Am I in the right place? on Charms

Grayson Wright

June 14, 2024 10:07 PM

Beginner Charms - Round and round we go. by Grayson Wright

When the Beginners entered their Charms lesson, it would not have been entirely unreasonable for them to have done a double take and spent a dizzy moment thoroughly bewildered and wondering if they’d just walked into the wrong classroom. This was perhaps especially a risk for the first years, who were still very new to their classes in the magical arts, but even the second years could be forgiven, considering the relative oddity of walking into the Charms classroom and finding the desks all set up with cauldrons, though without burners underneath them.

“Hello!” Professor Wright greeted them cheerily, confirming either that they were in the right classroom or that he was the one undergoing some confusion, whichever the student preferred to think. “Come in, come in...we’re starting a new spell today.”

Charms of locomotion were a first-semester standard for Beginners, progressing from simple forward motion until they reached the end of the long unit, when the students would have progressed first through levitation and finally into deliberately aiming the objects they levitated. They were not quite to that point yet, but they were, more or less, ready to work on automated motion.

“One thing you’ll all realize, if you haven’t realized it already,” Professor Wright informed the class once the bell had rung and everyone was more or less settled, “is that there’s often some overlap between different types of magic. A lot of the time, that means there’s more than one way to achieve a similar effect – Potions and Charms especially overlap in that way, there’s a lot of times when you can choose whether to use a charm or a potion depending on what you’re more comfortable with and what you’re better at, but there’s some cases where you can substitute in Transfiguration as well, to one extent or another. And, of course, most of the spells you learn in Defense Against the Dark Arts are just a specialized sub-branch of Charms. However, you’ll find that there are also times when you can at least benefit from using two types of magic in the same operation, if you’re careful and know what you’re doing.

“You’ve probably already guessed which of your school subjects today’s charm has the most applicability to, just based on the unusual equipment I arranged for you to have today. In some cases, very specific ones, this spell can be useful with simple potions, at least if those potions allow the use of a wooden stirring implement.” An odd point in the overlaps between Charms and Potions lay in the subject of metal; metal-charming was a specialty, one where people tended to find some metals significantly easier than others to work with and where most people didn’t have an excess of natural talent for it at all (Professor Wright himself was no better than indifferent at it, and found it difficult to accomplish even indifference, though he was capable of giving the Advanced class at least a brief introduction to it), and in Potions, using the wrong spoon or knife or type of cauldron could be a one-way ticket to disaster, or at least complete and total failure. Beginners presumably already knew a little about that, between the regulations about cauldrons and silver chopping knives, but Professor Wright refrained from elaborating further on the subject. It was not his natural response to information, but he’d been practicing, trying to cut down the amount of extraneous information he gave students, though he doubted he’d ever purge his lectures of it completely. “It’s also a very practical spell if you ever happen to cook, or put milk in your tea or coffee, or mix up a cup of hot cocoa. We’re just using cauldrons because it gives you a bit more room to work with if anyone gets too enthusiastic. Today, we’re going to continue our studies of charms of locomotion by learning about the automatic stirring charm.”

There was another small cauldron on the professor’s lectern, and he turned his attention to it. It, like the student cauldrons, contained only water and the end of a wooden spoon, the handle of which protruded above the rim of the cauldron. “Suscitare,” he said, clearly and firmly – efforts had been made to drub those words so thoroughly into the students’ heads that they would hopefully find themselves automatically thinking of the way they should say incantations any time they thought about using a verbal incantation – and tapped the end of the spoon three times. Of its own accord, it moved through the liquid three times in three identical, measured circles.

“An advantage of this charm is that it stirs at a consistent speed, which can affect how some things turn out. As I just demonstrated, you also determine how many times the spoon will stir whatever you’ve put it into by tapping the end of it three times with your wand. The first years should focus their attention on getting the spoon to stir the water in the cauldron once without faltering, and the second years should aim for three rotations. This spell automatically moves the spoon in clockwise circles, and we’ll discuss how to achieve counter-clockwise circles in a day or two, depending on how well today and the first part of class tomorrow go.” Another thing which they had probably grown thoroughly tired of hearing in their very first classes was that everyone progressed at their own pace and that they should expect the mastery of a new charm to take time. “You should also take the time to read the section in chapter two of your textbooks about how different geometric figures are more or less complex to move an object through, and I’d recommend writing a summary of it in your own words once you have. For now, though, you may begin.”

OOC: Welcome to Charms! All posting rules apply. If you need the professor for anything, just tag him in the post title and I'll be along soon. Be creative, use good spelling and grammar, and, above all else, have fun!

Subthreads:

Am I in the right place? by Yale Adams with Araminta Fairthorne

Charming. by Kerri Stonehurst

16 Grayson Wright Beginner Charms - Round and round we go. 113 1 5

Yale Adams

June 20, 2024 10:13 PM

Am I in the right place? by Yale Adams

Yale walked into the room, saw the potion cauldrons set up on each desk and did a double take, spending a dizzying moment thoroughly bewildered and wondering if he'd just walked into the wrong classroom.

But no, that was clearly Professor Wright greeting them from the front of the room and the other students were clearly his Beginner classmates, so he was in the right place and it was his Head of House who was confused. At least he said they'd be starting a new spell and not a new potion today.

Yale took his usual seat in the front and to the left and set his things out while he waited for the bell to ring. Once it did, Professor Wright began his lesson, and Yale wondered if the cauldrons were just there to visually emphasize the point that charms and potions could often have similar effects. However, as he continued the lecture and eventually got to the point that they would be learning a stirring charm, Yale grasped why they had cauldrons and wooden ladles in front of them.

The fact that they were starting with something so large made him wonder if the spell was easier to use for gross motor skills like the wide circles of potion stirring than the fine control required for, say, stirring a spoon in a cup of hot chocolate, or if size didn't matter so much but the cauldrons were chosen more because they were undoubtably much less breakable than ceramic mugs, and the magic school just had a bunch of them laying around.

When the professor finished explaining the spell, Yale picked up his wand gave the wooden ladle a firm warning look that he was addressing it, and stated clearly, "Suscitare," and tapped the ladle once with his wand. They'd had a few lessons already, so Yale knew he could do this, knew magic was a real thing, and he wasn't too surprised when the ladle kind of wobbled a bit, moving unevenly an inch or two in a clockwise manner before coming to a stop.

Yale frowned at it. "A full circle," he reprimanded the stirring implement. "You're supposed to go around for a full circle." He circled his wand in demonstration but the ladle did not appear to be listening and remained inert.

His neighbor, on the other hand . . . Yale flushed slightly. "I realize it's not an intelligent ladle," he clarified. But then, his mirror talked to him, so what did he know? Maybe it was. "It's not, right?" he asked, suddenly uncertain.

OOC: Do I need to credit Professor Wright for basically providing me with my first paragraph?

1 Yale Adams Am I in the right place? 1594 0 5

Araminta Fairthorne

June 22, 2024 10:36 PM

It seems so by Araminta Fairthorne

So far, Araminta was enjoying her boarding school experience. She had a roommate, who was fun to spend time with, she got to have tea with grandma on a regular basis, and she was learning actual magic!

Charms was one of her favourites so far, so she was slightly disappointed when she walked in and found it set up more like a Potions lab. It wasn’t that she disliked Potions, but it could be awfully stinky and slimy, and while she could tolerate that, she definitely didn’t enjoy it.

Apparently they were learning about some kind of overlap between Charms and Potions today, which sounded very impressive and advanced. After all, they were just starting to get to grips with the basics of each subject, and she’d heard that combining them was dreadfully tricky.

When it was eventually revealed to be ‘you are learning the stirring charm’ this did little to dent Araminta’s grandiose impression of the undertaking. It has been sold to her as a Big and Important Idea, and so that’s what she took it to be, because being swept up in the pretty fantasy of that was fun.

She straightened her shoulders, and tapped the ladle, telling it ’Suscitare’ in a firm, confident voice, tapping alongside the word, though not with much natural rhythm to the way she paired them. To her credit, the spoon rotated an entire, perfect and unwavering circle. The only issue was it did it on a single point, spinning once in the centre of her cauldron,

Her neighbour, Yale was giving his spoon a stern talking to. As people did that all the time, regardless of the sentience of the object, she didn’t regard it as odd, though she paused to watch whether he’d get better results the next time. He seemed to notice this and get a little flustered over his decision to talk to the object.

“No,” she confirmed. “If it was, it could follow a command, like… stir.” She addressed the ladle with the same tone she would a broomstick, with the unsurprising result that nothing happened. “Which would rather defeat the point of the lesson. Self-stirring ladles are more useful for things that need constant rotation—they tend to just have start and stop. They’re not infinite-instruction devices like a… um….. computer?” Given his question about the ladles, she thought Yale might be from a non-magical family, so she tried to bring in something he’d know. Unfortunately, her experiences with such things was limited to stuff Aunt Ema said, so she wasn’t totally sure that was right.

13 Araminta Fairthorne It seems so 1596 0 5

Kerri Stonehurst

June 24, 2024 4:30 PM

Charming. by Kerri Stonehurst

Being a second-year had thus far been underwhelming, but Kerri hadn’t been much bothered by it. She liked her education to be utterly unbothered by drama or upheaval. Her cousin had gotten prefect, which was a bit of a surprise considering she was up against Samara Brockert, and Kerri knew through her mother that Tawny, Samara’s mother, was a dragon of a lady. Still, it was a point for Lyla in the “respectable” column that Lena, Lyla’s little sister, had little chance of earning. Lena, now nine, had not much improved in the manners department over the summer. Academics aside, Kerri was glad to be back at Sonora so the Hollands could go home and her mother could stop holding her up as a paragon of good behavior.

Charms, Kerri had found out last year, came easily to her- the Minuette gifts from her mother shining through in her work. She had soared through the curriculum and practical exercises with flying colors. She raised an eyebrow at the cauldrons as she entered the classroom but settled in to listen to the professor. The lesson seemed simple enough. They had covered some locomotive spells last year, and this one wasn’t that different. Kerri bit her bottom lip to keep from complaining about the simplicity. This was a class full of kids at varying levels of ability, not a personal tutor like back home. She would take the easy grade and focus her efforts on subjects she struggled in- like Potions, which was actually relevant to this Charms lesson.

When Professor Wright unleashed them to practice, Kerri hesitated. She was confident she could perform the spell with little trouble, but she watched her classmates try first. As the incantation was spoken across the room, she saw both struggles and triumphs. A truly mixed bag. Kerri felt both guilty and grateful for her mother’s bloodline making it so easy on her.

Readying her own wand, she tapped the handle of her wooden spoon three times, speaking the incantation quietly but firmly. The spoon dutifully turned three times around the cauldron, resting back in the place it had begun. Kerri sighed.

“How are you doing?” she asked her neighbor, hoping she could offer help, or at least companionship.

64 Kerri Stonehurst Charming. 1584 0 5