Year 5 on Transfiguration

Professor Sutekh

September 24, 2008 4:25 PM

Year 5 by Professor Sutekh

Sanaa walked around her classroom humming as she pushed around desks and chairs and turned the desks into wells. Part of the class would involve animals if it went correctly. Sanaa was happy as she had received an owl at breakfast time. The letter had been from a prominent Transfiguration Master, Tarquin Hepplethwait, who was interested in her last article on Complex Multi-Layered Transfiguration and was extending an offer to come and study with him during the Sonora summer holidays.

A knock on the door indicated the students were waiting outside the classroom. Humming and smiling Sanaa waved her wand at the door, opening it. Smiling brightly at the students she made her way back to her desk and indicated for the students to sit down.

“Good morning class. Today we will be continuing with multi-layered transfiguration. We will be turning rock into metal, then turning the metal into animals. The incantation and wand work are the same except for the final Latin noun. For example in the last lesson we changed rocks into crystal with the incantation ‘Adfectio Crystali’, this time the incantation is ‘Adfectio Ferrum’. This follows into whatever your are transfiguring, it could be ‘Adfectio Marmaros’.

Sanaa picked up a box of rocks and tapped it with her wand before waving her wand over the students. Rocks of all different sizes and colours floated out of the box and into the wells of the desks.

“Today we will be starting from rocks.” Sanaa swished her wand and tapped the rock saying the incantation ‘Adfectio Ferrum.’ The rock morphed into a metal statue of a bird. “Good practice is to turn the metal into the shape of the animal you wish to end up with. It also makes the last step of the transfiguration easier.” Sanaa twirled her wand in four anti-clockwise circles before saying ‘Adfectio Avis’ The metal quivered and shook before gaining colour and shaking it’s new wings. A brightly coloured parrot was now sitting in Sanaa’s hand.

Sanaa tossed the bird into the air causing it to flap its wings squawking, before landing on a window sill. “Your transfigurations should last up to about 5 minutes before becoming metal or rock, but eventually it will change back to a rock. You may work in pairs but please work on your own rocks; discussion is welcome. Begin.” Sanaa smiled again at the class before going and fetching her parrot from the window and taking it back to her desk.

0 Professor Sutekh Year 5 0 Professor Sutekh 1 5

Geoffrey Layne

October 04, 2008 11:47 PM

So, who did fly over the cuckoo's nest? by Geoffrey Layne

Stashing everything but his wand under his well-topped desk as the few students arriving even later than he took seats, Geoff reminded himself that the lesson was only one part of the day and that he had less than half a year left of being forced to study it. With that thought in mind, he smiled at the happy-looking professor. It couldn't hurt anything, and he still needed her good graces until June. His assignments were good for papers and worksheets done at the last minute possible, but Anne said he lacked the style teachers liked. Since she couldn't explain what style was, he tried to make up for his lack of it by making teachers like him.

Even so, he had trouble suppressing a wince when he heard the assignment. Rock to metal he thought he could do - he could see a sort of connection there - but going from the metal something to an animal something, especially in the awareness that the metal wasn't even really metal...That, he thought, sounded daunting. It wasn't really satisfying to know this - a five-minute-tops effect - was as well as he could ever hope to do, either.

Enough of that, though; he had to do that well for CATS, and if all went well, he would eventually be able to pay someone to make anything he needed instead of needing to Transfigure it himself. He studied his rock. It wasn't a very large rock, so he thought it would be best to see a small bird when he tried to turn it. It was also a brown rock, which meant a brown bird. There were little birds, brown if he remembered them right, that hopped around in gardens at home in the fall. They would do.

Taking up his wand, he focused on a mental image of a metal yard bird, trying to remember just how the metal Sutekh had briefly had a parrot made of had looked. Reciting the Latin words flatly, without inflection or comprehension, while he imitated the first wand movement, he was moderately pleased to get a bird-shaped piece of metallic-looking material and didn't much care that its wings went suddenly flat and were not distinguishable from its body after that point.

Heartened by this success - it was a pathetic thing to be pleased over, doing half-well what some first years could do brilliantly, but this class was murder for him - Geoff tried the four backwards wand twirls and the second spell in the firm expectation that he'd have a deformed bird in front of him for five minutes.

It didn't quite work out.

Ten unsuccessful minutes later, the highlight of which had involved the metal bird going back to a rock and making it necessary to repeat the first feat all over again, he gave the model a dark look before rubbing his eyes and yearning for the ordered precision and certainty of the lab. He was an irredeemable Potions geeks, and that was that there was to it. Life would be infinitely easier if he could make an unruly back corner of his mind that wanted to come in best at everything accept that, shut up, and leave him alone.

Lowering his hands, he picked up his wand again just as the bird statue morphed back into a rock for the second time. A typical gesture of spite by the subject. "Merlin, I wish we could take our CATS now and get it over with," he muttered, more to himself than anyone in his immediate vicinity.

16 Geoffrey Layne So, who did fly over the cuckoo's nest? 72 Geoffrey Layne 0 5

Saul Pierce

October 10, 2008 2:00 PM

That would be me. No - wait - I flew <i>into</i> it. by Saul Pierce

Saul arrived among the very last people who squeaked in just shy of being late. The professor was already giving off the signs that she was about ready to start, so Saul grabbed the first empty seat he came, one next to Geoffrey Layne. In the the spirit of the upcoming CATS, Saul made an extra effort to try to pay attention, but the cause was hopeless. Barely a minute into the lecture, Saul's entire attention was fixed on watching Briony take notes.

It wasn't that he disliked the subject. Transfigurations was his cousin Simon's best magical discipline and Saul understood perfectly well how useful it could be. It was just that Briony was so pretty today. Just as pretty as she'd been yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that . . .

And really, how could Professor Sutekh compete with that, right?

After a few minutes, Saul shook himself and tried to refocus on the class because Simon wanted him to pull an Acceptable in this course so he could continue it next year. It was going to be tough. Application didn't come as easily to him as it did in charms and his written part certainly wasn't going to carry him through. But at least he wasn't as hopeless as he was in potions. If he could just focus long enough and work at it a bit, he did okay. He was in no danger of an E, certainly, but an A was within the realms of possibility.

He managed to catch enough of the lesson that he at least didn't need to ask Geoff what they were doing. Rock to metal bird to real bird. The last part was by far the harder of the two. Inanimate to inanimate was pretty easy.

Saul waved his wand and enunciated the incantation and imagined the final product and sat back with a smug, "Ha!" when the rock on his desk easily changed into a cast iron sculpture of a small owl. He would have gone for something flashier, but owls were the only type of bird he'd seen up close enough to have a really good picture in his head of what they looked like.

Now the hard part. Giving it life.

He sat up on the edge of his seat, took a deep breath, and tried his very best to put aside everything going on around him. Geoffrey Layne's surprisingly unsuccessful attempts (Saul naturally assumed that Aladrens were better than him in every subject regardless of actual performance history) were slightly easier to block out than the red haired girl sitting a few seats away and in front of him, but he managed with limited success to put Briony out of his head.

He cast the second incantation and imagined the sculpture turning into real owl and grimace and slumped in discouragement when all that happened was that the iron owl blinked once, canted its head, and stretched out its wings before settling back into statue mode.

"C'mon," he complained at it. "Not even one feather? Dude, I so imagined feathers."

Geoffrey spoke at roughly the same time, too, and Saul turned to look at him. He didn't seem to have been speaking to Saul, but Saul never let that stop him from responding to somebody before.

"No way," he disagreed, tapping a fingernail against the metal skull of his owl, and frowning over the fact that the whole thing reverberated with the sound of it. The whole thing was still metal? Man, he thought he'd done better than that. "I mean, I gotta pass this one and right now I'm still flunking." He looked over at Geoff and grinned a little. "Sides, who wants to take a test today that you could put off until tomorrow?"

Glancing down at the Geoff's metal bird - no, wait, that was a rock again - was Saul's? - no, IronOwl was still owl shaped even if he was no longer moving - Saul frowned in confusion. "Dude," he blurted in surprise, "why do you want to take the test? You're doing worse than me." It was perfectly clear by the shock in his voice that he found that to be epitome of academic ineptitude and completely unlike Geoffrey Layne.

Of course, Geoff probably wasn't assuming he'd get every question on his written part wrong and need to make it all up in his practical, so maybe they were doing about even. That was still well below Saul's expectations for an Aladren, especially one who was so into his CATS that he wanted to take them early.

1 Saul Pierce That would be me. No - wait - I flew <i>into</i> it. 82 Saul Pierce 0 5

Geoff Layne

October 11, 2008 12:29 AM

Just be sure not to kill a mockingbird. by Geoff Layne

"Me," Geoff said when asked rhetorically who would want to take a test today that could be put off a while. "I'm sick and tired of waiting for - "

Before he could finish that thought, however, Saul decided to interrupt him, and Geoff had a brief, irrational moment where he thought of how nice it would be to hex him. To be a prefect would seem to require a slightly better grasp of tact than Saul was currently exhibiting. If he somehow got Head Boy in two years, Geoff was staging a protest. He was not optimistic about his chances of getting anyone to help him with that, but he'd make the gesture.

"Brilliant observation, Pierce," he said dryly. Had Sutekh turned the heat up or something? It was far too warm. "I'm not going to take this next year." Saying it made him feel slightly happier. The subject was, objectively speaking, a useful one to master, but he hated it and could have Anne, who was good at it, perform transformations he didn't have the skill for that he needed done.

Another good thing about just getting CATS over with would be the end of Anne's reason for playing mother to him. His friend was a lot of things, but a nurturer was not on that list, and her ineffective attempts at offering support had done little but annoy him. Since he would have to suffer a long session of her guilt and apologies if she figured his opinion out, however, he had no choice but to deal with it until he successfully left his last exam sane.

Sixth year would be his year. Anne would be too worked up about her RATS and the Championship and her successor and the possibility of a hostile takeover by whoever that was to focus on him, especially since he didn't plan to carry on with the Quidditch team unless she really couldn't get anyone else. Helena would be obsessively working on CATS, and with her workload, that would be a full-time job. His classes would be fewer and all in subjects he was good at for once. If he could get through a few more weeks of the life at hand, life would become good.

He tried the first incantation again, this time coming up with a model of the family owl, Pandora. Pleased, he then performed the bird-creating spell again, and again failed to get any results he could see.

He really hoped it occurred to Saul to fail to comment.

16 Geoff Layne Just be sure not to kill a mockingbird. 72 Geoff Layne 0 5

Saul Pierce

October 11, 2008 6:22 PM

I will keep that in mind: No killing mockingbirds. by Saul Pierce

It never occurred to Saul to fail to comment.

When Geoff turned away to try the spell again, Saul took the hint to do the same (hey! he should sit next to Geoff more often - it might help him stay focused on the assignment more) and he attempted to cast Adfectio Avis once more on his bird statue.

He was still thinking about Geoff's assertion that he wasn't going to take Transfiguration anymore though, and he barely got the metal bird to blink. Turning back to Geoff, who now managed to turn his rock into a pretty good owl, Saul picked up the conversation as if they hadn't stopped talking.

"If you're not taking it next year and you're resigned to flunking anyway, why are you stressing about the exam? If the test is tomorrow or in six weeks, it shouldn't matter, right? I mean, I suck at potions, but the potions CAT is the only one I'm not worried about at all because if I get anything higher than a Troll, it's something to be excited about, and if I do get a Troll, then I just got what I expected to get anyway. There is no possible way I can be upset with my grade in that one. It's very freeing, you know?"

1 Saul Pierce I will keep that in mind: No killing mockingbirds. 82 Saul Pierce 0 5

Geoff Layne

October 12, 2008 11:58 PM

Good. Wouldn't want a silent spring. by Geoff Layne

Though he knew, intellectually, that it was probably a lost cause, Geoff tried the spell again. Apart from slacking off being a great way to attract negative attention from Sutekh and the class, he also had an audience he was uncomfortably aware of. Having Saul's presence, which had been peripheral before he started talking, brought sharply to his attention added almost as much perseverance as it did distraction.

It was the second half of that equation that Geoff blamed for his continued lack of success. If anything killed him in his exams, it would be the full awareness that a witch or wizard was watching and judging him based on one spell performed under extenuating circumstances. No perspective for them, no clear picture: just one spell cast during an exam that could very well determine things about the rest of his life. The thought was enough to make him wonder if Potions would even go as well as it should.

He was trying to decide if Pandora's toe movement after his next attempt had been his imagination when Saul returned to the topic they had briefly skimmed the surface of. At other times, Geoff might've found it an interesting thing to talk out, but the other fifth year's first sentence was what his mind stuck on. "I am not going to flunk the exam!" he said, his voice a little louder than he'd intended. He lowered it before continuing. "I'm quitting this class because I don't like it, not because I can't do the work."

This was, more or less, a lie. He had pulled out acceptable grades in Transfiguration in his first three years, but his fourth year had let him know just how much of that could be directly attributed to Anne. When she'd started denying him notes, he'd had to scramble to pull out a pass. Since there was only the slimmest of chances that the current professor would still be around in two years, he was dead if he tried to do seventh year work and Anne tried getting a life. When him and actual, can't-continue-a-subject, failure were very casually thrown together, however, the truth wasn't a thing Geoff gave much importance.

"What about you?" he asked, hoping to turn the topic. "Why do you want to carry on with it if you can't pass it now?"

16 Geoff Layne Good. Wouldn't want a silent spring. 72 Geoff Layne 0 5

Saul

October 13, 2008 11:19 PM

If I'm there, there's no chance of silence anyway by Saul

Saul was taken aback, both by the vehemence in the denial of flunking, as well as the question about why Saul would keep taking a class he had trouble passing. Slightly afraid of getting his head bit off again, Saul decided not to touch the fact that Geoff's practical transfiguration ability left plenty of room for improvement.

Instead, he answered the last question. "Cuz it's my second best class," he said, as though that were obvious. He looked down at the iron owl in front of him and realized it probably wasn't. Though, honestly, he wasn't really good at any of his classes.

"I mean, it takes me more than one class period to get a hang of a new transfiguration, but with some extra tutoring from Simon, I'll have the practical down solid by the time of the test. It's like a show, you've got to rehearse before it all comes together. And, besides Charms, it's the one subject I'll probably use the most. I mean, it's flashy enough to use on stage."

Saul presented IronOwl to Geoff and flourished his wand, "Take Mr. Wise here, for example. We have a really cheap stage prop because you can just pick up a rock for free anywhere. And then say there's an effect in your show where the statue needs to fly away, so I could just go," Saul focused into the appropriate mental stance for performance and make the appropriate wand motion, "Adfectio Avis," he cast, doing better with the knowledge that someone was watching, as he always did.

The iron wings turned to feathers and the flesh and bone bird launched into the air and flew for a whole two seconds before turning back to iron and crashing to the floor with a loud and destructive sounding crunch. Saul winced and leaned over his desk to see that it had shattered on impact. After another moment, the iron pieces transformed back into stone bits. "I probably need to get a different rock."\r\n\r\n

1 Saul If I'm there, there's no chance of silence anyway 82 Saul 0 5

Geoff L.

October 14, 2008 5:45 PM

Well, you'd have to pause for breath eventually. by Geoff L.

Staring was impolite, but that was what Geoff did after the announcement, apparently in dead seriousness, that this was Saul's second-best class. The guy was not really doing that much better than he was, and it was his second-best. The Saul equivalent of Geoff's Ancient Runes. The idea was, to scrape the surface, mind-boggling.

He had known for as long as he could remember that he could learn faster than most people around him; that was just the way it was. The way Helena had to worry subjects like a rat terrier to get them down had proved that, so it wasn't some huge revelation that other people struggled more with their work than he did, but it was the first of his really seeing that some people just plain struggled with it. Going from pure concept to immediate reality was...interesting in a disturbing way.

That at least partially processed, he was surprised to find himself nodding understanding as Saul explained himself. He sometimes took more than a class period to nail down a hard charm, and while he didn't know a 'Simon' - some Pecari, he guessed - he'd had Anne go back over everything from spells to the Futhark to highlights of the Vampire Wars during her infrequent bits of spare time. And while the thought of his family playing concerts at the school dance was ridiculous, he'd played enough violin concerts before Sonora to get the show analogy.

So they were polar opposites who happened to have something in common. That made sense. Not. Things were either like or unlike, or were supposed to be.

To his surprise, Saul's owl actually animated as he attempted the spell again as a conclusion to his talk-out of why it could be useful on stage. The affect didn't last long, though; it was quickly back to metal, and that turned, even more quickly, into smashed metal, which a second later reverted to stone. "Think you might," he said, glancing down at his own statue in time to see it revert to stone again. "How'd you do that, anyway? What was different that time?"

Philosophy was all well and good, but the thing Geoff was, and always would be, most interested in was obtaining what he wanted. In this case, that was a decent grade.

16 Geoff L. Well, you'd have to pause for breath eventually. 72 Geoff L. 0 5

Saul Pierce

October 15, 2008 11:29 AM

You underestimate my ability to keep making noise anyway by Saul Pierce

Sitting back and leaving the shattered rock where it lie, Saul took a moment to bask in the fact that he'd actually managed, for however short a time, to get his owl to animate properly. The weekly practice sessions with Simon were evidently starting to pay off. For the first time since Christmas, Saul felt was finally on track for a passing grade once the CATS came around.

"What was different that time?"

Saul looked over at Geoff and thought about it. "Mind set," he said with a nod of certainty after a moment's consideration. "My biggest problem is concentration." This was a fact. Saul knew it as sure as he knew that Briony and Pepper were the two prettiest girls he'd ever met. Knowing it didn't make it any easier, though. "I have trouble focusing." He grinned and tapped his head, "ADD, you know," he joked, though sometimes he suspected that very well could be his problem.

"But you were watching." Saul shrugged. "I was making a dramatic point. The owl had to come alive on cue. I had to get it right. It wasn't rehearsal anymore. It mattered. I'd fail as a performer if it didn't work, and whatever my skills in transfiguration, the one thing I'm good at is performing. So I did everything exactly right. And I focused."

He reached one foot out in front of him and started sweeping the broken stone bits back toward him with his shoe. "It wasn't perfect, obviously," he conceded, "but I think I made my point with enough flair to keep my actor's guild membership." Did he sound smug? Yes, yes, he did. But he thought he was entitled.\r\n\r\n

1 Saul Pierce You underestimate my ability to keep making noise anyway 82 Saul Pierce 0 5