Mina nodded to her answer to Cela as she made her way to the left side of the study area. She was actually really excited for tomorrow and their visit to the greenhouse. She really hadn't been down there since the little scavanger hunt they had the beginning of term.

Sitting down again, she pulled out her little chess piece and set it in front of her. Looking around, she frowned. Who could she ask to be her partner? Looking at her lonely little knight, she tapped it with her wand. We need to find you a friend, don't we? It was final, she was going crazy. Talking to a chess piece.

"Its easier if you don't try too hard." Celandine offered with an encouraging smile. "The question I am going to ask is..." She hesitated, "... what needs to change in order for me to get along better with Albert? Basically will he ever like me? You have to be sure to phrase your question in a way that it doesn't simply ask for a yes or no answer or you won't get much insight at all." Cel explained.

She pulled a folded square of silk out of her rune bad and lay it out on the desk. "Ummm we won't worry about the rituals and stuff I guess. It might be confusing otherwise and Professor Lupa didn't state that we had to invoke the runes."

If only Jack were a decent beat boxer...that would definitely help them out a bit. But, since he couldn't make a beat for the life of him, and the librarian would most likely KILL them for bringing a radio in here and disturbing the peace, they'd just have to do without. He pulled out his wand and pointed it at the bishop.

"Ok, here goes nothing," he said with a smile before waving his wand in a half circle moving in the clockwise direction as he spoke out the incantation. "Piertotum Locomotor!" he exclaimed.

He watched with a satisfied smile as his bishop came to life, standing up and looking at it's surrondings with curiosity. Since Livvy hadn't transformed her piece yet, he thought about having the bishop do a few push ups and laps around the table--to warm up, you know. He grinned as the bishop started to run laps around Jack's notes, and he started to make tiny hurdles out of his quills as he waited for Livvy to continue.

Oh. Livvy watched Jack as he started off and pointed his wand at the bishop and after saying the incantation, the bishop came to life and stood up to look around. She wondered if it was confused... shocked... scared. If only they could talk to the chess pieces. That. Would. Be. SWEET.

Just as Livvy was about to start off too, something Jack did made her laugh and she clapped in delight. The bishop was running around in laps and oh! - look at the hurdles that Jack had made out of his quills. "Your bishop should run for the Olympics," she said, humorously as she pulled out her wand once more and looked at her rook with much concentration.

Alrighty. DEEP BREEATH.

"Piertotum Locomotor!" Livvy commanded, loudly but soft enough so that the librarian wouldn't come over and hush them up. Even though things were loud enough as it was.

A grin of triumph exploded from Livvy's lips as the rook immediately came to life and began to waddle around the table. If they had been able to make thing sing, Livvy would've SO done a singing competition. She'd have to ask Professor Svensson if there was any way that they could do that. Yup. Next class. Toterly.

Livvy swished her wand around gently so that the rook would twirl around in circles like a ballerina. Ohhhh yeaaahhh. That's right. Her rook had sweet moves. Mhm. Maybe a little bit of the worm. Livvy burst out laughing, a little bit too loudly, at the sight of her rook attempting to do the worm. Its rugged body making contact with the table and then up again. "Dude. This. Is AWESOME," she exclaimed with joy.

Jak grinned and finally gave the mental command for his chess piece to stop before it wore itself out, and he watched as the bishop bent over in what he could only assume was weezing. He watched as Livvy's rook began to do the worm and let out a laugh.

"Does that mean the dance off is on?" he asked, pulling out his wand and pointing at the bishop. In an instant, the bishop straightened up and walked over to Livvy's chess piece, watching it for a few seconds before it broke out and started doing the robot. Hehehe. Where was a camera when you needed it?!

Oh YEAAHH. Her rook had sweet moves. Livvy allowed the rook to stop and stretch out a little before it hurt itself. Hey now. Chess pieces had feelings too. They felt pain and aches. She made sure of it that the rook did a few leg and calf stretches so that it wouldn't feel sore the next day after all the things that Livvy was about to put it through.

Was it on? "Oh. It's ON, Jack," Livvy said, smirking as she too pointed her wand at the rook and led it to walk towards the bishop. She watched Jack's bishop do the robot, which was probably the most funniest thing she had ever seen. 'When you're feeling low and blue. Have a dance-off with your chess pieces. Piertotum Locomotor. Sweet.' Sounded like an advertisement.

Livvy flicked her wand casually and her rook began doing the disco, it's waddling still very obvious but it didn't matter. The waddling seemed to just make things funnier.

Jack couldn't find any words to describe how hilarious he was finding this situation, so he just laughed, grabbing his stomach as his laughter started to hurt his abssss. The bishop had obviously started to figure out what was going on with their little dance off, so it's dancing got more intense before it finally started running at the rook like he was going to kick him.

"Hey now! None of that!" Jack scolded his bishop, waving his wand as the bishop started to do the YMCA. Or, at least, that was pretty sure that was what it was doing...Jack wasn't too familar with muggle dances.

The situation was funny as it was. And Jack's laughter seemed to make things even more funnier! The look on his face and the uncontrollable laughter her was going through, made Livvy break out laughing as hard as she was. She shook her head as she shook with the laughter that was erupting from her. She tried to stop so she could breathe, holding her stomach and leaning forward as she inhaled. Oh gosh.

Smiling, Livvy straightened back up and then.. CHEATER. She was about to get out her own wand to give Jack's bishop a piece of her mind. Had he seriously been about to kick her rook? BULLY! Livvy didn't like bullies.

But fortunately, Jack showed the bishop who was boss around here. Which was good... otherwise Livvy would most likely have blew up into small little pieces. HEH. Who would be laughing NOOWW, ehhh, bishop?

Refocusing on the entire point of the assignment, silly Livvy, she pointed her wand at her rook. Immediately, the rook stopped doing the disco, and launched itself into performing the Macarena. Which looked rather... odd... for a rook to do. Then again. All of these things that they were currently doing was... odd.

The bishop stopped doing the YMCA and looked at the rook, as if it had no idea what it was doing. Indeed, Jack was a bit puzzled by the dance too. What was he doing? And...was the rook shaking it's bum? Weeeeeeird. Must be another muggle dance.

Hmmm, speaking of muggle dances, Jack needed another one to get his bishop back into the game. Jack's knowlegde on muggle stuff wasn't that vast to begin with, BUT he did remember something...what was it? OOOH yeah, the Cha Cha Slide! He waved his wand and mentally instructed the bishop to do the Cha Cha Slide, and the bishop began to step to the left, to the right...hehe. This was fun! Those poor little chess pieces, though. They were giving them quite a workout!

Okay. So maybe the rook looked a tad bit silly. Since the rook didn't really have much of an arm, it didn't really look he was doing anything except for rocking back and forth, bobbing up and down, and shaking his buttocks. Yeaaahhh... not much of a dance. But at least Livvy knew what he was doing. That was aaalll that mattered.

OHMEGEE. The Cha Chad Slide. Livvy immediately recognized the dance and laughed and lifted her hands up into the air to clap her hands together gently in delight. "I LOVE that dance," she said, grinning. All these Muggle dances.. living with Muggles all her life surely had come in handy and given her quite an upper hand. Her mind was filled with all these possible dances. Elvis Presley? NYEAAHH.. OH OH!

Livvy mentally commanded the rook to do the Tonto, Jump On It dance from the old show, "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". She grinned widely as the rook turned around so that his 'back' was facing the bishop. And he shook his hips a few times before he held out his 'hands' one by one. Oh! And the cowboy twirl around thingy! HILAAARRIOUS.

"It is?" Fyo asked. The more she spoke, the more clueless he was. Of course, he understood the reason she had laid out butttt... after that? Zero, zilch, WHAMM!nothing. So much for a better grip on Runes.

"Sooo..." he said, when she had fallen silent. "Do we..." he blinked, prettt-ttyyy clueless. So VERY much for a better grip on Runes.



... He was so bad at this, it embarrassed him.

"We draw the runes. Like this."

Cela drew on a scrap of parchment.
"Okay?" She started drawing her own runes and placing them on the cloth she had in front of her, focusing on her question about Albert as she did so.

Okay, this made a LOT more sense. Enough of it, in fact, to make Fyo's eyes light up with understanding. "I think I get that," he said, and the last Ancient Runes lesson - which he had, of course, attended - seemed to spring into his mind, and become much, much clearer.

"Okkkayyyy!"

Yes, he was going to wait for her to explain some more.

DUHH!

Leave it to Carter to space out in the middle of a study session. Alright, they were thinking of questions. He had no idea what to ask the runes. He looked toward each of his friends at the table hoping for some inspiration. None came. His thoughts then wandered across the situation with Tori and her dad. "Will things work out for Tori when she meets her dad?" he asked playing with his runes. He hoped that was specific enough. Maybe not. "Why does Tori's dad want to see her?" That was probably better. He drew out his runes.



Alright, now for the interpreting...

Jack grinned as he watched the rook do some sort of dance that Jack had never seen before--but that didn't matter because it was HILARIOUS! As he doubled over in laughter once again, his bishop just stared in awe at the rook before finally hanging his head low and admitting defeat. Awwww, pooooooor bishop. It was just too hard for him to trump that move.

"Well, guess that's that," Jack said with a grin. He picked up his wand and was going to do the counter charm to put the little bishop out of it's misery when he realized that...he didn't KNOW the counter charm.

"Erm....how do I stop it?!" he asked Livvy in a bit of a panic.

Seeing that Rafe was pulling out his own chess pieces, LouAnn retreived her bag and began to dig for her pieces, as well. She pushed aside a few textbooks, rummaged some more, and still came up with nothing. Sighing, she pulled the textbooks from the bag, laid them on the table, then began to dig some more. "I swear you could lose an elephant in here," she mumbled. Maybe she should take her bag to the Common Room later on and clean it out.

"Hmm...yes, I'd love to use one of your pieces," she said with a laugh. It didn't seem as if she'd locate any of her own anytime soon. "The queen, please." She pulled the queen a bit closer to her then pointed her wand at it. Using the motion she'd been taught in class, LouAnn called out, "Piertotum Locomotor!" LouAnn began to bob her wand up and down, causing the chess piece to jump up and down and kick its legs. She threw her head back and laughed at the silliness of it all. "Come on, Rafe! Get the king going!"

"So, pull your runes." Cela encouraged. "And keep your question in your mind.

Cela looked up at Carter and nodded. "Okay so you should break it down, interpret each rune based on its position and think about how it applies to your question and once you've done that, you work all the individual interpretations together to get an answer."

Celandine worked on her own, making notes as she went.

Riiiight.

"Thanks," Fyo said, a little sheepishly. Stuuupid Shy!Shell attack. He rummaged in his runes bag and, at long,long last, had finally brought out five, bright runes. Huzzah, maybe?




Now, this was MUCH easier. Fyo knew how to interpret the runes. Or at least, how to try to interpret them.

HA!

Livvy had won. She really liked winning. It was her favorite part of partner assignments. And especially when the assignments were as fun and humorous as this was. She laughed along with Jack and watched as the bishop admitted defeat. "Maybe next time, little bishop," Livvy encouraged, winking at the bishop. It was a good thing she had thought of that move. There weren't many dances that she knew. It was too bad she forgot to pull the Napoleon Dynamite move. Maybe next time.

"Already?! Awww... that was way too fun," she said, grinning as she gave the rook a little high five. It was more of an index finger to hand five actually. She'd have to learn how to enlarge the chess piece next time. That. Would. Be cool. A LIFE-SIZE dance off.

Oh. Uhm. Yeah. That was a problem. What WAS the counter-charm? "Uhhh... I don't know. Stop it with your mind?"

Cela finished up her interpretation cheerfully and put it all away in her bag to hand in later. Now she had arithmancy and potions to do.

She started reviewing her notes but stayed where she was incase Carter and Fyo needed a hand with their runes interpretations.

Ok...how did you stop something with your mind? Mentally command it to stop moving by thinking something like "die, bishop, die!!!" or something along those lines? Noooo, that was too brutual. He closed his eyes and mentally commanded the bishop to turn back to a solid chess piece...it stopped moving, but hadn't gone back to stone. Ahh well. It was good enough for now. He'd deal with it later in his common room.

"I think that Duro spell or whatever it is to turn things to stone might have worked too, but this is just temporary," Jack said, picking up the bishop and dropping him in the bag. "Is there anything else we need to do?" he asked.

"Well, you could always try accioing it out of your bag," Rafe laughed before she agreed to use his pieces. "I find that spell rather helpful. Gets you things when you are quite a distance away." Rafe laughed at her digging. A girl's bag, that's definitely one territory he didn't wish to seek a venture.

"Oh, you're not going to show me up!" Rafe shouted as he pointed his wand at his king. "Piertotum Locomotor!" He shouted and made his kind do a little Irish jig. Rafe laughed right along with LouAnn as the little chess pieces were dancing. He then made his chess piece do a little break dancing. "Who would have thought this would have been so much fun?!"

As LouAnn's chess piece jumped and kicked to the beat of her wand, LouAnn laughed along with Rafe. "I could do that, but knowing my luck, I'd accio the chess piece and both of them would fly out the bag and knock me in the head before I knew what hit me!" she remarked. LouAnn always managed to be some sort of magnet for drama such as the situation she'd just described. Using Rafe's chess pieces were much easier...and safer.

She laughed again at the sight of Rafe's chess pieces breakdancing. This was just too funny! "Okay, okay...let me try something else!" she exclaimed. She pointed her wand forward, causing the chess piece to stop abruptly and stand at attention. She then circled her wand towards the left, and the little chess piece turned a back flip in mid-air. "Ha ha! Cool, huh?"

Riiiight. Fyo worked on his Great Tree Spread in silence. The interpretations were the easier part for him, because they reminded him - in a way - of Arithmancy, one of his very favourite subjects. Once he was done, the fourth year packed up and looked up at Cela.

"Thanks for the help," he said with a polite smile. "I would never have been able to do this, otherwise."

"Thats okay, I really don't mind helping, even helping Gryffindors is alright by me!" Celandine beamed cheerfully and finished up her Arithmancy.

What was Chris doing?

And where was Winnie? Wasn't she sposed to beeeee here tooo?