"A point that many of you mentioned, that is very important and relevant is that a Transfiguration changes what something fundamentally is, while a Charm leaves the base object and gives it properties or changes its behaviour."

She added that first point to the board with a flick of her wand, the chalk writing as she spoke.

"Several of you mentioned the 'seven classifications of spells'. It isn't precisely wrong but neither is it a particularly useful or clean cut definition of spell types. You'll find different classifications depending on who wrote the textbook, and many of the classifications are arbitrary."

Sooo to the next main point.

"The three main components of a spell are wand movement, incantation and intent. This means you have to get the wand movement right, focus on what you are trying to do, and pronounce the incantation correctly, all of which feed into your focus and intent. The intent is the most important of the three because eventually some will be able to cast their spells non-verbally, or in some rare cases, wandlessly."

They could move on quickly from this intro stuff, she hoped.

"First years, you'll find more information about particular wand movement types on page 47 of Quintessence a Quest. You can revise this later with an older student if you need help understanding these, and I do suggest you practice with a buddy later."

Because she wasn't going over it in detail right now.

One more bit before they could move on to something a little more substantial.

"We're going to touch briefly on incantations. What is an incantation? What kinds of words are used as incantations? What kind of words are not used as incantations? What is the relationship between an incantation and a spell? How are incantations chosen? You can answer any of these questions, I'm trying to get you all thinking a bit. Just share what you know about incantations." Some of it she'd touched on the previous year after all, so it wasn't as if most of them wouldn't know something.

ooc: Firsties and new students! You'll find 'page 47 of Quintessence a Quest' in this post.

You don't have to and aren't expected to answer ALL the incantation-y questions, just what you think your character would know/want to answer. Just share what you know .