Clocks > sands through the hourglass on Transfiguration

Professor Danielle Holland

July 06, 2009 12:31 PM

Intermediate Transfiguration (3rd, 4th, 5th Yrs) by Professor Danielle Holland

With only a nine class periods left before midterm (4 for beginners; 5 for intermediates), Danielle Holland felt she had developed a decent system for staying on top of her grading, her class planning, and the various other activities that went along with teaching at an Academy of Magic. She was still glad that Professor Skies (Danielle wasn't sure she'd ever be able to call her former Headmistress by her first name) had the RATS level kids, though. It was one less class worth of work to keep track of.

Her name was no longer on the board. She had all of their names down, so she figured her one name was pretty easy to handle. Holland was straightforward in both spelling and pronunciation. Plus, even if she was a half-blood herself, Holland was a solid wizarding name belonging to one of the first magical families to cross the pond, back before New York was even called New Netherlands. It was their one claim to fame, and she hoped the name wasn't as easy to forget as the rest of the family's history.

"Hello," she greeted the class once they were all seated and the clock on the wall said it was time for the lesson to begin. She had to raise her voice over the low hum of their personal conversations. "I realize midterm is getting closer, but if we could stay focused for a few more days, I promise we'll have a small party on the last day before break." From her own experience, nothing got done that last day anyway, and the likelihood of something going terribly wrong was drastically increased while the kids were distracted by their upcoming freedom.

"We've been working on animate to inanimate transfigurations all year so far, but today we're going to make the first step to switching that around; inanimate to animate. Creating an animate transfiguration is significantly harder because it is a far more complex end product. Some people consider going from an animate creature to another animate creature to be the most difficult transfiguration process, but there are many more similarities between the starting and ending points than there are in an inanimate to animate transfiguration."

She frowned and looked a few students in the eye, to impress the seriousness of the change they were about to attempt. "You are going to have to create the internal organs, the joints, and everything that will allow a creature to be alive. It is not uncommon for first attempts to give you a statue or a corpse of whatever animal you are trying to transfigure."

"As an intermediate step, today, you will find a simple hunk of rock on each of your desks. From this, I want you to create a functional clock. Clocks have gears, wound springs, moving parts, and all sorts of intricate inner workings. You do not have to understand how it works to transfigure it, just as you don't need advanced knowledge of physiology to create an animal. The magic involved in the transfiguration will create what is needed. However, the better your understanding is of the final product, the more accurate your creation will be. Even if you somehow discovered the incantation for transfiguring," she waved her hand in a circular motion, trying to think of something most of the students in the room wouldn't recognize, "an i-pod, if you don't know what a i-pod is, your spell will be unsuccessful."

"The spell word for creating a clock is domus specto tempus." She wrote that out on the board. "Domus specto tempus," she repeated again, slowly, drawing a line under each syllable as she spoke it, so they could catch the pronunciation.

Taking out her wand, she pointed it at her own sample rock. "The wand motion is a clockwise circle, like a second hand traversing a minute, like this." She demonstrated, tracing a jerky clockwise circle with her wand tip around the rock. It took closer to ten seconds rather than a full minute, but when the wand reached its starting point, the rock had turned into a small alarm clock that greatly resembled the one she'd knocked to her bedroom floor when it woke her that morning.

The second hand was ticking away, and it showed the time as 7:23 - which was entirely wrong, but matched what it had said the last time she'd looked at the one in her room, before she'd headed out for breakfast. Danielle set the alarm for 7:24 and put the clock on her desk, facing the class. "As you can see, the second hand is moving. In a moment, you'll hear that the alarm function is working as well." She waited a few moments, giving the clock a chance to ring and prove her statement. She was about to pick it up and check that it really was working as well as she'd claimed when it finally did.

She slammed her hand down on the off button, an ingrained habit that she couldn't have stopped even if she had wanted to. "Raise your hand for help if you need it. You can work by yourself or in pairs, but each of you should be able to show me a clock by the end of the period. Let know when you're done so I can mark you off as a pass."

As the students began work, she reset the clock to the proper time, and set the alarm again, this time for the end of the period. It was as much to test the accuracy of her own transfigured clock as it was to signal the end of the class.

Subthreads:

Re: Intermediate Transfiguration (3rd, 4th, 5th Yrs) by Chelsea Brockert with Jera Valson

Clocks > sands through the hourglass by Grayson Wright

1 Professor Danielle Holland Intermediate Transfiguration (3rd, 4th, 5th Yrs) 0 Professor Danielle Holland 1 5

Chelsea Brockert

July 24, 2009 2:02 AM

Re: Intermediate Transfiguration (3rd, 4th, 5th Yrs) by Chelsea Brockert

As a rule, Transfiguration was generally tolerable. All the teachers thus far had failed to irritate her by turning the class into a Muggle Studies lesson or discussing Quidditch or being revolting. It was a simple, straightforward class where an item started out one way and hopefully ended up as something else. Okay, maybe not simple as Transfiguration was one of the most difficult branches of magic (unless you were like Chelsea's cousin, but she'd much prefer to be only a bit better than average at this and respectable than be amazing at Transfiguration and a drunken embarassment like Marshall was) but it was still a great deal less annoying than the rest of her classes. Potions was repulsive by nature (though the lesson where they'd not had to actually brew anything hadn't been that bad)and Chelsea's feelings on History of Magic were probably well-known throughout Sonora.

Of course, even Transfiguration got to be a pain towards midterm. Just because it was less irritating didn't mean that Chelsea had any great love for it. The only point to doing well in class was to keep her parents off her back and not appear stupid or like she was a poor witch. Quite the contrary, things actually came quite easily for her. It was just that for the most part Chelsea didn't care.

And she didn't care to be there right now either. She was getting quite sick of classes. Chelsea was looking forward to midterm so she could have a break, even if generally she did prefer to be at school with her friends than at home with her family.

Chelsea sighed inwardly as Professor Holland began the lesson. She looked down at the rock on her desk. What was the point in turning it into a clock? She could buy several perfectly nice clocks, like fancy ones from Switzerland and what not. There were just no point to the stuff they did in class at times. The only practical use for this that Chelsea could ever see would be if she were stranded out some place without a clock and no stores and she either had to be somewhere or she was waiting for something to be over.

Furthermore, her rock was dirty . Chelsea made a face similar to one she'd have made if the rock suddenly materialized into Nina or Alexis or Old Flatt or one of the tons of other people she despised. At least this rock could be taken care of a lot more easily than any of them. She muttered a quick cleaning charm and made the dirt go away.

From there, she imagined a clock, an extremely ornate clock and went through the wand motions. The result was as usual, not what Chelsea wished. For one thing, it was just a hunk of wood with hands and numbers not the Swiss masterpiece the Aladren had envisioned. For another thing, it didn't work, possibly because she'd spent more time imagining what it looked like outside than inside. It wasn't entirely her fault, it wasn't as if she knew how the insides of a clock looked.

Chelsea gave a sigh and turned to the person next to her. "Sometimes, my tastes just don't match my ability in this class." Still, at least she'd managed to turn it into something on the first try.

11 Chelsea Brockert Re: Intermediate Transfiguration (3rd, 4th, 5th Yrs) 108 Chelsea Brockert 0 5

Jera Valson

July 24, 2009 3:35 AM

Time flies when you're having fun by Jera Valson

As usual, Jera was looking forward to her transfiguration class. Despite only being in third year, she'd had several tutors in this subject so far. Unlike with other classes, somehow the transfiguration teachers all seemed to have very similar methods of teaching. This indicated that the subject itself must be fairly structured and predictable, and Jera found herself liking the classes even more unpon this realization. It wasn't as though she was a true fan of routine, but mechanics, even social systems, fascinated her. She was therefore in greater luck today, when it was revealled they would be making clocks. Jera had made clocks before, but usually with kits or by charming objects like gyroscopes - the effect there was fairly short-lived. Today she would learn how to transfigure a clock from just a chunk of rock.

Jera was excited as she took notes on the class and watched carefully for the wand movement. She was already familiar with the inside functions of a clock - how the cogs fit together to turn the hands. She wasn't entirely comfortable with making an alarm clock like the professor, but then she was aware she was only in third year; she probably wasn't expected to match her teacher in terms of proficiency. Satisfied to attempt a normal, non-alarm clock, Jera took up her rock and examined it. It had crystaline structures, indicating its ignious formation. It was heavy, and hard. Trying to make a delicte carriage clock would be working against the materials. Jera tried instead to imagine a smooth, shiny outer surface in a dark gray color, with a smooth white face, black numerals, and smooth black hands. Inside, the machansim would be simple... but how would she power the hands? Jera's own clock at home used wind up, but she knew some Muggleborns at Sonora had watches with bat-a-ries in them. Not being entirely knowledgable about how bat-a-ries work, Jera decided to run with the wind-up approach.

Placing her roack firmly on the table, Jera raised her wand and said the incantation a couple of times in her head before parting her lips and casting the spell. The result was not perfect by any means, but Jera thought it looked like a clock. The outer edge wasn't as smooth as she'd liked, and the hands were too thin - one touch might break them - but three of them were there. It wasn't ticking yet, but then it hadn't been wound. Jera picked it up and saw the knob she'd made on the back. She was about to turn it, when the girl next to her spoke.

"Oh," Jera said in reply. She looked at the girl - Chelsea, in her House but the year above - and her creation. "Well, it looks like a clock," she said, trying to be supportive, but at the same time not being especially loquacious with strangers. Looking back to her own creation, she turned the granite key on the back, only to have it break off in her hand. "Oh," she said again, this time in disappointment. She put the clock back down on the desk to try again. "I suppose we try again?"

0 Jera Valson Time flies when you're having fun 112 Jera Valson 0 5

Grayson Wright

July 24, 2009 1:13 PM

Clocks > sands through the hourglass by Grayson Wright

Gray took notes in Transfiguration as a matter of form, but seldom used them. Anne's, which she still carefully copied, color-coded, and revised for him on a weekly basis, were of much more use than whatever scribbles he could put together during the lecture. Though he sometimes felt guilt over it, it was inevitably a good thing, and the closer midterm got, the better it was. His attention span seemed to get smaller every day, and dangerous, complex magic and distraction did not mix.

Professor Holland, it seemed, recognized that, which raised Gray's opinion of her exponentially. Maybe it was just him, but the last day before midterm or summer breaks got harder to sit through every year. He thought it was the difficulty of the work. That was enough to cancel out any gains he had made in maturity by getting older.

The lesson supported that theory. Gray scrawled down may be more difficult than animate-to-animate on a sheet of parchment, then began flipping through his notes, trying to distinguish between shades of blue and cursing Anne for not having an original bone in her body. He was as loyal to the House as anyone, but would it have really been that high of a treason to use some red and yellow and green in her color coding system instead of five different shades of blue?

Finally, after skipping over it twice, he found a page with an edge in the cobalt the guide at the front said indicated inanimate-to-animate transfigurations. Anne, it seemed, had found this topic especially interesting; he had learned how to distinguish what she'd written at the time she'd learned the material from what she'd added on later by style, and a majority of this seemed to be recent. Gray decided he could forgive her Aladrenophilia on the spot.

Nowhere, however, did she make specific mention of having a chunk of rock become a clock. He had more on theory than he actually needed, but when it came to the spell itself, he'd have to work it out on his own. Gray considered reading all his cousin had to say on the subject before he tried it, to see if understanding would make it work better, but decided it would probably take up too much time and, in the end, do nothing more than confuse him on the first reading.

On the first page, though, was a warning he took to heart: Keep it simple until you know what you're doing. It made good sense. The fancier something was, the harder the thing was to make - hence why elaborately carved furniture was more expensive than the stuff he had at home. Until he had the spell down pat, it was probably better to try very simple clocks.

He imagined the clock that hung in the kitchen at home. If ever a simple clock existed, it was that one; if the thing was a full two inches thick, he'd be surprised, and it had only two hands. He imagined the rock in front of him, which wasn't even roughly circular, rearranging its particles into that clock. "Domus specto tempus."

And he had...a crystal replica of that clock. Huh. Not quite what he'd been after, but a good start. "Finite incantatem," he said, waving his wand again to end the spell and revert the replica to a rock, and decided to skim over Anne's notes for any more useful pointers before trying again.

16 Grayson Wright Clocks > sands through the hourglass 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Chelsea

July 29, 2009 7:19 PM

Which is why classes always go so slow... by Chelsea

Sometimes, Chelsea really took it for granted that one of the other Ladies would be sitting next to her and didn't pay attention to exactly who she was talking to. Fortunately, Jera Valson was someone Chelsea had no real opinion of whatsoever. In fact, she rarely paid any attention to anyone who wasn't a friend, enemy or relative (and not much more attention to some of those relatives than to the average person). She knew the younger girl played Quidditch but as far as Chelsea knew, she wasn't quite as gung-ho about it as Jenaye. Furthermore, the fact that Jera had not been previously one of them, only to betray them for the enemy made her more palatable than Alexis and Chelsea should just thank Merlin that while it wasn't one of her friends, at least it wasn't one of her enemies.

There was also the fact that Jera was not only a pureblood but her mother was the Headmistress and Chelsea figured it might be in her best interests to be somewhat pleasant to her.

So she gave the girl a polite, though not entirely genuine or friendly, smile. "You're right, it does indeed look like a clock. Just not a very pretty clock. Not what I wanted at all, but it's probably adequate. I guess I can try again though since it's not like there's anything else to really do right now." Chelsea sighed and tried again, this time concentrating more on making the clock work. "Okay, the hands are moving. It's still a really ugly clock though." When tastes were like Chelsea's, it probably would have helped her to be as good at Transfiguration as her embarassing drunk of a cousin.

11 Chelsea Which is why classes always go so slow... 108 Chelsea 0 5