Just Make Me Not Terrible

[Aurora Night]

As Rory made her way to library, she kept flipping back and forth between thinking that this tutoring session was going to be okay, or that it was going to be even worse than her last one. She hoped it wouldn't though. Transfiguration was actually something she wanted to improve at, because it sucked to watch the rest of the class having hardly any trouble with their spells while she wrestled with one object or another every lesson. It was depressing. By the time she arrived and took a seat, Rory had decided that perhaps tutoring could be a good thing - if the tutor could really help her, that was. She hoped she'd be easy to find. Maybe she should make a sign, or spell out 'HELP!' in tiny bits of screwed up parchment... it would pass the time at least, she thought, pulling out some of the spare parchment that was getting crushed at the bottom of her bag.

 

[Lennon Cohen-Knight]

For a Ravenclaw, Lennon was admittedly not as studious as he liked to be. He liked to think of himself as more of a creative type, interested in writing and photography, except he was indecisive about what he wanted to do as a career so the fourth year had overloaded his class schedule to try and fit both interests at once. That seemed to backfire on him as he was not doing particularly well in his classes, except for Transfiguration which seemed to come much easier to him it was almost natural. That was why he decided the least he could do was depart some of his knowledge of the subject to someone who needed the help.

As he entered the library, he saw so many pairs of people coupled up with their heads over a book and he knew they were all here for the same thing he was, except he was the tutor and not the tutored. He didn't know much about the person he was supposed to help, so he was a little lost as to who they could be, but after a while he saw a younger girl who didn't seem to be paired off like the others in the library so he approached her. "Excuse me, are you Aurora?" he asked somewhat nervously.
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[Aurora Night]

Rory had already made the letter 'H' and was halfway through the 'E' when she heard someone approaching her. Without even looking up to see the person talking to her, Rory answered abruptly. "Nope." It was just an automatic reaction to her proper first name these days, and it took her brain a second to catch up and realise that this was probably her tutor looking for her. Abandoning the crude attempt at a sign, Rory finally looked up to take a look at who she'd be dealing with. "I mean, yeah, but still no. It's 'Rory,'" she explained. "You're my Transfiguration tutor, right? Please tell me you can figure out why these spells hate me." It was a reasonable assumption to make, she felt, because she didn't have many problems casting other spells. At least not to this extent.

 

[Lennon Cohen-Knight]

[So sorry for the delay!!

Lennon was about to step back and keep looking for the girl he was supposed to be tutoring when the girl had said she wasn't Aurora. But then she said yes it was her, and then no again. He was confused for a second but he caught on to her preferred name and nodded in understanding. "Right, Rory, sorry," he said with a small smile. He chuckled at her obvious frustration with the subject and took a seat across from her at the table, spotting the sign and wondering what she had been spelling out but he ignored it. "I know that feeling well, but luckily it's not for Transfiguration," he said, trying to assure her that the feeling was normal at times. "Let's start with what you do know, which ones have you been able to perform so far?" he asked, going a different route than most tutors that asked what they had trouble with most.
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[Aurora Night]

No problem!

Rory already liked this tutor so much more than the dumb one she'd had for History of Magic, although she basically had the same answer to give the older boy about her abilities in the subject. Throwing herself back into the chair she crossed her arms in an unconscious defensive stance. "None of them, really," she said with a slight pout. "First year I even practiced a lot, but I still never managed to transfigure anything all the way." And if inanimate to inanimate transfiguration had been bad, pretty much anything involving animate transfiguration had been even worse. "The only thing that's ever worked properly was making a chess piece move and talk." Rory ruminated on this for a second before she suddenly burst out with, "I don't get it! Why doesn't anything just change like I expect it to? I say the spell and nothing happens, it's so dumb." She kicked at the table leg in frustration which, of course, didn't help in any way.

 

[Lennon Cohen-Knight]

Lennon frowned slightly when the girl claimed that she didn't know none of the spells, and listened to her struggle. "Well you can't have been that bad if you managed to get past first year," he reassured her with a hopeful smile. When she mentioned animating a chess piece he raised his eyebrows, impressed, and said, "That's something!" hoping to cheer her up. "Do you like chess?" he asked, wondering if perhaps that had anything to do with it. "Do you remember anything you did differently that time than all the other times you've tried?" Lennon tried not to laugh as the girl kicked the table but his grin was poorly concealed as he bit his lip. "Sometimes it's not you, sometimes it's the wand," he said with a small, helpless shrug, still chuckling a little at her outburst. "Some can be temperamental and not like being pressured," he laughed again, knowing he must sound absurd talking about wands as if they had personalities, but wand magic did have its own qualities.
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[Aurora Night]

Rory couldn't help but snort at the tutor's first question. "Does anyone like chess?" She mostly just enjoyed watching the pieces fight each other; the strategy aspect was completely lost on her. The second question gave her more pause though and she fell silent, chewing at her lip. "It... it didn't really feel like transfiguration. The spell. Because the piece didn't exactly change. Like, I just made it talk and move, not change into something else." Her eyes lifted to meet the tutor's. "I've never been able to do that bit very well. I always ended up with wooden needles." At his comment about her maybe having a problem with her wand though, she just shrugged. If that was why she was doing so terribly, it didn't sound like that would be something either of them could really fix.