In your own words.... (Advanced) on Charms

Grayson Wright

May 23, 2021 6:28 PM

In your own words.... (Advanced) by Grayson Wright

“So,” said Professor Wright, looking around the room of Advanced students from behind his spectacles, “how many of you have ever wondered why we usually cast our spells in a version of Latin?”

He had a strong suspicion it was going to be all of them, or at least more of them than not, even considering the ones who were wizard-born and therefore had been hearing spells cast that way since before birth. Even if he was wrong, though, there was at least one he was sure of – that being the Head Girl. Diligent as Katerina was, and clever as Tatiana had been, the Vorontsov girls had both suffered from time to time because of the fact that there were sounds in Latin and English which simply didn’t exist in Russian, which could make the precision needed for good charms work…difficult…for them to achieve.

He did not think he was wrong about the others probably wondering before, too, though. What, after all, was so special about Latin, anyway? It was just one more language among many, both living and dead. Historically, it had come to prominence much later than several other languages. So why was so much of their schooling based around fragments of Latin?

“The commonly accepted answers are elaborated on in your textbook, on page 304 – “ he gave them a moment to flip around if they wished – “but the general consensus is that Latin became the dominant language for spell construction within the magical tradition we’re part of because of historical and practical factors. Latin was the language of international communication and scholarship for centuries in much of Europe – where our illustrious founders were from – which made it practical once sending young witches and wizards to schools became fashionable, and Latin is a language that works reasonably well for condensing a sentence into a word or two, which is one of the things that makes the style of magic you’ve mostly studied for the past five or six years very practical for day-to-day use – that, and the way we use wands and gestures to magnify and direct the forces we’re manipulating without the need for particularly complex rituals or time investments. However, there’s most likely nothing inherently more powerful about Latin than about English, or any other language, as you’ll see as we work through this unit.

“It’s going to be a mostly theoretical unit,” he admitted up-front. “While we’ll look at texts of spells from other traditions, trying out strange spells without being too confident of our pronunciation or procedure – or what some words even mean precisely – is…rarely a good idea. And there are several charms we’ll be looking at where you’d use common English, but they’re mostly things of far too serious a character for trying in class. However, today, at least, you will need your wands.”

The overly-cautious, fussy, conflict-and-drama-averse parts of his personality were not entirely pleased about that, as it could result in things getting a bit…explodey…for his taste even with the Advanced class, but there was nothing for it. They had to be given a certain level of trust, permission to experiment and maybe even blow things up; it was the only way they learned. He’d heard a joke at a conference once about how professors didn’t really teach anyone anything, but public embarrassments and the occasional burn scar could work wonders on student memories, and while he wouldn’t go that far, there was something to the idea that a lot of people needed experience as a supplement to far more sensible (to his mind) ways of obtaining information… He thought he could at least trust Advanced students to exercise such basic common sense as containing anything that looked liable to explode, or at least to call his attention to the problem before it became catastrophic. So that was something.

“You’ll each use one of these – “ he held up a small trinket box to demonstrate – “for your work. They’ve been magically sealed. You’ve all mastered how to work around second-tier sealing spells by now, so the wand movements should be familiar enough – try to open them in whatever language you please, so long as you’re fluent in it. Commands tend to work best, but try what you like, only note your results – not just success or failure, but your own level of confidence, how you felt as you spoke, and so forth – for each combination. You may read a bit in your textbooks if you feel theory will help, or not – either way, it will probably be difficult for all of you, so don’t be discouraged if you struggle to get results. Clear as mud? Excellent. Begin.”

OOC: Welcome back, trust you all know the rules by now, etc, etc. I actually have canons I can use to defend the theory put forth in this lesson if anyone wants them, but otherwise, have fun, tag me or catch me in Chatzy or tell someone to poke me off-site if you need anything, etc. Plus, Tatiana and Katerina are also my characters, so I can talk about them.

Subthreads:

My last time (except not). by Evelyn Stones with Ness McLeod

Khorosho. by Katerina Vorontsov with Allegra Brockert

16 Grayson Wright In your own words.... (Advanced) 113 1 5

Evelyn Stones

June 03, 2021 5:29 PM

My last time (except not). by Evelyn Stones

There had been a day where a teacher telling them all that they'd need their wands in class would have filled Evelyn with dread. This particular teacher, standing at the front of the room like he would have been entirely more comfortable at a desk, was the primary reason that was no longer the case, and why Evelyn's hand gripped her wand now as a comfortable, familiar thing. The fact that she'd even made it to this class filled her with pride, a feeling she'd been trying to develop in reasonable ways. She didn't want to be vain and snotty, but she did want to take pride in herself and her work. It was something that Ness, Heinrich, Gary, Valentine, and especially Professor Wright had all worked to instill in her: she was where she was because her own two metaphorical feet brought her there and other people only helped. She was the one who had done it so far, and she was the one who was going to be going on.

Going on soon meant leaving Sonora, leaving what she knew, leaving the only things that had become familiar to her when everything she'd known had been ripped out from underneath her feet . . . she'd learned then that she could fly when she thought she'd fall and she hoped that would be the case as she graduated and went on to college and life with Heinrich and Ness and CJ and, well, herself. She'd have to live with herself for the rest of her life, silly as that sounded, and taking pride in the familiarity of her wand in her hand was the first step in a path she had never thought she had access to before. She remembered telling Malikhi at their first feast that she would probably be best off marrying a muggle and doing a muggle job and just giving up on the whole magic thing after graduation, and now here she was, with a sealed box and only a vague understanding of an advanced bit of magical theory to get it open.

She considered the project in front of her, wondering how one was supposed to talk to a box. It was a trinket rather than a cardboard box or a wooden crate, and that seemed important somehow. Like it was a baby box. People used certain voices to talk to baby people, why not to talk to baby boxes? Although she wasn't sure that tone or intonation was precisely the point of this lesson, so maybe it was baby talk/baby-box talk that was the key thing for her to think about. How did one get more baby-box talky than open up?

She waved her wand upwards, trying to imbue a general sense of opening as she gave that a try, finding no success. She was only fluent in English, so she wasn't about to try another language, although German did briefly come to mind. She didn't know the German word for opening up a box anyway. She tried variations on please open, open, be opened, and a few more with some choice words under her breath to show the box who was boss but none of them worked at all. She wondered what her childhood self would think of her now.

"Open sesame," she tried, poking her wand at the trinket with a jabbing motion instead of anything more meaningful. Those were, after all, the magic opening words. She had a distinct memory of being a small child, spending time with her mom and practicing made up magic words since neither of them could do the sorts of things her dad could do. When they went to stores with automatic sliding doors, she and her mom would shout open sesame and burst into fits of giggles when they managed to time it well enough that the doors seemed to open on command rather than on motion detection.

To her surprise, the seal broke and the box opened. She stared open-mouthed at it, her success surprising her almost more than the method she'd used to get there. Did it count as cheating if she'd used magic words? She held up the open box, not sure if she was trying to share with her classmate or with the professor that she'd managed to do it.

OOC: This is open to either Gray or a classmate responding. :)

22 Evelyn Stones My last time (except not). 1422 0 5

Ness McLeod

June 12, 2021 8:14 PM

Same by Ness McLeod

Ness raised a tentative half-hand when asked about wondering why spells were usually in Latin-ish. Ness had wondered that and so, like a dutiful Aladren, had gone and looked it up, and didn't wonder it any more. The question was past tense, but still - why risk looking like you hadn't cracked a book?

Therefore, Ness already knew the summary that Professor Wright gave - that Latin was the go to largely because of tradition, though it was well suited to this type of magic. Though the cause and effect were harder to determine there - had this style of magic become popular because it worked well with the language being used? How much had language and magical style influenced each other? There were very few solid answers on that, especially once you took into account the fact that belief coloured historical accounts, but that belief was also key to getting magic to work properly. It was all very knotty. According to what he was saying and the summary pages which Ness had already read, magic should be possible using other languages, but it would be difficult for a number of reasons.

Partly, there was Ness' own will-power and self-belief, normally fairly strong forces, but it was a big ask to override years of habit. Spells were a thing that were crafted. The words were chosen with reasons, and some theories even went so far as to say that the words became more powerful over time – the more significance you imbued something with, the more influence it had. That part was sort of undeniable, but whether more power leeched into the words over time from the reverence of repeated usage, or whether it simply fed into people’s belief in ‘the right words’ was unclear.

The fact that non-verbal spells existed, along with spells in other cultures and languages, were proof that a single word was not the be all and end all, not the one and only means to the end. Though very often the means of learning non-verbal spells was initially to focus on the word, just keeping it inside your head rather than saying it out loud. The word didn’t disappear from the spell, therefore, it just became internalized.

Maybe it was a bit like chemistry? Ness tried to recall the sketchy details of chemical reactions that were half there from casual reading. Like, you could introduce things that broke other things apart and bonded with them in new ways, but you still had to account for all parts of the equation. Maybe this was like that. The new words would bond with a wand motion, and the old words would fizzle away like gas into the atmosphere, until you were left with a new spell. It was good for visualising, even if it turned out not to be accurate. And visualising was probably going to be important, as t the question for today was not so much whether spells were possible with different words, as whether Ness was capable of that particular feat.

As Ness stared at the small wooden box, trying to think how to instruct it, English felt very plain. Ness definitely did not have any other languages to a fluent degree. The D&D languages were interesting to dip into, but Ness had never managed to make a serious study of them. Languagey-wordy characters had more been Kir’s thing anyway.

“Open.” Ness decided to start with the obvious, at least as a baseline, following the wand movements Professor Wright had suggested, and trying to use the same kind of commanding tone that worked on brooms for ‘up.’ There wasn’t much evidence that the box was listening. Ness repeated the process a few times, knowing – underneath mounting frustration and doubt – that sometimes new spells took a few tries, though it had been a while since Ness had had to suffer that particular defeat. The trouble was, ‘open’ just didn’t feel very magical. Brooms were probably primed to respond to ‘up’ whereas these things were designed to be as stubborn as possible.

Ness considered variants. Unlock. Desist. Lid up, monkeyfudger.

There was an ‘open sesame’ beside Ness, and Evenlyn’s lid popped open.

“Yield to me!” Ness commanded the box, in the most dramatic D&D voice it was possible to use in class, taking advantage of the camoflague of some simultaneous yelling going on, plus an ability to not really mind being weird. Though Ness did mind doing something attention drawing right before failing. Perhaps that, or Evelyn’s success, was the catalyst that the reaction needed. The lid popped open.

“Snapsies,” Ness grinned, holding up the open box next to Evelyn’s.

13 Ness McLeod Same 1419 0 5

Evelyn Stones

June 15, 2021 7:55 PM

Our last time. . . . has feels by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn grinned at Ness. There was no doubt in Evelyn's mind that she wouldn't be here if not for her best friend and the fact that they were 'here' together was one of the Pecari's favorite things. Of course, with graduation looming, there was still the question of whether they'd be 'there' together after all this but Evelyn liked to think so. They definitely both wanted to, and that was encouraging.

"Cheers," she replied, lightly bumping her box into Ness'. "What worked for you? I tried to be bossy and I tried to be parental and commanding but neither really worked. I had to think of what words made me feel powerful and magical when I was a kid and that did it. I don't know if I'd be able to seal it back up again that way. I liked your DM voice" she added with another grin.

Evelyn paused, looking at her box and thinking about her own small success here for a moment. This was the sort of thing she wanted to do after they left Sonora and the idea of actually getting to was getting both more exciting and more intimidating as it became real. If all went well, she was going to meet kids who would also need to tap into a hard childhood to make their magic cooperate. That was a bananas thought; the thing she'd been trying to avoid doing at the start of her Sonora career was the only thing that worked and now she was going to make a career out of it. She may even work with students from Sonora.

"Does it ever just hit you that we're going to be using this stuff for real soon? Out in the world?" Evelyn was old enough that she'd been able to use magic away from school for over a year now, but she rarely did, both to avoid feeling like she was somehow showing off and because it was still just odd that she could. She certainly hadn't used anything like this before, or even considered doing so. What would life look like as a fully fledged magic user? She felt like she'd need to start going to some of the conferences that Professor Wright talked about if she was going to keep up on everything that was possible, although spellcasting pathologists were probably hosting their own conferences she could go to. "And in college . . . that's almost more terrifying than the world," she laughed.

22 Evelyn Stones Our last time. . . . *has feels* 1422 0 5

Katerina Vorontsov

June 17, 2021 2:56 PM

Khorosho. by Katerina Vorontsov

There was, logically speaking, no reason for Katya to be nervous about RATS. Tatiana had pulled out decent marks on hers, after all, after hardly even bothering to master written English and after spending what Katya had considered far too little time on serious revision before the exams. Katya was far more fluent, both in speech and in writing, than her sister, and was far more diligent; therefore, if Tatiana had done well despite her lesser qualifications, Katya had nothing at all to worry about.

Luckily, she was not, in fact, worried about the RATS – not anymore. She had been nervous before midterm, but that was in the past. Unluckily, now, on the other side of the holidays, she was absolutely terrified about the RATS, to the point of having actual nightmares about them.

What if she got tongue-tied in front of the examiners? What if she spoke the wrong language in a panic and the professor took offense? What if she was writing and forgot how English sentence structure worked for one crucial moment and did so in such a way that she wrote something which said the opposite of what she meant? What if…?

Unlikely, of course, all of it. But none of it was impossible, and when she was under stress, and on a timer…

She had, of course, spoken about this with no-one, and did not intend to. At home, she had slipped back into the quasi-invisibility of her place in the family, and here at Sonora, she remained the blandly smiling Head Girl. In both roles, she betrayed no negative emotions, did nothing that made herself the subject of a conversation unless she could help it. She was proud of that, too, which made it a bit more galling that her smile slipped a little when Professor Wright asked the class a question. For a second, she was startled – not that it was so very close to touching on why she was so worried, as because the issue was at the heart of so much of that anxiety….

She couldn’t really do as much as she might have, but Katya knew a fair bit about the magic of her own background. Divination was a much more serious subject there (it had not missed her notice that for a people who used the language of the Original Rome in their spells, English-speaking wizards seemed very poorly acquainted with ceremonial magic generally; as far as she could tell, they didn’t seem to perform any large-scale divination on a social, ceremonial level, not even silly things like casting the wreathes on Ivan Kupala), and they also seemed to do far less with group spellcasting, and with use of the body in anything other than hand gestures in magic generally, though the latter, at least, she had to admit was more efficient and probably why wands had been in fashion more or less consistently for a century now…which was why Grisha and Anya and Sonia had all taken classes which mixed methods, and which did not have textbooks which dismissed as ‘extremely rare’ or ‘impossible’ things that even Katya had seen done on occasion. It had, of course, taken their people a while to take up more western practices after the building of Peterburg, but they had done so. She wondered when people here would catch up.

As Professor Wright went on, she was surprised again to hear that the answer might be ‘soon-ish’. So, they did know something - a lot of common spells at home derived from Slavonic rather than spoken Russian, but if it had been impossible to work magic in the vernacular, what would people in tiny remote flyspeck villages have done before it had become possible to find a lot of young witches and wizards in order to take them to school? What about those who didn’t want to leave home, and were taught by their parents or grandparents, or a local leader? Surely this wasn’t really…news?

Apparently, it was.

Any feeling of superiority was short-lived, though. She might know something was more possible than some people did, but that only helped so much when it came to doing it. At the Advanced level, so much of their work involved marshalling the force of the will, and then training to the point that it felt natural and automatic to marshal it, just to get things done. To do so in an unfamiliar format, she suspected that would be as much of an effort as learning to do so silently had been.

Well, no time like the present to start. She considered for a moment, then decided to start in French. It was closer to Latin, which might help her trick her brain, which might build her confidence more quickly before she blithely started trying to do the exercise in English and Russian.

OOC: Based on the assorted Pottermore writings and evidence from within the text, it seems that British wizards' limitations don't end with logic, deduction, and lacking the patience for basic math and ciphering; if we accept all the materials written by the original author as canon, their textbook-writers seem pretty uninformed about what other wizards around the world can do,. I made up Katya's comments from a mix of that, what I've read about the history of magic in Russia, etc.

16 Katerina Vorontsov Khorosho. 1418 0 5

Allegra Brockert

June 18, 2021 2:54 PM

Um, Open Sesame? by Allegra Brockert

Graduation from Sonora would be here before Allegra knew it. She was sort of looking forward to it, albeit not as much as Topaz was, given that she didn't have a roommate she despised. Of course, the Crotalus imagined that Ness probably was even more eager to get away from Topaz than Topaz was her.

Because, after all, that was precisely what Allegra was looking forward to more than anything else. After graduation, her cousin would head off to Dofmore which was in Conneticut and she would stay in Salt Lake City until she met someone and got married. They would finally be far apart and Allegra couldn't wait. After all, all this time Topaz had tormented her out of convenience rather than actual hatred like the Aladren felt for her roommate. Once they graduated, the Crotalus would no longer be convenient-and she could not wait.

And maybe, just maybe, she'd get truly lucky and Topaz would find someone to marry who lived far away from whomever Allegra herself married. Someone who lived out east or was foreign. Although, Emerald probably wouldn't be very happy if Topaz lived in the Northeast, given that the Pierces were in New Hampshire, Emerald being already less than thrilled that Topaz would be going to school nearby. So maybe it would be better if the Aladren married someone from the South. Or just someone who didn't live near any of the rest of them.

Of course, the idea of someone marrying the other seventh year was kind of horrifying. Either the poor man would be her next victim or he would be as terrible and evil as Topaz herself was. Either way seemed awful to Allegra.

She much preferred to think about what her own future husband would be like. Over midterm, she had gotten to know a wizard named Josh Porter who seemed...nice. Kind and gentle towards her but strong enough to stand up to and protect her from Topaz. Basically exactly what Allegra wanted. Love, marriage and babies were the future she expected and looked forward to, assuming that her cousin didn't manage to kill or otherwise destroy her first. And she was almost in the clear.

The seventh year listened as Professor Wright began today's lesson. In all honesty, she never really had thought about why spells were in Latin, it was just simply a fact that they were. She'd never actually thought about a lot of theory things because most of Allegra's energy was focused on survival and worrying about what kind of horrible thing Topaz would do to her next.

And admittedly, magical theory had never really especially interested her in the first place. It didn't reduce her to tears like it did Sapphire but she was sort of meh about it, much preferring practical magic. (Unless of course it was DADA practical where she had a tendency to freak out and react, well, like Sapphire did to theory.)

Fortunately, today was a practical assignment. Unfortunately, Professor Wright had mentioned some things that were not exactly strengths of Allegra's, namely being commanding and confident. Those were things that Topaz had basically terrorized out of her.

She tried to remind herself that she had no issues with magical ability, that she was perfectly comfortable using the Latin words for spells and that the box was not a sentient creature with a will of it's own that would harm her nor was it something that Topaz had gotten a hold of and tampered with that would harm her. The worst it could do was not open and Professor Wright said they shouldn't be too discouraged it they didn't get results.

Allegra gave it a few unsuccessful tries where, while the Latin words were pronounced accurately, she probably failed to sound authoritative and commanding enough. She was going to need to work on that or someday her children would probably not listen to her any more than the stupid box had. Deciding to give it a break before she had another go, she turned to Katerina. "How are you doing so far?" The Teppenpaw seemed to have been speaking French and maybe the box had responded better to that.

11 Allegra Brockert Um, Open Sesame? 1426 0 5

Katerina Vorontsov

July 20, 2021 10:28 PM

Mixing two languages, interesting strategy. by Katerina Vorontsov

Allegra, Katya thought sympathetically, was probably not going to be very good at this exercise, though Katya couldn't imagine why. Allegra was a girl who seemed to have everything a girl could want - she was very beautiful, had a well-connected family, had reasonable magical talent, and was the oldest (and therefore probably the best provided-for) of her group of sisters - but she was not someone Katya could imagine seeing exude a sense of command. It made Katya worry for her sometimes - a woman needed to seem demure at times, of course, but the ability to command was crucial for anyone who didn't plan to be a spinster daughter who stayed at home with her mother. How else could one rule a household effectively? To even try to do so without such an ability was just asking to be walked on by the help, among others. If Allegra should ever produce a child who was - not even as forward as Tatiana. Even as forceful as their friend Sylvia, then....

"It did shake, some little bit," she said proudly of her own work, putting her thoughts aside for the time being. That was something she probably could not do much about at all, much less do anything about in class, which made it a non-productive distraction. "I spoke in French to it, since French is more like Latin than English or Russian," she explained. "Between them - I think English has more Latin like words in it, but Russian grammar is more like, I think, though I do not know Latin very well," she confessed. "What language are you trying to do it with?"

16 Katerina Vorontsov Mixing two languages, interesting strategy. 1418 0 5

Grayson Wright

Grayson Wright

In your own words.... (Advanced) by Grayson Wright

Evelyn Stones

Evelyn Stones

My last time (except not). by Evelyn Stones

Ness McLeod

Ness McLeod

Same by Ness McLeod

Evelyn Stones

Evelyn Stones

Our last time. . . . *has feels* by Evelyn Stones

Katerina Vorontsov

Katerina Vorontsov

Khorosho. by Katerina Vorontsov

Allegra Brockert

Allegra Brockert

Um, Open Sesame? by Allegra Brockert

Katerina Vorontsov

Katerina Vorontsov

Mixing two languages, interesting strategy. by Katerina Vorontsov

Our last time. . . . has feels by Evelyn Stones