A Complete and Utter Failure PV Cypresse Closed

In hindsight, she probably shouldn't have stayed up that late last night, but she'd hyperfixated on grading homework and somehow gotten five stacks of work done in one night. The plus side was that she had pretty much no work to do tonight! The downside was that she'd had to chug about a gallon of caffeine that morning to stay awake now.

Her weariness was soon forgotten, however, as she spun her students through another day of theory - definitely not the most well-reputed kind of class, but certainly one that many still found fascinating. Somehow she wound up with five seconds of extra time, a rare event in her classes packed full of material, but the gong sounded loud and clear, right on time, to signal the end of class. "Don't forget your homework," she called to the scuffle of footsteps scrambling to get to lunch. Somebody cursed violently near her right as the sound of tearing parchment pierced the air, and she grimaced in empathy. "Ouch, wouldn't wanna be you... it's okay, it's just one tear, you can still read it."

Leaning back in her chair, Cy waved a wand behind her head to clean off the sketched-out diagrams from the wall. Something in the back of her mind whispered that she'd planned to do... something after class today... what was that? Frowning, she thought hard, memories flashing back to the coffee from this morning, loads and loads of homework last night... oh, right.

"Ivy?" the woman said just as the first of the students began to pour out of the classroom, hoping that the student in question hadn't managed to dart out yet. "Is she still here?" she wondered aloud.

From the beginning of the year, Ivy had been a great student. She'd shown enthusiasm, interest, and perseverance, despite the difficulty of Transfiguration, and been one of the few who hadn't complained about the science but instead fully embraced it. Her homework had been well-written, hovering in the O to E range, offering thorough consideration and a clear understanding of the material, and her contribution in discussions had been wonderful.

Recently, though, her participation - as well as homework quality - had gone down and down and down until she'd been forced to give her a full out D. She hadn't heard a peep from her in too long, and her words seemed... detached. Uninterested. The complete opposite of the enthusiasm and fascination she'd shown before. Yes, Cy remembered frowning at the D she'd scrawled on that piece of parchment last night, hearing the halfhearted words aloud. Something had to be wrong - people got burnt out, yes, but burnouts never happened this quickly, and rarely this deeply.

So, in the middle of her half-asleep grading spree last night, Cy had resolved to hold her back after class the next day, ask her what was up. Not to say that she expected the girl to pour her heart out, but, well, for lack of better words, she was concerned. Most of the time when sudden drops in performance happened it was because of family issues, or social drama, or something else like that, when the person had no support. She knew it better than anyone herself - her grades had dropped to as bad as straight T's in her Second Year, and she couldn't be more glad that she managed to climb out of that hole. Sometimes, though, people needed a rope to be thrown over the edge. If Ivy didn't tell her what was going on, she'd have to contact the other professors to check if the performance drop was consistent across all her classes.

"She's still here," somebody remarked, thankfully, as footsteps thundered away, and Cy nodded in relief, leaning forward again.

"Do you mind staying back for just a second? I won't hold you for long, I promise."

@Cypresse Lian

It should not have come as a surprise that she was being held back after class. In the back of Ivy's mind, she knew that the "you need to get it together" lecture was coming soon, but she had pushed it to one side, having convinced herself that no one really cared. She was already heading towards the door, caught up in the flood of students eager to leave when the sound of her name being called stopped her in her tracks. One of her classmates crashed into her back and indignantly told her to "Watch it!"

There was a time when Ivy would have responded with a couple of sarcastic words without any hesitation, but the Gryffindor had lost her spark, and instead bowed her head silently as they passed by, thinking that she had imagined the first voice. Was she hearing voices in her head now? Wasn't that a telltale sign of someone going crazy? She was wondering if she ought to consult one of those thick psychology textbooks in the library when the voice, now recognisable as Professor Lian's, spoke up again, asking if she was still there.

Almost immediately, Ivy knew what she wanted - to talk to her about her grades, which were progressively getting worse and worse. Her stomach flipped in the most unsettling way and her legs suddenly turned to jelly. Despite being well aware of her situation, she didn't want to speak to anyone about it, least of all one of the professors who had once given her some of the best grades she'd ever received. She briefly pondered whether or not to walk out right now and pretend she had already left. It would be easy, as Professor Lian couldn't see, and she was about to go through with this plan when another student confirmed her presence, much to her dismay.

Ivy had no choice but to answer, her voice trembling slightly and a little higher than normal. "Yeah, alright." Taking a deep breath, she made her way over to the professor as the last of the students filed out of the classroom, the sound of the door banging shut echoing throughout the room.

Ivy set her leather bag on a nearby table with a soft thud and stood stiffly in front of the professor, fists clenched tight enough to leave fingernail marks in her palms. She swallowed nervously and prepared for the onslaught of questions and the fake pity that would surely attempt to coat the obvious disappointment in the professor's voice - at least, this was what she thought would happen. Professor Lian was the first person to attempt to talk to her about this situation, and Ivy expected that after this, she wouldn't be the last.

With her throat constricting tightly, she opened her mouth to speak, but. Get a grip, she told herself firmly. You had it coming. "What did you want to talk to me about?" she finally asked. Ivy had tried to keep her voice even but had failed miserably, and ended up sounding like she was on the verge of tears or something. She swallowed and glanced at Professor Lian, dread and apprehension growing in her grey eyes with each second that passed. "Look - if this is about my grades, I..." Ivy trailed off, unsure of what she would continue with. That she was sorry? That she would try harder? That she would do better next time? It would be lying and making promises she couldn't keep if she said something like that. They were all empty words that no one would believe, not when she'd had almost an entire month now to fix it.

As, usual, before Cy needed to even start the conversation, the student was already panicking. She spun her wand leisurely towards the double doors, flicking it to shut them with a quiet bang. She usually kept her doors open whenever she was inside, so that kids who wanted to come in would know that they were free to, but in certain cases—like, for instance, meeting with a student—in which she didn't want to be interrupted, closed doors ensure privacy. Anyone who opened locked doors would instantly be met with a shower of icy water and a Caterwauling Charm. Fortunately, it hadn't happened this year... so far.

But the student's voice seemed so stressed that it hurt her, and Cy motioned at the nearest desk, inviting her to sit. "Okay, hon, you sound like you're five seconds away from running away. Calm down, I'm not about to throw chalk at your face." She grinned at her own joke, recalling her days in Taiwan with projectile-launching teachers and strict classrooms. Students there tended to learn very quickly not to be disruptive—maybe she would've picked up the technique, herself, but she'd been on the receiving end of that ammunition before, and it wasn't fun.

These talks weren't really much more fun, but at least they hurt less physically. She could barely remember bits of her own first year, a little more than a decade ago, wide-eyed and inspired by the new world she'd been thrust into, while simultaneously stumbling around trying to cope with her new lack of sight. Any kid would've been intimidated about being held after class, unless that kid was some psychopath who for some reason was immune to anxiousness. It was natural. But there really wasn't a better way to confront her about this, and she needed to know the truth.

Leaning forward, hands folded on her desk, she rolled her chair in a few centimeters. "It's not about your grades, stop panicking. Well, I mean, it's kind of about your grades, since I did notice those, but more about their drop." She frowned. "Ivy, you used to get straight O's. Participated enthusiastically, wrote beautifully. But screw that, it's not important—you used to be interested, and now you never even ask me questions. So, what's up? Is it something social? Did something happen at home? Did you finally realize how strange I am and resolve to run away from Hogwarts forever and go live in the Highlands?"

The last sarcastic suggestion came with a small smile, intended to put the student at ease—which she didn't know if worked or not, but kids tended to respond well to humor when they were afraid, and even if they didn't, Cy probably wouldn't be capable of holding herself back from joking around. Even with the lighthearted tone, though, concern laced her voice, gentle and coaxing.

Ivy had been one of her best students. Sure, Transfiguration was hard, and it wasn't rare for somebody to fall behind because it was too much work, but there was no gradual slope of a burnout in Ivy's performance—just a sudden, flat drop. That meant something must have happened, and she was determined to find out.

@Cypresse Lian

Barely a minute into this... delightful meeting, and Ivy was already contemplating picking up her bag and running away. She watched Professor Lian flick her wand towards the doors, shutting them with a muted bang and an even quieter click. Great, so now she was locked in here. How very, very brilliant. It was as though Professor Lian had read her mind earlier and was ensuring that she would stay put in the classroom. Ivy sat on the edge of a nearby desk at her gesture, eyeing her carefully as she joked about throwing chalk.

She didn't laugh. The joke seemed out of place in such a tense situation, and instead of responding, she stayed silent, fidgeting with her hands subconsciously. A habit she had picked up lately, and one that happened more often than she'd like to admit.

Ivy glared at the ground as she listened to Professor Lian's speech. Stop panicking? What kind of request was that? The question only made the tension in her posture grow even more. Oh, and now she was pulling the stereotypical 'it's not about your grades' card. Damnit, it was always about the grades. Ivy let out a small, choking laugh at the end of her speech, but not at the joke. What a cliché - professors playing parents and failing as usual.

"Nothing's going on," she replied, enunciating each word clearly. This was probably the harshest tone she'd ever used with a professor. Ivy was normally quite respectful and polite when talking to them, even now when she was going through what this mess was, but ugh... she was so sick of people pretending that it was about her when it never was. "I don't get it. Why don't you just give me the 'I'm-so-disappointed-in-you' speech? It would make things so much easier for both us."

Even before she had finished speaking, Ivy was feeling guilty for her words. She was just trying to help. God, why was she such a mess? Ivy looked at Professor Lian, wanting to apologize but not quite finding the courage to. "There's your answer," she finally said. "Nothing's happening. I'm just... tired." Perhaps Professor Lian would be disappointed by this answer, but honestly, what did she expect?

The funniest thing about kids was that they thought being stubborn about something immediately proved that it was true. Not that Cy herself was completely innocent of that idea - quite the contrary, actually, considering how many times she thought she'd fooled Aoi or Evangeline or, you know, her former boss - but being the person confronting the kid this time made her feel funny, like watching a recording of herself, only a little off. She resisted the urge to laugh, but couldn't disguise a hint of a smile.

"Uh huh," she said as Ivy denied her question. Well, now she was sure that there was something going on. "So nothing's going on, that's why it sounds like you're going to try to bite my face off if I ask again, eh? Come on, you've got to realize that saying 'nothing' is literally the worst way to lie." After all, nothing said I'm wallowing in emotional confusion and I don't want you to know because it's uncomfortable like the word nothing, and while Cy completely understood that some things needed to be let alone, if Ivy didn't catch up she was going to fall too far behind to recover.

At least she'd made the student comfortable enough to voice her inner monologue. Now she couldn't suppress her snicker at all, hearing the accusatory words that Ivy tried to throw at her. All right, maybe laughing was kind of insensitive, but... she'd probably spoken almost the same exact words a long time ago. It was weird, man. "Okay, you want the disappointment talk? Disappointment, wasted potential, could've done better, blah blah blah, expectations, blah blah blah, more potential crap, we're done. Moving on." With each blah, she sent showers of red sparks arcing into the air with a twitch of her wand, flickers of light raining down onto the floor before they disappeared.

"Oh, yeah, yeah - sudden exponential increase in tiredness in the middle of the year for zero reason at all is totally why you stopped opening your mouth, ever. I'm not that stupid, Ivy, however low might think my EQ is." She leaned back, putting her hands behind her head, wand switching between pairs of fingers. They'd get there. It'd just take some - or, um, a lot - of time. "But okay, yeah, say I believe you. You're suddenly tired. Why are you tired?"

There was a high chance that being tired wasn't entirely a lie. After all, even if there was something going on, that something could very well be making her tired - it was a genuine question. More likely than not, she'd be met with another irritated brush-off. That was okay. She had time today, she'd done all her work yesterday night.

@Cypresse Lian

One thing that hadn't changed about Ivy was that she hated being made fun of, and something about the casual way Professor Lian spoke now made her feel ridiculed. Oh, Ivy knew Professor Lian's teaching technique was casual. It was just the way she taught. But that was different - that was the classroom, that was spells and incantations and science. It didn't matter how the information was brought to her, as long as she learnt it.

This was another situation entirely. In Ivy's eyes, the professor wasn't taking her seriously, with the jokes and modern slang present in her language. Although the Gryffindor knew that she was probably overreacting, that didn't stop her stomach from twisting with an angry sort of embarrassment.

At Professor Lian's barely disguised snicker, Ivy sank further down into her seat, her shoulders hunching slightly as the red sparks flew over the table. How funny she must think she is. Had the sarcasm been used in a different time and place, Ivy would have laughed. Instead, she responded bitterly, her cheeks flushing red. "There we go, that's it," she spat viciously. "Shall I say that I'll try my best to do better? That'll put a nice cherry on the top, wouldn't it?" She leapt to her feet, the chair clattering against the desk behind it with a loud clang. "Great! Can I go? Now that we're done with this crap."

She looked towards the doors, briefly wondering how easy it would be to walk out right now. It was locked, for one... and even if she could get it unlocked by some happy miracle, there was most likely some stupid spell placed upon it to hex whoever tried to walk through it right now. Besides, it wasn't like she would be able to escape for long. "I don't know," she mumbled uncooperatively. "I'm just tired, ok? Why don't you just go and mark some essays or something? Give me another D or two? It'd be a much better way to use your time."

Part of her just wanted to get out of this classroom, and forget about this stupid meeting. It was a waste of time for both parties, and she wanted to snap back angrily to every single question Professor Lian asked, to turn her away repeatedly until she was left alone again. But the other part of her wanted to seek help. She wanted someone to guide her back into the light, to be able to get back to where she had been before.

So she stayed. Ivy righted the chair with a reluctant thump and sat down with a huff. "Suppose something was happening," she said quietly. "What could you even do?"

Throughout the entirety of Ivy's tantrum, the chair clattering away, the yelling, Cy stayed absolutely still with a calm, even breezy, expression. Maybe there was a better word for it than tantrum, since tantrum felt like something somebody immature would do and everyone threw these kinds of tantrums regardless of their immaturity, but tantrum seemed to be the closest approximation. People just needed to throw out their emotions sometimes. She didn't take it personally. Yes, she was being disrespectful, but then again, it wasn't like Cy herself hadn't been the same way.

But what she was doing? It only convinced her even more that there was something this student was trying to hide, if it wasn't clear before. Emotional outbursts like this—ah, there it was, a better word than tantrum—were usually the result of something pent up. "You done?" Cy said dryly, raising an eyebrow. "Pick that chair up and sit your butt down, hon, 'caus apparently I have some explaining to do. It's my turn.

"My job at this school is to teach. What does teaching mean? It doesn't mean slapping a letter on a piece of paper. It doesn't mean reading phrases of a textbook to a bunch of people. You can do that yourself. My job is to make sure you learn. If there's something getting in the way of you learning, then it's also my job to stop that. Whatever it is you don't want to tell me, it's getting in the way, and that means I want to stop it.

"Well, see, first of all, I graded everything yesterday night and stayed up till four doing it, so I really don't have much better to do with my time. We both know that if you walk out of this room right now you're not going to try harder at all. I care about your grades because your grades are an indication of how much you're learning, not the other way around. And if you can promise me that you're learning everything that you want to, then that door's not locked anymore." Click, the lock went with a tilt of her wand. "Walk right through. But you can't promise me that and mean it."

As the clatters of furniture indicated the chair being set upright, the slight thump of a body sitting down in it, Cy uncrossed and crossed her legs the other way around. She hadn't won this fight yet, but she was on the way there. The rest was up to Ivy. "I can't promise you that I can solve the root of your problem, whatever it might be. I don't know exactly how you feel. But I can do my job, and I think it might make you feel better. You've fallen way behind in this class, and you know it. The one thing I can do is bring you up to speed."

Somebody had done this for her once. Olphie. Aoi. Evangeline. Mr. MT, too, and many more in her life. Like Ivy, she'd rejected them at first, because accepting their help would mean they were right. But she'd learned not to, and learning had been the rope with which she pulled herself out of a mile-deep ditch. Cy offered her a lopsided smile. "I might not know exactly what it is that's been happening, and I don't have to, if you don't want to tell me. But I know what it's like to be dealing with something and falling behind because of it, and I can show you how to catch up—if you let me."

@Cypresse Lian

It was like talking to a brick wall. Professor Lian just sat and listened through Ivy's outburst, as if she was completely unbothered by the fact that a student was shouting at her. Soon after Ivy had stopped speaking, she began to feel nervous, her anger dissipating. No one got away with yelling at a teacher, and she had been envisioning herself cleaning the abandoned toilets or something when Professor Lian spoke up again, sounding almost bored as she 'explained' what a teacher was.

The speech itself was... cheesy. Cliche. Overdone. It sounded like Professor Lian was reading off one of those annoying posters the Muggle postman often stuffed into the Bellamys' mailbox. They always ended up in the bin straight away, and Ivy's mother had eventually put a charm on the mailbox to bite the postman's hand if he tried to put one more pamphlet in there. Suffice to say, they never received mail that way again.

But it wasn't like Ivy could get a mailbox to bite Professor Lian on the hand, could she? And it looked like she was just about done talking anyway, and... oh, the door flicked open. Ivy looked at her in confusion, having zoned out for most of her speech. Zoning out was something she had become very good at as of late... which was perhaps not a good thing. Did that mean she could go now? Wait, what was she meant to promise her?

Ivy took a moment to put it together. Ah, so there was a catch. There always was. "Do you really think I won't leave?" she sneered. Who cared if there was a catch? Did Professor Lian actually think that this tactic worked anymore? Ivy's lips pinched together as she glanced over at her bag, sitting on the desk across from her, wondering how long it would take to grab it and run out of the room.

She knew she ought to stay, but staying would be admitting that she needed help, that Professor Lian was right and she was wrong. It was against Ivy's nature to ask for help, because she saw it as a weakness. Ivy liked to do things on her own. It made her feel capable and in control of herself, and she had always tried to solve her problems on her own.

Yeah, well, look how that turned out.

With a dramatic sigh, Ivy sat down against her better - or worse - judgement. There was a somewhat awkward pause after Professor Lian stopped talking, and Ivy filled it in after a moment's hesitation, frowning as she processed what had just been said. "You fell behind?" she asked sceptically. It was a little hard to think of Professor Lian as someone in her situation. "How did you catch up?"

At Ivy's question, she shrugged, maybe in a manner that seemed to contradict her words. "Well, if you do leave, then you leave. It's not like I can lock you in here anyway. The door's never locked if I'm inside. But you're also probably going to leave and go mope and be sad and angsty again, which is probably not going to change given the way things have played out without someone's help, so... I don't know, man. Besides, cut the crap - if you're just tired like you say, then you wouldn't leave a chance to catch up behind at all. So either you stay and listen, or you admit that something's up. "

Thankfully, she sat down. Hopefully she wouldn't stand up and leave again after what she just said, but Cy didn't want to make her feel like she was stuck here - which, clearly, she did - or was being antagonized, because, well, once someone was antagonized, they'd never listen. She knew that all too well.

And yeah, okay, she was a little hesitant about it, but as least she was there. And Cy didn't even know if she'd been listening at all - she could've been making faces for the whole time, after all - but at least she seemed to have caught on the last bit. "Uh, news flash, I didn't come out of the womb practicing Transfig," she snickered, twirling her wand absently. But she wouldn't disclose the details unless she was explicitly asked to - talking about herself might work for some people, but until she was certain it would work for Ivy, she didn't want to make her zone out again.

"With a lot of help, that's for sure. I had... like... I don't know, maybe six or seven people that had to pull me out of that through the course of two years. But you didn't fall as behind as I did. I'll tell you the story if you want me to, but I need an answer from you. Do you want to catch up? Because if you're going to sit here and dream about running out the whole time, you're probably not going to learn much."