Selina Skies
June 15, 2024 9:00 PM
Advanced - There's a delay by Selina Skies
“Good afternoon,” Selina greeted the advanced class. “We are going to starting a very interesting unit today, on transfigurations that are attached to an object.” Whether or not something was interesting or not was, of course, subjective, but this usually got a few ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ as it involved a lot of the kinds of flashy things that didn’t happen very often in the serious subject of transfiguration. “These are called ‘conditional transfigurations’ and what that means is that the change is enacted by something other than your wandwork, for example, a toy that changes shape when turned in a particular way.” She took a small toy person, raising its arms above its head. When she let go, it continued to move of its own accord, folding itself and changing into a toy racing broom. “Of course, your wandwork is what starts it all off really - you have to have placed the relevant spells on the object in the first place. But the actual effect of the spell is seen later.“Those of you who take charms will already be familiar with some of the spells we’re using. There is a substantial overlap here. Often, you are using a charm to set conditions - for example, age lines, time lines, and so on - in order for a transfiguration to be enacted.” This was where things got a little messy, as technically she had to teach some charms to people who might not be taking it. However, there were enough commonalities in that charms and transfiguration were both strong wandwork subjects that she was confident they could handle it, even if they hadn’t chosen to study the former subject.
“The first half of this lesson will be spent on the time delay charm. If you have already mastered this, please pair up with a classmate who does not take charms, and help them. You will draw a circle on the table, using the incantation tempus mora. If you are experienced in this charm, you may want to specify or envision a particular time, such as ten to fifteen seconds. As with most charms, the more practised you are, the better your results will be, which you can either channel into strength or precision - therefore you can just cast it, but the better you get the longer and longer the delay will be, or you can work on being precise in the amount of delay. After you have cast, it you, will take one of these.” She held up a simple toy consisting of a pair of wooden balls hanging from a string. “Ordinarily, when you hit these into each other, the movement from the first is transferred into the second.” She demonstrated the effect. That was not actually the purpose of the toy. The purpose was to be dextrous enough to create a steady rhythm of the balls hitting against each other and drive your parents to distraction. But she wasn’t about to point that out, and this other use served her purpose well. “To test your spell, place one ball inside the line, pull the other back, and watch…” She demonstrated. The balls hit together, but there was a sizable pause before the second one flew outwards.
“Once you are getting consistent results with the charm, you will add it onto any simple transfiguration. For example, chavena tempus mori” she cast the teacup spell, which they had first learnt in first year, adding a circle around the paper she was casting it on to the end of the wand motion. It lay there for a count of five - a pause which felt sizable in the silence of the room - before folding itself into a neat, willow-patterned cup.
“For homework, you will research ancient Egyptian uses of time delay spells, particularly transfigruations, in the traps they placed on their tombs. This will be one of several mini research topics will contribute to a knowledge of how these spells have been used throughout history, and which will form the basis of a final essay for this unit. If you finish five transfigurations with a consistent delays of over ten seconds, you may start your research.
Subthreads: Me, too. I'm also on a delay. by Lenny Pierce
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Selina Skies
Advanced - There's a delay
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Lenny Pierce
June 27, 2024 11:09 AM
Me, too. I'm also on a delay. by Lenny Pierce
Lenny liked Transfiguration. The theories could be pretty difficult to wrap his head around sometimes, but he really enjoyed the creativity involved in deciding what his final product would look like. It was as close to an art class as Sonora offered. He was also fairly skilled at practical wand work, so it had been a pretty easy decision to keep the class as he went into his Advanced years. He had also kept Charms, so he felt like he had an edge for this class as they'd been working on Time Delay charms there, too, and it was awesome to feel like all the stuff he was learning was actually building together constructively now.He wouldn't say he had mastered time delays, but he could pull them off fairly consistently, even if they weren't quite the ten seconds or more that Professor Skies wanted them to aim for. Which was fine. He'd rather play with the ball toy and work on getting the paper to turn into a teacup ten seconds after he cast the spell than start working on his research paper already. He'd found he could focus on that sort of thing better in the library than in a classroom. Especially if he had Cole around to tell him to stop doodling and actually do his work.
So first things first. Try to expand his time delay from about five or six seconds to ten or eleven. Lenny set up his own toy, cast the spell, focusing on fifteen seconds so even if it fell short maybe it would still hit ten, and then pulled back one of the balls and let it fall toward the other.
"One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven," Lenny counted in a steady cadence but then had to stop because the second ball swung out after the seventh second. Okay. Half the time he'd been aiming for, but still one of his longest delays so far. He'd take it. He just needed a bit more practice and experience to stretch that out three more seconds to reach the target goal. Definitely doable.
He looked over at his neighbor. "How are you doing? I got up to seven seconds this time!"
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Lenny Pierce
Me, too. I'm also on a delay.
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