Grayson Wright
March 24, 2020 11:19 AM
Is a spade a spade, Advanced students? by Grayson Wright
Gray was not sure when, exactly, some tiny part of the Charms world had figured out that he was now part of it, but somehow, he had ended up on a mailing list for a Charms education periodical. He suspected the professional development he had done the summer before last had something to do with it, though he was not sure; all he knew was that the publication showed up and had his actual name on it, rather than a generic form of address.He had not read them when they first started showing up, just thrown them into the bottom drawer of his desk, but one rainy afternoon he had gotten bored and had not emerged from the ensuing rabbit hole for several hours. He really was, he thought with mild horror, settling into this world somewhat. On the bright side, at least it gave him ideas for lessons.
"Hello, everyone," he said to his Advanced students. "Everyone ready to dive into what constitutes a charm?"
He leaned more or less casually against his desk as he continued. "When you were Beginners, you probably learned that a Transfiguration changes what something is, while a Charm changes what that something does. It's a good definition, but there are plenty of grey areas in it. We're going to look at a few specific areas where recent research makes the line blurry." The Chess Problem, after all, was traditionally taught in Transfiguration, and anyway - everyone did the Chess Problem sooner or later. Everyone. Absolutely everyone. For probably the last century. It was always extremely interesting when first presented - or at least, he had found it fascinating when it had been first presented to him - but these kids had almost surely been presented the Chess Problem in one form or another before, so new problems would keep them from getting complacent.
“There are a variety of spells where it’s possible to argue about whether something has changed what it does or what it is. One you’re all probably familiar with is the issue of whether chessmen are Transfigured or Charmed. It’s usually put under Transfiguration because of the composition of the incantations, and because the chessmen appear to develop at least rudimentary ‘minds’ under the influence of the spells. However, this definition starts to run into trouble when it meets the Golden Snitch.
“You could argue that the Snitch is only charmed to follow certain patterns shown by the Golden Snidget, the bird which it was designed to resemble,” he said. “However, when we observe its behavior, it seems to be aware when a player is close to it, and it takes measures to try to avoid capture, and it can be argued that this imitates the behavior or a living organism – if one with an even simpler brain than the chessmen show. I could also enchant this pen-stand – “ He picked up the wooden pen-stand on his desk – “to do the same thing.” Probably, anyway; it would most likely be less complex than the charms on a Snitch, but he was reasonably confident he could get the thing independently airborne and make it avoid contact with objects.
“Another example of a charm which behaves in an unusual fashion is the Fidelius Charm, which you might have also heard about in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, if you’ve continued that. Unlike traditional concealment charms, the Fidelius Charm doesn’t actually directly conceal an object – it conceals an idea, or a piece of information. If I put a concealing charm on my pen-stand, you might find it hard to pick it out, but if you walked up to my desk, you could put your hand on it and realize there was something shaped like a pen-stand there. If I made the decision – not very likely, but theoretically possible – to cast the Fidelius Charm on this pen-stand, then any student who my Secret-Keeper didn’t tell about its location would be unable to find it, even though it would still sit in plain sight here. So in that case – what have I changed? The properties of the pen-stand? The properties of – in theory – all but two humans on Earth? Or the property of location – is the pen-stand somehow both here, for those who know the secret, and not-here at the same time? If you get a degree in Charms, you’ll probably meet at least a few people who are willing to punch you in the nose if you disagree with them on which it is,” he added dryly.
“Last of all, we’ll consider the good old, simple Cheering Charm,” he said. “You all learned this one as Intermediates, because it’s probably the safest of the mind-altering charms, and the easiest to cast. Usually, all it does is temporarily change the behavior of parts of the brain – causes a surge of brain chemicals which produces a feeling of well-being and optimism. However, recent research suggests that if the Cheering Charm is used regularly on the same person, it can train the cells of the body to alter their behavior on their own – and the results seem to slow the aging process in some ways. Taken to extremes, though, it instead seems to make the body fail more quickly – the body starts creating unhealthy tissue which is different from what the body produced on its own. In either of these cases – has the behavior of the body changed, or has what certain parts of it are changed structurally enough to be considered a new thing?
“These aren’t questions you, as sixth and seventh years, can solve, but I’m going to ask you to select one of them as the topic for your second term research paper,” he informed them. “Today, you can look through these books I’ve pulled which relate to these topics – “ he gestured to a rolling cart full of books – “or go to the library and start reading. I’d like a statement of which topic you plan to pursue by the end of class. It’s not strictly binding – you have until next week to change your mind – but it’s a start. Also feel free to bounce ideas off me or your classmates until the end of class. If you don’t have any immediate questions, though, feel free to get started.”
OOC: Standard rules and disclaimers apply. Feel free to make up theories and have fun! The lesson was inspired by a combination of Flitwick’s Challenge from HP1 and three articles from Scientific American. Two were from this month’s print issue; one is about how new discoveries about how bird wings work and how it might affect the development of the next generation of drones, and the other is about how those who suffer from anxiety can show signs of accelerated cellular aging, but subjects who underwent cognitive behavior consistently showed the accelerated aging slowed or stopped compared to their initial tests. If anyone wants more information about those, let me know. The third is from the online site blog and deals with the presence of telomerase and its relation to aging and can be seen (without subscription) here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/aging-too-much-telomerase-can-be-as-bad-as-too-little/ (SA is written in pretty accessible language, so no worries if you're not up on your biology vocab - neither am I!)
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Is a spade a spade, Advanced students?
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