A Lesson of Silence ( Luna / Fharl )

[shava44]

A visitor to Hagrid's house would be very surprised by the interior which was not cluttered, not dirty, and very open feeling. As Fharl exited, pulling the door shut behind him (though mostly to keep students out of his privacy, not because he had anything of value), he felt satisfied with the space itself. Carrying his bag as he stepped out, he fastened it to the belt harness on his back and walked to the castle proper, breathing in the gathering coolness of the air. They'd have snow on the ground very soon, he could feel it. Soon he'd have to get a scarf out and start using it. Students and adults alike gave him big eyes over that one, often staring at his skin as if he was insane.

Honestly, they didn't know anything about a centaur's body, but the oddness when they had to bundle up must have rather bothered them. if he had known they were staring and disturbed because of two spots on his chest he would have been much more amused! Humans, he had learned living amongst them, were a very confused species about their own bodies, often hiding everything to be not so offensive to each other. Centaurs didn't have that issue at all. And he only wore the codpiece because of a request from the Headmistress; to him it was a part of nature and expected as it should be for everyone. Humans. Got to love them, they were so amusing!

When he reached the castle, he stepped into the courtyard first to make sure he was clear and not near anyone, then did a squat kick with both back hooves, tossing the dirt from his hooves back out across the lawn hard, cleaning them roughly. He did something similar with the front hooves and then pointed at them each in turn, causing a stream of water to shoot from his finger, cleaning them off a bit before he pulled on his version of sneakers. A couple of prances just to get the feel of them and then he entered the castle, turning almost immediately to the first left side hallway. Three doors in and there was classroom eleven, the room one of the past Headmaster's had turned into a interior forest for another centaur professor.

He very much liked the room.

With it daylight now, the forested walls and interior of the room led into a small clearing, natural seeming, to which he followed habit and circled twice, looking into it and admiring the magic itself. He could tell it was not real, but visually it very much appealed to the eye. Picking his spot he lowered his front half down and then his back end slowly, tail swishing to prevent getting caught underneath as he settled his large bulk. Fully down he was still as tall if not taller then most of the students in the school, but more comfortably so. Pulling out a piece of wood he had collected off the forest floor in the real forest, he pulled out his rather long knife and began working away on one end of it, working it to a nice curved end while he waited for the student to arrive. When she arrived he looked up and smiled at her.

"Well met. You may either stand or sit for this, it will seem pretty simple at the beginning, but then again most things do. Too bad it's not easy as well, but that comes with time and practice. Tell me, Luna Demetriou," he lowered the knife as he spoke to her, it's shiny surface flashing in the daylight of the clearing, "how far have you prevailed in learning the spells of this school? In your own words, of course."

[Deleted]

Luna made her way to the classroom where she had been instructed to meet the professor for her private lessons. This would be the very first time in which the young woman would have to take extra lessons of any kind but this professor had been reccomended to her by one of the professors that she had placed her trust in, the man had told her that this particular professor could help her greatly with wandless charms, something that could save her life one day when she chose to pursue her dream of becomming an auror. Finding no valid arguement against the statement, she had agreed to begin taking private lessons. Which led her to where she was now.

Her eyes stared blankly at the door of the classroom, before her hand reached forward, opening the door. She calmly walked in, making sure to shut it after she had entered, the last thing she wanted was some nosey students getting in the way, and disrupting her when she was trying to learn something important. Her eyes drifted over the classroom that had been charmed to look like a forest. It never failed to impress her just what wizards could do with magic. Once her eyes grew tired of glancing around they landed on the centaur that lay in the middle of the room, carefully carving a curve into what appeared to be a sphere before looking up, and smiling at her. She in turn gave him a small nod of acknowledgement, and her facial features did become slightly less stern but other then that there was no noticable change.

" Good afternoon, Professor."

When the centaur spoke, asking her the question she paused for a moment thinking it over in her head. How far had she come in learning the spells that the school had taught her? That was a very good question, one that she wasn't exactly sure how to answer. She knew that she had come far, further then a good number others that shared her age; unlike them she did not waste her time gawking over males, and throwing herself at their feet. Time that would be wasted tampering with clothes and makeup was better spent learning spells, and studying.

" I believe that I have come further then others when it comes to learning spells but even so there are many who are still above myself."

It was an honest answer. Luna wasn't foolish nor was she arrogant enough to think that she was better, more intelligent then everyone that was at Hogwarts. While she was proud of where she had gotten so far she knew better then to overestimate her abilities.

[shava44]

As she entered he looked at her face, seeing much sternness and control. She was not, at first glance, the most pleasant of people to speak with, all focus and no life it seemed to him. There was a time for letting go of some control and she had not learned that lesson yet apparently. But then again, as a centaur (a notorious race for sternness) it wasn't really his place to say that! He nodded at her greeting, noting that whatever she was controlling herself for, it wasn't something he was doing at least. And her answer, which she took a moment to think about as well, not surprisingly, was careful wishy-washy enough an answer to account for it in more then one direction. Ego on one end, unpreparedness on the other. Safely and logically in the middle.

She, in short, amused him.

"Carefully said, just as many students would try and phrase their answers to a teacher's request for self analysis. I shall require a different kind of thought however. Let me think how to rephrase it to help you understand." He looked back down at his whittling for a moment, running a finger over the curve and finding where it still needed work. Still looking down he said "When you cast, think about where it come from. It's not just the words and movements, it's an effort of energy inside of you. From where? How does it flow? Describe the feeling or your impression about it?" He let her think, watching her from under his lashes casually. Was she taken aback or surprised? Maybe, but she concealed it as best she could making it hard to tell. Was she used to the concept of where magic flowed through one, not being just like a formula you repeated and got in varying degrees of correctness?

They probably didn't delve much into it in class. Humans were often delving into only a fraction of the story, the meat of the subject and skipping the roots, the spine, the veins of how something worked. "To truly use a spell well, to use it without the wand or the words, you have to learn how to seek it inside of yourself first. The wand is a focus, a tool for learning and grasping higher amounts of magic power then you can without it. To go without it, you must understand how you learned to focus it, where it comes from inside first. The early magic users of the world did not have wands, had not learned to handicap themselves with a tool." She was smart, he could tell. She had to learn that to grasp the magic, she had to understand to some degree where it came from inside of her and, having learned it's feel, learn about herself in the process.

"Come here a moment please," he said letting go of knife and wood which floated aside and lay on the grass near his hand. He turned his will from them and reached out a hand and touched her in the middle of the forehead with a single finger. "See now, here is a focus. You can feel my finger, feel the heat from it, can you not? Focusing power inside of you for use is as simple as learning to draw your will around a point and take it where you want it." He watched her with kind eyes, urging her to learn, to grow, to expand outside of her own limits of the mind. The human mind, by far too often, gave itself limits which had to be overcome later to advance. Take off the training wheels in a way one might say. "Now, with that in mind, answer me again about how well you have progressed with your lessons."

[Deleted]

Luna was not one who bothered to pay much attention to how her presence affected other people. She knew that she was cold, and she knew that she more often then not tended to drive people away from her. People who wanted to get to know her past the " facade" that she supposedly wore often gave up after some amount of time had passed. Despite this, there were still some who liked being around her. There were some people who found her stern and cold personality not only tolerable, but some even found the young woman to be entertaining. One silent observation of the professor's reaction to her answer led the woman to believe that he would be one of the ones who would for one reason or another gain some sort of entertainment from her presence.

She listened to him as he spoke, telling her that her answer was worded carefully; something that was typical of students when they were asked to analyze their own progress. While it did bother Luna somewhat to be likened to others, she knew that in this case it had been warranted. After all, there were only three ways a person could go in answering a question of that sort. A person could either belittle themselves while attempting to act humble,[something that Luna's pride would not allow her to do] act arrogant and make themselves out to be far greater then they were in reality [ and embarrass the hell out of themselves later] or they could choose to give the safe answer as she did. She was drawn out of her thoughts when he began to speak again, offering a new explanation, and a new set of questions.

He spoke of the magical energy that lay inside of her, telling her to think about where the magic came from, to think about how the magic flowed out of her. He wanted her to describe how she felt when she used her magic, something that had surprised her. She had never been asked to do so before, most of her other teachers were more then happy with her careful, logical answers. Never before had she been asked to elaborate, nor had she been asked to discuss how she felt when using magic. Her shock had been there for a moment, present in the confusion that had taken place in her eyes for a moment before falling back to their normal cold stare.

For once, she was at a complete loss. For once she did not know how to answer a question.

Luna was the type of person that tended to see the world using logic and rationalizations and yet somewhere deep down inside of her, she knew that there was more to the world then that. She knew that magic could not properly be explained by using formulas and logic, and yet she still had never taken the time to see it as more then that. Her brow furrowed, and she fell silent, taking her time to think back to the various times in the past that she had used magic. She could vaguely recall a warm sensation that seemed to originate from the very center of her being, and so she tried to put that feeling that she had into words.

"I can recall feeling very warm when I wanted to use a spell in the past. That feeling would travel through my body and end up leaving it through my wand whenever I wanted to cast a spell."

Fharlomara began to speak about how to truly use a spell well without a wand. He told her that a wand was simply a tool that made it easier to learn and access higher levels of magic. He told her that in order to go without the wand, she would need to understand how her body focused her magic, and just where exactly it came from, while reminding her that the earliest of magic users did not have wands at their disposal. She listened intently, carefully absorbing the information that she was given before locking it away in her memory.

When he asked Luna to come closer to him she did so after watching him for a moment, trying to see if she could predict what he would do or say. She watched as he set down the knife and the piece of wood that he had been carving down next to his hand. It was then that his free hand went and touched her on the very middle of her forehead. He began to speak again, and again Luna listened until he finished speaking, she fell silent for a moment, lost in the depths of her mind before looking up at the professor, and giving her answer.

"I know very little about this other then it's a very brief feeling of warmth. I know that it comes from the center of my body, and that it flows smoothly from the center of my body to my wand whenever I cast a spell. However, I am not sure just how well I can focus without my wand yet. Going by that, I have to admit that I haven't gotten very far in my lessons. I understand the very basics, but I have much left that I need to learn. I want to know more about this feeling and learn how to focus it properly."

She wanted to study, to observe and to learn for the career path that she had chosen for herself was a very dangerous one. Mastering this skill could very well be the difference between her living and dying.

[shava44]

Learning with a centaur was never the same as human thinking. They had a much more natural approach, a work with the environment itself. Which is why he did so well with wandless and non-verbals spells whereas using a wand did not work for him at all. A wand was, in many ways, a shortcut tool for using magic which allowed far more powerful magic to be done because the wand willed the place of some of the control, the harnessing of magic. To learn his way was going to take her more then she had probably first thought. As she mentioned the feeling of warmth he raised an eyebrow, waiting as she listened to his other words, giving her more of an impression of what he wanted. He saw the confusion in her eyes, the loss of having no easy answer before she closed it off.

Her second answer was much more to his liking. He smiled at her and offered her his hand. Patting the grass beside him for her to sit on, he helped her to sit beside him a more comfortable height. "Much more reasonable. Now you see the outline of the problem you face and knowing that we can build a framework for you to use." He gestured around them at the forest, even though it was not a real one it would work for the moment's explanation. "For many many years all thinking beings have wondered where magic comes from. Some say from inside of them and some say from the earth. There is no proof of either, only the way we focus your interpretation will say for sure how you use it. I like to think of magic as renewable, the sun brought into the leaves, concentrated into the ground by their roots in exchange for the water and nutrients the tree takes from the earth."

Touching her shoulder as he motioned towards her he added "Beings of magic can absorb that energy of magic into them when they sleep, something their minds do when they are truly unconscious. No matter how you look at that part, there is magic inside you." Fharl patted the ground softly, the grass springy under his hand. He meant it to emphasis the way the earth was more like a natural battery, but being a witch he wasn't sure she understood that concept. "So there are two sources, one much larger then the one inside of you. Why use the larger one before your own? There is more then one answer." Knowing this would be an entirely new subject for her in some ways, he laid down the hint carefully.

"If it helps, think of magic as energy or water, flowing along with natural laws. You can direct water to where it is needed and build things to take advantage of it's properties. It is life, energy, magic, all good things rolled into one." He waited, curious to see what she would come up with in answer from her book learning which is what she mostly leaned upon for her classes. Now she would have to learn to really think on the fly, using what she knew and it would be tricky, but that was why he was here, to help her understand the framework of what they would work with.