Grayson Wright
June 30, 2020 1:33 PM
Avoiding a Splash (Intermediates). by Grayson Wright
To live was to experience stress, and certain situations had increased it for Grayson Wright recently. On one particular morning, however, he couldn’t help but begin the day in a somewhat elevated mood, with Before breakfast and the Beginner’s class, very early, he had put his manuscript together, checked it over one more time, tied up with the string, wrapped it up in paper, tied the paper up in string, and then sent his second novel off to the publisher.This was not, of course, the end of the work. Far, far from it. All too soon, the manuscript would come back to him, heavily annotated in at least a couple of hands that were not his. The long process of revising, rewriting, sending letters back and forth, jumping through hoops to arrange face-to-face meetings with this person or that one…it would be a long, long process. It was not, admittedly, as long a process as it could be – he was not exactly writing high literature of the sort the firm would take the utmost care with – but it was a long enough process nevertheless. Much of it would be tedious, some of it ego-bruising, and even once he got paid for it, it would be months at least before he could be sure the book would make back that advance and that he would therefore not need to return any of the money to the publisher. For now, though, it was done, it was done a bit ahead of deadline, even, and he was pleased with that.
“Good morning everyone,” he said, putting his battered old case on the his desk and looking around at the third, fourth, and fifth years. “Welcome. We’ll get to why there’s a wading pool beside my desk in a few minutes, but in the meantime, I hope you all finished the reading I assigned you last class about the relationship between circular wand movements and ancient circle-based magic, because that’s where we’ll be starting today….”
He flicked his wand toward the blackboard, where a circle shape appeared to illustrate.
“Ancient wizards used circle shapes for a variety of purposes, including some we now mainly use wands for directly – mainly, as a way to focus power in a narrow field, to increase the power of the incantations performed with it. Wands are…rather safer than ritual circles, though they have the drawback that it’s harder for multiple wizards to work together on particularly complex spells or effects, and that wands are a little bit alive themselves – wands usually draw on both magical flora and magical fauna to work, and several kinds are known for instability – sycamore, I think, is the one that can explode if it gets bored, maple wands become difficult if the user doesn’t constantly learn new spells, or at least find new contexts, there’s a few they say will never properly bond with an owner until they’re carried through trouble, which I imagine makes it a bit intimidating if your wandmaker tells you that about your wand when you get it…gets a little too close to prophecies for me. Specifics of wand woods, though, are outside the scope of my subject, you’ll want to talk to Professor Xavier about those.
“Back to charms – even after we perfected wand technology for everyday uses, we discovered that circular and semicircular movements were often effective for further directing magic. There are many arguments about whether this is more closely related to mathematics – circles and spheres have a number of interesting mathematical properties; the ancient Greeks considered them emblems of perfection – or to the relationship between astronomy and practical spellcasting.
“Some of our oldest ideas about the relationship between the Sun and our abilities have been proven inaccurate – can anyone tell me what the problem there was?” He looked for someone who knew that those ideas ran contrary to the fact of heliocentrism. “Excellent – we conceived ideas about movements at a time when we believed the sun moved around the earth, instead of the other way around. When I move my wand like this – “ he demonstrated an arc moving east to west – “I am not following the course of the sun, but of the earth. When I move my wand like this – “he made an arc in the opposite direction – I am not somehow communicating with the universe that I wish to remove light, because the source of light doesn’t move – at least not as far as our purposes here go.
“However, one reason why heliocentrism had to struggle for acceptance in the wizarding community is because we have substantial amounts of data which support the idea that things like the time of day or time of year do impact magic. In Potions and Herbology, you’ve learned about plants which are best gathered at night, or during certain phases of the moon. In potions, also, you may be asked to make a certain number of clockwise and counterclockwise stirs, for possibly related reasons. In the case of some charms we’re going to look at today, it’s observable that one of them is harder to work in cloudy weather. So. On to that.
“Third and fourth years, you’ll be working on the drying charm – a very useful little spell. Over here, you’ll find a bowl of water and a collection of handkerchiefs – take a handkerchief, dip it in the water, wring it out, please, so you don’t drip too much, and then practice the drying charm on it. The incantation for this spell is adesiccico and you’ll make an upward flick movement – like so.” Holding his wand in his right hand, he flicked it upward to the left, a slight outward arc. “A partial, shallow counter-clockwise arc – consider how what we’ve just talked about could be argued to be related to this movement. Fifth years, you’ll start looking at the related, but much more powerful, Drought Charm – a charm which you’ll practice in pairs over this wading pool.” He pointed to the pool he had told them to ignore earlier, a shallow thing which would likely scarcely be more than ankle-deep even on the shorter fifth years; he’d asked his cousin if she still had the one her kid had used when it was smaller, but while she hadn’t, Anne was one of those people who inevitably knew someone – or at least knew someone who knew someone – who could get you a hippogriff and a presidential pardon by the morrow, if you needed it. He hoped he wasn’t terribly upsetting some toddler he was within four degrees of separation from by depriving it of its pool for the day; it was not yet really cold weather, but he’d not like to go swimming in it if he could avoid it, so hopefully not.
“The most common use for the drought charm is to clear up puddles, though very powerful adult witches and wizards can take on whole ponds,” he informed them. “It’s more efficient when used by teams, though. You’ll need to carefully synchronize your wand movements and speech as far as you can while working. Your wand movements begin with a counter-clockwise circle and finish with a flick to the right.” He demonstrated this. “Incantation is exaresco.” There was an excellent chance at least one group would get it just close enough and simultaneously far enough away from right that the water would re-coalesce in the air and create a splash, but he had cast an impervious charm on everything on his desk and the desk itself earlier, so hopefully that would be all right.
“You’ll practice on these for most of class today, but if you should finish early, start the chapter in your textbook about the environmental impact of these charms, and if you want, looking at these books I’ve pulled here about water magic,” he informed them, nodding to a small rolling shelf of library books. “The links to astral magic should become clear quickly – perhaps even as quickly as you all probably became aware that you’ll have extended response questions on these topics on your next exam,” he added with a slight smile. “Let me know if you have questions or run into unexpected difficulty, and begin.”
OOC: Welcome to Intermediate Charms! As usual, all posting rules apply, tag Professor Wright if you need an IC intervention, and remember that while you’re welcome and encouraged to create drama and interesting discussions, Professor Wright will intervene before anything gets too out of hand – if you hex a classmate, he’ll notice, and if you start a screaming match, someone will get sent out to calm down, etc. If you have OOC questions, tag me on the OOC board or catch me in Chatzy. Have fun!
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Grayson Wright
Avoiding a Splash (Intermediates).
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