This could be interesting on Charms

Grayson Wright

January 13, 2023 8:56 PM

Advanced Charms I by Grayson Wright

The Advanced students just about had the trick of emitting water from their wands down, which meant it was time to move on to the next point under the umbrella of the odd degree of overlap between liquids and charms. Professor Wright, at least, was glad to do so. He only had so much of an answer for the question about why creating a spout of water was a charm and not a transfiguration, and he much preferred topics where he could, in the admittedly slightly unlikely event that someone asked, provide an adequate number of Extra Facts.

“Hello, everyone,” he said to the sixth and seventh years as they settled in for class. “In a moment, I’ll give you back the notes from your practical assessments last week – on the whole, very good, and as usual, I’m happy to answer any questions you have about your results.” At this point, the assessments were only tied to their grades to a point; he wanted them to focus on getting the principles down rather than just on getting a particular score for the performance of a particular charm, so although there would be more of a focus on getting it right as the class went along, for now, completion was the goal as far as the grade book went. He could but hope they wouldn’t disappoint him too severely and take this as an excuse not to study his notes on their performances, or to assume they were done with the material for good, though he doubted many of them had gotten this far without knowing him better than that. “Today, we’re going to look at a charm which works a little differently from what you’re used to. Normally, in charming, we add properties without fundamentally changing the identity of an object. Today, we’re going to reverse natural changes to an object and try to restore it to its original state.”

He waved his wand and glasses of vinegar began to distribute themselves to the student desks. “Apologies for anyone who finds the smell of vinegar too disagreeable,” he added. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that your goal today involves making that go away. This particular kind of vinegar is rather old-fashioned – it’s wine that’s gone sour, which is what the word vinegar actually means, vinum acer, ‘sour wine.’ It’s a traditional place to begin working on biological reversal charms, and so here we are.

“Now, if you attempt to take anything from the kitchens or cleaning supplies, that will probably be a different kind of vinegar – especially the stuff used for cleaning – so don’t think I’m enabling you to have any especially wild parties in the dormitories,” he added, though in fact, if they did steal some from the kitchens, they might have a better chance of that than they would with what they were using for their class experiments here. From what he understood, a lot of the more modern vinegars were made from stuff rather stronger than wine. He did not, however, see any need to tell students about that in the context of a lesson using one of the more traditional examples of a process. Knowledge consisted of facts; wisdom consisted in how and when one used or revealed them. “I would strongly recommend against that, especially since most of you don’t know how to cast permanent charms especially well yet, and you might therefore find it going back to vinegar on you at inconvenient moments.” Which was one reason why students started touching on permanent charms late in sixth year and wouldn’t – at least unless they experimented on their own – learn to fully master the art until late in seventh year. Not the only reason, far from it, but one of them.

“With that warning out of the way – we’ve practiced a few non-verbal charms this year, and now we’ll do so again. The incantation is vinadulceo, but by the end of the unit – when you’ll be able to turn vinegar back into grape juice in one step – I’ll expect you all to have made some headway in casting it non-verbally, so I’d suggest you start to work on it sooner rather than later. You are, however, free to give each other advice, complain briefly about your work, or swear at your work if you feel the need, it’s hard to concentrate when you’re frustrated, and concentration, as you know, is of the greatest importance here. For homework, read chapters 6 and 8 of your textbooks and answer the questions at the end of chapter 8 with this spell in mind as you start to consider the relationship between time and space in charming – yes, there’s going to be a paper along those lines soon,” he added, though he doubted this was a surprise to anyone. “All clear as mud? Any immediate questions? Begin.”

OOC: Welcome to Advanced Charms! You all know the rules. The spell is one which exists in canon - the Golden Trio study it in Advanced Charms in book 6 - but the incantation is one of my own devising. The explanation is partially of my devising; the HP Wiki included the link about how vinegar is created from the oxidation of ethanol and the spell could therefore count as a charm because it's restoring the item to its original identity after a natural process, rather than an artificial one, has taken place. Have fun!

Subthreads:

This could be interesting by Billy Cobb with Jasper Brockert

16 Grayson Wright Advanced Charms I 113 1 5

Billy Cobb

February 11, 2023 9:20 AM

This could be interesting by Billy Cobb

Billy didn't hate charms. It certainly wasn't the most exciting class, and Professor Wright wasn't exactly the most exciting professor, but still some of the stuff they learned was interesting and he could see it being useful at times. Still, as always he slid into the classroom at the last possible moment. He'd been doing it since year one, and he wasn't about to stop now. Even with the most interesting task in front of him, it was still sitting around in a room for way to long to get in there earlier than absolutely necessary.

That did mean that he usually didn't get to pick where he sat, or who he sat with.. unless someone saved a seat for him. As such, he'd gotten used to taking whatever seat was available and making the best of it. The professor didn't quite ramble on today as much as he sometimes did, so Billy took that for a good sign. He did like the sounds of this lesson, this could be fun. He was sure the Professor knew what he was talking about with swiping vinegar from the kitchens around here, but... Billy knew that the stuff they made back home might have results more along the lines of what Professor Wright was having them work with today. He grinned, Professor Wright's 'old fashioned' vinegar was the standard back home. The reading and homework stuff almost ruined his good mood. Almost.

He got his vinegar and before anything else, gave it a good smelling. Yup, that was just like the stuff back home. He wondered how much he could sneak into his stuff when he returned from winter break. Though, he should probably first master the conversion required to make things fun. But, how hard could that be? Billy was on the fence with the whole non-verbal thing, he didn't have to fight his accent, but he did have to get it right in his head.

With his wand ready, he thought hard about the word that the Professor had pronounced, and once he thought he had it straight he moved his wand and thought the word as loudly in his brain as he could. The bottle still smelled like vinegar. He glanced at his neighbor, "You got any good tricks fer this non-verbal stuff?"

2 Billy Cobb This could be interesting 1519 0 5

Jasper Brockert

February 17, 2023 4:11 AM

Agreed by Jasper Brockert

It was Jasper’s last year at Sonora and it honestly felt kind of weird. Like, he’d spent the last six years here and was pretty used to it. True, there were things that had been difficult, mostly the tension between him and Xavier last year during the Challenges, but in the end, even that had…gotten better. Like they’d sort of made peace? Not that they were going to be best friends, as they really did not have much in common, but the fifth year was okay in his eyes now, even if Amethyst did not think so.

However, what had really been great about the Challenges-aside from getting second place- was the bond he had now forged with Liesl. They now hung out together at times, both over the summer and here at school, in the Teppenpaw common room. She confided in him somewhat now, though likely not as much as she did in Cory or Hans. Jasper was really glad that she had the latter especially. He would be here for her next year when the seventh year was gone.

Honestly, Liesl was the one of his relatives he worried about the most, along with Chris somewhat. He knew Olaf and Amethyst would be fine and Isla had her friends. The two fourth years had friends too, but Jasper just sort of felt more protective of them, because they just seemed more vulnerable somehow. Like, Christopher was incredibly shy and cautious and just plain wary of people because of how Uncle Eustace had treated him. Well, them, actually. Their uncle had treated all of the boys that way and only Olaf seemed truly unaffected. Who would have thought that a total misanthrope would be the most well adjusted among them?

As for Liesl, underneath that spooky and rather cheerful exterior seemed to be a steaming pile of insecurities. First, she had felt like she was mediocre and untalented and not special during the Challenges, although she’d come into her own in the last one a little, which they still should have won. However, now Liesl. was having a hard time now that her brother Desmond was here. The younger Teppenpaw felt like her parents liked her siblings better than her, and that her brother in particular was this genius golden boy. Jasper had never spent that much time with the first year himself, but he knew that Desmond wasn’t always nice to Liesl and picked up a lot of their parents’ attitudes, especially from their mother, who treated the fourth year like a massive disappointment.

Jasper felt truly awful for her-knowing her parents, he was pretty sure her viewpoint was fairly accurate- he very much believed parents should love their children all the same. His own parents had arguably done that. None of them really were favored. So, despite their decidedly hands off parenting style, Jasper supposed he had to give them credit for that at least. They failed in so many ways, but at least they’d failed them all about the same. Well maybe Sapphire a little more since they hadn’t noticed her epilepsy.Which was probably because they weren’t noticing her at all.

But then, they just didn’t notice things. They didn’t notice anything Topaz was up to ever, and it wasn’t all because the Aladren alumna was sneaky and manipulative, they made it easy for her to do what she did. Father did stand up for Jasper to Uncle Eustace, but had not done so soon enough, when he really should have known better. Like, if Uncle Eustace said something negative about Jasper, Father generally would defend the Teppenpaw. However, Father should have put a stop to the Quidditch stuff that Uncle Eustace was forcing them into given how Jasper’s-and Christopher’s- physical and emotional well being had been at stake. Uncle Gene had an excuse for not stopping it, Father really didn’t.

The Teppenpaw attempted to push these thoughts aside as Professor Wright began Charms. Sometimes, it was a tiny bit difficult to listen in this class because the professor had a tendency to go on a bit, but Jasper felt it was necessary to try, both because the professor deserved to be treated respectfully which included paying attention even when it was a bit of an information overload and because if he didn’t, he might miss something necessary to complete the lesson, or that would be on exams or even something he might need for RATS. Besides, sometimes, the additional information was even interesting.

So Jasper attempted to put his worries-and apparent resentment-aside and pay attention to Professor Wright. Turning vinegar back into grape juice? Well that didn’t sound so bad. It was fairly difficult magic, but it did not strike him as being an impossible task. He was pretty sure he’d get results, he usually did, the only subject he’d ever truly struggled with was Flying Lessons and making his broom come up, which was largely because Jasper hadn’t wanted to fly in the first place. He generally wanted to do whatever was put to them to do everywhere else. It might not be readily apparent why he would need to turn vinegar back to grape juice specifically, maybe if he was really thirsty-though he could see turning it into wine, although, to be fair, he was pretty sure that wine was pretty easily accessible at home and this would not be necessary- but it was probably a way of showing how to do a more advanced magical skill that might be transferable to something else.

Jasper received his vinegar and took out his wand. “Vinadulceo” He bent down to sniff it since it honestly didn’t look too different and smelling was probably the easiest way to tell. It did smell a little less like vinegar. Which was good, because, while he was generally not bothered by that scent, he had to admit that this much of it in one place was a bit much. Also, it meant he made progress and that was always good.

Before he could try again, Billy, who was sitting next to him, asked about non-verbal tricks. “Um, I really wouldn’t worry about it just yet.” Jasper replied.”I think we’re supposed to master doing it in one step first and that won’t come until the end of the unit. Unless you’ve already managed to do so.”Which would be impressive.

11 Jasper Brockert Agreed 1496 0 5