SnitchSeeker.com - View Single Post - Transfiguration Lesson 1

Waterloo · 06-08-2019, 02:48 PM

SPOILER!!: gryffindor trio

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crayola

Eeeeeh .... why was this older kid saying his name? Usually older kids just ignored him, it had been one of the first things he had learned at this school. Older kids thought they were too cool for armour-football, or signing petitions, or sliding down armrails or basically doing anything FUN. Still. He had grown quite a lot during the previous summer so maybe now he was one of them ... the older kids.

Whoa.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Look at him, such a lad. Copying every old teenage kid he saw out and about, he raised his hand for a high five. "Up top ... Ma ...tilda????"

Honestly. It doesn't take much to trick him. Especially since he suddenly was surrounded by older Gryffindor girls.

He really was in with the in-crowd right now, wasn't he? He could almost imagine Céline laughing somewhere behind him. Once he got permission, he plopped right on the table by Rylee and stayed there, nodding along in encouragement. "Maybe it's not luck, there has to be some kind of trick for it." Blowing a runaway curl away from his nose, the fourteen year old leaned in and squiiiiiiinted his eyes. "Something has to move in there."

Probably. That was the only thing that made sense in his head except for the loops being ... you know ... ACTUALLY MAGIC.

GASP.

"Oooh, yeah, I wanna try!" Duh. He had no idea of how to do it but right after he took the rings from Rylee, it became clear that his approach was slighty different. She was careful but he was a second away from grunting and groaning as he tried to force the rings apart when Barlow spoke and the kid almost fell off the table he must certainly shouldn't have been sitting on.

Oops.

"Aaaaahh .... sorta, Sir." The boy scratched at the back of his neck and let out a sheepish chuckle. "I mean, I've seen it done, that's all. My cousin Jeff likes magic a lot ... not that he knows I'm a wizard, obviously ... he never taught me this one though, only something with cards and I still think he used actual magic for that." He was rambling, wasn't he? Definitely rambling. But thankfully Rylee was there and she also was using the rings so Dezi just handed them to her. "I think you might be better for this, Rylee. More caaaaalm and chill."

LAD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

She gave a small brief smile towards Rylee, before her attention was back on the younger boy. Boys could be dumb, so obviously tricking Willard was going to be easy-peasy. Even if the trick she had in mind wasn't really a trick, because she had absolutely no idea what she was doing and probably couldn't do anything when compared to Barlow's trick on Dezi.

Slapping the younger kid's hand - with her other hand cause one had her trick in it and obviously wasn't about to disclose her secrets just yet. "Maeve," she grinned, correcting him before tilting her head ever-so casually at his ear.

"Oh no! You've got it!!" the sixth year exclaimed, jumping back slightly and then reaching forward again to have another look at his ear. "It's... hold on..." Stealthily as possibly she used her hand to reach forward to pull the coin out from his ear, but really just maneuvering it in her hand in a way to look like she had pulled it from his ear. No one saw that the whole time, did they?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kolyander

Rylee smiled at Mauve in greeting, glad that they were forming a little group of lions. Did she want to try to separate the rings too?

"That's what I'm thinking. There has to be a way to get these apart... I'm sure once I figure it out I'm just going to laugh at myself for how simple it probably is." It was all a matter or keeping calm and trying to figure out the secret of the rings. Watching Dezi tugging at the rings during his attempt only made her giggle. His approach at it was definitely different than her own.

"Nice try, Dezi," she smiled warmly taking the rings back from him when he passed them to her. "Do you know how to do it, Professor?" From the way Barlow was talking it sounded like he might.

Ooooh! Rylee turned her gaze towards Mauve as she 'pulled' a coin from Dezi's ear. If the older girl was doing the trick correctly, Rylee didn't know but it did look like she had the hang of it.

The Gryffindor trio seemed to be getting on fairly well, and Barlow clapped loudly when Maeve successfully pulled off the old coin out of ear trick on a very enthusiastic Mr Willard. "BRAVO, BRAVO!!"

As for the metal hoops? "Of course I know how it's done!" It was one of his favourites in fact. "I'll tell you what, I'll let you keep them and you can keep practicing." Because as fun as this was, they were going to have to move on shortly.

SPOILER!!: viv, eloise, eni, nina and archer

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kayla Taaffe

It was weird to see barlow smiling. Props not seeming as they appear? Now that's weird magic.

It was odd to see maeve hanging around the class. He was either absent or in the boy's lavatory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oh its Erik ok

So no fake wands that was a bummer for one Eloise Fairfield and what if she say wanted to use her real one and pretend it could do real magic. Anyway has she got up and started asking her these question to herself. She grabbed some playing cards since she was familiar with those at least and went back to her seat and started shuffling them.

Hmm...card tricks..she could hide a card in her robes or something...Nah that was dumb.

More and more shuffling.

Maybe she could make the jokers appears somehow.

.... the question was how though.

Circe, with real magic this would be easy

Quote:

Originally Posted by gritandgrace

Oh, great. More Muggle magic. Eni was absolutely miserable at the thought. Not all Muggle magic was this lighthearted and she just couldn't do this. She was gonna have to talk to the Professor after class. Her parents said she'd be fine here and for years it was true, but apparently not anymore if this was going to keep happening. She'd have to drop the class, which doesn't work for her desire to be a Healer. Anything else, anything! she would do it. This wasn't something she could bring herself around to. It was just too hard.

Walking up to the table she grabbed some playing cards and started to shuffle them to make it look like she was planning to do something. She could stall. If anything a good game of solitaire wouldn't hurt.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArianaBlack

Professor Barlow was absolutely right. Nina Castillo was wishing she could be anywhere but here right now, though it had nothing to do with the matter of sitting in a classroom that made her wish such a thing. She enjoyed learning, far more than she was willing to admit, but she felt highly uncomfortable without her contacts in. As for his little trick, Nina was very unimpressed. Honestly, had he wanted to provoke awe, he should have dressed the part. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed, it wasn’t helping his case.

… No. That wasn’t magic. That was childish.

Already she wished she had simply skipped the lesson and spent the hour with a textbook instead. There was no need to waste time and speak about muggle magic, something that didn’t exist. Muggle magic was far more concerned with extravagant distractions and quick, easy entertainment. The whole concept was quite belittling. Nina had no real desire to have a discussion about the matter. The answers her classmates offered were also incredibly lackluster. Unsurprisingly that Fantine girl offered an incredibly wordy response that offered no real substance whatsoever. The Lucas boy was far too confused for his own good. And that one Ravenclaw first year was being overly enthusiastic, with an answer that lacked any real meaning.

…. Wands were banned?

Nina gave her Professor a pointed look, as if to ask if this was REALLY his lesson plan for the day. An easy pout made it’s way onto her face as she squinted to try and see what the items on the table were. Spoiler alert: she couldn’t exactly figure it out. But the word ‘Prop’ was enough to turn her off to the concept.

Reluctantly she stood up, scanned the table with a closer look this time. Grabbed a set of metal rings and made her way back to her desk without saying a word to anyone. Once back at the table, the Slytherin began trying to twist and turn the hoops, having no luck at detaching them. What was she meant to do with these?! They weren’t given any actual instructions????? This was the most useless lesson she had sat in a very long time. And Professor O’hara had them attend a Deathday Party, so this was saying something!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by lazykitty

Wait, Houdini was a wizard? Huh. One of those 'the more you know' moments.

Archer fetched one of the pound notes, since those tricks were ones she could do by herself. They could work by themselves, right? Oh well, she was doing it, okay?

Holding the note up, she folded the top of the note down towards herself. Then...wait. Which way was the fold again? It had been so long since she'd done the trick. Was it out towards the 'audience'? Well, that's what she was going with, anyway. She folded the right side of the note over the left side, folding towards the 'audience'. The next fold was a repeat of the previous one. Then, she unfolded the last fold she did towards herself, following it up with unfolding the bottom......wait, she'd messed up.

“I hope everything is okay, Miss Awning.” Was she practicing? Wasn’t she practicing? He wasn’t really sure to be honest.

He carried on shuffling around the room, stopping to applaud or exclaim obnoxiously loud when someone got close to pulling off a trick with their chosen props. He was so caught up in the activity that a couple of the quieter kiddos went unnoticed. He still remained completely and utterly oblivious to any discomfort Eniola may have been feeling and any pointed looks or pouting coming from Nina’s way went right over his disheveled head. Oops?

He did however, stop very briefly by Miss Fairfield to admire her shuffling skills. It was nice to see her taking part and not causing chaos! “Keep it up, Eloise!”

And then there was Archer who was doing something that required folding. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem she’d quite pulled it off first go around but he offered her an encouraging grin. Practice makes perfect, right!?

SPOILER!!: avalon

“Vanishment, yes!” Barlow nodded his approval. “A number of muggle magic tricks involve aspects of vanishing be it vanishing props or even people. Would be a lot easier with the use of magic.” Good, good, good.

SPOILER!!: cordelia

………. say what?

What was that sound coming out of Miss Winklebleck’s mouth.

Was that her attempt at an Abra Cadabra or an Alakazam? The task had been simply to practice, not to go inventing their own incantations but O for effort!

SPOILER!!: lucas

Quote:

Originally Posted by hermionesclone

Lucas immediately peeled up when the table was revealed and, even better, what was on the table was revealed. Props? For magic tricks? That would be cool. It was a pity he couldn’t do any but he was sure he could try something with his wand.

........... Or not.

Wands are BANNED?!

Mouth open slightly, he glanced between the props and the Professor. Banned?! Completely?! And they had to try and cast MAGIC?! Impossible. He was calling it now, it was impossible. How could they possibly try and do magic without their wands? He couldn’t move things with his mind, believe him, he used to try when he was five.

The third year reluctantly got up and moved over to the props table. Nothing here looked like something he could try and use magic on - and he was sure he couldn’t do it anyways - so he was going to choose the most fun. Yeah. Which meant the playing cards, obviously, and maybe these ping pong balls too.

Grabbing both, he headed back and set them down on his desk. And then? And then he stared. He wasn’t trying to do anything to them but maybe if he stared long enough, they’ll do something themselves? Maybe. The cards were easy, there were a lot of card tricks out there. And maybe....... the ping pong balls........ could disappear? Or disappear and reappear somewhere else?

Weren’t Vanishing spells hard?

Merlin. Okay. He was starting with the cards, then.

Picking those up, Lucas gave them a quick shuffle as best as he could. Which, as he soon found out, he wasn’t very good at because the cards were difficult to hold and kept falling out. But no one was watching, right? Was Barlow watching? He hoped not. This was the opposite of cool, right here.

Soon, when he was sure that the cards were shuffled enough, he picked out a random card from the middle and looked at it. Three of Spades? Okay. He was going to have to remember that. The card was placed back into the pile and he gave it another very messy shuffle. At this point, he wasn’t trying to remember and he was sure it was getting lost somewhere in the pile itself.

When he was sure it was shuffled enough, he separated some out. How much? He didn’t know, he just knew that a pile had to be taken out because it was never the top card. "Iiiiiiiiiis this your card?" he asked to himself, taking out a random card from one of the piles.

Queen of Hearts? Not even close.

This was hopeless.

If he was giving grades for effort, Lucas would also receive an O. Yes, he had caught glimpses of that awkward attempt at shuffling and YES, he had noticed that the Gryffindor had picked out the completely wrong card but Barlow appreciated the effort all the same.

“Not bad for a first attempt, Mr Dakest! All the best magicians had to start out somewhere!”

SPOILER!!: cassidy

He’d spotted her practice attempts and would you look at that… she had basically pulled it off! “That’s it, Cassidy! If I hadn’t known any better, you would’ve fooled me!”

SPOILER!!: tina

Quote:

Originally Posted by MadMadamMalfoy

Tina was worried she might’ve gone too far off topic by explaining how the “magic” cabinet worked, but Professor Barlow’s beam put her mind at ease. She nodded in reply, even smiling a little - one of the only times she’d smiled at all this term. She blinked confusedly at the next set of instructions. So wands were banned for now? Okay, now she was really curious how this was going to tie back to transfiguration! Were they going to be learning some spell that would achieve the same effect as these non-magic methods? If so, which one? She could already think of a couple off the top of her head.

Tina walked to the front of the room, closely examining the props on the table. She was looking for something simple that she could do by herself. Sorry, people, but Tina Dantes did not do group work! She eventually decided on a coin, There were a lot of things she could do with it, aside from a rehash of the coin-behind-the-ear trick, of course. Nope, she was going to try something different. As she went back to her desk, an idea came to her. She was going to try to make the coin disappear. The real question was how to do it. She’d seen a disappearing coin trick that used a scarf before, but she didn’t have a scarf. Besides, she didn’t know exactly how the scarf trick was done.

She thought for a few minutes, looking down at the coin in her hand. What if…? What if there was a way to hide the coin in her sleeve? That would sort of make it disappear, right? She decided to give it a try, though it might be hard to get her sleeve in the right position. Tina was tall and gangly with disproportionately long limbs, so her sleeves usually sat a good couple of inches above her wrists. Hmm… maybe that could work to her advantage? She was always tugging at her sleeves anyway, so it probably wouldn’t be too much of a giveaway. So how should she go about this?

Tina tugged her sleeves down so that they covered part of her hands. She had to sort of scrunch her arms up to get them to stay, but she managed. Moving carefully, she transferred the coin from her right palm to her left. S far so good… now she just had to think of a subtle way to flick the coin up her sleeve. With her dominant hand, she snapped her fingers a couple of times, inching closer to the coin each time until… she flicked it on the third snap. Did that work? She looked around and found the coin on the floor beside her desk. She must've misjudged the angle of her snap. Oh well, no big deal, she supposed. She could always try it again.

She repeated the process, this time changing the angle of her snap slightly, and she felt the coin drop into her sleeve. She did it! Now all that was left was the part about thinking how transfiguration could make the trick easier. Well, that was obvious. Just use a vanishing spell on the coin… or she supposed if you wanted to get fancy with it, you could always turn the coin into something instead of vanishing it.

MORE clapping happened, because Barlow had just spotted Tina put on quite the fantastic display! “...and don’t forget,” he exclaimed with an enthusiastic bounce, “the power of distraction! While pulling off something like this, most magicians will talk and question their audience to keep them distracted.” And then they were less likely to notice any sleeve tricks.

---

“You’ve all done BRILLIANTLY,” he said, making his way once more to the front of the classroom. “And if you struggled, don’t let that discourage you. Most magicians practice for years before they become truly successful. And speaking of magicians!” He had another question for them. “Most magicians will fashion themselves a stage name. Something snazzy, something catchy… something that will inspire mystery and intrigue! If you had to give yourselves a magicians name, what would it be?”

OOC: Question 2 is up! We’ll move on in another 24 hours or so. THANK YOU for playing <3

06-08-2019, 02:48 PM	#54 (permalink)
Waterloo Occamy Join Date: May 2007 Location: London Posts: 63,511 Hogwarts RPG Name: Cora Dredworth Sixth Year x1	connoisseur of comfort ❅ Crayola's Wibby Mrs Alex Turner ❅ Netflix and meow SPOILER!!: gryffindor trio Quote: Originally Posted by Crayola Eeeeeh .... why was this older kid saying his name? Usually older kids just ignored him, it had been one of the first things he had learned at this school. Older kids thought they were too cool for armour-football, or signing petitions, or sliding down armrails or basically doing anything FUN. Still. He had grown quite a lot during the previous summer so maybe now he was one of them ... the older kids. Whoa. "Hey, hey, hey!" Look at him, such a lad. Copying every old teenage kid he saw out and about, he raised his hand for a high five. "Up top ... Ma ...tilda????" Honestly. It doesn't take much to trick him. Especially since he suddenly was surrounded by older Gryffindor girls. He really was in with the in-crowd right now, wasn't he? He could almost imagine Céline laughing somewhere behind him. Once he got permission, he plopped right on the table by Rylee and stayed there, nodding along in encouragement. "Maybe it's not luck, there has to be some kind of trick for it." Blowing a runaway curl away from his nose, the fourteen year old leaned in and squiiiiiiinted his eyes. "Something has to move in there." Probably. That was the only thing that made sense in his head except for the loops being ... you know ... ACTUALLY MAGIC. GASP. "Oooh, yeah, I wanna try!" Duh. He had no idea of how to do it but right after he took the rings from Rylee, it became clear that his approach was slighty different. She was careful but he was a second away from grunting and groaning as he tried to force the rings apart when Barlow spoke and the kid almost fell off the table he must certainly shouldn't have been sitting on. Oops. "Aaaaahh .... sorta, Sir." The boy scratched at the back of his neck and let out a sheepish chuckle. "I mean, I've seen it done, that's all. My cousin Jeff likes magic a lot ... not that he knows I'm a wizard, obviously ... he never taught me this one though, only something with cards and I still think he used actual magic for that." He was rambling, wasn't he? Definitely rambling. But thankfully Rylee was there and she also was using the rings so Dezi just handed them to her. "I think you might be better for this, Rylee. More caaaaalm and chill." LAD. Quote: Originally Posted by PhoenixRising She gave a small brief smile towards Rylee, before her attention was back on the younger boy. Boys could be dumb, so obviously tricking Willard was going to be easy-peasy. Even if the trick she had in mind wasn't really a trick, because she had absolutely no idea what she was doing and probably couldn't do anything when compared to Barlow's trick on Dezi. Slapping the younger kid's hand - with her other hand cause one had her trick in it and obviously wasn't about to disclose her secrets just yet. "Maeve," she grinned, correcting him before tilting her head ever-so casually at his ear. "Oh no! You've got it!!" the sixth year exclaimed, jumping back slightly and then reaching forward again to have another look at his ear. "It's... hold on..." Stealthily as possibly she used her hand to reach forward to pull the coin out from his ear, but really just maneuvering it in her hand in a way to look like she had pulled it from his ear. No one saw that the whole time, did they? Quote: Originally Posted by Kolyander Rylee smiled at Mauve in greeting, glad that they were forming a little group of lions. Did she want to try to separate the rings too? "That's what I'm thinking. There has to be a way to get these apart... I'm sure once I figure it out I'm just going to laugh at myself for how simple it probably is." It was all a matter or keeping calm and trying to figure out the secret of the rings. Watching Dezi tugging at the rings during his attempt only made her giggle. His approach at it was definitely different than her own. "Nice try, Dezi," she smiled warmly taking the rings back from him when he passed them to her. "Do you know how to do it, Professor?" From the way Barlow was talking it sounded like he might. Ooooh! Rylee turned her gaze towards Mauve as she 'pulled' a coin from Dezi's ear. If the older girl was doing the trick correctly, Rylee didn't know but it did look like she had the hang of it. The Gryffindor trio seemed to be getting on fairly well, and Barlow clapped loudly when Maeve successfully pulled off the old coin out of ear trick on a very enthusiastic Mr Willard. "BRAVO, BRAVO!!" As for the metal hoops? *"Of course* I know how it's done!" It was one of his favourites in fact. "I'll tell you what, I'll let you keep them and you can keep practicing." Because as fun as this was, they were going to have to move on shortly. SPOILER!!*: viv, eloise, eni, nina and archer* Quote: Originally Posted by Kayla Taaffe It was weird to see barlow smiling. Props not seeming as they appear? Now that's weird magic. It was odd to see maeve hanging around the class. He was either absent or in the boy's lavatory. Quote: Originally Posted by oh its Erik ok So no fake wands that was a bummer for one Eloise Fairfield and what if she say wanted to use her real one and pretend it could do real magic. Anyway has she got up and started asking her these question to herself. She grabbed some playing cards since she was familiar with those at least and went back to her seat and started shuffling them. Hmm...card tricks..she could hide a card in her robes or something...Nah that was dumb. More and more shuffling. Maybe she could make the jokers appears somehow. .... the question was how though. Circe, with real magic this would be easy Quote: Originally Posted by gritandgrace Oh, great. More Muggle magic. Eni was absolutely miserable at the thought. Not all Muggle magic was this lighthearted and she just couldn't do this. She was gonna have to talk to the Professor after class. Her parents said she'd be fine here and for years it was true, but apparently not anymore if this was going to keep happening. She'd have to drop the class, which doesn't work for her desire to be a Healer. Anything else, anything! she would do it. This wasn't something she could bring herself around to. It was just too hard. Walking up to the table she grabbed some playing cards and started to shuffle them to make it look like she was planning to do something. She could stall. If anything a good game of solitaire wouldn't hurt. Quote: Originally Posted by ArianaBlack Professor Barlow was absolutely right. Nina Castillo was wishing she could be anywhere but here right now, though it had nothing to do with the matter of sitting in a classroom that made her wish such a thing. She enjoyed learning, far more than she was willing to admit, but she felt highly uncomfortable without her contacts in. As for his little trick, Nina was very unimpressed. Honestly, had he wanted to provoke awe, he should have dressed the part. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed, it wasn’t helping his case. … No. That wasn’t magic. That was childish. Already she wished she had simply skipped the lesson and spent the hour with a textbook instead. There was no need to waste time and speak about muggle magic, something that didn’t exist. Muggle magic was far more concerned with extravagant distractions and quick, easy entertainment. The whole concept was quite belittling. Nina had no real desire to have a discussion about the matter. The answers her classmates offered were also incredibly lackluster. Unsurprisingly that Fantine girl offered an incredibly wordy response that offered no real substance whatsoever. The Lucas boy was far too confused for his own good. And that one Ravenclaw first year was being overly enthusiastic, with an answer that lacked any real meaning. …. Wands were banned? Nina gave her Professor a pointed look, as if to ask if this was REALLY his lesson plan for the day. An easy pout made it’s way onto her face as she squinted to try and see what the items on the table were. Spoiler alert: she couldn’t exactly figure it out. But the word ‘Prop’ was enough to turn her off to the concept. Reluctantly she stood up, scanned the table with a closer look this time. Grabbed a set of metal rings and made her way back to her desk without saying a word to anyone. Once back at the table, the Slytherin began trying to twist and turn the hoops, having no luck at detaching them. What was she meant to do with these?! They weren’t given any actual instructions????? This was the most useless lesson she had sat in a very long time. And Professor O’hara had them attend a Deathday Party, so this was saying something!!! Quote: Originally Posted by lazykitty Wait, Houdini was a wizard? Huh. One of those 'the more you know' moments. Archer fetched one of the pound notes, since those tricks were ones she could do by herself. They could work by themselves, right? Oh well, she was doing it, okay? Holding the note up, she folded the top of the note down towards herself. Then...wait. Which way was the fold again? It had been so long since she'd done the trick. Was it out towards the 'audience'? Well, that's what she was going with, anyway. She folded the right side of the note over the left side, folding towards the 'audience'. The next fold was a repeat of the previous one. Then, she unfolded the last fold she did towards herself, following it up with unfolding the bottom......wait, she'd messed up. “I hope everything is okay, Miss Awning.” Was she practicing? Wasn’t she practicing? He wasn’t really sure to be honest. He carried on shuffling around the room, stopping to applaud or exclaim obnoxiously loud when someone got close to pulling off a trick with their chosen props. He was so caught up in the activity that a couple of the quieter kiddos went unnoticed. He still remained completely and utterly oblivious to any discomfort Eniola may have been feeling and any pointed looks or pouting coming from Nina’s way went right over his disheveled head. Oops? He did however, stop very briefly by Miss Fairfield to admire her shuffling skills. It was nice to see her taking part and not causing chaos! “Keep it up, Eloise!” And then there was Archer who was doing something that required folding. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem she’d quite pulled it off first go around but he offered her an encouraging grin. Practice makes perfect, right!? SPOILER!!: avalon Quote: Originally Posted by Fireheart "Definitely not as easy as it looks," Avalon agreed with Professor Barlow, shaking her head back and forth as she stacked her cups back up. She racked her brain for an answer to his question and immediately thought of the four main branches of the subject. "Vanishment would be helpful," she quipped, stacking up her cups. "But pretty complex magic for us underclassmen. I think that switching could be useful for this as well." But she had no idea how to perform neither vanishment nor switching, and she was fairly certain that she wouldn't learn the latter until next year. “Vanishment, yes!” Barlow nodded his approval. “A number of muggle magic tricks involve aspects of vanishing be it vanishing props or even people. Would be a lot easier with the use of magic.” Good, good, good. SPOILER!!: cordelia Quote: Originally Posted by griffin Did she know what muggle magic was? Of course she did, she had lived in the muggle world for the first half of her life. It was all stupid tricks that weren’t real magic. She had to admit though that some of it looked pretty cool. That did not mean that she actually knew how to do any tricks, however. Was the secret to muggle magic just carrying things around in your pockets? Check her pockets and you would probably just find some packets of sugary sweets for low treatments and several bloody test strips. When Cordelia went up to the table, she grabbed a couple of ping pong balls. What was she supposed to do with these??? Were there, like, instructions or something? ”For my next trick, I will make these ping pong balls disappear,” she announced to no one in particular. Turning away from her ‘audience,’ Cordelia stuffed the ping pong balls in her mouth, with one in each cheek giving her a sort of chipmunk look. Oh the professor was asking a discussion question. She wanted to speak but that was a bit difficult given that she still had a mouth full of ping pong balls. ”Ef oo yu ahi oo ou ohure ing inhea o i ing eh.” If you used magic you could just conjure an object to make it appear instead of hiding it. Maybe she should have spit out the balls before speaking, but if she did that it would ruin the illusion and everyone would be able to see that the balls were just in her mouth. It had not occurred to her that everyone would notice the bulging chipmunk cheeks. Now, what was she going to do with this mouthful of balls? Make them reappear? ………. say what? What was that sound coming out of Miss Winklebleck’s mouth. Was that her attempt at an Abra Cadabra or an Alakazam? The task had been simply to practice, not to go inventing their own incantations but O for effort! SPOILER!!: lucas Quote: Originally Posted by hermionesclone Lucas immediately peeled up when the table was revealed and, even better, what was on the table was revealed. Props? For magic tricks? That would be cool. It was a pity he couldn’t do any but he was sure he could try something with his wand. ........... Or not. Wands are BANNED?! Mouth open slightly, he glanced between the props and the Professor. Banned?! Completely?! And they had to try and cast MAGIC?! Impossible. He was calling it now, it was impossible. How could they possibly try and do magic without their wands? He couldn’t move things with his mind, believe him, he used to try when he was five. The third year reluctantly got up and moved over to the props table. Nothing here looked like something he could try and use magic on - and he was sure he couldn’t do it anyways - so he was going to choose the most fun. Yeah. Which meant the playing cards, obviously, and maybe these ping pong balls too. Grabbing both, he headed back and set them down on his desk. And then? And then he stared. He wasn’t trying to do anything to them but maybe if he stared long enough, they’ll do something themselves? Maybe. The cards were easy, there were a lot of card tricks out there. And maybe....... the ping pong balls........ could disappear? Or disappear and reappear somewhere else? Weren’t Vanishing spells hard? Merlin. Okay. He was starting with the cards, then. Picking those up, Lucas gave them a quick shuffle as best as he could. Which, as he soon found out, he wasn’t very good at because the cards were difficult to hold and kept falling out. But no one was watching, right? Was Barlow watching? He hoped not. This was the opposite of cool, right here. Soon, when he was sure that the cards were shuffled enough, he picked out a random card from the middle and looked at it. Three of Spades? Okay. He was going to have to remember that. The card was placed back into the pile and he gave it another very messy shuffle. At this point, he wasn’t trying to remember and he was sure it was getting lost somewhere in the pile itself. When he was sure it was shuffled enough, he separated some out. How much? He didn’t know, he just knew that a pile had to be taken out because it was never the top card. *"Iiiiiiiiiis this* your card?" he asked to himself, taking out a random card from one of the piles. Queen of Hearts? Not even close. This was hopeless. If he was giving grades for effort, Lucas would also receive an O. Yes, he had caught glimpses of that awkward attempt at shuffling and YES, he had noticed that the Gryffindor had picked out the completely wrong card but Barlow appreciated the effort all the same. “Not bad for a first attempt, Mr Dakest! All the best magicians had to start out somewhere!” SPOILER!!*: cassidy* Quote: Originally Posted by GrapehSarah Cassidy gave Barlow a big grin as he commented on her trick. "Thanks professor. And I'll give it a try." She wasn't too sure how Barlow had done that at the beginning of class, but it had to be fairly similar to what she was just doing or he wouldn't have suggested it to her. She looked down at the coin and began to study it, moving it back and forth between her hands. It had to do again with distraction and moving the coin without the person you were showing not noticing the coin moving. She held out the coin in one hand and then rubbed the two together. She opened both hands keeping the coin wedged between the fingers on the back side only showing the palms outward. Then she moved that hand back behind her ear and let the coin slip into her palm. There. She made a coin appear from her ear. Cassidy wasn't sure if that was how it was supposed to be done, but it seemed to work. So she practice it a couple more times, until she got the motion down more. Then she looked around for Barlow and raised her hand. She wanted to know if she was doing it right since he had done the trick at the beginning of the class. He’d spotted her practice attempts and would you look at that… she had basically pulled it off! “That’s it, Cassidy! If I hadn’t known any better, you would’ve fooled me!” SPOILER!!: tina Quote: Originally Posted by MadMadamMalfoy Tina was worried she might’ve gone too far off topic by explaining how the “magic” cabinet worked, but Professor Barlow’s beam put her mind at ease. She nodded in reply, even smiling a little - one of the only times she’d smiled at all this term. She blinked confusedly at the next set of instructions. So wands were banned for now? Okay, now she was really curious how this was going to tie back to transfiguration! Were they going to be learning some spell that would achieve the same effect as these non-magic methods? If so, which one? She could already think of a couple off the top of her head. Tina walked to the front of the room, closely examining the props on the table. She was looking for something simple that she could do by herself. Sorry, people, but Tina Dantes did not do group work! She eventually decided on a coin, There were a lot of things she could do with it, aside from a rehash of the coin-behind-the-ear trick, of course. Nope, she was going to try something different. As she went back to her desk, an idea came to her. She was going to try to make the coin disappear. The real question was how to do it. She’d seen a disappearing coin trick that used a scarf before, but she didn’t have a scarf. Besides, she didn’t know exactly how the scarf trick was done. She thought for a few minutes, looking down at the coin in her hand. What if…? What if there was a way to hide the coin in her sleeve? That would sort of make it disappear, right? She decided to give it a try, though it might be hard to get her sleeve in the right position. Tina was tall and gangly with disproportionately long limbs, so her sleeves usually sat a good couple of inches above her wrists. Hmm… maybe that could work to her advantage? She was always tugging at her sleeves anyway, so it probably wouldn’t be too much of a giveaway. So how should she go about this? Tina tugged her sleeves down so that they covered part of her hands. She had to sort of scrunch her arms up to get them to stay, but she managed. Moving carefully, she transferred the coin from her right palm to her left. S far so good… now she just had to think of a subtle way to flick the coin up her sleeve. With her dominant hand, she snapped her fingers a couple of times, inching closer to the coin each time until… she flicked it on the third snap. Did that work? She looked around and found the coin on the floor beside her desk. She must've misjudged the angle of her snap. Oh well, no big deal, she supposed. She could always try it again. She repeated the process, this time changing the angle of her snap slightly, and she felt the coin drop into her sleeve. She did it! Now all that was left was the part about thinking how transfiguration could make the trick easier. Well, that was obvious. Just use a vanishing spell on the coin… or she supposed if you wanted to get fancy with it, you could always turn the coin into something instead of vanishing it. MORE clapping happened, because Barlow had just spotted Tina put on quite the fantastic display! “...and don’t forget,” he exclaimed with an enthusiastic bounce, “the power of distraction! While pulling off something like this, most magicians will talk and question their audience to keep them distracted.” And then they were less likely to notice any sleeve tricks. --- “You’ve all done BRILLIANTLY,” he said, making his way once more to the front of the classroom. “And if you struggled, don’t let that discourage you. Most magicians practice for years before they become truly successful. And speaking of magicians!” He had another question for them. “Most magicians will fashion themselves a stage name. Something snazzy, something catchy… something that will inspire mystery and intrigue! If you had to give yourselves a magicians name, what would it be?” OOC: Question 2 is up! We’ll move on in another 24 hours or so. THANK YOU for playing <3 __________________ _____________Take part in our Higgledy Piggledy House Cup!