My hypothesis is that smoke is bad. (Professor) on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

June 10, 2017 8:32 AM

Beginners - Papa's Got a Brand New Bag by Professor Skies

Selina liked the first half of term better for the intermediates and advanced students, as their exams were still further off and everyone felt a little less manic, but the second half for more for the beginners, who by now were at least able to consistently channel their magic into doing something. Perhaps it wasn’t always super consistent, and it likely wasn’t perfect, but gone were the days of just glaring at their transfiguration projects willing them to do anything at all (and the occasional explosions of frustration, both literal and metaphorical, that came with this). She had kept an eye out for any students who had particular difficulty with their practical or their theory, and invited them either to her office hours, if the problem was their understanding or ability in the subject matter, or the literacy support sessions she ran, if the problem was more with their language skills or academic writing as a whole. They were all still steadily working through inanimate transfigurations, with the second years being challenged either by being given a different object to start or finish with, one which required a further leap of magic and imagination, or by being scored on the design as well as the completeness of their project.

“Good morning,” she greeted the class. “Today, you are going to be making bags - for the most part, this spell will work best to create a simple tote bag. The second years will be starting with a harder material, and can also cover design work, or start adding fastenings, to stretch themselves. Any first years who want to stretch themselves can do so by focussing on design.” She didn’t single out Zevalyn Ives, as she didn’t want to make her self-conscious - any more so than her current situation likely did - but she had intervened early in the term to let Zevalyn know that she was welcome to regard herself as whichever grade level she liked when taking these instructions, as well as to offer her additional support. It was Selina’s habit to walk around and give pointers during class, and so she had been able to help steer Zevalyn by merely doing this more frequently with her than she would have done an average student. It also allowed her to keep an eye on the girl, and check that her own expectations of herself weren’t becoming too unrealistic. Whilst minor explosions were par for the course in the first term, Selina had been keeping a particular eye on Zevalyn, due to the combination of her magic going untrained for longer than average, the resultant stress of now having to play catch up, and the fact that she was probably hitting puberty, which sounded like a winning combination for pyrotechnics.

“Please take a square of fabric if you’re a first year, and a square of wood if you are a second year. There are also some Transfiguration tables coming around, which you’ll notice are now blank for everyone.” The Transfiguration tables were an exercise Selina got students to do in their early days, in order to help with their visualisation skills and knowing what elements they needed to focus their energy on to complete the change. The left column listed traits, such as size, materials and function (or today, had blank spaces for the students to list these themselves) whilst in the right column they could note the similarities or differences between the objects.

“The spell is ’saccus’ and requires a light sweeping wand movement, like so,” she demonstrated, turning one of the fabric squares into a bright paisley patterned tote.

“The spell is the same for everyone, making it a target spell, rather than a source or origin spell. For your homework, please write up a brief definition of each, and find three examples.

“You may talk quietly amongst yourselves whilst you work, and let me know if you have any difficulties. Please begin.”

OOC - Welcome to Transfiguration. Posts here are graded on your realism not how well you claim to have performed, so keep it in line with what could be expected of someone of your character's age and experience. You are being supervised and Professor Skies would not allow anything to get out of hand, so please give me time to intervene if you are having/causing trouble, and tag me in the subject line to get my attention.

Please put your character's name and house in the author line.

Posts are marked on length, realism, creativity and relevance and must be a minimum of 200 words. Enjoy.

Subthreads:

By no means Exceptional by Jennifer White (Aladren)

My hypothesis is that smoke is bad. (Professor) by Zevalyn Ives with Professor Skies

13 Professor Skies Beginners - Papa's Got a Brand New Bag 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Jennifer White (Aladren)

June 16, 2017 3:30 PM

By no means Exceptional by Jennifer White (Aladren)

Jen was feeling a little bored. That wasn’t fair on the universe, because it had been kind enough to send her to magic school, which was just about the coolest thing she had ever experienced (apart from maybe that one time she’d actually seen a real live person do a 720 Gazelle flip. What a hero). Still there were the same classes, the same students (she couldn’t claim the same professors because actually there had been a few changes since midterm but it spoiled her belligerent monologue to admit this), and it was dull. Like today they were learning how to use magic to make fabric into bags. That should be cool. That should be amazingly awesome, because it would lead to customizing your own clothes with magic instead of just adding patches or having to go to the trouble of dyeing stuff or learning to sew, which was a skill Jen would love to have but was nowhere near eager enough to learn, and yet Jen just looked at the professor, and at her textbook, and felt no motivation or enthusiasm whatsoever to complete the task. Except that she would fail if she didn’t. Okay then, almost no motivation.

Sighing, Jen sluggishly hauled herself across the classroom to select the least obnoxious square of fabric she could find - it was very dark green with large black polka dots - and returned to find someone had deposited a blank transfiguration table on her desk. Jen stared at it, once she was back in her seat, until the letters of the words blurred together, as she idly imagined herself pulling a blanket over the top of her head and lying in isolated darkness and silence for the rest of all eternity. A scraping sound nearby - probably a chair on the classroom floor - jolted her from her semi-conscious musings and drew her attention back to her current surroundings.

Heaving another, more audible sigh, Jen straightened the parchment, lethargically picked up her quill (which she had mercifully had the foresight to remove from her bag upon entering the classroom, as she doubted she could summon the enthusiasm to accomplish locating it within the - possibly literally - bottomless conglomeration of scraps of parchment, broken bracelets, empty ink wells and droobles wrappers that kept her textbooks well buffered from her bag’s inner lining) and began scratching details for this particular transfiguration into the corresponding columns. It was not difficult or engaging work, but it was at least preparing her brain for the spell she would need to attempt soon, and being in the right frame of mind could only have a positive impact on her spellwork, she was sure.

Actually, it was helping. Jen took a moment to be silently impressed with professor Skies’ learning aids, because already the first year was starting to consider various functions of different styles of bags, and how this would impact design, and how that, in turn, would affect the her spellcasting. The professor had demonstrated a simple tote, and as her transfiguration skills were by no means exceptional, Jen planned to begin with that, also. Therefore her ‘function’ column was less detailed than it might have been for a more specific, singular-function receptacle. Her silence on this occasion was due to thoughtfulness, not her earlier academic apathy, and was far more engaging. So when she looked up to see another person staring right at her, Jen was mildly surprised - a chair scraping loudly moments earlier definitely would not have registered with the Aladren; this person could have been speaking to her for minutes and she would have no idea. “Yes?” she inquired, as void of emotion or suggestion as she could manage in a single syllable, as she did not know the details of the scenario in which she now found herself.

0 Jennifer White (Aladren) By no means Exceptional 388 Jennifer White (Aladren) 0 5

Zevalyn Ives

June 21, 2017 12:54 PM

My hypothesis is that smoke is bad. (Professor) by Zevalyn Ives

Zevalyn dropped, exhausted, into a seat near the front. She had stayed up much too late last night doing her herbology reading (she'd started hoping it would put her to sleep), but then she'd recognized a plant name from potions and cross referenced with her potions book as well as some supplementary books she'd had on hand, and then it had been midnight somehow. She felt she made good progress in understanding both subjects though, so aside from feeling a bit wiped today, she didn't regret it.

She made herself sit straight upright with impeccable posture. Since doing so was uncomfortable and required some small amount of focus, she hoped it would keep her awake and alert for the lecture. This seemed to work, though it helped that the lecture was brief and to the point.

She briefly considered the relative merits of target spells versus source spells. She was inclined to believe the former were more useful, because if you needed a bag and had the target spell for a bag, you could always make a bag regardless of what was nearby to use as raw material. If you had a origin spell for a particular thing, and didn't have that thing, them you were totally out of luck. On the other hand, if you did have some of that material, you could probably do more with it than just make a bag. If you didn't need a bag, but needed, say, a tarp to give you shade from the sun, the origin spell might be better if you had some random wooden squares on hand and knew an origin spell for wood squares. Otherwise, you'd need to make a huge bag and cut it up to make a makeshift tarp.

In conclusion, she figured it was probably best to know a bunch of each so you'd have options in any circumstance.

Though the chances of having random wood squares lying about seemed low so she thought maybe that particular origin spell might not be the most useful one. As that was what she currently had sitting right in front of her at this very moment though, it did make for an acceptable hypothetical example.

She had started trying out the second year assignments at the start of the new semester and saw no reason not to continue doing so today. Most of her teachers had seemed amenable to this progression and Professor Skies in particular had made it a point to tell her she should do whichever assignment she felt was most appropriate for her.

Zevalyn hadn't failed to notice that the professor did seem to hover nearby more than she did for some of the other students, but she appreciated the attention as it meant she often got help quicker when she needed it without needing to get too frustrated trying and failing on her own.

Zevalyn diligently filled out her transfiguration table as she had already discovered that the spell was harder if she skimped on the details in it. It was sort of scientific anyway, and that pleased her, being able to quantify things and make objective comparisons. In that way, transfiguration almost came easier to her than some of the lighter subjects like Charms.

When her table was completed, she turned her attention to her square of wood and picked up her wand. "Baggus!" she cast, forcing enthusiasm and confidence because lethargic disinterest was not conducive to spell casting.

*Too much enthusiasm!* she concluded a moment later, *Too little control!*

The good news was that she successfully created a rough canvas tote bag, like the kind her parents used for their groceries: thick, sturdy, plain, perhaps a bit too rigid with some wood grains still visible, but overall not a terrible first attempt.

The bad news was that it was, well, it had smoke and heat coming off of it in disconcerting amounts.

"Professor!" Zevalyn called out in alarm, snatching her endangered and notebook from her desk before retreating to a safer distance.

1 Zevalyn Ives My hypothesis is that smoke is bad. (Professor) 380 Zevalyn Ives 0 5

Professor Skies

July 26, 2017 6:08 AM

That, at least, is correct by Professor Skies

There was a teacherly skill that Selina had perfected over the years -the art of listening but not listening, of listening selectively. She really did not want to know who had said what about whom, or who'd been seen snogging in the gardens, or why so and so wasn't speaking to so and so any more. She preferred to live in ignorant bliss of these facts, unless a student chose to bring the issue to her. However, she needed to keep an ear as well as an eye on what they were doing, listening out for any gross mispronounciations or mangling of theories.

Baggus.

The word caught her attention just before the cry of 'Professor' which followed it. She quickly stopped the smoke with a wave of her wand. Whilst she'd been more or less expecting something from Zevalyn, this hadn't been it. Zevalyn was normally a conscientious girl, and making a mistake with the spell word was unlike her.

"Is everything ok today, Zevalyn?" Selina asked her. "You look rather tired," she noted, assessing Zevalyn and finding plenty of evidence in the rings under her eyes as to why things might not be going so well today.

13 Professor Skies That, at least, is correct 26 Professor Skies 0 5