Glittery and jittery on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

September 16, 2017 12:44 AM

Beginners - rain, rain, go away by Professor Skies

October dawned with a spectacular downpour. Selina often questioned the wisdom and sanity of their Irish founders who had been so fond of their home climate as to set up weather charms in the desert school in order to mimic it - firstly because that was a ridiculous amount of work, and second because she frequently failed to see the appeal. She had planned a rainy day lesson, safe in the knowledge that one would come along sooner or later (though it would be typical of the Irish weather to be sunny throughout the autumn months just to spite her - until living with Sonora’s, she had never thought of weather as something that had much personality or intent, but the Irish type definitely did, and it was to be as sheer bloody minded and contrary as possible).

“Good morning,” she greeted the beginners class, as they filed in and took their seats. “Hands up anyone who got wet feet this morning?” she asked, looking particularly at the Pecaris, who would have had to walk through the gardens to get into the main school building. “Rain is a common feature at Sonora, and even days that start out sunny here can quickly turn. So, today, we’ll be working on a very practical lesson, in order to help you deal with this problem. We’ll be making rain boots. We’ll be practising it on different types of shoe, as the most useful target for this, in case of a sudden rain shower, is your own footwear. I’ve got some regular boots for first years, and other types of shoes and sandals for second years,” she explained, waving her wand so that two boxes began to make their way around. In order to successfully navigate between the rows of chairs, they were about the size of a single standard shoe box, yet even by the time they got to the back row, the students would find them to still be adequately full.

“Remember to start by working out the differences between what you’re starting with and what you’re aiming to create. I’d like to see a complete transfiguration table from everyone, even if it seems straightforward,” she requested. Transfiguration relied very heavily on visualisation, and on the students being able to target their energy into the right aspects of the transformation they were trying to make. To aid this process Selina had her beginner students analyse the similarities and differences between the object they had and the object they wanted using a simple table, which listed all the features imaginable - size, colour, function, material, with two blank columns for them to make notes about these features. For the beginners, the main objective this lesson was going to be changing the material. As they were a few weeks into term, she hoped they were starting to get confident with this skill, although this required them to use it on a relatively big target. Whilst a pair of regular boots turned into rubber would work effectively as rain boots, and get them a passing grade, they might look a little odd, and so refining the appearance in some small and subtle ways would earn them extra credit.

“The spell for this is brasilenius, and you will need a swirling upward motion of your wand, like so,” she added, demonstrating by transforming a pair of brogues on her desk into a pair of blue boots patterned with clouds. “First years, don’t worry too much about design work, unless you find that you’re really getting the spell easily. Second years, as usual, it’s a way to earn extra credit.” Design work was always a good way to have older years in the classes stretch themselves - if the shoes they had were red, there was no reason why they shouldn’t make a pair of red boots. They were every bit as correct and useful as, say, a yellow pair. But being able to change the colour at the same time as everything else took extra effort and therefore was worth extra credit. Of course, if a student was struggling to get the spell down, colour was often a feature that could remain the same, and give them fewer factors to worry about.

“For homework, I would like you to try to find out the origin of the spell. I’d also like you to read up on Impervius charms, and suggest reasons why the Transfiguration you’re learning might still be useful or necessary. If you finish your practical work early, you can begin on this task.You may talk with your classmates as you work. And, if you have any difficulty, ask around or call me over. You may begin.”

OOC - welcome to beginners transfiguration! Posts are graded based on length, realism, relevance and creativity. Grading is done out of character, based on the writing skills you demonstrate, not how good you claim your character is at the spell. You’re a few weeks into term now, so this isn’t the first time your character has picked up a wand or attempted transfiguration. Enjoy, and have fun!

Subthreads:

Glittery and jittery by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw with Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Singing in the rain by Parker Fitzgerald - Pecari with Gary Harper

13 Professor Skies Beginners - rain, rain, go away 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

September 16, 2017 3:26 AM

Glittery and jittery by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

Dorian took a seat in Transfiguration, trying to ignore the balloons that followed him into the room and set themselves behind him. October the first was his birthday, and so far it was… mixed. All the members of his family who were still at home had sent him a card, which had sung loudly and cheered ‘happy birthday’ in all three of his home languages when he’d opened it at the breakfast table, before exploding a cloud of gold glitter over him. Everyone in Teppenpaw house and beginners classes would probably be doomed to finding glitter about their person for the rest of the school year, even if they never personally had any contact with him. But this was not the problem. Dorian appreciated the effort and enthusiasm of the card, and the presents that had come with it. He had expected Matthieu to ignore his birthday entirely, and that would have actually been preferable. He winced as the balloons rubbed against each other, making that squeaking sound. He hated that squeaking sound. It set his teeth on edge. He also had to worry the entire time that it was a prelude to the balloons suddenly bursting. A world without balloons would have been a much nicer world, in his opinion. It wasn’t like he was run-out-of-the-room-screaming afraid of them, but nor could he fully relax with them hovering and squeaking behind him. He was also afraid of other people finding out that he was afraid of balloons because it was a really stupid fear. And one, as Matthieu was managing to demonstrate from thousands of miles away, that was incredibly easy to exploit. He had hoped that the hell would be over after breakfast, at which point he could just deposit the stupid balloons in his room and continue on with his day. But they had followed him. He had tried a simple ‘finite incantatum’ which had prompted one to pop, and him to visibly jump and squeak. He’d had a moment to consider whether it was worth the horror of popping them all in quick succession to just be rid of them, before the horrible thing had regenerated itself. Matthieu had to have had help in making this special form of torture.

He sat, trying to listen to Professor Skies and ignore the fact that his palms were sweating. He hoped he could ask one of the staff to find a way to make the balloons stop following him. Rain. Rain and rain boots… He thought back to the day in the attic, before coming to Sonora, and his hopes of having pleasant, quiet rainy days without his bored brother storming through the house determined to make him miserable. It had been going so well. Sonora seemed so nice. But it was not beyond Matthieu’s reach to torture him here… As the box came past, he took out a pair of red cowboy boots. He took a transfiguration table, trying to think about all the different properties… Shape… The shape was kind of the same, but also not. The cowboy boots had that dip around the top, and their toes were pointed. His quill slipped in his fingers as the balloons squeaked. The material had to change, of course. The function was wearing them on your feet, but the rain boots you wore… well, in the rain, so it was a lot the same but also a little bit different. He struggled to find the words for this idea. Explaining an idea that was clear in his head when restricted to exclusively English words was tricky at the best of times, and now he was distracted and edgy. He considered calling Professor Skies over, and asking her to help rid him of the balloons, but before he could do so, the person next to him spoke to him.

13 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw Glittery and jittery 1401 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

September 17, 2017 3:48 PM

One of those things sounds better than the other. by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Westerners were very strange. This was a fact and Tatiana accepted it as a fact without question. When she saw one of them come into class with balloons trailing after him, though, she could not help but stare at this phenomenon in disbelief for a moment, wondering if she had perhaps managed to underestimate just how strange they were after all or if this one was just a special case. She was pretty sure, after all, this was the same one she had seen glitter suddenly explode all over at breakfast….

She considered whether glitter would improve her appearance or not, should any still be around and in the mood to migrate, and then decided that more sparkly gold things about her person was unlikely to be a bad thing as she took the seat next to Balloon Boy. People might even assume it was deliberate, as Tatiana was already sparkling as usual, her robes pulled as far down as possible in front to allow one of her aquamarine necklaces – the one with a oval aquamarine separated from a smaller, dangling pear-shaped aquamarine by a fan-shaped piece of white gold studded liberally with diamonds, albeit ones of no quality, their color and clarity bringing grains of salt to mind almost as much as their size did – and her ears showcasing her favorite earrings, each one a pair of pear-shaped aquamarines joined by a single tiny diamond.

Unfortunately, despite the fact she had worn a hat and carried an umbrella the whole time she was outside, her hair had felt some of the effects of the rain it had encountered on the way in from the common room. The water had taken it all out of curl and she was cross with it and the weather in equal measure for that. It was fuzzy and she was worried it would altogether obscure the class’ view of her earrings, which would be a shame; she had not worn them often this year so far. She raised her hand when the professor for some reason asked those who had gotten their feet wet this morning to do so, then leaned forward in concentration, her brows drawn close together and her chin propped up on one fist, as Professor Skies, whom she had gathered was like the matushka here even though she and the Headmaster did not seem to be married, gave them a speech.

In a month, Tatiana thought she might have improved more in her comprehension of spoken English than she had in her last six months at home. It still wasn’t perfect – one of the professor’s sentences failed to communicate much to her at all until the last few words, as she understood individual words but couldn’t follow the complicated sentence structure the professor used – but listening to English every day, speaking English every day, and even writing in English every day, with no relief except when she wrote home or in her diary (the second source of relief was something she felt guilty about, as Anton Petrovich had made her keep a journal in English for the past year and it felt like disobedience to write in Russian again, but she had to express herself properly somehow, and of course she could not be too honest when she wrote to her family – even her sisters and Grisha could never know how lonely and perfectly miserable she often felt among all these strangers. It would make her look weak and Tatiana would rather beat off every bowtruckle in the country without a tennis racket than look weak) had inevitably had an effect on her. Transfiguration tables, however, were still enough to lower her mood the moment she comprehended the mention of them.

Writing her homework assignments out was tedious, but doable. She had a Russian-to-English dictionary, a thesaurus, and a book of antonyms to help her, and in her dormitory, she also had privacy to use these resources as much as she needed to. In class, though, it was different; for one thing it was embarrassing to have all those books in front of her and to be flipping through them while nobody else had even remotely similar equipment, and for another, more practical, thing, it was slow going. Only the appearance of the same angular handwriting she had developed in English really linked her class and out-of-class compositions, as though two people with the same handwriting had written them, or one person at different ages. She was not entirely sure that she and Professor Skies wouldn’t both be better off if she simply drew pictures and they both pretended they were ancient Egyptians communicating in pictographs. That was a fun game; she and Grisha and Katya played a similar game sometimes.

She selected a pair of brown boots which were not hideous and then looked at the paper in front of her. Size. Well, Tatiana had selected a smallish women’s pair. Okay, then. Smaule she printed carefully. Colour – broun. She knew there was something wrong with that word, but she couldn’t figure out what it was and moved on. Function -

Well, that was complicated enough, wasn’t it? Anton Petrovich had made Tatiana compose some strange sentences in English, but he had never asked her to discuss what shoes were used for! She clicked her tongue in irritation and looked at Balloon Boy.

“Hi,” said Tatiana. “What does shoes do?”

16 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari One of those things sounds better than the other. 1396 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari 0 5

Dorian

September 18, 2017 4:17 AM

Depends how annoying you find glitter by Dorian

It turned out he was sitting with Tatiana. Dorian had, by now, gathered the names of most people via the roll call, and the fact that it was an exceedingly small year. He hadn’t talked to Tatiana properly yet, but enough of her reputation preceded her that he knew he wasn’t the only foreign student here. That was somewhat comforting, and he had been hoping for a chance to get to know her better - to form some comradely solidarity over irregular plurals, and the perils of the ‘th’ sound.

What does shoes do?

“We are wearing them?” he suggested, glancing at her table to confirm that she was, indeed, on the ‘function,’ section. He felt this was obvious, and so pondered her question a little longer. “And the rain boots that we make is keeping dry, but other shoes maybe not. Other shoes can be… just for wearing. Or maybe for looking pretty?” he suggested, tilting his head to the side as he considered it, and causing the light to catch the myriad glitter specks that still lingered in his hair, very visible against the black.

“I’m Dorian,” he added, although he thought she might not know that by now. He tried to think of how to express what they had in common, but he found that it was surprisingly difficult to bring up the fact of English not being their best language without potentially insulting Tatiana. ‘We both struggle with the same thing,’ implied the other person was struggling, which they might not be happy about admitting or having pointed out. “I am from Quebec,” he offered, as a means of getting to the same point. “Before coming, I think I will be the only international student,” he smiled.

13 Dorian Depends how annoying you find glitter 1401 Dorian 0 5

Tatiana

September 18, 2017 12:01 PM

It would be bad if glitter made you jittery. by Tatiana

Wearing. Tatiana had forgotten that word. Ruefully, however, she realized she probably would have remembered it had she not been thinking the wrong way about the question – she had thought that was so obvious that it hadn’t occurred to her to try to think of it….

“That so,” said Tatiana.

She understood the words he was using now that he said them, but wasn’t sure she could have come up with them. Of course, she wasn’t sure she couldn’t have, either. It was funny how vocabulary came and went, when it wasn’t just annoying. She could also hear that his English wasn’t exactly like other people’s, either. That made him Doryanmontor – or Montordoryan – or something similar to that. She tried to pay attention during roll calls, but it didn’t always work so well, not least because she couldn’t always tell what was a given name and what was a family name.

He was kind enough to clarify this a moment later, if only by telling her what he’d like to be called. He said it a bit differently than some of the teachers, but it was definitely the ‘Doryan’ bit of the name. Tatiana nodded and pointed to herself. “I am Tatiana,” she said. She thought the difference between her first name and family name should have been obvious, but since they persisted in calling her Vorontsov in the roll calls as though she was a boy, she thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

Tatiana knew what Quebec was, more or less – it was part of Canada, the country her place was attached to. Other side of the continent, though. They were not English there, she remembered, which explained some things. She nodded. “I am from…Alaska. Volshebnaya Derevnya. We talk in Russian there. Mama is of Russia.” She sorted through vocabulary words in her head. “Quebec – you talk French, yes? Papa parle français, mais mon - très mauvais,” admitted Tatiana. She thoroughly expected to be laughed at for the mistakes no doubt in that sentence, but she imagined he must miss hearing people speak French as much as she missed hearing people speak Russian. “So Papa – Papa says I have teacher English instead,” she said, as her French was, as she had admitted, very bad.

16 Tatiana It would be bad if glitter made you jittery. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Dorian

September 18, 2017 11:10 PM

Things would be going very badly if that was the case by Dorian

Oh. She was Alaskan. So, technically, Tatiana was not an international student. Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind his error. He felt he was very fortunate not to be pulled up on that one or to have caused offence. Although she still primarily regarded herself as Chinese, ‘Je suis une citoyenne Canadienne,’ and the attendant withering glare, was one of the first elements of French his mother had mastered. It was such a delicate subject to navigate though - he deliberately avoided the term ‘second language’ because for all he knew, Tatiana regarded it as her first, and because he himself had more than two and found the idea of having to rank them incredibly difficult. If pushed, he thought he would put English in third place, although he suspected his proficiency in it was at least equal to, if not better than, his Chinese. As his mother’s French had improved, as he’d spent more time in school, Chinese was something that special time had to be carved out for. It was, however, more firmly a part of who he was. English was an accident that had arisen because the circumstances demanded it. It would be so hurtful to his mother and to his own sense of self were he to somehow elevate English above Chinese. Language ordering, like immigration status, was not therefore a clean, cut and dry area of sensible fact and objective measure.

“Très bien!” he complimented, when Tatiana uttered a few words in slightly dubious French, his face lighting up at hearing it. “It is better anyway than my Russian,” he added. He knew exactly zero words of Russian, whereas Tatiana had composed a passable sentence which at least conveyed her meaning. “Maybe we can teach each other? I already have Jehan volunteer for French class in exchange for English.” That was an entirely sane suggestion. Of course learning a new language from scratch, whilst trying to operate in his non-native language, and learn a lot of new academic material, was entirely what his brain needed. He was glad that Vlad seemed easy going. He was going to need a place where he could just sprawl out and be a comatose mess.

“Colour…” he mused, returning to his notes. “Colour can be the same. But what about this?” he traced the lines that made an embossed pattern on the cowboy boots. “It will look strange on rain boot. But is more… design? It is not a colour but also not the shape.” He added his own subheading under colour to note that he would have to get rid of the design. Reviewing his notes, he saw that he needed to smooth out a few things regarding the shape but mostly it was just the material.

He muttered the spell to himself a couple of times, trying to make sure it could roll off his tongue smoothly. His accent shaped it a little differently than Professor Skies had said it but not enough, he thought, to be a problem. He pictured the changes to the boots, them growing and expanding around the toes and the tops to fill in the shape, and turning rubbery in their appearance. Behind him the balloons squeaked intrusively.

“Brasilenius,” he cast. The surface of the boots turned a little more rubbery, although it looked rather too thin. The toes also filled out. They actually looked quite good. But then they kept going. They expanded too far, and he realised what the thin rubber he’d created reminded him of... He clasped his hands over his ears just in time as the toes of the boots popped.

“I… I guess I get distracted,” he mumbled, glaring at the balloons which continued to squeak.

13 Dorian Things would be going very badly if that was the case 1401 Dorian 0 5

Tatiana

September 20, 2017 9:47 PM

Good thing it doesn't seem to be, then. by Tatiana

Tatiana had never managed to get the hang of French even with true teachers, but her eyes lit up at the idea of a language exchange with Dorian and Jehan just the same. That would, she reasoned, be like friends, friends she could feel sure were not laughing at her too much or at least not more than she was laughing at them – all in good fun at worst. That she had never attempted to teach anyone Russian, regarding it simply as the most reasonable language to speak and others as academic accomplishments, was another thing that did not trouble her as she nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, yes!” she said. “You think Jehan help me English as well? We can be club! Club of – tongues!” She knew that word could mean ‘languages,’ but she was also pretty sure it wasn’t the right one. As long as he understood her, though, she didn’t much care at the moment. “The fun, we will have!”

She frowned at his boot. “It shape on a shape,” said Tatiana. “Like – other boy says ‘daw-nut.’ Has a hole in it that is not bad. Was – “ English tenses were horrible – “put there for reason. To be pretty.”

She, personally, would try to expand it over the rain boot and make the whole boot have a pretty pattern, but she couldn’t explain all that in English and it was, after all, Dorosha’s boot to make. Tatiana had her own not-entirely-hideous shoes to deal with. And, perhaps more difficult, her own distinctly not-Russian word to say just so, lest she end up on her back with a buffalo on her chest. Papa liked to laugh and say his little daughter was as strong as a man, but Tatiana did not want to test this by adding the weight of a buffalo to her ribcage and seeing if the latter could withstand the presence of the former on top of it.

“Br – “ she began, then stuck on the stupid letter. There was no ‘s’ in Russian; it made the sound like с, except when it abruptly didn’t and instead sounded more like з (a letter with its own additional character making the same sound! Anton Petrovich had pointed out that ц could as easily be replaced by тс, at least to a learner’s ear, but Tatiana had not considered this a good argument for stupid English letters that used four shapes to say the same thing). Listening to her new friend, she thought he made it sound like a combination of с and з, which did not help her dilemma much. Could she make that sound? She was trying when suddenly, a pop from the next desk whipped her head around and her gaze back to her fellow non-native.

“Why you have those?” asked Tatiana when he glared at the balloons. “And you know their called in English?” she asked, figuring she shouldn’t miss an opportunity to add a new word to her vocabulary if he had it.

16 Tatiana Good thing it doesn't seem to be, then. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Dorian

September 22, 2017 12:19 AM

Let's hope everyone feels positive about glitter by Dorian

“I’m sure,” Dorian nodded, when she asked if Jehan would help her too. He thought that the Club of Tongues might take a different direction than his and Jehan’s previous plans to read poetry together because he was starting to feel that Tatiana’s English was a little behind his own, and he wasn’t sure how she’d feel about diving into verse. Though who knew… She might like the challenge. Either way, Jehan seemed kind and not inclined to refuse his help, especially if he got interesting company and knowledge in exchange, and if it meant the two of them had to make separate time for each other and poetry, he didn’t exactly see spending more time with Jehan as a problem.
“Yes, this will be very nice,” he nodded, when she talked about them having a club. “I wonder how many languages are speaked in the school? There are quite some French students… Chinese,” he mused, counting himself. He had observed the handful of other Asian students but he didn’t know which, if any, other language they spoke. They might have all been American Asians without any other languages for all he knew. Although he didn’t really know whether Tatiana’s suggestion was for a fully fledged club, vs just nick-naming the three of them. He knew which one he preferred, although he was curious about the question of the languages there were in the school. “Though maybe we just start with us three, and three language, so that our brains are not exploding. Some days, I feel I have a headache from just… so much English. So much thinking about everything that is said?” his voice rose into a question, seeking out whether she experienced the same thing.

He nodded vaguely to her explanation that it was a shape within a shape. It was one way of looking at it. He wasn’t sure what door-nuts were. Without context, he guessed she’d seen a door with some nice engraving. Or maybe a door handle, and she just didn’t know the word.

After his disastrous attempt, Tatiana finally brought the topic around to the erumpent in the room. Honestly, he’d been expecting it to be her first question. Although he figured why he had them was sort of obvious, why he had them in Transfiguration was more the point.

“Balloons,” he offered, when she asked for the English name. “My brother sent them, for my birthday,” he added, through somewhat gritted teeth. The additional annoying level to all of this being that, without further explanation, people were going to tell him what a thoughtful and considerate brother he had. “He has them enchanted that they follow me. I think he knows that will be annoying,” he explained, deciding that ‘annoyed’ was a reasonable feeling to express - and at least, somewhat accurate - even though ‘fearful’ or ‘anxious’ were the more predominant emotions elicited by the balloons.

13 Dorian Let's hope everyone feels positive about glitter 1401 Dorian 0 5

Tatiana

September 22, 2017 12:24 PM

How could they not? by Tatiana

Tatiana nodded in sympathy when Dorian mentioned that all the English gave him a headache sometimes. “Me, too,” said Tatiana. “Not as bad as first – then it sounds like many chickens!” she laughed, covering her ears to hopefully communicate, better than her spoken vocabulary could, how grating the surrounding gabble of English could be. “But I miss Russian,” she added sadly.

Gloom was not something her constitution tended toward, however, and she quickly brightened again as another brilliant idea occurred to her. “Hey – I see you, I say ‘bonjour, Dorocha’,” said Tatiana. “And you see me – ‘privet, Tatya.’ Ok? Then we hear a little of our right languages anyway.”

Bal-loon Tatiana noted the new English word. “Bon – anee?” attempted Tatiana, responding first to the part where it was apparently Dorian’s birthday. “We say s dnem rozhdeniya,” she added absently, now looking again at the balloons. “Maybe we tell Professor Skies. Is – takes mind away from work. It made your boots neprav – eto ne khorosho. You want me say so?” Perhaps, she thought, he did not want to seem ungrateful to his brother, and therefore required someone else to be rude on his behalf. Tatiana often did this for Katya; it disturbed her sister to do anything that might earn Mama’s disapproval, but since Tatiana did ten things Mama disapproved of before lunch every day, it did not much matter if she added one more for her sister’s sake. Of course, Professor Skies was not Mama and Dorian was not Katya, but she didn’t see what the difference in being scolded by her own mother and being scolded by the school’s mother was. This still did not account for Dorian not being Katya, but he was in the Yellow and Red House, which was supposed to be what Mama called 'sweet' people - Katya was such a person, and while Mama said Tatiana could be sweet sometimes in her own way, she was too rough to meet the full definition of the term.

16 Tatiana How could they not? 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Parker Fitzgerald - Pecari

September 28, 2017 6:23 AM

Singing in the rain by Parker Fitzgerald - Pecari

The shoes squished as he walked into the classroom and Parker felt a bit like a wet dog or some almost drowned animal.

The rain had started during Parker's now semi dialy walks through the gardens that surrounded the Pecari’s common room. He loved being outside surrounded by plants before he had to head into classrooms all day, and he was quite far away from the buildings when it had started pouring rain.

As he had run towards the common room entrance he made sure to jump in some of the larger puddles, luxuriating in the sheer oddness of a rainstorm of this kind in a desert.

It has to be magic. Parker had thought to himself Unless Arizona’s deserts are so different from the ones in Nevada, that they have freak rainstorms. But then it wouldn’t be a desert.

He had gotten carried and away with the puddle jumping though, and realized he might be late for class. So he ran towards the main building without stopping in the common room to change clothes.

He found a seat behind a bunch of balloons, and he smiled in the sheer satisfaction of having been outside in the rain, but he wished that he had been able to go back to the common room to change as water began to drip in a puddle under his seat.

When Professor Skies asked the students about wet feet, Parker laughed a bit and put up both hands. His wet clothes kind of sliding down his arms. He was sure there was some sort of spell that could dry him off, he just didn’t know it yet. Maybe he could ask someone on the Quidditch team later.

Professor Skies described the class and Parker loved it. He was less interested in the homework, as he saw being able to turn his shoes into rain boots at the wave a wand very useful already.

As the box reached him he looked in and pulled out a pair of old tan work boots that looked like they had some paint on them from somewhere. Parker took his paper and began speaking quietly to himself as he wrote.

“Size…,” Parker looked inside the shoe and couldn’t find a shoe tag. He picked up one of the shoes and held it to his own. It was a bit bigger. “Size: 8-8 1/2. Colour: Tan with white paint on them. Function.”

Parker looked at his shoes. The function could be for many things he assumed and shrugged his shoulders and wrote. “Function: To wear while working outdoors. Material.” Parker had no idea. He assumed some kind of leather or fiber blend.

Do they even have fiber blends in the wizarding world? Parker wondered. Parker tapped next to his sheet trying to decide what to write.

“Material: Lether”

First column was done. Parker looked around to see what others were writing in the second column to make sure he was right about making sure it was what he wanted the shoe to look like afterwards. Parker was still unsure about his magic abilities, so he never tried to go overboard and he wasn't quite sure what overboard was for this class. He turned to look at the paper next to him.

41 Parker Fitzgerald - Pecari Singing in the rain 1402 Parker Fitzgerald - Pecari 0 5

Dorian

September 30, 2017 1:43 AM

It does go everywhere... by Dorian

“Yes!” he laughed, when Tatiana compared the simultaneous cacophony of English speakers to chickens. “It is so much when many people speak it at one time. At home, maybe two people at one time, and then not only English. For me, it is the most strange that I cannot just change language. At home, we speaking some English but always I can change when the word is not easy. Here… They all speak in only English,” he shook his head, marvelling at this strangeness. “But with Jehan, he tell me just to say in the other languages if I cannot think in English. He maybe does not understand, but then my thoughts are finished, and this is nicer. He is very kind person,” he glanced over at Jehan’s back, and a content smile replaced the slightly sad look of camaraderie that he’d worn for Tatiana.

“That will be nice,” he nodded, when she suggested they greet each other in their proper languages. “Privet Tatya,” he repeated to himself, to make sure he had it clearly in his mind. Tatya was a logical enough shortening of Tatiana. Which helped him work backwards over the words she’d said she would say to him. “I am Dorocha?” he clarified.

“Merci beaucoup,” he smiled, when Tatya wished him a happy birthday in French. The Russian phrase was a lot longer, and more unwieldy than simple the ‘hello Tatya’ that she had already taught him. “You will write that down please? And also your birthday,” he added. He dug around in his bag, pulling out a notebook. The cover currently read ‘English phrases’ but before passing it across to Tatiana, he crossed this out and replaced the title with ‘Club of Tongues.’

She then brought up the very sensible plan of asking Professor Skies to rid him of his balloons, on account that they had made his boots neprav, which he could only guess, under the circumstances, meant ‘explode.’ He wasn’t sure what the rest of the syllables that Tatiana tacked on the end were. He assumed they were an aside to herself though. She even offered to ask for him, which he guessed meant that she had guessed that he was in some way embarrassed to do so. Which was embarrassing.

“I will ask. I plan to do this, but then I get interested by talking to you,” he smiled, trying to downplay the idea that he had any problem drawing further attention to himself and his balloons, nor risk anything that might make them make That Noise again.. “Professor?” he called, hoping that most of the class was now too busy with their projects to pay attention to what he was asking, little as he planned on revealing anything like the truth. When Professor Skies came over, he continued. “Please can you make the balloons go away? But not with finite incantatum!” he added hastily. “My brother send them for my birthday and he make them so they follow me, and I try this already but it’s just making them explode. And they are… distract me. Maybe distract other people too.”

“Of course,” Professor Skies nodded. Personally, she was sure no one really minded the balloons except Dorian, whose uncomfortable squirming she took to be embarrassment. Sonora students were at that sensitive age where they’d decided that being different was bad. Presumably the balloons, that his thoughtful brother had sent, were ‘uncool.’ She waved her wand, and the balloons disappeared with only the small ‘pop’ of a disapparating object. “They’ll be waiting for you in your room,” she told him.

“Thank you,” Dorian smiled, a little stiffly, as Professor Skies retreated. The thought that the balloons were Waiting For Him was not exactly a comforting one. He had wanted to cover his ears, just in case, when she’d cast the spell but he figured that would make him look odd. He hoped that neither she or Tatya had noticed him flinch at the small ‘pop’ as they were removed.

OOC - not god-modding Professor Skies because I write her

13 Dorian It does go everywhere... 1401 Dorian 0 5

Tatiana

October 10, 2017 12:10 AM

...Wait, more sparkly gold stuff is supposed to be bad? by Tatiana

Tatiana nodded to the description of Jehan. “Yes,” she agreed. “He seems so.”

If Tatiana understood the rest of Dorian’s speech properly, he was saying that at his home, they switched languages all the time. Tatiana made a small, rueful face. “I should – the English ones – I should them – “ Understand. Surely she knew how to say that in English – “know better,” she admitted. “At home, only Russian – others know English, French, but we not say it to all us.”

Well, she did speak English sometimes to Katya and Alexei, more or less, because Papa wanted her to. With Alexei in particular, however, this took the form of pointing to objects and repeating their English names more often than trying to carry on any real conversation. She and Katya had polite exchanges in English for lessons, practicing being proper English ladies (who were very boring, to her way of thinking, at least if they really were how she was taught they were; Tatiana had spent very little time studying how to be a proper English lady before deciding to thank all her stars she would never live among Americans or in England as a grown-up), but they tended to revert to Russian the moment they were at liberty to do so – they could say what they wanted to say that way. Not like this, jabbering, thinking through words and grammar backwards. It was nice to speak to someone who understood but still not the same as speaking to her sisters, just as saying ‘good morning’ to Professor Carter wasn’t the same as going to Mama’s room after breakfast and helping her pick out her jewelry for the day after she approved their outfits. It was, though, better than nothing.

“Ah – I forget. Nobody else does names like we do,” said Tatiana. “Sorry. Dor-yan – “ it occurred to her she didn’t know how that would actually typically reduce for someone who was his equal, didn’t wish to insult him, and wasn’t in love with him. “I do not know how it would go for us,” she admitted. “Dorosha? Doryasha? Dorya, like Vanya? In French, you call friends by all their names, like the English?”

Tatiana smiled when she saw Dorian change the cover of his notebook, took up her pen – and then hesitated. “You do not know the alphabet,” she observed, more to herself than him, before she started writing. Well, Anton Petrovich hard started her instruction in the English alphabet by teaching her to write Russian in it, strange as that felt. Ccdnem rozzheidenneiya, she wrote out, in her spiky, angular English handwriting. The letters were narrow and leant sharp right, but were readable, as was Tatia Vorontsova 14 juilette, her best recollection of how to say her birthday in French. Then, in much smoother Cyrillic, she signed this declaration – Татьяна ТАВ Татя.

Tatiana had been willing to talk on Dorian’s behalf, but she was glad that he proved willing to speak to Skies himself. The professor was the one in charge of the special lessons and Tatiana tended to wish to either begin using words Mama would not approve of or else sink into the floorboards whenever anything reminded her of those, something she’d temporarily forgotten in the moment when she’d volunteered to speak up for Dorian. She studied the shoes in front of her as though they were much more interesting than they really were until the professor went away and she felt it was safe to look up again.

“Now you try again, and I try,” remarked Tatiana when this more agreeable state of affairs was accomplished. She closed her eyes and mouthed the word a few times, getting the sounds as clear in her head as she could. Her tongue sometimes felt like it had been put in upside-down when she was trying to make the sounds, which was not a good way to have it fastened when she was performing spells. Feeling relatively confident, she gave it a try – “Brassalenayus!” – and watched in consternation as the shoes did change, but…just not how she’d expected. They shot up taller, more rainboot like, she supposed, but the toes were definitely not supposed to also be growing rapidly and curling up like –

“For a goblin, I make,” observed Tatiana dryly. “Or maybe the smart hag.”

16 Tatiana ...Wait, more sparkly gold stuff is supposed to be bad? 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Gary Harper

October 10, 2017 9:58 PM

That's the spirit by Gary Harper

Gary had arrived early for class. He liked being early, it gave him some time to get his thing situated and get a little reading done in the text before class got started. So far, transfigurations was not looking to be his strong suit. He was getting the hang of it, but some aspects just eluded him. The class essentially was all about the transmutation school of magic as he saw it. Some of the other classes had mixtures of evocation, illusion, abjuration, and some conjuration, but this one was much more focused. That in itself wasn't the problem either, the problem persisted through all of the classes so far, but for some reason it didn't seem to bother him as much as it did here. The problem simply was the question, 'How in the world is this working?'

As the other students poured into the class room, he read through the textbook trying to find the underlying forces behind the structural changes he was making to molecular structure of these objects with a flick of the wand and a word or two. He wasn't having much luck. The book focused much more on the procedures, the steps necessary to accomplish the changes, but not how or why. He knew they worked, he had accomplished some of them, but it still bothered him. Professor Skies began to talk, and he looked up not realizing the seats around him had filled. A boy (who Gary assumed had a name) in the row in front of him had some balloons, and the boy next to him (Parker maybe?) was dripping wet.

Professor Skies talked and Gary took notes. He would have to look up the information on the Impervious charm, one in the abjuration school he assumed with a name like that. The origin of the spell may give him some insight on the power of the origin, this will be some good homework. He'd have to hit the library, if he dug up enough origins of these spells, maybe that would answer some of his question.

When the box went past him, he reached in and grabbed a pair of fur-lined winter boots. He was going to turn this into rubber? This could get interesting. First things first though, the checklist. These had actually be quite helpful, and he scribbled down notes in the boxes provided. Size: 9, 12" tall, 10" leg diameter, 4" sole to top of foot. Color: Black, white fur trim, silver bootlace eyelets, inner lining red and blue plaid. Function: Retain heat, repel moisture. Material: Rubber sole, fabric sides, fur (probably synthetic), metal eyelets. Next he filled out the 'Change to' column. If the goal was just to make it rubber, a lot of this could stay the same. Size: 9, 12" tall, 10" leg diameter, 4" sole to top of foot. Color: Black, white fur trim, silver bootlace eyelets, inner lining red and blue plaid. Function: repel moisture. Material: Rubber sole, rubber sides, fur (probably synthetic), metal eyelets.

He immediately spotted one advantage, the winter boot was also designed to repel water, just not as well. He also wasn't sure how well it would work if he left the laces in, but he wasn't sure he was anywhere good enough to get rid of them yet. Maybe he could try and fuse the tongue and the main part of the boot together and let the laces alone but non-functional. So much of this magic was imagining what you wanted to happen. The word and wand wave had to be precise, there was no way to encode variations into those actions. They were just some sort of focusing point for the mental image you created. Or maybe a way to transfer that mental image onto the physical object...? So much more research was needed.

Leaning back in his chair, he noticed a small trickle of water making its way towards his paper. He wiped it away an looked at the wet boy next to him. He was looking at Gary. "Hey," Gary said in an attempt at a casual start to a conversation he wasn't sure he wanted to have. "How goes your boot?" He gave the boy who he was pretty sure was named Parker, but nowhere close to sure enough to actually say it out loud, a little smile.

2 Gary Harper That's the spirit 1404 Gary Harper 0 5