Divination Three: OWLs & NEWTs Refresher
 

Once again back up in his tower, the Divination Professor kicked open the door, which had grown stubborn without the use of magic to pry it open, and invited the students into the classroom. Drafting instruments such as rulers and pair of compasses lay on top of the tables along with small cut sheets of parchment and the peculiar muggle writing instrument; eraser-topped pencils.

"Come right in, students and take a seat. Class will begin momentarily."


ooc: While this class is meant mostly for 5th and 7th years, any student of any year may sit in and take notes.

Class Progression:

"Hello Professor." Celandine greeted, giving him a small smile. She was quite eager for her OWLs to come and she sat down, ready to revise.

Reese was going to be taking her NEWTs next term, so why not attend this class for early studying? The Slytherin stood in the doorway of the Divination room and glanced around at the very few people that had arrive before her. Hm. Surely more would attend, because this lesson would really help students study.

"Good day Professor," she greeted the man with a smile as she finally walked inside the room. She gave Cela a little wave and a smile before she settled into one of the desks towards the front of the room.

Arienna had counted all seven hundred and sixty-eight steps to the divination tower, and continued counting scilently to her seat, which hadn't changed once all year (or last year, for that matter). She knew that NEWTs weren't until next year, but Professor Kapoor was her favorite teacher, and she didn't have anything else to do for that block of time. Upon sitting, Ari froze for a moment, her lips jerking up and to the side, but only for an instant.

Collapsing her cane and pressing her sunglasses closer to her eyes, Arienna reached into her beige shoulder bag and pulled out her divination notebook...at least...she thought it was her divination notebook, until she felt the bottom corner where, in braille, the letters "TF" were. Sliding her transfiguration notebook back onto place, she felt the notebook with "DV" in it's corner and set it on her desk. She also pulled out a silver quill and held it lightly between her thin fingers.

She sighed, softly, thinking that she only would be at Hogwarts another year. She frowned, for a moment, before her face returned to it's usual, indifferent, blank stone.

Ella walked quietly into Divination, ready to watch the class a bit and take notes. "Hi, professor!" she greeted, then took a seat toward the back.

Matheu wasn't too strong in Divination. He heard that this lesson, meant primarily for OWL and NEWT students, was open to anyone. He figured it would be a great opprotunity to learn something in better understanding. He took a seat in the middle of the rows and against the wall, to prevent distraction from the other students.

Kapoor waited until a goodly amount of students had taken a seat or two. He expected this class was to be a small one, but he felt that with the way the OWL and NEWT exams were set up, a little brush up might be extremely useful to the students who were to take their exams this year.

"Hello, Miss Upstead, Miss Toussaint. Good to see you, Miss Westwick, Everyone. Welcome to Divination: The OWL and NEWT edition." He formally opened the class. "Some of you might be wondering why I have elected to give a class for material that will likely be covered on the OWL and NEWT exams. Afterall, the lot of you will already be familiar with the material, correct? This is true, but even so, the practical part of the exam is very important as you cannot pass the exam without it even if you do get every answer on the written portion of it correct. And, of course, we want you to succeed. Thus the purpose of giving you a bit of extra time to familiarize yourselves further with some of the material."

"Now, to begin, you all know what a Natal Chart is, correct? Could anyone give further detail about how they work?" He asked an open-ended question to see where they were at.

LouAnn didn't know too much about Divination...only what she'd manage to read in books. She did, however, remember just a little something about a Natal Chart when she was studying for her OWL exams.

"A Natal Chart is a chart based upon the exact time a person was born. I've heard that they go by the actual time that person drew their first breath, rather than when they actually came into the world" LouAnn said, her hand raised high. "This chart gives us information about a person in two different steps called chart weighting and chart shaping."

"That is it, Miss Purple. Care to venture a guess as to why they draw up the charts based upon a persons first breath rather than the time they are actually born?" He asked not only Anna, but everyone in the class as well.

That was...it? Was he sure? Of course he was sure, but...wow. LouAnn tended to get a little overexcited when she gave the correct answer, mainly because she usually doubted herself so much. "Uhh...uhh...umm. Oh, sure, Professor. Let's see...maybe because using the actual time the person drew their breath would give the best possible calculation?" she replied. "Also, because the celestial bodies constantly move, every second counts and can bring about change. I think a new chart is created based on each and every movement."

Kapoor was beaming. How could he expect less, truly from Fyo? The young wizard was one of his bests. He smiled proudly at both him and LouAnn.


"Very good answers, the both of you. That is correct and it can also be noted that birth can be charted as an event as well, and often is calculated as such until the child's fifth birthday." Kapoor manually took up a small chunk of white chalk and wheeled out the blackboard. On it, he began to doodle a pie-chart looking picture.


"This is your basic natal chart. We're going to be practicing both how to read them and how to create them. Please create a copy of this chart on a piece of parchment. If you own your own textbook there should be a blank one in the back pages for your use." He said, giving the class the next bit of instruction.

You are too sweet, Izzeh. *blushes*
 

Yay natal chart! Fyo opened his inter-leaf textbook and flipped to a fresh, blank page. Then he dipped his quill in ink, and began to copy the chart Professor Kapoor had drawn on the board. It looked a little complicated, and the fourth year was looking forward to further explanation.

Noticing the smile the professor was giving her, LouAnn, too, smiled. Class wasn't all that difficult today, a fact that made LouAnn pretty happy. Her eyes flickered back to Professor Kapoor, and she nodded a few times as he explained the charting of a birthday. Shortly afterwards, he was working on drawing a Natal Chart of his own. How the professor got all the lines to look so straight was beyond LouAnn. She'd be lucky to draw a decent looking egg-shape.

...and of course that was the very next thing the students were told to do. Shrugging, LouAnn got out her writing materials and set to work drawing what she hoped would somehow resemble the chart on the board. Oh, but wait...she did own a textbook! Laying down her quill, LouAnn happily flipped to the back of the book and found the page the professor had been talking about.

Celandine beamed cheerfully. Yup. Birthcharts were fuuuuun. She had already filled out the one in the back of the book, so Cela got a fresh sheet of parchment and drew up the circle with the twelve divisions representing each house.

Birthcharts? Whooopeeee... Livvy made no comment, nor any sign of disgruntle as she pulled out her textbook and lazily flipped through the pages towards the back of the book, until she found an empty page perfect for what the professor had asked them to do. The Ravenclaw picked up her quill from her desk and scratched it on the piece of paper, sketching up the natal chart that had been presented to them.

Ari jumped when Professor Kapoor started talking; the Professor probably never used his 'inside voice'. As he and the other students began talking about natal charts, Ari let go of the quill. Instead of dropping, the quill hovered for a moment, before it began to write across the blank page of the notebook. The words remained only for a moment, before they disappeared, and bumps took their place. Ari reached up her left hand and followed a few lines of the text, to make sure everything important got written down.

Reaching into her beige bag, Ari pulled out her Divination book, which was much different from everyone else's, mostly because it was all in braille. Flipping the first few pages, she scanned the table of contents with her fingertips, finally finding the words "Natal Birth Chart". Finding the page, her hand felt the page, on which was a raised picture of a birth chart, with information ont he sides, describing each section.

Grabbing the quill, Ari flipped the page and drew an almost perfect circle. Then, another one inside it. The ink from the circles disappeared and the paper raised where she had drew the circles. Using the edge of her book, she drew the lines carefully, two more circles, then numbered the sections.

Piece of cake.

Kapoor waited as everyone took out either a piece of parchment and drew upon it or flipped to the backs of their books. He noticed Arienna Malone jump up a bit as he began to speak and it made Professor Kapoor wonder if his breath was on hum.

"It looks as though you've all got your charts ready, but before we begin to fill them in with information, you'll need to draw a few details in. For those of you using the charts from your book these details will already be filled in for you. For the rest of us, please draw four concentric rings inside the circle of your chart. Once you've done that, section it off into 12 pie slices and place numbers in the innermost ring 1-12." He instructed.

Kapoor gave the students a few minutes to complete this part and asked them a question. "Why 1-12? Anyone care to offer a guess? Bearing in mind that this is used for Western Astrology.".

Cela raised her hand. "1-12 because there are 12 signs in the Western Zodiac." She paused and thought for a second, then amended, "12 commonly used signs anyway."

"Yes, Miss Toussaint." This class was going to go smoothly as it looked like all his best students were here. "Also, there are 12 houses to be represented on a chart."

"So, for example, if you find 11, the house of hopes and wishes, has the sign of Leo in it, it may mean that the person to whom the chart belongs longs for popularity-centered things. They want to be stars and familiar to everyone, provided nothing in the chart blocks this characteristic. Also, it will tell you where to place the other signs in the chart. The signs, you see, will go in order in an anti-clockwise motion following that numbers, which, for those of you drawing your own charts should also be layed out in an anti-clockwise motion." Hopefully, they hadn't gotten too far and could still fix that.

"Lets draw up an example." He said moving back towards his demo drawing of the natal chart. "I want everyone to find their 7th house and place the sign of Cancer in it. And, then tell me, what sign would be next to it near the number 6 we've drawn in representing the 6th house?"

Celandine wrote Cancer into the 7th House and put her hand up.

"Gemini in the 6th house, Professor?" She wrote it on her example chart.

That sounded easy enough. Fyo dipped his quill in ink once more, pressed it to the surface of his textbook, and filled in the number 7 spot. Cancer... that was the star sign of a friend he knew. Random thoughts, much?

He raised his hand. "Since we go in an anti-clockwise order, I think number six would be Gemini, sir." Sure sounded that way.