Professor Skies

May 22, 2016 3:30 AM

Professor Skies

Staff
Subject: Transfiguration
Written by: Rhy

Birthday: 24th December

Intermediate Theories - forbidden vs impossible by Professor Skies

“Good morning,” Selina greeted the Intermediates. “As you prepare for your CATS exams - which all of you are now considered to be doing, as you are in intermediates,” she added, lest any third years had taken this as a cue to nod off, “You will need to start learning how to answer the major theory questions of the core subjects, as well as demonstrating reasonable skills in practical magic.

“In Transfiguration, two of the major questions are the limits of Transfiguration, and the borders between Transfiguration and other subjects, most commonly Charms. Today we are going to be looking at a subject that covers the first question quite succinctly, although there is the possibility of it coming into discussions on the second question too.

“Today, we will be looking at three subjects…. Food, money and the human body. I would like you to get into pairs or threes and answer the following questions,” as she spoke, the chalk moved behind her, adding the questions to the board.

“1. What are the magical limits of Transfiguring these items?
2. What are the legal limits?
3. What other things are limited by magic or by law in the field of Transfiguration?

“Fifth years, you will also write an essay this term on the impossibility of bringing back the dead, and whether this violates laws within Transfiguration or Charms. If you finish your classwork early today, you may start researching this.

“Chapter seven of your books will be helpful, and I have provided additional material from the library which has good sections on these subjects. You may begin.”

OOC - This lesson primarily deals with Gamp’s Law. I found this article, which I thought was helpful and interesting, though I’m not convinced by idea number 4 http://www.beyondhogwarts.com/harry-potter/articles/the-five-principal-exceptions-to-gamps-law.html
As we don’t know for sure what the other exceptions are, I have tried to avoid stating them as facts, and am very happy for differing theories to start flying around the room.
Subthreads:
I don't believe in impossible. by Jack Spencer, Aladren with Alistair Johnson, Crotalus
In need of your ideas (tag Kira) by Chuck Fintoc, Pecari with Kira Spaulding, Crotalus
Stepping out of my comfort zone. by Lauren Song - Teppenpaw with Arne Reinhardt, Crotalus, Lauren
This sounds like a challenge! [Tag: Ingrid] by Louis Valois, Aladren with Ingrid Wolseithcrafte, Pecari
Those are synonyms to me [Tag: Jax] by Wu Peizhi, Teppenpaw with Jax Donovan, Aladren, Wu Peizhi
Not words I like to hear, those. by John Umland, Aladren
13 Professor Skies Intermediate Theories - forbidden vs impossible 26 Professor Skies 1 5

John Umland, Aladren

June 22, 2016 4:26 PM

John Umland, Aladren

Alumnus
House: Aladren
Written by: Grayson Wright

Age in Post: 15
Birthday: September 23rd

Not words I like to hear, those. by John Umland, Aladren

Classes had always, even at the best of times, had at least as many downs as they did ups, but this year they were worse. On the first day, he had noticed that Clark was gone, and then the staff had decided to make him overwhelmingly aware of the fact that what the Intermediate classes did possess was a fair number of girls. He had, after considerable thought, decided that Plan D, Version 2.0 (deliberately giving himself food poisoning and thus avoiding the occasion altogether; D-1 had just been poisoning himself, not least because he could make himself an antidote ahead of time as a contingency measure and because it meant he’d have a better idea of just how sick he was about to get when he ingested whatever he ingested, but he’d decided that would be harder to pass off as both an accident and an accident that gave the teachers no reason to seriously wonder what he was up to in his free time) was his best bet for handling the Ball situation, but since he had yet to figure out a contingency for the event that the staff started asking too many questions about what he had in his room that was so absorbing that he’d eat a mayonnaise-containing sandwich past its sell-by date instead of going to the dining hall and couldn’t say he enjoyed the thought of spending hours being violently ill just to avoid a particular three minutes of the day, he was still trying to figure out plans to correspond to all the other letters of the alphabet. That meant an increased awareness of girls as he tried to figure out which of them might be most amenable to an affair of convenience.

They didn’t make it easy. They were so…different, most of them, at least here at Sonora. Unfathomable, some of them, and while he had read that this was supposed to be part of their appeal, he couldn’t see it. Modern social norms had changed the game a bit (something John thanked God for; he did not think he would have flourished in a world where he was expected to select his life partner based on her father's ability to provide a mule and then spend the rest of his life looking at the backside of said mule), but dating was still a form of courtship behavior, intended to lead at some point to reproductive behaviors which, in a group of species which included his, also doubled as bonding behaviors. He didn't even want to work with people he found it impossible to relate to at all in class, never mind spend his free time with such people and allow them into his personal space. Maybe it was just because he was, as his brother Paul put it, an untrusting person-legitimatized-by-fiat (as if Paul had any room to talk, on either count), or maybe it was simple snobbery, as he suspected his sister Julian would suggest, but he couldn’t get his head around how this ridiculous process he was expected to engage in was supposed to work. The Best Looking page’s girls only avoided being boring because the blonde ones all looked so much alike that it was a little creepy, not appealing, he didn’t really know any of the others, either, and sooner or later, he thought he was going to fully accept that food poisoning really probably was his best bet.

Transfiguration classes, though, were a welcome respite from all that, sometimes enough to be the high point of a day. The legal limits of Transfiguration were only of minimal interest to him, but the magical ones…oh, that was interesting. He wished he had the notebook he had written about Clark’s geology survey and the research he’d done afterward in, but he thought he could remember enough of it off the top of his head to make a good show in the money category anyway – money was made of metals which were excellent conductors of electricity, the most valuable money was made of a metal it was extremely difficult to do much with magically, and since magic interrupted electricity’s workings and wands, the most efficient channels for magic, were composed of once-living bits, he had long since hypothesized that metals were poor conductors of magic in the same way that wood and sinew were poor conductors of electricity. He could throw that in there, though he thought he would keep his other friend’s hypothesis – that enough electricity, say inside a cage made of electric fence stuff or inside a power plant or something, could disrupt spellcasting the same way magic could interrupt circuits – to himself for now. The first part would do for today.

Food…he bit his lip, his mind blank except for what he’d read in the textbook for a moment. Food. One could change it, extend it, Summon it, but not conjure it – though one could conjure living things, many of which were edible. There was iron in foods, but food was generally not all metal, so that argument didn’t extend, but something was nagging him – something that suggested it all tied together somehow, just not in the question of elements as such….

“Energy!” he said happily under his breath. It was only a second later that he realized he’d said it aloud. Then, a second later, he realized that he still wasn’t completely right, but he thought he could see the way forward. He wanted to get to work, but Skies had said back at the beginning that they had to work together and had said ‘you may begin’ less than a minute before John’s exclamation, so he tried to look agreeable as he looked at the next person over instead.

“Ah – hello,” he said. “Need a partner?”
16 John Umland, Aladren Not words I like to hear, those. 285 John Umland, Aladren 0 5