Selina Skies
May 25, 2021 1:01 AM
Intermediates - Detect Magic by Selina Skies
“Good morning,” Selina greeted the intermediate group. “Today we’ll be taking a practical look at one of the most popular written questions on the CATS papers – that is, we’ll be doing some hands on, practical investigation to help you know what sort of information you need to provide in your answer.” As well as being more accessible to students who were different learner types, and reducing the language load for EAL students, it was just a more fun, practical way to access the information.“A common CATS type question is this,” she gestured to the board behind her, reading out the question that appeared there. “For his birthday, Demonious receives a toy from his grandmother. It is a top hat, which when turned in a particular way, causes a rabbit plushie to appear inside the hat. The plushie can be made to vanish again by repeating the movements in reverse. State what spells are likely to be acting on the toy, being as specific as possible. “ Underneath this was a helpful animated picture depicted the effect described.
“Firstly, does anyone want to suggest what they think is the answer to this?” It was quite a straightforward question, as compared to some of the longer essay-based questions. She called on anyone who felt brave enough to suggest an answer, until they’d cracked it.
“Today’s lesson will have three parts. You can choose to do them in any order, depending on what you think will be most helpful for you, but you should complete all three of them by the time class is over.
“On this table, we have some worksheets with a page of questions similar to the one on the board. Task one is to complete them, task two is to set two questions of your own using a similar format and test them on your classmates. On the other table, we have some objects similar to the ones mentioned, made by the advanced class during term one. I would like you to examine the objects, and state what spells you think are in action on them. Remember, this is transfiguration, so they all use at least one transfiguration spell. They were allowed to use charms as well if it helped achieve the effects they wanted.” As with all of transfiguration, there really were only four broad categories – changing, switching, vanishing, and conjuring – though the more specific they could get in explaining exactly what type of spell or how it had been used, the better. They would also have to name any charms they thought were present for full credit.
Specialis revelio might have come in handy, but she had checked with Grayson, and, whilst some of the fifth years might have been capable, it was typically only taught in advanced classes. In the interests of giving a level playing field, and not having them firing an unfamiliar charm at the advance class’s hard work from last term, she wasn’t going to suggest it. Their eyes and brains would have to do the work, which was what they’d have available to them in their exams after all.
OOC: Mentions of class levels approved by Gray's author.
As usual, points are awarded based on relevance, length, realism and creativity. You are free to invent objects that may have been created by the advanced class, so long as they are fairly mainstream in nature (i.e. fit the idea that 'anyone could have made that'). If you are stuck for object ideas, feel free to ask other authors what their character would have made but then credit them in the OOC notes. You will get more points for coming up with your own objects.
Subthreads: I like it! by Theo Spurn with Jezebel Reed-Fischer
I know that spell! by Valentine Duell with Sadie-Lake Chalmers
I kind of feel like this doesn't apply to me? by Philippe Delachene with Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alright! by Quincy Wright with Ellie Alperton
*rocks back and forth* by Sapphire Brockert
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Selina Skies
Intermediates - Detect Magic
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Theo Spurn
May 25, 2021 1:02 AM
I like it! by Theo Spurn
Theo tumbled into transifuguration and took a seat. He liked school, and was mostly glad to be back in it. He loved home, but right now it was time for school, so here was where he was supposed to be. He had freshly sewn velvet in the cuffs of his sleeves, which helped him feel good about anything which didn't feel good all by itself.He listened to Professor Skies, frowning in confusion at the example she put on the board, and raising his hand when it was everyone else's turn to speak.
"Why does he want to make it disappear?" he asked when called on. Professor Skies said something about that not really being the point of the discussion, which he thought was rude but noted down as a good response for when people asked him questions he didn't like or pulled the conversation away from what he was talking about. He had raised his hand and waited his turn, which were the rules he was meant to follow.
Anyway, people were moving now. There was a table with papers and a table with things. He went to the thing table because that was far more interesting. He touched all the things, turning them over and having a good look, until he got to one that held his attention for longer. It had a little figure standing in painted scenery. A small fake sun hung in the air above them. When Theo turned a handle on the side, the sun moved through the sky and the scene gradually darkened. At a certain point, the sun changed into a moon, and at that point, the figure beneath shifted to become a wolf. It looked good and friendly, like it had taken its potion. Theo turned the handle a few more times, watching the transformation.
"I like this one," he stated confidently to his neighbour, continuing to wind.
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Theo Spurn
I like it!
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
June 08, 2021 5:44 AM
Is this how they found me? I don't know if I like it. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Jezebel had always been a meticulous notetaker, a well-prepared student, and a fast learner but if she wasn't anxious about the upcoming tests she'd have to take, then she wasn't anything at all. Martin had been kind and very helpful when she'd needed to study and he'd taken the tests already which helped, but it wasn't quite enough to make Jezebel feel really truly ready and she was still mostly a ball of panicked energy these days. Classes like this, which were blatantly designed to prepare them for the tests, helped and hampered all at once.Figuring that she could do a lot of the on-paper preparation in her own time if necessary, Jezebel decided to start with the hands-on part of today's activity. She examined one or two of the items they were meant to be working with before needing to count her breathes to make herself calm down and, when she had finally managed that, she had come to a puzzle type box that reminded her of wooden children's toys. It was the sort where one door was always open and if you pushed a button or knob, another would open. Except in this case, instead of just doors opening and buttons moving, the colors on the box also changed and flowers bloomed out of the newly opened doorways before curling back inside when a new door was opened. Reopening the same door twice revealed the same flower, which Jezebel thought was probably an important clue in figuring out what spells had been used on the box.
She was admiring the work, both for its surprisingly relaxing beauty and for the actual spellwork that must have gone into it (something she hated to admire but couldn't quite help herself doing), when the student next to her spoke up. She wasn't well acquainted with Theo Spurn but it was basically impossible not to know who he was. In this case, he seemed to be simmering instead of boiling and Jezebel hoped he stayed that way because he seemed fun and stuff but she definitely didn't have the mental capacity to bring him back down if he got too excited about stuff. She looked at the item he was manipulating in response to his commentary on it and nodded.
"That's really beautiful," she agreed, bending over a bit to peer more closely at the wolf. It creeped her out a lot that werewolves and vampires and stuff were real because she was pretty sure that magic was from fairytales and magical creatures were from horror movies and combining them into the real world was super not cool with her. Still, Theo seemed to enjoy it so she wasn't about to freak out about anything. Keep the boy calm. That was her goal. "And really complicated," she added, not sure how the thing darkened like that. The figurine transforming made more sense in a transfiguration class, but how the heck did the rest work? She doubted it was as simple and mechanical as a crank turn the way a non-magical version would have been. "Do you want to work together?" she asked a bit tightly.
22
Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Is this how they found me? I don't know if I like it.
1454
0
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Theo Spurn
June 12, 2021 1:37 AM
Mounted on a small wooden frame? Probably not? by Theo Spurn
Theo didn’t look up when a voice next to him spoke, saying that the toy was beautiful. He smiled though, because she was right. It was really lovely.“Not really,” he corrected her when she said it was complicated. Some people were just wolves sometimes too. It was just a fact. It only got complicated when other people made it like that. He paused, leaving it in is wolf state, reaching out a finger to affectionately boop its snoot. He just about remembered not to turn and boop the person next to him too because not everyone liked being booped when they didn’t know you well, and out of the corner of his eyes he could see it was Jezebel, and he suspected that she fell into that category because even though he knew several facts about her that apparently wasn’t the same thing. People thought you needed to actually talk and stuff, and he wasn’t sure they’d ever done that. He booped himself instead because it felt nice.
“Okay,” he agreed when she asked if he wanted to work together. That was the polite response. He wasn’t really sure what they were doing but that didn’t stop him agreeing. “Your turn?” he guessed, pushing the toy towards her.
13
Theo Spurn
Mounted on a small wooden frame? Probably not?
1476
0
5
Jezebel Reed-Fischer
June 12, 2021 5:12 AM
Well that's something at least. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Jezebel flushed a bit, feeling the sort of anger that actually came from jealousy and embarrassment crop up in her throat when Theo said it wasn't complicated. He was a year younger than her, which didn't at all mean she was smarter but it should mean she should be able to tell when something was complicated or not. Was this just another example of how far behind she was by virtue of having non-magical parents? She glanced toward her cousin, wondering if he was having the same problems adjusting still, but looked back at her classmate when he poked his own nose. That was . . . weird. She wondered what was in his head but wasn't sure she wanted to know.Theo pushed the item towards her when he agreed to work together and she nodded. "Alright," she said slowly, "so how's it done then if it's not so complicated?" she asked, doing her best not to sound bitter about it. She wasn't trying to issue a challenge but also a little bit maybe she was. However embarrassed she was for needing help on this so fast, she knew she would need the answer eventually. He had said it was her turn though so she looked over the figure of the werewolf and the moon. It was interesting to her that it was based on a crank . . . she supposed it wouldn't be a very good toy if it just did it all on its own. She listed off a few ideas just to make sure she was also contributing something to this conversation. "Is this the sort of thing wizard kids play with? If they know they're magic before they come to school I mean?"
OOC: I'm trying to be vague about what Jezebel thinks the spells could be because I don't know the answer and can't begin to figure it out but Jezebel would have some reasonable guesses. Feel free to assume specifics if you feel like it or be vague as well.
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Well that's something at least.
1454
0
5
Theo Spurn
June 12, 2021 6:57 AM
I suggest continuing to not be that by Theo Spurn
“You just sort of get on with it. The person’s just a normal dad the rest of the time,” Theo shrugged when Jezebel asked him to explain how it wasn’t complicated. His face was in a bit of a frown because he was fairly sure that having to explain to people was annoying, and they ought to just know and not be rude by now. Not about his family personally, but just about the fact that werewolves were people. It had always been easy to know that, because it had always been that way for him, so how was he supposed to know what anything else was like? It didn’t feel complicated. It just felt like his life. He liked his life. He liked his dad. “And the moon,” he added, in case Jezebel had literally been asking how it happened, although she should have known that by now. “Biting” he added, because that came before all the rest of the steps.She seemed to be staring at the toy, and not interested in playing. Theo’s train of thought almost looped back round to her question, and he almost provided another answer for it, but at the last minute it diverged to the station of ‘if she’s not going to then I may as well’ and he reached out winding the handle.
“I play with my cousins, mostly,” he answered her question. “We like the floor is lava, but that’s not real, and I enjoy building dens. How about you?”
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Theo Spurn
I suggest continuing to not be that
1476
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
June 12, 2021 9:17 PM
Being mounted in a frame might give me a new lens. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Jezebel blinked and stared at Theo with her mouth part way open, although she wasn't sure whether it had popped in order to interrupt her classmate or to ask a followup question. Instead of doing either, she just pointed at the toy and blinked several more times when he stopped talking. "I meant how does the magic of the toy happen," she said in a hollow voice. "Not . . . I know how werewolves work. Your dad is a werewolf?" She was pretty sure she'd heard him use the word 'dad' in his explanation and Theo was a weird guy but he didn't seem weird enough to just call random people and beings 'dad' without reason. Truth be told, if Theo's dad was a werewolf, he seemed to have more good feelings about him than Jezebel did her own parents most of the time.He cranked the toy when the topic turned to wizard playtime and Jezebel watched the movement again as Theo explained what he liked to do as a kid. She wondered if he understand from her question that she was not someone who'd grown up with magic, although his answer didn't necessarily suggest he had either. Of course, if his dad was a werewolf . . .
"We played the floor is lava too," she said. "My siblings and me, and my cousin when he was around but that wasn't much of the time," she said. It was hard to tell if Theo was disinterested or disconnected, but it wasn't all bad. Sometimes it was nice to have a reason to be a little more straightforward than usual. He seemed like the kind of person you could say anything to and it would be okay; it was a different kind of feeling than people like Martin, with whom you couldn't say almost anything in case it was read badly. Very different roles in society, she thought. "We didn't have any toys anything like this. What kind of dens do you like building?" she asked, not sure what that was all about. Only beavers came to mind. Or werewolves?
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Being mounted in a frame might give me a new lens.
1454
0
5
Theo Spurn
June 13, 2021 7:46 PM
Sounds all stiff and scratchy. Bleugh. by Theo Spurn
I know how werewolves work – your dad is a werewolf.It was not exactly what Jezebel had said, her intonation and therefore implied punctuation had varied quite significantly. But it was what Theo heard.
“You don’t know my dad.” He frowned, confused as to why she was deriving her knowledge of how werewolves worked from his dad not a book. “You should be nice about this.” If she’d got her knowledge of werewolves from his dad, she would already know this. However, seeing as he couldn’t be quite sure how she’d done that, it seemed important to point out the obvious things to her, just in case.
“Oh yay!” he smiled, looking up when she talked about playing the floor is lava. “You should join us sometime. We make MARS like Aunt Sophie’s living room sometimes, but having a friend over would definitely be something she approved of, so you’d be very welcome and also it’s not real but it’s like it is so it matters a bit.” He’d had a couple of toys like this, but much like her question of how it worked, it slipped to the back of his mind because it was much less interesting than the other points she was bringing up. “Soft ones,” he answered, with a very big smile when she asked about his dens. “I have lots of big drapey bits of fabric and things that I can use to make them. What’s your favourite texture?”
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Theo Spurn
Sounds all stiff and scratchy. Bleugh.
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
June 15, 2021 6:11 PM
But safe. by Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Jezebel resisted the urge to huff at Theo, who was reminding her more and more solidly of Marcus the more he spoke. It wasn't that Marcus was as dense as Theo apparently was, but they both had an air of superiority about them that Jezebel didn't appreciate. Or at least they only worsened Jezebel's own air of inferiority perhaps . . ."You're right, I don't," she agreed. "I don't think I wasn't nice," she added, not quite confident enough to properly defend herself but not wanting to leave it undressed either. "I don't care who or what your dad is. If he's nice, that's all that matters and he sounds nice." It was the kind of thing she wished more people thought of her and her muggle parents if she was honest.
To then be invited to play with Theo and his friends was surprising and her instinct was to reject the idea as babyish but . . . well, she didn't exactly have an excess of friends, and playing was something she missed desperately from being at home with her younger siblings. Augustine was hardly up for playing with her as they ran in different circles and had different interests, but he was also her only connection to home now too. It was a challenge all the way around. She appreciated the idea that Theo considered having her over to be having a 'friend' over, even though she wasn't sure she would have used the same term to describe him, and that he thought his aunt would approve of her, but the latter did remind her that that probably wasn't true for lots of reasons. Still, she didn't actually know 'Aunt Sophie,' so perhaps she shouldn't jump to that conclusion.
Realizing that Theo probably meant the things she'd call 'forts' and wondering whether that was a wizard thing or a Theo thing, Jezebel gave in to a smile then. She was feeling warmer towards Theo the longer the conversation went on, although she was a bit anxious that they'd apparently mostly given up on the actual task they were meant to be doing. That was especially nervewracking considering how soon Jezebel needed to know this material.
"Soft dens sound nice," she agreed. "My sister and I used to make something like that so we could sit inside and read. Well, I'd read, she'd play with her dolls." She considered for a moment, thinking through a mental catalogue of textures before answering. It didn't cross her mind to think this was an odd question now just because that's where the conversation had gone and having a favorite texture seemed like a nice thing. It was the sort of thing that everyone probably had, even if no one talked about it. "I like soft cotton, like the fluffy stuff in pillows, or cotton candy," she decided. "What's yours?"
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Jezebel Reed-Fischer
But safe.
1454
0
5
Theo Spurn
June 17, 2021 7:22 PM
Blanket nests are best for safety by Theo Spurn
"No, you weren't," Theo confirmed when Jezebel said she hadn't been not nice. He was mildly annoyed that she didn't care about his dad, because that did seem rude, and his dad was very worth caring about, but then she said more good things. His face shifted to a beaming smile as she called his dad 'nice.' "Correct!" he nodded emphatically. "Good. Carry on being like that," he clarified, seeing as she had seemed uncertain about what counted as nice vs not nice behaviour. He could understand her confusion. People were odd sometimes."Yes! Good!" he shrieked, entirely too loudly for class and for someone who was so close by. But she was saying exciting things! He liked that she liked dens too! This was turning out very well and he wondered how they hadn't talked before this given that they had so much in common.
"You mean cottonwool," he corrected her when she compared the texture of pillow insides to cotton candy. "Cottonwool is very nice," he agreed. "Cotton candy floss," he added, merging the names from both his dialects, "is interesting and does the melty thing in your mouth but it is very sticky to the touch and that can lead to problems. Sticky things are unpleasant and unwanted." He gave a little shudder as he thought about sleeping on a pilllow of cotton candy and it all melting and in being in your hair and -ugh. Sticky was gross. "They do have the same visual texture though," he conceded, understanding a little bit why she had compared them. Visual texture could be interesting and problematic and tricksy but sort of fascinating so long as it didn't lead to unexpected and unpleasant touches.
13
Theo Spurn
Blanket nests are best for safety
1476
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5