BIG and small [I & II years] on Charms

Professor Olivers

February 08, 2015 10:28 PM

BIG and small [I & II years] by Professor Olivers

This term seemed to be difficult for Florence to adjust to physically. She had already had the flu and a head cold earlier in the term and was suffering through another minor cold. She was sure the skin on her nose was raw from wiping it so often, and she had taken to carrying around a handkerchief she had charmed to be softer than others. Most of her time was spent nowadays in her bedroom in the Pecari commons where she hoped not to contaminate anyone and also to recover quickly, but the virus was relentless. Florence had already taken three sick days earlier in the term, and this cold didn’t leave her reeling as soon as she stood up. So she took a Pepper-Up and, after the uncomfortable steam had passed through, went to attend to her beginner class.

Her voice was still husky from her cold, but at least her sinuses were clear and her headache had dissipated for the time being. Today they were going to go over yesterday’s lesson on Shrinking and Enlargement Charms. She had told them to read the section on the two charms two days ago, and during the last class she had introduced it. It had been a long class of lecture as well as practicing the wand movements. For Florence, it was hard to lecture to young students who had shorter attention spans than the Advanced, but it was necessary. Besides, there was no better way that she could think of to introduce them to the world of academia. Today, however, would be more fun for them.

When her younger students had all filed in, Florence stood up from her desk to begin class. “Good morning, everyone. I know it’s early, but I hope you’re all ready to practice some magic. Last class we learned about two important charms. Today we’re going to practice casting those spells. Up here in the front are two boxes. In one there are hand-sized bean bags. In the other there are plastic action figures. Remember that the Enlargement Charm is the countercurse for the Shrinking Charm and vice versa. These charms go hand-in-hand."

Florence cleared her throat before continuing. “First-years will start off with the dolls, second-years with the bean bag. Remember for the bean bags there are individual beans inside that need to be enlarged as well. Once you have successfully enlarged and shrunk your object, please come to my desk to show me and I will give you your points for the day. You can talk quietly amongst yourselves as you’d like.

“One more matter of business before I let you work. I am assigning you an essay due in three weeks on a charm of your choice. You’re going to research its history, development, and uses in today’s society. It can be a charm we worked on in class or a charm you would like to learn about. Don’t put it off until the last minute!” Florence looked at each and every one of them as she spoke. For the first-years, this was going to be their first big essay for this class and Florence, though she didn’t want to scare them off, wasn’t afraid of intimidating them. “Once you’ve finished with your practical work, you can work on your essay topics. Go ahead and begin.” Florence disappeared behind her desk and took a long drink of water from her bottle. It would be nice to sit and grade the Intermediate essays while the Beginners worked.

OOC: You can assume Florence checked off your work if you successfully cast the spell. Minimum two paragraphs, creativity and realism a plus.

0 Professor Olivers BIG and small [I & II years] 0 Professor Olivers 1 5

John Umland, Aladren

February 12, 2015 1:48 PM

Getting slightly sidetracked. by John Umland, Aladren

At five till eight, John entered the Charms classroom and found his favorite seat occupied. Instead of giving the occupant a death glare, though, he just shrugged and took the seat behind it. Sitting down, he took a folded-up napkin out of his pocket and resumed eating the raisins concealed inside it, affably inattentive to his surroundings and his own failure to set his desk up for the class to come.

When Professor Olivers started to talk, he raised his head to look in her general direction, the vague pleasantness of his mood fading at once. Her voice grated on his ears; he wished she would be quiet. He did not want to practice magic. He wanted to go back to the dining hall, get some more raisins and another cup of tea, and go back to bed. Bending his head down, he rubbed the back of his neck and then pressed his hand over his eyes, trying to focus.

He’d been on a track. When he first read the assignment two days ago, he had had a thought, and while he had quickly realized his conclusion had been erroneous, he had by that time already been more than halfway through a book on the differences between Charms and Transfiguration. It had been in equal measures fascinating and frustrating, reading all the arguments about a distinction which to him had always seemed very simple and straightforward. One book had led to another, the footnotes and bibliographies to tangents, and then his head had wound the tangents together in ways that made him then want to search for even more books….

At home, his parents and siblings would have badgered him about doing normal things enough to stave off the worst of it, but here, it was just him and Julian and he had barely seen her in more than passing recently, so he’d gotten in too far. A whole evening surrounded by books while he sat under one of the library tables, unmoving until he was run out at closing time. After that, without his brothers to make him turn the lights off, he’d been up all night reading in his room. The next morning...Nothing but tea for breakfast while he scrawled perfunctory answers on homework assignments it nearly enraged him to have to do at all. Irritability and trouble concentrating on anything other than the topics that had caught his attention. Reading under the tops of his desks and tables. Getting caught once. Feeling as though he were shaking all over. And then, when he was finally free to get back to it, to devote himself entirely to his books again...it had all just stopped. The words on the page had stopped making sense; he had eaten food without tasting it and gone straight to bed, where he’d slept like the dead until five, when he’d woken up confused and slightly dehydrated.

One of the laundry goblins, caught making off with his clothes, had been nice enough to get him some tea and raisins while he had a shower. Since that and consumption of the restoratives, he had felt tolerably human again. Just...not like himself. At all. His near-constant curiosity had been temporarily sated by the fit, and he was not particularly interested in learning or in focusing on anything but what he wanted to do from one moment to the next. If only he had a class where all they had to do was stare blankly at the wall for an hour or so today….

That, however, was not to be. Instead, he got to stare blankly at a beanbag...and write a paper.

He could almost feel his higher brain functions struggling to sit up before falling back into their blankets in defeat, muttering something about no doubt having enough material scattered through his notebooks to throw something together with only minimal additional research. Which was not the point, but was as enthusiastic as he could get at the moment. This was dreadful, this being handed an opportunity to actually enjoy himself with an assignment on a day when he was not himself and couldn’t really appreciate it.

He shook his head and looked at the beanbag again. Individual beans...would the professor be able to tell the difference if he picked a number - say twenty - and just made that number enormous enough to support the larger exterior? Or was there a formation that would simplify encompassing an unknown number of other objects, a shortcut he could take….?

He tried to remember the Latin word for ‘all’ or ‘everything.’ Omnia? But pure Latin wasn’t how it worked; ancient Roman magic had been the source of a lot of what they had now, but he could hear Mom’s voice explaining to him and Julian in a history lesson that the records indicated that it had often been more ritualistic in format and limited in use, and that in any case, most, though not all, modern spells used by English-speakers were actually the (to use his own words; Mom had put it more delicately) misbegotten incestuous offspring of Latin and its illegitimate daughter Portuguese, whose speakers had made many advances in simplifying spellcasting while they were also busy advancing navigation and making their best effort at Taking Over The World. And so anyone who really wanted to play around with most of the spells they learned in school needed a working knowledge of Portuguese as well as Latin, and John didn’t know Portuguese.

Engorgio tous ces beans et la valise, he thought and had to stifle a laugh. Yeah, it was probably for the best that the Portuguese had greatly simplified things for everyday spells in their day and not their fault he thought too much.

“Engorgio,” he said, and the ball did begin to swell. Parts of it were visibly sagging more than he thought they should be, though, and picking it up and squishing it between his fingers revealed that he’d been right about how eager all the insides would be to expand for him. A lot of the beans were still small. He frowned at it, annoyed. He really needed to figure out the theory behind how a single spell could affect both multiple and single objects….

A memory stirred, and he took his notebook out of his pocket, warily turning to the scrawls of the past two days. It was a little hard to make out his own handwriting and figure out what he’d meant by some abbreviations, but...there. It didn’t make much sense in retrospect, though, so he turned to a half-clean page, drew a dividing line, and started jotting.

Mult. effect - Transf. basics. Chm exp - will expl. Epnd c.struc? ~~Man.~~ Manual option or ext. endrnc from magic? Make obj. bigger w/tranfg

His higher thinking hit the temporary limit of its endurance again and pulled the covers back over its head, allowing the thought to slip away from him. Trans into self, he added quickly, before the idea was completely gone; if the pen hadn't already been in his hand, he would have lost it. He tried, his head feeling stuffed full of cotton, to think of something he had that he knew how to Transfigure something else into, tapping the thin wooden end of his pen against the page as he thought. A drop of ink fell from the nib onto his hand and he made a face before quickly rubbing it against the inside of his sleeve, figuring it was not enough to stain through and that the laundry goblins could therefore ignore it if they wanted to. The problem was that most of their exercises weren’t very practical, being designed to build skill and theoretical knowledge rather than to teach them spells for everyday use….

There was noise suspiciously nearby. "What?" he asked, losing his place in the list of spells he'd been slowly muddling his way through in his head for about the third time in as many minutes.

16 John Umland, Aladren Getting slightly sidetracked. 285 John Umland, Aladren 0 5