Sutton looked up from her spell book to see... who else but her two knights in shining armor standing in front of her!!

Grinning, she jumped out of her desk and threw her arms around both of them, suddenly over her tears and feeling much, much better about this task. "You two are seriously the best, most awesome guys in the whole entire world," she said in a bright tone, looking between the two of them with her bright green eyes. "I was seriously freaking out because I do not know enough magic to do this on my own, and I thought everyone I knew had partners, but I'm really, REALLY glad you guys don't!" Sutton explained with a little laugh.

Now, time to get down to business.

"So... while I know very little about magic, I know A LOT about science. Remember in Astronomy how we talked about Newton's Laws of Motion? Well, I think that those are what we need to base fixing the train on... instead of just shooting spells at it, right? Because obviously they tried that when the train stopped, I imagine, and it didn't work!" she explained, feeling confident with this approach and hoping the boys would, too.

Turning away from them, she bent back down to her bag and began looking through it until she came out with the sheet of parchment containing her notes from Astronomy. Yes she does carry all of her school stuff with her all the time. Sutton set the parchment out on her desk for the boys to look over.

So this other who'd approached Sutton agreed with him. Ed took an instant like to the guy. He was about to introduce himself when the train of emotion that was Sutton hit him with a hug. He grinned at her slightly frantic explanation and glanced at the other guy. "I'm Edmund, nice to meet you." He'd seen the fellow Puff about. He thought.

Nodding attentively at Sutton's logic, he tilted his head once more. So she wanted to be all logical and muggle about this. Watching bemusedly as she pulled out notes, he wondered if she carried everything with her. Edmund gave the notes a quick skim.

"So whatever stopped it is either the same mass as or has a mass larger than the train?" He thought he understood. Though technically while the train hadn't been moving around the Earth, it was still moving because the Earth itself moved. But that was just him being pedantic.

O__________O

Ella COULD NOT BELIEVE Theodore had just done that. He threw the train away? HE THREW THE TRAIN AWAY! The third year was going to faint or something. She just knew it. She looked down at the table and took deep breaths, closing her eyes tightly. OH NO. OKAY. Everything was going to be fine.

Blink.Blink.

"Theodore!" Whisper.Whisper.Whisper. "Don't be daft! Professor Scabior isn't stupid! He'll know you're lying." Key work YOU...Ella wasn't a liar and she certainly didn't want to be THAT third year who Professor Scabior murderized for making a toy train explode with a rocket. MEEP. "If he kills us...I'm going to be SO mad."...and dead.

Vivi shoved the train around the track with the tip of her finger. Did they need to fix the train or did they need to make it move? It sounded like they needed to fix it, but the other students seemed content just to add a little dazzle and hope the professor didn't notice the train wasn't moving precisely as a train should.

Maybe that was the right tact, because Vivi wasn't particularly mechanical and couldn't imagine how she was expected to fix a broken machine. Hello? Witch here? Sigh.

She turned to the boy sitting beside her and offered a shrug. "Genevieve Branxton. Do you know how to fix trains?"

Darn it, he knew that Ella wouldn't be subtle about this. She was too goody-goody for it. "Are you okay, Ella?" He muttered, eyeing her heavy breathing and dramatic facial expressions.

"Fine! Then... then I'll pretend to fall off my chair or something and start crying. The crying always works, ya know." Theo cried a lot, and 60% of the time, it was actually kinda real. That wasn't the point. Theo relaxed on the chair and simply twiddled his wand through his fingers. Nothing to see here, Theo had it all under control. "Just take a chill pill."

Like.. don't blow the cover, Ella.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magical Soul

"Why does it have to be Gary's?" Genuinely curious girl here. Did the boy's diet was that special and worth the puke dealing business? "Why don't you puke and test this theory? Or ask your brother to." Sounded pretty legit and less time-consuming. They didn't have to wait for Gary to feel comfortable about it, did they? In fact, now Louisa had the urge to sign her name on this experiment. Just to watch. Spike would've loved to tag along too.

Parachutes? Heh heh. Louisa pulled the train closer, "Very tempting to re-break this plane edition just to see it happen." It'd be unexpected. "The tail now," she plucked one more piece of the track and positioned it on top of the last car, enjoying the luxury of feeling like a BOSS by doing a non-verbal sticking charm. That was the vertical stabilizer of the tail. She then detached two more pieces of the track and transfigured them into wings, a bit close to Aspen's, and stuck them on either side of that same car. "The tail." She announced.

SPOILER!!: The Parchment

The train stopped:

• At night.
• Not far away from Hogsmeade.
• The lights flickered a couple of times.
• A few bumps occurred.
• One final big halt brought it to a final stop.

Transfiguration work:

1. Transfigure the front car to take a pointed shape.
2. Tracks to wings
3. Last car to tail.

They were almost finished, "We still need a propeller." The train's wheels can serve for the landing gear.

"Because Gary eats five apples a day." Obviously that was why. "And has an affinity to soda." Added bonus. Aspen paused in collecting the rest of the track to LONG-LOOK at the Head Girl. Asking Gary to puke for an experiment was one thing. Making her brother puke just didn't make sense and such suggestions would lead to flames and flabby fingers again, Head Girl.

The look. It said as much. Off-limit topic.

SPOILER!!: The Parchment

The train stopped:

• At night.
• Not far away from Hogsmeade.
• The lights flickered a couple of times.
• A few bumps occurred.
• One final big halt brought it to a final stop.

Transfiguration work:

1. Transfigure the front car to take a pointed shape.
2. Tracks to wings
3. Last car to tail.
4. Aerodynamics - smooth rough edges of train car

Aspen wasn't doing the propeller because the Head Girl suggested it. SHE could do that, Aspen would work on making the plane aerodynamic. Aspen wasn't sure what spell to use, and again took her time and concentrated silently on smoothing the hard lines and angles of the train.

"Planes make more sense. They don't require tracks. In the end, I think it'd be a lot less work for everyone, not to mention more efficient time-wise. We would arrive hours ahead, start school an entire day earlier."

Aspen pushed the sleeker looking train!plane back to Louisa, her eyes squinted and interested in the Head Girl. Louisa was being studied whether she liked it or not.

Oh goodness.

Logan almost fell over when he was suddenly enveloped in a hug. Sutton seemed really happy now, so that was a god thing. But almost falling onto the floor wasn't something that he really enjoyed much.

"I'm glad you're happy now." Returning the hug, he glanced at the other boy. "Nice to meet you, Edmund. I'm Logan."

He scratched the back of his neck in thought as Sutton started talking about Sir Isaac Newton. "So you want to use science to fix it?" Hopefully he could remember what they had been told in Astronomy. Some of that stuff was in one ear and out the other with him.

Craning his head a little, he tried to get a glance at Sutton's notes.

Watching as the girl shoved the train around track with her finger, shaking his head. "I don' know." He didn't, wouldn't reparo or something work? Well first they had to figure it out. The train back in 1993 stopped because of the dementors, but what caused it to stop in the first place? he'd never played with trains as a child! And his parents rarely rode on them.

"Isaac Muir." he replied realizing he'd not even introduced himself even after she had. "Would reparo work on it?" Ok, that was the easy way out. Pfft, and he was assuming the professor had done something with it to make it not so easy as that! "I guess the firs' thing would be te figure out why it stopped."

Oh, good. Investigative work. Vivi put on her mental Sherlock hat, wishing she had Selina's monocle for good measure. Maybe she could use it as a magnifying glass, because the itty bitty train had itty bitty parts and she might want to look closely.

For now, though, they'd use their wits. Sharp wits between the two of them, Vivi was sure. "Okay, so... Isaac. Reparo might work, but let's save our hypotheses until after we gather our facts. Let's start with motive, because it might help us figure out who and how and all that. The train in 1993 stopped so that dementors could board. It must have been fairly close to Hogwarts, right? Since the dementors weren't just hovering over the train the whole time." Unless they were. Either way, the dementors had to be a key factor.

Breathe in....breathe out..."Huh? I'mfine." Why wouldn't she be fine? It's not like they had just destroyed Scabior's train...with a ROCKET...and then pretended like it never happened. Sheesh.

"You're going to cry?" NOT surprising, really. "You don't have to pretend to fall off your chair....Icouldpushyou." Mumble.Mumble. Fine...that was mean and unElla-like. The third year was claiming temporary insanity, though. FINE. He wanted her to take a chill pill, she would. The small blonde sat back in her chair, taking one last deep breath before looking expectantly at Theodore. ...WELLLLLL?

"Oh, right... that was bad manners. I should have introduced you two," Oh well! Too late now because they already met! Though, she was surprised they didn't know each other, they were both boys, both older, and both SUPER nice to her, so it was good they were meeting. They'd probably be best friends.

Now back to... SCIENCE! "Well, yes... I sort of want to use science. I mean, not like literal science because that would mean experimenting like Muggles on the trains, but we have magic, so we don't need to do those things. I just MEAN, that using Newton's Laws, we can approach the problem from a more scientific angle."

When Edmund asked about the mass of the train, Sutton bit her lip, shaking her head lightly. "No, I mean... I guess technically it is a possibility, but you're thinking about the wrong variable. What really matters is that the FORCE of whatever stopped train would have to be equal to the FORCE of the train... and I do mean EQUAL because if the force was GREATER, then the train would have crashed, it wouldn't have just stopped," Sutton explained looking at the two boys, hoping they would understand.

Maybe they needed an example or a diagram. "Like, okay... let's say someone used magic to create a magical invisible barrier, right?" On a new piece of parchment, she drew a side-view of wall with dotted lines, to show that it wasn't visible. "Now, for something like that to stop the train..." she explained as she made a very rough sketch of a train on tracks, "...it would have to have enough mass which, for the purposes of our discussion is really weight at the point of impact), that the mass alone would be enough to stop the combined force of the train's mass AND acceleration. If it isn't enough, the train smashes through it. If it's too much, the train smashes into it." Sutton finished her drawing, which now predicted the different outcomes if the mass was less than, equal to, or greater than the force of the train.

"If I had the mass and speed of the train, I could be more precise... give you actual numbers, but since we are talking about magic, I'm not sure the numbers matter as much. Besides, that'd be really hard since we can't use calculators... here..." Sutton said, slowing down at the end as her eyes grew wide. Whipping around to look at her partners, she hypothesized, "WHAT IF to make the mechanical, Muggle parts of the train not work, they cast the SAME enchantment that's around HOGWARTS? Then, all someone would have had to do was stop the train, then remove the Locomotor spell, and there'd be no way for the train to move?! Is that possible, could someone have done?!"

Nodding, he agreed with that. Yep first things, first. "Ok, let's see. Motive, would be." Blank, drawn a complete and utter blank. "Dementors looking fer Black." Pfft, yep brilliant Isaac. DUH! "Thinking he might be on the train?" Hmmm were they hovering the entire time? "Would they be on the train the whole time though? They were supposed te be watching fer him, and sort of protecting the students?"

Wait no not protecting. Or were they? "But we have dementors, but we need their full motive, was it jus' 'cause of Black or was it more then thet?" Ok, now his mind was spinning.

"It's going to be hard to pin a motive on the dementors. I don't think anyone can say they went and asked them why they showed up on the train, or they'd be all 'Nope, sucking out your soul nooooow.'" Vivi wiggled her fingers at the boy and grinned. He was going make her brain explode with the questions, so she was going to break the tension.

Or break his brain. Bad stuff happened when brains broke.

"So let's say the dementors stopped the train because they were looking for Sirius Black. The difference between this stop and the others was that... the train didn't stay stopped. So it wasn't mechanical failure, or it wasn't LASTING failure."

Logan. Right. He nodded at the guy, but then looked back to Sutton. "Don't worry about it." Situation was fixed now. Her explanation made him nod though. So he had the right idea, he'd just fixated on the wrong part of it. He noted that Sutton was actually seriously intelligent for a thirteen/fourteen year old. Maybe science and physics was her study of choice.

Her drawing just confused him though. He'd had a good handle on it until she'd tried to be specific with drawings. Deciding to ignore her attempt at explaining, he frowned. "The train jolted quite viciously when it stopped." Nell being practically crushed by their luggage was enough to prove that.

Her mention of numbers had him making a face. Numbers were evil. But it seemed to strike inspiration in her. And to be honest, he was impressed. "I... never thought of that. I suppose it's possible for anything to happen, though why the Ministry didn't have people around to STOP it baffles me." Surely a train full of young magical talent was something they'd want to protect. Yes, they'd got them out of there pretty fast, but prevention was better than reaction.

Nate noticed that he didn't have a partner, since the seat next to him was empty. Oh well. I'm happy in a sense, so then I won't have to deal with my own opinion and someone elses. Even though I'm fine with that. Once again oh well. Nate went back to his buisness on fixing the train. "Hmmmm." He said to himself. "Let's see. Most likely Lord Voldemortist would've hidden in the shack where some of the students went to before he stopped the train. So that must mean that he would've had to have known when the train would come by........from someone inside the train. He had to have some how break the defences. So looks like I'll have to put the spell on it to fix it."

He said to himself once again. then he took out his wand, and said "Protego Horribilis!" After he stopped the spell he realized that it wouldn't stick. The permanent sticking charm wouldn't help because that's an object to an object. He tried once more to see if it would work. "Protego Horribilis!" Once he stopped the spell was still there. "Yes! Finally it worked!" He mumbled to himself.

Logan shrugged off Sutton's apology. "It's alright." Honestly it wasn't as if he couldn't introduce himself so someone else. Nor was it important.

Now rolling his eyes as she went on to talk about what they were doing, he felt rather amused. "Well, I know that, Sutton." He wasn't silly after all. "I meant more like... science and magic like we used for the rockets." Obviously they would need to use magic; this wasn't Muggle Studies after all.

Now feeling a little lost as the girl went into this big science rant thing, Logan stood back, staring at her with a blank look on his face.

Sutton couldn't help but giggle at the blank look on Logan's face, she really just wanted to pinch his cheeks or something, but that didn't seem quite appropriate to do in class, nor did she imagine he'd appreciate it. Shaking her head a little, she said, "Basically, we need to find out if there are any spells creating a barrier in front of the train first because, like Logan said, it was a sudden stop, which would indicate that a force of some sort made contact with the train from the front."

And now she looked back and forth between the two. "Right, so... I have no idea how to do that. Any suggestions or do I need to cry and look through my spell book some more," she said to them, smiling at the joke she made at her own expense.

Kat was looking for a partner. Oh why. She had to be so alone. At this time. Kat was panicking inside. Until some Gryffindor guy confronted her. Kat looked at him. "Hey," Kat smiled. Friendly beast, she was.

"Sure, you can partner up with me," Kat said. "I'm Kat by the way, nice to meet you,"

--

Seeing that the others have been starting to do something with their trains already, Kat looked at Kai. "I think we should start now," Kat nodded. "Where do you wanna work?"

O_____o

Louisa just stared back, and swallowed. Not that she was nervous or on edge or anything, she just... was over-salivating. GULP. So the brother was the red line where that creepy smile and wicked humor fade away to reveal Odessa's claws? That was totally unexpected. But respectable. Louisa would've guessed Aspen was a hexing maniac toward her younger brother as much as she was toward Joao -Merlin bless his memory- and Louisa and who knows who else. So yeah, kudos for that.

With all honesty, the seventeen years old didn't catch up to the whole sharpening the edges and stuff until a few moments later. That was pretty good and professional. But she wasn't going to mention this out loud, she started working on her propeller instead. Taking one piece of the track and breaking it down to several small identical plastic pieces, resembling the propeller's blades.

"Grey blue eyes, pale skin, ginger hair, a small mole on the left cheekbone." She raised her eyes from the now-broken track piece to look into Aspen's. "What do you expect to see other than that when you stare at my face like that?" POKER FACE.

Annoyed, Louisa snatched the train from the girl and smacked it on the desk. She wasn't done with her task yet. With her wand she stuck one of the plastic pieces in front of the pointed front car, that resembled the center of the propeller. Then one by one, Louisa made small holes in the middle of those 'blades' and slid them onto the central part of the fan, eventually tapping its end to enlarge it into a small ball. With her finger, she nudged the blades and made sure they could rotate, then duplicated this propeller thrice. She placed two of the replicas on the wings, then the last one back under the tail.

Tada! Their Hogwarts Express Plane was done. "We should charm the wings, the tail, and the propellers to make it fly." That was a duh comment. She started tapping each one of the propellers with the animating charm, the little blades started to rotate. Then came the hot-air charm, learned in DADA last term. Louisa concentrated really hard on this one and after a circular wand motion repeated to each propeller, the train started to move, slowly and nonsuccessively.



The 'claw pushed the parchment over to Aspen and motioned for her to add her own magical touch. Literally magical touch. They needed this train to fly, not just move.

Nodding, he agreed with that as well. Laughing though as she waggled her fingers at him, after saying sucking out your soul, he was amused. "All we can really do there is make assumptions." It was the likely reason the train had stopped and that that had been the dementors plan all along. But assumptions weren't going to get them anywhere!

Nodding, ok yep. "Exactly, so whatever caused it had te be temporary." Chewing on his lip, "Then the question would be if the was the case, was it intentional. Let's assume it wasn't, what could cause it te stall jus' temporarily? Perhaps somethin' was on the tracks?" There, was an idea! "And because somethin' was on the tracks, and the train stopped, the dementors figured it was a good time te check fer Black?"

Dylan was having a closer look at the tiny train, when someone got his attention. Glancing in the direction of the voice, he noted a boy with a Ravenclaw crest on his robes. Oooh snap, yes. Claws were all brains, right? Surely this person could only aid him...

"Nice."...was all the Captain offered as affirmation. Meh, Dylan wasn't the type to go on and on about stuff. Could they just get down to business? No small talking? Yes, lets.

Turning his full attention back towards the train, he reaffirmed, "So, from what he can gather happened to the Hogwarts Express back in 1993, Dementors and their uncanny ability to suck the life out of things stopped the train." Yes, they both knew this...but it just made him more comfortable restating. "Do you have any ideas about how to spring it back to life?"

......IF only the train had a mouth and he could feed it chocolate...

O__o

The Hufflepuff Captain had gone around to reading in front of the whole class the contents of the note ALOUD. Spy on him? Too concerned about what Dylan is up to, huh Ness? Can't get enough of him? Ack. What in the name of Merlin was she thinking?! She wasn't in any way supposed to have a reaction about that. Yeah, she should just ignore that no?

Yeah, yeah. IGNORE.

And Messer? What's with the stuttering? Lifting her head to get a closer look at the younger Hufflepuff, the Ravenclaw gave him a quizzical look, "Are you okay?" She was wooooooorried. Did he choke on something? "Do you still want us to fix this train or should I tell Professor Scabior you need to go to the Hospital Wing?" She asked further, placing a hand on his cheek. As she did this, her other hand flicked the train with the tip of her wand, "Repaiiiiiiiiiro, is it?" Or was it Reparo? The Mending Charm?

..the toy train made a clattering noise and she eyed it curiously. Was it fixed now?

"Assumptions might have to do us for now," Vivi put her fingers back on the train and she pushed it along the track again. It would be awesome if it moved on its own, complete with smoke and little tiny train whistle noises.

But it wasn't doing anything right now.

"So your hypothesis is that the train was stopped by the conductor to clear the track, and once they removed the obstacle, the train could move again?" That was an interesting thought, but Vivi had to point out one concern she had. "But our little train doesn't have an obstacle. How can we try that out?"

"Yep." Brilliant response Isaac, real brilliant. What else could they do though, really there was no way of actually finding out what happened, you couldn't exactly go back in time. Well, you could with a time turner, but that wasn't exactly going to happen here. Chewing on his lip some more, he tried to figure a way they could find out what had happened.

Nodding as she repeated his idea. "Maybe create a likely one obstacle and place it in its path." Ok, now that was just stupid, it was travelling through Scotland, so mebbe it was sheep or something that were on the tracks. So how long would it take fer a herd of sheep te get off the tracks?" Yeah, and where were they going to get the sheep? Well this was just one hypothesis, "It would give the dementors the time te get on the train and search before the tracks were clear."

Sierra shook her head. "No, there were adults on the train this go round," she said. "We had two members of the Board of Governors and the Headmistress in the prefect's compartment, and then when I went to the back, the Healer was there, too." Funny how so many adults were on the train this time when there's usually none at all.

"...and you know," she said, a thought coming to her mind, "...the lights flashed on and off several times before the train came to a stop. Or was that when the train stopped?" The details were getting foggy now.

She shrugged. "I don't know if we could have just casted Locomotor on the train. If we could have just done that, the Headmistress would have cast it for us," she said. She stared at the train, at a loss for what could have started it again.