Beginners - feeling bouncy on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

May 07, 2016 12:56 AM

Beginners - feeling bouncy by Professor Skies

“Good morning,” Selina greeted the beginners class, “As you already know, I’m Deputy Headmistress Skies, however you can all address me as ‘professor,’ and I will be teaching you Transfiguration. Transfiguration is complex magic, and you will find that you do best in this class if you can approach your projects with a degree of patience. Please try not to be disheartened if you don’t achieve much straight away. A lot of what we practise may seem to have little practical use at first - why change one object to another, if the other is close at hand? But can you imagine being able to conjure up what you need out of thin air, or change your appearance at will? These are some of the more complex forms of Transfiguration, but you can’t learn to run before you’ve learnt to walk. The skills you will learn in your early classes will strengthen your magical ability as a whole, and your ability to control your powers. And you never know when you might not have exactly what you need readily to hand, so you may find these types of spell coming in useful more often than you imagine.

“Your first task today will be to fill out a Transfiguration table, which is coming round now - there are detailed copies for first years, and blank ones for second years. The table lists all the features of an object, such as function, size, etcetera. When we are Transfiguring, the most important element is to visualise in detail the change that will take place, as well as finding common links between the items. As you become more practised in the process, this is something you will be able to do in your head, but to start with, it helps to think it through on paper.

“Today, you will be making bouncy balls. You have a few different options to choose from. First years, you may take either a smooth, round pebble or an eraser. Second years, you can choose either of these materials, or a more lumpy and uneven pebble,” as she spoke, a box floated from her desk around the room, pausing in front of each student so they could make a selection (although if they took too long, it jiggled somewhat impatiently). “Whilst you work, I would like you to keep notes about your different attempts, including what changes you visualised and what results you saw. For homework, pair up with someone in your year who chose a different starting object to you and compare notes. It’s not a puzzle, and neither of the first year objects is more or less difficult - they each have plus points and minus points.

“The spell for everyone is hevea,” she had considered making them look up the derivation of this for homework as well, as the other task was fairly easy, but she didn’t want to overload them in their first week. “We’ll be looking at different spell origins throughout the term, and anyone who wants to get ahead on this subject should read chapter four of their books,” behind her, the chalk scribbled details of the lesson and the homework in an elegant, sloping hand.

“You may talk quietly amongst yourselves whilst you work, and if you have any difficulties, you can discuss the problem with your neighbours or raise your hand to get my attention. You may begin.”

OOC - Welcome to Transfiguration! Remember, in her first lesson, Hermione Granger was only able to make a matchstick go silvery and a bit pointy. The lesson you’ve got is slightly easier to give you more chance to have a range of different outcomes, but it will still not be a fast or easy process for your character. You are marked on the quality of your writing, not how well your character does, and high marks are given for realism, creativity, length and relevance. Feel free to make up details about the worksheet that has been handed out, and tag me in the subject line if your character is calling my attention, or doing anything risky that a teacher would likely put a stop to. Remember, you are being supervised, and whilst explosions are fun, Selina would step in before a situation became truly dangerous, so please give her the chance to do so if you’re up to anything.

Subthreads:

Play ball (tag: Gabe) by Ben "Hippo" Pierce, Pecari with Gabe Valenti [Teppenpaw]

Hope everyone's put away their china. by Joseph Umland, Teppenpaw with Killian Everett - Pecari

Where there's smoke... there's a Spark? by Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw with Farrah Welsh (Aladren)

Not so bouncy. by Lily Spencer, Pecari with Arianna Valenti [Aladren]

Bounce, little pebble, bounce! [Tag: Juniper] by Finn Scott with Juniper Brockert,Teppenpaw

13 Professor Skies Beginners - feeling bouncy 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Ben "Hippo" Pierce, Pecari

May 10, 2016 10:41 AM

Play ball (tag: Gabe) by Ben "Hippo" Pierce, Pecari

Ben had decided that he was going to start a club this year. He specifically wanted a baseball club, but wasn't sure how well that would work out if they didn't get enough members, so after further though, he was thinking expanding it to a general 'sports' club and they'd play whatever sport they had enough players for at any given meeting. However, he was just a second year and most of the clubs he'd seen so far had all been run by older students, and he wasn't sure he wanted to do it all by himself anyway, so when he arrived in Transfiguration, he waited until Gabe Valenti was already seated then swooped in to take the seat next to his.

"Hi," he said, "good summer?"

That discussion took them until class started, at which point, Ben tried to pay attention and not distract his neighbor too much because failing Transfiguration would be seriously frowned upon by his mom and dad, but he really couldn't help an expression of incredulity at the idea of reading Chapter Four before he absolutely had to.

An Aladren sorting had never been a danger for him.

At least this lesson would result in a ball, and Ben knew balls. He could picture those in his head very well. He was particularly thinking of a swirly colored bouncy ball he'd gotten for a quarter from one of those machines in the mall that you stick in your coin and turn it around until the thing dropped out of a slot on the bottom. He'd promptly lost it by bouncing it too hard off the mall floor, but he still remembered it well enough to duplicate today.

"So," he said to Gabe as he began filling out the blank squares of his transfiguration table. Appearance: Spherical ball. Squiggly color swirls "I was thinking of starting up a Sports Club. We'd do, you know, pick-up games for baseball, soccer, whatever. Do you want to co-lead with me? I figure having a person on both of whatever teams we end up with who knows how to play would be a good idea. You know most team sports, right? Or just baseball? And we could maybe try Quadpot, too, but I think we'll mostly do muggle sports."

He tried to bounce his eraser off the desk and it bounded off the surface just enough to fall on the floor. Ben retrieved it and wrote Texture: Bouncier than the eraser, but not loads more.

1 Ben "Hippo" Pierce, Pecari Play ball (tag: Gabe) 339 Ben "Hippo" Pierce, Pecari 0 5

Joseph Umland, Teppenpaw

May 16, 2016 8:46 PM

Hope everyone's put away their china. by Joseph Umland, Teppenpaw

It ranked pretty high on the list of things he never wanted to admit to anyone in his family except maybe Julian or his dad, but Joe had discovered over the course of his first year that he didn’t really like Transfiguration all that much. It was difficult, often (as, to Joe’s mixed guilt and amusement, Professor Skies basically admitted in her speech to the new first years) tedious, at least at this level, and Joe felt constantly as though he was not living up to expectations in it. His sister Julian’s performance had been more respectable than brilliant, too, but the age differences made Joe think the teachers were more likely to compare him to his brother John, and John had honestly thought Julian was joking when she’d asked him if he was at all worried about the CATS. How was Joe supposed to compete with someone who'd effortlessly thwarted the efforts of the fleet of psychologists whose entire job was to make sure the mysterious cabal of sociopaths who wrote standardized tests composed each item in a way guaranteed to give one last Judgment Day boost to the gut-wrenching, near-debilitating fear of failure the cabal’s agents had spent a lifetime instilling in poor innocent schoolchildren in preparation for that day? It wasn’t possible.

He still smiled cheerfully at Professor Skies as he walked past her, though, and kept on as she started class. She was a nice lady and it never hurt to be nice back. Besides, it was a new year. Maybe, now that he had the basics firmly in his head (and he did; Mom had gone over the high points with him again over the summer to make sure he at least didn’t lose much theory of anything while he was out of school), Transfiguration would go a little more smoothly this year. There was no reason not to hope until they got started, anyway.

They got started with bouncy balls. Joe hesitated just long enough over the box of options when it came to him that it jiggled impatiently at him. Professor Skies had said it wasn’t a puzzle, but really, it kind of was – a flipped spot-the-difference game where crossing his eyes wouldn’t work. Spot the similarity, and...yeah, pebbles were somewhat roundish and could bounce on water, so he could see that. When the box expressed its irritation with the length of Joe’s reasoning process, he grabbed, on impulse, one of the rougher stones meant for second years, only to then realize why the erasers were there: a lot of erasers could bounce on solids, which were really a lot more likely to be used to test their creations than a body of water was…..

Now he had a pebble, though. Here was hoping his attempts to be clever did not turn around and bite him in the rear when it came time to drop the bouncy balls from a height and see what happened. He thought, based on stuff he remembered hearing Mom and John talk about, that he might be better off trying to make a larger bouncy ball instead of indulging in a little loophole abuse to make one of the little ones that came out of machines at the supermarket…Except that on second thought, he wasn’t sure if that sounded easier or not. Those little ones were heavier naturally, closer to the density of rock, he thought his brother would put it, and could undeniably do some bouncing – Joe had once taken out a lamp and the door to his mother’s curio cabinet with one of those things, the latter going out so violently that a couple of the contents had fallen and broken, too. Magic made it an easy fix, but Joe was still glad that the other two people in the house had been John and their oldest brother Steve instead of Mom and Dad. The three of them had, once Steve finished repairing the damage and John finished laughing hysterically, agreed to take it to their graves, and as far as Joe knew that was still the plan.

He added deliberately asking John to ramble on about physics at him to his to-do list. In the meantime, Joe ran a hand through his blond hair. He thought for a moment about the incantation, but he didn’t have a clue what it meant and unlike John, he didn’t just carry around a dictionary. Maybe he should start. Today, though, he was on his own.

He saw his neighbor had also selected a pebble. “Great minds think alike,” he observed, hoping he wasn’t tempting fate there. “Are you thinking of going for a big light ball or a small heavy one?” It couldn’t hurt to see what other people were thinking, he thought.

16 Joseph Umland, Teppenpaw Hope everyone's put away their china. 329 Joseph Umland, Teppenpaw 0 5

Gabe Valenti [Teppenpaw]

May 17, 2016 3:19 AM

All the things by Gabe Valenti [Teppenpaw]

Gabe entered the room with an unusual frown on his face. He'd somehow managed to charm his favorite Mets hat to glow in the dark in Charms class earlier in the day, even though they hadn't been focused on doing such a thing in the first place. It really wasn't a major issue, because other then when he'd turned down a dark corridor he hadn't really noticed it. But he needed to figure out how to change is as soon as possible, so he could wear it to baseball games with his non-magical family next time he was home. Mattie would probably be pretty mad if Gabe didn't wear it to his baseball games.

Sitting towards the middle of the class, he tossed his hat into his backpack, for safe-keeping. Or maybe not, his Care of Magical Creatures textbook could get kind of frisky sometimes. But mostly it preyed on smaller objects, like pen caps or erasers, so Gabe figured his now magical hat was alright. When he looked up, there was Ben Pierce sitting next to him, asking about his summer. Gabe grinned, there was no reason to worry other people about his hat, and it wasn't what the other second year had asked him about, anyway.

"For sure!" He exclaimed, "It was really good to be back home with the family, we did plenty of hiking and camping and stuff, and my sister's little league team came in second place for regionals." Emma Valenti had been pitching a winning game when the coach took her out for the last inning, but the closing pitcher, Mikey Russo, had totally blown it. If his sister had been magic, Gabe was sure she could have melted stuff with her eyes that night.

He asked Ben about his summer, too, before Transfiguration started. Transfiguration was an interesting class, because there were all sorts of ways besides explosions that a spell could go wrong. Sometimes it was boring stuff, like a nail that was as bendy as a paper clip. It would be cool if he could bring his failed experiments home, to entertain his siblings, but Gabe was pretty sure Sonora frowned upon that sort of thing. Gabe managing to keep anything other than his broom safe and sound for an entire term would be a sort of accomplishment, anyway. Not even his lucky hat was immune.

Class started, and Gabe began to absent-mindedly spin his pen in his hand. Deputy Headmistress Professor Skies was not really selling the class today, talking about how they wouldn’t be doing anything crazy for a while now. He picked up an eraser from the floating box - partly because his Care of Magical Creatures book kept eating them - put down the pen, and proceeded to bounce the eraser on the desk instead. It wasn’t super bouncy or anything, but jiggled around a bit when he dropped it on the desk.

He picked up his pen in his left hand and scribbled down the spell in his notebook, and promptly forgot the number of the associated chapter. Ah well. He was sure he could ask Ari for the notes later. Just one of the perks of having a cousin in all of your classes. For now, the pink eraser reminded him of home, and the classic Spalding bouncy balls that were currently stored in the family garage. Man, he hadn’t played with one of those in ages. It would be pretty cool to just make something like that.

All thoughts of the class, however, were promptly distracted by Ben’s Amazing Idea, “That’s an awesome idea! Of course, I’ll do it with you, dude,” he said, nodding like a bobblehead to everything Ben asked, “Baseball is the family sport, but I play others, for sure.”

His hand on the eraser twitched at the word Muggle. He never used it before, of course. It seemed weird to use a word that felt so foreign on the people and things that seemed most familiar to him, a word his non-magical family would not think to use themselves. But he didn’t hold it against Ben, either. It was the way most people here talked, especially people who grew up with magic. And people who grew up with magic seemed to be the most in charge of things, had the most power to make other people more like them. That made what Gabe and Ben were about to do doubly important. Bringing non-magical sports into Sonora, teaching their small school about the outside world, didn’t seem to be something that was done very often around here. Heck, they didn’t even have Math classes! Gabe hadn’t minded Math as much as the other subjects he studied in his old school.

“D’you think it’ll be too complicated to start with baseball?” he asked, mind already moving on to all the possibilities, “Soccer or basketball are both kinda like Chasing, so that might be easier to get the hang of. Or maybe volleyball or kickball.” Kickball, he thought, was a sport where you could be pretty flexible with number of players, and volleyball too. He wasn’t sure how many kids would be into this sort of club, but he’d do his very best to encourage them all to join. Beyond the important duty of sharing non-magical stuff with magical people, baseball was one of the things he missed most about home. If he could bring that here, and make the Teppenpaw Quidditch team, life at Sonora would be perfect.

0 Gabe Valenti [Teppenpaw] All the things 330 Gabe Valenti [Teppenpaw] 0 5

Killian Everett - Pecari

May 18, 2016 10:50 PM

Not to mention family pets by Killian Everett - Pecari

Killian eyeballed his wand after taking it out in preparation for Transfiguration. The wood was a light color, willow, which wasn’t too bad. The core, unicorn. He fought back a frown. Unicorns were for girls. Why couldn’t he have had a dragon heart string? Now that sounded cool. Way cooler than some prancing white horse with a giant toothpick glued to its forehead. That’s it if anyone asks, my wand is Oak and Dragon Heart string, Killian decided, those sounded far more manly to the eleven-year-old, much better than wispy willows or glitter belching unicorns.

Envy itched at Killian while he watched the box of objects float around the room with perfect ease. While he knew it would take time to learn to control his magic, he still couldn’t wait to be able to do stuff like that instead of stare cross-eyed at random things on his desk as they failed to change. Hopefully, he wouldn’t catch anything on fire by accident.

That thought inspired him to snatch up one of the smooth, round rocks when the box hovered in front of him before it could even think of giving an annoyed rattle. Only after the box moved on to the next student did Killian realize he should have thought a little bit more about what they were doing instead of worrying about what might happen. Rocks didn’t have a lot in common with bouncy balls, except shape. At least the eraser was made out of a type of rubber. Getting a rock to bounce would probably be more than a little tricky.

The boy next to him spoke up, adding yet another curveball to the mix. “How does that even work?” Killian couldn’t help but ask. His major stumbling block when it came to magic had to be the ungodly amount of scientific rules it broke. “I mean, where would the extra mass come from?” While he’d never been a big fan of English class, he’d adored science, making magic all the harder to swallow. “It might be easier to keep it small, so we only have to worry about changing what it’s made out of.”

0 Killian Everett - Pecari Not to mention family pets 354 Killian Everett - Pecari 0 5

Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw

May 19, 2016 9:47 AM

Where there's smoke... there's a Spark? by Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw

Eager to start learning how to actually cast spells with his wand (as opposed to waving an ordinary stick around and shouting spell names he'd learned from watching professional duels, as he had done up to this point), Jozua arrived to Transfiguation class early and took a seat right up in the front row to show just how ready he was for this. His enthusiasm dimmed slightly as the worksheets were passed around because learning spells was one thing but what looked suspiciously like homework was quite another monster. Homework was much less enticing.

He rallied, though, with his round stone. Actually selecting an object from the box that he was absolutely going cast a real spell upon meant this was going to happen and happen soon. The box moved on to the next student and he gave his pebble a good look. It was round, though not perfectly spherical, probably a little on the small side for a ball, and, well, made of stone, so it was hard, grey, and had zero bounce to it at all.

He was going to change this stone to a rubber ball.

Jozua listened intently to the instructions and noted down that he should read ahead in Chapter Four (which he supposed might happen if he couldn't sleep some night, but he mostly suspected it would just remain a note of something he should do but never got around to actually doing). Once the professor finished talking, Jozua pushed aside the untouched transfiguration table and held his wand over the pebble.

"Hevea!" he casted waving the wand dramatically and tapping the rock with its tip.

There was a small puff of smoke and a tiny scorch mark on the rock, but otherwise, nothing changed. Jozua deflated. His first transfiguration spell was a bust.

Still, he dutifully recorded his results in his notes. First Attempt: No change; just smoke.

Also, he was pretty sure transfiguring wasn't supposed to make smoke. Just in case he was mistaken, though, he consulted his neighbor. "We're not supposed to get smoke, right?"

1 Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw Where there's smoke... there's a Spark? 348 Jozua Sparks, Teppenpaw 0 5

Farrah Welsh (Aladren)

May 19, 2016 7:44 PM

So, I probably shouldn't have sat next to you? by Farrah Welsh (Aladren)

Farrah was nervous as she took her seat in the Transfiguration class room. Her dad said that this class tended to be the most discouraging of all the classes, but to keep with it because it was very important. Farrah had started reading some of her class books to prepare herself, but Transfiguration was rather confusing to understand without any context behind it.

Now that she was actually sitting in the classroom, her nerves were getting the best of her. What if she were actually quite terrible at magic? What if she completely messed up and embarrassed herself? What if she can’t figure out how to use her wand? What if everyone laughed at her? The anxiety she felt seized her for a moment as she waited for the lesson to begin. The last thing she wanted was to be different from everyone else. Her mom always told her that when she started to panic that she just needed to close her eyes and take a couple of deep breaths. Farrah took her mother’s advice now because she definitely did not want to have a meltdown before the class even started.

Farrah took a couple of breaths, counted, and then released them. It was not a good idea to start class with such negative thoughts. Both her dad and the book said that confidence mattered when attempting spells. She needed to believe that she was supposed to be there and was just as good as everyone else! Farrah shook herself and focused in as Deputy Headmistress Skies began the lesson.

She looked over the table provided while the professor went over how to use it. Farrah could appreciate the table as it allowed her to break the process down before trying to attempt to change an item into something completely new. As the box came around, Farrah chose a smooth pebble to attempt the spell on. She felt that it was the closest resemblance to a bouncy ball. Farrah began to fill out the table, making notes to the similarities and dissimilarities between the items. It was easier for her to identify where the difficulty would lie for her with the transition.

Farrah was still working on her table and trying to work out how she would manage to change a pebble into a ball that had buoyancy. She had no idea how she was supposed to make this into a bouncy ball. They were so different except for the shape and relative size. How was she supposed to do this? She understood the spell and the wand movement but how exactly did one become the other? Farrah could feel the panic begin to rise again as she struggled to work out the problem. She was going to flunk out of magic school she just knew it.

"We're not supposed to get smoke, right?"

She looked up from her paper, her panic clear on her face as her mind tried to catch up to what the boy had just said to her. Her face cleared slightly when she realized what it was that he asked her. “Smoke? No, I don’t think so.” Farrah answered with uncertainty. It may have been easier if they had been able to see it happen. “Did it smoke when you tried the spell?” Farrah asked, curious now, her anxiety slipping away as she focused on what the boy was doing.

6 Farrah Welsh (Aladren) So, I probably shouldn't have sat next to you? 344 Farrah Welsh (Aladren) 0 5

Joe Umland

May 23, 2016 2:39 PM

And any small children. by Joe Umland

The person beside him was a Pecari first year, but evidently, that was not an impediment to speaking at least conversational Nerd. Joe saw no reason this should not be so, as he and his sister were both Teppenpaws who understood probably up to intermediate Nerd, though Joe knew he, at least, didn’t speak it very well.

“Sometimes, with Transfiguration, you can…stretch out…what you have,” he said. “Rubber – I guess that’s what we’re going for?” Joe thought most bouncy balls he’d seen were made more of some kind of bendy plastic than they were of rubber, but John could use lots of words to say that simpler substances were easier to Transfigure and Joe remembered from his social studies lessons that rubber was derived from rubber trees. He was sure it got processed to death before it became bouncy balls, but it was still probably simpler than plastics. “That’s usually lighter – less dense, I think – than stone, so something a little larger but lighter could work.” Joe knew there were a lot of equations about that kind of thing they would learn when they were older, but he already thought he knew that size and weight were important because the input and the final product didn’t necessarily have to have identical ones and was content to lump it all into the general category of things that could be summed up as ‘probably because of quantum thingummies’ until the details became things he needed to know to get his work done. His rule of thumb for now was that he should not try to Transfigure anything larger than his own head, be it something larger than his head into something smaller, something smaller into something larger, or something larger into something else also larger. Within those parameters, he thought he should be pretty safe until he was old enough to learn all the equations. “But so could one of those really small, really hard bouncy balls from the supermarket, if you know those.”

That was always a question. Joe had been raised on a Muggle street, but by magical parents. As a result, he knew just enough about both worlds, he thought, to be pretty much incomprehensible to anyone firmly anchored in one any time he didn’t pay attention to what he said. Still, he guessed the basic idea was pretty easy to figure out even if the younger boy was pureblood and so possibly unfamiliar with supermarkets and their cheap toy machines. It occurred to him that he should ask his sister how purebloods got their things, as she ought to know by now, or at least be able to find out pretty easily, somewhere between her biological relatives and her boyfriend….

“I’m Joe, by the way,” he said. “Second year. Welcome to Transfiguration.”

16 Joe Umland And any small children. 329 Joe Umland 0 5

Lily Spencer, Pecari

May 24, 2016 5:13 PM

Not so bouncy. by Lily Spencer, Pecari

Lily was very much looking forward to life at school. She didn't think her courses were going to be very interesting, but at least she was finally going to learn how to use her magic properly. One of the hardest courses was Transfiguration, according to her oldest brother and sister, and Lily dreaded the class. She sat down near the centre of the room, hoping to get a good view of everything. She smiled at her desk mate, but Professor Skies began her lecture before she could say anything.

A Transfiguration table was coming round now and Lily took one for herself and examined it. Filling this out seemed easy enough, but tedious when the differences in objects were rather obvious. She looked over at her partner, wondering if she was the only one who hadn't gone to school prior to Sonora.

The practical bit of the lesson was more interesting and Lily left her Transfiguration table untouched on her desk as she pulled out her wand. It was a beautiful one, she thought, 11 1/2 inches, dragon-heartstring, maple. She was proud of it, now being an owner of a wand, and she couldn't wait to use it properly, not just pretending. Already it felt like an extension of her.

When the pebbles and erasers came around, Lily plucked out an eraser, not completely confident in her abilities as of yet. She knew she'd never been a very good student so if she took the easier route she would be able to pull off an O. She wasn't looking forward to the lectures in class, but this looked like fun.

Instead of filling out the table first, she immediately attempted the spell. She'd read whatever chapters she needed to later tonight or tomorrow... or whenever she felt like it. Lily brandished her wand and said, "Hevea!" with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. The eraser began to steam and she gasped and tried to cool it down by waving it with her hands. The rubber only fell off the table and when Lily tried to pick it up she discovered it was scorching. "Ouch!" She put her fingers in her mouth as if that would cool them, and looked over at her desk mate. She stamped her foot in indignation before sitting back down on her chair and wiping her fingers on her uniform.

"Having better luck than I?" she asked sullenly. "I think I'll have to wait for my rubber to cool. I don't know how it got so hot."

40 Lily Spencer, Pecari Not so bouncy. 357 Lily Spencer, Pecari 0 5

Arianna Valenti [Aladren]

May 27, 2016 12:00 PM

Definitely not by Arianna Valenti [Aladren]

Not for the first time, Arianna glanced at the Quidditch sign ups in Aladren. And not for the first time, she kept walking, in this case to Transfiguration. Her cousin was currently trying to get her to go out for the team, which to him was basically the most important thing a student here could do. It was true that she had a fear of heights that only he knew of, that she was currently trying to smite. It was also true that Arianna had been on the volleyball team with her friends at Hobart, and had actually had a good time. All of her friends had been on the team, and the uniforms were really cute. But Arianna did not know anyone on the team - which seemed to be comprised of only older boys - and, based off the school uniform, the Quidditch outfits were probably weird, too. So she waited.

Transfiguration was something she was a little more sure about. She had looked through all of her textbooks, and from what she could tell, Trasnfiguration would allow her to change almost anything into something else, and it would be the greatest challenge of all her magical subjects. Both concepts enticed her. She had always been a top student at her old school, and never one to back away from a challenge. Sitting towards the center of the room, she looked forward to continuing to maintain a strong performance at her new school.

Taking out her black quill (which she had also practiced writing with all summer, so that she didn't look like a child ) she began to take notes as the professor spoke. Her dark curls were loose today, parted on the left, and she tucked a stray curl behind her ear as she wrote. She raised an eyebrow when Professor Skies explained that some people might not see the benefits of the subject. How dumb did you have to be not to immediately see the benefits of turning one thing into something else you wanted? If she really got good at this, Arianna might not ever have to go shopping again! Her wardrobe would only be limited by her magical ability.

She was less enthused, however, by the particular subject of today's class. She didn't need a bouncy ball, that was a toy for little kids! As the box came around, Arianna chose a round pebble, figuring that it was probably very difficult to achieve a perfect sphere on her own. Better to just focus on the size and the material. Continuing her notes, Arianna began to wonder why magical people didn't also study things like chemistry and science - that would probably be very useful in understanding how transformations worked. Ignorant wizards. It reminded her of the parents at her old school, so sure that their way was the only correct one.

She began to fill out her chart, writing in a neat, round cursive all the physical qualities of her stone. She even picked it up and dropped it a few inches to the desk, to see if it had any bouncy qualities already. But as dark eyes looked up, she caught sight of her neighbor, who appeared to have decided to just go for it.

Arianna put down her quill, distracted by the idea of seeing one of her classmates perform magic. It was only the first day, after all. Had this girl taken some sort of prep classes before arriving at Sonora? It wouldn't have surprised Arianna, some of the kids at her old school were already preparing for the SATs. As if they needed an additional leg up, on top of their money and connections.

Nope, apparently this girl had no more experience than Arianna did. But she just went for it anyway. Must be a Pecari. She smirked as the rubber fell on the ground. The girl was acting like a complete baby, putting her hands in her mouth and stomping her foot. Clearing her expression to neutral before anyone saw, Arianna was almost reminded of her own little sister, Elisa. Although, Elisa would never wipe her hands on her outfit like that, no matter how ugly the school uniform was. Arianna had taught her better.

"It's probably part of the transfiguration process, it has to heat up to change shape," she found herself answering automatically, in a matter-of-fact tone, before holding up her own neat worksheet, “It's like arts and crafts - there are steps.” Now why had she done that? Probably she was thrown off by the girl's accent - there were so many international students here! Yes, that had to be it.

OOC: Assuming Lily has a noticeable accent, feel free to ignore that last bit if that is not the case.

0 Arianna Valenti [Aladren] Definitely not 343 Arianna Valenti [Aladren] 0 5

Lily Spencer

May 27, 2016 6:26 PM

Give it a go? by Lily Spencer

The witch sitting next to her sounded condescending and Lily immediately put her guard up. She’d been surrounded by condescending witches all her life and being told what to do did not sit well with her. “I don’t think that’s right,” she said, glad she at least knew something about Transfiguration. “Heating up doesn’t usually happen if one transfigures an object correctly. Otherwise with something like animal transfiguration, those poor creatures would be dead by the time they were transfigured back.” She imagined a bird turning into toast inside simply to transfigure into a glass and shivered. “My siblings all went to Sonora before me,” she explained, “so I know a bit about it.”

Instead of verbally attacking the other witch, as Lily was prone to do in response to being talked down to, she looked over with disinterest at the chart. “These are one of the things I don’t like about being a first year,” she said, sitting down to fill out the dull boxes. “It’s more fun to get right into the good stuff instead of learning all these tedious steps. Do you make arts and crafts?” She imagined sewing pillows and designing tables and putting together sticks and glue - all very unappealing. “I’d rather be playing sports or climbing trees outside with my friends.”

As Lily filled out the boxes, disappointed that her first attempt had been unsuccessful, she found it actually rather easy. The similarities between a bouncy ball and a rubber were obvious. They were both soft, smooth, both somewhat bouncy and, in this case, her eraser was round. She imagined her ball would be pink like this eraser and included that. Differences were obvious as well: a ball was usually made of plastic instead of rubber, it was much larger and it was hollow on the inside.

Once she’d filled out most of her table, she looked over at her neighbour. “I’m Lily Spencer, by the way,” she said. “What’s your name?” Even if this witch was condescending, Lily thought she ought to give her a chance. “What house were you sorted into?” she added. She already knew this witch wasn’t in Pecari, but she guessed either Crotalus or Aladren: those looked to be the more supercilious houses. Lily’s cousins had also attended Sonora many years before her, and two of them had been the snobby pure-blood types. However, there was her sister, Charlotte, who’d been sorted into Crotalus as well, but Lily didn’t think Charlotte was very condescending; only a little.

“Have you finished your table? Want to give it a go?” She half-hoped the other witch did just as awfully as she, but at the same time she wanted to see some magic happen for someone her age. Lily hopped off of her stool and picked up her now-cooled eraser off the floor. She’d try again in a bit and hope for less embarrassing results this time.

40 Lily Spencer Give it a go? 357 Lily Spencer 0 5

Finn Scott

May 29, 2016 7:38 AM

Bounce, little pebble, bounce! [Tag: Juniper] by Finn Scott

Finn had been quite excited to start classes. He’d always been a little envious seeing the older members of his family performing magic, and now at Sonora he was finally going to have a chance to do so himself! His first few classes hadn't gone too badly. However, he was a little nervous for his first transfiguration class, as it was meant to be a hard subject. What if he wasn't very good? That would be awfully embarrassing.

He listened carefully as the Deputy Headmistress explained what they were to do. The task didn’t sound too complicated, although he wasn't sure his chances of success were that high. He took the sheet that was coming round, glad that he’d have the more detailed copy. Briefly debating over which object would be easier, the tray jiggled slightly and Finn hastily chose a pebble. Examining it, he found it a little hard to think that he could make it into a bouncy ball. The pebble was heavier than a bouncy ball, although it was at least smooth and fairly spherical. He jotted down his observations in the table he’d been given, hoping that they would make the task ahead of him a little bit easier.

Looking around to find someone he could pair up with for the homework, he was relieved to see Juniper’s familiar face. They’d got on well at the opening feast (or so he’d thought), and it would be nice to talk to her again.

“Would you like to work together?” he asked her, hoping that she hadn't already made plans to pair up with somebody else. Finn didn’t want to get left behind in the friend-making process! He hadn't talked to that many people yet, and whilst part of him wanted to make as many friends as possible, a shyer part of him was quite happy to sit back and let others make the first effort. However, after his previous conversation with Juniper, he felt more confident around her and was hoping to get to know her better.

Finn wasn't the most confident of boys. He’d been brought up to always be friendly and polite, but whilst he often came across as quietly confident he could be a bundle of nerves inside. Despite enjoying his time at Sonora so far he did find himself missing home and his family. Sharing a room with a boy he didn’t know very well (although Jozua did seem very nice) meant that he couldn't fully relax yet, especially as he was being very conscientious about keeping their room tidy.

Turning his attention back to the lesson he was in, Finn decided to have a try at transfiguring the pebble. He looked at it whilst picturing a bouncy ball in his mind. Aiming his wand at the pebble, he focussed hard on the task he was attempting. “Hevea,” he said firmly. To his disappointment, the pebble remained looking the same. However, it did bounce a couple of times! Feeling pleased with himself, he jotted down his initial results in the table.

“How are you getting on?” he asked Juniper.

9 Finn Scott Bounce, little pebble, bounce! [Tag: Juniper] 347 Finn Scott 0 5

Finn Scott

May 29, 2016 9:07 AM

Teppenpaw, sorry! (nm) by Finn Scott

9 Finn Scott Teppenpaw, sorry! (nm) 347 Finn Scott 0 5

Killian

May 31, 2016 12:59 PM

If all the breakables are put away, let’s give this a try. by Killian

Killian listened to the older boy’s logic and gave a reluctant nod of understanding. Transfiguration boggled his mind more than any other class they’d had so far. He could get potions, after all, it was little more than a hybrid of chemistry, cooking, and medication making. Although, from what he’d read, there were a lot of uses for potions that had nothing to do with overall health. He could wrap his mind around it. Then there were charms, which while strange, felt more like magic in a way that was more expectable to his mind. Care of magical creatures made the most sense, seems it was learning about animals. Magical animals, but still animals.

Transfiguration, however, made his skin itch with irritation as he tried to force logic onto the branch of magic and failed. Shouldn’t they have to know what each item was made up of before they could even begin to try and change it into something else? How could they change stone to rubber? How could they fundamentally alter the very nature of an object, transforming it from one thing to another? The whole thing felt wrong, but he had to take the class and learn, so there was no point in fretting over the logic (or painful lack of logic) of it now.

“Yeah, well if we tried turning them into a kick ball that might work since the inside would be full of air. Then again, would it be harder to get air into it instead of keeping it one solid thing?” He glared down at the rock before pulling his worksheet closer. Maybe if he filled it out he’d have a better idea of what should be happening here.

“I think I’m going to go with one of the small bouncy balls,” he offered a smile, “yeah, the ones that come out of the quarter machines. That way, I just have to change the material it’s made out of instead of worrying about how I’m going to inflate it. I’m Killian,” he tacked on as an after thought.

Looking the rock over, he noticed that it looked like a river rock and was fairly round, though it had a bit of an egg shaped tip at one end. “Shouldn’t we have to know what it’s made out of before we try to make it be something else?” There were lots of kinds of rocks out there, and he had no idea if it mattered what type it was before he changed it.

Pulling out a ragged looking quill that looked like it might have been gnawed on by a puppy, he began scrawling out a description of his rock:

Smallish, dark grey, smooth surface, not quite round A frown teased the corner of his lips down while he tried to think of what else to write before giving up and moving to the other side to describe the type of ball he wanted.

“I’m going to have it be one color, maybe that’ll make it work better,” he thought out loud.

Small rubber bouncy ball, yellow, same size as the rock. “Do you think that’s all right?” He asked, pushing the sheet over a little so Joe could see.

0 Killian If all the breakables are put away, let’s give this a try. 354 Killian 0 5

Joe

May 31, 2016 3:25 PM

I think they've all been secured. by Joe

The mechanics of getting air inside a Transfigured object were not something Joe had thought a lot about in his life, but the younger boy’s point made sense now that he did. If they made a kickball…shell, he guessed, from the rocks, it would obviously have some air inside (his scientific knowledge was fairly limited, a composite of province of Alberta educational standards for students around grade six and stuff he’d picked up just from living in the same house as John, but he didn’t think they were likely to create a vacuum – he distinctly remembered something about even space having a few hydrogen atoms floating around in it, or something close to that anyway), but ‘has air in’ was not the same thing as ‘has enough air in to fill it up.’ Air had to…he fumbled for nerd words…was it pressure it had to have behind it to inflate something? That made sense when he thought about blowing up balloons, so he decided he was going to go with that.

To conclude, he said, “I have no idea.”

Thankfully, Killian’s next question was a bit less baffling. “Only…like, in general,” he said. “It’s easier the more similar two things are, or the more similar you think they are – a lot of it’s all in your head – but you probably don’t need to know exactly what kind of rock it is.” He considered the little he knew about the kinds of rocks there were and concluded that this was one of those things John and Clark would probably have spent whole hours of free time experimenting with had they been in his shoes. “Unless you’re someone who knows a lot about rocks, maybe,” he allowed. “My brother has trouble sometimes because he knows too much.” Knowing too much didn’t, in Joe’s opinion, necessarily make one smart.

He started filling in his own Transfiguration chart. The first image of a small bouncy ball that popped into his head was half-red and half-blue, so when Killian said he was going to go for a monochrome one, he decided to go with the mental image he’d had. He did have second year pride to think about, after all. “Colors and things can get you more points,” he said. “You know, if it’s not grey. Just…getting something that’s not rock – and not, you know, oozing or on fire or anything like that – “ he qualified on second thought – “will probably mean full points anyway today, though.”

Joe looked over Killian’s Transfiguration chart, which looked pretty good to him. “Yeah,” he said. “You might want to put something on about making the ball round to, you know, match the other part, but other than that, that looks good. Just get that picture in your head and you’re ready to give it a try.” He paused writing on his own chart to see if Killian would give it a try so he could see how the Pecari did and maybe – he didn’t think it was likely he’d be of any help, but it was possible – offer pointers for the near-inevitable second go.

16 Joe I think they've all been secured. 329 Joe 0 5

Killian

June 03, 2016 9:30 AM

All right. On Three, 1 . . . 2 . . . by Killian

Even though Joe didn’t have the answers to all his random questions, Killian found himself glad that they were seated together. At least Joe had some experience. Killian could have ended up next to another baffled first year, leaving the pair to wander around like a pair of helpless pups left alone in a park.

Joe knew enough to guide Killian, and the smaller boy paid strict attention when the other spoke. A small laugh escaped him when the other boy admitted his brother got into trouble for knowing too much. One of Killian’s favorite channels on TV was the Discovery channel, and he thought in a few years, maybe he’d know enough to get into trouble with it. Add magic to the mix, and there was no end to the amount of experiments he could perform.

He mulled over the point that more colors would earn a higher grade, but chose to stick with his single color theory for the time being. When he got the hang of changing one thing to another, then he’d think about the decorative aspect.

After Joe looked his page over, Killian nodded and added round to the bouncy ball side of the equation. A sigh threated to escape him as he set the paper aside and took out his wand. There were no more little tasks to keep him from giving it a go.

He gave the rock a long hard look. You are going to be a day glow yellow bouncy ball, perfectly round, and made of rubber. I will be able to throw you and you will bounce. It felt silly to be mentally willing a rock to turn into something else, but whatever helped, he’d go with it.

Taking a deep breath, he pointed his wand at the helpless rock and cried “HEVA!” To his dismay, nothing happened. Not one single thing. Heat filled his cheeks as he poked the rock with the tip of his wand. It remained a rock, just like in his heart he knew it would. Killian’s eyes darted towards Joe, and he gave a weak smile.

0 Killian All right. On Three, 1 . . . 2 . . . 354 Killian 0 5

Hippo

June 05, 2016 9:06 PM

As time and participation permit, of course by Hippo

"Nice," Ben belatedly congratulated Gabe's sister's little league team's placement. He missed playing little league himself, but the season didn't quite mesh with Sonora's break, so he'd had to find another league with a shorter season. "Hiking and camping sound fun, too." His experience with wilderness was limited - when Mom had off from her job, they usually did something involving beaches and hotels rather than forests and tents, but Ben would like to try the later at some point.

"Good!" Ben enthused about his summer when Gabe asked about it. "Was on the summer baseball league, and found a few pick-up games for soccer, too. And Dad brought me to a Red Sox game, so that was awesome, especially when they won that night!" Dad had learned to navigate the muggle sports world shortly after Ben started elementary school, so that was no longer in the realm of impressive feats, but it was still a special treat and he was always excited when schedules and the household budget worked out that they could go.

After the lecture, Ben grinned widely as Gabe proved just as enthusiastic about his club idea as he'd hoped and agreed to co-lead with him. "Awesome."

Ben eyed his transfiguration tables, trying to decide if he needed to write more in the material box than 'rubbery eraser material to rubbery bouncy ball material' but wasn't really sure how to explain the difference. There was one. He just didn't know the words to quantify it on his table.

Turning back to Gabe, he shook his head slowly as he considered the concerns raised. "I don't think baseball is any more complicated than Quidditch - it's only got the one ball, so it's pretty simple, actually, by comparison, so I think it will work as long as we can get enough people to field large enough teams. That might be the trickier part. I guess we could have back-up plans for each day. Like, if we plan baseball, and only eight people show up, four people teams are way too small for baseball, so we could switch to volleyball or track races or something that would work with fewer people. But maybe starting with, say, volleyball, might be a good idea, just because there aren't really a lot of positions to explain and we can get into it quicker and not bog down the first meeting with a lot of rules explanations, and that works with pretty much any number of players." Beach volleyball only had two people on a team, and Ben was definitely hoping they'd pull way more than two people besides themselves.

He decided he'd leave his transfiguration table as it was, and just give the spell a go. If he failed to produce any effect, he'd flesh out his answers a bit more, but he was pretty sure he knew what he needed to achieve, and that was really the whole point of the exercise.

He picked up his wand and held it over his eraser and cast, "Heavia," but as soon as the word was out of his mouth, he knew he'd messed up the pronunciation. Fortunately, nothing happened instead of something bad. "Wait, what was the incantation again? Heavia? Heave-a? Havena?" He pulled over his textbook, ready to go look it up if Gabe couldn't remember either.

1 Hippo As time and participation permit, of course 339 Hippo 0 5

Jozua Sparks

June 05, 2016 9:36 PM

Maybe not. My family earned this surname. by Jozua Sparks

Jozua grimaced slightly as the other girl confirmed his suspicions. Smoke was a bad sign. "Yeah," he answered her question, showing her the scorch mark on his rock as if that would prove smoke had happened. "I must have done something wrong."

His eye fell on the blank transfiguration table and he briefly wondered if maybe there was a point to it after all, but he really just wanted to do a little bit of real magic before getting all bogged down with theory and written work. Was that really so much to ask for? He'd been doing theory and written work for eleven years.

(Well, probably closer to eight years, since he wasn't born with the ingrained knowledge of how to read, write, and reason, though honestly he couldn't remember a time when he didn't have such skills.)

Couldn't he just get this one thing to go before he had to start learning why it worked? Apparently not.

With a deep, heavy, put-upon sigh of great reluctance, he pulled the transfiguration table over in front of him. "I guess we're supposed to do this part first," he grumbled as if the requirement was entirely unreasonable.

He looked over at the girl's sheet, not exactly intending to copy her answers, but just get an idea of what kinds of things he was supposed to be writing. She was doing a rock, too, so their answers should be pretty similar anyway. "What did you put for the first box?" he asked, figuring if he asked verbally and provided some discussion on the topic, then it wasn't cheating anymore.

1 Jozua Sparks Maybe not. My family earned this surname. 348 Jozua Sparks 0 5

Joe

June 07, 2016 3:58 PM

Think you've got a couple of things out of place there. by Joe

Joe was not terribly surprised that Killian’s first stab at the project availed him nothing, but he felt bad for the first year anyway. “Don’t worry about it too much,” he advised the younger boy. “You’re doing well for a first try in here as long as you don’t set anyone else on fire.”

A mediocre performance was, of course, setting oneself on fire, at least a little bit. Joe decided not to mention that to Killian. “I think you had the pronunciation a little off, though,” he did add. “It sounded more like hee-vee-ah when Professor Skies said it. Saying it right is…really important, ‘specially when you’re older. Now we can just – backfire our wands, or nothing happens, but when you’re older, you might accidentally Summon a buffalo when you did not want to Summon a buffalo, and I think that would, uh, kind of ruin your whole day,” said Joe authoritatively. He had only the most passing acquaintance with buffalo studies, but understood they were very large relative to people and, indeed, most rooms people were likely to be in when they inadverently Summoned them.

The difficulties of start-of-the-year Transfiguration were something he knew more about, though. Being a second year meant it had to be easier than it had been when he was a first year, but..."My turn,” observed Joe, hoping he didn’t sound too gloomy about the prospect. “Hevea!”

The rock…shuddered, part of an irregular edge drawing inward toward the rest and forcing the bottom down, but it only took on the faintest suggestion of unnatural smoothness and didn’t change color at all. Lifting it and dropping it about three centimeters also proved that it wasn’t made of rubber yet. Joe caught it quickly before it could roll off his desk. “Like I said, it takes a while,” he said. “How’re you doing?”

OOC: Pronunciation borrowed from oxforddictionaries.com, that being the first online dictionary with a pronunciation guide my cursor landed on when I Googled it.

16 Joe Think you've got a couple of things out of place there. 329 Joe 0 5

Juniper Brockert,Teppenpaw

June 08, 2016 9:15 PM

And turn round. by Juniper Brockert,Teppenpaw

Juniper was definitely not looking forward to going to any class besides Care of Magical Creatures. The idea of sitting in class with all the first and second years and no escape sounded like torture. It wasn't like Orientation where she had ended up spending part of it hiding in the girls' room. If she ran out of the classroom because she couldn't take it, she'd be in deep trouble with her professor, plus her classmates would think she was a freak.

And it wasn't as though Juniper didn't want to learn about how to use magic. That was necessary and in Transfiguration in particular, which she did think she might be good at, if she really did want to become an animagus someday she needed to be in class to learn. It was just that Juniper didn't want to have to be around other students, who even if they were quiet and not technically bothering her, were distracting just by being there because she'd be so anxious in their presence that she was afraid she wouldn't be able to focus. Only in Care of Magical Creatures would the comforting presence of animals and the overwhelming interest in the subject be enough to forget about the presence of others just a little.

The Teppenpaw tried to force herself to ignore the presence of her classmates and listen to Professor Skies. She really did want to learn things, she just didn't really like the social aspect of....well, of life in general. Not to worry about the little nuances of interactions with different people. Not to worry about people thinking her strange or to mess up if she didn't do things right. Not to worry about representing her family name accurately. Juniper had heard role call and there were last names she recognized besides those of her relatives and Finn. It made her acutely aware that any action she took had the potential to offend them.

And even the ones who weren't might be critical of her for some reason or another. She wasn't sure she was supposed to care, but she did. The first year didn't want anyone to have reason to make fun of her. Not that she actually had much experience with being made fun of since she genuinely didn't have much experience with people other than her parents, Duncan and the ghosts in their house and the only one of them whom ever criticized her was Mother. Occasionally, she saw other relatives at a family or social event, the ones more closely related more, in particular Tasha and her parents. And then there were the parties her mother forced her into where she tried to fade into the background and could never ever shake the feeling others were whispering and laughing.

Juniper had those feelings right now. Sure, people were supposed to be listening to Professor Skies, but she knew that not everyone was into academics and minds wandered. What if she was doing something wrong and they were critiquing her rather than learning how to transfigure erasers or rocks into a bouncy ball? It was a compartively simple lesson, a building block, but bouncy balls weren't a necessity of life-she might have fun playing with one with a cat, even though horses were her favorite, Juniper loved all animals-so others might not think it was that vital to learn and thus were letting their minds wander. She just hoped there was nothing about anything she was doing at the moment that made anyone think of her .

She didn't think long about which object she'd take, it didn't matter much to her. Juniper reached into the box and pulled out an eraser, pink and tapered on the ends. She examined it and wrote down some notes about it. It was a radically different shape from a bouncy ball which were always spherical but both were made out of rubber. Of course, they were of different types of rubber. And then of course, bouncy balls could be any color or pattern. Juniper decided she'd just make it a brighter shade of pink and concentrate on the shape. She'd rather go the simpler route and possibly succeed, then try something more ambitious, fail and have her classmates see. She was a Brockert and that meant Transfig prowess, even if she did prefer COMC.

Before she could try anything, she heard a voice speak to her. Juniper looked up, startled, only to Finn there. "S-sure!" Not only did someone want to work with her, but it was someone she'd already met and liked. That meant she hadn't messed up with her fellow Teppenpaw and that he wanted to be around her still. And as an added bonus, she didn't have to deal with the stress of meeting someone new. Plus, Finn had a pebble and she had an eraser and Professor Skies said to pair with someone in her class with a different object.

She watched as Finn tried the spell. "Good job." She told him as his pebble bounced.

Now it was her turn. Juniper took a deep breath. All she needed was for it to do something. "Hevea" . The eraser turned a rather garish share of neon pink-she'd always associated bouncy balls with bright colors so it was more or less what she wanted despite her desperate desire to blend in-and the tapering on the ends disappeared.

The first year considered her housemate's question. "All right, I guess. How about you?" Juniper returned the question.

11 Juniper Brockert,Teppenpaw And turn round. 345 Juniper Brockert,Teppenpaw 0 5

Gabe

June 10, 2016 3:35 AM

That sounds like an adult problem by Gabe

"What position d'ya play? I'm catcher, usually, " Gabe asked just before class was about to start. It was really cool to meet another baseball kid here at Sonora. Back home, Gabe's older siblings were both pitchers, and practiced throwing the ball with Gabe until well after dark in their backyard. The youngest Valenti sibling always loved getting to tag along with his brother and sister. It was pretty lame that he had to wait until winter to see them again.

"Yeah, maybe as we grow the club, we can move on to bigger team sports. D'ya think they would let us play football?" he grinned, the idea of some of the stuffier kids trying out the non-magical contact sport was particularly hilarious to him, " And yeah, volleyball is a good idea," Gabe agreed, "I've only ever played at the beach, but my cousin Ari played, at her old school," he nodded over to his younger cousin, "So maybe she could help out with like, formal rules and stuff." Gabe thought Ari was pretty smart, and sure to know of such things. And she was just about as competitive as him, too. It would be really fun to play against her, at her own game.

Gabe was perfectly happy to avoid the inevitable boredom that were in-class worksheets. Non-magical, magical, they were all the same. Just a piece of paper that would end up in the bottomless pit of his backpack, only to be unearthed in the week just before finals, by then just a crumpled scrap of paper covered with indecipherable chicken scratch. So he was excited to see what haopened when Ben just went for it. Doing magic was always more exciting than plain old writing about it.

Of course, sometimes practicing Transfiguration barely felt like doing magic at all, it could be so subtle sometimes. Charms were more interesting, there was always a cool and fun effect. And it was more pleasant than Defense, which was cool, but also you could end up hurting someone. Long story short, Gabe was not expecting much more than Ben's results in his own go at it. He grabbed his wand from his robe pocket and pointed it seriously at the eraser.

"Hevya!" he exclaimed at the pink eraser. It did nearly a half, slow spin before coming to a stop. He picked it up for further examination. Still very much an eraser.

"I dunno, dude," he shrugged, placing the Still Eraser back on his desk. It was a very good thing that there was the future Sports Club to talk about. Otherwise, this was going to be a very long lesson.

0 Gabe That sounds like an adult problem 330 Gabe 0 5

Arianna V,

June 12, 2016 9:45 PM

Don't mind if I do by Arianna V,

Arianna's dark eyes narrowed, an impulsive reaction to the idea that she could be incorrect. In science last year, they had learned about changes in matter, and how they could be caused by either physical or chemical changes. Changing a pebble to a bouncy ball seemed like a chemical change to her, like mixing flour, sugar and water and all the other things to bake a cake. Add some heat, and you would change the ingredients to something else, irreversibly. Of course, with magic, it might be possible to change them back. It might be possible to break all the rules of science she'd had to study at her old school.

"Interesting," she muttered quietly, still working her mind through it. She didn't entirely believe the idea that you could change molecules of a living thing and it wouldn't hurt. But Arianna could accept that magic broke at least some of the rules taught in Papa's strict curriculum. This was going to be a fun letter home.

The other girl's mention of older siblings reminded Arianna of Elisa, Arianna's sister and the baby of the Valenti cousins.

"Not really," she shook her head, "But my little sister does." Elisa was always making magic wands out of pencils, and turning their school supplies into all sorts of fantastical things. Their shared room at home was filled with the nine year-old's creations. Much more useful than climbing trees, which really there weren't very many of in Brooklyn, anyway. Arianna had always thought Elisa might be an inventor, someday. But these days, she tended to hope for witch as her sister's future career.

"What sports do you play?" she asked, only half paying attention as she continued to fill out her form. Arianna noted that she planned for her ball to be about the size of her fist, with a blue tie-dye color. It needed to be firm enough to retain its shape when it bounced, and not stay flat and weird, like a basketball with no air from gym class. And it couldn't be soft like a volleyball, the sport she had played back home. Volleyballs didn't really bounce well, without enough force. Maybe like a stronger, hardened version of putty, then.

"Arianna Valenti, in Aladren," she responded, still unsure herself why she was giving the girl any of her time. The last name seemed familar, although Arianna couldn't place from where. Perhaps this made Lily an Important Person, then. Yes, that was why Arianna was still chatting with her.

She nodded when Lily asked if she was ready to try, and took her wand out of her robe pocket. It was walnut, and like her cousin, had dragon heart string at it's core, which she thought was a very gory thing to casually on one's person at all times.

Looking back at the pebble, dark eyes stared very deliberately, wand carefully pointed at her target, "Hevea."

Some sparks of yellow light shot from her wand, and... nothing. The pebble looked exactly as it had before. She frowned, picking up the pen she had been using to take notes and prodded at the pebble. A small indent formed. Like a hot cake, fresh out of the oven, or wet clay.

"Well," Arianna observed, picking up the pebble and rolling it between her fingers, so that it would regain its roundness, "That was anti-climatic."

0 Arianna V, Don't mind if I do 343 Arianna V, 0 5

Farrah

June 15, 2016 7:55 PM

It does have a flare to it by Farrah

Farrah was surprised to hear that he had already done the spell. Was he that fast with his table or was Farrah being painstakingly slow with it? Looking around, it looked to be a little bit of both. Farrah was just so nervous about trying her very first spell and she had wanted to make sure she had done everything correctly first before bringing her wand into the mix. Maybe he was more confident about it than she was. Or maybe he had more experience with it over all? She didn’t know but it only made the excitement to try it grow.

Farrah looked over her table again to make sure she covered everything while she lifted her wand up from her desk. She would have to do it sooner or later and everyone, including the Professors, said that it wasn’t going to work the first few times and that would be okay. She just had to keep reminding herself of that.

She looked at him again, but this time with suspicion. Was he trying to get her to do his work for him? Farrah had enough of her fair share of cheaters in her other school. She wasn’t the sort of person then to allow someone to cheat off of her and she wasn’t about to start now while she was at Magical school. Farrah didn’t want to come off as one of those snooty, goody two shoes, or anything like that and there was a chance that he was just comparing his own work with her. “I wrote out the similarities between the pebble and a bouncy ball.” Farrah offered to him. “Which, I guess there aren’t as many similarities between them as I originally thought when I picked out the pebble to begin with.” Farrah added, frowning as she looked down at the pebble on the desk.

She left him to his table and took ahold of her wand. She recited the spell in her head a couple of times. Taking a deep breath, Farrah held out her wand and stated as firmly as she could, “Hevea”. She watched with expectation and a bit of trepidation for something, anything, to happen. She thought the pebble might have shook some, wobble a little bit, and maybe even look a bit paler. But other than that, there was nothing different about the pebble. Farrah frowned. She had said it with confidence too. “Well, that was a bust.” She said with a sigh.

6 Farrah It does have a flare to it 344 Farrah 0 5

Finn

June 20, 2016 10:02 AM

Or even change colour! by Finn

Finn was relieved that Juniper was happy to pair up. Transfiguration seemed hard enough so far without worrying about someone he didn’t know criticising his attempts. Besides, as she’d already known about magic she wouldn’t expect him to be brilliant straight away, right?

Academics had been Finn’s main concern about starting at Sonora. Whilst by no means stupid, he knew he wasn’t the most academically gifted person, and he didn’t want to fall behind in his classes or look stupid. His grandmother had told him that if he put in the work he would do well, so he had decided that he was going to take the time to do all the homework and any extra work that was needed. He was hoping that the tutoring he had at home (in reading, writing and mathematics) would help him complete the work to a good standard.

Finn watched Juniper’s attempt, thinking that she seemed to be going quite well. She’d actually got a visible change, which was more than Finn could say about his pebble.

“Not as well as you,” he replied honestly. “I like your idea of altering the colour though. Maybe picturing it as a different colour will help me get more of a change?” It was worth a try, Finn thought, and perhaps if he could picture a clearer difference between the pebble and the bouncy ball he could perform the transfiguration more easily. That was his theory, at least.

Brandishing his wand, Finn tried the spell once more, and this time his pebble seemed to turn a little green. “It changed colour – well, sort of!” he grinned, glad that he’d made further progress in the transfiguration. He wrote down his latest results, and then put his quill carefully aside so it didn’t accidentally get caught up in the spell. He’d rather keep his quill how it was – it was rather a nice one, a leaving present from his grandfather that made him feel rather grown up.

“So what’s your roommate like?” asked Finn, wanting to know more about their fourth housemate, who he hadn’t properly met yet.

9 Finn Or even change colour! 347 Finn 0 5

Juniper

June 30, 2016 5:29 PM

That too. by Juniper

Juniper turned pink. Was it okay that she'd done better than Finn? He didn't seem mad at her or anything, she didn't think. "Thank you." She said shyly. "You didn't do too badly. I mean, it bounced and I think that's harder because it's a textural change. I'd think visual would be easier. Plus, I mean, the material an eraser is made from is closer to what a bouncy ball is since they're both rubber whereas you have a pebble which is very much a different texture."

She looked away, down at her desk. That might have been more than she'd said to anyone since she arrived at Sonora and she was now uncomfortable. Juniper was unaccustomed to talking to others much at all and was worried about how Finn would react. Of course, she'd complimented him back so that was a good thing but what if the rest of what she'd said was stupid or didn't make sense? Or even if Finn thought it sounded good, Juniper never knew who was listening in a room full of people. At the parties she was forced to go to, sometimes even she ended up overhearing conversations, even though she didn't necessarily want to, which in turn made her worry others would think she was eavesdropping on purpose and call her out on it. Besides, it made Juniper generally uncomfortable to hear things not meant for her ears.

Of course, not being able to hear what someone was saying in these situations was just as bad in a different way, because she always thought they were talking about her. This was why it was just best to avoid people. Animals were so much better, they didn't judge. How Juniper longed for her horse, Butterscotch right now. A ride would be so good to clear her head. To calm her down. Plus, she had to be missing Juniper too. What if she thought Juniper had abandoned her? The Teppenpaw had told her goodbye, releasing actual tears, unlike with her parents, and explained where she was going, but she wasn't entirely sure Butterscotch understood.

Thinking about it made her feel like crying all over again but for obvious reasons Juniper could not do that here. It was hard to find a place to cry in general at school, given there were people everywhere and she didn't want anyone to see. She took a deep breath and instead, watched Finn's next try. "Good job." It was easier giving compliments than getting them in some ways.

He then asked her about her roommate. "Um, she seems nice enough. Her name's Georgia." Juniper replied. She wasn't sure what else to say and wasn't all that comfortable talking about other people anyway as she didn't really want them talking about her. "What about yours?"

11 Juniper That too. 345 Juniper 0 5