DH Skies
January 26, 2019 12:27 AM
Beginners - Tea time by DH Skies
“Welcome, and welcome back, to Transfiguration,” Professor Skies greeted the beginners class, which comprised the new first years and the second years, who had already studied with her for a year. “You have already been briefly introduced to me as Deputy Headmistress Skies, but during class you may address me simply as ‘Professor.’” Admittedly, this was not a huge step down in the formality stakes, and indeed everything about the Deputy Headmistress suggested that informality was not particularly likely. She was one of the more senior teachers, now in her late fifties, and had taken great care to not look remotely near her age. The blonde of her hair was supplemented by that of a bottle, and however many lotions and potions she used, having lines on her face was inevitable. She was not intimidating in her manner, unless students were sensitive enough to mistake seriousness for that, but she certainly seemed like she would not tolerate any messing about.“Transfiguration is the art of turning one thing into another. There are some other types of spells such as switching, vanishing, conjuring, and certain forms of animating which also form part of the Transfiguration curriculum, and studying why they are considered to be Transfigurations will form part of your theory learning in later years.
“Within the standard definition, turning one thing into something else, spells are divided up further around whether they involve inanimate objects or animate, living things. The simplest types of transfiguration involve inanimate to inanimate - turning one object into another object.” As she spoke, the chalk wrote key points on the board in an elegant, looping hand.
“We will be starting with these sorts of spells, and with objects that are more closely related - balls and pebbles have similar shapes, matches and toothpicks are both similar shapes and made of wood. In the coming lessons, you will be asked to make notes in advance of attempting the spell, comparing your objects on all sorts of features; size, shapes, materials, uses and so on. Today, we are going to do that all together as group. Second years, you are free to chime in here for house points,” she added, hoping that the mention of house points was enough to wake up any who had drifted off whilst she went over the basics.
“Today, our project will be to turn teacups into saucers, for first years, and saucers into teacups for second years. First, I’d like us to think through the properties of both these items, to help you imagine the transformations that need to take place.” Behind her the chalk drew a table on the board. Down the left hand side were listed things such as ‘material’ ‘function’ ‘shape’ with two columns, one for teacups and one for saucers. Professor Skies took contributions from the students until the table was filled out.
“Good. So, as we can see, there are some obvious similarities in the materials - both are made out of china, and in this case they share a use, being parts of a teaset. The main thing that is going to have to change is the shape. First years… essentially, your cup is going to melt, flattening out into a disc, whilst second years will need to draw your saucers upwards and inwards, and also pull a handle out of somewhere.
“Second years, your spell is Chavena,” the ‘ch’ made more of a soft ‘sh’ sound, and behind her the chalk helpfully wrote up both the spell and and its pronunciation, along with a little doodle representing the wand movement, “The spell comes to us from the Chinese, Chawan,” she added, doing her best to get a rising tone on each syllable and glad that, to her knowledge, the only Chinese speaker in the school was safely in intermediates, away from her terrible pronunciation, “where tone carries meaning. Luckily, it came into the English-speaking world via the Portuguese, who first brought tea to Europe, so you don’t need to worry about tone. You may read sources that tell you using a rising tone helps, and certain witches and wizards have always sworn this, but when tested, there has been found to be no significant benefit to performing the spell that way. The wand movement is a light, rising spiral, like steam rising from a cup.” She demonstrated the spell on a spare saucer, forming it into a neat, matching cup.
“First years, your spell is Latin in origin. As most Chinese teasets don’t include saucers, this spell is of British invention, which prefers Latin for most of its roots. The spell derives from the generic word for a plate or dish, so your visualisation is key in making it specific enough to apply to a saucer. On the plus side, you will find this spell is generally handy when wanting to make large, flatter objects of any number of varieties. The spell is Laminus and has a sweeping wand motion - in this case, with a slightly circular flourish, of about the size you want your saucer to be,” she explained, demonstrating the wand movement both on its own, and on a nearby cup.
Whilst she had been speaking, a box of assorted china had been making its way around the room, pausing by each member of the class, and rattling itself pointedly if they did not notice it or took too long about choosing. Thus, by now, everyone was equipped and ready.
“You may talk quietly amongst yourselves whilst you work. Raise your hand if you need any help. You may begin.”
OOC - welcome to Transfiguration. Posting here can earn you house points! Posts should be a minimum of 200 words and will be graded on length, realism, relevance (how well you deal with the class content) and creativity.
Posts are marked out of character, based on the quality of the writing, so a character who says they are doing badly but does so in a well-written and detailed way can still score full points. Remember that Hermione, the best witch of her age, struggled with Transfiguration at first, so please keep your character’s ability level realistic. That said, I feel I’ve given you an easier task, as your objects are the same materials, so there’s a little more scope for differing results.
You are being supervised, so if things are going wrong, Selina would step in before anything got terribly out of hand. Please tag me in the subject line if there’s something that needs my attention.
Have fun, have a go, if you’re unsure about anything, ask on the OOC or in chatzy.
Subthreads: Ich verstehe nicht. by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen, Teppenpaw with Hilda Hexenmeister, Pecari
I enjoy a nice teatime. by Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw with Evelyn Stones, Pecari
This is not helping me take this seriously. by Jessica Hayles, Crotalus with Felipe De Matteo, Crotalus
*shakes head* by Topaz Brockert, Aladren
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DH Skies
Beginners - Tea time
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DH Skies
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Jessica Hayles, Crotalus
January 30, 2019 11:22 PM
This is not helping me take this seriously. by Jessica Hayles, Crotalus
The last time she had been in New York, Jessica had been slightly in the way, so Daddy had handed her one of his cards and deputized an employee to take her to the Met. In the gift shop, she had been taken with a little watch in an enameled case suspended from a long necklace chain, so the card had been used to purchase one, a purchase which now hung very far down her front and offered slight relief to the near-unbroken expanse of shapeless green sack she was being forced to wear.Right now I should be in language arts, she thought as she popped open the case to look at the watch, forgetting to correct for the time difference between Arizona and Atlanta. Her eyes tried to well up at the images of her old school, her old teachers, and her old friends which flashed through her mind, but she blinked hard and pushed it down. She had never been able to stay pretty when she cried. She planned to get out of here as soon as possible, but for at least a little while, she was going to have to live with these people. She had to look her best, or as close to her best as she could get while she was wearing a sack and going around with air-dryed hair.
Instead of crying, then, she looked warily around the classroom, noting similarities and differences to normal classrooms. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the differences or the incongruities to the similarities.
The teacher, Mrs. Skies - Professor Skies; who on earth really called themselves ‘professor’? Jessica had met professors before, from multiple universities; most were simply addressed as ‘Dr.’ – was a subject of particular interest, and not only because she was an authority figure giving a lecture, trying to teach them something. She was also Jessica’s dorm mother (for the time being) – the person she was going to have to approach tonight to get this stupid scheduling situation sorted out. Which was why at one point, she bit her lip instead of raising her hand to ask why, exactly, anyone would ever, in the history of ever, bother turning a cup into a saucer….
This class, she suspected, she was going to have to keep. If she could convince her temporary guardian that she was a model inmate who could be trusted to stop doing the magic, she would have a much better chance of convincing the board or whoever to let her go home sooner rather than later. The liaison had worn them all down into agreeing she would stay until at least eighth grade, but Jessica didn’t think that part was in writing at all, much less properly notarized, so it wasn’t binding. For now, then, she was going to have to waste precious time doing something totally pointless. Her lip tried to curl as she took a teacup from the box. Waste was revolting; it was one of the reasons why they had had to come up with new packaging for the powder foundation compacts last year, to give the company a more eco-friendly image without compromising the appearance of the actual container. Daddy had a team figuring out what people would think of refillable lipstick cases, too, and whether or not multiple designs could be introduced to get people to buy more of them without appearing wasteful….
It was with extreme reluctance that she admitted to herself that at least the mini-lectures about how the magic words came to exist were sort of interesting. She enjoyed social studies most when they talked about history, though she knew she was supposed to care more about the parts about Financial Responsibility and other aspects of how the world worked.
She turned the teacup over in her hands. At home, tea was boiled with sugar, diluted a bit, and then served on ice in tall glasses. Mint and lemon could be added to taste. That was it. Teacups just brought toys to mind for her first, followed by charity events where people wore silly hats and long, long ropes of faux pearls. That thought did not help her address the problem she had with taking this seriously. She was missing at least a whole day of real classes to mutilate dishes?
It did not help that her first attempt to laminate the teacup didn’t work, either.
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Jessica Hayles, Crotalus
This is not helping me take this seriously.
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Jessica Hayles, Crotalus
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Felipe De Matteo, Crotalus
February 06, 2019 10:41 PM
Get yourself together, woman. by Felipe De Matteo, Crotalus
The day to day business of life at Sonora was still entertaining. With everything going on in his own house, there was hardly a need for some of the usual recreational amenities Felipe had had at home, and now he had the additional pleasure of beginning more practical lessons. The fact that transfiguration was one of them was thrilling. Paper and ink were hardly effective methods of teaching. They were much more suitable for note-taking, observation-making, figure-drawing, and plan-making. Felipe did all of these as Professor Skies explained what they would be doing.He had taken care to sit next to a particularly promising Crotalus student. Since they were in the same house, Felipe knew who she was. However, he had not yet spoken to her. Granted, he hadn't yet spoken to most people. But this girl was different because she seemed so utterly disinterested in Sonora.
Felipe was the quiet type himself and appreciated the silence she offered, but when he realized it was not bred of any like-mindedness, he was less enthralled. Particularly because her obviously pitiful existence reminded whatever part of his insides were most wholly shaped by his legacy that he was supposed to be altruistic. Friggin' altruism.
Sending silent thoughts south, towards Mexico and his father and his lovely house that he suddenly missed much more than he had at first, Felipe tried to focus on his assignment. He worked on his transfiguration table as the girl beside him made her first attempt at the spell. Considering how utterly dreadful she looked in general, it was no surprise when it didn't work. Of course, she could've been perfectly put together and still not accomplished a task like this on day one.
Finally, he interrupted her.
"Excuse me," he said, turning slightly towards her and offering a polite smile. "You're Miss Hayles, right? Jessica?" First names seemed just fine but since all these Americans seemed particularly attached to their last names so far, he thought he'd try out both. "I'm Felipe," he said. He didn't, however, remind her that he was a fellow Crotalus first year student, that would come as necessary.
Felipe's hands were on his desk, with a quill and detailed notes scrawled in front of him. They did not brush his dark hair from his brown eyes, they did not attempt to smooth memories from the surface of the teacup the way Jessica's did, and they did not wonder what it would be like to brush the dew from Jessica Hayles' eyes when she looked up at him. Absolutely not. Although perhaps blonde wasn't always an odd color, however common it seemed to be among American girls. It really was such a shame that Jessica's expression didn't look at all pleasant on her face.
"Do you want to work together?" he managed, deciding that was the properly altruistic thing to do.
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Felipe De Matteo, Crotalus
Get yourself together, woman.
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Felipe De Matteo, Crotalus
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Jessica
February 08, 2019 11:06 AM
I'm trying to be cool, but I don't know how yet. by Jessica
A flash of slight confusion, followed by mild pleasure, crossed Jessica’s face when the boy next to her informed her that he knew her name. She recognized him as one of the other students who had been placed in the same dorm she had, but they hadn’t spoken before.“Yes,” she said. “I’m Jessica.”
She wondered how he’d noticed this, among other things – mainly, how long he’d known about his condition and how, as a result, he felt about it. The social worker liaison person had kept talking about this as a ‘world’ with its own communities and culture, which made her think that some of them were like people who were born Deaf and didn’t want cochlear implants – which was fine for them, but Jessica didn’t think it was fair that the man had looked appalled when Jessica had insisted she had no interest in joining anyone’s pride movement and just wanted to get the condition under control and go home. She had no interest in being an inspiring story about the little heiress who had everything until one day she found out she’d had a spontaneous genetic mutation which meant she had to leave her whole life so she could learn to not be a walking, talking time bomb. Jessica hated inspirational stories. The stories themselves were all virtually the same and the characters were inevitably flat, forced to be cardboard cut-outs who weren’t allowed to have real feelings like normal people for more than a few minutes because that wouldn’t fit the narrative. At least she was allowed to feel whatever she wanted, even if she had to try to look better than she often felt.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said politely instead when he introduced himself, her Southern accent extending the first vowel of ‘nice’ and softening the double vowel of ‘you’ until the word was almost more a suggestion of a word than a distinct sound.
She wasn’t sure what he meant by asking if they could work together. “I’m not sure how,” she admitted. “But I don’t really understand what we’re even doing – we’re just – trying to convince the teacup to turn into a saucer?”
Saying it out loud, she could kind of see how that was more impressive than she had initially thought. This was still a completely pointless task, of course, but if she could convince objects in general to stop being themselves and become something else – why, she could never get caught without a mirror or a pen again, in theory. Between that and the relatively interesting lecture, she thought that she would like to keep this class, if possible, when she got her schedule fixed, though just keeping organized had worked well enough for her for eleven years and counting.
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Jessica
I'm trying to be cool, but I don't know how yet.
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Jessica
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Felipe De Matteo
February 10, 2019 3:38 AM
Good thing, because that would just be exhausting. by Felipe De Matteo
Felipe smiled at her accent and then at her word choice. He wondered for a moment if she was unfamiliar with English before deciding it was magic she must be unfamiliar with. Somehow, the idea that transfiguration was the art of convincing something to be something else was sort of beautiful way to think about it. It was the way that farmers talked about coaxing harvests from the ground and that was definitely beautiful. So many beautiful things."A bit like that, yes," he replied, keeping his smile polite. He didn't want to make her think he was teasing her. "You'll probably have to use your wand instead of your words though," he joked. It was a terribly lame joke. It was the sort of thing his father would say to his sister and they were both pretty okay people though, so Felipe accepted it in stride.
"These are to help us think about what things we don't have to change," he said, pointing to the transfiguration table in front of him. "Like I know they are both made of china, so I don't have to change the material. I know they can both contain liquid, so I don't have to make holes or anything. But I know one has a handle and the other doesn't, so I'll have to do something about that." He frowned a bit, suddenly realizing how difficult it all sounded. He couldn't imagine living without magic.
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Felipe De Matteo
Good thing, because that would just be exhausting.
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Felipe De Matteo
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Jessica
February 11, 2019 11:14 PM
I don't think it would be good to run constantly hot. by Jessica
Jessica found a smile when Felipe said that she’d have to use her wand – a concept her brain still seemed to skip over every time it was confronted with it; magic wands belonged to fairy godmothers, not her – instead of her words. “But you heard the lady,” she said, lightly joking as well. “It won’t work without the magic words.”And then she was back to magic words. Magic words were a thing. Magic words were a thing she was supposed to use with a magic wand to cast magic spells to convince one dish to turn into another. This couldn’t be real….
However, unfortunately, the alternative was even worse. If this wasn’t really happening, then Jessica had actually lost her mind and was in an asylum instead of a residential treatment center for a freak genetic condition. Therapy could improve her ability to work around a freak genetic condition. If she was hallucinating all this, she really doubted there was much that could be done for her at all. So this had to be real, because the alternative was actually worse.
“I guess if you flattened a teacup out, the cup and the saucer might have about the same amount of china in them,” she said. “I don’t know – but if you just put a handle on a saucer, it would make you an awful shallow cup.” Which could have its advantages, but which Mrs. – sorry, Professor - Skies might not like very much.
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Jessica
I don't think it would be good to run constantly hot.
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Jessica
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Felipe De Matteo
February 12, 2019 11:07 PM
Well, you're not wrong. by Felipe De Matteo
Felipe cocked his head, fascinated by the train of thought that seemed to have gotten lost shortly after leaving the station and simply choo chooed it's way from Jessica's mouth without heed. It was the sort of thing he'd been desperately missing at home and was grateful for at Sonora. Even if people didn't say nice things all the time, at least they said what they meant. Felipe wasn't sure he even knew how to say exactly what he meant, and appreciated Jessica's tone, shoulders, and eyebrows that said so much all by themselves, that she really wouldn't have had to talk anyway. But she did talk, and that was nice too.He thought it was rather funny to think that the magic words were necessary to cast any magic. He was convinced now that Jessica did not know she was a witch until she found out she'd be attending Sonora, and the idea fascinated him.
"You don't need the magic words," Felipe said in a low voice, almost a whisper. It felt silly to offer it as a secret, but it sort of felt like it somehow. "I bet you've done stuff on accident before, right? You just have to convince it to change its shape and let your magic make it happen." Sitting up a little straighter and looking at Jessica as though she might be capable of doing exactly that, with or without any magic words, he added a caveat for good measure in his regular voice: "But the magic words probably make it a little bit easier. Keeps the magic going where you want it to go."
Thinking that the worst Jessica expected was that she'd conjure a freaking handle to attach to a freaking saucer was almost precious if it wasn't so aggravating. Well, so mainly it was both. He wasn't so confident in these sorts of magical arts, simply because he overthought them. Maybe he should take his own advice.
"What about people?" he asked. "How would I go about convincing you that you are a witch? I just have to make you see that you already are, right? So convince this piece of china," he said, pointing at the dish in front of her, "of what you already know it is." He finished by pointing at the piece of china in front of the closest second year, leaning on visuals to make a point. "Or maybe what you already know it can be."
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Felipe De Matteo
Well, you're not wrong.
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Felipe De Matteo
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Jessica
February 20, 2019 9:07 PM
I rarely am. by Jessica
Jessica’s perfectly penciled eyebrows rose involuntarily as Felipe whispered that the magic words were not, in fact, necessary. They weren’t? So no abracadabra or bibbity-bobbity-boo. This was actually a bit of a relief, as she imagined that was going to help her take this seriously more easily than she otherwise would.“I see,” she said. “I guess that does make sense, with what they said about how I would end up bombing the labs by accident if my parents didn’t send me here.”
Not that Jessica spent much time in the working labs, as it wasn’t safe and she couldn’t touch anything there on the rare occasions she did see the inside, but she did like it when Daddy took her to work and let her sit in on meetings about what was going on around the company, or when they went to the scent room and tested new offerings. She tried to shove the thought of not being there out of her head, not wanting to tear up again. She just had to get through this. She was tough enough to do it. She had to be, because if she wasn’t, how was she going to manage a corporation someday? She just had to wave the stick and will herself to have enough faith and trust and pixie dust to get through this and get released so she could get back to all that.
Felipe’s next point didn’t go over as well, because Jessica already knew exactly what the piece of china in front of her was. It wasn’t what they were supposed to turn it into, otherwise this would not have been a (bizarre, pointless) piece of work. “That is hard to get my head around,” she admitted. “Things usually stay what they are where I’m from.”
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Jessica
I rarely am.
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Jessica
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