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#MCtober2024 - Week 2

Based on @lamieboo's #MCtober2024 event (click on #MCtober for more info).

What are your MC / OC study habits?

Iñaki has a few methods of studying as you can see above. She usually doesn't like to review in groups (unless its with trusted friends) until she feels comfortable with the material on her own where she knows what she doesn't know and can bring it up to the review session. While on her own, she'll either will use flash cards, rewrite notes or teach Uturunku (her jaguar plushie) in her shared dorm room. Eventually Imelda joins in on her teaching session with Uturunku since the two girls are in the same class and share the same dorm. Once she gets more comfortable with Sebastian and Ominis as friends, you would often find Iñaki in Undercroft studying with the two boys especially when Midterm Season hits and the library is packed. She would usually be sitting on cargo crate box reviewing her flash cards or notes, waiting for the boys to show up. She also like doing reviews on charms, spells and dueling techniques with Sebastian by physically practicing them in the Undercroft.

Her other known study locations is her dorm room or the Slytherin Common Room with Sebastian when burning the midnight oil, the Room of Requirements (not often since it's out of her way) and the Great Hall with her friends who are in the other houses. She also likes white noise the noisy Great Hall provides. Iñaki vs History of Magic

Iñaki hates Professor Binns. She thinks he's the most boring-est person in the planet with how monologuist, plain and calming his voice is and hates how he can knock her to sleep. It is her goal to actually sit through class and stay up completely for once and take notes, but she can't. She always knocks out if she's trying to focus and ends up becoming Ominis' pillow once the two are friends.

At least Ominis is kind enough to share his notes with her as he takes them with a bespelled diction quill that he'll later transfigure the notes into braille. Eventually Iñaki gets her own diction quill like everyone else in class does.

After a couple of classes with Prof. Binns, Iñaki will eventually accept that she's either going to nap in this class period or try to get ahead and do homework from her other classes with her enhanced earbud on to listen to music while her diction quill does the work of taking notes down.

Iñaki's Girl Crew

Iñaki becomes especially close to Natty, Poppy and Imelda for different reasons:

Natty is the first friend Iñaki made while at Hogwarts. She and Natty bond over living in a foreign country far from their homelands and learning to live in a different world. Natty's friendship is important to Iñaki because she is one of the few people who really gets what Iñaki is going through and the same is true vice versa. It isn't surprising to see one going to the other to have a good cry over missing their homeland. Natty also was the one who helped her finish her animagus training in secret and saw her transform into a jaguar for the first time. At one point, the two would go running in the Forbidden Forest in their animagus form, baffling any locals as to where a gazelle and a giant cat came from. Natty is also the first person Iñaki says is her friend.

Poppy's friendship with Iñaki began after defending the kneazle in class. After they partnered up in Beasts class that same day, the rest became history. Poppy enjoys Iñaki's frank and playful nature and Iñaki's enjoyed Poppy's bluntness and kindness (it reminds her of home). The two girls end up bonding over being oddballs, caring for beasts and going over the different magical beasts and their tales around the world. Poppy especially loves it when Iñaki tells her stories about the magical beasts native to the Americas that you wouldn't be able to find in Europe and ends up making it a goal to see the thunderbird that lives near Niagara Falls one day.

Imelda Reyes at first is Iñaki's roommate. For about five minutes until Iñaki grumbles in Spanish "¡Ay!¡Por el amor de Dios! after stubbing her toe against her misplaced suitcase as she was moving in a week later after arriving at Hogwarts. Imelda was surprised to learn that the American spoke Spanish. Iñaki didn't realize Imelda was Spanish (Imelda holds duel Scottish-Spanish citizenship) and spoke Spanish as well. They became friends like a house on fire due to their Hispanic heritage (Iñaki's family is originally from Latin America who immigrated to the US. Imelda's father was the one who moved their family to the UK when he went play on Puddlemere United to be close with them). They only speak Spanish to each other as it makes them feel at home as they both miss speaking it while at Hogwarts (There's very few Spanish speakers there). The two spend a lot of time talking about their Hispanic Heritage while comparing and contrasting the differences in the cultures (Iñaki' is bicultural as her Latino roots hails from two different countries) and the Spanish language as well.

When Imelda found out that Iñaki has family in South America (but didn't realize Iñaki was a first generation/muggleborn witch) she immediately assumed Iñaki was good at quidditch due to the sport culture in that continent (quidditch is essentially the magical equivalent to soccer/fútbol) and tricked her into trying out for the team in having Iñaki play in pick-up quidditch games since it didn't seem like she wasn't going to try out because she seemed nervous about it (in Imelda's eyes). The moment Iñaki realized what Imelda was doing, she calls Imelda out and the two end up having a frank discussion as to why Iñaki didn't play quidditch (American racism is the reason why - Iñaki didn't want to play into the stereotypes and found she couldn't really enjoy playing the sport back in New York) despite being good at it (Iñaki played with her first-generation/muggleborn mage cousins on both sides of the famiy as a kid and picked up the sport pretty fast). In the end Imelda helps Iñaki get over her prior reservations on playing the sport but not enough for Iñaki to play as a starter. Iñaki ends up playing as the reserve chaser though and ends up as a starter in sixth year during her last year at Hogwarts.

The four girls accidently become a friend group through a class project. Iñaki had them all meet at the Three Broomsticks to discuss what they would be doing and it spiraled to the four girls realizing they were outsiders in different ways as they talked about their lives and bonded over feeling like a fish out of water at times with their peers. They ended up making outing to the Three Broomsticks for lunch to be a weekly thing after their class project was done as all four became close friends with each other.

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