Theories and Speculations on Charms

Professor Aaron McKindy

July 27, 2011 7:23 PM

Roll Back the Clock [Years VI - VII] by Professor Aaron McKindy

“So. Reversing things,” Aaron McKindy said, perched on top of one of the student desks and speaking to the small gathering of sixth and seventh years that made up his Advanced Charms class. “It’s probably one of the biggest ethical issues in magic. Reversing time, for example, is something that only a few very specialised and very powerful witches and wizards can do. That’s why we have Time Turners – remember the unit we did on assigning magical value to an object?” Nods. Good. It had been a very long unit, so Aaron might have been a bit worried if he didn’t get one or two acknowledgments of the work the class had done.

Personally, he wouldn’t have minded getting his hands on a Time Turner. But that was beside the point.

“The problem with reversing things,” Aaron continued, fiddling with a loose thread on the bottom of his black v-neck, “is that usually you have to know how they went the first time. You can’t say the alphabet if backwards if you don’t know it forwards, right?” A point that was debatable, and given the particularly pedantic students he had in this class, anything that was debatable was to be quickly moved on from and never spoken of, ever again. For his sanity.

Since class had begun fifteen minutes ago and Aaron had just broken the young witches and wizards out of their pre-learning chatter (or in some cases, pre-learning seclusion), he was assuming that they had noticed the bottles of vinegar and firewhiskey, the jars of kim-chi and pickles, and the plates of wrinkled apricots and raisins. The assumption could have been wrong, but he was fairly certain that a bottle of firewhiskey on a professor’s desk would elicit more than a few interested glances, especially in a group of students so close to the Wizarding age of maturity.

“Like a lot of upper-level magic, waving your wand and saying a few words isn’t going to get you to the point of today’s assignment. Technically, this is university level material in practise, but the theory may be covered on your exams at the end of seventh year.

“What matters most here is intention, concentration, and magical ability. Some of you may be unable to reverse the process that has turned the articles on my desk into what they are today, but others of you – with some concentration – may be able to turn a raisin back into a grape.

“It can be helpful to do the wand-motion for a spell that creates a similar effect backwards, or to reverse the focus word and say the reversed form while waving your wand. The most effective method to channel your power into a reversal process is going to be unique to each witch or wizard; additionally, this is a very necessary trick for those of you interested in becoming Animagi to learn. A fair number of people can turn themselves into an animal with their wand in hand. The trick comes when you’re wandless, can’t speak, and need to become a person again.” Aaron smiled at his students. He had no doubt a few of them would be able to excel in this particular lesson, but he also expected failure on the behalf of some others.

“Get started at your leisure, and feel free to consult me, your book, or your neighbour if you need help brainstorming ideas. You may work with the item of your choice on my desk, and let me know if you need anything else.”

With that, Aaron hopped off the desk he’d been sitting on and led the way to the raised dais upon which his desk, with the items necessary for this lesson, sat. With a twist of his wand, he uncorked the firewhiskey and let the fun begin.

|OOC|
You…probably should know the rules by now, so follow them. Have fun, tag me if you need me, please don’t drink the firewhiskey so Aaron isn’t liable for the resultant havoc, etc. Enjoy!

Subthreads:

I am not smart enough for this by Charlotte Abbott with Andrew Duell

Theories and Speculations by Edmond Carey, Aladren

0 Professor Aaron McKindy Roll Back the Clock [Years VI - VII] 0 Professor Aaron McKindy 1 5

Charlotte Abbott

July 28, 2011 9:23 AM

I am not smart enough for this by Charlotte Abbott

By the time the students were set to work in today's charms class, all Charlie could think was 'What?' Somehow her fingers had worked their way distractedly into her hairline, with her palms pushing on her temples, to the point that she's had to re-align her slim red hairband. She knew what Time Turners were, had a very vague notion of how they worked, and understood that a raisin was a shrivelled grape. That was about where her comprehension of this class stopped. It wasn't the words that confused her, but the concept. Making things go backwards? There were something in the universe that made her head hurt, and she was pretty sure this class fell into that category. Still, exams were looming large and terrifyingly on the horizon, so the sevnth year thought she ought to make a real effort to master whatever it was McKindy was on about.

With a determined sort of resignation, Charlotte selected a couple of raisins - she figured they were small, solid, and therefore possibly the easiest of the given selection to start with - and placed them befor eher on her desk. So... well, now what? She stared at the raisins. So, probably they were real raisins not magically-crated raisins, otherwise she could just finite them and it would all be done with. As natural raisins, then, they were dried, and needed rehydrating or something. Merlin she loathed it when professors made her really work for her grade.

Giving in on logical thought, Charlie reached for her textbook and skimmed the index for something she thought looked useful. She tapped together the heels of her gray boots - worn with a smart gray dress with red butterfly print - as she flicked the pages between her fingers. "If this is on the exam then I'm failing for sure," Charlotte muttered aloud to nobody in particular.

It might have been a mild exaggeration - she certainly wasn't top of her class in anything (but hello, check out how many Aladrens were in her year) but she didn't think she was bottom in anything, either. She was clever enough, but lazy with her work, always putting in sufficient effort to get good grades but never over-exerting herself. So it was that when something tricky arose she had a tendency to give up almost instantly, unwilling to work hard for a mediocre result. It was probably this same ethos that had her struggling to decide whether or not to go to collge; and if so, what to study, and if not, what else to do. She didn't like it when things were complicated... simplicity was, well, simpler.

Having found a section that seemed relevant, Charlie read it over, then looked again at her raisins before raising her eyes to her neighbor, discovering their gaze met hers. "I've never felt so thwarted by shriveled fruit in my life before," she said with a smile.

0 Charlotte Abbott I am not smart enough for this 135 Charlotte Abbott 0 5

Andrew Duell

August 11, 2011 10:08 PM

How do you feel about cheating? by Andrew Duell

Charms. Yay. At least it wasn't potions. At least that was Andrew's thought process until Professor McKindy started talking. He scribbled down notes in his notebook as McKindy talked, but the words didn't quite process right. He wanted them to alter time? Well, if that was possible... No, there was just to much if it could be done, all of reality would have to be questioned... well, more so than with ordinary magic.

When instructed, he picked up a wrinkled apricot from the pile up front. He set it on his desk and looked at it, he poked it and he rolled it around a bit. He really had no idea what to do. They were supposed to reverse time? Something that only the most experienced and powerful witches and wizards could even attempt? Great. Maybe the book would have some helpful insights? He flipped through it. Not really. He sighed, now what? What was everyone else doing?

He looked around, Charlie was next to him. She had a few raisins setting in front of her, it looked like she was being as successful as he was. She looked up at him, smiled and her comment solidified his guess. He smiled back. "I know the feeling." He poked his apricot again. "I know one way to do this... but it's not exactly turning back time." He closed his eyes briefly, waved his wand and one of her raisins was transfigured into a grape. He shot her a quick grin, "Got any other ideas on how to do this?"

2 Andrew Duell How do you feel about cheating? 145 Andrew Duell 0 5

Edmond Carey, Aladren

August 12, 2011 1:42 AM

Theories and Speculations by Edmond Carey, Aladren

From the first words of Professor McKindy’s lecture, Edmond was fascinated by what he had to say, enough so that he was only momentarily distracted by the question of whether or not it would count as saying the alphabet backward if one learned it what he thought of as backward, in which case it would technically be possible to say it in a manner society would regard as backward without knowing it forward but which might not count in more abstract terms about the relative meaning of being backward. Such arguments were interesting to him, as was the thought that he knew the alphabet perfectly well forward and still couldn’t say it backward, but the lesson claimed supremacy.

He had, after all, given up on figuring out the things on the desk almost at once. The dried apricots and the raisins he could make sense of, though he did wonder if there was a charm which could rehydrate them and have the same effect, but the others made no sense. Pickles were, to the best of his understanding, sliced cucumbers, he didn’t know what kim-chi was, and as far as he knew, vinegar and firewhiskey were vinegar and firewhiskey. Unless they were trying to get grain out of alcohol….

Interesting if so. He scribbled down that thought. Full reversal…Well, that would take more power than he thought he had, more power than he thought anyone had, but in theory, that could extend into almost anything. Into changing the past, or undoing it so events could progress in a different way. But that went against everything he knew about Time Turners; he’d never used one himself, but he knew the theory, and had read accounts of their use. Either events were fixed and constant, so that a time traveler had already traveled before he traveled to cause the events that went into memory, or else reality…flexed, allowing situations that could be misinterpreted as the original event by involved parties, there was some debate on the topic, though he thought that the locked-loop theory seemed to have more support. Him, he found them both headache-inducing, especially once he began to read the philosophy associated with them.

Catching what Professor McKindy was saying, he took down the suggested strategies for the reversal process. There was no need to be silly about this. He was quite intelligent, he knew that, but he was not a genius. The level of comprehension and creativity necessary to see something that no one else had ever seen in centuries of study was not something he possessed. At some point, someone must have thought to use a group of strong wizards, all working together, to attempt anything he could think of. He would have to go look it up in the library later.

For now, he had to select something. He decided to start small, with the raisins. He could work his way up to more difficult things.

First, he thought of how they had come to be. They had been dried. Water had left them. There was a dehydration charm, he knew, generally used to clean up puddles and mudholes that might threaten shoes and hems, but it could be made smaller, he guessed, to do this. So if he could figure out how to reverse that…He wished he had his Latin books with him, or at least a decent dictionary. Bungling a spell could have dramatic results; saying the exact wrong thing while trying to reverse a spell word could bring the roof down on them all. Perhaps it would be best to try it wandlessly first.

0 Edmond Carey, Aladren Theories and Speculations 0 Edmond Carey, Aladren 0 5