Magic Practice for Beginners - RP for Anya & Emily

[exex_demon]

((open to anyone wandering by the classroom))

Anya hurried up the stairs and past the Great Hall. She was supposed to meet Emily in classroom seven so they could get it ready for the first meeting of the Dead Girls Club, but she had lost track of time. Books and wand in hand, she walked quickly into the classroom.

(( Takes place after the

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[emilyremains]

Emily had been waiting with a pile of books of her own, spread across two benches and a chair, and she was practicing her wand movements when Anya came into the room. "Swish and flick," she muttered to herself. "Swish and... Oh, there you are." She smiled at Anya.

[exex_demon]

"Hello! Sorry I'm a little late." Anya walked over and dropped her books onto a convenient desk. Some of the books had parchment bookmarks sticking out between the pages. She pulled over a chair and sat down, taking out her own wand. "Have you tried casting any spells yet?"

[emilyremains]

"That is quite all right." Emily tapped her wand on the open book in front of her. "Yes, I have been trying something simple, just to see if I could do it. I think I have got one down." She pointed her wand at a rather small book entitled One Hundred And Ten Tricks of Magical Decorating, and tried the traditional "swish-and-flick" move. "Wingardium Leviosa!" she murmured. To her immense delight and relief, the book did float up into the air, where it remained.

[exex_demon]

Anya gave Emily a round of applause. "Great! At least we know it works for both of us. This isn't the first time I've done magic, but I'd never used a wand before." Anya started paging through Household Spells for the Busy Witch. "I thought we could start by trying to clean the room. I saw a charm in here that should do the trick." She opened the book to the first marker but didn't find the spell she wanted, so she moved to the next. "It looks like we'll have quite a few girls tomorrow!"

[emilyremains]

Emily looked at the room and wrinkled her nose a little. "Yes, cleaning would be a good place to start. It would not hurt to get a little light in here either. These windows could use some polishing. And perhaps some nice curtains," she added as an afterthought.

She looked quite pleased. "Yes, I can hardly wait! And did you see that there is a new possible member being Sorted right now? A Dr. Janet... something. I think I saw you in the Sorting Hall at that time, so I suppose you spoke to her?"

[exex_demon]

"Yes, I did speak with Dr. Fraiser. She seemed very nice. I told her if she gets Sorted before tomorrow she should join us. I felt like the Dead Girl Welcoming Committee!" Anya grinned at Emily, but then frowned as she remembered something else. "I don't know all of the girls that signed up, but I do know one of them from before I came to Hogwarts. I knew she was here, but it didn't even occur to me that Glory would sign up. I mean yes, she did die, but she was trying to open a gateway to a Hell dimension at the time!" She sighed, then returned to the book. "I guess I'll have to play nice, but it's a good thing there's a no-kill rule around here."

Finally finding the page she wanted, Anya turned the book so Emily could see. "A-ha! Here we go. Scourgify!" Anya watched in delight as the spell started cleaning the floor.

[emilyremains]

"Fraiser, oh yes, that was her name. She did seem nice. I very much hope she will join the club." Emily nodded slowly, and her eyes widened at the 'gateway to Hell' comment. "Goodness me," she murmured. "A Hell dimension? Why would anyone want to open one of those? Is this... Glory a demon as well?"

She read the spell, repeated it a few times to make sure she got it right, and then she pointed her wand at the windows. "Scourgify!" The pale sunlight came flooding into the room as the grime disappeared from the glass, and Emily clapped her hands together. "Oh, this is a wonderful spell!"

[exex_demon]

Anya frowned thoughtfully as she dodged out of the way of the spell cleaning the floor. "I don't think we ever figured out what Glory was... or is I guess. She claimed to be the banished goddess of a Hell dimension. She wanted to open the gateway to get back there, but in order to do that she needed to kill Dawn. Obviously we couldn't let that happen."

Anya paused in her reminiscence as the spell finished up on the floor. "That's amazing! Who needs a vacuum cleaner when you have magic? I wonder if it's safe to use on fabrics?" She returned to the desk to check the spell book again.

[emilyremains]

Dawn, Dawn... Emily did not think she had met anyone named that, but on the other hand there had been many people at her Sorting that had not introduced themselves. "Obviously you could not," she said, as that seemed to be the appropriate answer. "I suppose we will just have to see how this Glory behaves. A goddess, indeed?" She shook her head. "Hogwarts certainly gets a lot of strange people..."

Emily frowned. "What is a vacuum cleaner?" she asked as the spell finished up on the windows.

[exex_demon]

"Well I don't know if she's really a goddess or not, but she was very strong. Of course now that I'm a demon again, I'm pretty strong myself. She'd better behave." Anya glanced at the spell book. "A vacuum cleaner is a mechanical device that sucks dirt and debris into a canister for disposal. Very handy, but you have to manually push it around, like a broom. This is much easier."

She looked up and smiled at the sparkling clean windows. "It doesn't say you can't use it on fabric. Should we try it on the curtains?"

[emilyremains]

Emily chuckled. "She'd better." She nodded thoughtfully at the new information. "Those were probably after my time... Being dead really makes one miss out on a lot of new things." She said it with a certain amount of amusement.

"We might as well try," Emily shrugged. "Since you are the more experienced witch, I could try that while you look into a way to draw up some chairs... Or a carpet, perhaps?"

[exex_demon]

Anya nodded. "Okay. I'll check the Transfiguration books next. A carpet would be nice." She pulled another book over to her and started to look through it. "So what was it like where you lived? Was... um, Elder Gutknecht, right? Was he the only one who could do magic?"

[emilyremains]

"Scourgify," said Emily softly and began cleaning the curtains. "Would you look at that, they are really white," she muttered. "More like grey before..." She interrupted herself. "Should we have a colour scheme, perhaps? There has to be a dyeing spell in one of these books."

She smiled at the thought of the Land of the Dead, and especially at Elder Gutknecht. He was such a sweetheart. She wondered a little sadly if she would ever see him again. "Yes, he was," she said as a reply to Anya's question. "He was the one we went to when we needed help. He was very wise and had a lot of books, so he always knew what to do. I used to go to him for a chat once in a while, but usually I never dared to bother him. He was so very important and had so many things to do." Her voice turned softer, and a little sad. "Elder Gutknecht was a great help for me just after I died. I was... Well, I was in a rather bad shape back then."

[exex_demon]

"I think there was a whole section on color changes in one of the decorating books." Anya tried to imagine waking up and realizing you were dead. "I bet it was quite a shock. Do you have other friends back there?"

She flipped to another bookmark and read through the spell. "This looks promising." She pointed her wand at one of the hard-backed chairs and read the incantation. The chair started to shake, and suddenly the legs and arms of the chair changed into stuffed pillows, while the seat and back remained wooden. The pillow legs slowly collapsed to the floor. Anya stared, then started to laugh. "Not exactly what I had in mind. Let's try that again." This time the chair had the proper structure, wooden frame and comfortable, fabric cushions, but the cushions covers looked just like wood. "Okay. I guess this is going to take some practice. At least this one you can sit on."

[emilyremains]

Emily took a book and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. "Oh yes, here we are! What do you say about... Maybe red? Light red. That is a nice, relaxing colour, isn't it?" She nodded. "I had a few. Ms. Plum was the one I talked to the most, I suppose. She had a lot of good advice. Mostly about men," she added with a slight smile. "And there there was Mr. Bonejangles, of course... And Monsieur Boneapart. And Maggot! Oh, he would not have been pleased if he found out I nearly forgot about him." She chuckled. "I talked to him a lot as well. I sort of had to, since he spent most of his time in my head." She tapped a bony finger against her ear.

"Practice makes perfect!" Emily said dutifully, but she had difficulties hiding her laughter. "It looks... different. Quite interesting."

[exex_demon]

"Oh, go ahead and laugh. My mistakes are always very amusing." Anya was pretending to be offended, but she was smiling at Emily while she said it. "Red is a nice color. Give it a try. Maybe you can change the look of that chair." She flipped a little farther ahead in the book. "I'm not sure we're going to be able to manage lamps. Maybe we should just stick with candles for now."

Anya was still trying to process Emily's statement about talking to a maggot in her head. Of course demons traditionally wore blood larva to weddings, so it really wasn't that odd, all things considered. She transfigured another chair, with slightly better results this time. "We still need to figure out how to set the password too."