Is what little girls' Christmas presents are made of on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

September 28, 2014 3:41 AM

Intermediates - sugar and spice and all things mice by Professor Skies

The holidays were rapidly approaching and there was every possibility that her students' attention had started to wane. She had every sympathy with them for her own mind was prone to wander back over the pages of the owl order gift catalogues she'd been studying, or recall delicious favourites that needed to be added to the grocery list (or just fantasise about eating them). Christmas was exciting – it was a break from school, a time for family, and there were presents and the most fantastic food. Much as she enjoyed her job, when it got this tantalisingly close to the winter break, she couldn't help but be eager for the last day of term.

The best way she'd found of combating this so far was a week of Christmas-themed lessons in the run up to the break. Her beginners had been making baubles out of pebbles for the large tree that stood at the front of the room and, her advanced students had been conjuring holly and ivy (she had thought about the idea of setting mistletoe to give some of them a nudge in the right direction for asking each other to the ball but had decided it was probably safer not to) and now her intermediates were in for some festive fun. She hoped. She couldn't quite decide whether this lesson verged on the macabre or not, and wasn't convinced that all the students would be so keen on the end of class treat after the work they'd undertaken... Still, she had to make it at least somewhat relevant to the curriculum.

“Good morning,” she smiled, as they took their seats. “To get you into the festive mood, we're going to be making sugar mice this morning. You can start with either a mouse or, for a greater challenge, a canary,” she explained. Admittedly, the harder challenge was somewhat easier than the tasks she'd been setting the older students generally; they had been predominantly working on non-animate to animate versions of the tasks but it was nearly Christmas and they probably were feeling a little worn down. “Whilst I wouldn't advise eating your results, you can trade your project in for an actual sugar mouse at the end of class – one which I assure you begun life that way.

“The spell sucree souris, will work for both projects, using a sprinkling wand motion,” she explained, demonstrating on one of the canaries. It was as if she was dusting it with icing sugar from the tip of her wand before it sharply morphed into a yellow sugar mouse. She supposed she should have changed the colour as canaries were already yellow but they had always been her favourite. “For those of you using a mouse, a spell that doesn't specify the animal concerned should also work. However, I advise against you using 'confectione' and your homework will be to research why this spell would be inappropriate, and to suggest a non-species specific incantation that you could have used instead. You may begin this task during class if you have time. When your mice are finished, please bring them to me for inspection then hang them on the tree – they are enchanted so that if your spell wears off, the resultant live mouse will find itself back in its cage rather than tied by its tail to a fir, worry not. Please collect your creature and begin.”

OOC – Minimum 200 words with points for length, realism, creativity and relevance. Enjoy.

Subthreads:

Attack of the sugar blob by Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren

Is what little girls' Christmas presents are made of by Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren with Liliana Bannister, Pecari

13 Professor Skies Intermediates - sugar and spice and all things mice 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren

September 28, 2014 8:59 AM

Attack of the sugar blob by Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren

Francesca was looking forward to the holidays. She was sure they weren't going to be a total break, what with CATS at the end of the year (indeed, several lengthy holiday tasks had already been assigned) but studying at home with hot chocolate and their house elf's ginger snaps, and with breaks taken in museums or walking through a snowy park definitely sounded preferable to studying full time in the Sonora library. Between now and then she only had a handful of classes to get through (and some of the teachers seemed to be winding down for break) and the last dinner at school to look forward to, at which she would give Adam and Ginny their Christmas presents. Ginny was relatively easy to buy for, so long as Francesca didn't doubt her own taste too terribly, as jewellery and the like was always an option. Adam was harder. She would have thought that having two brothers and not exactly being the girliest girl she would have cracked it by now, but both of her brothers always had a lengthy list of books they wanted. Even if they didn't, nice leather-bound notebooks usually went over well. However, she didn't feel she knew Adam's taste in books well enough and, unlike Theodore, she wasn't in the habit of forcing good, improving books on people regardless of whether they wanted them or not. She usually got Adam something more or less Quidditch related and this year was no exception, though oddly it had inspired a change of direction in Ginny's gift too. She had been thumbing through a Quidditch magazine when she'd seen the advert for Wizard McClean's Post-Match Soaks, little balls of powder that dissolved in the bath and which promised to 'beat grass and mud stains and soothe aching muscles.' Although the ingredients were the same in all of them, they could be purchased in a variety of colours to suit the person's team affiliation. Francesca didn't think it was her inherent bias that led her to believe that yellow and brown weren't the most appealing colours for such products, and so she had opted for neutral (and festive) green. Of course many more similar products existed in more floral scents and pastel colours, aimed at witches, and so Ginny was getting some she'd found in a general gift catalogue. She had doubled up both these orders for her sisters' presents, with the idea of giving a set of post-Quidditch soaks to Ingrid, and the others to Jemima, who also tended towards the more girly end of the spectrum.

She was still awaiting the owl orders, which were due in that day or the next, and so was feeling the happy anticipation of gift giving as she took her seat in Transfiguration. She was pleased with the lesson, mostly because the advanced task sounded quite straight forward and so perhaps her cheerful mood wouldn't be curtailed by the usual frustrations of this difficult class. She wasn't sure she'd want to be eating any sugar mice afterwards but she could add it to her stock of Christmas gifts.

She took a canary, trying to ignore the urge to start researching the homework question straight away. There was something on the tip of her mind about it.... perhaps the word was a false friend of some kind? Did she already know that or was that just a logical assumption from what Professor Skies had said? The little niggle that this related to something she already knew, along with her natural inclination towards the more academic side, made her far more eager to start looking into that problem than to actually tackle the practical. But that wasn't what had been asked of her. She practised the wand movement a few times as it was an unusual one. She'd got the hang of doing things from the wrist, so it wasn't as stiff and awkward as it might have been when she was a beginner. Still, this one was particularly delicate and she didn't think she was doing it quite so deftly as Professor Skies had, even when she'd practised a few times. Oh well, time to see how it would go...

She assessed the canary, trying to picture it morphing into the stylised shape of a sugar mouse. Their noses were relatively pointy, though compared to a beak it would need a little rounding out. The wings could become the front legs and the feet the back ones... The tail would need to shrink and become string, so that was two different materials to hold in her mind at once.

“Sucree souris,” she cast, dusting her canary as lightly as she could manage. The bird stopped flappping, taking on a definitely sugar-like appearance and turning white. Alongside its own tail, a piece of string trailed out. It also wasn't so bird shaped any more though it wasn't really mouse-like either it was more.... blobular.

“Snowballs are Christmassy too, right?” she joked to her neighbour, indicating what was very much a work in progress.

13 Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren Attack of the sugar blob 250 Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren 0 5

Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren

September 29, 2014 5:38 AM

Is what little girls' Christmas presents are made of by Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren

Christmas was coming. The park in Chicago would be deep with snow, adding a sharp edge to his morning jog, or a crisp air to any family walks. He enjoyed many elements of the day itself – the receiving of interesting books, the delicious food and, to an extent, the parlour games. He tended to have had his fill of them before most of the others, although his mother's riddles and charades were always witty and inventive, which he appreciated. It was the interminable round of socialising in the surrounding days that got to him though... He liked all of the people involved (bar one or two more shrill cousins or daughters of friends) but it was a constant circuit of them, all suspending their normal ability to be interesting and engaging in preference of the same trite set of greetings and questions regarding the holidays. He wanted to be pleasant company and to enjoy theirs but he just found it all so wearing after a while, wanting time and space to regroup before the next engagement but not finding such things forthcoming.

He was advance-compensating for the onslaught of over-socialisation by withdrawing further into his own company during the final weeks of term. The difference probably wasn't overly noticeable – his general hobbies of running, swimming and reading were all solitary efforts anyway, and he tended not to be the one to initiate conversations. It wasn't that he disliked people. He liked them very well, in small and interesting doses.

He took his seat in Transfiguration. The lesson seemed relatively productive for him. As a new comer to this level, he was still working on stilling living creatures. He normally had to do something with their shape as well but he supposed a sugar mouse didn't resemble a real mouse very closely, and perhaps this was a good chance to try getting something in one go.

He took a mouse, trying to imagine it turning into its small and caricatured sugar self and practising the wand motion a few times. It was a fiddly one, and he preferred things with broader wand strokes. He supposed that was further merit, pushing him to try something he found difficult.

“Sucree souris,” he cast, trying to be as delicate as he could manage. His wand was not particularly pliant and he thought that was part of why he didn't take to such motions easily. Or rather, he was naturally disinclined to them which had made him well suited to a wand that reflected this in its own nature. It was possible, of course, for wands to sense the wizard or witch's deficits and ally itself with someone whom it balanced but it was more unusual. Wands chose wizards they felt an empathy with, tending somewhat compound their natural failings.

He leant over, studying the result carefully. It had transformed into a sugar mouse, that much was technically true.... However, it was far more realistic than any of the candies he'd ever seen, or the example Professor Skies had held up. It had detailed fur scored into the sugar, and delicate crystal whiskers instead of the drawn on lines. He wondered how solid the sugar was... Did it go all the way through or was their still mouse in the middle? Although he wasn't generally squeamish about Transfiguration that was a slightly stomach churning thought. He hadn't been particularly inclined to eat the mice, even those Professor Skies was offering which were guaranteed to be safe, as he didn't have much of a sweet tooth but that thought definitely set him against it. He'd give it to one of his younger sisters, Ingrid or Jemima, and then retreat to a safe distance as they were chattersome enough without being full of sugar.

He was about to start work on the mouse again, when a voice piped up next to him, diverting his attention.

13 Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren Is what little girls' Christmas presents are made of 270 Theodore Wolseithcrafte, Aladren 0 5

Liliana Bannister, Pecari

September 29, 2014 8:25 PM

Generally speaking, perhaps by Liliana Bannister, Pecari

Now that the Midterm was approaching, Liliana had found herself getting more and more excited for her return home to England. Winter holidays were different than summer holidays and much better too, she believed. Though the summer holidays were longer than winter ones, she inevitably always had to spend some of her holiday at “home”, in Connecticut. Though she had technically lived there for the past four years, she didn’t feel as though it were home at all. She had spent the majority of three of those years at Sonora, going back to England as much as she could during her breaks. And though snowy Connecticut was beautiful and the small town they lived on the edge of looked nice in the winter it just wasn’t the same.

Her head was deep in thought about how lovely her grandparent’s countryside estate always looked in the winter her whole walk from the Defense classroom to Transfiguration. She was excited to play Quidditch in the snow with her cousins, her favorite type of weather for the sport, and to attend the grand balls her grandmother always threw. As she was getting older, she was starting to take more and more interest in the girly things her mother and grandmother had always wanted her to be a part of, and even though she had previously enjoyed ballet, she was starting to realize that being rough all the time was not very becoming to young ladies. Though Liliana had yet to take an interest in any particular boy at the school, she had noticed that the girls who boys liked tended to be on the more delicate side-- Charlotte Spencer certainly never ran rampant on a Quidditch broom and neither did Ji-Eun Park.

As usual, Liliana wasn’t particularly paying attention when Professor Skies was giving the lesson for the day, which, to be perfectly honest, was probably why she didn’t do too well in the subject. It wasn’t that she was awful at school-- Liliana could be intelligent when she wished to, she just had a hard time focusing when in the classroom environment. She’d been able to achieve Es in all her other classes, her mark in Defense falling just short of an O (she greatly enjoyed the chills the class sent down her spine), but Transfiguration was the one subject in which she still struggled. Which was odd since on paper Potions took a lot more concentration and precision.

Today, after Skies set them to work, she sat, staring at the cute little mouse before her. If this was Care of Magical Creatures the mouse wouldn’t have to fear for its life. Although technically the mouse would die either way, Liliana felt as though being turned into a sugar mouse was a lot less painful than what her mouse would probably have to go through when she eventually attempted the Sucree souris spell. Although she knew how to speak French and could pronounce the spell perfectly, Liliana was sure her mouse would appear in a mangled, bloody mess, probably with a broken spine upon re-transformation, should Professor Skies wish, while other students’ mice would probably be able to turn back into real mice.

“You know,” she said to Theodore as she watched him work on his mouse. “I think it would be safer for everyone involved if I didn’t cast the spell.” She turned a quizzical eye towards the poor creature who would have to endure her mistakes. Liliana could just see it. The whole class would have perfect mice and she would have a weird looking thing to hand in. “I mean, honestly, this is not going to go well. But you know,” she continued. “No matter how long I stall it’ll still end up the same so I might as well get it over with.”

“Sucree souris,” Liliana raised her wand and twirled it around a little. Sure enough, though she ended up with a thoroughly sugared object, it was weirdly deformed to the point that she wasn’t entirely sure that it even was a mouse. Liliana shook her head bitterly. The nose of the mouse was drooped and the little feet which had been so cute beforehand were scattered out around the lumpy body of her sugar “mouse.” In addition, the tail was missing-- though it might have actually turned up as the awkwardly long fifth leg that seemed to have taken up resident in between what may or may not have been the mouse’s ears. “At least it’s all sugar,” Liliana said cheerfully. “I’m sure after a few more tries I can make it look right.”

That was the problem with Transfiguration. She had to give it her undivided attention, thinking about each individual part of the assignment while performing the spell. And no matter how hard she tried she just was never able to keep her mind focused. It always strayed off, thinking about different things that had happened over the past week or random family tidbits that would randomly spring to mind. Today, for example, while transfiguring she had thought of the time her cousin, Reuben, had gotten in trouble for letting mice into a girl’s trunk at Hogwarts as a Christmas “present” despite the fact that their family didn’t even celebrate Christmas.

“Excited for the holidays then?” Liliana asked conversationally as she turned the mouse over in her hand, thinking about what she should fix on it first.

10 Liliana Bannister, Pecari Generally speaking, perhaps 274 Liliana Bannister, Pecari 0 5

Theodore Wolseithcrafte

October 04, 2014 2:41 AM

What are you hoping for? by Theodore Wolseithcrafte

The voice belonged to Liliana Bannister – his opposite. Although he initially meant it in the Quidditch sense, he began to wonder in how many senses it might be true. She was female, he was male. She was Pecari and whilst the houses did not have direct opposites, he felt that and Aladren were about as far apart as you could get. She also, from current evidence, seemed rather chatty. Both of them being Purebloods was about the only point he could find on which they did not seem to differ.

As she prattled and had a go at the spell, he took the opportunity to turn his mouse back to its original form and have another go. This yielded much the same result except he was almost sure he saw the whiskers twitching... It was much harder to focus now that his desk-mate had engaged him in conversation.

“Yes, I'm sure they will be very pleasant,” he nodded amiably, when she inevitably asked about the holidays. The week leading up to the holidays tended to be dominated by this sort of conversation, whilst the week following it tended to involve speaking about how it had gone. It was rather tedious as it wasn't as if the outcomes were likely to be variable and dramatic. Even if they were, people were unlikely to do anything beyond put on the appropriate social smile and say they'd been wonderful. If only people put so much energy into having conversations around things that really mattered. Elections, for example, or the voting in of new policies – it wasn't always clear cut how things were going to go, and the implications on their own lives were serious. Yet the amount of airtime such occurrences got in most people's conversation paled in comparison with trivial and unvaried things like the celebration of Christmas. “And you?” he queried because he knew it would be rude if he didn't.

“I must inquire,” he asked, he had taken most of Liliana's musings about her work as rhetorical but one point had piqued his interest, “why would it be safer for everyone if you hadn't attempted this?” Whilst her work was undeniably messy, it did not seem to have endangered anyone, and he couldn't recall her overtly causing serious incidents in class. “Are you prone to catastrophes?”

13 Theodore Wolseithcrafte What are you hoping for? 270 Theodore Wolseithcrafte 0 5

Liliana Bannister

October 04, 2014 8:25 PM

Skills, skills on toast. by Liliana Bannister

Liliana noticed that Theodore was able to turn his mouse back and forth which disconcerted her. Was she really that far behind in Transfiguration? She was managing to achieve nice grades with her other classes so she knew it wasn’t her magic that was defunct, but sitting near classmates who had the hang of things in this class always made her feel a little bit inadequate so she preferred to distract herself with mindless conversation.

“Yes, I'm sure they will be very pleasant,” Theodore replied to her question about the holidays. “And you?”

She tilted her head to the side and stroked the sugar blob fondly before placing it back on the table with a sigh. “I think mine will be nice too. This year Hanukkah comes a little later than normal so I will be able to send at least the last few days at home with my family.” It was difficult, sometimes, being a different religion than the majority of her classmates. While her classmates were able to go home and spend their major holiday with their families, Liliana had to stay at school and fast alone on Yom Kippur. She supposed she didn’t mind being alone on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, but it was always hard on Purim as it was a fun holiday that many children loved. It just wasn’t the same, being a continent and an ocean away from her family and having to play catch-up. At least at Hogwarts and her cousins were able to spend the school-year holidays together.

“I must inquire,” he asked, “why would it be safer for everyone if you hadn't attempted this? Are you prone to catastrophes?”

Liliana lifted up her little sugar thing for Theodore to see. “I think I mainly meant the mouse. I’m scared to turn this back into a live mouse to try again because of what it will look like. I’ve probably killed it…” She placed the ex-mouse gingerly back onto the table. “It’s not that I’m really prone to accidents, it’s just… Transfiguration has never been my best subject. I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.” She smiled down at her creation again. “And then I get really attached to the things so that makes it really hard for me to make them right the next time around.”

To be fair, the only reason she had gotten this far in Transfiguration was because she was able to ask Atlas questions about the homework. The disappearance in the professors the last year had put her at a great disadvantage and Liliana had spent part of the summer with a tutor to help her catch up. She was slightly ashamed to be doing so poorly in that class, especially because she knew she wasn’t dumb-- she was succeeding in all her other classes, wasn’t she?

10 Liliana Bannister Skills, skills on toast. 274 Liliana Bannister 0 5

Theodore Wolseithcrafte

October 11, 2014 2:51 AM

I'm not sure those can be given by Theodore Wolseithcrafte

“That's good,” he acknowledged, when she mentioned being able to spend some of Hanukkah with her family, glad that he had asked about holidays rather than Christmas. “How will you be celebrating?” he queried. He knew vaguely that it also involved presents and, he thought, lots of candles but he was somewhat vague on the specifics. Plus every family had their own way of doing things.

“I'm quite sure the mouse will be quite alright,” he said, wondering whether Lilianna had listened to any of Professor Skies' speeches this term. The mouse was not being suffocated inside the sugar blob but had been shifted out of this reality to make way for the sugar and existed in a complete state either in another dimension of suspended between them. Fatalities in Transfiguration were exceptionally low. “Remember chapter three – suspended states of being in animate transfiguration?”

He couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as she mentioned becoming attached to the things she made. He eyed up the mess on her table, from which he could almost conceive why she thought she might have killed the mouse. It looked like a sugar incarnation of a mouse that had been crushed in a trap. A strange, mutant mouse with five legs. Lilianna really had to be sentimental to an extreme to be attached to that. He was surprised at her. She had grown up around magic, and presumably seen animals Transfigured before. Of course some girls still got squeamish about such things but she was a Pecari Quidditch playing girl. The two notions were strangely incompatible in his mind.

“Perhaps it is presumptuous of me, as I admit I don't know you well but you never struck me as the kind to be sentimental,” he commented, quite glad of the opportunity to get to probe a little deeper. Finding out what made people tick was interesting.

OOC – sorry, probably semi my fault for not mentioning it in Professor Skies' post but I've always taught Transfiguration as being unlikely to result in dead or mutilated things. Check back through some of the other intermediate lessons if you'd like to see more about what she would have told them. I sometimes forget there are people who have their first intermediates and so won't have heard the speech.

13 Theodore Wolseithcrafte I'm not sure those can be given 270 Theodore Wolseithcrafte 0 5