alittlemirror | wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

To say Jade is displeased would be an understatement. It's not that he cares about this detention tarnishing his record, no. He doesn't really care about his record. What he does care about is how it cuts into his studying time. He had just come across a particularly fascinating snippet on the nature of death and the soul...

(And besides, those Hufflepuffs had started it with their incessant chattering. They're like a less annoying version of Saphir, and nobody had ever really objected when he hexed Saphir. And it's not like he used a serious hex; he just sealed and removed their mouths. Easily reversible, if they knew what they were doing - and knew how to use nonverbal spells.

After all, what kind of first-year doesn't know how to use nonverbal spells?)

But someone had taken offense to his hex, and now he finds himself trudging to Professor Rammsteiner's office, growing increasingly irritated at the loss of his study time. From what he's heard of detentions, they usually entail doing useless, mundane tasks easily accomplished with a little creative wandwork. He's thought about ignoring Professor Rammsteiner's orders more than once, but he's also been told that it would just lead to more detentions and thus a bigger waste of time.

Oh well. He's here now. With one last irritated sigh, he raises his hand to the door and knocks.

"Professor Rammsteiner? This is Jade Curtiss."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Heine doesn't say anything, but stops the trajectory of the book mid-air with a silent Arresto.

The only advice he can think of is to tell Jade to imagine his wand as an extension of his arm, but it's more the other way around—how he'd learned to cast with a wand after being taught mostly without one. Now that Jade's without his wand, he supposes it might feel like losing a limb.

"The wand opens your abilities," he says. A quick flick of his hand sends the book flying back at the same speed. "It's not the only way through."

At least he manages to get the spell out this time: "Depulso!"

It doesn't work. He tries to imagine the magic channelling through his body - he must have performed magic like that once, when he was still a child, before he had taken to borrowing his parents' wands - but it doesn't work.

The book glances off his outstretched fingers, tumbling onto the floor. Jade stares down at it.

Then he leans down to toss it back at Professor Rammsteiner, not speaking a word.

Heine catches the book once more, this time in his hands. After a moment's thought he transfigures the book into a ball, a palm-sized sphere as heavy and hard as the book it had been. This time he just throws it at Jade like a baseball, faster. Maybe it'll work out of necessity?

Really. They're moving to balls now?

"Depulso!" He repeats, pointing at the ball - or trying to, at least. This feels like a test of his reflexes as much as it is a test of his magic.

It's a test that he fails. The ball hits his knuckles, bouncing off of them and down to the floor, where it goes rolling away under the desks. Immediately, a dull throb of pain starts up on his knuckles and refuses to fade.

At the same time, a book comes flying off the shelf, moving towards Heine in a wobbly glide. It looks like the spell had (somewhat) worked - just not on its intended target.

They're easier to throw than a book! But also harder to keep in one place, which is apparent when the ball rolls away. Heine casts a slightly absent Accio to pull it back towards them, looking away when he hears something on the shelf move.

Getting there. He puts the book back for the moment and casts about on his desk for a moment to find a pen and paper, which are transfigured into a slingshot. An opened carton of cigarettes becomes a pile of round projectiles. It takes some charmwork to get the thing working without his input, but only a few seconds—and no wand.

Jade will be pelted by projectiles any time now if he doesn't get Depulso working. Heine doesn't use the opportunity to get back to working, however, just watches silently and closely.

He can venture a guess at what Professor Rammsteiner is setting up, but what he's more interested in are the movements of his hands and the way he positions his body. It's nothing he can't imitate, Jade decides.

Which just means that all this is less a problem with his technique and more a problem with his control. He remembers his first year, watching his fellow students struggle to so much as lift a feather even when their wandwork and pronunciation had been perfect. Their difficulty had stemmed from their inability to tap into their magic, to channel it.

It's not a problem he had faced before. Magic had always came naturally to him. But it's a problem he's facing now.

The first projectile hits him, even as he snaps out a quick "Depulso!", trying to channel his will through his fingers. A second projectile glances off his ribs, and he lets out a little grunt of pain. Again, he repeats his incantation, and while the third projectile wobbles in the air, it doesn't stop. A spot of pain blooms in his left shoulder.

It's not working. As the fourth projectile soars towards him, Jade raises both arms: "Protego!"

His mounting frustration, the odd excitement of meeting a new challenge, his will and his determination - all of that he channels into the air in front of him.

The projectile hits an invisible barrier, then falls to the ground like a stone.

For all his clear frustration, Jade picks it up quickly. Heine doesn't expect him to succeed that quickly.

He gathers the other projectiles into a huddled herd on the ground before summoning them to rest behind the slingshot, in case Jade continues, but he stands to look at the barrier.

"Can you keep it up?" He's about to tap on where it was before.

"We'll see." He doesn't think it'll hold. He knows how barriers work, and this one doesn't feel strong at all. Frowning, he tries to do...whatever it is he had done a few seconds earlier and create a stronger barrier.

Nothing happens. It holds when Professor Rammsteiner taps on it, but Jade thinks the fragile shield has more or less reached its limits already.

He shakes his head. "I don't know why this isn't working."

Heine makes a noncommittal sound in reply—he doesn't know why either. His guess amounts to the idea that wandless magic means letting go of an aid that's been with Jade for most of his exposure to magic.

"Maybe because they were hitting you." For a kid, Jade's surprisingly collected nearly all the time. There had been something, though, when he'd gotten clearly angry and managed a proper Shielding Charm.

It's idle conjecture on Heine's part, anyway; he starts up the charmed slingshot again and hops to sit on a desk to watch.

"Maybe," Jade acknowledges, his mind hard at work. It's not that he's incapable of wandless magic; he had managed that Accio earlier, and other simple charms besides.

It just doesn't work as well as it should. His spells lack the strength they usually have, and casting them requires immense focus. He simply can't react to the projectiles quickly enough to deflect them.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Professor Rammsteiner has much advice for him beyond keep trying.

He thinks about walking out, but the slingshot has started up again and he decides that he might as well stay. He needs practice; whether he practices on his own or with someone else doesn't make much of a difference. The first projectile hits his shield while he's busy thinking. The air in front of him seems to ripple and shatter into shards of light as the shield collapses.

With a sigh, he tries to block out the pain of the projectiles hitting his skin, falling into a deep concentration. "Protego," he says again, determined, and is rewarded with the appearance of another weak shield.

He's not satisfied. "It shouldn't be this hard," he mutters.

Heine watches while Jade casts another Shield Charm. It holds, but not well.

"Why's it easy to use your wand?" he asks. For Heine personally it's more difficult with a wand when it comes to quicker casting, though it serves as sort of an amplifier when he needs it. But it's hard for him to imagine not finding wandless magic easier.

"I don't know," he replies honestly. And, again: "Protego."

It feels a little easier this time, but the shield is as weak as it was before. It's only a matter of time before this one gives out as well, but Jade will use this brief respite to try answer Professor Rammsteiner more fully.

"It feels natural. It's just easy."

Shouldn't it be easier to just use what you already have? Crossing his legs at the ankle, Heine hunches over a bit more to watch closely as the shield drops.

"I guess you just need to practice until it feels 'natural' without a wand," he finally remarks, gaze sliding off. "How long are you planning to work on it?" Tonight, he means. He doesn't expect Jade to be proficient by the end of the day, but he also doesn't know what else to say or do. He'd learned all his magic through force of necessity—and even if it may seem necessary to Jade, it doesn't to Heine.

"As long as it takes." To master the shield charm. To master wandless magic as a whole. Jade doesn't sound determined, just - factual. He'll master it, because he has to.

He looks at Professor Rammsteiner as another projectile bounces off the shield, creating ripples of light in front of him. "I can use the slingshot by myself. You don't have to stay."

Did he just dismiss a Professor from his own classroom? Yes, yes he did.

Fortunately (?) Heine isn't offended, because... he didn't want to stay anyway. He makes a sound of acknowledgment and goes back to sitting behind his own desk to grade papers.

It's hellishly boring. From time to time Heine looks up and watches Jade practice. It's sort of a nice distraction, because god forbid he work properly on grading for an entire ten minutes.

By the time he's done, it's late at night and he's ready to turn in.

"I'm locking the classroom. You can take that with you, but you can't stay here."

It's a little easier to cast the charm successfully, and his shield lasts for longer, but it's still not good enough. He's not ready to be done yet. When Professor Rammsteiner breaks his concentration, Jade looks up at him with an expression of clear annoyance.

"Why not?" He asks tersely.

"Because I've got things in here." He waves a hand vaguely. He might be referring to all the filed papers, or the items used in Transfiguration class, or the few personal effects still on the desk. In any case, he just doesn't want Jade there. At least not without being within earshot.

"Can't you practice in your room?"

"I don't want to." He's comfortable here. He had just started making progress. He doesn't want to move and break his flow.

And besides: "You run classes here. You can't be that worried about your things."

There are few things more destructive on this earth than a class of young witches and wizards with too little control and too much mischief on their minds.

"I'm here when there are classes happening," Heine points out. He shuffles his papers into a neat enough stack and starts reaching out to the makeshift slingshot. It stills as his hand approaches.

"Just take this back with you or something."

The projectiles stop coming, so that's the end of this particular exercise. Jade is frowning, irritated and making sure Professor Rammsteiner knows it, but he doesn't try to reactivate the slingshot.

"Fine." He taps on his own shield, shattering it, then steps towards the table. He picks up the slingshot, holding it carefully.

Time to go look for a deserted classroom he can use. He's not about to practice in the Ravenclaw common room - Ravenclaw is full of too many eccentrics up and working at all hours of the night.

But before that...

"Thank you," he mutters, not looking at Professor Rammsteiner. That's what the Professor - Professor Nebilim, that is - would have wanted him to say, isn't it?

Heine holds his papers under his arm, watching to make sure that Jade is going to leave the room. The thanks takes him by surprise, a bit, though it's not unwarranted.

"Sure," he says in reply after a brief pause. It hadn't been too bad. At least Jade isn't that annoying.

Without further fuss, Heine herds Jade out of the classroom in front of him before shutting and locking the door behind them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject