Advanced Class - dig your claws in on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

November 15, 2013 4:45 PM

Advanced Class - dig your claws in by Professor Skies

Professor Skies surveyed her advanced class without her characteristic good cheer. They had done nothing wrong and she was in no way angry with them but today's class was serious and she wished to impart this from the very start. Since the start of term, they had been looking at the theory of human transfiguration. Although ethics and legality had been touched on during some other topics, most notably switching spells, this was the first topic where it had been a major component of the coursework, and the students had an essay due on the subject the following week.

“Good afternoon. Housekeeping first – your essays are due at the end of next week. If you would like me to look over anything or discuss any points with me today, please do. I shall be making my way around during class.

“As you know,” the class syllabus had detailed their timetable for the year and she had also mentioned it in the week preceding this one, along with the fact that any students feeling anxious should come and see her in her office hours, “today is our first optional practical lesson on human transfiguration. Owing to the ethical considerations in this subject area, no one is forced to participate and it will not appear on the practical section of the exam. The reason we cover it is partly to sate your curiosity – many people are interested in the subject. It can come in useful in post-Sonora life. For example, anyone wishing to become an Auror must pass an examination in disguise skills. It is useful to have some foundation to build these skills on. Finally, it is a difficult branch of the subject, and anything that stretches you improves you. So, even if you have no interest in ever doing this again, at least you are flexing your Transfiguration muscles.

“You have a choice today of working on your fingernails or your hair. I would prefer for you to do fingernails as they are easier to target and further away from any vital organs. You won't scramble your brains by targeting your hair but I always feel it's best to start at the extremities. However, I understand that the thought of working on fingernails creeps some people out.

“If working on your nails, your task is to turn them into talons. If you are working on your hair, try turning it into fur. The details of the spells can be found on page 32 onwards of your textbooks. If you need any help, please let me know, or speak to your peers.”

OOC – I have deliberately left gaps, such as the incantations, as I feel that, as advanced students, you should be more than capable of contributing in detail to the class, and thus you are more actively encouraged than ever to make up theory as well as elements of the practical, such as the incantations. Posts will be marked on length, creativity, realism and relevance, and must be a minimum of 200 words.

Subthreads:

There are times I'd do that. by Alicia Bauer, Aladren

That sounds rather dangerous. by Valerie Lennox. Crotalus

What I've been waiting for... by Nora Dobson, Aladren

A bit wary... by Evan Brockert, Aladren

13 Professor Skies Advanced Class - dig your claws in 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Alicia Bauer, Aladren

November 20, 2013 1:55 AM

There are times I'd do that. by Alicia Bauer, Aladren

As she settled into her seat, Alicia made an effort to hide her excitement about the coming lesson in response to Professor Skies’ serious expression, but it was a difficult task. She had been looking forward to this class ever since she saw the syllabus at the beginning of the year, and for the past week, she had been studying daily in anticipation of getting to actually try something interesting out for once, rather than just learning the theory. This was one of the most difficult, dangerous, and complicated things she had ever tried, definitely the hardest one she had ever gotten to try, relative to what the books said should be her skill level, openly in a classroom, and she could hardly wait to get to it.

Suppressing a smile grew slightly easier when Skies mentioned the ethical problems some people had with the subject, as she worried about people getting the wrong impression from her wanting to participate, though the rest of the speech, apparently trying to persuade the reluctant to do it anyway, did make her feel a little better. The possibility of her moral standing being questioned wouldn’t have been enough to stop her, but it might well have dimmed the pleasure of both the effort and the eventual accomplishment without the second part, which would have been…irritating at best.

As the shine had worn off, Alicia had worried, a few times, about becoming everything she had spent as much of her life as she could remember despising since she’d turned seventeen, but Professor Skies was, by and large, an encouraging sight in that regard. She was an adult and yet not an utter condescending moron – she seemed to recognize they were, in fact, people despite their ages and generally treated them with at least the very basic level of respect anyone who knew a few good jinxes deserved, which was behavior Alicia appreciated in an authority figure. Skies’ current behavior, encouraging them to try out difficult tasks just for their own sake, for the sake of learning and to see what they were capable of, was even more approved of, for whatever her approval was worth. She was still acutely aware that too many people would say it didn’t amount to much, though it was soothing to think of how many more opportunities she would have, as an adult herself, for altering that opinion.

As she opened her textbook, she began the exercise, which she had come up with earlier in the year when she tired of Isaac complaining about his classes and had seen an opportunity there, of looking for applications for skill-building spells which seemed, in and of themselves, intrinsically useless. For one thing, it was just good to practice thinking that way, and for another, feeling that the spell had a purpose seemed to make the spells themselves somewhat easier to execute. These two were difficult, but…fur could be used as a way to not freeze to death in the wrong circumstances or, perhaps more likely, in partial transformations, which did not alter the mind, to, well, hide, which was always a useful thing to have many ways of doing, and the talons could have several applications. Offense, defense, climbing, and hanging on, if they were the right kind, all came to mind, depending on one’s style of magic and the spells which came easiest, always an important consideration in such perilous situations as all those.

She gave up trying to think of more applications as she got to the right place in the book. Hair and nails into fur and claws; she thought those should be relatively straightforward, really just a matter of species, since fur and hair especially seemed pretty close to each other anyway. There were structural differences under a strong lens, she observed in the illustrations in her book, but less than in some standard Transfigurations; the difficulty was in confining the effect to only part of a structure, to not transfigure her scalp and from there her head and then run into trouble. The difficulty, that was, aside from the fact it was her hair.

Alicia ran the bottom inch or so of thick dark brown hair through her fingers, looking at it tentatively. It was, of course, ridiculous, given the things she didn't mind, but…her hair. Her best feature. In public. To impress, though, she would have to Transfigure both sets of nails (which she had painted yesterday, too) and her hair, which was going to be difficult no matter what order she did it in because of how hard it was likely to be to hold a wand with any structures which could be dubbed ‘talons’ attached to one hand.

Part of her tried suggesting that if other people were allowed to be squeamish about their fingernails, she could be squeamish about her hair, at least on the first day. The rest of her told that part to shut it, that those people were either whiny brats who would never have to accomplish anything for themselves or else the sort of people who made As. She did, though, decide to start with one fingernail on her left hand, then, if that was successful, to try working her way up to Transfiguring all the nails on that hand at once. If she got that done in class, then she'd risk her hair.

For now, she read the material over one more time, then reviewed the incantation she’d need.

Verto unguem. There were several ways to translate that, but in context, she thought ‘I cause it to develop into a talon’ was probably the best option, since turning her fingernails upside-down didn’t sound appealing and, well-kept though they were, she really doubted they were up to overthrowing the government. Sometimes, knowing things didn’t actually make tasks easier, and right now, she knew knowing more about the word than she needed to was going to make the task somewhat harder, when it was already one which would require a lot of concentration and magical exertion. If she thought at just the wrong moment about the other definition of ‘to turn,’ in both languages, that could be quite painful….

Now that double meaning was the elephant in her head. Great. Willing herself to concentrate, she pointed her wand at her index finger, pictured it turning into a talon, and said, “Verto unguem.”

The nail did not grow as far as she had had in mind, but did seem to thicken and curve while growing as far as it did, and she grimaced in discomfort as she undid it and tried again. The second time, she got it sharp and gasped, shaking her hand pointlessly, before catching herself and hastily undoing it and then shaking her hand some more.

“This might be less fun than I expected,” she muttered, only just catching herself short of popping her finger in her mouth. “Be careful about sharp talons,” she added to her neighbor, in case they’d heard her speak. “Because that hurts if you’re not.” Would she need to transfigure the fingertip to that of something more suited to talon-having, too, or was that just what she should have pictured as part of the original transfiguration? She decided to try that out next and see what happened.

OOC: ‘Verto’ may be translated, according to my handy-dandy Oxford Latin Desk Dictionary, as ‘turn, turn around or about; turn upside down; overthrow; alter; change; transform; turn out; cause to develop (into); pass into a new frame of mind; translate’. There were several other words I might have used, and I picked that one, relying on ‘cause to develop (into)’, mostly so I could make Alicia’s life harder and make the comment about her fingernails overthrowing the government, though 'claw' and 'fingernail' apparently being the same word in Latin helped. ‘Unguis,’ also according to the OLDD, is ‘m. nail (of a human finger or toe), claw, talon, hoof’, with 'unguem' as the accusative form.

I considered the imperative ("Fingernails turn into talons!"), rather than the active indicative singular, but it doesn’t seem to be, after an admittedly hasty review, quite how most spells from the HP books, as far as I can make them out, ‘work;’ I’ve got some Magical Theory Thoughts there, but am leaving them out until I do more research.

16 Alicia Bauer, Aladren There are times I'd do that. 210 Alicia Bauer, Aladren 0 5

Valerie Lennox. Crotalus

November 23, 2013 4:21 PM

That sounds rather dangerous. by Valerie Lennox. Crotalus

There were only two classes that Valerie was taking now that she was in Advanced classes, Charms and of course, Transfiguration. This was the latter and the one class she'd actually got an O in on her RATS. Thank Merlin for Grandmother's genes. The seventh year felt that was a major contributer to her abilities in the subject. There was no way Valerie would be good enough at it anyway. At least not as good and she'd felt she'd had to try a lot harder than some people anyway. Sometimes, she'd felt weak after doing magic, though not as much now. Or had missed class, which had previously put her behind despite the best efforts of Melanie and Ryan to help.

But she was better now, even though she still got sick on occasion. Still, Valerie couldn't help being totally anxious about her grades. Like she wasn't as good as others, not even here. She knew she couldn't compare herself to Ryan, who was especially gifted or even Nora Dobson, who seemed to be all over brilliant. Like Melanie, but more intimidating, However the Crotalus at least had two years on her sister and learned more difficult stuff. Still, she very much appreciated her sister's help. Or anyone's. She wished she didn't, she at least wanted to do well in classes, even if she was hopeles in every other way except needle work. Valerie was especially bad at socializing due to her being constanly ill. Now she was painfully shy, only comfortable around friends,

Though, she was a bit worried about holding them back, epecially Melanie and Brianna. The last thing she wanted to was stand in the way of either, especially considering they had other relationships. Valerie begrudged neither of those them but she couldn't help but feel left out or a third wheel. To a certain extent she felt a little bit jealous too, because she had serious doubts Jasper felt the same about her.

And she really did want it to work. Not that everyone was expected to gush over her illnesses but it would be nice if he cared. Plus, there was so much more to it than that. Valerie wanted it to be equal as possible, with mutual caring if not outright love. Of course, it happened with many purebloods that love was not a factor. Ryan and Sophie had just been lucky as were her sister and Marcus. However, Valerie wasn't so fortunate, given her heath issues, she'd had to take what she could and in that sense she did feel lucky. That someone would agree to marry her at all. And it wasn't like Jasper was a bad guy and he wasn't that social, which was comforting to the shy girl. He just...was probably not in love with her and she didn't think she was in love with him in either, but she wanted to be and wanted him to be with her, just like her sister and Marcus and Ryan and Sophie and Brianna and Linus.

Valerie also worried about being too clingy. She knew this would never be an issue with her sister but she was terrified of her friends getting sick of it and abandoning her. She wasn't too worried about it with her sister but what if Melanie and Brianna wanted to spend time with their significant others? And even if Jasper did like her, he still wasn't here and Valerie felt lonely sometimes.

She listened as Professor Skies gave her lesson. Human Transfiguration? Valerie had no ethical obligations to the subject but she was a little afraid to try it. The Crotalus knew that she did not want talons, though they might come in handy when her potion brought on a furious bout of itching. However, there were all sorts of bacterias that could grow under the nails. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't last that long before her nails reverted back to their natural state, which was pretty short. Valerie was afraid that Professor Skies wouldn't think she was putting forth enough effort. She felt she had to try that much harder to do well. Even though things were technically easier for her now, years and years of feeling less capable had taken their toll.

But that was the lesson, to create talons or fur. She knew that fur wasn't that big of a deal. Ryan was becoming an animagus and he'd gotten to the point where he could grow it. She, however, was actually more comfortable with the talons. As fearful as Valerie was about bacteria that could grow under her nails-she was fearful of any sort of germs with good reason-she didn't think the talons would be as difficult and Professor Skies would prefer them to transfigure their nails. The Crotalus did tend to be the sort who did what she was told, since she was used to following Healer's instructions as well as trying to do as society dictated and learn her lessons so she'd be a good witch.

Valerie looked down at her nails, which were fairly short but well kept. Despite the worries about bacteria, her mother was big on her and Melanie looking nice, though more was expected of the Teppenpaw than her. It had always been like that because of Valerie's illness that her mother didn't....think she would do as well in life or something. Or even have one. It kind of hurt. It was like Mother didn't like her as much because she'd been ill. And she seemed to treat Melanie as some kind of doll. Valerie also didn't really like how Mother had acted towards Brianna when she'd come to visit.

However, Professor Skies did not simply want long nails, she wanted actual talons, like a bird of prey had. After looking up the incantation, Valerie pictured such a thing in her mind, picturing claws sprouting out where her nails were, “Verto unguem.” She said, tapping her left index finger and looked down at her nail which was very clawlike in appearance now and more...animalistic than simply a very long nail. As unappealing and dangerous as it looked, Valerie was still proud of herself for being able to do it and decided to try again, with about the same degree of success. Maybe she could do her entire left hand. It might be too hard to do the right one when she needed her wand and it would be a little hard to use it on the hand she was working on.

Still, she couldn't help admire what she'd done. She just hoped it wouldn't seem like she was showing off.

0 Valerie Lennox. Crotalus That sounds rather dangerous. 0 Valerie Lennox. Crotalus 0 5

Nora Dobson, Aladren

December 06, 2013 9:19 PM

What I've been waiting for... by Nora Dobson, Aladren

This had to be the third greatest moment in Nora Dobson's life after getting prefect and Head Girl of course. They were going to be doing human transfiguration . Oh, she'd been wanting to do that since she was a first year and met her roommates. It was just too bad Kitty wasn't around anymore. Not that the seventh year was happy she'd been in such a bad accident of course. Still, there had to be someone else irritating she could try this out on.

She had of course read ahead in the syllabus and had she not been a proper lady, she would have shouted with utter glee at the prospect of human transfiguration. Sort of like she wanted to do when she'd been named Head Girl. Her essay was coming along very nicely too, though she supposed it wouldn't hurt to have it looked over. Still, Nora wouldn't call herself a perfectionist-being one was dangerous, everyone in her family got all worried-she just...naturally assumed her work would be or pretty darn close.

The essay had had to do with ethics in human transfiguration. Now, the Aladren might have inherited a few unethical-or at least insensitive-genes from Grandfather, but she couldn't imagine a single one of her relatives saying the topic was unethical. Okay, maybe it was wrong to do to Muggles, but that was more of a legal issue and it involved the ability to obliviate people's memories. Something else that Nora would be quite happy to learn to do.She'd made quite sure to write that in her essay. On the other hand, becoming a registered animagus was perfectly okay. Several of her relatives had done it including the future Headmaster . In fact, Professor Skies was one herself. And really the registered part was just more bureaucratic legal junk.

And she couldn't see any issue with transfiguring others either. After all, it was what Nora had been waiting for for the last seven years. She just had to find someone as annoying as Kitty had been to practice it on. There had to be some Pecari around that qualified. Or a firstie. Or a firstie Pecari. And they should probably not be an important pureblood. But there had to be someone irritating of some age that wasn't a pureblood. Come to think of it, she could probably think of a few good non-pureblood candidates off the top her head. Nora just hoped that that was the next lesson.

Always one to pay an excessive amount of attention in class, this time the seventh year was even more riveted by the lesson if that was possible. Oh,she knew she'd be at least somewhat successful on the first try, she always was, always had been. "Verto unguem" Nora said, pointing her wand at her left pointer finger. What she really wanted to do was the whole hand into a talon, a complete claw-or better yet, someone else's hand into a complete claw-but Professor Skies wanted just the nails, so the nails she would do. The nail she had attempted was-unsurprisingly-quite long, maybe even a whole foot. Truthfully, even though Nora wasn't a girly girl who cared about having a perfect manicure, it was quite gross looking. They were probably longer than Professor Skies wanted too. However, the Aladren was not about to stop and after changing it back, as it not only was it not only what the professor probably wanted, but would probably also get in the way. "Verto unguem"

This was much better and Nora grinned. She had an actual animal claw. A proper talon. Now to do the rest of her fingers. If it went correctly, maybe she could do her right hand too.

11 Nora Dobson, Aladren What I've been waiting for... 197 Nora Dobson, Aladren 0 5

Evan Brockert, Aladren

December 06, 2013 10:56 PM

A bit wary... by Evan Brockert, Aladren

Typically, Evan liked Transfiguration. He was very good at it, and honestly wandwork in general. This lesson, however, worried him just a little. It had nothing to do with how well he'd do but the fact that Nora seemed really excited about it. Like almost as much as she had been when she'd been elected Head Girl. The kind where it was taking every ounce of self control and propriety she possessed not to bounce up and down in her seat.

His own essay had been on ethics as instructed. Evan had written that there was of course nothing wrong with human transfiguration such as becoming an animagi. It was a true achievement in one's life and something for them to be proud of. On the other hand, well, if such magic, like any magic, was used by the wrong person, it could go quite bad. For example, Uncle Liam shouldn't be transfiguring anyone into anything. He also didn't think people should use human transfiguration if they weren't...capable of it. People could get horribly disfigured for life, unless someone good at the subject came along and fixed it. Which could be quite a good career, though not for Evan. He was going to be an artist. Well, technically he already was but he meant professionally.

However, when Professor Skies announced that people could sit out if they found it unethical, Evan did not join that group-and naturally neither did Nora. He truly didn't feel it was, not on its own. It was just the idea of certain people doing it kind of scared him. However, if someone who was unethical wanted to change him-if they learned that lesson-he wanted to be able to fight back. The Aladren was taking Defense for similar reasons rather than Potions.

When it was time to actually get to the lesson, Evan eyed his older cousin warily for a moment. He felt bad for not trusting her really, she wasn't an evil person like her grandfather, she was just a little...insensitive. She thought completely with her head, forgetting the human aspect of things. It was fortunate that transfiguration was a painless subject. It was difficult but safe. There was more threat from someone incompetent at it than someone who wanted to experiment on human beings which Evan knew his cousin well enough to know she probably wanted to do just that, but once she had these lessons, she'd do a good job of it. He just didn't want to be the person who got on her bad sign.

However, now was not the time. Despite Professor Skies' recommendation to go with the nails, Evan just couldn't. Full blown talons would be all right and he could probably do them but if they just turned into long nails, they'd just look girly or creepy, depending on one's viewpoint and the Aladren didn't want that . Hair into fur it was.

He envisioned his hair turning into the fur of a rabbit. Of course, being that it was on the top of his head, he had no idea what it looked like though when he rose his left hand up there, it certainly felt like fur rather than his own hair. Whether or not it was the same color as his natural hair rather than the fur was another question. He grabbed his parchment and quickly did the spell that would turn it into a mirror. When in doubt, use Transfiguration. Practically a family motto.

Evan looked into the newly transfigured mirror to find that while everything appeared to be fur, there was a white streak going down the middle of his head. He felt the white streak as well as the part where his natural hair color was. All fur. Cool. Not a look he wanted to keep, as he had to look respectable and it would probably horrify people such as his mother, his fiance, his friends and of course, Great-Grandfather if he didn't. Still, Evan was pretty proud of his success.

11 Evan Brockert, Aladren A bit wary... 212 Evan Brockert, Aladren 0 5