Professor Skies

February 08, 2013 6:25 PM
“Hello and welcome, or welcome back, to beginner Transfiguration,” Selina smiled at the class. She ran through the register, looking up to see which faces matched the new names. In front of her, a seating plan filled itself in as they answered, lest she needed some extra help with the new students. Lots had family members in the school. Sometimes that was a help, for example Boxton-Fox-Reynoldses were few and far between and thus distinctive, a ginger girl was likely to be a Thornton. However, keeping track of which Thornton was which – and which Carey, or which was a Carey and which a Raines – could be a headache. With the size of the years though, it wouldn't take her long to get them memorised.

“Transfiguration is very complex magic. I do not want anyone to be disappointed if they do not achieve results straight away. That, however, is not an excuse for slacking off – far from it in fact - I expect everyone to try their hardest.

“Today we will be turning knives into feathers,” she explained, handing around a box from which student would be able to take a knife – the standard, not especially sharp variety that one ate with at dinner.

“I am also passing around Transfiguration tables for first years. Second years, I expect you to be able to make your own from scratch now,” last year, she had given them the possibility of taking the handout in case they had been unfamiliar with the method – she hadn't been entirely sure how her predecessor had taught – but she knew the current second years had covered this method thoroughly; after all, she had taught them. The tables listed common object features, such as size, function and material and each had an empty box next to it for them to make notes in. “The purpose of the tables is to help you find similarities as well as differences between the objects. If you feel that you have to change everything, it is a monumental task to overcome. However, if you identify things that you do not need to change, or do not need to change a great deal, then you will conserve energy and be able to channel more into those aspects which need larger changes.

“The incantation is pennata and you will need to make a delicate zig-zag motion with your wand – imagine you are tracing along the fronds of a feather,” behind her, the chalk scribbled the relevant details on the board.

“I expect you to take notes as you work detailing your attempts. Try to identify the things you do well and any areas where you need to improve, noting any mistakes you make and the effect this has on your work. That goes for every lesson – these notes will not be marked but keeping this sort of diary will be beneficial to your progress, and may provide a useful resource when writing assignments

“You may discuss the lesson quietly with your neighbour but I do not expect the noise level to get disruptive. Raise your hand or call me over if you require help. You may begin.”

OOC – usually posting rules apply. Minimum 10 sentences, 200 words. Accurate spelling and grammar, as well as creativity, will be rewarded.
Subthreads:
0 Professor Skies Beginners Transfiguration - light as a feather 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Charlie B-F-R

March 03, 2013 5:47 PM
Henny had said good things about the Transfiguration professor, which had the possibility of meaning she was very strict and set very complicated homework. However, it probably meant she was fair with it, as Henny didn't like mean people. The woman before him seemed perfectly nice. She appealed to Charlie due to the fact she co-ordinated her nails with her robes, as well as seeming generally smiley and welcome. Her speech reassured him, confirming his suspicions of what his sister saw in her; she wanted their hardest work, and hard work would be needed but she would be patient if they struggled.

He took a Transfiguration table and one of the dinner knives. When he thought of a feather, the first thing that came to mind was the beautiful Augurey feathers he'd been allowed to keep from Care of Magical Creatures. They had been set with care and pride on his bedside table, awaiting a suitable use. He would probably give one to Jeweliah for something, seeing as there weren't too many fantastic accessories he could make for himself. He just needed to keep an eye out for a suitable hat to perch one in... He started noting things down. Under size, he noted that feathers were bigger, still thinking of those on his bedside table, before thinking that they didn't really have to be, and adding 'or smaller. Or the same.' He noted that both were shiny before feeling that that wasn't quite the right word for feathers, and adding 'or glossy.' They sort of meant the same but it seemed odd to call feathers shiny. Their weight and their uses were very different. For feathers, he noted that they were used for fashion or for quills – which was something you held in your hand, kind of like a knife (the preliminary chapters he had read on Transfiguration had encouraged what they called 'lateral and subtle link-making' and what he called 'tenuous straw-clutching') but knives were used for cutting.

He practised the wand movement and the incantation, and then turned to his knife. He tried to think very hard about quill feathers, relying on that connection of it being something handled – it was not something wholly different, he had a connection, a bridge to cross between the objects – but also picturing the way the fronds of a feather moved, as that was a big difference that he needed to work on.

“Pennata,” he cast, zig-zagging his wand. The knife lay, shining silver and resolutely unaltered.

“Pennata!” he cast again, trying to feel in charge of things. He bent down to study the knife at close range. He thought the end might be slightly rounder. So very slightly that it was just as possible that he was either imagining it or going a little cross eyed looking at it.

“Does it look any rounder to you?” he asked the person next to him, holding it up. “Just there, on the end? I won't be upset if you say 'no,' cos I'm not really convinced...”
13 Charlie B-F-R Hard work for little progress 252 Charlie B-F-R 0 5


Mal Carey, Pecari

March 08, 2013 1:09 AM
For two years, Mal had gotten a steady stream of letters from Sonora Academy. Why Lucille thought he cared about Miss Arbon and Miss Raines’ tea party or Mr. Brockert’s mannerisms or Miss Yale’s hair or any of the other dull things which seemed to occupy her every waking hour, he had no idea, but he had read them anyway out of a vague sense of this being a contribution to the alliance against Mother, and along the way, he had even managed to glean a few pieces of almost useful information.

One of them, he thought, was that the Transfiguration class was reasonably challenging but that the professor did her best to cut their meat for them so not too many members of the class actually choked on it. Lucille had not put it that way, of course; Lucille cried on her letters sometimes because of it, because she was not the best at theory and was always afraid of failing, but Lucille cried about everything sooner or later and did appreciate how the professor gave them little tables to fill in. Mal had looked at some of the ones in her notebooks over the summer, so while he knew that exactly aping Lucille was probably not the way to ever win any academic prizes – amazingly, for someone who could spend so much time being boring on papers she meant for him to read, she apparently hated writing things out – he was already a little familiar with the charts Professor Skies handed out to them and told them to fill in before they started working on the knives.

He found it helped less than he’d hoped as he looked down at the knife and tried to think of much original to say about it, and even softened a little in his opinion of his sister’s intelligence after he finished writing down ‘oblong,’ ‘can be gray,’ ‘thin,’ and ‘sharp?’ Knives could be used to sharpen quills, so he guessed it could make sense to just turn one into the other and skip a step that way, but he wasn’t sure how to fit that onto the chart and so left it off. Finally, he gave up on that and just picked up his wand.

Transfiguration, after all, was something he thought he was going to be good at. Most of the things he’d done by accident at home had involved turning one thing into another, and sometimes, when he stared very hard at things and willed them to change shape, he almost thought he had made some tiny change to them. Almost. It wasn’t much of a stretch, now that he had a wand, to assume he was going to not have a problem with it…though one repetition of the incantation made him think that assumptions weren’t necessarily all that accurate.

“Pennata,” he tried again, moving his wand a little more forcefully, and this time was rewarded with at least a series of what looked like cracks up both sides of the knife blade, as though it were trying to look like a child’s drawing of a feather. He pressed his lips together, reluctantly pleased with at least some progress.

Beside him, another boy started talking, and Mal looked up to find himself looking at someone he made a note of as a possible decoy if he ever had to run from something here at school. They looked, he thought, probably more alike than he and his half-brother did.

"Not really," he said about the knife. "How many times have you tried it?" This was important information when it came to measuring his achievements against those of others.
0 Mal Carey, Pecari That's too bad 0 Mal Carey, Pecari 0 5