Make my day, why don't you... on Transfiguration

Professor Marlowe

February 17, 2006 8:37 PM

Lesson One, Second and Third Years by Professor Marlowe

The classroom was quiet in the last few minutes before Selina's class with the second and third years was due to begin, the only disruption coming in the form of Cel's contented purring as she petted him absent-mindedly. It was the first time Paracelsus had ventured to enter the classroom, leading her to think he was probably getting jealous of the students. Of all the cats she'd had over the years, he was the most inclined to jealousy. Since Cel had been known to shred anything within claw's range when she annoyed him, Selina had resigned herself to stroking the cat with one hand and holding down her lesson plans with the other.

Paracelsus decided he'd been recognized enough just as the first student entered the room, jumping off the desk and disappearing behind her. Selina stuffed the lesson plans away almost as abruptly, lacing her long fingers together to wait for the room to finish filling. She didn't know where her cat had gotten off to, and found herself fervently hoping Cel hadn't decided this was a prime opportunity to destroy her bookshelf or the like. Ripped rugs she could handle - Melinda had always insisted that Selina's own mild deficiency of housekeeping skills and in some areas made her dislike of cluttered places hypocritical - but Cel would be in the hypothetical dog house if he ruined one of her books.

When the official beginning time for the class came around, she pulled her hands apart and stood. "Your attention, please." Once they were quiet, she went around the desk to face them, leaning on it slightly. Not a bad-sized group, if her judgment was any good. Fewer third years than second years, if her roster shared the quality. After a moment, she nodded acknowledgement to them and began to speak. "I am Professor Marlowe," she introduced herself, accent as ever. "As I'm sure you've all deduced, I will be your Transfiguration teacher." That was enough of that. One advantage of teaching older students was that she didn't have to drone as long.

"Today's lesson is a comparatively simple one," she informed them. "You've all had at least one previous instructor in this subject, so this is, if you'll forgive me the expression, a test of your abilities. You'll be attempting to Transfigure a stick - " she held up an example of said item for their inspection - "into a pencil." The class would never know the effort that went into saying that with a straight face. It was semi-practical, she supposed, and harder than what she had posed for the first years due to the fact they would be refining one part and creating two others, but sticks to pencils...Selina couldn't help finding it amusing.

"The incantation for this is Cillium Insigere. I'll give you a demonstration, and I would advise copying the instructions on the board down into your notes." She pointed the tip of her wand at the stick she already had elevated and spoke the words that would, if all was in order, cause the stick to turn into a Number Two pencil. The pureblooded students in the room had probably never heard of one, but they came in useful, sometimes. Erasers were wonderful inventions.

If the students were to actually examine the pencil at close range, they would probably note that while the wood had a point, the graphite had ended two centimeters shy of protruding, but her hand was currently hiding that defect. She blamed the partial failure on the fact that she had omitted breakfast from her schedule for the day. Not the brightest idea she'd ever had, on reflection. "You may begin." \n\n

Subthreads:

One bit at a time... by Gwenhwyfar Carey

Isn't magic great? by Lily Collins

Make my day, why don't you... by Catherine Raines with Stephen Baxter, Catherine

The Pencil-Making Association of Arizona Goes Musi...Magical by Anne Wright

Merrily returning to my worst subject... by Connor Pierce

0 Professor Marlowe Lesson One, Second and Third Years 0 Professor Marlowe 1 5

Gwenhwyfar Carey

February 19, 2006 6:53 PM

One bit at a time... by Gwenhwyfar Carey

Gwen was the first to arrive at her Transfiguration lesson, entering the room just in time to see something jump off the teacher's desk and retreat from there. Looking away from the thing she assumed was a cat, she felt a start of surprise at the realization that Reiner's replacement was a woman. Transfiguration was one of the most traditionally masculine disciplines she could think of. The new professor did nothing but put some papers away and twine her hands together, and Gwen hurried to grab the seat furthest to the left on the first row. It was as out-of-the-way as she could manage, the theory being to remain invisible. Adherence to that theory still seemed the wisest course of action.

Hoping to seem industrious and therefore in no need of special attention of any kind, she already had parchment, quill, ink, and wand out before the classroom was full and was copying the things written on the board down when the class was called to order. The name 'Marlowe' rang a very distant bell, and the professor's accent suggested she was either a Yankee, foreign, or both. Gwen tried to erase the automatic analysis from her mind. It didn't matter. So long as she got the information she needed from this woman, it didn't matter where she was from or who she was.

She knew what a pencil was from Allie's sketching lessons. That a spell to turn a stick into a pencil wasn't exactly practical was quickly brushed aside; this was practice to help them get the hang of Transfiguration, not something they'd need to know specifically. It was a question of applying what they were taught to different situations, or so Aunt Rosamund had said during her rant on why Gwen needed to learn Latin once she had down the basics of Spanish and French. She mentally thanked Rosamund for making her spend all those hours reviewing what she'd learned in her first year. If not for it, she doubted she'd remember anything. There were advantages, it seemed, to having an academically strict guardian.

She leaned forward in her seat, forgetting her resolve to be invisible, and frowned at the thing in Professor Marlowe's hand when the demonstration was complete. That didn't look like one of Allie's drawing pencils. She'd spent every other day she was at Magnolia Grove for the past five years attending Allie's drawing lessons, and she knew what a pencil looked like. Maybe there was more than one kind? Maybe the spell had gone wrong? She wanted to ask, but knew it to be a bad move, politically. It would give the teacher the impression she didn't trust her and would call attention to her. If Marlowe said the thing in her hand was a pencil, it was a pencil.

She took a moment to clear her mind of any stray thoughts and to focus on the stick she was issued. This was entirely possible. She had just seen it done with a front-row view. There was nothing impossible about it. "Cillium Insigere, she said softly, not wanting to be overheard if she happened to mispronounce the spell. Her stick looked a little pointier and maybe a shade less knobbly, but that was it. "Cillium Insigere," she repeated, putting a little more force into it. The point grew more defined, and about half of it shaped itself into smooth, even planes, leaving the other side unaltered. It was a start. "Cillium Insigere." The previously unaltered side imitated the first, making the stick hexagonal. Without realizing it, she had brought the partially Transfigured stick so close to her face she had to squint to see it clearly, completely lost in her work. \n\n

0 Gwenhwyfar Carey One bit at a time... 63 Gwenhwyfar Carey 0 5

Lily Collins

March 02, 2006 12:29 PM

Isn't magic great? by Lily Collins

Transfiguration, along with Charms, was one of the more interesting subjects for Lily. It was uniquely magical, with no real similar subject in the Muggle school. Lily embraced her magical side. Not that she thought less of those with muggle blood,(what with having it herself),she just preferred magic, that was all. It was different from the way she grew up and Lily appreciated that it was something most people didn't get to see. Not to mention that the magical people she knew had more readily accepted her then the muggles she'd met.

She listened to the lesson. Hmm...stick into a pencil. Wizards didn't use pencils. They used old-fashioned quills. However, this was one of those bits of muggle technology that Lily wanted to compromise on. Just because the magical world was more interesting, it didn't mean there weren't things she didn't understand. Mistakes made in pencil were easier to fix. She was sure there were erasing spells, but she didn't know them yet.

"Cillium Insigre" Lily said, tapping the stick with her wand. She didn't get it right away, but kept at it. Eventually, she managed to get a regular looking pencil...only it was round, a bit bumpy in places, and lacked the graphite end. Instead, there was just a wooden point.\n\n

11 Lily Collins Isn't magic great? 45 Lily Collins 0 5

Catherine Raines

March 04, 2006 3:37 PM

Make my day, why don't you... by Catherine Raines

There were some benefits to having parents so absorbed in their personal lives that they barely registered her. One of the ones that had benefited Catherine most since she started at Sonora was that Charles and Lila had been completely oblivious, so far as she knew, to the fact she had only just passed Transfiguration the previous year. She'd actually passed Care of Magical Creatures and Astronomy with higher marks, and that was saying something, considering that she hated the teacher of the latter and everything about the former. Transfiguration was just hard, and there was no point pretending that it was anything else. Of course, a tiny corner of her conscience acknowledged she hadn't really put in a great amount of effort, either, but that was beside the point.

Reiner had left the previous year owing to the weather, as part of half the staff and at least some students to do so. One way or another, though, they'd found a replacement, which meant that Transfiguration was still a required core academic course. Joy. Catherine wasn't slouching as she entered the classroom, but she couldn't keep her expression from giving away her dislike of the subject and all things connected to it as she walked in. She threw her hair forward to hide her face as she passed the new professor, though not before registering that it was a dark-haired woman. Hopefully, the teacher's gender wouldn't have an affect for the worse on her grade. It would be humiliating if she actually did fail, even if her parents didn't notice.

She found her attention wandering during the opening speech, picking up only enough to know that the professor talked funny and had a name that started with 'M'. With an effort, she dragged her mind away from fond memories of the first part of her summer and back to what was going on in the present when the assignment was being announced, managing to copy down what was written on the board without understanding a single one of the principles involved in the tranformation, never mind what a pencil was. The example created by Professor Marlene (Catherine wasn't sure if that was the woman's last name or if she had just missed the part where it was announced) was an odd-looking thing with no immediately obvious use.

She examined the stick for signs of dirt before picking it up, then pulled out her wand. There was no real point to doing this, since there was no chance she'd get it right, but she'd heard of effort grades. Maybe Marlene would turn out to be nicer than she looked and chuck one to the poor dunce of a Crotalus. Pointing one narrow strip of wood at another, she repeated the odd-sounding incantation, only mispronouncing half the syllables. What looked like grayish water dribbled from the end of the stick, leaving it unaltered. She grimaced at the dirty water, slid her chair a little further away from the desk, and would have given up completely if she hadn't noticed Gwenhwyfar Carey working on her stick as if her life depended on it - and making progress.

By the end of class, all she had done was make the stick's sides be thoroughly lined with splinters and the end that had dribbled water attain a dark gray point. She covertly looked around at other people's work, then glumly at her failed Transfiguration. She had known this was going to be a bad year. The worst part was that it felt like it was going to get a whole lot worse. Abandoning her stick and all appearances, she put her head down on her arms. There was no chance she was going to pass this class.\n\n

0 Catherine Raines Make my day, why don't you... 66 Catherine Raines 0 5

Anne Wright

March 04, 2006 7:31 PM

The Pencil-Making Association of Arizona Goes Musi...Magical by Anne Wright

Anne approached her first Transfiguration lesson of the term with a degree of wariness. There was never any way of knowing what a new teacher might pull out of the hat, after all, and keeping her guard up seemed like a good way to avoid doing something stupid at exactly the wrong time and landing herself on the permanent bad side of aforementioned new professor. Upon entering, she caught sight of dark hair, hands not-quite-prissily clasped on a desk, and a face that was definitely that of a woman. Very little, in other words, that she could draw a conclusion about the professor's nature from. Geoffrey had said his year's class with her had gone mad, but the membership of that year meant that that wasn't too much of a testament to the woman's teaching ability, especially since Geoffrey liked to exaggerate and she knew for a fact it had been her cousins who got involved in the fire business.

She slid into a second row seat, slightly to the left of the middle, and waited for class to begin, textbook, wand, parchment, and a regular Muggle ink pen she had fiddled with until she'd worked out how to refill it with quill ink all neatly arrayed on the desk. It didn't take long; she'd been delayed in her arrival by some kind of hold-up on the stairs. The opening speech seemed routine enough, but Anne had to work hard not to burst into either laughter or applause when she heard what the assignment was. Pencils. They were making pencils. She immediately decided she liked this woman. Number Two pencils were as unpurebloodlike as almost anything she could have thought up herself.

Anne considered it a point of discipline not to look around at what other students were doing when she had finished copying down her instructions and received her stick. It gave an impression of either uncertainty or distraction, and focus was what a year's worth of magical training had taught her that the professors liked to see. Putting her textbook back into her bag to keep it out of the way, she picked up her stick and examined it critically before trying anything. It was longer and thicker than a pencil, which meant size modification as well as shape modification, and there was the creation of eraser material, the metal eraser band at the end, graphite, and paint to contend with. It was, though, more or less a similar-shapes or appearances Transfiguration. Probably manageable, she decided after a moment.

She ran her long fingers over her wand almost lovingly. Keeping it hidden from Aunt Sarah all summer hadn't been fun, and not doing magic all summer even less so. She was back at Sonora, back in class, now, though. "Ready, now?" she muttered quietly to the piece of polished rosewood. "Let's show 'em what we can do." Lifting the stick and the wand in one movement, she pointed the latter at the former and tried to focus her entire being on what she was doing, forming a mental picture of her stick morphing into a pencil. "Cillium Insigere."

The stick was definitely looking smoother, had the beginnings of angles, and had a wooden point. Not bad, for a first try. It was all about focus. Focus and belief that it was possible. "Cillium Insigere." The point began to hollow out, the angles to become more defined. Come on, come on, come on... Her eyes were narrowed and her face given an oddly pinched look as she grew increasingly unaware of anything but turning the idiot stick into a pencil. She was more than proud of herself when she finished it well before the bell. And that to you, Firebird St.Martin, she thought, wishing for the first and probably the last time ever that Lila could read her mind. \n\n

16 Anne Wright The Pencil-Making Association of Arizona Goes Musi...Magical 59 Anne Wright 0 5

Connor Pierce

March 04, 2006 9:29 PM

Merrily returning to my worst subject... by Connor Pierce

Connor hated Transfiguration. He'd hated it with Reiner, and he was pretty sure he'd hate it with whatever new teacher the up-tops had found. He could answer the written or verbal questions without a problem, that was just repeating what the ridiculously heavy textbook said, but when it came to actually doing a Transfiguration, he was completely hopeless. If told to turn grass into hay, he stood a good chance of producing chicken feathers. Getting used to a new teacher didn't seem likely to help the problem.

The new professor - why they didn't just answer to 'Mr.' and 'Mrs.' was still a mystery to him, since Sonora wasn't a college - was a tall woman with an odd sort of modified British accent. He thought she pronounced a few of her syllables like Boston Rob off Survivor, but Boston seemed a little far away for her to be teaching here, since Gwen said there was another magic school in Massachusetts, but there was a school in Britain, too...didn't matter. If he could get through her class without causing any irrepairable damage, she could be from anywhere she wanted to be from. Marlowe was a name with good connotations. He'd had a sort-of friend named Jack Marlowe, back when he still attended public school. They'd hung out a bit over the summer, and Jack had had either the presence or absence of mind not to ask questions about what boarding school was like.

Sticks into pencils. No doubt about it, the wizarding world was still weird. He was coming to like it more and more, but it was weird. Still, knowing how to turn a stick into a pencil might come in handy sometime, if he was in the woods and needed to take notes. That was one of the good parts of magic's weirdness - you started to look at things from new angles. Maybe the purebloods and half-bloods didn't so much, but it worked from the Muggleborn perspective. Picking up the stick, he tried to see it as a pencil, then pointed the wand at it and repeated the odd-sounding words Professor Marlowe had used to turn her stick into a pencil. Predictably enough, nothing happened.

Noticing that most people were having to do it over and over to achieve the desired endpoint, he followed suit, continually having to remind himself that this was possible, he'd seen it done, and he was not out of his mind for waving a piece of wood around and expecting a random stick to turn into a pencil. It was easy to get unused to magic after an entire summer of living normally. By the end of the lesson, he had managed to explode the end of the stick, leaving a crater where the eraser should have been, but it had turned into a sort of rough, yellowish hexagon with a little less than a centimeter of something dull, dark, and hard protruding from the vaguely pointed end.

Guess I'm not that hopeless after all, he thought, noticing the spiny-looking thing lying in front of a girl with her head on her arms. At least I only part-ruined it. \n\n

0 Connor Pierce Merrily returning to my worst subject... 68 Connor Pierce 0 5

Stephen Baxter

March 05, 2006 8:44 AM

Not her job. Will I do? by Stephen Baxter

Stephen made his way to his desk, with a smile of simple pleasure. His desk was a lovely shade of green, and had been ever since the lesson with Professor Reiner where they'd been making inkpots complete with ink and Stephen's had been spilled just about everywhere. That had been quite a fun lesson, even with the professor and the girl next to him disrupting it from time to time. Of course, Reiner wasn't here any more. He'd left just like... Whatshername, the last Professor. It seemed like the professors in this subject didn't last long at all.

With that in mind, he looked up the front, taking in number three. Number three's name was Professor Marlowe, he was quickly informed, along with the rest of the class. Apparently she was a woman too; Well, Reiner had been a man, and Zephyrflames's replacement was a bloke, like Zephyrflame, and Coach Cooper and both of her replacements had been girls. It looked like the staff was swinging slowly in the female direction. Stephen tried to decide how he felt about this, and then decided that as they definitely weren't hags, he was not opposed.

And Marlowe was getting them to transfigure sticks into pencils.

When he thought about it, it seemed almost like a muggle (except with magic) version of the ink class. At least that, he decided, would help make it easy enough to work out; similarities and all that. Except of course, he noticed with interest, that apparently they were expected to include an eraser along with the pencil. At least that meant that it was a little trickier, he'd been wondering if they were being given work for younger students, because the second years were with them. With the eraser there were having to not only transfigure the shape of the stick, and the middle into lead, but also make part of it rubber and the metal bit that held the eraser in place. This was starting to look like it might be a finicky lesson, it was a good thing that he'd been paying attention.

Paying attention...

And he'd missed the incantation. Stephen rolled his eyes, and was about ready to turn to the person next to him and whisper ask when he noticed that it was one of the second year girls and by the look on her face... he chuckled quietly, especially as he watched her be all squeamish about her stick.

Her failure to get the spell to work didn't really make her look like proper material for copying off, which was sad. He looked at his stick, flipping it a couple of times in his hands then looked back at her. It was a good thing that the person on the other side seemed more confident in what they were doing, as Stephen was able to catch the incantation, and he was able to give it a go himself, after a few tries working out what he needed to concentrate on and by the time class was starting to wrap up he'd got himself an almost respectable looking green pencil in the end. It wasn't quite what the professor had been after, but then, with the green ink on his mind, and sitting at his green stained desk... well, it wasn't like it was a huge surprise.

He took another look at the girl sitting next to him, and then at her work. It was lying in a smallish puddle of mucky water, and if the head on the arms was anything to go by she wasn't the happiest of campers. He surrupticiously used a hand to ruffle his hair about to make it look rakish and interesting, and then cleared his throat, leaning over to pick up her failed effort and tap her on the shoulder with it.

"Maybe," he suggested with a grin, "if you got a really thin drill and one of those replacement leads that you can buy at the shops..."
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

39 Stephen Baxter Not her job. Will I do? 49 Stephen Baxter 0 5

Catherine

March 05, 2006 5:25 PM

Uh, sure...I guess... by Catherine

At least someone's going to be happy, Catherine thought bitterly, having pity-partied herself almost to the brink of tears and completely forgotten that no one openly noticed her lackluster grades. Amelia'll have a field day when she finds out I can't even - She was brought out of her misery by something with spines tapping her shoulder. She jerked upright with a muffled squeak and snapped her head around to face the messy-haired boy who'd used her miserable attempt at a pencil, whatever it was, to tap on her shoulder. "What?" she said blankly, having less than no idea what he was suggesting.

It suddenly occurred to her that she really hadn't had very much to do with any boys at Sonora. Most of the previous year had been focused on keeping in good books with one set of girls and trying to bring down another, and the majority of Sonora's student population was comprised of girls anyway. Even at home, most of the people she was regularly exposed to were girls. Her cousin Raines Bradley was the only boy she really knew at all, and he didn't count. The inevitable conclusion was that she had no idea what the rules for this conversation were. It didn't take her long to decide she didn't like the vulnerability of not knowing automatically how things worked in a situation.

"Sorry," she said, giving a bit of a return smile and deciding to just go with it. If she messed up, the other girls would be able to torture her with it for ages. "I don't get it, but I'm sure it was really funny." That probably qualified as a mess-up. "You were joking, right?" Or maybe not. A question occurred to her, a bit belatedly. "Wait, who are you?" \n\n

0 Catherine Uh, sure...I guess... 0 Catherine 0 5

Stephen

March 06, 2006 7:02 AM

grins you've got to do better than that by Stephen

The 'what' was a bit of a disappointment (although the squeak that proceeded it was definitely worth it), but it didn't take to long for the second year to start to warm up, smiling back at him.

"Stephen," he told her, seriously, "Stephen Baxter." She'd probably heard at least something of him, "and I dunno really." He paused, and sent her a lopsided grin. "I suppose it could have been a joke, but," and here he poked her with the mangled remains of her transfiguration again, before holding it out to her, "you're not in a position to be accusing others of making jokes," he teased her with a wink. "But you're right, it wasn't bad."

"You got a name?" \n\n

39 Stephen *grins* you've got to do better than that 0 Stephen 0 5

Catherine

March 07, 2006 5:07 PM

Problem is, people might realize I can use my brain if I did by Catherine

Stephen Baxter. The name might have rung a dim bell, but Catherine had learned how to pretend she knew who people were by the time she was seven, and had given up on actually remembering them by the next year. She nodded as if she knew exactly who he was, shaking back her hair to offer a distraction from her face. Some were, after all, better than others at reading between expressions. She was glad she'd taken the precaution when how badly she'd failed was pointed out to her, and she took her whatever-it-was back from him without regard for the splinters. It took an effort to drop it casually back onto her desk without wincing, somewhere between the jab in the heel of her hand and the one in her thumb.

"Of course I'm right," she said, feeling her neck tense the way it did when she was feeling defensive and really wanted to sling her hair into the face of the person causing the defensiveness. "Aren't I always? I mean, I really went out of my way to show how smart I was with that, don't you think?" She pointed to the decimated article lying on her desk and forced a smile to reinforce that she wasn't being completely serious. Her mother had some stupid saying about laughing along with people laughing at you or something like that, and it was an especially annoying one to have chanted at her, but the basic idea behind it worked. Sometimes, it did. Besides, it was usually a good move to appear to find humor in her own stupidity.

"Last time I checked," she said offhandedly when asked if she had a name. "Catherine Raines, if you're interested." She waited to see if it got a reaction. Catherine personally had no idea if her year's reputation was so bad the general school body knew about it, but it didn't seem impossible, not in such a small school with a lot of people having friends or relatives in other Houses. If she was lucky, no one knew anything. The problem was that she wasn't usually very lucky. \n\n

0 Catherine Problem is, people might realize I can use my brain if I did 0 Catherine 0 5

Professor Marlowe

Lesson One, Second and Third Years by Professor Marlowe

Gwenhwyfar Carey

One bit at a time... by Gwenhwyfar Carey

Lily Collins

Isn't magic great? by Lily Collins

Catherine Raines

Make my day, why don't you... by Catherine Raines

Anne Wright

The Pencil-Making Association of Arizona Goes Musi...Magical by Anne Wright

Connor Pierce

Merrily returning to my worst subject... by Connor Pierce

Stephen Baxter

Not her job. Will I do? by Stephen Baxter

Catherine

Uh, sure...I guess... by Catherine

Stephen

*grins* you've got to do better than that by Stephen

Catherine

Problem is, people might realize I can use my brain if I did by Catherine

grins you've got to do better than that by Stephen