#i went as vague as possible w/the hp setting :///

[pippytmi]

Supercorp + Hogwarts AU + meet messy + "is that the best you can do?"

“Hey, do you guys want to see a muggle magic trick?”

Kara doesn’t have to look up to know Alex and Kelly are exchanging glances over Nia’s head. Nia is the best witch in the fifth year hands-down, but her grasp of muggle illusions leave a lot to be desired.

“Sure…” Kelly agrees, politely but unsurely, while Alex shakes her head.

“If this is that stupid coin trick again, Nia—” she starts, but Nia is already squeezing between them on the grass, unfolding a pack of muggle playing cards.

“It is not,” Nia says. “Prepare to be amazed! Yvette says I’m really good at this one.”

“Oh, joy,” Alex mutters under her breath, which turns into a pained yelp when Kelly elbows her in the ribs.

Kara finally raises her gaze from the newspaper she’s been half-reading, fully prepared to commit to Nia’s trick, but then she catches a glimpse of dark hair and a brisk pace. It’s Lena Luthor, notorious loner, actually sitting outside by the black lake with her books.

It’s odd—Lena never sits outside. People talk; Lena doesn’t have many friends (someone even started a rumor that Lillian Luthor pays Jess, another sixth year, to hang out with Lena). In fact, the only time anyone really sees Lena is in class, or in the Slytherin common room when Jess is also there. Kara sees her even less (only when Slytherin and Gryffindor share classrooms), but that doesn’t make the hopeless crush she’s fostered on her since they were eleven any less potent.

Kelly starts clapping suddenly, reluctantly dragging Kara’s eyes from Lena (who is reading a book; Kara is wondering just what kind of book it is). “Aw, Nia, that was good!” she says. “Do it again!”

Even Alex is curiously lifting up the cards one by one, as if trying to determine the trick herself. “Did you use actual magic for this?” she asks.

“I’m just that good,” Nia brags, though the way she tries to expertly shuffle the cards right back into their box suggests otherwise; half of them spill onto the grass. “Oh man!”

“I’ve got this,” Kara says, absentmindedly reaching for her wand. “Accio—”

“Kara, no!”

Oh, that’s right, Kara thinks belatedly. My wand is broken. It had been an unfortunate event on the Quidditch pitch involving an overzealous Hufflepuff seeker (Winn is still very apologetic about it, but it can’t be helped now). Unfortunately, Kara never seems to quite remember that magic is off-limits until it can be fixed.

And even more unfortunate is the fact that her mind and her words have begun to converge; she’s thinking about the book Lena is reading while glancing at the cards, and her mouth is forming silent words, and really it’s not a surprise at all when said book rockets out of Lena’s hands and aims right for Nia’s head.

No one dies, though, nor do they have to make the unpleasant trudge to the infirmary—Kelly is far quicker than any of Kara’s botched magic, and the book explodes into nothing when she mutters a firm, “Evanesco.”

“Kelly!” Kara forgets, for a second, about the whole Nia-about-to-break-her-face thing; her heart drops to the pit of her stomach at the thought that something of Lena Luthor’s has been reduced to figurative dust. What if that book was personal? What if it was special? What if it was—

“Excuse me,” says a quiet, sudden voice, and Kara just about falls over in the grass at the sight of Lena Luthor standing there. “I think you summoned my book.”

Kelly winces. “Oh, actually—”

“I destroyed it,” Kara blurts out, because really, this is her fault and Nia still has a face so the least Kara can do is take a fall for a friend. “I’m sorry. My wand is broken, and I was trying to summon some cards, but I was looking at you and thinking about your book and it just…I’m sorry. Again. I can pay for it?” She immediately begins digging into the pockets of her robes, but all she manages to scrounge up is a broken sugar quill and a drawing on a torn sheet of paper that depicts Professor Grant as a dragon.

For a moment, all Lena does is stare down at Kara in a peculiarly quizzical way. She doesn’t seem mad or anything, just perplexed. A second later she says, “You were thinking about ‘Voyages with Vampires’ strongly enough to summon it? I don’t really enjoy Gilderoy Lockhart books myself.”

“To be fair,” Kara’s quick to defend herself, “I couldn’t read the title from this far.”

“Right. You decided you wanted to snatch my book from me because it was mine.” And just like that, the curious expression on Lena’s face drops entirely, twists into something resigned and exhausted. “Is that the best you can do? Petty little child games?”

“What? No, I would never—”

“Because last week Eve Tessmacher hit me with a furnunculus curse that was far more clever than this,” Lena all but sneers. “It’s always the pig-headed Gryffindors that aim out of their league.”

“You wanna say that again?” Alex is jumping up, her wand brandished out, and Lena glances from her to Kara to Kelly to Nia, as if just realizing how potentially outnumbered she could be.

Except, well, that’s so not the issue. Kara hastens to stand between Alex’s wand and Lena’s body, nearly knocking her sister over in the process. “No! No, I didn’t do that as a prank, I—” She pauses, feels her cheeks go hot, and then rushes out, “Ijustthinkyou’rereallypretty!”

Alex lowers her wand; Kara can tell, because Alex uses it to jab her in the ribs. “Oh, bloody hell,” Alex grumbles, and she nudges Kelly to join her. “I think that’s our cue. I’d rather study for Potions than watch this.”

Kelly obligingly drags Nia along, who looks like she wants to protest, but eventually Nia caves in—though not without trying to wink conspiringly at Kara, which doesn’t work because Nia “winks” with both eyes.

“But—” Kara watches as her friends scatter, and then she is left with the heavy, accusatory gaze of Lena Luthor. She tries to smile, but imagines her attempt is more of a wince than anything. “Did I mention that I’m sorry?”

Lena takes a step forward. She raises her chin in the air, no less guarded, but her eyes convey a tiny bit of that earlier curiosity all the same. “You’ve already had your fun, Kara Danvers,” she says. “But I will give you credit, no one has played the ‘I have a crush on you’ prank yet.”

Kara frowns. “Do people really play pranks on you so much?”

“I am the weird little sister of a boy who tried to blow up Hogwarts,” Lena all but deadpans. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re way more than Lex Luthor’s sister, and that’s just...really mean,” Kara says, words bursting out before she even pauses to rein them in. “I mean, you are so smart! Last year you saved a bunch of first years who wandered into the Forbidden Forest. A-and you never tried out for Quidditch, but sometimes you fly with Jess on the pitch and you’re so fast you could easily run circles around anyone on the Slytherin team. You’re the coolest person ever. Even when you were eleven, you—” Finally, her brain starts to catch up with her mouth, and Kara flushes hotter than she ever thought possible. “Oh, gosh. I’m sorry. I swear, I didn’t mean for that to sound…stalker-y. I only know about the first year thing because Professor Grant’s son was new that year and I was supposed to be babysitting him. And then the flying, well, sometimes I go to the pitch with Winn whenever he wants to practice—”

“Kara. You can breathe any time you want,” Lena prompts, and Kara pauses to do exactly that.

“Sorry,” Kara adds, again, after she’s let her lungs rest a bit. Her whole body feels shivery from head to toe, like she is seconds away from fainting, and honestly? She just might. “Anyway. Um. I can replace that book if you want. Or I can give you the money and you can pick out a better one, since you said you weren’t a fan? Whatever you want.”

Lena is quiet for a beat. “What were you going to say before? About when I was eleven?”

Kara bites her lip so hard she knows she will inevitably have to ask Kelly to heal it later. “Oh, that,” she says evasively. “I meant, when you were eleven, and I walked face-first into the wrong wall trying to get to platform nine and three quarters, and you didn’t even laugh at me. You just...helped me up, and promised you would walk with me to the train until I found my family again.”

“I remember,” Lena says, and her voice is softening, as is her expression. “You somehow got lost between platforms seven and eight. Your sister was furious when she caught up with us.”

“Yeah.” And Kara finds herself smiling at that memory; this time it’s a real smile, and she couldn’t stop it if she tried. “That was really nice.” She wants to mention more—how even when Lillian Luthor scowled at Kara’s hand-me-downs, Lena complimented her right away on the shirt that had once been Alex’s—but all Kara does right now is step back. “I’ve bothered you enough, I think. Will you…let me know? About the book?”

“I don’t care about the book,” Lena says, and she swallows, loud enough that Kara can hear it. “Do you mean it?”

“That you’re...nice?”

“Yes.” Lena’s cheeks are a faint pink color, and Kara’s entire mouth goes dry.

“Well, yeah,” Kara says, and in that moment—with Lena blushing, and Kara’s chest tightening—they both know that she’s confessing to so much more than thinking Lena is nice. “So. Um.” She squares her shoulders, and prepares to be brave enough to live up to the Gryffindor name: “Can I buy you something that’s not a book? Sometime? Maybe on our next trip to Hogsmeade?”

“Like a date?” Lena asks, so impossibly soft, and Kara nods.

“Exactly like a date,” Kara says, and honestly, she should demand ten points to Gryffindor herself because her voice does not waver once.

And Lena Luthor smiles, just cautious enough to show how unsure she is, but still warm enough that Kara’s heart skips a beat. “Okay,” she says. “But on one condition: I’ll handle any magic until then.”

“Deal,” Kara agrees, and it’s official; breaking her wand might have been the best thing that has ever happened to her, ever.

[isaacathom]

oh yea i had an interesting idea today from a dream

so the dream was basically me and a big group of like, ykow, dnd classes and stuff. there was a mage called Anna (the only one who had a name), there was someone with a huge shield, and someone who i definitely referred to as a ‘Scorpion’ and im as yet unclear as to whether they were a straight up scorpion or something weird was going on.

anyway we’re adventuring, when through bad luck we end up in an enchanted glade. Anna crit fails a role and ends up nearly burning to death in lava (yea me neither bud), and the group is being swarmed. As the party’s only other mage, i figure we’re fucked and set up a teleport spell for the 5 of us. which goes off, and we’re suddenly in the central courtyard of this castle we use as a base.

at which point i pass out and am like, proper fucked up. because its 20 mana per person in a teleport, so 100 mana for the team, and i wasnt even operating on a full mana bar. so it went into the negatives and basically sent me catatonic. very fun.

thats was p much the end of the dream and i think its interesting. to try and incorporate spell blowback into the spells more directly. the more polished idea is that the players magic is granted to them by a patron deity, who is the reason you have spell slots. so say you have 3. you have some spells you can cast w/o burning a slot (yknow, Cantrips and shit) but youve got some that burn a slot, and some that burn more than one. very fun.

however this system would allow you to burn more slots than you have, sorta like overcharming in hollow knight. youd do your normal accuracy dice (AC dice, right? whatever), but you’d also roll a dice to see what your patron deity thinks. this would have some modifiers, mostly how your deity opinion of you and possibly some vague context stuff like if youre casting a spell thats in their field of magic or casting it for a purpose that aligns with their domain. ie if your patron is the goddess of war, and you ask to cast a powerful spell which you will use to turn the tides of battle, she will look upon that favourably and be more likely to grant your request. she might hate you, but she will modifier on the context. Your results would be in two major camps - successful but detrimental to the user, and unsuccessful and extremely dangerous. a crit fail on a “Divine” roll would absolutely fuck up a bitch because you’d get some of the worse consequences of spell overuse (like being knocked to 1 hp and knocked the fuck out with status effects, so on) AND your spell would likely be turned against you or your party. its rough. if you crit succeed, though, the spell would go off exactly as your planned and you might even get your spell slots rejuvenated, or it doesnt burn the spell slots it would have used, or it works better than it oughtve.

stuff like that. i think that could be interesting. your magic characters would need to spend a solid amount of time currying their patron’s favour in order to ensure they can do what they need to without like Dying, which is nice. its a risk reward thing. extremely powerful or situationally important spell, but you might get totally fucked. pick wisely.

you could incorporate the general “Divine Roll” into regular non-overspell casts as well but itd be sorta weird at that point if casting a regular fireball by burning the first of three spell slots could result in your character being in a coma for 5 months, yknow. you feel me? yea. i think incoporating it into risky moves is kinda neat.

admittedly i dont play ttrpgs so idk shit but i think its kinda cool