at it once again

[Elisabeth McKnight]

Practicing wasn’t supposed to be this hard, Ellie thought with a huff as she waved her wand again, pointing it at the mouse sitting in front of her on the desk in one of abandoned classrooms. The mouse merely twitched its whiskers at her, for all the attention Ellie deserved, in its opinion. She had mastered levitation charm a while back, but summoning charm was giving her no end of trouble, as was transfiguration, which she was now practicing. She supposed that was why she was in the transfiguration club in the first place. This time she was using one of the abandoned classrooms in lower levels in order to practice, keeping the door to it wide open just in case anyone got alerted by suspicious crashing noises that always happened whenever she attempted to master a spell. So far, though, there was none, for which Ellie was grateful, but she also was not making any progress, which was most disappointing, especially since this was supposed to be merely review in her case.

Presently, Ellie frowned in distaste at the glass that still had mouse ears. She was hopelessly stuck, and unsticking herself wasn’t happening yet. What was she doing wrong this time? At least her end-all-spells charm, as she was calling it, was working now, so she managed to un-transfigure the critter back to normal with a simple ‘Finite’, but her luck wasn’t happening much. Saying the spell for turning the mouse into the glass, and the more elaborate, the better, both Ellie and the mouse squeaked in fright at the loud crash behind them. Instead of a mouse turning into the glass, it turned out that one of the desks behind her broke apart, and how, Ellie didn’t have a clue. “Oh, dear,” she sighed, warily eyeing her wand. “Are we seriously at it once again? Just when I thought I got you under control!” And she really did, too, just her luck it happened when she was on her own, though if the sound was anything to go by, she doubted she'd be so for long.


@Ellory Pendergast

  

[Ellory Pendergast]

Ellory had found herself in the lower levels because she had gone to see Miss Artemisia Carrow, one of Slytherin’s prefects. Just as she was making her way towards the staircase, she overheard a loud and suspicious noise from one of the nearby classrooms. Peeves was her first thought, but she still thought to check what was going on.

It was Peeves that she found in that empty classroom. It was one of her people, a girl she recognized from the Gryffindor common room and table but whose name she didn’t actually know. And there was a broken desk.

“You do know it is against the rules to destroy school property?” Ellory said, with slight amusement in her voice. She raised a questioning eyebrow at the younger girl.

  

[Elisabeth McKnight]

Ellie glanced about, looking for the mouse that scampered while she was scolding her wand, and jumped at the voice before turning a guilty look at the older girl. She recognized her as being from her House but not quite beyond that. The mouse located and retrieved, Ellie twisted her foot on the ground and tipped her head to the side, then gave a small huff at the sight of raised eyebrow on the older girl’s face. There was the eyebrow thing again, did all older students have it for the younger ones or was she an exception?

“Well, yes, but you see, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she explained, twitching her nose at the same time as the mouse twitched its whiskers. “I was attempting to turn the mouse into the goblet but instead, well, that happened, and I don’t know why. I mean, it’s a beginner’s spell, right?” She gestured with the hand that still held the mouse to the afore-mentioned school property and gave a dubious look at her wand. “Just when things were getting better, too, oh, and I’ve a witness!”

After all, she almost wrestled her stubborn hawthorn wand under control last year, and this time, it almost behaved. Well, almost being the key word as evidenced by most recent mishap. And she did have a witness, too bad it was of the witless variety and was currently more interested in Ellie's hair than her bit of a predicament. How typical of a mouse!


@Ellory Pendergast