Astronomy ~ Lesson One ~ Fourth Years

Colin sighed as he looked at his measly list. It was still only three for this age group. It appeared they were as uninterested in the sky as any group of children could be.

Well, it could be that no one signed up; then they would be less interested.

Rolling his shoulders, he went over to his favourite spot by the window and looked out. He would just have to wait and see what he had to work with.

Cepheus tilted his head to the side as he saw no one else in the room yet, apart from their Professor. Shrugging his shoulders, he moved forward and dropped his bag at the edge of the room, coughing politely.

"Hello, Professor O'Brien."

Diane hurried to the Astronomy Tower. She had with her, a textbook, her wand and a want to glance once again at the twinkling lights up the sky.

She wasn't able to see the stars too often that summer. And she was looking forward to this day. Now it's finally here.

She smiled as she greeted her professor and sat by a Hufflepuff, staring at the stars.

Colin turned away from the window at the sound of a cough and smiled at the student.

"Hello Mr. Turrow," he greeted with a nod, "nice to see you these evening."

He repeated his greeting as Ms. Scamander entered the room. The man waited for a moment.

"Well, we should have one more student joining us this evening, but let us get a little talk going, and we'll see if they are going to show up."

Colin made his way back from the window and sat himself on the edge of the desk.

"So, let's ease into this slowly; what's you're favourite part of astronomy? Or what do you hope to learn from this class?"

Ondrea hated climbing the stairs to the Astronomy tower, mostly because she always had to do so in the dark. This year was no exception. In fact, this year was worse because all her senses her hyper-alert.

Her quick entrance into the classroom once she finally reached the door had nothing to do with an eagerness to attend the class and everything to do with the fact that she was certain she heard something on the stairs below her.

She froze upon finding that the professor and two others were already in the room.

Seat, Drea, she told herself. SEAT! The girl moved to a seat and quickly sat, fixing her gaze on the corner of the desk. She had been doing entirely too much self-prompting, lately...

Diane smiled in agreement to their topic.

"Actually sir, I always liked stars" she replied, looking up. "And I'd like to know more about them"

Just then another student arrived.
"Hello" she said politely.

Cepheus tilted his head in the Professors direction before thinking about his answer.

"All of it," He replied. "It's nice to see the stars, but better to be able to identify them and then telling other people about it."

Tesla ran to the Astronomy tower, hoping she wont be late to all her classes on her first day back to Hogwarts.
She got lost 3 times already and was cursing her brother while running from class to class, blaming him that they moved back from France, and not her own bad behavior.

"..m sorr...profsr...I...got...ost", she said between heavy breaths.

"Ah, Ms. Montgomery, lovely for you to join us," he watched as the young girl sat in her desk, and nodded along to the responces of the other students.

"Good, good," he nodded, "I quite enjoy the stars too - I believe they are what attracted most people to the evening sky. Now since we're all here, why don't we -"

He cut off as another student arrived. This time a gryffindor girl who was panting to catch her breath as she apologized.

"Normally I would take off points for tardiness, but seeing as it is the first day, and I am always glad to add more students to our slowly growing numbers- I'm going to let you off easy," he said leaning more heavily on his desk, "Why don't you inform us of what you know about stars Ms." he quickly glanced down at his list to see the last name there, "Gordon."

So normally, she would say something like "Stars are on the sky, sir", or "They are shiny", just because she didn't care about school or making a fool out of her.
But Astronomy was different, it was her passion, she lived for these classes and back in France it was the only subject she never ditched.

"A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. Other stars are visible from Earth during the night, when they are not obscured by atmospheric phenomena, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points because of their immense distance.", and then she added. "Sir."

She quite liked the man and she wanted to leave a good first impression.

"Very good Ms. Gordon. That is a most throural answer - I think Gryffindor deserves a few points for that answer."

Colin began to walk about as he spoke.

"Now since we all seem to be interested in stars, I want to look at their groupings. So what does anyone know about Star Clusters and Binaries?"

"S-star c-clusters are g-roups of stars and b-binaries are wh-en there are t-two," Ondrea ventured when no one else did. "One s-smaller."