I'll try to be patient. on Transfiguration

Selina Skies

February 12, 2022 1:34 AM

Advanced Transfiguration - Wait For It.... by Selina Skies

“Good afternoon,” Selina greeted the advanced class. “We are going to starting a very interesting unit today, on transfigurations that are attached to an object.” Whether or not something was interesting or not was, of course, subjective, but this usually got a few ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ as it involved a lot of the kinds of flashy things that didn’t happen very often in the serious subject of transfiguration. “These are called ‘conditional transfigurations’ and what that means is that the change is enacted by something other than your wandwork, for example, a toy that changes shape when turned in a particular way.” She took a small toy person, raising its arms above its head. When she let go, it continued to move of its own accord, folding itself and changing into a toy racing broom. “Of course, your wandwork is what starts it all off really - you have to have placed the relevant spells on the object in the first place. But the actual effect of the spell is seen later.

“Those of you who take charms will already be familiar with some of the spells we’re using. There is a substantial overlap here. Often, you are using a charm to set conditions - for example, age lines, time lines, and so on - in order for a transfiguration to be enacted.” This was where things got a little messy, as technically she had to teach some charms to people who might not be taking it. However, there were enough commonalities in that charms and transfiguration were both strong wandwork subjects that she was confident they could handle it, even if they hadn’t chosen to study the former subject.

“The first half of this lesson will be spent on the time delay charm. If you have already mastered this, please pair up with a classmate who does not take charms, and help them. You will draw a circle on the table, using the incantation tempus mora. If you are experienced in this charm, you may want to specify or envision a particular time, such as ten to fifteen seconds. As with most charms, the more practised you are, the better your results will be, which you can either channel into strength or precision - therefore you can just cast it, but the better you get the longer and longer the delay will be, or you can work on being precise in the amount of delay. After you have cast, it you, will take one of these.” She held up a simple toy consisting of a pair of wooden balls hanging from a string. “Ordinarily, when you hit these into each other, the movement from the first is transferred into the second.” She demonstrated the effect. That was not actually the purpose of the toy. The purpose was to be dextrous enough to create a steady rhythm of the balls hitting against each other and drive your parents to distraction. But she wasn’t about to point that out, and this other use served her purpose well. “To test your spell, place one ball inside the line, pull the other back, and watch…” She demonstrated. The balls hit together, but there was a sizable pause before the second one flew outwards.

“Once you are getting consistent results with the charm, you will add it onto any simple transfiguration. For example, chavena tempus mori” she cast the teacup spell, which they had first learnt in first year, adding a circle around the paper she was casting it on to the end of the wand motion. It lay there for a count of five - a pause which felt sizable in the silence of the room - before folding itself into a neat, willow-patterned cup.

“For homework, you will research ancient Egyptian uses of time delay spells, particularly transfigruations, in the traps they placed on their tombs. This will be one of several mini research topics will contribute to a knowledge of how these spells have been used throughout history, and which will form the basis of a final essay for this unit. If you finish five transfigurations with a consistent delays of over ten seconds, you may start your research.

OOC: As usual, posts are marked based on length, relevance, creativity, and realism. Enjoy!

The toy I am trying to describe. Looks and functions like a simplified Newton's cradle.

Subthreads:

I'll try to be patient. by Mara Morales with Mab

13 Selina Skies Advanced Transfiguration - Wait For It.... 26 1 5

Mara Morales

March 11, 2022 8:15 PM

I'll try to be patient. by Mara Morales

So far, Mara thought that Advanced classes were pretty okay. From her, that counted as high praise. So far, she wasn't really doing anything that felt like the Real Stuff - the kinds of magic which could, in theory, make her just...as a person, which was a bizarre idea to contemplate from the background she came from - but they were supposed to at various points in the next two years, and the stuff they had now was interesting. They were still producing mostly amusing toys, she thought, but amusing toys were as good a way to learn as any, she guessed.

She had her eyes on her notebook as Professor Skies began to talk about conditional transfigurations because she was taking notes quickly enough that she needed to look at hte paper to make sure she was still writing inside the lines. This was...probably not totally practical stuff, there was probably a simpler way to do all the things that came to mind to do with this spell, but it was still cool. It could doubtless look super-impressive, and impressive was good, too; there was a kind of power just in being impressive. Plus, there were all the potential security applications....

She was also in Advanced Charms, but had not really mastered the time delay charm, at least not to the level she wanted to. It was some combination, she suspected, of being new to the class but also of this being one of the places where her personality became a problem with a spell. Dad always had said she was a little too aggressive, too quick to act, just as he said that Jessica was too afraid of blowback to be aggressive enough. Delaying wasn't really a frequent entry in her playbook; her major complaint about Potions was was the amount of waiting involved, sometimes with nothing else to do but wait just in case something went wrong. At least she wasn't coming to the time delay charm new, though, so that was an advantage - even if she never could stop being impatient about how hard it was to get to the place where she could combine strength with precision.

The toy presented was simple enough, as was the explanation of the physics behind it, but the spell demonstration underlined just how casual the wizarding world really was about just...breaking physics. She was mostly used to it after five years, but sometimes it could still catch her off-guard, especially when there was some reference to the principles they were about to break. Logically, she knew that physics also couldn't explain the toys Professor Skies had used, but there was something about it - it was easy, she guessed, to believe there was a trick to it, like there was to those automata from the Renaissance or the Enlightenment or whenever she was thinking of. This thought - energy was being...what? Pent up? Transforming between forms during the delay?

Ask Professor Wright about that, she scribbled into a margin. Upper limits to how much you can do? Explosions?

If nothing else, she thought, that information might be helpful in thinking about the charm. Could they more or less form a rainy day stash of magic, like one could with money? That was an interesting idea.

So were ancient Egyptian tomb traps. She'd mention this stuff to Bertie, she decided; ancient Egyptians had not been hugely into Latin for a lot of the pyramid-building phase of things, at least if she remembered that unit from school correctly. Cleopatra (the famous one) had spoken Latin, along with like fourteen other languages, and Rome had been around for a while before her, but she'd been at the end of a whole long dynasty. It would be as interesting as anything to see where the drift in magical practice began, and why, and what the old ways had been. She hoped this project at least covered the theory of that stuff, because it had to be different from what they generally learned - their spells didn't really last long by many standards at all, much less on the scale that tomb curses had lasted.

- Can't be a time delay, though - tcs trigger when someone breaks in, not at a specific time?

- Unless they were just that good at Divination. Unlikely, though.

- Did wizards back then know they were just manipulating a force, or did they believe it was just because of the religious parts of their rituals? Does what you think about the source affect what you can do?

Of course, she wasn't sure how much of this was at all relevant to what Professor Skies wanted her to hand in. What Professor Skies definitely wanted her to do right now, though, was work on the practical lesson, so she got to that.

"Neat stuff, huh?" she asked a neighbor. "I keep thinking there has to be a trick somewhere."

16 Mara Morales I'll try to be patient. 1472 0 5

Mab

March 19, 2022 7:41 PM

They say patience is a virtue by Mab

Mab was not fantastic at Charms or Transfiguration or even Dueling, despite being the new Dueling Club president. Her wandwork had shown improvement since she learned the theory behind how wands actually worked, and she could usually get her spells to do the things she wanted them to do now, but they were never as strong or as fluid as she thought they should be. Still, she managed well enough to pull As in her practical exams, and her theory was strong enough to bump that up to a E overall for her CATS, so she'd been able to keep DADA, Charms and Transfigurations as classes going into her Advanced years. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do when she was done with school, but she figured wand competency was a requirement for most fields, so all three wand heavy classes were still in her schedule, in part to challenge herself and get in all the practice she could, and in part because she thought learning the deeper theory might actually help her master the lower level spells most people seemed to just get when they were beginners.

So far though, the spells were just getting harder and more complicated, building on skills she didn't really have, and she thought she might soon have to swallow her pride and start going to some of the extra help sessions, instead of just beating her wand against the wall of her room, trying it again and again and again, until she finally managed some kind of consistency producing the effect she was trying to achieve, though never as powerful, never as clean as she wanted to see, as she thought she should be able to do.

When Professor Skies today asked who was taking Charms, Mab raised her hand because she was, but she had no intention of pairing off with someone who hadn't taken the class, because 'mastered the charm' was not how she would describe her competency with time delay magic. She could manage it with some precision, but not for particularly long. She was still lacking the strength half of true mastery, and this was unfortunately true of nearly all of her wand work.

'Over ten seconds' was a doable length, though fifteen seconds was about as long as she had ever managed to hold a time delay. She thought she could handle twelve seconds pretty consistently though. She would run the delay on the balls for about that long, to double check she still had it, maybe even try to bump it to fifteen if she could, so when she added the transfiguration - another skill that did not come naturally to her, though it was a Beginner level one thankfully so she shouldn't struggle with it too badly - she could fall back to an easier time delay interval.

She got one of the tied together sets of balls, and cast the time delay circle. When she tested it though, there was only a seven second delay before the movement passed on to the other ball. Blast. She'd fallen out of practice with this one, she guessed. Okay. Just ten seconds for now. Build up to fifteen. It was like lifting weights. You didn't start with the heaviest one you could do first. She already knew strength wasn't her strength.

She psyched herself up for another go, but her neighbor spoke before she could cast it. For a moment, Mab just blinked at Mara, trying to change gears from performing an incantation to answering a direct question.

Was it neat? She guessed it was neat. This was a kind of pointless use for the effect, but she could imagine there might be times it would be useful, particularly if it was triggered by something other than strictly elapsed time, which judging by the assignment about Egyptian tomb traps, they would be getting to soon enough. "Well, the ancient tombs kind of had tricks," she remarked dryly, with just a hit of a smile. "It's pretty neat," she admitted, "that we're starting to see how all the magic building blocks come together to do the big things like that. I mean, Cursed Egyptian tombs are kind of a big deal. Even muggles know about those, even if they only kind of believe in the curses."

1 Mab They say patience is a virtue 1473 0 5