Grayson Wright
February 08, 2022 10:50 AM
Advanced Charms - Aguamenti by Grayson Wright
"Agua-menti," said Professor Wright, looking over the Advanced class. "Anyone care to take that word apart?"He was curious, not least due to knowing there were students in the room who knew Romance languages. He did not speak any of those languages, but he sometimes read about root words in spells, and had seen notes that indicated menti was also how the phrase 'you lie' would translate into Italian, and it was also close to some conjugations of the Spanish word for 'to lie' as well. 'Water, you lie!' would be a...rather different sort of concept than that which actually went into the spell. Well, to some degree - the actual root, here, was from proto-Italic, which had evolved fairly neatly into Latin, but agua was just going to muddy the way further, since that was the Spanish and Portuguese word for water. One of the many spells probably more or less formalized during the era when the Iberian nations had been at the height of their powers; a sort of Portuguese-Latin hybridization was common in major routine charms.
They got, in the end, to the ideas the spell was based around - 'water' and 'mind.' "Very good," he said. "This charm produces clean water in a sort of fountain from the tip of your wand. It's not one with particularly complex wand movements - in general, just point where you want the water to go. Now, to review the difference between Charms and Transfiguration - anyone care to give us that summary?" He waited until someone volunteered the information that a charm altered what a thing did whereas a transfiguration altered what the thing was, and included the realm of conjuring and vanishing, as either making a thing exist or making it at least in some sense cease to do so were ways of defining what it was. "Excellent, five points to you. So. On the face of it, since this spell produces water, it looks like a conjuration, which is a form of Advanced Transfiguration - but I'm not Professor Skies in disguise, and if you think you're supposed to be in Advanced Charms, then you're in the right place. So, by definition, this spell alters what, what water does rather than what it is. Not to worry, though - the menti part doesn't mean it drains all the water from your brain, not unless you bungle it...more thoroughly than I can even imagine how to bungle it. Don't try to exceed my creativity there, wouldn't be good for your health," he added.
"No - the use of 'mind' refers to a theme you've doubtless heard vari, variations on so many times over the past five or six years that you could recite it in your sleep - one of the most useful skills you can develop, in terms of magic usage, is strength of mind. I've read that Muggle scholars who study what they think is history of magic, that they say that religion requests, whereas magic commands. That...lacks nuance in some ways, but it's accurate enough for what we're doing here. Through force of mind, you're commanding the available water in the air - plants - et ceter, et cetera to concentrate and then to go where you want it. The difficulty - and therefore the amount of, of focus needed - depends on the surroundings to a degree - so be very glad that the founders decided to enclose Sonora in an artificial environment." In the Arizona deserts that surrounded them, the spell would often be...difficult.
"Now - you're learning this spell in Advanced for a reason. It's one of the simpler ones we'll tackle in this class, but it can be dangerous. Your homework for today's lesson is to research why that is, and write a summary. You can begin working on that after your practical work, of course, and discuss your ideas about why it might be with your classmates while you work if you like. First, though - " He flicked his wand, and large cups flew from a cabinet and landed in front of each student. "Practical work. The incantation is the word we've been discussing, aguamenti, and you point your wand into the bowl. Any questions? You may begin."
OOC: Welcome to Advanced! You all know the rules, so I'll justify my theory here instead. It's worth noting to begin with that I do not know Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese and that my Latin isn't fluent, so I'm basing those bits of the exposition on what I get when running stuff through multiple online translators (to make sure I get the same result, which seems...at least to have a reasonable probability of more-or-less accuracy) and dictionaries.
OOC, the reason why a lot of spells are a sort of Portuguese-Latin hybrid (per, at least, lots of wiki pages that pick apart the incantations) is probably that Rowling knows Latin and lived for some years in Portugal, probably picking up some of the language, which would make it easy to mash something together in one's head/make puns and 'slant' puns between the two languages, which are closely related. I pinned it on History because why not - if wizards have always existed, then presumably they used spells before Latin existed, but there seems to be a standard form derived from Latin with other influences for a lot of 'day to day' spells, which raises the question of why that's the case IC.
From the pieces of history given from canon and semi-canon sources, it seems standardization and the creation of organized academies were relatively late developments (Hogwarts was founded in the tenth century; Rome had lost/ceded control over Britain in the fourth century, though Romano-British kingdoms formed afterward and Roman influences lingered in some areas longer than others) which took some time to achieve widespread acceptance, so standardization of spells across, at least, Britain and the Romance-language-speaking world could have reasonably taken until the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries (Portugal began empire-building in the early fifteenth century, and modern Spain more or less formed and rose to power very late in the fifteenth century). However, the 11th and 12th centuries, closer to the founding of Hogwarts, were a period when scholars from around Europe had substantial contact with Islamic scholars, chiefly in Iberia and Sicily, despite their religious differences in order to access scientific knowledge and preserved classical manuscripts which much of Christian Europe had thought were lost. There are documented examples of British scholars who studied in Toledo, at the time a major center of education also strongly associated with magic, in this era, so their magical counterparts bringing back spells in a dialect of medieval Latin which was on the route to developing/merging/drifting into Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian could also be plausible. Feel free to have your characters run with either of these theories, or make up some others (aka, why Gray said 'probably formalized during...etc etc.)
Subthreads: Cheers? by Ellie Alperton with Esme Brockert
I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me. by Sapphire Brockert
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Grayson Wright
Advanced Charms - Aguamenti
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Ellie Alperton
February 11, 2022 2:56 AM
Cheers? by Ellie Alperton
Ellie was not a speaker of any romance language, besides what she found on Mexican restaurant menus and occasional bilingual product labels. She was, however, an avid textbook reader, which usually dealt with etymology pretty thoroughly. And ‘agua’ was actually a menu/product label word, so it was pretty easy to remember. She raised her hand.
“Agua means ‘water’ in Spanish. The rest of the word isn’t meaningful if directly translated, and is more likely to be Latin derived, and meant to channel mental control.” She thought that hit most of the main points, and whilst she could have written out the various stages of the derivation, she wasn’t sure she could pronounce them accurately - they were the kind of facts you memorised for test questions rather than needing as a verbal skill.
Professor Wright continued the lesson with some rather graphic imagery, which she frankly didn’t need, both in general and right before attempting said spell. His reassurances that they weren’t likely to harm themselves were all well and good, but not putting the image into their minds in the first place would have been even more helpful in achieving that goal, especially as this spell did seem to concentrate so much on the mind’s energy and visualisations.
There was also an element of danger. Again, having read ahead, Ellie knew this, and even if she hadn’t, she suspected she would have been able to make a good educated guess from what Professor Wright had said; sucking all the water out of the air probably wasn’t that great for it. Once or twice, it might not be too noticeable. But a whole room full of students (even if it was their admittedly small class) sucking water out of the air repeatedly for the next hour? That had to have an effect. There was an increased probability of static shocks if they all really went for it, and spending a prolonged amount of time in such an environment wouldn’t be great for their skin.
Ellie received a cup, and tried to push thoughts of brain stuff out of her head. The water in the air. This was to do with the water in the air.
”Augamenti,” she cast. A thin jet of water shot from her want and… sort of into the cup. It caught on the edge, and a fair bit of it dripped onto the table. “Fair warning, my aim appears to be terrible,” she admitted to her neighbour. For now she wasn’t getting enough water for it to matter, but she definitely foresaw it becoming an issue, along with splashback.
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Ellie Alperton
Cheers?
1456
0
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Sapphire Brockert
March 23, 2022 11:14 AM
I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me. by Sapphire Brockert
Sapphire was so glad to be in her last year of school. She was completely fed up with magical theory that she had difficulty even paying attention to, let alone retaining and making sense of it. Of course, that could also be because the Crotalus truly did not find magical theory the least bit interesting and it was naturally difficult for anyone to pay attention to something that they found boring.And, stupid her, of the three classes that Sapphire had kept post-CATS, two of them had to be one with complicated theory and one where the teacher was the Aladren HoH and generally fascinated by things like that. Professor Wright often gave them excessive amounts of information that Sapphire found overwhelming but nevertheless worried would be on her exams..
And perhaps the fact that she’d continued with these two classes, Charms and Transfig, when the theoretical part was so difficult for her, proved more than anything that Topaz was right, that Sapphire was an idiot. It certainly often seemed like an extremely poor bit of decision making but the thing was that the Crotalus was pretty good at the practical parts of magic, possibly one of the best in her year at Transfiguration.
Of course, she didn’t dare think herself the best. At anything. Ever. That would be arrogant of her, which was a very negative quality to have. It made others feel bad, or at least being around arrogant people-Topaz-made her feel bad. Like they thought she was less than them, which was not something that the seventh year ever wanted to make others feel. Plus, she was sure that if she thought well of anything about herself, she looked even more foolish and others were sitting somewhere laughing at her.
Anyway, what was even worse than the academic aspects, the difficult, boring theory, was the social aspect of school. Sapphire had never really felt like she belonged, especially among her year mates. She definitely felt like some of them looked down on her, probably because of her lack of academic abilities. Or because she was just different from them. People could say all they wanted about purebloods looking down on non-purebloods, there was some truth to that, but Sapphire was the one being excluded and looked down upon, not them. She was the one who was different, not them.
Which, more than anything having to do with academics, was why she could not wait to graduate, and be done with Sonora forever. Nobody liked her here besides her relatives and Sadie. She could not wait to leave this place and never ever look back. While Sapphire didn’t like the social pressures of pureblood society, it was the lesser evil at this point.
Stll, she had to get through the year, which included passing her RATS. While she was extremely desperate to get out of this place, if it was the last thing she ever did, she was obviously dreading RATS. CATS had been really awful, she’d almost thrown up all over her examiner. Even more mortifyingly, Sapphire had spotted said examiner down on St. Berylla’s hanging out with, of all people, Father’s cousin Cory and her former tutor Neal. It had rather made her want to crawl in a hole and die and she’d made sure to avoid the man.
The seventh year sighed to herself as Professor Wright began the lesson. See, this was exactly what absolutely killed her about the Charms professor. He was a pleasant enough fellow, but did he really think that the exact meaning of the word aguamenti mattered? Sapphire knew what this spell did, of course, as she’d grown up in a magical household, and agua was similar to aqua, so she could figure out that part probably had something to do with water but still, the important part was to know how to do the spell.
At least, Sapphire hoped that was the most important part. She rather needed it to be.
She was relieved when Professor Wright released them to do the practical part of the lesson. Sapphire was not sure why it was dangerous, except that when someone like Topaz got ahold of just about anything, it probably became so and the word research had made her wince just as much as anything involving the Aladren alumna did, but this was something she was pretty sure that she could do.
“ Aguamenti ” Sapphire said. She was pleased when water started gushing out of her wand, though she wasn’t having much luck hitting the bowl. Coordination had never been a strong suit of hers.
11
Sapphire Brockert
I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me.
1459
0
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Esme Brockert
March 24, 2022 12:14 PM
Cheers by Esme Brockert
Esme was sort of excited about Advanced classes. She was definitely happy to be able to use more complicated and powerful magic. That was basically what made someone a witch or wizard and that was something that she took a certain amount of pride in.And it was actually kind of annoying that some people seemed to think there had to be more. Which was great for those who sucked at spell work- who, by the way, were not going to be successes magically-but for others, it impeded them a great deal. How was it fair, for example, for someone like Sapphire, who was pretty good at the practical side of magic to basically struggle and suffer and be kept from succeeding because she had difficulties with the unnecessary theoretical side.
Or something like DADA, where sometimes someone who was talented magically but not so athletically, didn’t do as well. Esme very much believed that such importance should never be placed on athletics. Okay, some athletic ability was probably necessary for someone who wanted to be an Auror, but in order to be successful magically? Not so much.
Still, while those sorts of skills could be an asset in certain careers, Esme still loathed when someone placed importance on how physically capable someone was. It bothered her a great deal when Uncle Eustace bullied her little brothers and male cousins about their disinterest or lack of abilities in Quidditch. Nor could she stand those who thought they were just so much better than everyone else because of how good they were at sports. Which actually also described her uncle.
And those who looked down on someone for their intellectual abilities, such as Topaz, weren't any better than Uncle Eustace was. Nor was it honestly okay to look down on those who lacked magical ability-and Esme actually didn’t or at least she didn’t think she did. She didn’t think less of them as people for lacking magical talent like it was a moral failing or something, she just didn’t think they were going to succeed in anything where they would need it, not unlike how someone who was unathletic was not going to be successful at Quidditch or how someone who couldn’t sing wasn’t going to be doing opera. That didn't necessarily make them bad people, it just meant they weren’t meant to do certain things. Which made it completely unfair to make those things part of what one had to do for part of their grades.
Esme listened attentively as Professor Wright began the lesson. Sometimes, he could be a tad…long-winded. Some of his lectures she personally found interesting but she knew that Sapphire would have trouble with them because she found them overwhelming and hard to retain. Esme was certain that she would need to help her cousin with the homework.
She drew her wand “”Aguamenti ” A steady stream of water came out of her wand but her aim was a little less impressive. “Same.” Esme replied to Ellie.
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Esme Brockert
Cheers
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