Professor Skies

July 16, 2019 8:04 AM
Professor Skies surveyed the assembled beginners, hoping that the first years were feeling settled - she perhaps needed to hope that for one or two of the second years as well - and that everyone was having a good first day of classes.

"Welcome to Transfiguration," she smiled, an act which emphasised the lines around her mouth and eyes, "I am Deputy Headmistress Skies, though in class you may simply address me as 'Professor.' I will be your Transfiguration teacher.

"Transfiguration is one of the more complex branches of magic, and I should warn you now that it may take you some time to get results. That said, it can be incredibly useful. In general, it is the art of turning one object into another. As you progress, you will also learn how to make objects vanish or to conjure them from nothing. Beyond the studies we offer here, select magical people who are especially adept at transfiguration can learn to transform themselves into animals whilst maintaining their human minds." It was deeply tempting to finish this with 'like so' and turn herself into an owl, but remembering the degree of culture shock some of the Muggleborns had from things like talking and moving paintings, she decided that seeing their teacher transform into an owl might be something to save for another time.

"Today, we are going to start much more simply. You are going to be given a paper plate and will try to transfigure it into a china one. When we transfigure, we take into mind all elements of an object - its shape, its function, its material. With today's task, many of those elements have been removed - you have only one feature to concentrate on, and that should make things significantly easier for you.

"Second years, seeing as that task would be rather too easy for you, you will be taking a side plate along with your paper plate, and will be trying to replicate the pattern to make a matching set - and believe me, I have means of telling the difference between a transfigured plate and a side plate with an engorgement charm on it," she warned them, in case anyone thought that was a clever shortcut.

"All of you will be using the spell lateramen and a gliding wand motion, like so," she demonstrated, holding up the finished plate which had a fine border of pink flowers. “Your homework will be to look up the origin of this spell. You should also look up the definitions of source spells and target spells in your textbook, and identify which this is. I would like you to identify three more spells of each kind, and we will begin next lesson by going around collecting everyone’s examples,” she warned them. Behind her, the chalk wrote the homework on the board in swirling, elegant cursive, along with notes and diagrams for the spell they would be using that day.

“You may talk quietly to your neighbours. Help each other if you get stuck, or call me over. If you are satisfied with your results, or need a break from the practical, you can start your homework during the lesson. 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 already more similar to each other, so there’s a little more scope for differing results. You are also free to make up relevant information that your character is reading in their textbook.

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:
13 Professor Skies Beginners - Life's a Picnic! 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Jezebel Fischer-Reed

July 18, 2019 12:03 PM
Of all the things that Professor Skies said in her introductory material, one particular phrase stood out to Jezebel: second years, seeing as that task would be rather too easy for you... Jezebel took a moment to look around the room at the faces of the second year students and see that they were not so different from hers, except for the lack of cold fear that seemed to permeate the expressions of some of her fellow classmates. Granted, they didn't all look as confident as Professor Skies seemed to think they should be, but that was just it: Professor Skies was confident in the class as a whole. It wasn't jut she firmly believed in the ability of one student or another, but in the class as a whole. Second years, in general, could do this task easily. If that was all it took - one year of magical education - to start literally changing the physical matter of one thing into another thing, then the next seven years were going to prove very helpful indeed.

With this in mind, Jezebel was hardly worried. She was also pretty sure that she wasn't going to be able to make it work, but that was probably normal. She thought of her mom and wondered whether it was the sort of thing that she would call "faith." Ekene Reed always insisted that if you didn't believe God could do something or other, then He definitely wouldn't prove you wrong. You had to believe it and have faith before it was going to happen. Jezebel wasn't sure what she thought of that, but it didn't seem to help anyway. The whole point for her mom was that God could absolutely be trusted and you could absolutely have faith in Him to do - or at least be able to do - whatever it was that you were praying about. In this case, Jezebel was placing her faith in an eleven year old girl with no knowledge and limited ability to break the laws of science. It didn't help that that eleven year old girl was herself.

Trying to stifle her sigh, and the feelings of being a permanent disappointment to her poor mother, Jezebel turned to the student next to her. She offered a weak smile and held up her paper plate.

"Give me a pair of scissors and I can make a mask out of this," she joked, trying to find some humor in the situation. At least if she came across as funny, then she wouldn't have to actually deal with her problems. "But I've got no idea how to make the magic happen and get china out of it. How do we even begin?"
22 Jezebel Fischer-Reed So this will get easier then? 1454 Jezebel Fischer-Reed 0 5

Hilda Hexenmeister, Pecari

July 19, 2019 10:53 AM
Hilda was already having a bad year. Her initial goal to try harder at this whole Being an American thing had run repeatedly into multiple language barriers, not least of which was trying to get her German tongue around unfamiliar words like ‘Hippogriff hypothesis’ just to get let into the Pecari common room. She hated Professor O’Malley just a little bit for that one. Hilda might have illegally divulged the House password to an Aladren just to be sure the woman wasn’t cheerfully throwing unpronounceable nonsense at them for fun and giggles.

Heinrich had to look them up, but he confirmed they were both real English words, if not ones that had any business being paired together.

Worse than the password though was returning to classes and the deluges of English that made up the professors’ lectures. Hilda was catching more than she had last year, but that was like saying a crup was better at playing Quidditch than a kneazle was. Crups could catch balls, but neither could fly brooms or understand the rules.

So she sat through the transfigurion lesson, catching a word or phrase here and there but not grasping the overall play. The word plate came up a lot. She knew that one. It was part of a table setting. She just wasn’t entirely certain if it was the flat thing she put her sandwich on, or the curved thing that held her cereal.

When Professor Skies demonstrated turning a paper flat dish into a china flat dish with pretty flowers, though, Hilda figured she knew enough to guess at their assignment. Demonstrations were usually a pretty conclusive indicator for what was expected of them during a lesson.

Also the chalkboard was filling up with words, and written English was a lot easier to decipher than spoken English. Hilda got out her German-English dictionary and started the arduous task of translating.

She had gotten far enough to realize she translating a homework assignment and not the class exercise when the first year next to her spoke. There were words. Some she knew, most she didn’t. Give ... this ... no idea (Hilda could sympathize with that one) ... How do we even begin?

Overwhelmed. Hilda knew about overwhelmed. She picked up her wand, and tried to explain, in a language she was nowhere near proficient in. “Wand. Move.” She repeated the movement she’d seen Professor Skies do. “Think.” She touched a finger to her temple. “Picture.” She moved her wand again, and said, “Word.” She couldn’t remember the incantation, and she hadn’t gotten that far in her translation of the board, so she just gestured vaguely in that direction on the assumption it was up there somewhere. She tapped her temple again, in emphasis, “Picture,” she repeated.

Hopefully, that made even a little bit of sense to the new witch. Or at least gave her a place to start, as she’d asked for.

With those perhaps overly simplistic instructions for how to begin out of the way, she pointed to the center of her chest and added, “Hilda.”
1 Hilda Hexenmeister, Pecari Ich weiß nicht. 1433 Hilda Hexenmeister, Pecari 0 5

Jezebel Reed-Fischer

July 20, 2019 4:58 PM
Jezebel was quiet for a moment, taking in what had just happened. Her classmate's accent was heavy and seemed genuine so she was pretty sure she wasn't being made fun of. That happened sometimes at school -- or . . . at her old school -- but she didn't think that's what was happening here. Besides, the words that the girl managed actually were sort of helpful and they came with an introduction.

"Jezebel," she offered, smiling and pointing to herself in mimicry. "Or Jazz."

She pondered the rest of the advice for a moment, trying to sort out whether she was supposed to make a picture in her head, and how exactly that was meant to help. She felt like magic was supposed to come from someplace, but she wasn't sure where to draw from.

"Word?" she confirmed, pointing to where she'd written down the incantation. Deciding to take full advantage of her notes, she drew the paper plate, then an arrow and some bits of swirly goodness happening around a thinking face, and then a china plate. "Picture that?" she confirmed, pointing to the decent likeness she'd managed, and then pointing to her own forehead. "Where does the magic come From, though?"
22 Jezebel Reed-Fischer Something something something? 1454 Jezebel Reed-Fischer 0 5

Hilda

July 26, 2019 1:22 PM
Hilda thought that if all people talked in such short sentences and supplemented them with drawings as Jazz did, she’d be doing a lot better at Sonora.

She nodded when Jazz questioned whether the word she had written in her notes was the word she was talking about. It looked suitably Not-German-Or-English to be an incantation, so she guessed it was the right one. She nodded again at the accuracy of the sketch. “Ja, perfekt.” She did not bother translating that to English because she was pretty certain she did not need to. The nodding should translate the ja part and perfekt was just about the same in English. Hilda’s favorite English words were the ones she didn’t need to learn because England hadn’t messed them up too badly when it corrupted Old German. Stupid England. Stupid French invaders.

The next question was going to be harder to answer though. There had been more words, but Hilda was getting better at picking out the important ones and ignoring the rest, and this time she thought those were ‘Where magic from?’ and there wasn’t really an easy answer to that, even if the two girls had both been fluent in the same language.

She touched her temple, “Magic.” She touched her heart, “Magic.” She touched each of her arms, “Magic.” She touched both of her hands, “Magic.” She touched her feet, “Magic.” Her legs, “Magic.” Her stomach. “Magic.”

She paused a moment, trying to figure out how to express the next bit. She gestured sweeping movements from her extremities in toward her center, “From allen.” She lifted her wand, and said, “Der Fokus.” She pointed to its tip. “Magic from you, out wand.” She touched her temple again, “Think, picture” she struggled, not having the vocabulary to express what she wanted to say, “Magic does picture. Need picture oder keine Magie. Or no magic,” she repeated, correcting herself when she realized belatedly that she had accidentally slipped into German in her effort to break it down into the simplest of concepts.

She hoped that was close enough. She hoped that helped. She hoped most of it had actually been in English.

“Sorry. Mine Englisch ist not gut.”



OOC: Thanks, Google translate.
1 Hilda Magie kommt von euch allen 1433 Hilda 0 5

Jezebel Reed-Fischer

July 26, 2019 1:32 PM
For someone who clearly struggled with the English language, Hilda communicated pretty dang well. Considering how overwhelming and complicated everything seemed to be at Sonora, this breakdown was a lot more comforting than the older girl probably realized. Their topic of conversation was a topic which had been on Jezebel's mind since she'd been accepted to Sonora, and she still wasn't sure how she felt about it. She'd talked to Dathan a little bit, but their families were too different - even if it was really all one big family - for them to relate too much on this front.

"I am magic," Jezebel summarised.

She thought the whole thing was a bit like being an artist; the art and the skill came from the person and their brain and such, but the product of their work came from the way all of that was focused through the end of a paintbrush. She wondered whether she could take up art at Sonora; it might help her with her magic, too.

"Your English is better than my German," Jezebel said, smiling. "But really, your English is not bad."

Good would have been a stretch, but not bad was true enough. After all, the biggest problem seemed to be with limited vocabulary and structure, not with the words themselves. Jezebel had understood just fine.

"Can I watch you do yours first?" she added, nodding at the plates and pointing to Hilda. She wasn't sure I need to know this is actually possible for us would make any sense to her, so she settled on pointing at herself and making a distinctly uncertain face, before pointing back to Hilda with a more pleasant expression. "It will help me."
22 Jezebel Reed-Fischer I knew a guy named Allen once. 1454 Jezebel Reed-Fischer 0 5