Finished One Small Step For Students, One Running Climb For Wizard Kind

October 5, 2023

He had been beckoned with a note and his smile only grew wider as he made his way out of the castle and to where she waited. When he thrust the heavy door open, his eyes alighted upon her immediately. Before he could utter a word, EmmaLee excitedly greeted him. She took his wrist and off the two went, he listening quietly as she was nearly to bursting to lead him off to a little alcove. He blasted past a moment of panic thinking it would be a secret trysting spot she had discovered, but before he could even break a sweat over the underthunked thought, she stopped in front of a display case, her smile growing even brighter, if that was possible. Stephen moved behind her as the area was somewhat cramped and he wanted a good view of what she wanted him to see. Since he was taller, he could easily lean over her to see everything.

The first real surprise of the evening came from the discovery of what was behind the glass. He could easily feel that EmmaLee was silently vibrating, much like his cell phone did when he used to carry one all the time. His wonderment was why? Excitement over her discovery or something else altogether? Like him? She brought him to the tiny alcove to show him the remnants of some girl's broom; Selene Wartnaby's broken broom to be precise. Really? His first thought was, Ooooookaaaay -- does she think I'm interested in all brooms simply because I'm a broom racer? and then shame had to have colored his face as he read the plaque.

"Woah!" he whistled excitedly, but quietly. He stepped a little awkwardly to her side and simultaneously turned her shoulders to face him, completely awestruck. "EmmaLee, this is fantastic!" he whispered exuberantly. He was about to share his theory that it had to have failed or people would've definitely known of her success. He seriously doubted a third year witch had enough Transfiguration knowledge or the necessary grasp on the Muggle world's knowledge of the moon to have successfully pulled it off, but he brushed those thoughts aside for the moment. That wasn't the point of her little expedition, and she verified that when she told him, "It seems that you are not the only one who thinks that the moon is not out of reach for wizard-kind."

"Emm... -," and his mind-mouth connection felt broken for a few seconds as he felt lost for words. "EmmaLee, wow. Just wow! Thank you so much for sharing this with me. You have no idea what it means to me. Honest." He could tell she was pleased he was pleased, and he relaxed only a little as he felt a jumble of nerves begin to surge, and he was uncertain why.

EmmaLee then suggested a clandestine trek to the Astronomy Tower and he was all in for an adventure. Off they started once again, but it didn't stop Stephen from giving a last, longing look over his shoulder at the plaque. There were other witches and wizards with similar designs on the moon. He felt a new resurgence of purpose and he had EmmaLee to thank for it. They weren't even at the tower steps yet and now he thought he was the one going to burst. He had questions and a million thoughts and he was tacking 'To Do"s onto an ever-growing mental list of new avenues to research when he got back home.

He was so focused on his future research that he was losing sight of the adventure he was now embarking upon, so he snapped out of it easily enough. It was an adventure itself just getting there and the corridors were echoing with the syncopation of their footfalls and stifled peals of laughter. They had the pleasure of dodging ghosts and sneaking past any number of portrait people who were wide awake and possibly a threat to their mission.

At one point they heard a male and female voice coming their direction, and from the context of their conversation, something about the Prefect's bathroom, they were both prefects. Looking around for a hiding place, Stephen and EmmaLee chose a HUGE tapestry that was luckily hiding a verrrry shallow alcove. The curfew breakers were side by side with the back of a heavy, dust laden tapesty millimeters from their faces, bearing audial witness to the tender affections between the two prefects. He was glad EmmaLee could not see his face as he was certain he had to be red as a beet. Still, the absurdity of their dilemma threatened many times to dissolve him into fits of laughter. He was certain they had been discovered when he did sneeze as quietly as he could and the Prefects themselves got quiet, but they moved on and he and EmmaLee undraped themselves and ventured onward.

Success, finally, was to be theirs.

EmmaLee led the way as they ascended the spiral staircase and found themselves just outside of the Astronomy classroom. Something tickled the back of Stephen's lizard brain and yelled for him, well, for the both of them, to take flight. All of it had been just too easy. He was about to remark on that fact when EmmaLee happily and proudly lilted out a quietly sweet, "Ta Da!". He watched her, quite bemused by the Julie Andrews-like twirling and spinning as she gravitated ever closer to the central orrery. All that was missing was her singing to him that the hills were alive with the sound of music.

He continued watching her and momentarily held his breath that in such a grand, sweeping display, the orrery, and everything else, remained safely unscathed. He needn't have worried. She was far too graceful to have clumsily knocked anything over. Stephen took an eager look around and had to admit that the room was gorgeous.

His gaze landed on the bank of telescopes as the autumn breeze brushed through his hair, cooling his neck. Motioning for her to join him, he made his way over to the telescopes. It was a beautiful, cloudless night. Perfect for stargazing. "You know, the stars seem to carpet the Scottish Highlands' sky in numbers twofold what I am used to seeing back home," he said in a tone just above a whisper. They were the only two there, as far as he knew, but it felt appropriate to whisper for some reason, not out out of fear of discovery but out of reverence.

He'd been looking through the scope, training it on the moon while speaking. "Home being California and not Ilvermorny, of course," he continued, still looking and focusing his concentration on dialing everything in just so. "Ilvermorny also offers a magnificent view of the heavens, but - ..." and in that moment he looked up, completely forgetting what he was about to say as he caught the vision of loveliness that was EmmaLee standing next to him, moonbeams cascading all around her. A chorus of laughter and loud clapping could be heard drifting up to them from below in that moment. He knew he blinked a couple of times and finished his sentence quite differently than he initially intended, his voice even more hushed with her nearness, "but... but nothing nearly as beautiful as you."

As soon as he said it, the breeze that had cooled his neck was having to now contend with a face flushed with embarrassment. Stephen didn't know what to do or how EmmaLee would feel about him saying it. He might have ruined everything before they even had a chance to enjoy themselves, but a part of him was not regretting the moment at all. He stopped himself from staring at her and continued, hoping the awkwardness would pass.

"Uhhhm, if you are interested, the Sea of Tranquility is just a glance away. Look hard enough and maybe you will see Selene Wartnaby talking with the Man in the Moon," and he chuckled as he stepped aside to allow her to see what, or who, she could see.

@EmmaLee LeDames Also mentions the presence of two enamored prefects that one may assume would be @AngelFyre McCubbin and @Simon Kincaid

Reducio

OOC: Standing permission has been granted for our two characters to god mod one another.

October 5, 2023

"Does my father like space?" he repeated thoughtfully to himself. He briefly looked up from the scope and and then out the magnificent windows before them. "Well, I don't think he dislikes it. I'm honestly not certain he's ever given it much thought."

This was, truthfully, a very sore subject for Stephen. Most of his life he had been nearly obsessed with the idea of space and space travel. He had had big dreams and had had big plans, all of which had been fostered and tended to with care by his best friend's father and not his own. That in and of itself was not the hurtful part, or the most hurtful part, anyway. The most hurtful part had been placing him in a school of magic, against his own wishes, thereby obliterating all hope of attending the Air Force Academy. Last time he checked, he was pretty damned certain Ilvermorny's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was not on the approved list of accredited educational institutions for admission, a salient fact his father didn't give one flying fig about.

Standing there in such a state, his laser focused gaze could have almost burned holes in the magnificent windows. He was so caught up in his disappointment, for about the 100 millionth time, that he completely forgot EmmaLee was even there beside him. The predictability of the emotions he always felt on this subject had already begun to come to life and their intensity was ratcheting up quickly. Already he could feel the rage licking at his psyche and it was just an ugly, internal spiral from there.

Without even realizing it, he let out a deep sigh and leaned lightly against the telescope, raising his arm at the same time to drape it casually along the length of the optical tube. That was a mistake. The whole apparatus, given its size, was much lighter than Stephen would have imagined it should be. Before he knew it, both he and the scope started their inevitable descent to the floor thanks to a little thing known as gravity. He was surprised, to be sure, but he did not panic. He managed to right himself easily enough, and hours upon hours of broom practice and wand practice had him grabbing for his wand as a due matter of course. Without really having to think about it, he cast "Arresto Momentum" on the telescope.

Fully expecting to hear the shattering of the glass lenses and the clanging of the metal tubing, moments - maybe two to three - passed with only silence to be heard. Well, that and his racing heartbeats pounding in his ears. A mere two seconds later, maybe less, and that telescope would have been a goner. He knew he had cast successfully, he just hadn't been sure he had been timely enough.

"Holy crap on a cracker," he croaked and then finally remembered EmmaLee was not only there, but had just borne witness to his utter clumsiness. "That was a close call. Too close. And ermmmm, my sincerest apologies for the uhhhmmm, for the uhhh, for the cracker remark." He turned away from her so that he could retrieve the telescope and put it back where it had originally been. Or at least a close proximity to where it had been. He probably would have been blushing under normal circumstances, but he was honestly just so relieved not to have broken it that little else was registering with him in those moments.

When he finally had it righted and situated, he wasn't feeling any more calm. His brain had been racing and he had assumed it was because of the near catastrophe, but then it dawned him. He was being pushed to think back to just before EmmaLee had asked about his father. He had asked her to tell him more of about her passion, and he had been listening while not spooking her with too much direct eye contact. As she had been telling him about her love of playing the cello, and metal music, he had found the something beautiful in the sky he had hoped to be able to show her.

"I swear I'm not generally clumsy. I got lost in thinking about my father, and the scope was so much lighter than I thought it would be, and well, you know the rest." An awkwardly charming grin made its appearance, crinkling the corners of his eyes before he continued. "I'm sorry if I scared you. If it had broken, you likely would have had detention until graduation and I likely would have been banned from Hogwarts forever," and he shook his head sadly back and forth at such a prospect. "Lucky for us, that was not the case. Here, come take a look at this, and he quickly looked back into the scope and found the prize. He had not expected to be able to see the Andromeda galaxy from Scotland, fearing it would be too cloudy, but there it was.

"I don't know what you know about what you are currently looking at, but that is the Andromeda galaxy. Like the Milky Way, it is also a spiral galaxy, and is actually the closest large galaxy to our own. If memory serves, Andromeda and the Milky Way are destined to collide in about 4.5 to 5 billion years from now creating an even larger spiral galaxy," and he whistled at the thought. "Man would I love to see that. Imagine looking up into the night sky and seeing nothing but those gorgeous spiral arms," he said wistfully. He silenced himself and gave her a bit of time to look at it and then moved closer to her once again.

"If you'll permit me, I think I may be able to magnify it so that you can see some incredible details," and he stepped forward as she moved back a bit. He made a few quick adjustments and lifted his head to blink a couple of times before putting it back down. "Whoa. This is spectacular!" and he moved back to watch her as she once again positioned herself over the eyepiece. "The spirals are not as prominent due to the positioning right now, but trust me, they are there."

He was happy to finally get some time to observe her more closely and marveled at her beautiful white hair in the moonlight. It was nice to have a little time to look at her and not be shy or coy about doing so. "I'm not musical at all, but one interesting thing I read, well, interesting to me anyway, was that some composers, when dealing with the subject of astronomical bodies, would score their pieces to look something like a spiral galaxy. I'm not quite certain what that means, exactly, but it sounded intriguing. I realize I'm probably telling the cellist amongst us nothing new here, but it's about the only contribution I have to offer up, at this moment in time, with regard to your passion."

Oy. Just shut up, Schwartz.

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@EmmaLee LeDames

Reducio

OOC Fun Fact: From Inverness (in the Highlands and a close frame of reference for where I imagine Hogwarts might actually be) the Andromeda Galaxy actually could have been seen by Stephen and EmmaLee the night of Oct. 5, 2023. Some interesting info can be found here: https://in-the-sky.org/data/deepsky.php (Circumpolar - M31 (mag 3.4) is visible all night. It will become visible at around 20:11 (GMT), 42° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will be lost to dawn twilight at around 05:54, 42° above your western horizon) and here https://in-the-sky.org/data/object.php?id=M31 if anyone is interested.