—
Lysander
In one sense, Lysander was an independent man who had lived happily on his own for over 800 years. He went for what he wanted. But he was also a soldier, used to taking orders. He didn't usually do things with no direction at all. And right now he had no clue how to proceed. He'd been paying attention, but other than his natural magic, which was mostly passive anyways, he really had no experience with magic.
He took out the paper, pieces, and photo, laying them out and examining each one. All he had seen the teacher do to manipulate the chalk was placing their hand next to what he assumed was a spell circle. Lysander guessed there was probably some concentration involved, but other than that he was at a loss.
Instead of rushing ahead blindly, the half-demon decided to watch the other students and see how they reacted. It was possible some of them might have seen something he missed or maybe would have more knowledge of how to do this already. He didn't see much that helped him, but he made a note that the girl whose paper had gone up in flames had touched the inside of the circle.
Seeing that, Lysander decided to wait a bit longer before trying to do something on his own. He hoped maybe the teacher would offer some more explanation.
—-
Gernet
The naga grinned at the word experiment. He kind of liked the idea of just throwing the students straight into practice. Experience was a great teacher. And as far as lessons went, he was pretty sure failing at getting this right away wouldn't kill him, which was more than could be said for some things he'd had to learn.
Gernet still watched everyone carefully as he took the items out of his desk and spread them out on top. It couldn't hurt to see what the other students tried. And even if it didn't end up helping him, he'd still be able to gauge the others' level of experience - possibly.
The circle was the first thing he examined, tracing it with a finger. The naga hadn't thought to bring anything to write with since he'd expected to have to rely on memory, but now he was wishing he had. But it wasn't much of a problem - symbols were something he was good at remembering.
As he placed the pieces of the mug next to the circle, Gernet wondered if the setup was of any importance. He didn't know anything about this unconventional magic yet, and the spell circle was already drawn, but he knew a state of mind was needed for chaos magic.
Usually, Gernet would not have attempted something he was unsure of in front of others, but he figured, in this case, an attempt was expected, even an unsuccessful one. Picking up the photo in one hand, he placed his palm beside the spell circle as he had seen the professor do, and concentrated on the pieces. They did move, but only to make a small pile of broken mug shards.