CHARMS - All years, Term 8

Morgana looked up and her eyes fell on Aoife O'Donnell. She raised an eyebrow and fixed the girl with a cold glare. "Ask your unicorn friend, Aoife. Unicorns doesn't attack. All they do is run. They are fantastic creatures because of the magic within them, but other than that, they have nothing. They are the embodiment of innocence and would never hurt anyone. That can indeed be seen as a strength, but given this fact, do you think I fit a unicorn?" she asked, her voice monotone, hiding her utter dislike of the girl. She were to work with this one, it would do not good to have the girl be even more annoying.

"The point is, O'Donnell, that if a unicorn is cornered by men who wants to kill it, it has no means of escape. That's what I mean by helpless. Magical or not, they have no strength but their speed," Morgana concluded and returned her attention to her table instead, deciding that the girl honestly wasn't worth her time.

Morgana Gaunt was the most terrifying being Aoife knew. True, she liked the girl but she was SO SCARY. Even more scary than her parents! And even more than JEN! Still, the redhead was brave and stayed staring at Morgana while she gave her scary little speech, shaking in her boots. Really, the girl was only being mean to impress Tor. She didn't really mean to be so horrible! At least, that was what she was telling herself.

"Er... no," she said in response to whether that description suited Morgana, only just loud enough to be heard. "But unicorns are just lovely things! And so beautiful! They aren't the friendliest of beings, usually. And you can never tell when they're scared or angry!" That, of course, didn't sum Morgana up. Aoife could see that she was so much more complex than that, that there was a lot to her, but all those traits were true of the Slytherin girl.

That made no sense! "So the use of helpless in that sentence was completely inaccurate?" She sure sounded a lot more confident than she felt. Work might be hell tomorrow. Oh well. #YOLO!

"Oh no poor me not being privileged enough to be a sheep." Blake sighed dramatically. "What is the point in this assignment at all if I can't even be a sheep?" Blake moaned dramatically banging his head against the desk.

He perked up a bit though when Aoife mentioned a dinosaur. "YES, I'll be a dinosaur!" He quickly butted in making it official and grabbing the choice of animal before Aoife decided to change her mind and be mean and overly controlling and bossy again.

But thankfully Aoife got distracted, pity it was with Morgana. The devil of Slytherin. Blake was too scared of the girl to even look her in the eye, she sounded ten times worse than Jennifer Moss. The only thing was that Morgana was so anti-social he only had to see her in the Great Hall and he usually skipped past the Slytherin table fairly fast when she was present. Pity they had to have class with the older students. "What do you think your doing?" Blake hissed at Aoife as she took it upon herself to defend Unicorns. Did the girl have no sense? Blake grabbed her and tried to turn her attention back to their own group before the evil Slytherin declared war on their table or Gryffindor students. "What creature are you going to be?" Blake asked feigning interest in the assignment for his own sake.

"I'm here, I'm here!" Lyn murmured loudly to herself as she stumbled into the classroom. She had actually remembered where it was, it was just that Peeves had found the opportunity to drop a Dungbomb on a lone Hufflepuff and took it. Now Lyn was reeking of bad smell, and she had quite no idea how to remove it. Her hair was a bit frizzy due to the explosion, but she had tried to stop at the bathroom on her way to class and try to put it back to normal by using water. The frizziness still showed a bit.

She gave a quick smile to the professor, and silently hoped that he wouldn't announce to the whole class that she had arrived. Her smell had probably already done that. It was almost like Kay's dog poo, except worse. Shyly, Lyn took a quick look at the seating chart and found herself relieved to be teamed up with some people she knew. She understood the words Lyra, Blake and Aoife but the Professor's writing was so weird that she didn't decipher who else was sitting at that table. She dashed over to the table, in which she spotted Lyra, and sat down at the empty seat.

"I am so, so sorry," Lyn quickly apologized, realizing that they were going to laugh at her for her hair and smell. She wished that she could've hidden in the bathroom until class was over or something.

Since it was going to be Aylee's last year at Hogwarts, she was trying a bit hard to be better at classes. Kynan, of course, had told her that it was impossible, so she was going to try to help Kynan get better in classes, instead. Her brother had then told her that that was impossible as well. In the end, Aylee decided to have no resolution for her last year, and just wanted to enjoy Hogwarts for the last time. And that meant having to go to Charms.

Charms had grown to be one of her favourite subjects since her first year. They had gotten several professor changes over the years, she remembered. Aylee had a faint picture of a Professor Adele, she thought, from her first year, but couldn't remember. She remembered, though, strict but really soft-hearted (Kynan's theory) Professor Fenech, and now Professor LeBlanc. Of course, this one Professor had managed to make Kynan like maths by handing out candy during Arithmancy. He was one of the most hyper teachers she had ever met, and one of the most funniest. It was going to be hard, really, to have to leave Hogwarts, because she would miss Professor Leblanc.

That day, she had went to wait for Kynan outside his common room, so they would go to Charms together. Naturally, Kynan showed up late. They walked hurriedly, discussing random things like Aylee's graduation, Ethan's new job, their new apartment, when Kynan was going to ask Maya out (to which Kynan had blushed, looked away and said no more). When they arrived, they weren't quite late, because there was a tiny smelly Hufflepuff rushing into the class. "Oh my god, is that a Dungbomb?" Kynan muttered, waving his hand around his nose, attempting to push the smell away. "Yes, Kynan, I thought you'd recognize it from the ones you put in my room last year," Aylee replied, a bit sarcastically.

The two of them entered together, and the first thing Aylee looked at was the seating chart. "Maya, Deirdre and Ryland," she muttered to Kynan, and she could basically hear his smile at the mention of Maya's name. "You're gonna be sitting with Ryland," he muttered back. Mad, Aylee leaned in to whisper something in her brother's ear, "Shut up, because I know how to turn you into a toad and I'm not afraid to do it." She leaned back and looked at him with serious eyes. She was tired of all the teasing she had gotten for pushing Ryland away. Maybe she should turn the Professor into a toad, or change the seating chart with a spell, to make Ryland sit with Aoife or something.

Aylee then walked over to the table with Kynan, and tried her best to avoid Ryland's eye. She realized that it wouldn't be much trouble, since he was asleep anyway. Kynan was obviously delighted to see Maya, because as soon as he saw her, he sat down and said, "Hey, how are you?" So, as usual, Aylee was left alone, until Kynan looked over at her and made a movement with his head to signal to her to come over. Quickly, she pulled her chair closer to Kynan and Maya, and greeted Kynan's-pretty-crush, "Hey."

Oliver greeted Madeline, when she came in to sit next to her. "Hi!" he said, "Glad to see we're in the same team!" Before he could say something else, though, he was taken back when Morgana delivered some sort of speech about how terrible his idea was. Oliver was a tad bit hurt, but not enough to let it get to him and give Morgana the power to destroy his idea with her harsh words and arrogant aura. He let her speak, rant as much as she wanted, then when he was about to reply Mademoiselle O'Donnell began an argument with Morgana across the room. Well, this is just wonderful. He was rather annoyed by the girl's side of the argument. He liked Aoife, but he didn't think she had much of an argument to discuss, Morgana was easily winning this one. He stopped paying attention after a few seconds, and looked at Madeline instead. He groaned and rolled his eyes.

When Morgana finally came back to their table, all thoughts of Aoife now disintegrated, he spoke up. "I suggested fairies because they have wings and wings are awesome. Mermaids are often thought to be beautiful creatures with wicked desires. They don't all have to be half naked, and I'm sure none of us would appreciate such a thing from you regardless of how pretty you are. Unicorns are cool too. They're pure and widely desirable. They're useless to you, but they're unique and wonderful to me. Maybe I thought you'd be a good candidate for them." He was pretty calm even though he'd sort of stood up to a scary pretty girl. "If you would rather be a phoenix, be my guest. I'm sure you'd be just as wonderful as a born-again creature." After his little moment of petty courage, Oliver turned to Tor and Madeline, "Any ideas on what you would like to be? Or any other theme options?" Oliver might be a silly second year, but he was having none of Morgana's shit. He was a man. Sort of. Maybe not. He was just Ollie. Ollie the Tree Hugger.

The small Hufflepuff boy and girl who were to sit at their table looked rather annoying. As long as they kept their mouths shut most of the time, he’d have no problem with them. The first child greeted them very enthusiastically. Tor nodded to him. Then he started with suggestions about costumes. “I am not dressing up as a phoenix, thank you.” Morgana seemed to be even more annoyed, since her suggestions were pathetic unworthy creatures, not good representatives of her incredibleness. Even he could live without seeing her as a half-naked mermaid. “If we have to, I might be a dragon.” But if he didn’t completely have to, he would not be dressing up as anything. Perhaps he’d pretend to be sick and not show up on the day he had to.

Unsurprisingly, the small red-headed girl couldn’t keep her mouth shut either, trying to get a rise out of his lady by starting an argument about unicorns. Of course, the older girl won, because she was so much superior.

Morgana raised an eyebrow as Aoife started retaliating at her. Aoife obviously wasn't the brightest kid of them all, as she clearly didn't hear what Morgana was saying. Unicorns were helpless. If cornered. They were rarely cornered, but not calling them helpless just because they were often not caught, was like saying a toddler was never helpless, except when the sheets lay over its head.

She did not, however, bother to explain this to the girl. If Aoife had made up her mind about the unicorns, it didn't matter to Morgana. One thing was for sure, though; the only reason not more unicorns were killed, was due to the fact that people believed it would bring a curse upon the killer. Not many people liked the thought of that.

She didn't have to think about Aoife much longer, though, as one of the other kids by her table seemed to get her to talk about something else. Morgana returned her attention to Oliver, who was now ranting an excuse to Morgana. Morgana just looked at him. And then she smirked. "You're weird, kid," she said, "But you've got backbone." She leaned back in her chair, deciding to leave him alone.

Just because he was a kid who liked the wonders of innocence, did not mean that Morgana at all agreed with him. She was not at all flattered by his mention of her being pretty or somewhat stating her being unique and wonderful like a unicorn. She rather disliked that. But his incessant rambling about the creatures, and not once blinking made Morgana think that this kid could be something one day.

She listened to Tor saying he could be a dragon. Morgana looked at them. "We don't want to do something less predictable, though? Like charming costumes to look like they're from the medieval times?" she asked casually, "Also, important to remember that there's a difference between transfiguration and charms. We're not going to be anything. We're going to look like it," she added. She figured this was a tricky job just because one had to be certain of where charms ended and transfiguration started.

Even though Morgana had called him weird, he was going to take it as a compliment. For a second he wondered if she went around calling everyone that, and if she did it would take away the compliment part and just make him feel so...common. He didn't want that. If he was going to get along with his team, he must be as extraordinary as them. I'm still taking it as a compliment, Oliver thought and gave Morgana a big smile, adding to his weirdness.

Tor did look like a dragon. He was big and scary and he couldn't seem to look at anyone else but Morgana, which made Oliver laugh a little. "No, of course we don't want to be predictable." Oliver added in, "But how do we achieve being super amazing and not stress the boundary between transfiguration and charms?" he thought out loud, though he was looking at Morgana, most of his words getting tangled up in him brain. "Your idea of charming costumes is good, but what fun is that?" he said as he rested his elbows on the table, wondering if they could do something easier than creatures but equally fun.