This could be worse, I guess on Transfiguration

Selina Skies

November 13, 2020 9:42 PM

Intermediates - Adaptations and Variations by Selina Skies

As Selina set up for the intermediate class, she tried not to feel the twisting feeling in her stomach that said she was missing something. Everyone seemed to be ticking along just fine, but it was harder, after last year, to trust that feeling, and she was trying to make sure she wasn’t complacent, and that she was alert to what might be going on under the surface. The intermediates was her most stressful class on that front in that it contained the physical reminder of things going wrong - though better that than an empty space where he should have been. At least she had a professional to defer to for him. Currently, her biggest worry was probably Killian. He could try to pretend he was alright, but she’d noticed him stifling yawns over breakfast the first few weeks back. Still, he seemed to have perked up a bit lately. He certainly looked less tired. Whatever it was that had improved his mood, she hoped it continued.

“Good morning,” she greeted the intermediates. “Today, we will be having an experimental class. For your homework you should have done some background reading on where spells come from, and how new spells get developed. Whilst this is not something you will learn much about whilst you are still in school, it’s a fascinating field, and one it’s well worth being aware of.” In school, of course, they learnt the classics. The basic foundations and building blocks that had broad application in everyday life. It didn’t mean that there weren’t new discoveries happening. Her understanding was that non-magical schools worked in much the same way - science taught the basic fundamentals that had been known for a period which ranged from decades to centuries, but that didn’t mean there was nothing left to discover.

“Today, we are going to be working with an existing spell but looking at some of its variations. There is a more common wand movement to this spell, but a subset of people for whom an alternative works better. Adaptation to existing spells is an interesting field of study in its own right. There are many ways in which we might differ, and which may affect our ability to cast spells in identical ways to each other. This can include disabilities which affect a person’s ability to move or speak, or other differences. The most commonly known variant is that left-handed versions of spells are often mirror images - the fluidity and the dexterity of the movement being important. However, there are occasions where this is not the case, or where the left-handed version simply doesn’t seem to work as well. Left-handedness is something that is reasonably prevalent in society, and yet there are still examples where we lag behind in properly accounting for it.

“Today, we will be investigating a difference of personality, for want of a better descriptor. For decades, there was a single way of casting the spell we’ll be looking at today. However, a second variant now exists, which around ten percent of the population seem to find easier to work with. The spell is a simple inanimate transfiguration so it should be well within everyone’s capabilities. The way you will be analysing the spell today is by what feels easier to you. Admittedly, not the most rigorously scientific procedure, but that’s what we have available. Can anyone think of ways we could measure the results more accurately, if we had more time or equipment available to us?” she asked, not really expecting anyone to be familiar with the latter, but hopeful that a few of them could work out an answer from the clue contained in the word ‘time.’

“I would like you all to write out your notes using the scientific method, which we went over last class. Who can remind me what that includes?” she asked, calling on people until she had the outline up on the board, including aim, equipment, method and hypothesis.

“Now, our actual experiment today will be working on turning pebbles into pencils. You will use the same incantation each time, but you will try a circle, a sharp flick, and a flowing motion for your wand movement,” she stated, demonstrating each one without casting the spell whilst the chalk scribbled the incantation behind her. One of them, after all, was a complete dud and even she struggled to get a result from doing it that way. She tended to fall with the majority who found the flick easier, but she didn’t want to bias them.

“You may work with a partner, and we will be coming together at the end as a class to collect overall results. You may begin.”

OOC: Posts will be marked based on length, relevance, creativity and realism. I am not sure if I have ever invented a pencil spell. I will try to go back and look. Extra points to anyone who does that, or comes up with one if I haven't.

Subthreads:

Woo experiments! by Morgan Garrett with Jezebel Reed-Fischer

This could be worse, I guess by Esme Brockert

13 Selina Skies Intermediates - Adaptations and Variations 26 1 5

Morgan Garrett

November 18, 2020 7:53 PM

Woo experiments! by Morgan Garrett

Science had always been a class that baffled Morgan, back in Kentucky. It was not that it was difficult for her. It was that she had always struggled to see the point in it.

Once upon a time, she knew, the experiments they conducted in class had been revolutionary, people really had wondered about whether a bean would grow better in sunlight or under a lamp or all those silly things, but those times had been gone long before Morgan had ever gotten to a classroom. Too, until fifth grade at least, everything had been taught to her as fact: if this, then that. There was, as far as Morgan could tell, nothing at all left to find out really, except whether evolution was real and whether it ought to be allowed in school to confuse people until that was decided. Her old teachers had known what the outcome of every experiment was going to be before she’d ever done it, so what had been the point of the exercise?

When she had heard Professor Skies talk about the scientific method, then, she had been expecting something dull, which was why her eyes sharpened with interest, bringing an unusually intelligent expression to her normally placid face, when it turned out to be something so individualized that it seemed impossible that Professor Skies really could already know the answer. Tentatively, therefore, when asked what equipment might help them get better answers, Morgan put her hand up.

“Um – I reckon we might – if we had stopwatches, we could tell which way we get to the end faster with, and which way lasted longer? And if we had – really fancy stuff, like super-microscopes, I guess, then we could see if the Transfiguring went all the way down?”

Her face was heating up even before she finished talking and she dropped her eyes to her desk quickly, feeling very stupid. Why hadn’t she just stopped at stopwatches, which at least made sense? Super-microscopes. She knew that wasn’t the word – but she didn’t know what the word was, either, for something that would look far enough down into something to tell how well it had been transfigured. Microscopes were okay for seeing a single cell, she knew, but could they see enough to tell what something really was? Did it even show up like something people could see at all? Was this something Professor Skies already knew? If she did, it was kind of rotten of her not to tell them….

She tried to focus on the task when it was given to them. Pebbles to pencils. She racked her brains for knowledge. Lead was a thing that…was in pencils and paint, but she thought she’d picked up somewhere that it was mined, too, so she guessed that took care of the worky part of the potential pencil – not only did they sound alike, they also both came out of dirt. Pencils had wood cases, though, and plants and minerals, those were all different. Were they low-key conjuring then? Cool!

She smiled politely at her neighbor, hoping that person didn’t think she had sounded like too much of an idiot. “Which one are you gonna try first?” she asked, more to make conversation than to determine her own course of action.

16 Morgan Garrett Woo experiments! 1470 0 5

Jezebel Reed-Fischer

November 22, 2020 4:27 PM

I am excited, but I do not woo. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer

Jezebel was mostly settled. It felt like she should have settled before now, but it had taken her some time to trust that Gus was really okay and that everything was okay and that nothing was not okay. She wasn't ever totally convinced but at least she was sure as she could reasonably be for now, and that was a good feeling. It had been a nice distraction though, and she was honestly a little bit stressed that she didn't have anything to worry about herself now. There was only the occasional thought about her brother's success and safety and he was a Pecari, so really it was mostly about his safety. But the occasional thought did not a worried mind fill, so she was left to worry about herself, her future, her success, her grades. . . .

Today's class was the sort that made her especially glad to be a Crotalus because she hoped she could be as cool as Professor Skies someday. She liked the idea of talk about really super amazing stuff in a way that was objective, scientific, and evidence-based, while also still magical. That part was less thrilling, but since she was here and apparently stuck with the whole witchcraft thing . . . well, she would just have to try to Koepp reminding herself not to be thrilled. Sometimes she got dangerous little flutters of pride and excitement that she thought would probably disappoint her mom, and she was already a living, breathing disappointment, so the least she could do was be a humble one.

When Morgan turned to her, Jezebel gave a pretty sincere little smile. It was almost always nice working with Aladrens because they were pretty smart and interested in stuff like she was, and that was a nice change of pace from some of the conversations she'd had with Augustine about magic over the summer. She just wanted to study this stuff and learn about it. How else was she supposed to be ready for this big insane world she was apparently supposed to jump into?

In the course of her notetaking, Jezebel had already written out detailed steps to the scientific method, and she glanced over them as she listened to Morgan's question. "I think I want to start with the 'normal' one for this spell. Sort of use it as a control sample?" she suggested, making it a question because that was the most polite. "I think your suggestion was really smart to use a stop watch. Do we want to try measuring time somehow?"

22 Jezebel Reed-Fischer I am excited, but I do not woo. 1454 0 5

Morgan Garrett

November 24, 2020 8:08 PM

Aw, why not? by Morgan Garrett

Control sample. That sounded real smart - like something Mara might say. Morgan nodded agreeably to Jezebel's suggestion that one should be established by trying out the most common wand movements first.

"Makes sense," she agreed. "Especially since it's more likely to work than the other one. " Thoughts swirled around in her head, at least half as much images as words, getting close to the concept of muscle memory and how it would really suck if they got the less common one stuck in their memories first and then turned out to be common people who would get on better with the common set of movements. Putting these thoughts into coherent words that fit a short gap in the conversation seemed like more work than she really had time for, though, so she let the idea go.

Her round, slightly freckled face lit up with a smile when her idea about stopwatches was complimented. "Thanks!" she said enthusiastically. "I don't think my watch has got a second hand..." She shook back one of her wide green sleeves to examine the face of the timepiece strapped to her wrist. "Yeah, no, it doesn't, but I guess minutes are probably more important?" she half-stated, half-asked. "Otherwise...one-missasippi-two-missasippi won't be super-exact, but it beats nothing I guess, if it comes down to telling how many seconds difference there are between one way and another." Morgan bit her lip as a thought occurred to her and she tried to assess it to see if it was worth mentioning out loud. "And I guess we might ought to do two tests? One for which way makes the spell start working faster, and then one to check to see if that one's the same one that lasts the longest? Does that make sense?" she asked, thinking it was usually best to have others evaluate her thoughts even if they made sense to her. Nobody had all the right ideas, after all, and Morgan did not tend to think of herself as one of the people more likely than not to have the right ideas in the majority of cases anyway.

16 Morgan Garrett Aw, why not? 1470 0 5

Esme Brockert

December 09, 2020 8:34 AM

This could be worse, I guess by Esme Brockert

Esme was looking forward to being in Intermediate classes this year. Yes, they were challenging, but while she readily accepted that some people didn't do well with that and tended to get stressed out and she didn't think any less of them for it, she didn't really mind being challenged. After all, the whole point of school was to learn how to use their magical abilities and the older you got, the more impressive the things they got to do were.

That didn't mean she loved everything about every class. Like, who knew what sort of unpleasant things classes like Defense had in store for them? Although Professor Brooding-Hawthorne was taking a sabbatical but even last year when Professor Carter-Xavier subbed they'd had that awful dueling lesson. Esme was glad that at least Allegra didn't have to take it anymore and deal with situations that made her incredibly anxious, at least not in class.

However, now it was Transfiguration, and while Sapphire had been stressing last year about Professor Skies incorporating Muggle science-a topic Esme agreed was unnecessary to learn about-into some of her lessons, this was typically a subject that the third year had very little trouble with and one where she generally did not object to the kind of things that they had to do.

Although, Esme could not say that she was all that interested in where spells came from. Still, the fact that it didn't involve an icky athletic activity that could cause humiliation for some people meant she could politely disagree with Professor Skies rather than get irritated about it like in DADA.

And she did get where the professor was coming from regarding people who couldn't do spells the regular way. For those people, there did need to be alternatives so they too could learn magic.

Anyway, what they were doing did not sound too terribly hard but Esme wished Professor Skies hadn't brought up the whole science thing. It was just going to make Sapphire shut down and think she couldn't do it. The third year was glad it wasn't going to be "scientifically rigorous" because then her cousin would likely not be able to do it-and she wasn't sure she'd even do that well on it. Esme liked to believe she was smart enough but given this was not a subject where she'd had any sort of background, she certainly wasn't inclined to think it was something that she'd find easy.

Besides, they were here to learn Transfiguration, not science .

She turned to person next to her. "Would you like to work together?" Esme asked. She'd made sure as usual not to sit next to certain people.

11 Esme Brockert This could be worse, I guess 1479 0 5