Professor Lilac Crosby
November 18, 2011 5:43 PM
Shield me with your... pipe? [First and second years!] by Professor Lilac Crosby
“…Wrimlet, Morana.” With that final name, Lilac finished the attendance for her beginners’ class. She still didn’t have the names down quite yet (although she knew Miss Wrimlet, a member of her own House). She’d gotten pretty adjusted to seeing the faces of the new first years by this point, but it continually seemed somewhat strange walking into her intermediate class and seeing now-third years like Hope Brockert and Addison Thorton. Even odder still was the fourth-year class; she’d started at Sonora when that particular class was mere first years themselves.Students, just like she herself, grew up ever so quickly. Her very own niece, while still in the beginners’ class, was a second year already. In all honesty, she enjoyed the first and second years a great deal because they were so young still and so rapidly changing. However, she was probably the least free with herself in that class: she tried very, very hard not to be a complete dork and embarrass Sally.
To the considerably newly-christened first and second years she spoke. ‘Now that that’s all in order, I bet you’re wondering why there’s a metal pipe on each of your desks.” The tubes were about two feet long and not as heavy as they looked at all, easy to lift for most students. She’d taken every precaution she could think of for special cases; when Valerie Lennox had come in, for example, the twenty-nine year old had been sure to guide her to a desk where the pipe was smaller and even lighter. Any other students with similar medical concerns were addressed in such fashion as well. She always did her best for such students.
The grey-eyed witch grabbed the pipe off of her own desk, proportionately longer as she was larger than the students and could likely hold more. “Imagine this, if you will: you’re all grown up. You’re an Auror. Someone chases you into a dark alley. Something’s happened that you can’t escape. What do you do then?” Lilac paused briefly to glance across the students. The usual variety of opinionated faces seemed true. “You need a shield, but all the only thing available is a metal pipe from one of the buildings.”
Wand directed decisively at the pipe, she incanted, “Paerdecto!” In the blink of an eye, the pipe was a shield. “Now, note that the composition of the pipe has not changed. Strengthened a little, maybe, but not changed. Most of this is just a shift in form. It is, however, now more resistant to magical damage, as it ought to be.” Otherwise, there really was no point to the spell in itself.
While she had spoken the incantation, it and its pronunciation had appeared on the board behind her. PAIR-deck-toe. “Be sure to realize that this may not do terribly much against stronger spells, but obviously it’s better than nothing.” Just as the pipe and its weight, the spell was not as challenging as it would have appeared. “Any questions? If not, go ahead and begin. Feel free to help each other out. Talking’s fine as long as it’s at a manageable level. I’ll be here if you need me for any reason.” On that note, the class was let loose. The brunette sat at her desk, straightening her ankle-length brown skirt a little as she did so. She absolutely abhorred such a tremendous amount of wrinkles, but she’d overslept a bit that morning.
OOC: Welcome to Transfig, first and second years! Let’s see some nice, creative, detailed posts. That makes me happy, plus you get points, which make you happy too! Everybody wins! Yay! Have fun, but don’t do bad things like writing for other people’s characters. Happy posting!
Subthreads: It would work better to use a shield that used to be a pipe by Theresa Carey, Pecari with Gareth Whitebriar - Crotalus, Theresa
I'll...try? by Mellie Goodwin, Pecari with Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren
Only if there's room after I shield me. by Alicia Bauer, Aladren with Angel Shield - Teppenpaw
I don't think it will do me any good (Professor) by Valerie Lennox, Crotalus with Prof. C.
All right, if you insist by Alexandra Devereux, Crotalus with Elijah Errant {Pecari}, Alexandra
Not what I'd have in mind. by Evan Brockert, Aladren with Andrina Thornton
Sorry, I'm too busy running the other way by Paul Bennett, Crotalus
Class closed (nm) by Prof. C.
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Professor Lilac Crosby
Shield me with your... pipe? [First and second years!]
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Professor Lilac Crosby
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Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
November 21, 2011 1:47 AM
I'll...try? by Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
Mellie wasn’t much good at Transfiguration – she didn’t have ‘the knack,’ as Alison used to call it – but she enjoyed the class anyway, just because she never knew completely what was going to happen. Professor Crosby came up with some interesting things sometimes, and some of Mellie’s failures had been spectacular enough to be interesting all by themselves during first year. She expected second year to go about the same way – lots of moments of interest, but it’d all work out so she passed in the end.Though really, it was still exciting enough that it was second year. Yeah, there wasn’t a huge difference, she was still in beginner classes and all, but she wasn’t new here anymore. She was one of the second years she’d spent last year looking up to in those beginner classes, one of the endlessly confident people who knew all about the school and the teachers and wasn’t just making everything up as she went along.
Well, okay, she really still was making it up as she went along and certainly wouldn’t call herself endlessly confident, but maybe some of the first years would think that she was. And she was a lot more confident than she was last year, at least when it came to going around the school without getting lost. She had only made one (maybe two) wrong turns since she’d been back, and hadn’t been late for anything important at all.
She was playing with the end of one of the two more or less together braids she’d put her hair into when Professor Crosby started the lesson. She had indeed been wondering why there was a pipe on her desk – well, she’d guessed they were going to be transfiguring it into something, she’d just wondered what that something was going to be; she hadn’t come in under the impression that they were going to start working on the plumbing or hitting each other with lengths of pipe or having Charms class – and wasn’t too sure what to think about the explanation, except that it sounded a bit like Defense class as well as a Transfiguration lesson.
She shrugged, though, when they were set to work and got out her wand. “Think you’re going to have any luck?” she asked her neighbor. “It didn’t sound, you know, too bad, did it?”
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Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
I'll...try?
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Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
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Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren
November 27, 2011 6:15 PM
I’ll help! by Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren
This term wasn’t quite as bad as last term when it came to finding her way around. Unlike normal school where each year they had different teachers in different classrooms in different parts of the school, it appeared that the teachers and classrooms remained the same at magic school. Two gold stars for Sonora. That really was the way it should be. At least this way she wouldn’t spent the first two weeks completely lost. Okay, so she still used David to guide her around for the first few days but she was getting better! Well, not really. But it was nice to think so.
She’d lost David a turn or two ago and was hopelessly turned around. It was a breathless Kitty, her cheeks flushed from running around half frantic trying to find the classroom before she ended up being late, that barged into the room. It had been a close thing, but Kitty managed to make it on time. Still slightly out of breath, her long black curls tangled from the run Kitty flopped into her seat. Her foot bumped the desk and the pipe decided to roll off the edge, landing on the floor with a loud CLANG!
“Oops!” Kitty chirped as she ducked under the desk to retrieve it. THUMP! “Ouch!” Kitty yelped as her head banged against the bottom of the desk. Grumbling about having woken up on the wrong side of the bed she climbed back into her chair, waving the pipe to show that she’d retrieved it successfully in one hand while rubbing the back of her head with the other. “Well my luck can’t get much worse today!” Kitty said and laughed, obviously not too upset with how things were going. “Anyway, at least a shield won’t be able to roll away.” She gave the pipe a withering look, as if it had rolled away on purpose just to make her bump her head.
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Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren
I’ll help!
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Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren
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Mellie
December 01, 2011 10:21 AM
Thanks! by Mellie
Mellie winced, her hands fluttering uselessly as she wanted to help but couldn’t figure out how, as an already-disheveled Kitty McLevy dropped her pipe and cracked her head coming back up from retrieving it. She guessed, in light of this, that the other girl’s windswept look came more from some kind of similar incident before class than the lack of neatness seen in Mellie’s own two braids did. Her problem was just that she didn’t know how to fix her hair, not that she was prone to doing or getting caught up in things that would destroy it once it somehow, through processes as secret and complex as those of the great alchemists, came together.Well, not overly prone to it, anyway.
She laughed, too, though, when Kitty laughed the incident off with the observation that shields at least didn’t roll. She thought of some remark of reply that she could imagine Alison making – something about Kitty must work with shields all the time, then – but she was sure that for her it would come out all wrong, sound like she was being nasty or just lame, so she just said, “Yeah, that’s true,” with a smile. And put out a hand to hold her pipe in place before it could decide to roll away, too.
“Okay, spell time.” This was the uncomfortable part of working in class, with everyone around and able to see: the first spell attempt. After that, with most everybody trying for a second or third time and having entertaining screw-ups, it wasn’t so bad, there could even be a sort of fun camaraderie element involved depending on who she was sitting with, but the first time…She took a breath, then tried the incantation. “Peerdecto,” she said.
Her pipe bent itself, with much complaining of metal which made her clap her hands over her ears before she remembered her wand was still in one of them and she snatched that hand back down before her hair could catch fire, into a rough U-shape.
“Okay, not what I was going for,” she said quietly, looking at the thing and wondering if the professor would have another she could use if this one got stuck that way or if the new shape was actually a transition point to the shield shape, then looked back at Kitty. “But on the bright side, it still can’t roll like this now. Having – Are you having any better luck with yours? I’m not sure where I went wrong with this one.”
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Mellie
Thanks!
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Mellie
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Kitty
December 07, 2011 8:05 PM
No problems…well maybe little ones by Kitty
“Yup.” Kitty agreed, there was always a moment of exquisite anticipation when attempting a new spell. It didn’t matter so much that they almost never worked right the first time, just the fact that they were working magic all new and sparkly that Kitty couldn’t get enough of. Second only to flying, Kitty missed using her wand. It was totally lame that they weren’t allowed to practice at home. A summer without flying and magic, it had been the worst summer she’d ever had.Kitty jumped, and almost toppled off her chair when a horrible screech sounded next to her. Wide blue eyes stared at the now bent out of shape pipe and Kitty couldn’t help but giggle. “I bet you scared a lot of people with that.” Kitty said with another chuckle. Turning her attention back to the pipe on her desk she commanded “Peerdecto! There was a loud POP and a clatter, and…something sat on Kitty’s desk.
The bottom half was quite shield-like in appearance and if she squinted and tilted her head a little to the left she could see a lioness rampant engraved into the metal. Well, that or a really fat annoyed pony. But, the top part of the pipe hadn’t joined in on the shield goodness and remained a pipe, giving the whole construct a very short ornate shovel-like appearance. Kitty fluffed her hair absently as she stared at the sort of shield. “Well…not half bad really!” She snickered at her pun.
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Kitty
No problems…well maybe little ones
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Kitty
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Mellie
December 09, 2011 3:03 PM
Nothing to worry about, really. by Mellie
For a minute, Mellie didn’t get the pun, and started to say, “no, no it’s no – “ before she noticed Kitty was snickering and the pun hit her between the eyes like a big, engraved, too-short-handled shovel. “Not half – I get it,” she announced, smacking herself in the head for not getting the point a little more quickly than that. She loved to read about it in books and laugh when it was pointed out that someone had said something clever in this-or-that scene, but she had never mastered the art of picking up wordplay in real life. Often enough, she didn’t even get it when it happened on the page unless one of the characters, or the narrator voice, pointed it out for her.It was, she guessed, an Aladren thing – maybe a little bit of a Crotalus one, too, since they were ladies and gentlemen and had to be witty at their elaborate parties, but Aladrens were clever by definition, so they probably sat around their common room being brilliant all the time, making puns and jokes that only the smartest of people would understand. She had wanted to be there, but she thought she’d known even when she was in that week before school, when she was so excited and thought anything could happen for her, that she wouldn’t be. If anything, she thought Mom had been expecting Teppenpaw.
Not that she would have minded being a Teppenpaw, any more than she minded being a Pecari. She liked her House, and the people on her Quidditch team, and her roommate, and the random people she said hi to in the common room. But she still wished she could have been clever as well as a Pecari. Alison had been a Pecari, too, and her cousin had never been as dull as she was.
“Guess it’s time for round two,” she commented as both their creations started to look a little wavery. One of the frustrating things about magic, at least beginner magic, was that it never lasted, really. She decided to do hers quickly, before it completely lost its shape again, so there would theoretically be less to do. “Paerdecto!”
This time, part of it did spread toward the middle, leaving it very thin there before the two ends didn’t manage to meet in the middle and still thick on the sides, where it was shaped like a pipe, but the end of the pipe-edge did meet up in a rough shield shape. It was progress. She wasn’t sure she could have done it if she’d let her first attempt go completely back to being just a normal pipe, but since she had done it, that was the good thing she was going to focus on. “Do you think it’s cheating to try again before it goes back?” she asked. Then another thought hit her. “Or that it would, I don’t know, make it explode or something?” The shield exploding would, after all, be really, really bad.
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Mellie
Nothing to worry about, really.
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Mellie
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Kitty
December 13, 2011 2:36 PM
We can do it! by Kitty
Kitty nodded excitedly, clearly not put out by the fact that her first attempt hadn’t been perfect. Last term she learned that it often took a number of tries to get magic to work right and she still got a thrill when something began shifting into the correct form even if it didn’t make it all the way. She watched as the shape began to waver like a mirage in the desert.Blue eyes watched avidly as the shape wavered further before snapping back into the pipe shape. That always looked so neat to the young muggle born and was one of the things she loved about messing up. It reminded Kitty of a video she’d seen once where a tea cup was pushed off the table and shattered into a million pieces, then the footage was rewound and the cup reassembled its self and leapt back onto the table of its own accord.
“Hm? Oh, no I don’t think it’s a problem. I just like to watch it snap back to its original shape before trying again. It shouldn’t explode, if that was something that could happen the Professor would have warned us of the danger.” Kitty reassured as she looked at Millie’s second attempt. It was getting closer to a shield and Kitty gave her a congratulatory grin.
“Kitty and the Pipe, round two!” Kitty said as she fixed the pipe with a mock fierce glare, but she couldn’t quite hide the smile that still played on her lips. ”Pardecto!” The pipe jolted and sort of spread out into an oddly triangular shape. While it was flat, it looked more like a piece of scrap metal than a shield and Kitty pouted at the unshildlike object.
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Kitty
We can do it!
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Kitty
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Mellie
December 13, 2011 11:40 PM
Go us! by Mellie
Mellie considered the prospect of the authority figure doing what authority figures did and warning them about potential dangers. “Yeah, that’s true,” she said after a second’s contemplation. She was pretty sure she was not nearly smart enough to come up with some concept that no one had ever come up with before, so Professor Crosby had to know that sometimes, people might get the bright idea to try turning something that was already Transfigured or partially Transfigured. “It feels kind of like cheating anyway, but…” she shrugged expressively, letting that finish the sentence in lieu of the words she couldn’t quite come up with."I'm being stupid," she concluded.
She didn’t want to cheat. Her parents both worked in law enforcement, and after a lifetime of that influence, she didn’t know if she was even capable of really wanting to cheat. Mellie wanted to do things right, on her own, and it just…be right. But part of her just wanted to pass, to do well, and was willing to cut a few corners – not exactly break any rules, just skim the corners – in order to do that. She just didn’t know if that was wrong or not.
This wasn’t the kind of thing she mentioned, because she didn’t want to seem that serious, and knew she was probably making a mountain out of a molehill. A very small molehill. She smiled as Kitty announced she was starting on Round Two versus her pipe.
“Well, that’s doing pretty good, too,” she said encouragingly when Kitty got a big triangle of metal. “You could totally hold that up in front of you if you had to.” Well, she thought shields were supposed to have handles on the back – something hers didn’t; she’d have to do the spell again in a minute with that in mind – so… “Well, prop it up in front of you, anyway,” she amended her statement. “At least it’s flat and kinda shield-shaped now.” There had been before and would, Mellie was sure, be again lessons where she’d give a pretty to have whatever she was working on get that close to being the object it was supposed to be by the time she left class for the day. She found her ability with a wand to be a little unreliable, if anything, given to sometimes being about average, sometimes things were even easy, before she’d hit a phase where nothing went right.
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Mellie
Go us!
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Mellie
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