As Kace was building the fire, he heard the professor ask a question. He knew the answer to that easily. "Umm Professor they use the fire to roast marshmallows and make smores!" he nodded and hopefully he would be able to make one.

Now onto making the fire. He heard Kaiden's instructions and was glad he was doing well. He kept in mind to put more space between the sticks. That seemed logical because Kace wanted the fire to be big. He was still making the kindling sticks into a teepee shaped and he saw others trying to help.

While the others were busy, Kace left and went to go more twigs and wood. They were gonna need it.

This was getting ridiculous, to be honest.

Their rocks disappeared, and apparently Jake had been silenced or something somehow (she hadn't really noticed, oops), and Alice had completely ignored her. Rude. This was the point where these competitions were just annoying and hardly seemed worth it. So many better things she could be doing with her time instead. Meh. Could class just be over now?

But it wasn't, and she wasn't gonna sit around and be bored the rest of the time. So she'd try to deal with it.

Another stick was thrown at Alice's leg. "Start helping us or the next one's going for your head." And she was only half-joking now.

There was another Gryffindor who didn't seem to be helping, but she was younger and looked confused so Penelope didn't throw anything at her. "Hey, you wanna help them gather more rocks and make them into a circle?" she suggested, nodding at the other Gryffindors who were hopefully doing that. Because whining about disappearing rocks wasn't gonna get the job done, only getting more and working again would.

At least the wood was still there and had been sorted through, with the different sizes piled together. So what next? "Do we start building the rest of it now? With the kindling or something? The smaller sticks?" She'd look over the instructions herself but she'd set her copy down somewhere and now she couldn't find it.

Okay. Anya was gonna fix him. Jake watched her as she pointed her wand at him and... "I don't think that's-" He started to say, but stopped when he realized that he had actually spoken out loud. "...goingtowork." He finished, frowning. That was all? He'd just been charmed? "...Thanks," he said to Anya. Now he felt dumb.

"Let's just keep building it with the smaller sticks," he suggested in response to Penelope's first suggestion. He reached over and grabbed the pile of smaller sticks and moved them closer to the middle of the group so anyone could reach them.

Then he started to carefully put the small sticks in a teepee formation.

As soon as she vanished the rocks of Gryffindor, Léa looked at Ravenclaw's non-existant campfire and sighed. Their boys were not working--

She gasped dramatically when that girl YELLED like that, with her hand pressed on her chest, and looked with BIG and worried eyes at their non-existant campfire. She was actually good at pretending, y'know? So she probably did a good job at hiding her pleasure in seeing the outrage. Then the creased forehead and fearful eyes turned to her team-mates.

"We..." She sighed. "I can't zink of any muggle way to protect our castle from enemy fire." Some more worried looks. "But... we should start, I zink? I'll... get some stones." She walked to the stones after that Slav girl but paid no attention to her doings so when the pile of wood disintegrated, she looked back at the room to find the guilty. Wonder if it was the same person who silenced people? Wonder if they would be accused of vanishing Gryffindor campfire too?

Questions to ponder later. For now, she just grabbed as many little stones as she could and brought them back to Ravenclaw area.

"Have we agreed to build eet in a castle form?"

Minerva was distracted, who on earth would be using there wand? It was muggle studies and an easy lesson. Why was there need to do anything with a wand. Seriously immature pranks is what it was. She would think it was a first year if she thought they could do the spells needed, but certainly it was a very immature annoying person. Couldn't Hadley just use her wand to figure out who cast the last spell. Then that person could get detention and they could be done with this.

Turning back to her badgers watching them work, Min smiled. Proud Badger moment on how well they all worked together. The campfire was looking great, "You guys are doing awesome. Kaiden amazing work." He was the one giving the instructions and he was doing so well stepping up to be leader with this. She knew he had a muggle background and tried not to think of the summers events, but she was very proud of her little badger right at this moment. Whether he admitted it or not he was a true badger.

Now what did they have left to do, it seemed like everyone had done something and they were just now waiting to be allowed to do the fire, well hopefully they would be able too unless prankster mcpranky pants made it so Hadley wouldn't allow them.

She watched as the boys brought over what was needed. She didn't think that she needed to say anything to them. She didn't believe praise was in order for doing what needed to be done. Hannah loved being apart of the Slytherin house. It was the only house that she could be associated with, but on the same note being apart of the Slytherin house was going to be a disadvantage for a competition in muggle studies. Slytherins as a whole didn't do things the muggle way so they wouldn't know about this muggle fire building nonsense. She looked at her peers and realized that she really didn't know any of them. Was it bad that the sixth year had kept to herself that much? She didn't have time to think about that now. They had a competition to win. Obviously everybody was waiting for somebody else to make the first move.

Hannah grabbed her instructions and went through them once. "Okay, so I do not do things the muggle way..." Que disgusted look. ...but I do not want to lose to Hufflepuff so let's get a move on shall we?" Without waiting for any comments, questions or concerns the sixth year got to work moving the rocks around and moving them into a ring. "There's that." She didn't have time to twidle her thumbs and she hoped her housemates would get it together. She grabbed the instructions to read what they had to do next.

The Hufflepuffs were doing an amazing job, which of course made perfect sense given that they were the best house and this was the HUFFLEPUFF class. They were totally going to win this competition. Just so long as no one decided to mess with their fire. Fern glared at the other non-Hufflepuff students. If any of them tried ANYTHING, they would face the wrath of FERN QUIMBLEY.

Listening to Kaiden's instructions, Fern reached for some of the larger, left-over sticks and announced, "I've got the big sticks!" That way, after they finished arranging the medium sticks, they could start on the next layer without any pause.

Now that they were doing a team activity, she wasn't as bothered by the fact that he knew way more about campfire construction then she did and was therefore stealing the show. But hopefully the next lesson would be about Disney movies because Fern had seen them all with Tallulah and could quote Ariel line-for-line so there.

Waiting for the badgers that were working on the medium sticks to finish, Fern gave a go at Professor Hadley's question, "Do they use it to see in the dark?"

Oh! Campfires! What else were they used for? The first thing that popped into Tora's head was "smores!", but someone else already said that... so what about "Telling stories?" she said raising her hand. "You know, myths, legends, oral traditions, that kind of stuff," that was how religions and other such things began, correct? People sitting around a fire telling stories about how the world began.

What? How were you panicking one moment and then with a wave of your wand fine the next? "So... why were you panicking if all along you only needed to cast some spell and be fine?" the second year looked suspiciously up at the older boy. Not falling for it mister. Not at all.

She continued to glance over at him as she bent down to fix some twigs into more of a tepee style. Obviously she was still waiting for an answer please and thank you. Once that bit was done, she left it up to the rest of her housemates and focused on the foreigner. Your answer please.

*Blink* .. *Blink*

Who in Merlin's Hippogriff-designed underpants silenced Wade? He was impressed by Kaiden, nodding in his approval at how he was pretty much taking on head of their group. His own knowledge with Muggles was good enough, but man did Kaiden have it all better than a textbook. A congrats was in order along with it, so Wade opened his mouth to say so and.... Nothing? His lips which mimicked like a fish out of water for a moment, before his brows furrowed. He looked around, everyone else could speak, so.. yeah, it didn't take long for him to realise it. He didn't really have any enemies at Hogwarts that he knew of, so that pretty much narrowed it down on who could have done it.

Taking his wand out, he pointed at his own mouth, 'Finite'. He looked at Professor Hadley after pocketing his wand again, who had already mentioned that they weren't allowed to use their wands, "I'm sorry, Professor. But someone in here just silenced me as well." But to answer her earlier question, "I think they could also use a campfire to signal for help and their location, like how we could send sparks in the air for it." Yeah, so it was back to work or well, whatever they were allowed to do right now. He smiled at the younger girl, Fern, and the others who had been helping in his group. "Nicely done, you guys."

Wait, Wha!!! All our rock work gone, ERRRRR Oichi looked around but could not figure out who had done it and sighed. She then began to pick up more rocks to help her fellow Gryffie friends start a new ring around the fire pit.

As she worked she heard the professor ask another question and raised her hand and responded, "Muggles use fires for smoke signals to signify they are in trouble or lost.". Yes that seems about right.

Okay, so they had them a perimeter made. Now they needed stuff to put in the middle to burn right? Ugh, had she made clear how dumb she thought this was yet? Upon glancing at her notes she noticed where it said something about not making a ring if one was not already there, but oh well. They needed a perimeter right? She was not going to start over especially because it looked like she was on her own right now. What happened to all of the help? What were those boys doing? They should be the muscle. "Oi...plan on helping?" She didn't know many of the names so that comment was pretty much directed at everybody. She was very loyal to her house, but she would always be number one.

Not waiting for a response, Hannah went right on along with the campfire thing. It was odd that she was putting so much effort into muggle studies considering how she felt about the subject. Honestly, though it didn't have anything to do with muggle nonsense it was all about winning. Her house was not looking too good right now. Hannah being in charge was most likely not going to help matters, but at least she was doing something. So, she needed wood. She walked over to where the boys had gathered the wood and started placing the logs/sticks in a neat pile in the center of the rocks. She laid them crisscross and stacked them not too high. She didn't know if that made a difference or not. Hannah just liked things nice and neat.

It had become clear to Alexa that the Professor wasn't going to give the go ahead to retaliate. That was fine, that was her go ahead to just SIT THERE in PROTEST. If there was one thing Alexa Cambridge did not do it was waste--well actually it was stupidity but you got the idea. To have her walk to the desk for rocks only to have them vanish on her was NOT how she planned to spend a class where there wasn't meant to be any magic in the first place.

Lex flopped to the ground and folded her legs to WATCH.

Not one more rock or wood would be laid on this campfire, not by her anyway. She was over this. Completely. There was no hard proof but judging by how things had been going for the past few weeks she was willing to blame the foreigners and as such, this was all THEIR fault and ONE OF THEM needed to come over here and GRACIOUSLY give them their rocks back. New rocks weren't the same, it was the principle of the matter.

Had to be them. Karina was suggesting protection charms. Something must have been up. Just watch her sit this whole thing out. She would answer the question asked earlier though.

"They use it to burn mass evidence. They all gather around it, some place far away with a bottle or two of muggle butterbeer or whatever it is they have and they just toss things in while singing old muggle tunes none of use have ever heard of." Obviously.

Blink, blink. What was that, Cambridge? Well then, wasn't SOMEBODY taking this a little harshly and seriously.

Approaching the fourth year, she bent down to be at eye level with her, "You know, if you're so offended by such and such, I'm fairly there are other ways to retaliate besides magic." Not that she was encouraging it, but you know. Just saying. "But you also have to figure out who did it...."

ahem, moving on though.


Protective spells? BUT, this was Muggle Studies. At the same time, there WAS some shifty business going around and whoever it was using nonverbal spellwork to be counterproductive on the other houses, well ... there was no mundune alternative. "Fine. Protective spellwork, only."

Now, where was the extra woodpile? Surely the students didn't use it ALL already?

Fix her boyfriend? Oh please tell her she wasn't going to go all 'kiss and wake up' fairytale type deal. BUT then she saw her cast finite. Alright then, THAT was okay, she supposed. And it wasn't like she officially BANNED wands from today's lesson, though she did frown upon them because they were supposed to learning about muggles from the wizarding perspective....

"Good. Yes, Muggles do use campfires to boil water." Hadley nodded, adding that to a list she started on the board.

"Cooking, yes. Good." Surely some of the food-loving students might like that? Encourage them to finish up their campfires.

"YES! And you know.... if we get these campfires up soon," cause class would be over soon and then they'd be out of time. "THEN, we might just have time to have make some s'mores." OF COURSE, that was assuming she'd brought the ingredients... and given her feelings on food in the classroom which she'd broken before. BUT might as well get their attention.

"Sometimes, yes. Because flashlights can run out of battery life, or charge. A fire is more practical for muggles, if they were really camping. They don't have wands, so they need some form of light." Hadley nodded at the young first year.

Castle form? Hadley's eyes widened when she heard the French accent suggesting that. Well that was original, but could they pull it off with so little time left?

"Yes. Fires could definitely be used as a way to signal for help!! Excellent." Hadley smiled at the Head boy for his very original and awesome suggestion.

And someone else suggesting what Wade just did? Hadley just gave a nod in her direction.

Well someone was being STUBBORN?!? Did this mean she wasn't anxious to get to the FOOD part?! Assuming Kace or Lottie's ideas for what muggles did with campfires would be taken to heart.

"Sometimes. Yes, they do use the campfires to burn evidence." But what kind of evidence? "And yes. Glad you mentioned the muggle tunes. Singing and joy and dancing and food are very common around campfires."

Speaking of which, they REALLY needed to get a move on.

"Alright ....... does anyone need help with building these campfires? Is anyone totally lost? Because we only have about ten more minutes to get your campfires going if you want to get to the singing and muggle food part of the lesson." Cause otherwise they'd have done all the work just to call it a day.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackboard

Muggles use campfires for:
- To boil water the make sure that its safe to drink
- Cooking
- Roast marshmallows and make s'mores
- See in the dark
- Signal for help and their location
- They use it to burn mass evidence.
- Drink "muggle butterbeer"
- Singing old muggle tunes

Goodness, did Caleb have to do just about everything? No one else was really DOING anything or making any effort to start a campfire, so he started to arrange the sticks in a teepee sort of fashion, like he'd seen in muggle camping brochures at the store and such. "Can someone try and light the fire with the flint or something? I don't think I'm strong enough to get a good spark," he admitted. Normally he wouldn't admit that he was weak like that, but look at him. He wasn't any Superman or anything. He had yet to hit puberty and wasn't about to waste time acting like he had the ability to light a fire by himself.

Oichi was a bit taken aback by the professors last statement. Sure they were in a hurry but the her house also just lost most of their work due to some practical joker. They were not totally lost but they could certainly use the help considering how many people in her house just gave up after the awful magic trick.

She spoke up and said, "Professor, us Gryffindors could use some help, not because we don't know what we are doing but because there is so little time left and most of our work vanished thanks to some practical joker and I don't think we'll finish in time without some help.

With that said Oichi continued to gather rocks and do her best to make a new fire ring with her fellow Gryffindors but the rocks were heavy making the work slow as molasses and they still needed to add the gathered sticks into the rock circle once it was done. Oichi sure was glad she asked for some help.

Laura was just stood there because she had no idea what she was supposed to do. She just hoped that someone would explain to her what she had to do.

You know, these Hufflepuff kids could make a pretty great campfire. The ones who were helping anyways. There were some, Kaiden noticed who still refused to help. It wasn't like they didn't know what to do... he had told them enough. And at this point, there really wasn't anything to do. The teepee campfire looked like it'd be scout leader approved. Mouse said what? The boy's ears turned a bit pink. "Um, Thanks Mouse. And It looks great guys, I think we're done. Y'all are good at this campfire stuff." Yep. They should... use that for stuff.

"Professor Lady, Can I go a head and light it?" he pulled the fire starter out. She said the had ten minutes to get it started, but... she didn't say if they could light it yet. But, he'd gladly do that part of the fire making. since he had the tools.

FYI she was totally helping with building the campfire. Mhhmm. She just stood there regaining her breath after she carried a couple pieces of wood. She totally deserved the break yeah? Besides her friends were doing fine, not that she was focused on them as the other houses' groups caught her attention. What was happening? Weird. The snake paid attention to the Professor while turning to her house mates at the same time.

"Yes, rocks," She said to no one in particular before stalking off and bringing rocks. She thought that they couldn't probably use magic so she carried them which meant a break was needed pretty soon.

Cassia crouched and started forming a circle with the rocks while the firstie arranged the sticks. she needed to learn his name. Light it? The fifth year eyed the campfire. Should they light it? Well, if yes then she wasn't going to risk it and do it herself. She'd rather not be the reason Slytherin lost, thank you. Only because she never lit one. She glanced expectantly at the others, anyone with experience?

Jake was pouting. In a mature manner. Mainly, he wasn't talking anymore. He let the girl say that they needed help, but he didn't look up from the teepee structure he was still working on. It was somewhat frustrating, since some of the sticks kept sliding and messing things up, but Jake was determined to finish the assignment on time. Especially since someone thought it would be fun to vanish their things. He wasn't going to give that person the satisfaction. Nope.

...But honestly, he had no idea what he was doing. He just kept doing it anyway.

Well... "I know. You're not the only one." Kat didn't like doing things the Muggle way when they could just flick their wands and BAM! Campfire made. Right? "But what could we do? It's Muggle Studies..." Kat shrugged. The class wouldn't be named that way if they weren't supposed to learn how the Muggles lived by, right? Plus Hadley wouldn't be so amused by the use of magic in her class, unless it was necessary. Magic actually wasn't too necessary because yeah, making fire just apparently didn't need it. Please. It would've made everything easier.

Kat decided to help the others fix the teepee pyramid thing with the twigs and branches. She knelt down and did the last bit of it, plus the finishing touches... then she looked at the perimeter stone thing. Everything was actually in place but final touches were necessary. Kat wanted everything sort of perfect, you know? How perfectionist of her. Lighting up the fire though. "I'll do that, but I don't think we're allowed to light it up yet." Or were they? Kat looked at Professor Hadley for the final instructions.

"Oh and you did great, helping with the campfire." Kat was grateful. Her Slytherins were awesome and she couldn't imagine how much she'd miss them after she graduates.

So many Hufflepuffs.

Ella liked that everyone was doing their best to help but she sort of felt in the way so the blonde had taken a step back, watching Kaiden take the leadership position. He was doing a really good job too, making sure things were set up like they needed to be. Ella was for finishing quickly if it meant s'mores before leaving class.

The sixth year heard Kaiden call over to Hadley so they could get the okay to light and she smiled a little, impressed by the fire set-up. "Nice job, you guys." Really, it looked brilliant.

Anya didn't bother checking everyone else's progress. Why? Because they were running out of time. From glimpses of people she did manage to catch, it looks like they would make it.

She took a step away to admire the framework of the fire. She took the liberty of adding a few more pieces of wood to it so it looked fuller. It wasn't very good, but worse case scenario, they could get away with this.

"Alright. Finishing the rocks and putting some more filler sticks around the frame should be enough." she said clapping her hands together to get off the dirt and dust.

Alexa's butt was still firmly planted on the ground. It wasn't fair to do the work twice. Her teammates were still pressing on and she would congratulate them for it but would she help? Nope. Not a second time. She wouldn't condone the waste. Lex nodded at the Professor for saying her answer was right. She knew it was right. Some things, you just had to burn as quickly as possible. It prevented certain other things from happening.

When the woman asked who needed help she said nothing. Oichi was doing the talking, there was no need. So what if time ran out? What would it matter to her?

It looked like they were over the rocks part. The part she'd wasted effort on. A new part of the activity.. Hmmm....alright, this she would half help with, but only half because she was still obviously throwing a 14 year old's tantrum. No magic, no retaliation. Whoever it was, they would get away with this and her house would have to do twice as much work. Lex watched Anya and added a stick or two of her own, but no major contribution. Nope. She was over this class. Over everyone but her getting to use magic.

Some people were actually starting to help and that was a good thing considering the class was almost over and they still did not have a fire. She looked over at what they had put together and she was actually pretty proud that they managed to do this good. Had this of been a subject worth taking they would have sped right through it with perfect results. All things considering she thought that they did pretty well.

Now they just needed the professor to look over what they had done and get her approval to light it right? She was pretty sure that she heard something about not lighting it until she said so. Control freak much? Whatever, she was ready to be done. She wanted to know who was going to win already. "Okay snakes, let's get the professor over here so we can finally light it." She waved her hand in the air. "Professor we are ready over here." Hannah really hoped that it was good enough for them to proceed. It was getting down to the wire.

Singing?

They had to sing?! BUT WHY?!

Sophie didn't understand why everybody always had to act so happy-go-lucky. Couldn't they just collect their hard-earned points, eat, and leave? That sounded like a good idea to her.

Then some older Slytherin announced they were done with their fire. Oh...they were? Sophie looked over at it. Looked good to her. She sort of faced the professor and GRINNED. "Look at us! We're awesome!" that grin seemed to say.