Oooh, they were going to play a game using the Anti-Summoning Charm. Jade was determined to master the spell so that she could do well in the game. Also so that she benefitted fully from this lesson and became a better witch, obviously. Ahem. She decided to first practise the incantation.

"Non Voco Furtum," she said. A three-word incantation! She didn't come across these very often. But it did not mean that the incantation was harder to pronounce or remember, since the individual words themselves were pretty easy. "Non Voco Furtum, Non Voco Furtum, Non Voco Furtum," she repeated to herself, trying out different methods of pronouncing the words.

It was obvious that Stasya wasn’t entirely acting entirely her usual self, given her quietness during the discussion. She’d been rather having her own discussion in her head, thinking about what she’d want to cast anti-theft charms on. Likely anything would be creature related, and as she already knew that summoning charms didn’t work on creatures, she’d stayed quiet. Internal discussions all the way. Keeping jewelry safe was a nice idea, though. The bracelet she’d gotten from her father that she still regularly wore, even though it was getting rather threadbare by now, her squirrel charm necklace…She knew she had precious items that weren’t her pets and it would be nice to know they were safe from theft.

As long as they didn’t just get destroyed. The stuffed goat she’d had for ages had been repaired but she still remembered that feeling just as much as she remembered the feeling of being possessed.

Once they’d been released to practice the charm that had been introduced, she’d quickly written down the pertinent information so she wouldn’t have to worry about memorizing it all. Two taps of the wand was easy enough, no matter how complicated the professor had said the charm actually was, so she figured that didn’t need to be practiced. And she’d been taking Latin for years so the incantation was familiar. Even so, practicing it wouldn’t hurt. “Non voco furtum,” she said softly, repeating it several times and at varying volume.

Hmm. Maybe she could try it non-verbally?

Her answer had been very specific - specific to her. It was the sort of thing that absolutely no one else in this class would be concerned about but it could literally be the difference between life and death for her, so yeah, she cared about her medical equipment being summonable when needed. Cordelia was excited to try out this charm. Not that she owned anything valuable enough to want to use it on. Really, she had no idea if it was worth placing this charm on anything she owned. ”If the owner of the object is still able to summon items that an anti-summoning charm has been placed on, does it really matter if the charm is placed on things you want to summon or not?” Like, you would theoretically still be able to summon your own socks to you even if you had placed an anti-summoning charm on them, right? Not that socks were the type of thing anyone would want to protect with anti-theft magic in the first place. Who in their right mind would go around stealing other people’s socks? Whether or not she found a practical use for this charm, she was going to put full effort into learning this charm. Cordelia started out by practicing the incantation. ”Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum.” That should be enough practice saying it, right? The wand movement was simple enough that she didn’t even need to practice tapping the box to be able to do that part correctly. She was ready to try the spell on her box. ”Non voco furtum.” Cordelia tapped twice on the box with her wand. Now to summon it to see if the charm had worked. ”Accio box!” The box enthusiastically leaped from her desk, almost hitting her face in its quest to reach her. That obviously didn’t work. Cordelia caught the box and placed it back on her desk. This time it was going to work, she had a good feeling about it. ”Non voco furtum,” she said the incantation as she tapped the box twice with her wand. Confident that it would work this time, Cordelia tried summoning the box. ”Accio box!” Cordelia cast a summoning charm to see if the anti-summoning charm had worked on it. Hey look at that, it wasn’t moving! She had done it! Her victory was short lived, however, when only seconds later someone else’s box from a nearby desk landed in front of her next to her own box. What??? Clearly someone else in the class had also failed at casting the anti-summoning charm, and clearly she hadn’t focused enough on the specific box she wanted to summon. ”Uh, is this anyone’s box?” Cordelia held up the newly arrived box for everyone to see. Well, this was embarrassing. At least maybe the anti-summoning charm on her own box had worked?

When she was sure that she had repeated the words more than enough to know how to say them properly, Rylee finally removed her wand from it's holster on her arm. Quietly clearing her throat and flexing her fingers around the smooth wood of her wand, she gave the box on her desk to taps with her wand, "Non voco furtum." Properly spoken and very clearly said.

Now came the true test. All that was left to do was to attempt to summon the box, which would hopefully remain exactly where it was on her desk. Never before had she actually wanted an item she was summon to NOT come to her. Lifting her wand once more and preforming the wand movement as she spoke, "Acc-"

HUH?!

Before she could even finish casting the charm the box on her desk rose into the air and floated away! And not even towards her! Rylee looking very much confused followed the box with her eyes to watch it land on a nearby desk. She most certainly had nothing to do with that! So that meant... Rylee grinned widely at Cordelia. "Yeah, it's mine, Dia." Laughing softly she got up to collect her box from her friend. "That's some really good summoning! Keep working at anti-summoning charm, you'll get." They both would with some practice.

This was it, her moment to shine. Vita finished up her notes, underlining the more important aspects of what they'd discussed so far. She was determined to do well on he NEWTs, you see. Then it was time to practice.

"Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum." A bit silly to say as far as incantations went, but not hard. It rolled off the tongue and that was always good. "Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum." She eyed the box, trying to visualize an actual force field around it as she said the words out loud. If she could picture it, give the words meaning and purpose, she should be able to keep anyone from summoning the box to take for themselves.

Wand up, she sat up a bit straighter and uttered a, "Non voco furtum." Then it was two taps and she should be able to test out her skills by attempting a summoning spell now, yes? Yes.

The wand movement was just two simple taps on the box. When she was more comfortable with the incantation on her tongue, Jade decided to try it together with the wand movement. "Non Voco Furtum," she said, tapping the box twice. Did it work? There was only one way to find out...

"Accio!" she said, trying to summon her box. To her dismay, the Ravenclaw found the box skidding over into her hands. Well, that was no good. But as the professor said, protection spells could be tricky, so she should be patient with herself and try again. She would have to say the incantation correctly, tap the box, and maintain her focus on the spell casting all at the same time.

"Non Voco Furtum," she said clearly and tapped her wand twice on the box in front of her. This time, she thought she had managed to stay more focused on the spell. Her desire to succeed in casting the spell was even stronger the second time as well. "Accio box!" Please don't come, please don't come, please don't... oh look! The box did wobble a little bit, as if it really wanted to fly into her hands, but it remained at its position on the desk. She did it!

Eni was frustrated with herself. It’d been probably ten minutes and she still hadn’t gotten it down. It shouldn’t be this hard. She thought to herself. “Non vocoders furtem.” she continued, “Non voco furtem.”

Let’s try this again. She thought as she pointed her wand to the box, “Accio box.” there was a slight wobble, but it didn’t truly move. She was almost satisfied. Almost. Here we go again...

Oh, he got an excellent question?

His eyes widened and he found his heart going THUMPTHUMPTHUMP again while his cheeks started reddening. He hardly heard what Fuller-Thompson was saying over the sound of his own heartbeat but he did pick up what he was trying to say. It was up to him. So there was no right or wrong answer. Got it.

When they moved on to casting the charm, Lucas cleared his throat slightly and sat up in his seat. Non Voco Furtum. Non Voco Furtum. "Non. Voco. Furtum. Non. Voco. Furtum......" he chanted to himself, twiddling his wand between his fingers, "Non Voco Furtum. Non Voco Furtum." It didn't SOUND bad but something Fuller-Thompson said about it being tricky kept repeating itself in his head.

No. No no no. Don't think about that.

He shook his head and forced himself to focus on the box in front of him. The box. And the spell. "Non Voco Furtum," he said, giving the box two taps with his wand.

............

????

Was that it?

There was a small pause as he....... waited. Just waited. Almost as if he expected something to pop out to tell him that he'd done it. But when nothing did....... "Accio!"

.........

AHHHHSDKGFJGHFKJHAS!

Screaming internally, Lucas did his best to protect his face from the oncoming box that was ZOOMING to his face. He didn't know what...... happened but one of his hands seemed to bat it away, making it tumble back onto the table again. Breathe. Breathe.

Merlin, why couldn't they work with pillows, instead?

Text Cut: Answers to specific questions

Quote:

Originally Posted by gritandgrace

Eni caught something the Professor had said, "Professor? You said it would prevent someone else from summoning the object; does this mean that the caster of the charm could still summon the object or is there a way to make that exception? If so, that could be quite handy." That's something she would be very interested in learning!

In the meantime Eniola took to practicing the charm, maybe she could finally keep her brother out of her things when she goes home for the summer. That would be a relief!

"Non voco furtum. Non voco furtem. Non voco furtem..." She continued to repeat and double tap the object. Eni knew she probably wouldn't get it right away, but it still would've been nice; she chuckled to herself at the thought.

Piers had been wandering, watching the students work, but he paused beside Eni to listen to her question. And a good question it was. ”In this case, no. With this particular incantation, the object becomes un-summonable altogether. There is, however, a more complex spell with a more complex charms theory that allows the caster of the charm to summon their so called “un-summonable” object. That’s more advanced.” And was harder to explain. But if she wanted to learn more she could ask him about it oustide of class sometime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kolyander

Rylee hadn't raised her hand to give an answer to the question but she was thinking about quite a list of things that she would put this particular charm on. Like say... her bag and the entire contents of her trunk that was up in her dorm. That did pose one question though and she was curious enough to raise her hand and ask. "Professor... if I placed the charm on say a jewelry box than all the items inside would be unsummonable as you said... but does the charm work on each individual item inside the box or just the box itself? What I mean is... if say I take a ring out of the charmed box would someone then be able to summon the ring?" This was important honestly. If the items were only safe inside the box she would have to rethink what she would really put the charm on and what she wouldn't.

Anti-summoning charm. Non Voco Furtum. It basically meant 'no theft' in Latin. Sort of. The translation wasn't spot on with how it was worded now but broken down she was able to figure it out. Learning Latin had become very important over the last year or two. Anyhow... it was time to focus on practicing the charm. "Non Voco Furtum...Non Voco Furtum.." Rylee repeated several times to herself working on not only on the pronunciation of the charm but how it felt as she said it.

Stopping again when another question was brought up, Piers nodded, thankful for another question. ”Excellent question. When you cast this anti-summoning charm on the box, it takes effect on the box itself rather than the contents of it. While the contents remain inside the box, they cannot be summoned. But once they leave the box - or the container with the charm in place - they can be summoned.” So, the charm was placed on the box, not the contents. Make sense?

Quote:

Originally Posted by griffin

Her answer had been very specific - specific to her. It was the sort of thing that absolutely no one else in this class would be concerned about but it could literally be the difference between life and death for her, so yeah, she cared about her medical equipment being summonable when needed. Cordelia was excited to try out this charm. Not that she owned anything valuable enough to want to use it on. Really, she had no idea if it was worth placing this charm on anything she owned. ”If the owner of the object is still able to summon items that an anti-summoning charm has been placed on, does it really matter if the charm is placed on things you want to summon or not?” Like, you would theoretically still be able to summon your own socks to you even if you had placed an anti-summoning charm on them, right? Not that socks were the type of thing anyone would want to protect with anti-theft magic in the first place. Who in their right mind would go around stealing other people’s socks? Whether or not she found a practical use for this charm, she was going to put full effort into learning this charm. Cordelia started out by practicing the incantation. ”Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum. Non voco furtum.” That should be enough practice saying it, right? The wand movement was simple enough that she didn’t even need to practice tapping the box to be able to do that part correctly. She was ready to try the spell on her box. ”Non voco furtum.” Cordelia tapped twice on the box with her wand. Now to summon it to see if the charm had worked. ”Accio box!” The box enthusiastically leaped from her desk, almost hitting her face in its quest to reach her. That obviously didn’t work. Cordelia caught the box and placed it back on her desk. This time it was going to work, she had a good feeling about it. ”Non voco furtum,” she said the incantation as she tapped the box twice with her wand. Confident that it would work this time, Cordelia tried summoning the box. ”Accio box!” Cordelia cast a summoning charm to see if the anti-summoning charm had worked on it. Hey look at that, it wasn’t moving! She had done it! Her victory was short lived, however, when only seconds later someone else’s box from a nearby desk landed in front of her next to her own box. What??? Clearly someone else in the class had also failed at casting the anti-summoning charm, and clearly she hadn’t focused enough on the specific box she wanted to summon. ”Uh, is this anyone’s box?” Cordelia held up the newly arrived box for everyone to see. Well, this was embarrassing. At least maybe the anti-summoning charm on her own box had worked?

This girl’s question was similar to a previous student’s question, so Piers imagined she had been busy at work when he had answered it just a moment ago. So he would repeat himself. ”With this particular incantation, the object you are charming becomes un-summonable altogether. There is, however, a more complex spell with a more complex charms theory that allows the caster of the charm to summon their so called “un-summonable” object. That’s more advanced.” And was harder to explain, which was why this was all he was saying. But she too was welcome to see him outside of class about it.

Once Piers had wandered around the room a few times and was moderately pleased by the success some of the students were showing, he walked back up to the front of the classroom. ”Alright everyone, we’re going to move on to a game.” Everyone loved games, right? ”I need you all to stand up and move away from your desks. Come on, up, up.” Piers waved his hands a little to usher everyone out of their seats. Once they were up, he waved his wand to the right... and to the left... and all the desks slid up against the wall, maneuvering around each student so as not to hit them.

With another wave of his wand, all the boxes they had been working on, whether they were successful in placing the charm or not floated from the desks and landed in two separate piles in the middle of the room.

”I would like you all to split up into TWO teams. I’m going to remove the charms you have placed on your boxes. With your team, you will need to both place anti-summoning charms on your own team’s boxes AND try to steal boxes from the other team by using the summoning charm. You get to decide how many people you have summoning and how many people you have charming.” Piers paused for a heavy moment to let the instructions sink in. ”The more boxes you charm on your own team, the fewer will be stolen. If you haven’t quite mastered the spell yet, this is a good opportunity for you to try again.” Which meant this activity was about LEARNING. Not winning. ”The team with the most boxes when I say STOP wins.” Just to make it competitive.

Okay. Were they ready? ”Alright, go! Split into two teams - you have TEN SECONDS.” Because he was hungry and there was some beef stew somewhere calling his name, but class needed to end first.

”TEN.... NINE.... EIGHT.... SEVEN.... SIX.... FIVE.... FOUR.... THREE.... TWO.... ONE -- GO!”

And let the chaos begin.

OOC: Welcome to the main activity! (Sorry I wasn’t able to answer the questions earlier - I was having laptop issues.) Hopefully the instructions are clear.

1) Split into two teams. I won’t do it for you. In the title of your post, indicate whether you are Team One or Team Two. It would be helpful if the first person to post after me went to Team One and the second person went to Team Two, the third person Team One again, and so on and so forth, BUT I won’t be monitoring it. It’s not a big deal but TRY to make them even.

2) Decide whether your character is going to charm their own team’s boxes OR summon boxes from the other team and then make it happen!

Do these two things in one post! You can make as many posts as you’d like, but since Piers did a countdown, the activity begins NOW so don’t worry too much about selecting a team or a position and just start firing away! If you have any questions, shoot me a message! You have four days to have as much fun as you want.

Oh, we're moving on now? Austin stood up and watched as his deak flew away from him. Whoa. That's pretty cool. Then he watched as the boxes were sorted into two piles. They needed to be in teams? Austin frowned. He hated group work. He raised his hand.
"Anyone wanna be on my team?" He has go raise his voice a bit higher.
This was going to be an exhausting lesson.

No. Not everyone liked games. Nina Castillo did not like games.

Was it too much to ask for a textbook assignment? Because Nina would much rather learn the PROPER way, as opposed to running around the classroom sending boxes flying in all sorts of directions. That was a safety hazard. Of course Professor Fuller-Thompson didn't care, surely. The young Slytherin had a hard time believing that he cared about much at all, aside from his gross snacking behavior. Yes, she would never let that one go.

As far as this game went, she walked over to one side of the room. There. She was on a team. And because she didn't want to send boxes flying in the air, she took out her wand and began tapping on her team's boxes.

"Non Voco Furtum," she'd be in charge of anti-summoning charms. Hopefully that was apparent.

Kamryn took her wand as she looked over the words.. Non Voco Furtum, that seemed like a mouthful and she took a deep breath as she sounded out the difficult incantation.

“Non Voco Furtum..Non Voco Furtum.. ” She tried out the spell a few times until she was sure that she had the pronunciation right. Because that really was half the battle with spells like these. The other half was intent.

She pointed her wand at her box and said “Non Voco Furtum!”

She wasn’t sure if it worked though as they were being split up into teams and Kam walked over to one side of the room.

“I’ll focus on summoning objects. ” She said softly. Since she hadn’t gotten a chance to check to see if the spell she had done worked! Hopefully someone else on her team knew it better than she’s did!

“Accio!” She said as she pointed her wand at a box across the way from her.

Anti-summoning charm, interesting. Sure, it wasn't as exciting as some of the other anti-theft spells he knew about, but this was one he didn't know and one he was interested in learning. And what Gunnar found most useful about this spell was that the object couldn't be summoned by anyone but the owner. That was actually kind of cool.

He didn't offer an answer for the question that the professor posed as he felt that revealed just a bit too much about it. Besides, his classmates gave enough generic answers to be sufficient. Instead, he idly examined the box on his desk as he half paid attention, then took down his notes once the professor moved on with the pertinent information.

Non voco furtum. That seemed simple enough. Gunnar repeated the words in his head several times before speaking them aloud. "Non voco furtum." And with two taps with his wand, he cast the spell on his box. It seemed easy enough, though he didn't really have time to test it before they were moving on. With a game.

One might think an avid Quidditch player like Gunnar would be eager to play a game in class, but he normally preferred to do his spellwork on his own. Still, he picked up his box at the professor's prompting and headed over toward one side of the room where Nina was already casting the anti-summoning charm on some boxes on that side.

"Have you mastered it?" he asked as he set his own box in front of her. He could summon from the other side if need be, but as this was a competition, he intended to win. And their own anti-summoning charms needed to work as well.

Nina did not care for this game whatsoever and the competitive aspect didn’t change that at all. She was very well aware, however, that others would most likely be caught up in the desire to win. Obviously the whole gimmick was set up to appeal to her classmates. But Professor Fuller-Thompson said nothing about a prize. How could winning be worthwhile if there was nothing special associated with it? She didn’t care for bragging rights.

”Non voco furtum,” she tapped another nearby box, before looking up at Gunnar. ”Um,” she bit her lip. While she couldn’t say with confidence that she had mastered the spell, persay, it had been easy enough during the practice they had just done. And so she was quite certain that her spells were working.

”I’m not sure, it’s a complicated spell...” she lied.

Eni had heard someone mention they'd be summoninng objects so she figured she better get to work on using the spell to leave them Anti-Summon Able to the other team. She walked up and grabbed three boxes placing them in front of her. She got on to her knees and said, "Non voco furtem." and tapped the first box, continuing this with the other two and going over each of them three times.

I wonder if someone cast Finite would that allow them to summon it? Would all of her work be for nothing? Or would the Professor stop that before it's started? I wonder if I could put up a Protego to stop their spell from working? Eni thought to herself. Well, best keep an eye out. And she continued her spell work.

After trying a few more times on her own box, Avalon had succeeded at placing the anti-summoning charm. It took a bit more concentration than she initially thought it would need, but she had done it, and she was pleased with her results. But now it was time for the activity, which meant putting the charm into practice.

"I'll join you two," Avalon said as she approached the two older Slytherins. Hopefully they wouldn't be embarrassed to have a lowly first year on their team. "I wouldn't say that I've mastered the charm yet, so I can try a few, but I'll mainly work on summoning some of the other team's boxes." She didn't want to be the cause of her team's loss if she somehow messed up the anti-summoning charm.

Avalon cleared her throat and pointed her wand at a box in her team's pile. "Non voco furtum," she said firmly. Had she done it? She guessed she wouldn't know until the other team tried to summon it. Well, at least she could tell the professor that she had tried performing the charm again to reinforce it. She decided to let the older Slytherin girl finish the remainder of the boxes. Just in case Avalon made any mistakes.

Noticing that a Hufflepuff was already busy protecting the boxes across the room, Avalon pointed her wand a stray box that the girl wasn't currently charming. "Accio!"

It was entertaining, really. He did the countdown and everything and some students were dilly-dallying instead of getting to it. The purpose of the countdown was to make everyone panic and start shooting spells. Ah, oh well. Hogwarts kids had soft spines and mushy brains - except for himself, of course.

Piers watched the match between the two teams, plucking an apple from his desk and crunching into it while the students worked on their spells. Back and forth, back and forth. Was he keeping score? No.

Idly looking at his watch, Piers stood back up when he finished his apple and sent up some blue sparks from his wand to catch everyone's attention. "That's it, everyone! Wands down! Game over!" Did the adrenaline help or hinder?

"And the winner is, errr.... both teams because I don't feel like counting." It was a close call, anyway. "Everyone pack up. Class is dismissed. Feel free to take one of these boxes with you. Your homework is simply to practice this spell until you have it mastered. It can be a tricky one." So, if the boxes would help, they were free to take one. Piers grabbed his apple core and tossed it into the trash. He'd rearrange the desks once the students were gone.

OOC: The lesson has ended! Thank you all for coming. Feel free to post your student grabbing a box and heading out! This thread will remain open for another 24 hours or less. Please note that any catch up after this post will not be counted for points. See you next time!