Year 7 on Transfiguration

Professor Sutekh

June 07, 2008 2:48 PM

Year 7 by Professor Sutekh

Sanaa was contemplating how she could teach the subject of Animagi without demoralising those students who found it really difficult. To become a Transfiguration Master you needed to be able to turn into an Animagi; Sanaa’s was a Borrowing Owl, and it was simply something most people could not do. You had to have complete faith in your ability to withstand the animal’s instincts and be able to turn back into a human. This was difficult for most witches and wizards as the thought of transfiguring their wand hands into a shape unable to hold a wand was frightening and unnerving. Luckily for the RATS the students only needed to be able to half transfigure their bodies; whether that was the top or bottom, or the sum of the human parts transfigured.

Sanaa decided that she would start with the feet today, as even if the transfiguration took a while to wear off they would still be able to use their wands. Nodding at her plan, Sanaa banished the desks and chairs and made a section of the floor padded. Sanaa waited for the school bell to go indicating the start of the class and opened the door. In came the seventh years who had kept transfiguration.

“Today’s lesson will be much easier if you sit on the floor. We will be beginning the subject of Animagi and today we will be transfiguring the feet. Shoes and socks will need to come off.” Sanaa sat herself down on the edge of the platform on which her desk sat and, lifting up the hem of the robe, pulled off a pale gold suede slipper that matched her robe; she did not wear socks. After the rest of the students had seated themselves she began her lecture.

“First, your Animagus is a representation of your inner animal personality. I am an owl, which means I am studious, like the night and have good eyesight. The colouring of your Animagus is usually based on your human colourings; I have brown hair and white skin. Occasionally there will be weird colours. There is no need to focus on any animal when you are doing this, to do so will actually stop the transformation. Clear your mind, twirl your wand twice clockwise and jab it at a foot saying ‘Manasugi’. Please be patient it will take a while to learn to completely clear your mind first. Watch.”

Sanaa twirled her wand and jabbed it at her right foot whilst saying the incantation. Her foot turned into an owl’s foot, complete with talons. It was out of proportion to the rest of her body.

“Once you have practiced on all of your limbs, torso and head and successfully transfigured each part you can complete the full transformation. Stand in a clear space, tuck your wand away and silently cast the spell.” Sanaa shrank down until all that was left in her place was a small brown and white owl. The owl hooted once and then grew until she was human again. “It took me 6 years to complete the full transformation, so for your RATs you only need to transfigure half of your body, whatever combination. For example it could be both legs, one arm and your head. You will not be expected to complete the transformation.”

“Finally, to undo any transformation do the same wand movement and say ‘Exigo’, which is a standard spell to end most transfigurations. You can work in pairs but you will be transfiguring your own foot, this spell cannot be performed on anybody else. That is extremely dangerous and may result in that person spending months in the hospital whilst we correct the damage. I will personally give anybody who attempts this detention for the rest of your time here in school. Please begin.”

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Zack Dill

June 20, 2008 12:32 PM

Having a bit of trouble by Zack Dill

Zack was normally good at transfigurations. In fact, Zack was normally good at just about any academic subject he ever came across. He was a genius. Even when he didn't know much about something, which was rare, he could usually pull in enough outside information from other sources to make a guess that, more often than not, he was as confident in as he would be if the deduction were fact.

So when Year Seven of Transfiguration came around, Zack was sure he could handle anything thrown at him. He had six years of experience behind him and he had mastered animate-to-animate transfiguration to his own satisfaction last year. He figured this year would just be more of the same, practicing all forms of transfiguration until they could do it in their sleep (or on their RATS after a night of very little sleep). He was not anticipating an animagus transfiguration of himself.

Still, he set to work readily enough after committing the lecture to his notebook, as close to verbatim as he could when he was translating it into three different other languages (Sindarin and Kling-on were givens, but lately he'd begun mixing in Runes for the extra practice). As minutes passed by and try after try was completely unsuccessful, Zack was beginning to get frustrated and develop something he rarely experienced in his classes: self-doubt.

The worst part was that he even knew what the problem was. He just couldn't fix it. He simply did not know how to make himself stop thinking. He tried to clear his mind, but he just couldn't. As soon as he chased away one set of thoughts, another set would swiftly appear to take their place. How to hold the wand. How to pronounce the spell word. A brief analysis on the word origin and a momentary sidetrack as he took a moment to miss playing Magic: The Gathering (the 'mana' part of 'manasugi' reminded him of it) and wonder if Guenther played.

And then he would try to push all of that aside, and he'd suddenly be thinking about what kind of animal he might turn into, and not really liking most of the options. He doubted a snitch counted as an animal since it was an intelligent alien species, but he thought that might be cool to turn into.

Then he tried to clear his head of that since that was very definitely something he was not supposed to be thinking about while casting this spell, but as soon as it was gone, he was wondering what the prairie elves would serve for dinner and thinking that he was really in the mood for roast beef today. Or something that came with dark gravy. He wanted gravy.

And when he pushed that thought away, he found himself working on his potions homework, thinking up the best way to explain the relation between the precision of the rats' tails' preparation and the effectiveness of the final potion.

And when he tried to focus back on the subject at hand, there he went analyzing the wand motion again. It was a vicious, never-ending cycle, and whenever he gave up trying to clear his mind and just cast the spell anyway, nothing happened. It was really irritating and he was starting to wonder if he was even capable of doing this, and how much it would affect his grade if he didn't, and he didn't think he could handle it if he got anything less than perfect. He was an Alderaanian. He was Zack Dill, Head Boy.

He was supposed to be the smart one.\r\n\r\n

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