Doing my part, with some help from my cousin (Intermediate) on Transfiguration

Alexandra Devereux

May 08, 2014 12:24 AM

Doing my part, with some help from my cousin (Intermediate) by Alexandra Devereux

Usually, Alex’s appearance – the tall, thin frame, taller than some of the boys in her year and unrelieved by much in the way of a figure, with a long, sharp-angled face, which looked narrower and sharper even than it was because of her large nose, surrounded by plain brown hair and holding narrow brown eyes – was something she considered a substantial hindrance to her success in life. A girl who wasn’t pretty wasn’t useless, but she had to have a lot more brains and connections to compensate for her shortcomings than many pretty-but-stupid ones did. She didn’t think she had looked around at her year at school and its crop of pretty, charismatic girls and immediately concluded that her best option was to stay in the social background, but she did think she had realized it pretty early. It was a pity in some ways – it irritated her to think of how much money she could have made with the fellows the girls in her circle had gotten attached to, one way or another – but it was what it was, and other possible opportunities had become apparent over the years. She didn’t have to be pretty to be successful, not when there was more than one kind of success, and being an unattractive old maid could have its advantages, too.

The main one was that she expected not to have to deal with a lot of younger people for a while, which made the current situation more than a little ironic. Theresa had managed to duck all official duties, but Alex, as a prefect, had only two options: teach or administrate, and she planned to heap as much power as possible onto Thad and Alicia’s plates, until they eventually choked on it. It was a strategy with some risks, since she’d be a good candidate to take their places if they choked before the school was stormed by Aurors and someone spent a very long time being interrogated by very unpleasant men, but since Alex did not think the crisis was going to last very long, she considered them minimal, at least compared to the alternative. So here she was, scowling at some fourth and fifth years who’d bothered to show up for what would pass for Transfiguration today.

“All right, then,” she said. “Quiz time. You've spent the past few days on Vanishing Spells, so now, I want you to get out a piece of parchment and summarize for me what you now know about why Vanishing is a Transfiguration and how it relates to other forms. Take twenty minutes.”

She reserved the right, of course, to call time earlier if too many people finished early or things got out of hand in some other way, though she was willing to let anyone come finish it later if they needed to. It wasn’t as if she was exactly the world’s authority on the right amount of time to take a test in; the main reason she had said ‘twenty minutes’ was because that was the deal she had worked out with Theresa. Her cousin was not enthusiastic about being helpful, but Alex had come up with creative enough threats to get her into the room once the tedious part was over.

The other seventh year slipped into the classroom three or four minutes before time and Alex greeted her with a nod. “All right, wrap it up,” she announced to the students. “If you need more time, come by after supper, I’ll be here,” she added, since she would at least look over the papers to see if they were basically right. As far as she knew. She hadn’t presumed to touch the grade book, but had kept a neat, organized file of the things she’d made them do, in case there was some debate about what to do when they were rescued. Alex expected everyone’s parents to take them home and that be the end of it all, but, well, a glance at history would tell anyone who cared to know that strange things happened at wizard schools from time to time, and this one had survived unfortunate incidents before. Better to be prepared.

“Now you’re actually going to get to use your wands,” she said. “Unless, of course, one of you does something stupid or doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing, in which case that person will be thrown out.”

They distributed various small, inanimate objects, none very hard, scrounged from around the school to the class. “The incantation is evanesco,” Alex said, nodding to where she’d written that on the board. “Now – “ She held up a leaf from one of the Garden plants and demonstrated the spell for them, then again, for the other side of the room.

“It’s not likely you’ll get it today,” she informed them. “This is one of the hardest spells on the CATS. We’ll be on it for a while longer. But give it a try, and Theresa and I will help you if you get stuck.” Or set their own notes on fire, though she hoped they could avoid that. She knew the fifth years, at least, weren't completely incompetent, so there was some reason for hope, she supposed.

Theresa gave her an unfriendly look, which Alex chose to ignore. Theresa had passed the Transfiguration exam, too, and could pay attention well enough to disarm anyone who wanted to make too much of a problem, so she would do her part to help out.

OOC: Feel free to either theorize or skim over the quiz part, and tag me if you need me!

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