Advanced Class - Undo it! Undo it! on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

November 07, 2014 7:36 AM

Advanced Class - Undo it! Undo it! by Professor Skies

“Good afternoon,” Professor Skies greeted the advanced class, “Today, we will be working on a rather useful set of spells, the much more complicated cousins of something you've been using since first year,” she smiled. They were still working on vanishing and conjuring, a project that over-arched the entire advanced curriculum. However, that took up only three of the five assigned lessons a week, and smaller topics were fitted into the other two.

“For all your years here, you have used the simple spell 'reparifarge' on partially transfigured objects to set them back to their original form, and to have a go again especially if things have gone awry. This spell, as you should know, works only on partially transfigured objects,” she wondered how many had forgotten this fact since being taught it and tried to turn their wands on finished projects only to find the faithful friend letting them down.

“Today, we will be beginning a module on untransfiguring. This is a complex branch of the subject and only a limited amount is taught, even at RATS level. Our focus will be on untransfiguring your own work. This can be useful if you have transfigured something only for temporary use and, in your exams, if you feel your final piece is complete but overly simple, you can take it back to square one for another go. Your essay for this module will be on the subject of untransfiguration of the work of others and the limitations of this, as theory in this area may come up in your exams.

“Today, you will be transfiguring pebbles into buttons,” she told them, not being able to help a slight twitch of her lip as she assigned the project they probably all remembered, albeit dimly, from their classes in first year, “And then untransfiguring them again. You will be using the spell Oriri granum with a sharp, slashing wand movement. This comes under the category of origin spells within untransfiguration. Your homework, which you may begin if you have time, is to research the other categories of spell, their relative frequency and three common incantations in each.

“You may talk amongst yourselves or call me over for help should you need it. Please begin.”

OOC – points will be awarded for creativity, realism, relevance and length (200 words minimum). Please state your house in the author line and tag Professor Skies in the subject line if needed.

Subthreads:

But priori incantatem is forever by Henry Carey, Crotalus

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Henry Carey, Crotalus

November 08, 2014 2:23 AM

But priori incantatem is forever by Henry Carey, Crotalus

He thought, since that was the reaction some of his family had had, that it might surprise some of his classmates to know it, but Henry had come to think that his problem was not magic, exactly. Studying his own successful spellwork made him think that even under different circumstances, he would not have been an outstandingly powerful wizard, but that he would not have been as incompetent as he often was under the circumstances he had, either. His – aptitude, he thought, ability, whatever the word was to describe the capability a person had to direct magic, was most likely no worse than average. His problem was just controlling it.

He had at least passed their exams, but he had dropped Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts with a feeling of great relief. Charms was full of bangs and flashes and smells even when Professor Olivers didn’t get creative with the dimensions of the classroom, and Defense not only had all of these disadvantages, it also induced paranoia. He had once been nervous enough after a lesson that he had ended up swinging his bag of textbooks into a random suit of armor when he thought he saw it reach out toward him, and he tried as hard as he possibly could not to think about the picture of a dementor’s hands he had once seen in a textbook, because when he did think about it, he was right back to having trouble sleeping. It was bad enough knowing that anyone he saw could, because of his lack of control when he was under stress, kill him whenever they wanted without thinking about all the other things that could do so, too. Most people weren’t going to try to kill him without a reason. To dark creatures, existing was a reason. He did not want to know what sorts of things he would have been forced to know about if he had continued Defense Against the Dark Arts to the RATS level.

He had not planned to take Transfiguration, either, but his family had made him. Henry had not done well in the first half of the year because he had resented the subject for that, but he had accepted it in time. He was not really quite good enough to have continued, but he liked the subject itself. Transfiguration, like Potions, was perceived as dangerous enough that the work environment was usually what he liked: quiet, focused, simple. As long as he could get the kind of seat he liked - back row, end of an aisle, so there was a wall behind him and only a person on one side of him; sometimes, he wasn’t lucky and his brother and cousin sat on either side of him and made him so angry that he messed things up, but other times, he either didn’t mind Jay and Anthony or else avoided them – he could relax in that environment, and when he relaxed, he had better luck with spells. And….

Well, after that, it began to be something Henry didn’t know how to express. He just knew that it appealed to him. Something about the precision. He had read a little about the formulas the seventh years used to figure out spells for conjuring, and they were…beautiful felt like the wrong word to use, but it was the one that occurred to him when he thought about it. He wanted to work the formulas himself, even if he was never really able to conjure anything useful. If he passed for the year, then, and did so well enough that Professor Skies didn't throw him out anyway, he was going to finish Transfiguration.

He still tensed a little in his seat when Professor Skies said that they were all going to work on something complicated today, wondering what that meant, though reassured that it was at least something he knew something about. He frowned a little in concentration as Professor Skies went on, not least at the implication that simplicity was not the way to a good RATS score, even though he had already known that. Being expected to try to guess what other people would find attractive when he liked things as plain as possible was one of the downsides of this subject.

At least he didn’t think he would have trouble with the wand movement. That was also sometimes a problem. He flexed his wand hand. Reattaching that had fallen low on the list of priorities after he’d torn himself to bits when he was ten, and Aunt Lorraine said she thought they had left it a little too long. It worked, but not as much as it had before, and he thought it had gotten worse over the years about sometimes going numb, things not quite bending right, or generally doing things that made some of the more complex sequences of wand movements difficult on bad days. Not impossible, but more difficult. Today wasn’t a bad day, though, his fingers weren’t tingling or swollen and nothing hurt, and slashing movements were pretty basic. That wouldn’t have given him too much trouble even on a bad day.

He frowned again as he transfigured the pebble into a button. Slightly rough gray stone smoothed out into a big, round, also grayish wooden coat button, since he had never been that good at changing the basic colors of his materials and usually didn’t try to if he could avoid it and tried to have a picture in front of him when he did try to do it. That made it easier to imagine the button then turning back into a pebble.

"Orini granum," he said, slashing his wand at the button as shown, and sat back as the surface of the button...rippled, rose for a moment as though it were a wave, and then settled. It now looked...wrong, though, and when he touched it, it was rougher than it had been when first made a button.

"Sounds like what it is," he remarked to his neighbor, smiling faintly over the start. Origin spell - originally granite. He didn't know if that was what it really did mean, since the Latin lessons he had been given when he was younger had not stuck well even at the time and he had lost most of it since, but he thought it was helpful when he thought he could understand what he was saying, sometimes.

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