Serious question: Are we too old to play in the sand? on Transfiguration

Selina Skies

April 09, 2022 6:12 AM

Beginners - sand play by Selina Skies

“Good morning,” Selina greeted the beginners class. She suspected there were a few sleepy heads, and students feeling reluctant to be back, but she had something to sweeten the deal.

“As you can see, we’re going to be working with sand today,” she said, gesturing to the trays on each desk, each of which was a few inches deep with the material.

“Let’s begin with our visualisation exercise.” She had been introducing these at all grade levels, as a way of focussing the class before they began. She couldn’t prove that they were helpful, but they had good evidence behind them, and she wanted to do more to shape their practise as a whole, rather than letting them think it was just about what happened when they waved their wands. “I was you to close you eyes and imagine the sand forming itself into different shapes. Let’s start with something simple—a sandcastle. Don’t just picture the finished product, but how would the sand move to get into that shape? Now let’s try something a little more complex. Imagine it forming into a bottle. Into the shape of an animal. A shape of your choosing…

“Okay, open your eyes. This is the type of exerise you should be doing prior to casting, in order to get a clear picture of your target. Today, those visualisations will have one more step beyond what we just did. Who can tell me what common material is made from sand?” she asked, giving house points when she got the correct answer.

“You will be making glass paperweights today. For first years, this can be a simple glass shape in a single colour, though you will get points for the symmetry and smoothness, as well as the distance of the colour from the original sand. Second years, I’d like you to try creating multiple colours or a pattern. Normally, to get sand to transform into glass, it requires exposure to incredibly high temperatures. Transfiguring it doesn’t produce nearly the same level of heat intensity, but I would advise you to handle your finished products with care, and perhaps use gloves.

“The spell is vitreus, with a light upwardly swirling wand motion. You may slightly change the shape of it to mimic what you want to create. Like so…” She demonstrated, keeping a neat circle to produce a spherical paperweight, and a more elongated shape to have the same effect on her final product.

“Homework is this worksheet, which assigns several readings about states of matter and physical transformations that can be observed in the non-magical world, but are sped up or achieved more easily with magic. There are several comprehension questions, and—as ever—you’ll see it touches on the popular theory question of what makes something a transfiguration. If you finish early, you may start the homework. Also, I’m aware a few of you may be feeling sluggish after the holidays, so for added incentive, when you finish your paperweight, you can come and claim an Ice Mouse from the front, though please don’t eat them during class.” The sweets had been a gift from her granddaughter, who was starting to be old enough to have opinions on what she thought made good presents, and to insist on helping to choose. Selina had good naturedly eaten a couple in front of her, but had no desire to finish the whole packet.

OOC: Welcome back to transfiguration. You can earn house points by posting here. Points will be awarded based on the quality of the writing, not how well you claim your character does - therefore a long, detailed, and realistic post of a character struggling with the spell will score more highly than a short post where the writer claims perfect results.

Posts are graded on length, relevance, creativity and realism.

If you have any questions, please ask on the OOC or in chatzy.

Subthreads:

I love sand boxes! by Cole Pierce with Yaniel Ayala Velez

Serious question: Are we too old to play in the sand? by Phil Carson with Tissena Randall

13 Selina Skies Beginners - sand play 26 1 5

Cole Pierce

April 11, 2022 7:01 PM

I love sand boxes! by Cole Pierce

Cole was, in his humble opinion, doing quite well in his classes. He'd never been super studious, but he'd always been a well behaved child who listened to his teachers (not least because his Dad taught in his elementary school and if he got in trouble Dad would definitely hear about it), and that hadn't changed at all when he arrived at Sonora (except Dad wasn't here, so it was mostly ingrained habit and good manners that kept him attentive and ready to learn rather than fear of reprisal, and he figured that was probably a better motivator anyway). So he paid attention, and did his work, and he was naturally gifted enough that this was sufficient to result in good grades and a reasonably good understanding of the material in almost all of his classes.

Potions was his best subject, because Mom was a bona fide Potions Mistress, and he'd accumulated enough basic knowledge apparently through osmosis and just listening to her talk about work, that he felt he'd had a little bit of a head start over the other kids in the class. (This was one of the points where he and Lenny pretending to be twins was really working out for them since Lenny's mom was also a potions mistress, albeit one who didn't use many animal ingredients because she was vegetarian herself and catered to vegetarian and vegan clients, but how weird was that?)

Transfiguration was also a good subject for him. He had a good imagination and his visualization skills seemed to be really helpful here, plus the exercises at the start of each class were kind of fun and helped ease him into the class. Today looked especially interesting, he thought, as he walked into the room and saw trays of sand on each desk. He sat down at one that looked like it maybe had a little more sand than some of the others, and almost immediately began drawing designs in the sand with his finger. It sadly wasn't wet enough to hold any clear lines, but it left interesting designs anyway, if not any clearly recognizable pictures.

He been about to try using some of his school supplies as drawing aids (his wand and quill to make skinnier lines, his inkwell to make circular impressions, his textbook to make it all flat and even when he wanted to erase it all and start over) when Professor Skies called their attention to the front and started the class.

Cole closed his eyes and imagined a sandcastle magically rising out of his tray, like an ancient structure buried over the years and someone was draining the area of what had covered it. Then he mentally swished the castle gone and instead imagined a bottle. The baby bottle rose up out of the sand, nipple first, the same way the castle had. Then next to the bottle, a little baby kitten emerged but before he could imagine the sand kitten trying to drink from the sand bottle, the exercise ran out of time, and he dashed it all away before opening his eyes to his sand tray with the circular lines on it that had been meant to be a group of friends sitting together on a beach. (Not that Cole was anywhere near good enough of an artist to actually draw that so it was probably just as well the sand was not a good drawing medium.)

Cole's hand rose quickly in the air when Professor Skies asked what sand was used to make and he made the requisite "Ooo! Ooo!" sounds that often went with a kid eager to share that he knew something. They covered this in science class! "Glass!" he exclaimed when she called on him, and he beamed even wider when she granted house points to Teppenpaw.

And they'd be making glass paperweights out of their sand today. That was awesome and appropriate! But apparently definitely not cool, because they needed to be careful not to burn themselves when they were done.

As a first year, his objective was something smooth and symmetrical, and probably not anything too complicated like the castle, the bottle, or the kitten he had imagined earlier. Hmm. Sand. What did he associate with sand? Sand boxes, obviously. Boxes were symmetrical and could be smooth.

He thought about one of his mom's knick-knacks, a glass rectangular prism with an etched picture of a swing dancer inside it. He probably couldn't pull off the dancer, but the rest of it didn't seem too hard. He imagined the same glass block now, but with just a little splash of blue in the middle of the clear glass instead of the etched image for some bonus not-sand-colored color.

He focused on that image for a little while, and then took out his wand and made the circular swirling motion with just a bit more jagged corners than a circle ought to have, and the sand pulled up into a rectangular prism that was a bit cloudier than the perfectly transparent glass he had imagined, but it was more white than sand colored so maybe that would be viewed as intentional. There was a shock of blue toward the middle of the block, right where he wanted it, but with the cloudiness of the rest of the glass, it wasn't harder to see than he would have liked. Still, it was kind of cool - no, not cool, because of heat transfer, so it was more like a cat's meow.

The outside wasn't rough or bumpy exactly, but, like the cloudiness of the glass, it wasn't as buffed and shiny as he had wanted it to look, but instead it had that sanded down matte quality that he sometimes saw on the edges of glass tables.

Still, it was glass, and it was a paperweight, and it had some colors other than sandy yellow, and the one thing he had gotten exactly as he imagined it was its symmetrical rectangular shape. Picking it up with his herbology gloves, he brought it up to the front to show off and collect his Ice Mouse.

When he returned to his seat, he was sorely tempted to eat the piece of candy despite being explicitly told not to, but the Grandma Jessica in his head was making frowny faces at him, so he sighed and put it away for later. Showing his paperweight to his neighbor, he lamented, "It didn't come out quite as epic as I imagined it, but I guess it's all right. How'd yours go?"

1 Cole Pierce I love sand boxes! 1546 0 5

Yaniel Ayala Velez

April 12, 2022 6:27 AM

Me too? by Yaniel Ayala Velez

Yarielis took a tentative seat by Cole, wondering whether that was a good idea. On the one hand, Cole was a fellow Beater-wannabe. That meant they were often doing the same drills during Quidditch practise, which - as far as Yarielis was concerned - was kind of like being friends. It was about as ‘being friends’ with anyone as it seemed normal to expect to be at this stage. Except, on the other hand, Cole seemed to have already formed a solid group with his fellow Teppenpaws, and maybe what he and Yarielis had didn’t extend off the pitch. There was also the fact that Cole was Lenny’s twin. Lenny was… complicated, and controversial, and Yarielis wanted to be more annoyed with him than was probably allowed. Certainly by his brother. Potentially, it made trying to befriend Cole an epic waste of time…

Still, this was just class. Hopefully sitting together would make that more fun, and Cole would be friendly, and even if that never evolved into actual friendship, well… that was fine.

As the lesson began, Yarielis tried to shake off all thoughts of Cole and Lenny and how complicated it was to try having a social life. It was time to concentrate. Which began with one of the awful visualisation exercises. The exercises in themselves weren’t awful, but Yarielis wasn’t sure how anyone was supposed to close their eyes in a room full of people and focus on anything other than what might be happening whilst they weren’t looking. Theoretically, everyone else had their eyes closed and was just focussing too. But kids could be jerks.

When they were set to work, Yarielis evaluated the situation carefully, drawing a few different shapes in the sand. It was tempting to push it around and physically mould it into different shapes, just because that was how Yarielis learnt best—by physically doing—but it seemed like the kind of thing that might be regarded as cheating, even if it was just for practise, and you smoothed the sand out before trying.

Yarielis settled on an oval, or whatever the three dimensional equivalent was. Something that would sit on a person’s palm with the same stability, smoothness, and pleasant weightiness of a large, flat pebble.

At the point at which Cole asked, Yarielis had two attempts done—there being more than enough sand for multiple attempts before needing to worry about any undoing spells. The first attempt was definitely melted and lopsided looking. Yarielis was now bending down to table height to inspect the second, much smoother one.

“I don’t know,” the Crotalus said, peering critically at the large, clear glass pebble. “Does that look symmetrical to you?”

13 Yaniel Ayala Velez Me too? 1554 0 5

Phil Carson

April 28, 2022 9:49 AM

Serious question: Are we too old to play in the sand? by Phil Carson

Phil walked into the classroom feeling awake, energized, and ready to go. He was sure that it probably helped that there wasn't a time zone difference between Sonora and his home in Montana (at least right now because Arizona was weird - smart but weird - and didn't follow Daylight Savings Time - Sonora would be an hour behind Montana when he went home in the summer and came back in September), but it was also that he'd been able to finally get a good night's sleep without hearing a two year old screaming in the middle of the night.

He was really looking forward to learning about sound proofing charms in Professor Wright's class someday, not that he'd be able to use them at home until he was seventeen and he probably wouldn't need them anymore by then anyway (he hoped). Still, it was nice to dream, and he thought actually knowing the spell he was casting in his dreams would make them feel just a little more real (or more frustrating; that was very possible, too).

He was surprised to find, as he walked into Professor Skies' room, that each desk had a tray full of sand on it. Phil felt tentatively optimistic about that.

He took his seat in the front row (he always took the first one to the left of the exact center in the front row if it was available, first one to the right if it wasn't, the middle front one if that wasn't available either, or as close to front and center as he could manage if even his third choice was taken - it rarely came to that though because, in addition to him being an early arrival most days, front and center generally wasn't a popular seating choice). Like he did everyday, he put his bookbag beside his chair, pulled out his inkwell (he still hadn't quite gotten over the novelty of inkwells and felt quite fancy putting it in the corner of his desk) and his quill, as well as a piece of parchment for taking notes on and his wand.

Only then did he turn his attention to the sand and start running his fingers through it. He was honestly a little confused about how much he was supposed to find this entertaining. His dad had stopped taking him to playgrounds with sandboxes a few years ago, and only resumed the practice once he had a toddler sibling, so he was pretty sure he was supposed to be too old for it, but it did feel soothing, having the grains pass through his fingers.

Eventually, the remainder of his classmates arrived and Professor Skies started the class with a visualization exercise. Phil wasn't great at those, or perhaps he was too good at them, because they kept getting away from him, but he guessed that was why they were doing them, to flex their imagination muscles and get them toned up for the transfiguration spells they'd be doing later. A lot of Phil's visualizations came with a narrator, and today's was no exception.

The castle rises up out of the dunes! It looks like Doctor Doom has done it again! Our heroes will have a tough time getting past that thick perimeter wall! No, nevermind. The Hulk just bashed it right out of the way!

"Imagine it forming into a bottle," Professor Skies' voice intruded.

Oh no! The fallen castle wall is transforming! It has enclosed the Hulk into a giant glass bottle!

"Into the shape of an animal," Professor Skies prompted.

The Hulk shatters that, too! But now the shards are coalescing together into a great Dragon! Will our hero survive this battle?!

"A shape of your choosing," Professor Skies interrupted.

The Hulk picks up a piece of the fallen wall and hurls it at the dragon's head! The dragon dodges and transforms again, now taking the shape of great robot, absorbing the huge rock that had been thrown at it! The robot attempts to step on the Hulk!

"Okay, open your eyes," Professor Skies instructed, and Phil groaned quietly in disappointment. He opened his eyes, wishing he'd at least been able to come to some kind of resolution for the scene.

Phil raised his hand to answer her question but she called on one of the Teppenpaw first years instead. As an older Aladren sitting in the front row, he was pretty sure he was statistically unlikely to get called on until Professor Skies exhausted her other options, but he still let out a small breath of relief that his bluff had again not been called. Oh, he knew the answer, of course. That glass came from sand was a fairly elementary science fact. But it was one thing to know the answer and to have the teacher know you knew the answer, and something else again to have to actually say that answer in front of everyone. If he got called on, there was always a chance that he would abruptly forget what he'd meant to say, or say the wrong thing, or have his voice crack (as was starting to happen altogether too frequently lately), or otherwise not look as smart and put together as when he just raised his hand and showed the class that he was smart without actually needing to prove it.

He took down some notes about the spell they would be doing today, as well as a reminder about the homework, and then looked at his tray of sand, hoping for some kind of inspiration on what sort of glass paperweight with multiple colors he should try to create.

In keeping with his scene from the visualization, he decided on a simple circle with the Hulk's fist icon coloring it green and black. The shape was easy, but the design was intricate and detailed enough that he thought it might qualify for a bonus point. He used his quill to draw it out on his parchment first to make sure he remembered how it looked, inking in the black parts and knowing the empty space would need to be green in his final product.

He drew a circle in the sand with his finger, marking out which bit of sand to focus on, and then cast the spell. The sand within his circle hardened to glass, and the design was quite nice, with clear and distinct colors, but the shape was kind of terrible. It was neither symmetrical nor smooth, and it was in dire need of sanding (heh) and buffing.

"Well," he remarked to his neighbor. "I did the hard part well and the easy part wrong." Presuming, of course, that 'the easy part' was what the first years had been given to work on, though it was in actually probably the existence of additional requirement that made the second year task harder, rather than the color being any harder than the shape and texture. "I've got glass slag, with a colorful design on it." He picked the 'paperweight' up carefully, digging into the sand to lift it up with a bunch of loose sand between his skin and his product. Even so, he found it quite warm to the touch as she had warned, but not burning hot. The greater risk, he thought, was the potential to slice his fingers open on the sharp edges. He tilted his hand to show off what he'd made then let it slip safely back into the tray. "Guess I should work on that shaping visualization a little more."

1 Phil Carson Serious question: Are we too old to play in the sand? 1536 0 5

Tissena Randall

May 03, 2022 3:46 PM

Home suck home. by Tissena Randall

OOC: CW mention of child murder BIC:

Coming to Sonora in September of this school year had felt like a ridiculous farce, a parody of the happy life she was supposed to be leading. Her sister was supposed to be in this class. She was honestly just grateful that the murderer's brother wasn't; it wouldn't have been a pretty combination of classmates, especially with a wand in her hand. He'd mostly spent the year looking depressed, so that made her feel a little better sometimes.

Coming to Sonora after winter break felt like a breath of fresh air though. She'd severely underestimated how significantly sucky home would be now, with a notable black hole in the family dynamic. Her mother was still mostly a tear-stained mess. So as much as Sonora felt like crap still, at least tissena could mostly pretend it was the year before and everything was normal and she'd go see Soprano in the summer. She could put off her grief a little longer, all in the name of magical education.

Today's task brought back memories of playing in the sandbox with her younger sister, though, and that made things complicated. She was pretty determined not to think too much about that, but since it couldn't entirely be avoided, she thought of her sister just enough to choose colors she knew the younger girl would have liked - purple and yellow - for the heart shaped paperweight she intended to create.

At least, it was supposed to be heartshaped. Perhaps a little grief had managed to slip through the cracks because, once she'd put her hair up, completed the pre-casting activities, and waved her wand, it was a muddled headstone shape that appeared, the color of a bruise. Perhaps purple and yellow had been a poor choice. She didn't bother to pick it up, merely gesturing at it when her neighbor spoke to her.

"Mine isn't right either," she said. "Not very heart-shaped," she added to clarify where the round-topped rectangle had gone wrong. Perhaps he wouldn't recognize it for a headstone and assume it was a slice of bread or something. That would be good. "It's hard to hold onto what I'm visualizing while I'm trying to remember how the spell goes," she admitted. "Even with my drawing in front of me, it feels like I'm working on two separate things at the same time."

22 Tissena Randall Home suck home. 1534 0 5

Phil Carson

May 13, 2022 6:06 PM

We have sand boxes here? by Phil Carson

Phil leaned over to look at the other girl's paperweight, and it didn't look badly shaped. Kind of a rounded rectangle, fairly symmetrical, not dangerous. He was about to say it looked fine to him - the coloring was a bit painful to look at, so he figured that was where it had gone wrong, but technically speaking it met all the requirements Professor Skies had laid out, but then she clarified that she'd meant it to be a heart. It was definitely not a heart any more than his was a circle.

"You were at least neater in how you messed up," he offered encouragingly. "But yeah." Phil nodded in agreement. "There is a lot to keep track of. I'm pretty sure that's what makes the second year task harder, is that there is more to try to hold together in your mind. We just got to keep training our brains to hold more, I guess." As an Aladren, he was able to be entirely cheerful as he said this. He liked the idea of being able to hold more in his brain at one time.

He looked down at his jagged glass slag. He just wasn't there yet.

"Okay, take two," he said aloud, readied his wand, and took a deep breath. Most of the work was already done, he just needed to shape it and polish it a bit. If the first casting was him magically speeding over the process of heating and transforming sand into glass, this second one was him magically speeding over the process of sanding it down to a proper circle and buffing it.

"Vitreus!" he cast, swirling up and around, imagining the motion was the sandpaper and buffing machine. The rough edges melted away, leaving the green fist in the middle of a circular glass paperweight. "Ha!" he crowed proudly. "Got it!" He picked it up to show it off then quickly dropped it back down into the sand. "Oo! Hot. Right, we're not supposed to touch yet." He shook his hand out, though he didn't think it was hot enough to actually have burned him, at least not in the bare second his hand had touched it. It was just very warm to the touch and his brain had helpfully triggered the 'let go!' reflex before any damage could be done.

1 Phil Carson We have sand boxes here? 1536 0 5

Tissena Randall

May 19, 2022 7:03 PM

Probably in MARS honestly. by Tissena Randall

Tissena couldn't help her excitement at a project going well and clipped eagerly for her classmate when his project worked the second time. Even if he hadn't announced his success, she could see that this one was significantly better than the last attempt.

"Very good!" she cooed. A thought occurred to her as she looked at the circle he'd made and remembered he'd drawn out some sand in his box first. She left her headstone paperweight where it was, trying not to look at it, and drew a heart in the sand around it with her finger, leaving the paperweight in the middle. "Mine was supposed to be purple and yellow both but I think I'm just going to try for purple first," she decided.

Now that she was working, actually working, it was easy to let her brain forget her grief for a moment and just get caught up in the work she was doing. It was nice to feel like she had a purpose, even if that purpose would only last this one class period. Her classmate was nice enough and he was an Aladren from his badge so that was nice. She suspected that if she hadn't been as eccentric as she was, she might've been an Aladren herself. She was more prone to experiments than theory though, and she thought that might have been part of the badge soup's decision too.

She took a deep breath, focusing on a purple heart paperweight, and repeated the spell. It wasn't perfect, nowhere near as good as her partner's second attempt, but the bruise color shifted into a solid, defined purple, and the bottom of the round-topped rectangle moved inward, forming a point. It wasn't too sharp, which was probably for the best. The top, instead of shifting and forming into a heart top, simply cracked, a small piece breaking out of the middle. She was left with a jagged heart-shape and an extra piece of glass that had popped out of the middle top.

"Not as good as yours, but I'll take it," she decided. "I'm Tissena by the way. I'm bad at names. And faces. Sorry if we've met before and I forgot." Obviously, anyone who was in range of her grade was someone she'd met in at least a cursory way since there weren't that many students at Sonora, but it felt appropriate to acknowledge that a proper meeting was different than a meeting in the more informal classmate sense.

22 Tissena Randall Probably in MARS honestly. 1534 0 5