Professor Skies
December 04, 2015 11:21 PM
Advanced Transfiguration by Professor Skies
“Good afternoon” Selina greeted the advanced class. She was pleased to see a good number of students had stuck with her subject. She still remembered her first position, where her advanced class had been a single student. She had also been a lot younger, closer to the girl’s age, and those cosy little meetings in her office had been more like a friendship than a teacher-student relationship. She made a mental note to write to Christine later in the day…“Today, we will be transfiguring objects of unusual size. As you know, the larger an object, the more difficult it is to transfigure it effectively - or indeed charm or hex it. The skill we’re practising today will therefore be useful across a number of disciplines, and across a number of real life scenarios.
“You will be working in pairs trying to combine your efforts and to transfigure one of the desks into a pig. Obviously, this requires a great deal of precision - not only do you have to take the usual care and attention with your wand movements but you have to be aware of your partner’s and match them as closely as possible.
“I would also like each pair to come up with a real life application for this type of combined spellworking, and to write it up on the board before the end of the lesson - this can be a specific situation, or a career in which you think the need for this type of collaboration would arise frequently.
“The incantation for this is porcelli - for homework please find five more animal incantations and add them to your spell indices. You should use a gentle, flowing wand movement.”
OOC - points will be awarded based on length, relevance and creativity.
Subthreads: A year more advanced and a bit more <i>Riddikulus</i> by Liliana Bannister, Pecari
Loneliness (Tag Arnold) by Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw
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Professor Skies
Advanced Transfiguration
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Professor Skies
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Liliana Bannister, Pecari
December 10, 2015 1:21 PM
A year more advanced and a bit more <i>Riddikulus</i> by Liliana Bannister, Pecari
Transfiguration had been the bane of Liliana’s existence for as long as she could remember. She was not a dumb person and she wasn’t an unpowerful witch, but she simply couldn’t get herself to care enough to focus on Transfiguration. It was a different sort of feeling than she got working in Potions class which she fully understood yet felt too tedious for words. Her solution there, she had found, was to listen to upbeat music when doing her homework or practicing brewing outside of class—a habit she had picked up by stealing away to a MARS room or an empty classroom at weird hours of the day since she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to do that. After she had started to associate the class with things she liked she found that it was actually becoming fun! Which only left Transfiguration for her to worry about.Here it was a little more difficult, but she as getting by and over the years she had improved. Had she gone back to retake any of her lessons she knew she would have performed perfectly, would have achieved an O or an E. It was just adding the new material and with it the new theory that threw her off. Many times over Liliana had read essays and taken detailed notes but she could she could always understand the language, the concepts when it was being explained to her in detail yet once she was on her own it became difficult to remember. There was some sort of disconnect there and she just couldn’t seem to find it.
And then, there it was, in black and white ink on the page in front of her. She wasn’t even in Transfiguration at that moment but rather Charms. But reading those words triggered something and things began to click. It was as though the knowledge had been there the whole time just hiding behind a box or a shelf or some other kind of object in her head. Liliana felt like she could do anything in the world and succeed. It was such an incredible feeling and her face broke out into a huge smile. She wanted to start laughing but she refrained from doing so lest her classmates think her less stable than they already probably thought.
Yet she couldn’t help but feel so powerful now that she knew the secret to understanding Transfiguration, she couldn’t help but let out a pleased little giggle as she walked into the hated classroom of old the next day. But just as quickly as the smile had appeared on Liliana’s face in Charms when she’d finally understood everything she had been struggling with over the past five years it fell of her face that day as Skies announced the task. She had thought she was prepared for whatever the Deputy Headmistress could throw at them that day. But it seemed that she was already just supposed to be one step behind the class material. Life just wasn’t fair and all she wanted was to be on par with as everyone else when it came to Transfiguration.
“Seriously?” she asked herself quietly as the smile fell from her face. “I finally catch up and this is thrown at us? Just perfect.” Nevertheless, Liliana was determined not to give up sos easily—hadn’t she come to magnificent revelation just the day previous in Charms? Perhaps the same would happen today! A class too late, she thought glumly to herself. But better late than never, I suppose. She turned to the classmate sitting next to her and smiled. “Don’t be scared,” she said in the honest, frank manner she had perfected over the years. “I had the mother of all revelations yesterday, I promise not to harm you.”
OOC - My baby is growing up! I promised myself that as soon as I understood French direct object and indirect object pronoun agreement in passe compose Liliana would understand Transfiguration. The time has come and I am so proud of my little darling. Each of our journeys have been long and full of strife. I first struggled to learn them when I was a wee child of 16.
Now, five years later, I have come into my own as a French student. I have conquered the beast! Conversely, Liliana was only 11 when she happened upon the dreaded beast that was Transfiguration. Similarly, five years later, she has solved the mystery of non-partnered Transfiguration. Strangely enough, as Liliana embarks on the perilous journey to conquer partnered Transfiguration I, too, must embark an the equally perilous journey of utilizing auquel, duquel, all the quels, pretty much. Wish my luck, my dear friends, my compatriots, my comrades-in-arms. I shall see you on the other side!
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Liliana Bannister, Pecari
A year more advanced and a bit more <i>Riddikulus</i>
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Liliana Bannister, Pecari
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Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw
December 15, 2015 3:45 AM
Loneliness (Tag Arnold) by Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw
At this point in Portia's life, it felt like she was just biding her time until she graduated from Sonora and married Joseph. She didn't truly have friends at school, she was friendly with Arnold, probably because their sisters were best friends, but had never really fit in the rest of his clique.Last year, Willow had been here to talk to sometimes, but even she was busy with either Keme, library helper duties or brooding over her sister's illness. Still, it was better than now. Portia was admittedly pretty lonely. She was a social person and genuinely liked being around others, however, now it felt like all she did was study, plan her wedding(not that she hadn't been doing that since at least Nora's betrothal anyway) and write long letters to Joseph. She hoped he didn't get tired of hearing from her, as she never got tired of hearing from him. It was just that not really having people at school to talk to, she'd stepped up her letters a bit, as well as sending letters to her parents, sister and Willow. As different as she and her cousin were, the older girl had been there for her to talk to at times during the last six years and even more so, Portia had tried to be there for her.
Maybe there was a reason she was in Teppenpaw after all. She had really wantd to cheer Willow up, though she doubted she had been very successful very often. Portia had never truly been given the full story about Autumn given Willow's reluctance to talk about it and Portia's parents' explicitly forbidding Nora from giving her the gory details.
But now Portia was basically alone and she didn't like it. Oh, she didn't miss the roommate she'd had one little bit and it wasn't as if it had harmed her self-esteem too much to not be included. She didn't think there was anything specifically about her that made her unlikable, it was just the lack of common interests, that she was very different from Arnold's friends, and she didn't really feel like they had necessarily snubbed her, either. It was just the make-up of the year group and it hadn't worked out in her favor. Even still, she couldn't help feeling isolated and didn't exactly seek to be among a group that was all friends with each other while she was the one different. Who wanted that? Who wanted to be around a bunch of people who were a super tight group of friends while they sat there feeling not really a part of things? That was how she'd felt with the concert last year.
She supposed she could have tried to befriend Nellie or Charlotte, but Nellie seemed busy with Tristan and Charlotte with Emrys. Portia couldn't fault either of them for that, if Joseph were here, she'd have been busy with him, too.
And that was something she wished for every single day. She enjoyed his company to begin with and sometimes the loneliness was simply unbearable.
Sometimes she even resented her classmates a little for their tight bonds. Portia felt awful about it but they had each other, she really didn't have anyone here.
The seventh year listened to the instructions. Desks into pigs. All right, she should be able to conquer this eventually. After all, her grandma had been a Brockert, that meant no transfiguration should be completely impossible for Portia, even she wasn't the sort who could do it in one shot like Uncle Marshall could if he were ever sober.
There was something else though that she had yet to have a chance to do. She approached Arnold. "Hey," she said in a friendly voice, not feeling the need to be formal. "Would you like to work together? By the way, I never did get a chance to congratulate you on Head Boy." Portia was genuinely happy for him. Even though he had his other friends that he spent more time with, they were still friends too and she thought he'd do an excellent job.
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Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw
Loneliness (Tag Arnold)
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Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw
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