Beginners - matchsticks make...? on Transfiguration

Selina Skies

July 08, 2022 7:12 PM

Beginners - matchsticks make...? by Selina Skies

“Good morning,” Selina greeted the beginners class as they made their way in. “Welcome or welcome back to Beginners Transfiguration. I am Professor Skies, and I serve as both the deputy headmistress and the transfiguration teacher here.” Even without knowing that transfiguration could be complicated and dangerous, she felt that gave a fairly clear subtext of ‘don’t mess around.’ Selina strongly suspected she had a reputation for being tough but fair, with the side of the spectrum it skewed towards depending on whether you asked a Pecari or an Aladren.

“Transfiguration is highly complex magic. Unlike other things which might go wrong in more explosive or messy ways, poor transfiguration skills tend to lead to limited results. That said, we are talking about a set of skills which - if pursued all the way to seventh year - includes vanishing things, conjuring things, and transforming your own or other people’s bodies. Therefore, it is important that you take this class seriously.

“For beginners classes, we focus on inanimate to inanimate transfigurations. Can someone tell me what that means?” she asked, open to any keen first years who had read ahead or could just work it out from the vocabulary. Though, if there weren’t any of them that felt forthcoming, this knowledge should have been very basic to the second years.

“Today, you will all be working with matchsticks. First years will be trying to turn them into toothpicks, whilst second years will be making needles. Who can tell me what makes the first year task easier?” she checked. She had heard of schools that threw first years straight into the second of those tasks - the result tended to be a room of students with matchsticks and mounting frustration by the end of the lesson. Occasionally a prodigious student would be able to affect a partial change, but it seemed like a cruel way to start them off.

“Very good,” she said, as she took various answers, pointing out the differences between the two tasks. “When we are transfiguring, it’s important to think of all aspects of our object.” She wrote a list down the left hand side of the board, with terms such as ‘material’ ‘form’ ‘function’ ‘size.’ Across the top, she wrote ‘Matchstick’ and ‘Toothpick/needle.’ “When you are in the early stages of your practise, I would recommend writing up a table like this. This will help focus your attention on what elements you need to change, and where you can conserve energy or find links between your items. You may add further rows if you have other ideas - for example, we could also find the common link that all these objects are man-made. That’s the first step.

“The second important element is visualisation. I want you all to close your eyes and picture the process of your matchstick turning into a toothpick or a needle. Especially for those doing the needle task, what changes first? Does it change shape and then material? Material and then shape? Do both processes happen simultaneously? There is no right or wrong answer, but the more complex the shift, the more ways there are of picturing what it looks like.

“Okay, eyes open. The spells will be different for each group - your homework will be to read a bit more about the different types of spell we use in transfiguration, but we’ll get to that later. First years, your incantation is dentiscalpii.” Behind her, the chalk wrote this on the board, along with a pronunciation guide. “Second years, your spell is acus.” It was a minor piece of misfortune that the first years had a much more complicated word to get their mouths around, but their task was easier in so many other ways. “For all of you, you will need a short, flicking wand motion, like this.” She demonstrated the wand movement, and both spells.

“If you get stuck, check in with a neighbour or raise your hand. It’s normal to need some time. Try to focus on one small change at a time.” She would also make her way around during the lesson, checking in on them. “You may begin.”

OOC: 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. You may have your character answer the questions Professor Skies poses to the class, but check other people's posts first to make sure they haven't answered them. She may take more than one answer, depending on how detailed/accurate people are.

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

Subthreads:

Fire! I know this! They make fire! by Lenny Pierce

..annoying scratching noises? A foul odor? Unpleasant smoke? by Nausicaa Scapetello

....My head hurt? by Lyla Holland with Xarryn Bavol

13 Selina Skies Beginners - matchsticks make...? 26 1 5

Lenny Pierce

July 09, 2022 8:30 AM

Fire! I know this! They make fire! by Lenny Pierce

Lenny was now a second year. He was the older half of the beginner class, and no long a total newbie. Transfigurations was a hard subject, one he could pull off eventually with enough practice but which did not come as quickly to him as, say, charms. Still, as he settled down in the middle of the classroom and Professor Skies started her lesson, he found he must have learned more last year than he thought because he knew the answers to all of her questions. He raised his hand to answer them but he was never the one who got called on, which was mildly disappointing because knowing the answers was not a given for him, and he kind of wanted to impress somebody that he actually did today. (This was a non-specific somebody; he liked a lot of the people in his year group but no one person yet stood out to him, other than his twin but that was an entirely different kind of specialness.)

Well, maybe when the questions were a little harder than first year introductions to Transfiguration, he might sound more impressive anyway. What inanimate-to-inanimate meant and why it was harder to turn a matchstick into a toothpick rather than a needle were pretty basic concepts.

He drew out his own Transfiguration table as she explained what that was to the first year, but hadn't finished filling it out when she told them to close their eyes. Lenny did so, picturing a matchstick changing shape to a needle and then silvering over as it changed material. (He imagined this would be the easier order of operations since wood was softer than metal.)

He wrote down Akkus at the top of his transfiguration table, plus a parenthetical note of 'sharp flick' so he'd remember the incantation and wand movement. As she told them to get to work, he first finished filling out his table, making notes like brown wood > silver metal, blunt bottom > pointy end, flammable rounded top > rounded top with a hole in it (metal, not flammable).

Having completed his notes, he picked up his wand and looked at his matchstick. This shouldn't be too hard. He was a second year now. He'd done loads of inanimate to inanimate transfigurations last year and this one seemed maybe a little simpler than what they'd ended on last year. "I can do this," he told himself out loud, flicked his wand and cast, "Acus!"

And got a beautiful and perfect needle laying on his desk. It just happened to be made out of brown wood instead of silver metal, like it was supposed to be. "Halfway there, good job, me." He peeked over at his neighbor to see how well they were progressing. "How's it going for you?" he smiled encouragingly, the light pink of his lip gloss a perfect match to the shimmery hairclip decorating his high ponytail.

1 Lenny Pierce Fire! I know this! They make fire! 1547 0 5

Nausicaa Scapetello

July 11, 2022 5:58 PM

..annoying scratching noises? A foul odor? Unpleasant smoke? by Nausicaa Scapetello

Nausicaa was naturally early for Transfigurations class, and found a seat in the front and center of the room. As far as popular opinion went, this was the most difficult discipline to learn. As such, Nausicaa planned to master it easily. There was no reason not to, it was simply magic and followed the rules of magic. The idea that someone like herself might not completely excel was foreign to her. She had all of her material easily on hand, but not strewn about her desk. The professor would let them know what they would need and to clutter the area up early seemed absurd. Her notebook and quill were at the ready though.

Deputy-Headmistress Skies began talking and she was also their professor for the class. Her research into schools revealed that traditionally the post of Deputy-Headmaster/mistress was still a teaching post so that did not make her think less of the woman. The warnings the Professor gave sounded well rehearsed, and nothing she hadn't heard before. Magic was dangerous, wait for school, etc.

Her hand raised into the air quickly and yet properly in order to answer the professor's rather simple question. If anyone didn't know the answer, she wasn't sure that they should have made it this far. "Inanimate things are objects that are not alive. Inanimate to inanimate transfigurations describes the process of changing one non-living object into another non-living object." It seemed almost demeaning to answer such simple questions, but still she would not loose out to anyone else here.

Again she raised her hand to answer another ridiculously simple question. "The first year task is easier because there is not as much to change. That is the matchstick and the toothpick have more in common than the matchstick and the needle." That sounded terribly inane coming from her mouth, but it was the correct answer.

Nausicaa stared a bit blankly at the chart the Professor made on the front blackboard. Were there really people would couldn't identify the differences between these objects with just their minds? She closed her eyes as instructed and pictured the matchstick. She turned it into a toothpick in her mind. 'Difficult', she thought sarcastically. Her eyes opened and finally they got down to useful information. The spell word and wand motion, it was about time. She quickly and neatly jotted down the word along with a the phonetic pronunciation. The wand motion she wrote down as well with a simple diagram.

With the matchstick now in front of her, she retrieved her wand. Then with the magical tools necessary, she focused on the matchstick spoke the word and flicked her wand. "Dentiscalpii!". Despite her perfect execution, the matchstick seemed unmoved or unchanged. Very strange, did she get a defective matchstick? She glanced at her neighbor before focusing back on her own work. The chart on the blackboard caught her eye again. Rediculous, she thought. Still... she sighed and closed her eyes to recreate the mental image she'd made earlier.

2 Nausicaa Scapetello ..annoying scratching noises? A foul odor? Unpleasant smoke? 1561 0 5

Lyla Holland

July 12, 2022 3:08 PM

....My head hurt? by Lyla Holland

Professor Skies was the Transfiguration teacher, along with being the deputy headmistress and Head of House for Crotalus. Lyla knew better than to expect any favoritism; she got the feeling that the professor was committed to balancing her different roles fairly.

Lyla arrived to class early, sitting in the very back row so she could watch the other students. She set out her notebook and quill, ready to take notes. There was one other girl, a first-year Aladren that Lyla recognized from the sorting ceremony, sitting front and center. She hadn't gotten anything out of her bag, and Lyla wondered if she ought to have waited, too.

Soon enough, the classroom filled up with a mix of first- and second- year students, and Professor Skies came in and started the lesson. Lyla sat out of the question-and-answer portion of the lesson, preferring to simply write down the correct answers. She filled out her 'difference table', as she labeled the top of it neatly, though a matchstick and a toothpick really weren't all that different.

Dentiscalpii, Lyla mouthed the incantation as the chalk wrote it on the board. A thrum of excitement raced through the first year. She was about to do her first real spell! Accepting her matchstick and laying it on her desk, her anticipation faded and anxiety took over. What if nothing happened? What if everybody else got theirs to change properly and she couldn't? As murmured incantations filled the classroom, Lyla practiced the wand movement. Just a quick flick, but not too quick, and don't forget to visualize what you're changing, and say the spell right, and....

Lyla cleared her throat and gave her head a small shake. She closed her eyes, imagining the matchstick growing thinner, and pointier.

"Dentiscalpii!" she said, perhaps a little too forcefully, flicking her wrist sharply.

Her matchstick grew slimmer, and pointy, but more like a jagged splinter than a uniformly round toothpick.

"Fiddlesticks," Lyla muttered under her breath. She knew it wasn't realistic to expect perfection on her first try, but she had been hoping she might be a prodigy. Sighing, she resigned herself to the fact the hard work was going to be the best way to learn magic properly, and readied herself to try again.

"How are you getting on?" she asked her neighbor, wanting something other than her inner monologue to listen to.

64 Lyla Holland ....My head hurt? 1559 0 5

Xarryn Bavol

July 14, 2022 7:01 PM

Should I help you find the healer? by Xarryn Bavol

Xarryn entered into his Transfiguration class, not so much nervous about the fact that he was about to do magics that changed things from one thing into another thing, but maybe mildly concerned. He had enough trouble turning strands of fiber into rope and that was just weaving.

He took a seat near the back of the room, not wanting to look incompetent in front of too many people. He didn't mind being the center of attention, but he preferred it to happen when he was doing something he was actually good at. As of yet, he did not know if Transfiguration was one of them or not. Right this moment, he would guess 'not' but that was because he'd never tried it before and there was always a learning curve, even if you did have talent.

Xarryn looked at his neighbor's spread of supplies and copied her, making sure he had parchment and quill and ink ready for note-taking, and he put his wand in easy reach, touching it every few seconds to make sure it didn't roll away.

He listened to the professor explain about who she was, which was good to know. Professor Skies. Skies were blue, like her eyes. He could probably remember that. Then she explained what Transfiguration was and how it was more likely to plop than boom, which was probably for the best, all things considered. Xarryn liked a good boom as much as the next pirate, but probably not indoors with a lot of kids around.

A girl in the front row rather prissily answered the questions the teacher asked, and made it sound obvious. Xarryn slumped a little deeper in his chair. Yeah, it was a good thing he'd sat in the back for this one. He didn't even know what 'inannamite' meant. Why didn't folks just say 'not alive'? That was a whole lot easier on the tongue.

The teacher explained some more stuff about the lesson and how to keep everything straight about what needed to change by writing out a transfiguration table thing, and that made sense. Xarryn filled his out with Matchstick and Toothpick on the top, leaving out the Needle part because he was a first year and that part didn't apply to him.

He put down 'wood' as the material in both columns and for 'form' he was again a bit confused until he picked up from context that it meant 'shape'. He crossed out 'form' and wrote 'shayp' so he'd remember that. He crossed out 'function', too, and wrote 'what its 4' when the discussion helped clarify what that meant. For shape, he filled in 'small, long' in both columns and added 'poynty on both sides' for toothpick and 'fire hat' on the matchstick side. For what it does he put, 'makes fire' on the matchstick side and 'stabs food' on the toothpick side.

Professor Clouds then walked them through visualization and Xarryn felt he had a good feel for that. He'd always had a pretty good imagination. He kind of pictured whittling off the fire-starter cap on the matchstick to a food safe point, and then doing the same on the other end.

He copied down the spell word from the board onto his transfiguration table parchment, being careful to copy it correctly because he knew he was bad at spelling and he'd definitely get it wrong if left to his own devices.

When they were told to try it, he took a deep breath, got out his wand, and practiced the flick a few times. He felt mighty grown-up, having his own wand and flicking it. Now if he could just make it do something.

"Dentiscalpii!" he said, flicking authoritatively, imagining the matchstick getting whittled to toothpick pointiness. The top kind of sheered off and vanished, but it looked more like someone had hacked at a matchstick with a knife than transfigured a matchstick into a toothpick.

He checked in on his neighbor at about the same time she was checking in on him. Hers wasn't ideal either, looking a bit jagged, too, so he showed her his without too much embarrassment. "It's pointy?" he offered. "I imagined cutting of the matchstick top, and that's . . . basically what it looks like happened. So, go imagination? Not quite a toothpick though. I mean, I guess it could hold a sandwich together without poisoning anyone, so . . . close?"

1 Xarryn Bavol Should I help you find the healer? 1560 0 5

Lyla Holland

July 17, 2022 6:12 PM

Only if I impale myself on this dumb thing by Lyla Holland

"I'm Lyla," she introduced herself absentmindedly, distracted by the egregious amount of spelling mistakes on the boy's parchment. Clearing her throat quickly, she tore her eyes away from "shayp", whatever that was, and offered a handshake. She remembered too late that shaking hands wasn't a universal habit, and she hoped the boy wouldn't leave her hanging. "I'm in Crotalus," she added, in case that was important.

Lyla hadn't paid much attention to her neighbor before checking on him, but as she surveyed his desk, she noticed that he'd laid his supplies out just like she had. She felt a stab of pride in her chest that someone would want to emulate her, seeing as she was normally the one doing the following when it came to things like that.

She swapped matchsticks with the boy, carefully so as to not impale him with hers. His matchstick did indeed look like it had been hacked at, though her splinter wasn't any better. Try imagination, he'd suggested. Well, she had imagined her matchstick turning into a toothpick, but she hadn't really thought about the practical aspects of how a matchstick would change over. She reviewed her chart, noting that she'd forgotten 'round' as an essential toothpick shape, as she'd been too focused on 'pointy'. Returning the Pecari's matchstick, which was just a stick now, she received hers and set it gingerly on her desk.

How do you make a square thing round? For some reason, Lena came to mind, rolling her play-dough into snakes. Lyla raised an eyebrow. That might just work. Her neighbor had gotten decent results with his 'chopping' idea, so having a method of action wasn't a bad thing.

She pushed her sleeves up. She wasn't thrilled with having to wear robes all the time- although Lyla could see the practicality of long sleeves for say, potions class, they got in the way more often than not. She was hoping she would get used to it, but the getting-used-to part was getting more annoying every time her sleeves fell back down.

Lyla retrieved a fresh set of matchsticks from Professor Skies for herself and her neighbor, and focused on her visualization. She imagined rolling the matchstick on her desk until it was skinny and round, rolling it harder on the ends until the blunt bottom and red tip were pinched off in a pair of tight, but not necessarily sharp, points.

Picking up her wand and giving it a firm flick, she replayed the images in her head, reciting the incantation.

To her astonishment, both ends of her matchstick vanished, and the straight edges rounded off, leaving a wonky, lopsided toothpick, but a toothpick all the same.

"I did it?" she breathed, eyes wide. Her first successful spell, although imperfect, was exhilarating. She turned back to the boy.

"It worked! Your suggestion worked!"

64 Lyla Holland Only if I impale myself on this dumb thing 1559 0 5

Xarryn Bavol

July 27, 2022 6:59 AM

Yes, impaling sounds bad. by Xarryn Bavol

"Oh! Right! I'm Xarryn," Xarryn introduced himself after Lyla did. "And I'm in Pecari!" he added excitedly because that was the House of Adventure! And also because she'd told him hers, so that was apparently how people introduced themselves here.

They exchanged toothpicks - if they could be called that yet - to examine each other's results and Xarryn felt he was doing about par after seeing how Lyla's had turned out. Something had happened, but not entirely how you wanted it to turn out. Which was probably about what you could expect from trying any new skill for the first time, so he wasn't discouraged. They just needed to keep trying.

Lyla fetched them some new matchsticks to start fresh with, and Xarryn turned his attention back to his wand and the new match. He looked, too, at his old matchstick/toothpick to see what needed to be improved upon. For one thing, it should probably get stretched out longer. A hacked off matchstick was just too short for a proper toothpick.

He added a few more notes to his transfiguration table. Lawgur was put into the Toothpick Shape box, and Shoreter was added to the Matchstick Shape box. He also drew pictures for good measure.

With the picture to reference, and the old one as an example of what could go wrong if he didn't think about it enough, Xarryn cast the spell again. "Dentiscalpii!" he said with the same flicking motion as before.

This time, instead of chopping off the end, he imagined stretching it out and changing it into a wooden point. He also remembered to think about making the other end pointy, too. And that . . . seemed to mostly work. He had a passable toothpick in front of him. It still wasn't entirely perfect - the middle still looked like a matchstick shaft not toothpick shaft (and he wasn't entirely sure what the difference was, but it was clear there was a difference and he hadn't fixed it) - but it was clearly more toothpick than matchstick now.

He looked again at Lyla's. She had also done better and . . . was attributing it to his suggestion? He didn't remember making a suggestion? Apparently he had though, and it worked, so go him! "Whoo!" he cheered for her. "Look! Mine did better, too!"

He offered her his new toothpick for her examination and looked more closely at the one she had made. "Oh! That's what I forgot to do! Toothpicks are round!" The matchsticks were more squarish along the wooden length.

He added that to his table, too. Skwair kraws sekshun went under Matchstick shape while Sirkull kraws sekshun went under the Toothpick side to help him remember to change the cross-section shape. He sounded out each word slowly and out loud to help him spell them. They still looked very wrong. He didn't know how to fix it though, so he just put his quill aside. With a sigh, he complained, "There's so much writing at school. Dad tried to teach me, but it's really hard."

1 Xarryn Bavol Yes, impaling sounds bad. 1560 0 5

Lyla Holland

July 29, 2022 12:42 PM

I couldn't agree more by Lyla Holland

Lyla studied Xarryn's proffered toothpick, and while it was still squarish, it was definitely a toothpick.

"That looks great!" she said, beaming. She was glad that they were both making progress. There was still work to do, but they had come leaps and bounds in mere minutes.

She noticed Xarryn sounding out his words as her wrote them, a painfully slow process, with questionable results. She tried not to stare, looking everywhere except his desk. She could still hear him, though. It seemed like ages, but he finally finished.

There was a lot of writing in school, he was right. He couldn't keep going the way he was, he'd never keep up. He seemed smart enough, and Lyla didn't think his issues came from lack of trying.

"It is hard," she said, though she had no experience. Books had always held a comforting role in her life-books moved with you, even when you had to leave your friends behind. There was a special sort of companionship in reading the same story over and over-finding bits of information that you'd missed the first time, watching the relationships between characters, even falling in love with the smell of the pages. Lyla could understand how it would be hard for someone who hadn't had that sort of connection, though.

"Maybe I could try to help you," she suggested, "I read and write all the time. And I taught my little sister to read, and reading and writing are pretty close to the same thing."

She thought listing her credentials would make her seem more competent, but afterwards, she thought it might come off as bragging. Oh, well, she'd said it and it was out there, now. She really needed to work on thinking before she spoke.

64 Lyla Holland I couldn't agree more 1559 0 5