Any transfiguration geniuses about? on Charms

Professor Lorraine Taylor

December 15, 2008 1:55 AM

Advanced Charms [All Sixth and Seventh Years] by Professor Lorraine Taylor

To to a questionable amount of interest in the class now that Zack Dill had graduated, Lorraine Taylor had put Advanced Charms with Sciences off to the side, instead deciding to incorporate it a bit more in her Advanced class. After all, she was still of the opinion that everyone could do with a little bit of science. Despite what many wizards (and Muggles) seemed to think, science and magic were hardly mutually exclusive concepts. Still, she would miss her discussions on physics and calculus. But there wasn't much to be done. Sonora didn't do much in the way of emphasising what she considered useful classes (Arithmancy, for example) and therefore she was forced to make do with what she could. And what she could involved teaching her charms students as much as possible.

The woman had combed her neat, shoulder-length gray-blonde hair back, her ears, neck, and fingers unadorned with so much as a marriage band. Lorraine had never even, to her mother's chagrin and her own distinct pleasure, come close to a brush with marriage. The woman was not interested in having children. She found her nephew adorable and perfect for spoiling on holidays, she loved her students and her new Teppenpaw wards, but she did most definitely not want a squalling, needy child of her own. The professor had little doubt that she could not handle such a responsibility, and the gods protect poor Kiva, who would be stuck with her own squalling package shortly if she wasn't already. Lorraine had forgotten (or had never known) the Deputy Headmistress's due date.

But all that aside. It was time for Advanced Charms to begin.

There were few students in the classroom, which had been re-Transfigured so as to be set up with large black lab tables, stools, and cabinets full of unknown materials.

"Good morning," Lorraine began crisply. "I am sure you understand all my rules by now. If you have a need to review them, please approach me privately," and she should not have to speak to any of these young men and women. They were seventeen or so by this point, far old enough to take care of themselves in such matters. "Today, I have a challenge for you. You must make one of the items in your cabinet hover in the air." Noting that one or two of the students in front of her were frowning in confusion at the apparent simplicity of the task and a few others were smirking, Lorraine continued "without using the levitation charm or the hovering charm. You may use any of the resources available in this room. I would suggest you work in partners. And you have--" Lorraine checked the Muggle-style clock hanging at the back of the room. "forty-five minutes to successfully complete this challenge. Enjoy."

Subthreads:

Did you see? I got an E in this one. by Saul Pierce with Anne Wright

Any transfiguration geniuses about? by Geoffrey Layne

Flying lemon by Dalila Bastet

0 Professor Lorraine Taylor Advanced Charms [All Sixth and Seventh Years] 0 Professor Lorraine Taylor 1 5

Saul Pierce

December 15, 2008 11:17 PM

Did you see? I got an E in this one. by Saul Pierce

There was really only one class at Sonora that Saul would call himself 'good' at, and that was Charms. Spellwork came more easily and naturally to him than did the book learning and memorization used by most of the classes. Transfiguration required concentration to master, which Saul didn't have in large quantities so it generally took him weeks or longer to really get comfortable with new spells there. It was only through a concentrated effort and strict tutoring schedule that had allowed him to pass Transfigurations with the same grade he'd easily claimed in Charms with only minimal studying and practice.

So of all the RATS level classes, Saul figured this was the one he had the best chance of passing. His CATS examiner had even thought he'd had a chance at an O, but the man obviously hadn't been aware of exactly how bad of a test taker Saul was. An O had been beyond the realm of possibility, but an A on the RATS was not.

But Saul didn't have to worry about that for almost two years yet. He still had ten months before he turned seventeen (having only just escaped his fifteenth year at the end of June) and he was determined not to even think about those tests until at least then. Better though, would be not to think about them until that following January. Which meant, he had well over a year before they became an issue.

This year was the calm between the storms and he intended to make the most of it.

He took a seat in the front of the classroom, mostly because he was campaigning for Head Boy and thought that might make it look like he was trying to take his classes seriously this year. He actually had attempted that last year, with the CATS on the line, but it had only been met with mixed results and the suspicion that he might, all joking aside, actually have a real learning disability. He'd dealt with it the best he could, but it would be way too much effort to keep up now that the tests were over. With the pressure off, he hoped an appearance of academic effort would be more convincing than actual academic effort.

Besides, Charms was the one class where he could coast and still do decently, so long as he remembered to do most of his homework assignments.

Saul was glad, though, when the lesson turned out to be pretty much just the instructions for today's class, without going into theory or anything tedious. It meant he knew what was going on for once.

He was one of the kids who grinned a little at the apparent easiness of the assignment, and it didn't really waver much even after she told them the catch.

This was a creativity assignment.

Awesome.

Saul looked at the shelf, looked at the objects on it, and then turned to look at the person beside him. His eyes were bright with the brilliance of his own idea. "Ever done a tug of war?" he asked. "With summoning spells?"

1 Saul Pierce Did you see? I got an E in this one. 82 Saul Pierce 0 5

Anne Wright

December 27, 2008 12:11 AM

Me, too. by Anne Wright

Anne had mixed feelings about the discontinuation of Charms with Sciences.

On one hand, the class had been excruciatingly difficult. A lot of the things Zack and Connor had seemed to take as the most mundane of topics had confused her, and she had needed to work twice as hard as she normally would have just to be on a level with everyone else. She had stuffed her plate to the spilling-over point already for seventh year, and there was no guarantee that she'd have made it through the second year of that.

On the other hand, though, Anne disliked changes even more than she liked the sense of belonging to an exclusive club for brilliant, progressive Charms students. Mixing the two Advanced classes meant change and losing the idea that she was part of a solid group. This class was just a class, or just felt like a class. She wasn't sure losing some of the stress was worth it.

With a slight grimace at the number of people in the room - she really had gotten too used to the tiny classes of sixth year - Anne sat down on the front row and stacked up things she thought she might need for the class on top of her desk in no particular order. Time raced by too quickly, now, for her to get worked up about having her things color-coded or her desk perfectly arranged. She'd never really gotten that worked up about it before, but now she felt like she had an acceptable excuse for it.

Her initial reaction to the assignment was confusion. There was no way Professor Taylor was handing them something that easy, not even as review. Not on the first day, while there was still material to cover even for the seventh years. The second part cleared up her confusion and, as an added bonus to spice things up, brought a wave of anxiety on its heels.

Anne was not inventive, at least not in the way the teacher was asking her to be. If she did something, she usually did it in the most straightforward, simple manner she knew. The idea of not doing so was, to use a very large and Aladren-y word, stupid. Except teachers didn't do or decide to have a class do anything that was stupid, which meant this was all reasonable, which meant she was a lost cause.

She noticed her fingernails digging into her own arm when, in a move she didn't quite connect to the assignment, Saul Pierce spoke to her. The look she gave him was as blank as the parchment in front of her.

"No," she said. "No. Why would I do that?" Another thought hit her before he could answer. "Wait, can you even do that? I didn't know that was possible."

16 Anne Wright Me, too. 59 Anne Wright 0 5

Geoffrey Layne

December 27, 2008 1:00 AM

Any transfiguration geniuses about? by Geoffrey Layne

Because he had been unexpectedly been returned to his House Quidditch team and made its Assistant Captain, Geoff was in the process of summing up the Advanced classes he'd chosen. His idea of how much was exactly as much as he could handle had not factored in a team over the summer, and there was a good chance he'd have to give up at least one class just to keep his seventh-year head safely above the water. Unlike a person he knew rather well, he got no thrill out of pushing himself almost to the breaking point. He suspected it was a lack of rich grandmas.

Once it was time for class to begin, Professor Taylor went straight to the point. She really would have made a better Head of House for Aladren than for Teppenpaw, though Geoff could see why the assignments had been made as they had; a Head of House like Flatt would probably traumatize half of Teppenpaw in a week. Geoff had always thought of his House as the most tough-minded of the four, and he'd taken their assignment to Flatt as proof of his accuracy. Geoff pushed his Charms book to one side as she gave the assignment.

Once she told them to enjoy the challenge, Geoff sat back and surveyed the objects in his cabinet like a general in the process of reviewing his troops. A light object would be the easiest to suspend through any means, so his first order of business would be to take each object out of the cabinet and weigh it in his hand.

Once all the objects had been considered, he settled on the one he'd figured would be the lightest anyway - a sponge. A chance had existed that it had a metal core or something of the sort, but it looked like he'd just gotten lucky. Now he had to engage in the more difficult part of the assignment: he had to think like Lorraine Taylor.

His own memories of her were standard, so he dismissed them to a relatively close corner of his mind, just in case Anne had given him nothing useful. She had taken Advanced Charms with Sciences, which had apparently been Taylor's favorites in one room; when Anne had talked about it, she'd sounded a little like a member of a secret society. It was reasonable to think, therefore, that Taylor would favor him for acting like someone in that class, and while he had no idea if he'd be with her in a year or not, she was still grading him now.

She liked Muggle things - even the book this class used had mentions of it. She also liked mixing magic with her Muggle things, or using things common to both worlds. He had to go out on a limb and find something that united all of that to succeed, he was sure of it.

Floating...Hovering...Nature? Anne had mentioned that a few times, but he wasn't quite sure where he was going with it; not many things in nature were suspended. He spent a little while longer raking his brain before the answer - or, if he had to be technical, a potential answer he thought might be what she'd been after to start with - came to him.

Magnets.

Geoff went back through his discarded objects, but none of them were magnets. He supposed she wouldn't have left them what they needed in plain sight; that would make the whole game less of a challenge, and therefore less fun. She had, though, said they could use anything in the room, and they all, unless the class was inhabited by idiots, had brought their wands into the room.

The only problem with his plan was his lack of talent for Transfiguration. That was where the suggestion to work in partners came in; Transfiguration was acknowledged by too many people as the most difficult of disciplines for more than half of the class to be skilled in it. Geoff turned, only half-trying to hide a triumphant grin, to the person next to him.

"Are you any good at Transfiguration?"

16 Geoffrey Layne Any transfiguration geniuses about? 72 Geoffrey Layne 0 5

Saul Pierce

December 29, 2008 3:56 PM

Pretty awesome, huh? by Saul Pierce

Saul blinked at Anne, half because he was surprised she hadn't ever played tug of war (with accio spells or otherwise), half because she didn't want to, and half because she doubted him that it was possible (which came to three halves, so he added a little frown, too). "Well, yeah," he told her, as if everyone ought to have magical tug of wars as part of their daily life.

"If you want a cookie, and Echo wants the same one, and you both cast the spell to summon it at the same time, it just sort of hangs there in mid-air between you, not sure who to go to. Then you start putting more magic into it, and so does Echo, and it starts moving back and forth, but never going more than a few inches one way or the other, and then you release the spell and the cookie smacks Echo in the forehead." He paused a moment, then added, as if to give the situation greater veracity, "I do that all the time."

1 Saul Pierce Pretty awesome, huh? 82 Saul Pierce 0 5

Anne

December 29, 2008 11:03 PM

Re: Pretty awesome, huh? by Anne

Anne's first reaction to Saul's reaction to her was, even a short distance away from panic, to be a little offended. He was not in a position to talk to her like she was an idiot; maybe he was a prefect, but she was an Aladren. What went on in Pecari, she had no idea, but Aladren did not put idiots in positions of power and leave them there. Since no plot to remove her from office had ever come out, Anne felt safe in assuming she was both intelligent and reasonable.

As he went on, though, Anne all but forgot being irritated. Why he and Echo - didn't he run some kind of little writing club that Gray was in? - didn't do the sensible thing about their cookie shortage and split the remaining cookie wasn't clear, but the idea was good. Professor Taylor had been the one to encourage partner-work, so she couldn't (or at least shouldn't) complain if a method of suspending the cookie or whatever it was required two people. It was also simple.

"Gray and I split the cookies," she informed him, though it wasn't always true. Near finals, Gray had a habit of taking one look at her and surrendering almost all of his cookies. She knew he hid some of them from her, but since some sugar was better than none, she had never told him she knew about his stash. "And if you smack me in the forehead with a cookie or anything else, you'll get smacked with a Bludger the next time Aladren plays Pecari. That said, that is brilliant."

Reaching into her cabinet without looking, she pulled out a hand mirror and put it on the lab table, as close to center as she could estimate quickly. It was probably way off, but that was all right. "On the count of three?"

16 Anne Re: Pretty awesome, huh? 59 Anne 0 5

Dalila Bastet

January 02, 2009 9:19 PM

Flying lemon by Dalila Bastet

Dalila entered charms and looked around. There seemed to be a lot more people in the classroom than she'd seem in a long time now that the science and non-science classes had been combined. That wasn't the only thing different. The regular tables and chairs had been replaced with black tables and stools, reminding Dalila of the science labs in high school that she saw on tv.

She chose a random seat and pulled out her quill, parchment and her signature orange ink to take notes with as she grinned over at a few people who looked her way. Despite the new classroom get-up, she had no doubt that there would be some sort of essay required at the end. And when Professor Taylor said she had a challenge for them, Dalila was sure it was going to be a massive essay to prepare them for RATS. Instead it was an actual magical challenge. Dalila stared at her. How in the world was she supposed to make something hover without using a levitation charm.

As people divided up into partners, Dalila flipped through the last year of notes for the first few minutes, while other people around her partnered up and grabbed things from the cabinets in the back. She wrote down a few ideas, most of which seemed relatively stupid or impossible. But one stood out. She had written the charm down in the corner of her notes as a reference for further study, which she never got around to. After quickly looking it up in her book, she whipped out her wand to try and practice the spell, completely forgetting that she was supposed to find a partner.

Instead, she got up and grabbed something random from the cabinet. A paperweight. Way too heavy. Dalila didn't feel the need to send anyone to the hospital. Dalila put it back and grabbed the lemon that was sitting next to it. Much better. She maneuvered through the people to find a empty spot to practice. She found a corner that was generally unoccupied and threw the lemon in the air. "Impedimenta!" she said confidently, but her aim was off. The spell bounced harmlessly off the ceiling and the lemon landed on the floor near her feet. Dalila sighed.

"You'd think after 6 years being a chaser, I'd know how to aim better," she lamented as she picked up the offending fruit to try again. She lobbed it up into the air and cast the charm again and hit the lemon. Its free-fall slowed to a crawl and gently sunk through the air like it was pudding before hitting a desk and rolling across the floor finally stopping next to someone's foot. It wasn't bad. A few more tries and she'd have it frozen mid-air.

"Hey, can you toss that back?" Dalila called.

0 Dalila Bastet Flying lemon 60 Dalila Bastet 0 5