Seventh Years: Lesson Six

Professor Nakamura was in a good mood. He thought tonight’s lesson would be a welcome reprise from lectures, as well as still being educational. They’d learned an interesting spell last week, but nothing was as good as the real sky up above – which was what they’d be observing tonight. He’d arranged for the class to be earlier than the usual evening class and hoped that that signalled something interesting for his students.

“Good afternoon,” he greeted, “this lesson will be a bit different than usual. No lectures, no notes – unless you want to, of course.” There was a twinkle in his eye. He knew some students liked to go above and beyond. “Tonight we will be going on a short camping ‘trip’. So please, no need to get out your parchment and quills, simply follow me.” Professor Nakamura bade the students to rise from their seats, then led them out before locking the door behind him.

Professor Nakamura led the students to a far corner of the castle grounds where a couple of tents had been set up earlier. “Tonight we shall study the stars as they are in the sky, but first we’ll set up a few campfires. They should die down by the time we can observe the stars, so they’ll be little light pollution. Right! Two to a tent. There’s plenty of room inside, as you’ll see.”

The tents had been set up near the lakefront. As the evening settled, the students and Professor Nakamura spent time talking around the campfire, mostly about astronomy, but other topics cropped up too. The sunset reflected beautifully onto the surface of the lake, a fluid mirror of reds and oranges. They all ate food provided by a mix of the Hogwarts kitchen and Professor Nakamura himself, who prided himself on his chef skills. Toilets were also provided in the tents, meaning no need to return to the castle itself.

“Now, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the importance of studying for your NEWTs,” Professor Nakamura brought up, a groan or two coming from the students at the prospect. “Tonight, please take the time to examine the sky, practice your star charts and identifying constellations, as well as try to locate some of the celestial things we learnt about this year. Ah, and one last thing – curfew is at 1:30am. Make sure you are in your tents by then and good luck with your exams,” Professor Nakamura said, smiling. “I’ll be around if you have any questions.” He left the students to it, hoping they’d enjoy their time. A meteor shower occurred around midnight, which Professor Nakamura watched keenly with interest. He made sure everyone was in bed by curfew before retiring to his tent himself. It had been a perfect night to simply relax and study the sky.

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Roleplay the trip!

 

[Emmanuel Okoye]

Emmanuel couldn’t quite believe that this was his final week of Hogwarts classes, he still had so much learning to do. He had so much work he needed to get to. He was looking forward to getting more and more specific on the eduction he wanted. He knew it would take time, but the time would pass as quickly as the last seven years at the school. He grabbed the last few things he needed, and headed to the last classes he had at this school.

Emmanuel walked into the astronomy classroom and took his usual spot in the room. Though they weren’t sticking around in the classroom, instead they were taken camping, though just out to the grounds. He sat down by the fire and looked up at the night’s sky. He was going to miss this place, miss hogwarts and all it had been for him. It had been a nice place to be and to learn. He used the time of this lesson to practice his star charts and identifying constellations. He wouldn’t say he worked particularly hard, though whether he needed to or not wasn’t really necessary to consider. He just did some amount of work as he stared up at the sky and then headed to bed for the curfew.

 

[Rory Styx]

It wasn’t lost on Rory that the final week of classes meant that his time at Hogwarts was coming to an end. Before he knew it he would be leaving the castle the way he had come into it, only this time it would be for good. He’d likely only ever return again to see Tori graduate, other wise he’d never see the castle he had called home for seven years again. He wasn’t in the classroom long before Professor Nakamura announced they would be leaving, they would be having a different kind of lesson. Rory was a little disappointed that he wouldn’t get the chance to spend the normal lesson time studying, but he went along for the ride and was curious to see what Professor Nakamura had in store for them in their final lesson. He certainly seemed to have put more thought into it than most of the other professors.

Several tents had been set up along the lakefront and they spent the late afternoon and early evening eating and talking by the lake. Rory paired up with one of his more agreeable classmates to share a tent with, he established some ground rules for the shared space before returning to the group on the edge of the lake, where they discussed Astronomy and began looking up at the stars once it was dark enough the campfires had been sufficiently put out. Eventually, Professor Nakamura mostly left them too it, Rory spent the evening watching the stars and discussing them with some of his classmates before eventually turning in a little before curfew. It had been an unexpectedly enjoyable evening and it definitely made him realise how much he was going to miss Hogwarts once he was gone.

 

[Michael Watson]

Michael was exhausted, but just kind of flat in general. His time at Hogwarts was nearly over, and while he would be kind of glad to be out of the place, he was still feeling a bit untethered and uncertain about what the future held for him. He was all prepared to spend this last Astronomy class madly revising seven years of content as he had been for all his classes over the past few weeks, but he relaxed a little when Professor Nakamura told them they'd be going camping. Sure, it was just in the grounds, but Michael honestly just needed the fresh air.

The food was really good, too - Michael was surprised that Professor Nakamura had cooked some himself, but not displeased by it. Maybe that was something he should do when he was home, work on his own cooking. His skills were adequate but not great. Of course, they were expected to do some work, and Michael had to try and re-orient himself to his star chart and remember which constellation was which, which took up a few hours of his night. There wasn't really a worry about missing curfew, though - he was in bed well beforehand, too worn out to stay up that late.