Grayson Wright
November 15, 2020 4:28 PM
Of Words and the Will (Advanced Charms) by Grayson Wright
Grayson Wright!Of course I remember you – I’m almost as surprised you’d think I wouldn’t as I am to hear that you’ve read my book! You understood it very well – you must have paid more attention in class than I ever thought back in the day. See included for responses to specific questions.
Teaching, huh? I wondered why I hadn’t heard of any new broadcasts for a while. Quite the change! It’s hard to think at all seriously about you teaching, of all things, at least the way I remember you! If you’re ever up north, we must have a drink so I can find out how that ever happened.
Best regards,
Emma
It was always strange – not to mention slightly embarrassing – to realize that people from his past did, in fact, remember him. He never would understand why they did that, he thought, almost irritably. People somehow, surprisingly consistently, seemed to remember him, no matter how illogical that was for them to do. In college, for instance, he had mostly minded his own business, stayed out of people’s ways, scribbled endlessly in his notebooks – in short, done just as he had done before college, and for the most part had done since college – and yet, old classmates, passing acquaintances, far too many of them seemed to remember more often than he thought made a scrap of logical sense for them to do.
At least, he thought, it was of some benefit to his students this time. It had been a gamble, writing to Emma to check his comprehension of her new book; he would not have been surprised at all if she had ignored him utterly. Apparently, though, he was surprisingly memorable, enough to be interesting, even…People from school had listened to his shows? In the grand scheme of things, this probably was more likely than Lawrence having done so, and Lawrence had done so, but it still made him shake his head a bit.
The possibility that he was semi-famous and perhaps slightly charismatic, however, was a matter to dwell on later. For now, he and the Advanced class were ready to examine fundamentals of incantation construction.
“Back in your intermediate classes,” he began after everyone was settled and the class had been greeted and general formalities had been gotten out of the way, “you began learning the basics of spell modification and customization. Ways to make certain tasks simpler for you, or accommodate for areas where you or your wand components might be weaker, and so forth. Those basics are the things I asked you all to review before this class because they include some of the building blocks for a subject we’re going to look at in several sub-units spaced throughout this year – the subject of incantation formation.”
He paused for a moment to attempt a somewhat stern look. “When you were first years, you all learned how important it was to make sure you said your incantations exactly correctly, with your mind focused on the spell and your wand movements all precisely made,” he reminded them. “Keep that in mind. Playing around with spells is dangerous, which is why you’re just learning the theory in class – it’s included in the RATS curriculum for the benefits of anyone who might want to go into research after Sonora, and one of your projects for this year will be to hand in a proposal for a novel charm – I’ll give you more information on that at the end of class – but you shouldn’t go around trying to cast unapproved spells. In Potions, you learn to make antidotes, but you aren’t supposed to give anyone an antidote that hasn’t been approved by a qualified Healer. In the same way, you shouldn’t cast a spell that hasn’t been approved by the committee or panel at MACUSA which deals with that department.”
He looked around at the class, daring to hope that this lot didn’t contain too many students who’d be tempted to push that boundary – well, at least not past the point of reason. It was too much to hope that they would all play by the rules completely – he had been insufficiently invested and too cautious to try anything when he’d been a student, but even he had felt the curiosity, the desire to test himself and his abilities. He found it impossible to imagine many people less magically ambitious than he had been at seventeen, and he would put money on most people being moreso. Still, they were a ruly group, for the most part, the sixth and seventh years. It was unlikely that everyone would keep the letter of the rule, the temptation to See was simply too much for some types, but it felt safe to assume that one of Sonora’s occasional campus-wide disasters wasn’t too likely a result, with this class….
“Now,” he continued, with a short clap of his hands as punctuation to the opening part of the lesson. “Now that we have all those formalities out of the way, we can get to the good stuff. Copy this down – “
The chalk had begun to draw on the board behind him, forming a chart. In the first three boxes at the top were incantations: accio, confundo, and descendo.
“Here we’ll find out how many of you read the supplement boxes in your textbook – or perhaps had Latin tutors growing up,” he acknowledged. “Can anyone tell me what these incantations literally mean in Latin?”
He took answers, prompting and filling in as needed, until he had written the words he wanted in each of the boxes below the incantations: I summon, I mix up; I jumble, and I descend.
“Very good,” he said. “Anyone care to speculate about which of these doesn’t quite fit with the other two, and to explain why?”
He looked for the answer - descendo. Both of the others had an implied object that made a smooth English sentence – I summon it, I jumble it - or, more in keeping with the spell’s use, this person’s wits - up. I descend it, however, implied that the speaker was using a ladder or a staircase, and this was not what the spell customarily did – instead, it made other objects move from a higher point to a lower.
“Very good,” he said when he managed to get the parts of this answer out of his students. “However, if you look a bit further, there’s another answer to my question - confundo and descendo are both third conjugation verbs, while accio is a fourth conjugation verb. I won’t ask you to know what those words mean in particular,” he added with a slight smile, suspecting many of the students felt a surge of relief at these words. “Just know that they illustrate the danger of making assumptions about words based on superficial similarities – in this case, the ending o.
“The reason for this is…almost simple,” he said. “It’s that in the centuries when wizards began to develop standardized charms and organizations for communicating them – schools, councils, and so forth – Latin was still a living language.” Here was where Emma’s work became relevant. “From the early medieval period – around the time Hogwarts School was founded, in what would eventually become the English-speaking magical world – until around the sixteenth century, the language was…flexible, and it wasn’t uncommon for words to be adapted to use the endings of classes other than their original ones. One theory about why this works for magical purposes is related to nonverbal magic – essentially, incantations are aids to concentration, which is the essence of magic. The witch or wizard speaks his or her will into existence. I summon that thing. I make the flying object come down. I jumble someone’s perception of immediate reality. As for our friend descendo - one reason the designer of this charm may have constructed it this way is because there were already earlier charms that had the -o construction. It makes the incantations easier to remember, which helps make them more practical. That, combined with the drift from classical Latin to vulgar Latin to modern Romance languages causing words to assume new meanings, would result in an incantation that doesn’t make much sense directly translated, but which worked in context, and got passed down until the present day, where it works for us because – so the theory goes – we expect it to, because we see it do so for others.
“So. For today’s class, I want you each to pick a charm. I have enough dictionaries for you to share in pairs – look for etymology and notes, and compare it to the incantations we’ve just discussed. You’ll probably find single-word incantations easier to work with for purposes of this, but you can try others out if you want. Determine if you think the incantation fits with the ideas we've been discussing or if it seems like an outlier. Compare your results, assess each other’s work. In fifteen minutes, the class will come back together to discuss your outcomes. Any questions? Everything clear as mud? Pair up, one person from each pair ca come get a dictionary, and then you can begin.”
OOC: OOC: Here, friends, have some resources!
List of Spells in Harry Potter
Latin Spells in Harry Potter
Why Is The Latin In Harry Potter So Lousy
Latin Verbs
Latin-English Dictionary (a nice clear one for seeing translations and classification etc.)
Latin Verb Conjugation (very thorough on the conjugations - ego means "I" [as in "I descend" - "ego descendo", though 'ego' would usually only be used for emphasis in context], tu means "you, singular informal", is means "he" [as in "he walks"], nos means "we" [we run], vos is "you, plural; you all" ["you all fight"], ii is the "they" form ["they go" etc.])
English-Latin Dictionary
So, beyond that? Want to make up a contradictory theory? Make up your own incantations? Go wild! Impress me and I will give you points! Have fun!
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Grayson Wright
Of Words and the Will (Advanced Charms)
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Beau Tate
December 11, 2020 8:50 AM
Can't we do something interesting? by Beau Tate
It was Beau's last year at Sonora and in some ways, he was glad. He was not at all going to miss school work one little bit. On the other hand, he was really not looking forward to giving up his freedom and working at some time-sucking, soul-sucking job. The Pecari couldn't imagine anything less enjoyable and he couldn't think of anything he wanted to do for the rest of his life that would actually make him money. Beau wasn't aware of a job that was a non-stop party. Maybe being a rock star? But then, he would have to be good at an instrument or singing and he wasn't. Getting good at those things would have taken way more effort a long time ago than he had ever been willing to put forth.He sighed inwardly as Professor Wright began speaking....and speaking...and speaking. About things Beau was not interested in. As usual. Okay, the idea of making up one's own spell was a fun idea in theory. Knowing Professor Wright though he probably wanted them to think of all the "how and why does this work" kinds of things that Gary had been talking about last year.
Honestly, Aladrens . It wasn't as if Beau thought they were bad people-although some probably were- or somehow inferior to Pecaris or anything else. It was just that they seemed to care an awful lot about things that the general population found boring. Once again, he had to admire his mother's stamina for putting up with boring housemates.
And now Professor Wright was claiming this was the good stuff. It seemed that, once again, he was assuming that they were all super academically inclined Aladren types.Beau really could not have cared less about the roots of spells or how they came to be or what they meant in Latin or anything, just how to do them. That, after all, was why he was taking Advanced Charms. Because it was a thing that was a major part of being a wizard and it was important to be able to do things magically. It was literally what separated them from the Muggles.
He groaned inwardly. Not only was the lecture dull, but the assignment was too. Look up words! Why couldn't they do something practical ? Beau turned to the person next to him. "Do you want to work together?"
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Beau Tate
Can't we do something interesting?
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