Professor Skies

July 16, 2019 8:04 AM
Professor Skies surveyed the assembled beginners, hoping that the first years were feeling settled - she perhaps needed to hope that for one or two of the second years as well - and that everyone was having a good first day of classes.

"Welcome to Transfiguration," she smiled, an act which emphasised the lines around her mouth and eyes, "I am Deputy Headmistress Skies, though in class you may simply address me as 'Professor.' I will be your Transfiguration teacher.

"Transfiguration is one of the more complex branches of magic, and I should warn you now that it may take you some time to get results. That said, it can be incredibly useful. In general, it is the art of turning one object into another. As you progress, you will also learn how to make objects vanish or to conjure them from nothing. Beyond the studies we offer here, select magical people who are especially adept at transfiguration can learn to transform themselves into animals whilst maintaining their human minds." It was deeply tempting to finish this with 'like so' and turn herself into an owl, but remembering the degree of culture shock some of the Muggleborns had from things like talking and moving paintings, she decided that seeing their teacher transform into an owl might be something to save for another time.

"Today, we are going to start much more simply. You are going to be given a paper plate and will try to transfigure it into a china one. When we transfigure, we take into mind all elements of an object - its shape, its function, its material. With today's task, many of those elements have been removed - you have only one feature to concentrate on, and that should make things significantly easier for you.

"Second years, seeing as that task would be rather too easy for you, you will be taking a side plate along with your paper plate, and will be trying to replicate the pattern to make a matching set - and believe me, I have means of telling the difference between a transfigured plate and a side plate with an engorgement charm on it," she warned them, in case anyone thought that was a clever shortcut.

"All of you will be using the spell lateramen and a gliding wand motion, like so," she demonstrated, holding up the finished plate which had a fine border of pink flowers. “Your homework will be to look up the origin of this spell. You should also look up the definitions of source spells and target spells in your textbook, and identify which this is. I would like you to identify three more spells of each kind, and we will begin next lesson by going around collecting everyone’s examples,” she warned them. Behind her, the chalk wrote the homework on the board in swirling, elegant cursive, along with notes and diagrams for the spell they would be using that day.

“You may talk quietly to your neighbours. Help each other if you get stuck, or call me over. If you are satisfied with your results, or need a break from the practical, you can start your homework during the lesson. You may begin.”

OOC - welcome to Transfiguration. Posting here can earn you house points! Posts should be a minimum of 200 words and will be graded on length, realism, relevance (how well you deal with the class content) and creativity.

Posts are marked out of character, based on the quality of the writing, so a character who says they are doing badly but does so in a well-written and detailed way can still score full points. Remember that Hermione, the best witch of her age, struggled with Transfiguration at first, so please keep your character’s ability level realistic. That said, I feel I’ve given you an easier task, as your objects are already more similar to each other, so there’s a little more scope for differing results. You are also free to make up relevant information that your character is reading in their textbook.

You are being supervised, so if things are going wrong, Selina would step in before anything got terribly out of hand. Please tag me in the subject line if there’s something that needs my attention.

Have fun, have a go, if you’re unsure about anything, ask on the OOC or in chatzy.

Subthreads:
13 Professor Skies Beginners - Life's a Picnic! 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Anya Delachene, Pecari

July 19, 2019 1:03 PM
Anya was wearing jeans and battered green t-shirt that said ‘Shooting Star Feed: Best Malt Whiskey Feed for Abraxons’ in fading gray letters. It looked too big for her, like someone had put a shrinking charm on it once, but the enchantment was falling apart as the shirt itself lost its structural integrity. It had come free with one of their feed shipments, sized for an adult, but Anya had been the only on in the family with any interest in wearing it. Mom had tried to convince her to throw it away instead of packing it for school, but Anya would hear none of that.

It was, after all, Sonora colors, perfectly matching the school robes she wasn’t wearing. She had to show school spirit for her first day of classes, and wearing that hindering straightjacket of a uniform was entirely out of the question.

Charms was the first class of the day, and she got through that one without major mishap, though she did get told several times to return to her seat and that wandering about the room was not appropriate. She didn’t understand how people could expect them to stay in the same place for a whole hour without getting up and moving around, and she’d had to ask to go to the bathroom once just so she could see different walls for a couple minutes. She was not looking forward to Potions, which came in two hour blocks.

Now in Transfigurations, she sat atop her desk awaiting the class to start. She dutifully moved into her chair when that happened, more in response to the prompting of Professor Skies’ pointed look than by her own initiative, but she sat, in her chair, and listened to the introduction, mildly disappointed that there was no animagus demonstration. That would be so cool. She wanted to be a bird. Maybe an eagle.

Before she did that though, she was going to have to make a disposable plate into fine china. Yippee.

She pushed aside her resentment that she had to start so pretentiously, and reminded herself if was just the first step to getting her wings. If she ended up shattering the plate - the most likely outcome of mixing Anya with fine china - that would just prove she’d done it right.

She collected a paper plate and returned to her desk, hoisting herself up onto its surface again and balancing her plate over her crossed ankles. She pulled her wand out from the back pocket of her jeans and studied her plate a moment.

It was a pretty flimsy plate. It would probably fall apart if anyone put anything too wet or greasy on it. She poked at it, testing its elasticity. Definitely more a bendy plate than a brittle plate right now. That was going to have to change. Also, the plain white was way too boring. That had to go, too.

She picked up her quill (she hadn’t quite been sitting on it) and sketched a rough outline of an eagle in the middle, to make it a fun and interesting china piece instead of a hideous flowery one.

“Here goes,” she said, psyching herself up, imagining one of Mom’s fancy dinner plates in the china cabinet, but with a cool eagle in the middle of it instead of a pink rose.

Anya made the gliding motion with her wand, and stumbled over the unfamiliar incantation, and . . . nothing happened at all. The total paperness of the plate was more than a little disheartening after she’d been starting to see results with her Charms spell in the previous class.

“Well, that didn’t work,” she complained, and looked down at her neighbor. “How’s yours going? Transfig’s a whole different ball game to Charms, isn’t it?”


OOC: Reprimands in Charms approved by Gray’s author. Selina’s pointed ‘off the desk’ look was assumed based on normal teacher getting-class-started protocols.
1 Anya Delachene, Pecari I like picnics! 1453 Anya Delachene, Pecari 0 5

Jessica Hayles, Crotalus

July 19, 2019 2:03 PM
The girl's outfit was hideous. Besides Jessica's increasing aversion to forest green, there was also the state of the t-shirt. It looked like something which was on the brink of no longer fit for garden work, and it didn't even fit the girl properly. Her hair was also untidy, and jeans were in Jessica's opinion rarely flattering even to someone otherwise well-dressed, much less someone who was not. Normally, therefore, if Jessica looked at her at all, it would have been with mild contempt.

At the moment, though, there was nothing of that in the way she kept glancing at the girl sitting on top (!) of the desk beside hers. Instead, it was almost pure fascination.

Almost, because it was mixed with just a hint of glee at the thought of what must have been going through Skies' head at the sight and anticipation of Skies suffering through trying to keep the girl more or less in her seat. Jessica thought that any inconvenience an unruly brought to herself would be a very fair payment for watching Skies slowly lose her tiny mind. However, most of her attitude was one of fascination.

Here was someone who was refusing to play nicely. Here was someone breaking the rules.

Jessica touched her necklace, carefully only just skimming her fingers over the delicate ivy leaves to avoid stressing the century-old enamelwork. Jessica couldn't help but think about things like that. Jessica never thought about breaking rules, at least not for long. She hated the uniform as much as everything else about this place, but it brought on her nerves to even think about deliberately, openly breaking a rule. People did from time to time, but rarely so...blatantly, and she felt a bit as though she were observing a member of another species here.

She tried to direct her attention to her side plate. Skies had a tiny brain and was a horrible person, but somewhere or other she had acquired nice enough china, Jessica supposed. She didn't recognize the mark on the back of it, but when she lifted it to the light, it was translucent enough, and the pattern was pretty enough. The edges of the dish and the center were rimmed in cobalt blue, with straight, evenly spaced bars of blue running between them. In the white spaces, there were tiny red flowers. It looked very antique Americana. Jessica personally preferred pastels, but this was pretty. She would not mind making a copy of it on the cheap paper one. At least temporarily, she could make something better than it really was on the outside.

The phrase lipstick on a pig sprang to mind. She ignored it.

She pulled her slim tube of gloss out of her little handbag and applied another sheer coat of pink to her own lips, a mental signal to herself that she was ready to get to business. She put it away and made her first attempt. A few faint splotches appeared on the paper plate, but it felt paper all over. Leaves fell from trees and flowed steadily down to the sea. And so it went.

“Well, that didn’t work.”

Jessica looked up at the girl then - farther up than seemed appropriate, really, given the girl's position. "It is," she agreed, the words slightly tinged with a Southern accent. "Charms just adds things, or moves them, or - stuff. This is supposed to change things. It's difficult."

Jessica didn't know all the science, but she did know just enough to know she was probably making a very serious understatement. That was one thing that sometimes occurred to her...there was power here. The only trouble was, if she wasn't allowed to use it, then it was useless to her and she had no reason to acquire it - it was just something to make things even more difficult. And it frightened her. There were limits to what people should be able to do. This all passed right by them.

"I'm Jessica," she added. "Welcome to the school."
16 Jessica Hayles, Crotalus I do, too. 1442 Jessica Hayles, Crotalus 0 5