Beauty is more than skin deep

The charms classroom was newly decorated with paintings and prints of all shapes and sizes (and though none of them talked, many moved) thanks to Damon's NEWT class. Though not all of them had been as competent as Miss Lyons, and it was her taste that dominated the room.

In a beautiful environment, Damon had decided it was time to learn about beautiful things. It had not escaped his notice that his BASIC students were, not to put too fine a point on it, growing up. Soon, they would be entering the unknown territory of dating and wondering how to attract the opposite sex. Today's lesson would help them considerably in that department.


please read the class guide before you post.

Sam walked into the Charms classroom and stopped in his tracks. "Sorry," he said, "I think I've got the wro-... Professor Ambrojze, you've redecorated," he said, looking around the room with a speculative look on his face. "Well," he said slowly, an intense look on his face. "Well sir, that man is rather dashing, if you swing that way," he said after a pause.

"Good for you, you go get them," He then added, giving a look of respect, bordering between mock and intense seriousness, to the professor.

"I find it takes a lot for a man your age to express himself in such a way in this day and age, particularly given the current administration," He said, mimicking tying a noose to his neck and hanging himself.

"Still, I suppose it's better than an empty wall, though I think a nice countryside landscape would've suited us better," he said with a shrug, walking to his seat and sitting down...

... before immediately standing back up. "Oh and Sir," he said, "I got your owl, here you go," he said, walking forward and passing a little piece of paper signed "I, Samuel Grigori, have read and understand the Charms Class Guide" to the professor and returning to his seat.

"My oh my," Sam thought to himself in silence, "Who would've guessed that professor Ambrojze was gay, never really picked him to be like that... I wonder what he and Professor Wilson would be like as a couple," he thought, bursting out laughing then immediately stopping, his expression matching that of a thief caught red handed.

Keith slumped into class and arched an eyebrow.

"Paintings," he said, rather unnecessarily. "Do we get to learn how to make them move or something?" He asked, glancing at the ones that were painfully still. One was actually caught in a loop, repeating the same motion over and over again like some kind of muggle robot. "Or better yet, set them on fire? Hey Sam," he said, taking a seat.

He frowned, watching the older boy pensievely. He still owed the Slytherin girl from potions a favor - get revenge on Samuel - and though he didn't have a fully formed plot yet he had some ideas.

"Professor?" He asked Mr. Ambrozje. "I have a quick question. What would be the best way to go about tethering a normally stationary object to a person?"

Sam turned as he heard the sound of another student entering the classroom, wondering who might be joining him in the quiet classroom. "Hey Keith," he said with a smile and wave, "Nice to see you," he added, turning back to face the front.

He pulled out his notebook and began to sketch something. He wasn't particularly good at art... in general. Most forms were lost on him, but circles did fascinate his mind, particularly when they formed a dark, wiry tunnel on his paper. "Fire would be fun," he piped up when he heard Keith's suggestion, "Fire would be lots of fun," he said, straightening up a little and grinning wickedly.

It was a pity more girls hadn't turned up today. Perhaps when word of this lesson got out, they would change their minds about skipping his class. In the meantime, he felt today he could make things a little less formal.

Wheeling out to the front of the classroom on his new wheely chair he'd convinced Professor Doyle to buy him stolen from another professor's office, Damon sat in front of his two favourite students and mused on Keith's problem.

"It would depend how you wanted to teather it," he replied. "There's always the permanent sticking charm, and since half my NEWT class didn't turn up to learn that last week, I'd be glad if you'd bother them to teach it to you, but there's also Wallace's Incredible Attractor, which causes the object to follow you around and send you badly written love poems at 1am. I'm not sure a NEWT student would even have heard of that, though. It's very obscure."

"Speaking of love," he announced with the enthusiasm of someone getting to the point. "I believe you two gentlemen are of that age where love is imminent. You probably both have..."

Damon waved his hands aimlessly, trying to think of a label that wasn't one hundred years out of date.

"...lady friends?"

Keith nodded, jotting down notes in his mental journal for later. Neither of those sounded like exactly what he needed, but he could always hit the library - Keith only avoided that place when there was schoolwork to be done, and pranking was definitely not schoolwork.

"Lady friends?" He asked. "Ha. No. And after...recent events," he said, mind flashing to Jack and her freakish "thing" with Ariel, "I'm considering just finding whatever makes you fall in love and yanking it out of my head, because it seems to be a lot less trouble that way."

Sam oggled at the professor's new wheels and thought briefly about what would happen if he stole requisitioned the professor's chair in order to zip around the Gryffindor Common Room and play chair hockey.

Probably nothing good, that was for sure, so the thought of doing something like that was soon pushed - rather forcefully - out of his head.

Still, Keith's question about sticking charms did spark a note of intrigue in his mind, it was a rather odd question, mind you he had those all the time so he wasn't really one to get too curious about these things. But there wasn't much happening in the class right now, so picking up on what others were saying certainly seemed to be the easiest way to pass the time

That couldn't go on long however, and sure enough the professor brought himself to their attention after a moment, by asking yet another question. Today really did seem to be a good day for that sort of thing, he thought.

"Lady friends?" He asked, a slightly incredulous tone entering his voice as the professor asked about their love lives. "No, not right now," he said dejectedly. How nice for the professor to pick up on the largest gaping hole in Sam's life and starting prodding insensitively around the edges.

But she wasn't trying to be annoying, he knew that for sure, so he chose to simply ignore his own self conscience and listen up for the next part of the lesson. Surely this was leading somewhere interesting, or fun.

Damon raised an eyebrow at each boy's response. They were both, what, thirteen? They should have been well on their way to conquering the fairer sex by now.

"Well, as convenient as that would be, I'm afraid it's impossible," he told Keith. "Which is why I'm here. Today's lesson is on beautifying charms."

"I KNOW," he continued before either of them could interrupt, "it sounds girly, but beautifying charms are just as useful for men as they are for women. For example, last lesson you learnt the scouring charm. Imagine how that could help you woo the girl of your dreams when you figure out that nobody likes their boyfriend to stink like the quidditch locker room!"

Damon was on a roll. In a flash of inspiration the perfect way to teach them this spell had come to mind.

"The trick with beautifying charms is to be imaginative. Anyone can use a hair thickening charm to make their hair more lustrous, but with some initiative, you can also use it to stand out from the crowd."

"So!" He stood and turned back to the blackboard, writing the incantation along with the correct pronunciation upon it:


"That's the incantation. Whichever one of you can show me the most imaginative use of that charm by the end of class will get twenty house points. There should be some mirrors around here somewhere..."

Sam looked dubiously at the professor as he spoke and had to remember to close his mouth, which had ended up hanging open in a rather unsightly manner following the revelation of the class' content.

Beautifying charms. It would've been fun had any girls actually been in this class, but neither Keith or the professor were really people that Sam cared to see looking beautiful, and everyone knew that you couldn't improve upon perfection in his own case.

"Fine sir," he said after an awkward pause filled the room, finally shaking his head a little and tapping his desk with his wand, causing the surface of it to change into a mirror.

Except the top part, it caught on fire for a few seconds before extinguishing itself.

"Bugger," he muttered, embarrassed at having stuffed up again in front of professor Ambrozje.

"Wait wait wait," Keith said, holding up a hand. "I don't even know what that spell does. And if you expect me to cast a spell I don't know about then you need to learn something about me." He held up his left hand. "Last time I did that, my palm grew teeth and tried to eat me. It was very traumatic," he said, nodding. "So what exactly does the stupid spell do?"