Battling semantics on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

October 16, 2016 1:23 AM

Advanced class - bring it back by Professor Skies

“Hello,” Selina greeted the advanced class. They were a few lessons into the term and had already gone through all the practical things, like the syllabus for the term, and now it was time to get on with the real hard work of advanced transfiguration.

“Today, we will be working on part-whole transfiguration. This is a branch of the subject concerned with recreating whole objects from a small piece, such as a shoe from its buckle, or a cardigan from a button. As it is in this class, it will come as no surprise that it is very difficult. However, there are some positives about this type of work.” Every spell had been invented for a reason. Every bit of magic worked because someone had worked out what little foothold they could find to make it work. Selina had always taught her students to look for these little ways in. “For homework, you will be writing about what makes this type of magic possible - what is working for you, rather than against you when casting this spell. You may discuss this whilst you work or after you finish.

“The spell for this type of transfiguration is ‘Renovo’ plus the name of the object you’re trying to recreate. You will need to use an upward spiralling wand motion.

“Please take an object from the box as it comes around. You are then free to begin. If you have any questions, work through them with a neighbour, or ask me.”

OOC - sorry that class is late and short. I have a lot of demands on my time right now. Please show me up by writing responses that are infinitely more creative and detailed, and you shall be rewarded with points.

Subthreads:

Battling semantics by Jake Manger [Teppenpaw] with John Umland, Aladren

It would help to know what it is. by Lionel Layne, Pecari

Tagging Aiden by Savannah Brockert, Teppenpaw with Aiden O'Neil

13 Professor Skies Advanced class - bring it back 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Jake Manger [Teppenpaw]

October 16, 2016 2:46 AM

Battling semantics by Jake Manger [Teppenpaw]

Much to Jake’s surprise, there was something very regular about everything. Aside from swapping out a roommate for a cat, nothing had really changed. He was Head Boy now, sure, so there was a bit more work he had to do in lieu of free time, but other than that, there was nothing horribly special. Classes were in full-swing now, the school year officially begun, and everything felt so… normal.

He had rather expected some sort of magical change in himself, in the school, in something in light of his seventh year status, but Jake was quickly discovering it to be just another year. Except this time, he had exams and a future to plan for at the end of the line. In no way was he a conceited person, but it was a harsh reality to face: he was just another come-and-go student, a passing face, and nothing remarkable was happening to him this year.

The dark-haired lad did his best to shake these notions away, shrug off the blues, and pay attention to Professor Skies brief but imperative instructions. The homework seemed a bit difficult as he’d always had trouble with essays, especially those that demanded pretty phrasing for him to explain the whys of things. Prior to his education, he’d never thought about how or why magic worked. It was magic! It just did. But with these instructions sitting on his shoulders, Jake found himself even more glad that he’d signed up for the academic support classes. Last year had been a definite burden without his Aladren brother around to help him. He’d made it through alright, obviously, but this little boost this time around would be a definite plus.

The box of items floated his way. “Thank you,” he politely addressed up front to the professor as he grabbed a button from among its contents. Once the box was out of his way and he was free to attempt, Jake made his first go of it. “Renovo sweater,” he said firmly, doing his best to emulate Professor Skies’s example of the upward-swirling wand motion required. In an instant, the button became more, although a complete sweater it certainly was not. “Do you think,” he wondered idly in a neighbor’s direction, “it matters the exact phrasing? I mean, everything’s got a bunch of names. This could be a sweater…. This could have been a sweater,” the Teppenpaw amended quickly, “but also a cardigan or I think some people might call them jumpers? I don’t know. Do you think that stuff makes a difference?”

12 Jake Manger [Teppenpaw] Battling semantics 280 Jake Manger [Teppenpaw] 0 5

John Umland, Aladren

October 25, 2016 2:09 PM

I think of it more as a game than as a battle. by John Umland, Aladren

Days had passed since the year began and nothing had happened. The staff had not vanished. There was no creepy writing on the walls. The Quidditch team had, against all expectations, reformed with no major problems; John privately had his doubts about their ability to be The Brilliant Aladren Quidditch team when Theodore and Leonidas had been replaced by two first years and someone he was not entirely sure could fly, but at least they wouldn’t suffer the humiliation of not even being able to play and could finally argue convincingly against claims that Aladren was just a pureblood boys’ club which occasionally tolerated a John or a Clark or a Francesca as a useful mascot. To top it all off, Advanced classes were so far rather interesting, or at least had syllabi and theory that made John, for the first time in quite a while, feel optimistic about his chances of enjoying his year.

Naturally, therefore, John was just waiting for the other shoe to drop in spectacular fashion and thought it would take several weeks of nothing much happening to completely convince him he had been wrong about there being a pattern to when things went wrong, or at least that losing to Pecari last year had been Fortune’s due if she was indeed given to collecting and that everything was going to be okay this year. On one hand, St. Augustine and Boethius both made it perfectly clear that all of these thoughts were nothing more than superstitious nonsense, and on the other, if there was some kind of curse going on, losing a Quidditch game seemed small potatoes beside thinking his sister was dead when he was eleven and worrying he was going to prison at thirteen, but…it had been pretty humiliating, Park being Park, and it would be nice if that was the last Bad Thing that happened to him in school.

If today was the day things were to start to go wrong, though, Professor Skies was evidently not going to be the instrument of chaos. John was glad about that; Skies was his favorite teacher. He scribbled a few notes as she talked. He had read about this in the textbook, of course, but had never tried to use it before, so he expected this to be interesting.

When the box came to him, he selected a strip of leather. One end was pointed and had a number of tiny holes bored into it, so he thought it was probably the band to a wristwatch not similar to the one he was wearing. It was missing a clock face and the other half of the band, though, so there were multiple linked – but not fused – pieces to create: a watch face linked to this end of the band (plus all the mechanisms inside a watch; John knew little of clock-making and wondered if he’d be able to produce a working watch. He knew he’d have to pull off the face, ring, hands, numbers, and glass front…), then another end of the band, then a clasp at its end, one that could link with the little holes in the end he had. It was a small object but, he thought, a complex task. Today was not going to be the day he became bored.

John decided to sketch out the final product he wanted before he started trying the spell, thinking a visual aid might help him keep everything he needed to do in his head more easily and so ease the process a bit. He had just finished his sketch when Jake Manger – to John’s surprise – addressed him and actually brought up something interesting.

“I don’t know,” said John, frowning, but because he was thinking. “We use ‘jumper’ the way you do – you…maybe every now and then, you’ll hear someone at home call the thing you wear because you’re cold a jumper, but usually in Canada, they mean – something like the things my sister used to wear to Mass.” The word he was fumbling for came to him. “Pinafore dress. I’d think, uh – when I think about ‘sweater,’ it doesn’t have buttons, I just pull it over my head, but a cardigan does have buttons. Maybe try that?” He was not, he noticed, having a fluent speech moment, but he thought he had been reasonably comprehensible. “That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it. How do you think you tell – what kind of clothes a button comes off of at all? Could you make a pinafore dress that’s like overalls, or, uh, just overalls, from that even if it came off a cardigan? That’s interesting!”

16 John Umland, Aladren I think of it more as a game than as a battle. 285 John Umland, Aladren 0 5

Jake

November 02, 2016 1:40 AM

I do much prefer games. by Jake

Jake was very pleased to find that it was John Umland to whom he had expressed his curiosity. John was a year below him, but he was an Aladren and, therefore, obviously pretty smart. Jake didn’t consider himself very intelligent--obviously it didn’t work this way, but sometimes he wondered if maybe Sally and Arnold had used up all the Smart Genes™ before he got the chance at them--but John was different from him in that regard. It was reassuring to find someone smart to ask questions.

Without his older brother around, the Teppenpaw had seen a decided drop in his grades last year. That was why this time around, he’d signed up for the academic support group that Professor Skies ran. In truth, Jake was far smarter than he gave himself credit for, having had such high standards to compare to his entire life, but in terms of school work, he had a more accurate assessment of his skills. He simply lacked comprehensive study skills. Either he knew something or he didn’t, and that was just not working. Not with RATS ahead.

He nodded along as John assessed the situation, his happiness to have found someone smart only rejuvenating as the younger boy went on. John raised a good point about how one was supposed to tell what a button came off, anyway, and Jake sheepishly returned, “I was going with a cardigan”--he chose that word in particular since John said he thought that was the best option--“because it looks like a button on one my older sister’s. There’s gotta be a way to tell, though. Maybe if it’s from the wrong thing, it just doesn’t work? Like, if I called it pants and it’s a cardigan, maybe nothing would happen.”

The dark-haired seventh year aimed his wand at the button and the scrap of material growth he had managed to produce around it. Picturing Sally’s cardigan clearly in his mind’s eye, he said, “Renovo cardigan.” To his moderate surprise, a fairly close replica to his sister’s clothing item was immediately on the table before him. For a moment, he just stared at it. “....I don’t know what this means,” he said at last, turning his attention once more to John

12 Jake I do much prefer games. 280 Jake 0 5

John

November 09, 2016 1:39 PM

I often do as well. by John

Teppenpaw was the House John respected most after his own, it having proved itself worthy of housing two of his siblings and having a good set of traits besides, but John had never had any particular opinion of this particular Teppenpaw before. Jake was just a target to aim Bludgers at, or someone to distract from the Snitch by aiming Bludgers at the girlfriend of. At the moment, though, the target was talking and John wanted to see if he could continue to do so interestingly, so he spoke again himself.

“Let’s test it,” he said. “After you test the cardigan idea. I’ll sacrifice a button.” There as a button on the front pocket of the shirt he had on beneath his robes which would do, as John seldom kept anything in that pocket anyway unless he was going on a long trek in the Gardens. As he planned to reclaim his button long before he went on another one of those, he saw no downsides to this plan.

Jake attempted to regenerate a cardigan and succeeded, enough that John looked at him with open respect. “You’re apparently good at this spell, for one thing,” he said when Jake said he didn’t know what his success meant. He did not add any comment on Jake apparently also being very well-informed about the contents of his sister’s closet. “Beyond that…it’s….” John pulled his drawing of the watch closer and flipped it over so he could write on the back. “Sorry – I think with a pen. Okay. It could mean that was originally a cardigan just like your sister’s. Or it could be related to the theory of Forms – there’s a True Cardigan, and that came off a cardigan, and you’re just good enough wizard to pull it up with the details from your sister’s. Or you conjured a cardigan imitating your sister’s and just attached the button to it, though that…would that be two spells at once, or one spell with multiple components?” He looked directly at Jake so the seventh year would know he was not talking to himself and welcomed input.

16 John I often do as well. 285 John 0 5

Lionel Layne, Pecari

November 09, 2016 2:14 PM

It would help to know what it is. by Lionel Layne, Pecari

He had made it out of his first year of the class unscathed, but that did not make Lionel approach his second and final year of Advanced Transfiguration with any less trepidation than he had the first. Half a battle was nothing; it was near the end that things either came together or fell apart.

This was not, he was sure his grandmother would say, a very optimistic view, but Lionel didn’t agree with her on that. Lionel saw it as conceding himself a fighting chance of actually passing the class. He took the same view of his other classes. It was going to be painful and difficult, but he actually thought he stood a good chance of doing it. He wouldn’t have the kind of brilliant test results Rachel and Alicia had seemingly pulled out of thin air or the very good ones Isaac had worked himself to the bone for, but he would pass and therefore have Options going forward. It was good to have Options, to not be locked in to one or two categories, in any case, and for someone who did poorly on the RATS, the one or two options were probably cruddy ones anyway. Hence the value of education and all the work he was going to have to put in to prove he had one. Or something like that….

So far, Advanced Transfiguration, Take Two hadn’t been too unkind to a Pecari seventh year just ambitious enough to be uncomfortable with his own lack of ambition, but so far, Advanced Transfiguration, Take Two had mostly consisted of going over the syllabus. The first real class was…well, Lionel didn’t know, having never done it before, but it sounded decidedly harder than reading the syllabus. Part-to-whole, and the part was supposed to be small. Joy.

When the box came to him, Lionel poked around in a bit, looking for the largest part he could find. This took long enough to cause a cleared throat beside him, he thought, but he tried to ignore it; maybe whoever just had phlegm. It made him nervous enough, though, that he just grabbed something, in the event a metal ring almost large enough to slip over his hand and wear like a bracelet.

He frowned at it. “What do you think this is supposed to be?” he asked a neighbor.

16 Lionel Layne, Pecari It would help to know what it is. 283 Lionel Layne, Pecari 0 5

Jake

November 11, 2016 12:46 AM

I also like agreeing! by Jake

The immediate response of “Let’s test it” reminded Jake of everything he loved about Aladren students like his siblings: they were so willing and ready to learn. The conversation he and John were having in no way mandated the line of conversation, or at least none of this theorizing they had gotten into. The lesson had started out so simple, really, but now it was all complex and way more interesting. Jake himself was not an intellect of much regard, but he did have a curious streak in him, even if it wasn’t backed up by the same kind of knowledge base.

Still, even though he knew he wasn’t nearly on the same playing field as his Aladren schoolmates, Jake was having a great time talking about these things with John. Really, when he’d asked his initial question about phrasing, he’d sorta just expected an answer, but this discussion was much better. The Teppenpaw felt almost, sorta…. smart.

He couldn’t help but grin at the nice things John said to him. Jake was good at the spell, good enough wizard. That was nice to hear. No one had ever really been mean to Jake or implied that he was lesser either intellectually or magically (except maybe his step-sister Carrie, but nobody ever talked to her anymore), but maybe just because he spent so much effort building up everyone else he didn’t build himself up enough, he’d never really thought of his own abilities as being much of anything. It wasn’t so much an insecure or self-deprecating thing so much as… the thought never really crossed his mind. It was nice to hear.

“I don’t think I’d call it two spells at once,” Jake said very deliberately. “Kinda seems like most Transfigurations spells have some kind of conjuring involved, at least at this level. So I’d say more like what you said, one spell with multiple components.” He looked around the table, his bright blue eyes pausing momentarily over John’s notebook, the cardigan, and anything else before them that was relatively related. “Maybe if you’re gonna sacrifice a button to try, you should do the spell. You should take a turn to practice it anyway, right?”

12 Jake I also like agreeing! 280 Jake 0 5

Savannah Brockert, Teppenpaw

November 18, 2016 8:32 PM

Tagging Aiden by Savannah Brockert, Teppenpaw

Things seemed to be going well for Savannah. She was comfortably settling into Advanced classes and things with Aiden seemed pretty good too. Really, she couldn't complain though she knew that neither her sister nor her boyfriend were as happy with some of the. Scarlett had been expressing her distaste for the Charms assignment quite a bit though she was happy enough to have Tobi as a partner. Savannah had to admit, the general area of Charms research assigned was a little dull. She didn't dislike research papers as much as they did, but she couldn't honestly say that she found them fun .

That was probably one reason she was in Teppenpaw rather than Aladren. Then again, Amity had been in Aladren and there was nobody that hated any kind of work more than Amity did. Amity hated work as much as most people hated Carrie.

Hopefully, Transfiguration would be more to all their tastes-Scarlett's,Aiden's and hers too. And not assign a major research project that would put even more on Chaslyn's already overly filled plate. Of course, for herself, her twin and her cousin, this was probably the easiest class. Well maybe just herself and Scarlett. Nothing seemed to be all that easy for Chaslyn who had to do everything perfect and was suffering the counter affects of such unreasonable expectations. If you pushed yourself-or were pushed by someone else-too hard and took on too much, overall quality would suffer.

Fortunately, they were doing a practical lesson today and it sounded kind of fun. Unfortunately, they also had an assigned essay, which wouldn't be too much trouble for her but she was concerned about others. If they wanted, Savannah would be happy to get together to work on it though she didn't know if Chaslyn would have time. Of course, she did have to do the essay too and the sixth year really thought she should come. That way neither Scarlett nor Aiden had to worry as much about being a third wheel.

When the box came around, Savannah pulled out a shoe lace. It was not a plain ordinary black or white or otherwise solid colored shoe lace either, but instead was multi-colored, like tie dyed or something. The Teppenpaw hadn't seen anything like it before, not that she ever wore sneakers to begin with. Ladies especially had to wear things a bit fancier and a lot less comfortable. Savannah usually stuck to flats that were somewhat practical for everyday wear while saving the truly fancy and charmed to not hurt her feet much shoes for balls and whatnot.

She looked at the shoe lace with a slightly bemused expression on her face before turning to Aiden whom she'd sat next to. "What kind of shoe would this even go to? I mean like a sneaker or something but like, the kind of design on it? Like I can't imagine this going into something plain. By the way, do you want to work on the homework together, maybe with Scarlett and Chaslyn?"

11 Savannah Brockert, Teppenpaw Tagging Aiden 286 Savannah Brockert, Teppenpaw 0 5

Aiden O'Neil

November 26, 2016 6:11 PM

Responding to Tag by Aiden O'Neil

Aiden really hated the Advanced lessons. All they seemed to want from him was to do project after project after boring project. Aiden’s brain was fried. He didn’t want to do any projects anymore. Didn’t the professors know that they more work they set on them the more overwhelmed and near their wits end they became? Didn’t they care at all for his mental health? Plus, it was all so boring.

Professor Skies surprised him though with just setting them off to do a transfiguration task. No special project, no long easy for him to try to find time to do amongst all his other essays that he had to do. Not that her assignment wasn’t difficult. He had no idea how exactly that he was supposed to create an object from nothing. Or rather, from one particular item. Aiden ended up with a zipper. A zipper. A zipper from Merlin knew what. It could have been from anything. A sweater, a purse, a coat, or even pants.

Aiden turned to look at what Savannah was talking about and found her holding a tie-dyed shoe lace. That was an interesting choice. Aiden wore sneakers, but he never really paid attention to brands or laces or anything. Of course, he highly doubted his mother would allow him to purchase a pair of sneakers that had those types of laces on them (his mother was rather concerned about image). He thought about it for a moment, trying to recall any type of brand shoe that he would think would allow for such a style. In the end, he could only really think of one. “I think Skechers is a brand that has all sorts of weird styled sneakers. I think I even saw them with a pair covered in glitter.” Aiden commented. “I didn’t know anyone felt compelled to walk around with glitter representing their feet. Anyway, I think they would have a pair of shoes that would have those types of lace.” Aiden replied

“I don’t think the shoe itself is like that, I would try for something plain but maybe with one of the colors in the shoe lace?” He suggested, hoping that it was a little helpful to her. He returned to his own zipper. He had to figure out what type of zipper it was. It was short, so it was mostly likely for a pair of pants. But what kind? Jeans? Dress pants? Khakis? He had no idea. He supposed he could worry about that later and instead just focus on making pants appear and then the style would come later.

“At least you know yours came from a shoe.” Aiden offered her with a laugh. “But here goes nothing.” He added before turning to the zipper and picking up his wand. Without much flare, Aiden waved his wand, “Renovo” He said firmly, his wand moving upward in a spiral as advised. He waited patiently for a moment to see what was going to happen only to realize that nothing actually had happened. “Well… that was a waste.”

6 Aiden O'Neil Responding to Tag 287 Aiden O'Neil 0 5