LOL- in which character development happens by Liliana Bannister, Pecari

So, Liliana was to encounter the issue with tortoises again, was she? The previous year, Atlas had tried to educate her in Transfiguration but what had started off as a study session had quickly degraded to a tell-all gossipy laugh fest—something Liliana was ashamed to have participated in at her age. Befriending Atlas had been weird—he was her first non-pureblood friend and also the only friend with whom she frequently argued. The friendship was not at all steady and definitely had its ups and downs and Liliana was sometimes still surprised when she realized just how close she and the Muggleborn had come to be over the past years. That she considered him to be her best friend was a huge step out of the traditionally conservative values of her family but that wasn’t something she was likely to admit to him.

“Well,” she said to her neighbor as she went up to gather her experimental subject for the day. “Let’s see how this goes.” As the middle of the intermediates, Liliana wasn’t sure which way she ought to go. The third years were surely expected to transfigure a tortoise to a teapot while the fifth years the teapot to the tortoise, but as a fourth year Liliana was sure that she could go either way. She also was sure that by attempting the fifth year spell she was sure to get points for trying the harder spell as well as make a good impression on Skies—something she needed desperately since Transfiguration was her worst subject (by now she was sure the whole school knew her as the Pecari who couldn’t transfigure). However, she also knew that if she attempted the third year spell she was more likely to have a perfect product since it was similar to exercises that she had previously come across.

Liliana’s hand wavered a bit as she reached her hand forward. In the last second, she made the quick decision to grab a teapot. She well knew her professor’s idea on how the transfiguration of objects worked. In theory it was nice, and, in theory it seemed like it would work—for someone who transfigured seamlessly, that was. Liliana on the other hand was known for her messy transfigurations no matter how neat her transfiguration tables were (something she had to do in her beginner level classes but something she had continued to do privately as with her age her skill had not gotten any better) nor how many hours she spent studying the transformation formula*. Luckily she was hanging on at the end there, managing to get a passing grade in the class but just barely and she was a little too prideful to ask the professor for help. However, she still sometimes believed in her heart of hearts that when she transfigured live things she killed them in some aspect or, at the very least, lowered their life expectancy in the long run.

Today, however, she was not at all worried about an inanimate object into an animate object as working with solely inanimate objects was something that she had at least gotten the hang of by then. Perhaps, she thought to herself as she appraised the pretty teapot sitting in front of her, today I might actually surprise myself and create an object that works rather well. Her fingers reached out and traced the black and gold Egyptian style etching around the brim of the teapot’s lid. It was a teapot that she was sure she would have loved as a birthday present, gold being one of her favorite colours, especially when it was embellishing something. Once she felt she had stared at the teapot enough, Liliana figured it was about time she started the process.

Taking a quick look around, Liliana pulled out her parchment and furtively made notes in a sloppy transfiguration table of sorts. She didn’t want anyone to know she still used this beginner’s aid to help her with her transfiguration but she also was uncomfortable working without one. Please, please work, she thought to herself as she raised her wand. Liliana squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, picturing one of the mottled miniature tortoises that lived in the ponds of her grandparent’s estate in England. She adored how the greens mingled and was looking forward to creating a similar swirling pattern on the tortoise she planned to transfigure. “Testudo,” she commanded, slowly waving her wand in a loose oval shape around the tortoise.

Before her very eyes, the teapot began to shake. First the spout’s tip grew slightly wider while the rest of the spout shrunk inwards and the handle nearly disappeared completely. The rest of the teapot seemed to be fighting itself as it tried to decide whether it wanted to flatten itself out or remain where it was while the lid enlarged and overshadowed the rest of the teapot-tortoise which was for the most part still taller and thinner than a proper tortoise ought to be. The creamy color of the teapot, however, had begun to take on the swirled dark and pale green she had pictured and Liliana wasn’t positive but she thought that the teapot had just winked at her!

Liliana beamed and prepared herself to try again, deciding that she should probably get the teapot-tortoise to fit the lid-shell and rid it of its horrid shiny appearance which probably indicated that it was more porcelain than living creature. “You know,” she said to her neighbor. “I think this is the first time that my first attempt at something in this class has ever gone so well! I’m quite proud of myself!” She beamed, eyes twinkling. “Perhaps I’ve found my calling in life—to change teapots into tortoises.”

OOC: The transformation formula as according the Harry Potter wikia is that the intended transformation is directly influenced by bodyweight (a), viciousness (v), wand power (w), concentration (c), and a fifth unknown variable (Z), a formula which appeared in the Philosopher’s Stone film.

I don't think I'm winning this race. by Lionel Layne, Pecari

Beginner Transfiguration had been challenging, requiring a lot of complicated notes and even more effort and concentration to work the spells. Lionel had thought of it as possibly his toughest class in his first two years. Now, after spending some time in Intermediate Transfiguration, his memories of those classes had assumed a rosier tinge than he thought they’d had at the time. In his first year, they’d been taught first by whatever sixth and seventh years had the time and could be persuaded or maybe bludgeoned into using it and then spent the second half of the year playing catch-up, and in his second the assignments had gotten more difficult, but neither had been anything like Intermediates so far. The class required they work hard on every level, and Lionel was more than a little amazed by the number of people he was pretty sure were Advanced students he’d seen going in and out of the Transfiguration classroom.

Today’s task was one of the weird ones, and as he took notes, Lionel wondered if someone had really felt the need to turn a tortoise, of all things, into a teapot or if the spell would really work on just about anything and tortoises had just been chosen as a school exercise - both words started with “t”, and he could sort of see a tortoise, with its head extended, looking like a long, oblong teapot: the head and neck the spout, with the jaws the opening of the spout, the shell the body, and the tail the handle….

Not that he knew much about teapots. The beverage of choice at home was either coffee, which came in a carafe, or sweet iced tea, which was served from a pitcher. He’d seen a teapot he could sort of map to a tortoise at Aunt Emily’s before, though. Everyone at Aunt Emily’s except Aunt Emily herself drank hot tea from teapots at Aunt Emily’s, though they made the habit even weirder by mostly drinking green (or so they insisted; they always looked more yellowish than anything to Lionel) teas instead of normal ones. Lionel considered this bizarre, but at least it gave him an idea of what to think about while transfiguring his tortoise. Later, maybe, he’d find a bowl and test out his idea about the spell being general, just to see what would happen. Even if it didn’t work, Lionel doubted he was powerful enough to blow himself or anything much larger than a bowl up. Pushing his limits, seeing exactly what he could do it if he put his mind to it, was not something he’d ever really wanted to do, but based on how he performed in class, he thought he was probably very average.

He put his gloves on - growing up near the coast, he’d seen turtles often enough, heard all his life that they were crawling with diseases people could pick up easily if they were careless in handling them, and thought tortoises were pretty similar - and went to collect a tortoise. Back at his desk, he practiced the wand movement a few times and then gave the spell his first try.

The tortoise shuddered, its head emerging from its shell and then, slowly, beginning to become smooth and rigid. At the same time, it color faded out to white. The gap between body and shell lessened, the legs pulled inward and fused together in twos, and the tail extended and then curved down as it, too, turned to ceramic...and then it all stopped.

Lionel blinked at what he had produced. He had meant for all four legs to come together into the base, which should have also been round and largely featureless. It was also supposed to be hollow and have a hole in the top (the lid being a separate piece, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to pull a removable one off), but while he could see a pronounced indentation on top of the shell, it still looked like a shell and was definitely, as a quick tap with his finger revealed, solid, though examination did show the tortoise’s mouth was open and its throat looked pretty hollow when he checked that. The handle, though, was useless; he could have gotten a finger through, but since it didn’t even connect with the rest of the pot...thing at the bottom, he was sure it would snap off if he tried to lift it that way. That would be bad, unless things transfigured from living things were sturdier than they would be if they were real things to preserve the integrity of the original creature….

A few comic books he’d once read with a villain who Transfigured his victims into glass figures and shattered them came to mind. Lionel wished it hadn’t. To get the thought out of his head, he looked over to one of his neighbors with a self-deprecating smile and said, “I guess I could try to pass it off as, er, decorative only, but I think I’m going to need to try this one again. How’re you getting on?”

Can hares swim? by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus

He hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, not least because he didn’t want to risk being mistaken for a bit of a sociopath, but Isaac had been confused both last year and in the early lessons of this year by how much Professor Skies felt the need to stress that they were not butchering the animals they Transfigured in this class. The material itself had been easy enough to grasp, he understood the theory as far as he guessed anyone in here did (he was pretty sure the general consensus was “we have no idea how it works, just that it does” and that all the talk about nonbeing and ‘everything’ and elsewhere was just a really elaborate euphemism for that), but he had no idea where, evidently, some of his classmates had gotten the idea that their desks were going to be covered in blood and guts and gasping, shrieking half-creatures from. Did the Muggleborns - he assumed it was mostly them who had such objections, as proper wizards had no doubt seen enough transfiguration in their lives to know better even before school - think all real witches and wizards were utter sociopaths? Isaac did not think of himself as a particularly soft-hearted person, but he found the thought of blood and guts for blood and guts’ own sake repulsive and thought that was the normal way to feel about it. If Transfiguration had been like that, then only Dark wizards would have practiced it, and somehow, Isaac just didn’t see Professor Skies starting to cackle while announcing her intentions to Imperius them all into being the slave army she used to conquer the world.

Isaac’s only objection to working with live creatures was that they did some of the things Professor Skies said a teapot should not do, like run away and bite. There were some enchanted ones that ran or bit or shrieked if anyone but their owner touched them, and one of the collection his older sister had brought home from her long vacation recited a poem about how wonderful tea was whenever one poured hot water into it (he thought it was one of the English ones; Alicia had dragged home a set or two from everywhere she’d traveled last year, but more from England than anywhere, as she’d visited her sidekick Princeton there repeatedly. Some of the dishes, such as that pot, had made him almost want to reconsider his assessment of some aspects of his sister’s character) but he doubted one that was half-tortoise would bother distinguishing him from anyone else trying to grab it by the tail and pour boiling water into it and that there were limits to everyone’s ideas of what constituted a good novelty item.

For that reason, he took a teapot from the options at the front. Prudence said to start with the third year task, but ambition dictated the more advanced one and was backed up by the desire to handle a tortoise as little as possible. The task, meant for the upper years, would take a lot longer, reducing the amount of time he spent around something that could potentially snap his fingers off.

The pot he had selected was larger than most of the ones around his house, but not the largest in the box - his guess would be a four-cup model. Scalloped ceramic of some kind - not very good stuff, he thought, as he held it up to the light and found it quite opaque, but that wasn’t surprising considering the context. Round body, long, thin spout that seemed a little out of proportion to it, large handle that might have been pretty comfortable if it hadn’t been a shade too thin and rounded; his hand slipped down almost at once, and if it had been full of hot liquid, he would have burned it. Fortunately, however, that wasn’t the case. It was painted with a picture of ships and a dock; there were little figures waving to the ships on the docks. Examination of its bottom did not reveal a pattern name or manufacturer, though raised, uncolored letters in the ceramic did reveal the country of origin once he squinted.

He focused on the boats. Boats were aquatic, turtles were aquatic, and...was there a difference between a tortoise and a turtle? Isaac knew both more from pictures than real life. Probably something to look up before he started. He went to examine the nature books.

Of all the things I never thought I’d need to know, he thought as he began turning pages, looking for both words. He quickly discovered that tortoise usually meant a turtle that lived exclusively on land and couldn’t swim. This made his boats much less useful and he made a face at the book, annoyed.

Back at his seat, he contemplated the image, wishing he knew how to turn the image into cacti or something land-based. It had to have feet, not flippers; even if Skies secretly found the non-picture parts of the books as dull as he did, it didn’t take someone who was actually a talented amateur naturalist to tell the difference between a foot and a flipper. Concentrating on that detail, he cast the spell...and ended up with a teapot with feet.

Immobile feet. They looked carved from greenish stone.

At least it hadn’t sprouted a head which immediately, perhaps disconcerted at being attached to a teapot, started biting. That was something.

Yay for character development! by Brandon Carey, Pecari

Brandon, aware that his neighbor was really not very good at Transfiguration, smiled a bit when Liliana Bannister mentioned seeing how today’s assignment went. “Good luck,” he said.

He thought he would need a little luck himself this year. The visual part of Transfiguration wasn’t very hard for him - the fact that he worked a lot better with pictures than with words had first been pointed out to him by Professor Skies, and while it had embarrassed his older brother, who believed he should have been able to tutor Brandon enough that no one ever noticed he wasn’t very word-oriented, it had proven the key to getting through school without his little sister on hand all the time to read for him - but the theory seemed to get more complex all the time, and he felt like he should try extra-hard on the written assignments that still weren’t his strongest point for Professor Skies. Let her know she hadn’t wasted her time on him. Plus, there were always the CATS to think about, at least if you were an adult in his family. To Brandon, they seemed far away and like nothing to worry about, but to hear Mother and Uncle Anthony talk, they might have been close enough to cast a shadow over his work books every day.

That was why he was sure they would want him to go for the fifth year task. Which was fine. He was sure he could do it, it was just the writing about it that might be a problem if that turned out to be their homework or part of the next class. Making something animate was kind of hard, too; once, he’d done animate-to-animate, or what was supposed to be animate-to-animate, and still ended up with something non-moving at the end, just because it seemed really strange to create something, even temporarily, that was alive and not a house plant. He could do house plants, as far as he knew, all the time, but anything that was supposed to move was a little harder to think his way through.

Still, he didn’t mess it up all the time, or even half of it, and he had to get to total competence by the end of next year, so it was worth another try. He got a teapot and started working on it, trying to picture an item he associated with his baby sister Cecilia - a prim little lady in the making, a bizarre anomaly in their family; they had all drunk a lot of hot water from her little toy tea set in the hopes that it would teach Ceci to enjoy being a hostess and that she would feel so guilty about making them do it when she grew up that she’d feel she owed them a few minor favors - turning into a land turtle.

The pot itself helped him a little by not looking like Ceci’s. Hers was covered in tiny blue and pink flowers and fit in the palm of his hand. This one was a lot bigger and had a picture of a boy and a girl in strange clothes on it. There was still nothing at all turtle-like about it that he could see, though. Frowning in concentration, he tried the spell and pushed his chair back a little, surprised, when its spout turned into a head, the jaws opening and closing twice before they went still, while the body expanded sideways and the edges of the lid began melting into the rest of the body….

Liliana seemed to be having some success, too. “That could be a thing,” he joked. “Someone had to make up the spell for it for a reason, right?” He looked between their projects. “I’m not sure I could make much money doing it - “ an important consideration for him when considering any life calling; he had two older brothers, three sisters, and a younger brother, so while he was from an old pureblood family which was wealthy overall, he personally was not going to inherit much - “but mine did move for a few seconds,” he bragged, pointing to its head-spout.

I like my space. by Eleanor Vandenberg - Crotalus

There was a shiny new accessory to Eleanor's uniform. It was gold and gave her authority and a nice title. Prefect. The words were music to her ears. It was something she knew she had earned from her good manners, outgoing personality, and her good grades. It just proved that she could carry her own weight in society.

Over the summer, Eleanor's grandfather had passed away, but he had been on his deathbed for the past two years. With his passing, however, Nellie discovered she had a really greedy grandfather and a much older half-brother. It had come as a shock, but the clandestine meetings had been orchestrated by her parents in an effort to keep this half-brother a secret from her. It ended up that her dead grandfather had willed only two thousand Galleons from his estate to her father; everything else went to Eleanor's half-brother, the boy who had been raised by her grandparents in London from his birth after her father's arranged engagement had failed. For Nellie's family, it meant the inheritance they had expected had gone to Laurence Vandenberg, and Grandfather Vandenberg's only son was left with two thousand Galleons. In comparison to what they should have received, it was pocket change, and to everyone else it was a very visible snub.

Knowing that she was not her father's only child had come as a shock, but afterwards, Nellie had thought about him often. He was nine years older than her, somewhat established in London, and went by the nickname Laurie. Daddy did not like to talk about him because he was angry about Grandfather's decision, so Nell had peppered her mother with questions instead. It gave her a lot to think about over the summer, and though part of Nell wanted to be angry at her half-brother, the other part of her desperately wondered what it would be like to have a sibling.

Now she was back at Sonora, feeling older and a little more special. She sat down at her usual desk in Transfiguration, looking forward to keeping up her good grades and tackling her CATS. Getting scared or nervous would not help her do well; studying hard would.

Nellie had had a great time at the ball with Tristan last year, and she hoped for them to become better friends. She'd seen Leo off on his own with another girl at the ball too, and for once she hadn't cared so much. Nellie wasn't ugly or impoverished, though she didn't have nearly as much money as some purebloods, and she was pure. All of those things worked in her favor, and she didn't think chasing after one boy just for the security he would bring was a good enough reason if she was capable enough to find someone who liked her better. Nellie had never known exactly what Leo thought of her, but she was beginning to care less.

Eleanor was at the top of her class now as a fifth-year, so she picked up a teapot, determined to be a good role model for all of the younger students. She knew she could turn a plain tortoise into a plain teapot, but vice versa would be a challenge. Nellie sat down at her desk with the flower-patterned teapot, thinking it a shame to transfigure it into something less interesting. Brandishing her wand, Eleanor practiced the slow, oval movement, her hand disciplined and unwavering after years of practice.

Her concentration was disturbed when someone's elbow came into her personal bubble, and she turned to narrow her hazel eyes at them. "Excuse me," she said, her chin jutting out slightly in offense.

Trying not to rub it in by Clark Dill

It had taken two years, but Clark Dill was finally of the opinion that he was back on track with where he should be after the professors' disappearance his first year. The second half of that first year had felt hectic and like they were working at double pace. Even last year, he got the impressions some of his teachers were making the most of the opportunity to introduce everything again in a much more clear and unhurried manner for not only the new first years but the returning second years as well. So, now in his third year, and with a solid grasp of the basics behind him now, Clark felt he was doing as well as anyone could expect from a third year sharing a class with fifth years.

He was an Aladren, too, so not only was there no stigma attached to those of his House spending a ridiculous amount of time on school work and researching the minutiae of all barely relevant topics to the current subjects of discussion, but there was an expectation that he would go above and beyond while studying and doing homework, which made it difficult not to for fear of disappointing his teachers. Also, he felt just a little bit obligated to his roommate to prove half-bloods could score solid Os and be overachievers just as well as pure-bloods could.

So, okay, yes, Clark did spend just about every minute of the day that wasn't otherwise scheduled for class, eating, sleeping, or Quidditch in the library trying to get a good grasp on his new intermediate level class material, but he was getting it. He wasn't just regurgitating what his textbooks and research materials said. He actually understood what was going on, even in Transfiguration, which required almost twice as much effort - and several visits each month to office hours to discuss the finer points of the theories - to achieve than any other single subject he was taking this year. But he knew what was going on, and that made it totally worth the time he put into it.

So when Professor Skies instructed the third years to collect a tortoise to turn into a teapot, he quickly drew up a Transfiguration table with the relevant changes he would need to keep in mind while visualizing his teapot. He even sketched a quick model of a teapot on the bottom of the page. When he went to collect his tortoise he took a moment to study some of the unclaimed teapots first, even taking measurements on one that he liked the looks of.

Returning to his desk with his tortoise, he gave the critter an immobilizing charm while he marked down the dimensions of the target teapot on his sketch. No sense in having it try to bite him or run off while he was busy framing the details of his transfiguration. While it was frozen in place, he took the opportunity to take measurements of the tortoise itself as well, so he'd know exactly how much its dimensions would be changing, down to plus or minus one sixteenth of an inch. Sometimes he was pretty sure being a scientist's son gave him an unfair advantage in school.

Only once he had fully quantified and qualified in neat columns everything that he would need to address in his transfiguration did he pick up his wand and make a few practice motions. After a few tries, he felt confident he not only had the flick right but at least had a few theories if not full understanding about why that particular motion was being used. He then tested his Latin (he assumed) pronunciation until it matched what he'd heard Skies say.

Finally, he reviewed his notes one more time and then put it all together. His wand came up in a short, sharp flick, and he spoke the incantation, "Sinensis." He held a picture of his target clearly in his mind, and the tortoise's appearance transformed.

Where a tortoise had stood in magically enforced stillness (as slow as tortoises were reputed to move, Clark had thought it wisest not to release his immobilizing charm and risk missing the critter altogether if it tried to wander away) there was now a fine ceramic teapot, bright blue in colour, with Greek letters in pale grey circling around it, starting at alpha just beside the handle and looping around the pot's widest circumference in the middle until it reached omega, on the handle's other side. It otherwise lacked decoration but he thought having the whole greek alphabet on it might make up for the lack of other creative patterns.

Granted, yes, using Greek letters was a little geeky, especially since he'd learned most of them for his Dad's math and physics lessons, but Clark was mostly feeling pretty proud of himself for refraining from using Tolkien's elvish script. To be honest, the only reason he hadn't was because he couldn't think of a good teapot parody for the One Ring's inscription offhand.

He tapped the side of the pot and was pleased by the hollow sound he got back. He pushed down on the thumb press to open the top up, but nothing happened. Clark frowned and leaned closer as he pressed a fingernail against the spring holding it closed. That depressed fine. But a closer inspection of the actual lid showed it was still fused with the main body of the pot. Oops. That would be why that wasn't working.

Clark was about to start looking for other defects (not counting the chip on the bottom he'd put there on purpose to give it character) when his neighbor spoke. Clark looked over and gave his yearmate a bright grin, pushing his teapot closer so Lionel could get a better look at it.

The other boy's wasn't really as nice as Clark's but Lionel wasn't an Aladren or otherwise one of Clark's competitors for top of the third year class, so he didn't expect it to be, and it really wasn't too bad for a first try by normal achievement standards. "Pretty good. My lid doesn't open though," he admitted, demonstrating the thumb press's uselessness, hoping to make the Pecari feel better about his own progress by drawing attention to the imperfection of Clark's work. "Another pass might help both of us."

Frustration by Serena Brockert, Teppenpaw

Sighing to herself, Serena settled into a seat in the middle of the room, making sure to sit far away from Oliver Ferguson. She wanted very badly to enjoy this class, but she didn't. The subject of Transfiguration was an interesting one and Professor Skies was nice enough but she just...wasn't as good as she was supposed to be in it. The Teppenpaw knew that others were worst, but this was the one class she felt she was supposed to excel in and she didn't. Brockerts tended to have an affinity for the class. Her cousin was even an animagus!

It wasn't as if Serena was normally that hard on herself about school work really. In fact, she was actually getting a better grade in Transfiguration than she was in DADA. DADA scared her and often she only got As. In here, she felt the need to overcompensate for her practical work by going way overboard, the way Chaslyn might, on theory. She tended to get Es but felt she should be getting Os. In other classes, she was satisfied with an E.

She didn't want to be a disappointment to her family. While the fourth year doubt that she'd be disowned for something, she still wanted make them proud. So far, her parents hadn't caught on. They thought she got Es rather than Os because of theory work when it was really the other way around. That was how it had been with Arabella and how it would likely be with Fabian. Her parents knew she was different from her siblings, they just didn't know that she was in this way. Serena preferred to keep it that way. She was ashamed.

Being a fourth year, she had some choice about what she wanted to do. Although she felt she should try the harder task, she didn't feel ready for it. In fact, Serena had been playing it safe so far, sticking to animate to inanimate transfiguration. She'd always been taught this was the more useful than the reverse really. People were more likely to need a teapot than a tortoise. Furthermore, Serena just plain didn't expect to have any success with inanimate to animate. Maybe, maybe, a string into a worm or something. Yarn into a caterpillar. That was the same color.

So she took a tortoise, careful to keep her fingers away from it's mouth to avoid getting bitten. Now what did they have in common with teapots? Not much as far as Serena was concerned. They had hard shells and teapots were made of hard material. Ceramics of some sort rather than...tortoise shell. Teapots were more breakable if they weren't charmed not to be.

With that, Serena looked at her tortoise and tried to imagine the teapot she'd like to make. She pictured one with a flat bottom, but in the shape of the tortoise's shell. It was an unusual shape for one, yes, but she really didn't think she could do better than that. She could make it a lighter shade of green too, she supposed. And then there was the pattern. Serena longed to make beautiful ornate patterns but she could barely get anything on the first try let alone do anything really fancy. She'd have to settle for polka-dots, they were rather easier than say, flowers. "Sinesis" .

Nothing but a tortoise with what looked black spots all over it and no legs. Wonderful if this was charms but it wasn't. Serena hadn't pictured anything like that . On the plus side, it had done something at least. Still, though, it wasn't enough, not as good as what her cousins had done, she noticed after sneaking quick looks at them all. Of course, Tristan had had a teapot to begin with so she couldn't really compare with him. Serena looked back at the tortoise, which looked a bit ill and tried again. " Sinesis "

Oh goodie, it was now a sickly shade of green rather than either the pretty shade she wanted. Still had spots that were the wrong color, albeit lighter now. More gray than black. Serena sighed to herself, frustrated. Would she ever be able to get the whole thing at once?

That's too bad. by Tristan Spaulding, Crotalus

Tristan had been in a foul mood all year. Over the summer, he'd been playing Quidditch with his paternal cousins, and gotten to a fight with his cousin Cedric . Finally, Cedric blew up and told the Crotalus that he was a lousy player and he had no business on the field. Of course, his cousin had gone one step too far, and told him that he should just go play with the girls. This had angered Tristan and, being that he was unable to do magic outside of school and that he wasn't about to have his wand snapped, tackled him...and satisfyingly come out in better condition than Cedric had. Normally, he wasn't one to wish that kind of violence and pain on someone, but he'd been in a furious rage.

The thing was that what had really bothered him wasn't the part about playing with girls, but the assault on his Quidditch playing abilities. Although Tristan was good at many other things, this was the one most important to him. He'd tried to brush it off, as Cedric was the next in line for heir after him and had always been jealous but when his parents had scolded him for the incident-something that rarely happened, but the fifth year had been violent-they'd also...seemed sorry about something and when pressed, they'd confessed that his cousin was right, Tristan wasn't any good at the sport, though he'd been assured that he was pretty good at flying itself.

It had still been devastating though. To find out you were bad at the one thing you loved most in the world was awful. He'd been trying to find another hobby he felt as passionate about for all this time while his parents refused to let him play. Now he knew why, they didn't want him to embarass himself-or them or the Spaulding family. Spauldings were supposed to do great things. It was one thing for him not to get prefect-and he was happy it had been Nellie-but to look bad , to be mocked in some way, was unthinkable.

His parents-other than the thing with his father's involvement with Amity's betrothal, which went no further than him having been roommates with Phillip Tremont's uncle-had, after impressing upon him the importance of not attacking others physically, doted on him and spoiled him even more than they had priorly, focusing all the rest of their attention on him. It hadn't made a difference. Tristan still continued to sulk.

Now he was in Transfiguration, something he knew he was good at. One of the best in the fifth year class, he felt. Still, it just wasn't the same. Not something he had an overwhelming passion for. If he had to pick something other than Quidditch, he supposed he'd pick DADA and dueling. It had a noble quality to it, he felt. In fact, if Tristan hadn't been underage, he would have challenged Cedric to a duel instead. And he'd have won. He'd technically won anyway, but dueling was classier than beating someone up like a common Muggle. Maybe he'd do so anyway, once he came of age. This was not going to be a grudge he'd forget.

He looked through the teapots. Teapots were so...girly really. They brought to mind tea parties that little girls like Kira had with their dolls and women like his mother and grandmothers had with other ladies. Plus they often also had such flowery designs on them. Appropriate for ladies, and he'd proved quite obviously that he wasn't feminine. Tristan selected a dark blue squarish teapot with a silver design. Not quite so frilly. Let the girls and Leo have those. He'd found himself attracted to the golden one and one that was more quaffle shaped, but denied it to himself, not wanting get all melancholy and affect his average. Not in this class.

One thing he noted, was that this teapot, in addition to being a different color than a tortoise, was also a smaller size. Tortoise shells were not square and there were living bits in them, while no part of a teapot was alive. He didn't really know much about tortoises in general. They snapped and moved slowly. Like Amity in a grumpy mood. Of course as teapots were inanimate and didn't have mouths, so therefore, they did neither.

He envisioned the teapot getting larger and becoming green. There was nothing inside it of course, so he didn't have to worry about turning liquid into animal. If both were solid, they were more alike and while Tristan wasn't one to shy away from challenges, changing the very nature of something that way just seemed a little bit difficult to him. He'd let Ryan change a puddle into a small animal if he liked, but the fifth year didn't find it necessary at this point. "Testudo"
The teapot grew, it's color changing like he'd imagined. It had sprouted legs on the left side of the body, though it's handle was still sticking out and it had no head. There was no trace of the silver pattern left. Tristan grinned. It looked pretty good, certainly better than anything Cedric could do. He turned to Nellie, whom he'd seated himself next to, but before he could say anything, she spoke,

"Excuse me,"

She sounded annoyed. "Hey, it's just me!" Tristan replied. He couldn't think of anything he might have done to annoy her,for even though he'd been rather sullen all term, he'd still been nice to her . "You look pretty today." He complimented her, hoping to diffuse the situation. Girls liked being told that though he meant it of course. Tristan really liked Nellie.

I'll let you in just a little bit. by Nellie Vandenberg

The elbow belonged to Tristan, and Eleanor’s demeanor changed immediately upon recognizing him. A compliment always helped, and it made her feel brighter. In return, she smiled, though she didn’t know how she could look different or prettier today from any other day in this bland uniform. Maybe it was the badge, or her dark hair. Was it shinier today? “Thank you,” she replied. “Sorry, I spoke before I even saw you. I didn’t mean to snap.” Apologies came easier when she actually meant them, and with Tristan she liked to think she could be a little more at ease around him. She saw his teapot-turtle and raised her eyebrows in approval. “Wow, nice job for a first try.”

She looked at her pretty teapot and wondered if trying to impress Tristan with her skills would backfire. She imagined the turtle, a turtle smaller than the pot, but she couldn’t imagine away the beautiful pattern. It would be such a loss to the world of fashion and beauty if she turned such a wonderful teapot into an ugly turtle. It would be like a reverse frog-to-prince story. “Testudo,” she said, drawing out a slow, oval wand movement. The result was only a shell of a turtle with the same flowery pattern, but it was a good try. At least she'd gotten the shape down, though there was no actual turtle inside. It wasn't as good as Tristan’s, but boys liked to think that they were better anyway so she didn't care.

“How was your summer?” she asked, allowing Tristan to break through her concentration. Though they were in the same house, Eleanor had spent a lot of this first term performing Prefect duties and studying or writing letters with millions of questions that she would never send to her half-brother. She hadn't really had the time to catch up with anyone except for the other Prefects that she worked with now.

The Quidditch team for Crotalus was incredibly pathetic this year according to the roster, so much so that Nellie didn't even want to mention it. For once she was glad neither of her friends was involved in the sport. Even if Tristan liked to play, combining teams wasn’t exactly a good thing. In fact, it was pretty sad that Crotalus couldn’t put a full team together despite the number of boys in their house. In any case, she was glad she didn’t have the burden to go support her house on the pitch this year. The sport wasn’t all that interesting to watch anyway.