"Oh hi, Avalon!" Analiese smiled at Avalon as she sat down next to her. When Professor Barlow asked a question, Analiese's hand shot into the air. "I don't know the name of this trick, but this is how you do it." She ripped of a miniscule piece of paper from her sketchbook, which she was holding, and wrote the word 'egg' on it. Then she covered it with her hand and when she removed her hand... Voila! It was an egg!* Oh wait. Now there was an egg on her desk.

* This is an actual trick, I didn't make it up.

Eniola purposely avoided eye contact with the Professor with this question. She knew what could happen when muggles and wizards alike weren't careful with magic. It was quite an off-putting subject for her all together. She didn't like it. No, not one bit.

I wonder if I could fake sick to get out of this. Eni thought to herself. Best wait and see how the rest of class goes, wouldn't want a bad rep with the Professor or Healer Beryl. She instead took interest in her nails and the desk. It couldn't be that hard to go unnoticed in a class this size.

Guess who was suddenly, miraculously feeling wide awake now? Yeah, this bloke. “Great answers from all of you,” Barlow encouraged, absently ruffling his hair and by doing so, accidentally worsening matters atop his head. “Seems like you’ve all got the jist of it and have at least some basic knowledge about muggle magic tricks and that’s going to come in handy for what we’ve got coming up next.”

Remember that whole standard, boring classroom setup thing? Not strictly true.

With a quick flourish of his wand, Barlow lifted the disillusionment charm that had been placed on an unsuspecting table pushed up against the wall on one side of the classroom. On the table there were props aplenty. Playing cards, rope, metal rings, feathers, ping pong balls, cups, coins…… there were more than enough to go around.

“I spotted a few of you got your wands out ready for the lesson,” he started again, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “But for now, wands are banned, alright? I don’t want to see any of you cheating, that’ll take the fun out of it.” Brown eyes lingered on certain individuals. He’d temporarily confiscate wands if he absolutely had to. “Go grab yourselves a prop or two and have a play around. I want you all to have a go and see if you can perform magic the good old fashioned muggle way and while you’re doing that, think about or discuss amongst yourselves how you think Transfiguration could be used to make these tricks easier…… or more exciting!”

This was still a Transfiguration lesson after all.

OOC: Time to get creative! You’ve got about 72 for this mini activity section of the lesson. Just joining? Feel free to jump right in or post a catch up, it’s up to you! Any questions, give me or Barlow a shout! <3

"Why would I carry an egg in my pocket all the time? It'll probably crack and my pocket will get all messy." A bit weird of a suggestion, really. Er... now what was she supposed to do with the egg? She just left in on the table in a corner. By the time the rest of the class realised what they were supposed to do, Analiese was already halfway to the table of props. She quickly grabbed a deck of playing cards and went back to her desk. She tried a few tricks and failed. Seriously?

Cassidy couldn't help but giggle a bit at Professor Barlow's enthusiasm. It had gone from a very dull early morning to something more exciting just from his change in mood. Cassidy herself was already getting more excited for the lesson. Muggle magic was just so...weird.

She went up to the table and her eyes scanned over everything. She didn't know what to grab because she wanted to try everything. She decided on something simple that she'd also heard of: making a coin disappear through a table. Shouldn't be too hard right?

Cassidy grab a coin from the table and skipped back to her seat. So all she had to do was get the coin from one hand to the other without someone noticing to make it look like it went through the table. Easy peasy. She grabbed the coin and started practicing sliding it from right hand down to her left. She kept doing it over and over, each time doing the motion faster and faster, only dropping the coin a few times. Eventually she was going to have to practice this with another person or she wouldn't be able to prove if the trick was working or not.

They were going to be learning about....muggle magic tricks? Last time Avalon checked, she was in Transfiguration, not Muggle Studies. But when she thought about it, she supposed that some of the tricks her classmates were describing could possibly be categorized as transfiguration. She wasn't too familiar with them, other than the classic card trick - which had already been mentioned - and the 'pulling something out of your ear' trick that her cousins had told her about. She raised her hand. "Some muggles try to pull an object out of another person's ear. Like a ball or a coin or something. Of course, they aren't actually pulling it out of their ear. It's just an illusion," she said.

She watched with a raised eyebrow as Analiese performed some odd trick using a piece of paper and an egg. Avalon never understood the purpose of muggle magic tricks. It didn't seem to serve any purpose. She made her way over to the table after Professor Barlow relayed the instructions for the activity. Grabbing a handful of coins and a few cups, she tried to think of some tricks to do. But she had no idea where to start. They weren't given any instructions, and she hadn't perused any muggle magic books in her spare time.

"Do you have any idea how to start?" she asked Analiese, glancing over next to her to see that her classmate was having similar trouble with her deck of cards. Avalon laid out three coins on her desk and covered each one with a cup. She shuffled them around a bit, quickly sliding one cup to the edge of the table and catching the coin with her hand as it dropped. Well, that was way too obvious. Muggles made this kind of stuff disappear all the time. But how did they do it without real magic?

Transfiguration was not really Lili's strongest suit. To be honest, her wand work wasn't the best. Her best subjects were the ones where she didn't really need to do magic. Which was... interesting. But she still tried her best. She wasn't the best academically, but that was okay. As long as she passed her NEWTs, then that didn't really matter right? This lesson did seem pretty fun though. Muggle magic? That was interesting. Something she hadn't thought about before. She didn't need to. She was a witch after all. But she supposed it would be pretty fun to try and at least see if she could do some muggle magic.

She stowed her wand away, and then approached the table, tilting her head. She had no idea where to start. She hadn't really seen magic tricks before. Deciding to just pick up something, she grabbed a pack of cards, and wandered away to find herself a spot. Now to try and work out what she had to do with this.

The frown on Dorian's face slowly vanished as he thought about the Professor's words. "I guess..." he answered slowly. "I'm trying to see it from a muggle point of view but i KNOW that real magic, our magic, exist so thinking about their tricks being called magic...that's odd to me, sorry" he wasn't sure why he was apologizing. "Computers, now THAT is magic" so much information in one tiny thing. Magic!

They had to do illusion...no..magic tricks without the use of their wands? He had no idea how he was going to do that. He pocketed his wand back inside of his Ravenclaw robe and stood up from his seat. He looked around the room, wondering if perhaps someone wanted to work together when he spotted a girl sitting alone with a deck of cards. Card tricks didn't sound too difficult to do.

"Mind if i join?" he asked.

Magic. Not magic as they all had come to know. Muggle magic in the form of tricks and illusions. Now this was surely going to be interesting if nothing else at all.

Keeping quiet for the first question was okay, she had been taking down some notes just in case. As they wouldn't be needing their wands, Rylee slid that back into the holster on her wrist. No sense in having it out if they wouldn't be using them.

With a more than ready smile on her face, at a chance to try something new, she wasted no time in getting up and making her way to the table at the front of the room. Out of all the props there the one that really caught her eye was what looked to be like two large shiny rings looped together. Selecting those, Rylee returned to her seat to see if she could figure what to do with it.

For once in his academic life, Dezi Willard was actually paying attention to a class. No, not just paying attention, Dezi was invested in this class.
Maybe it was the fact Barlow didn't look like your regular professor, all uppity and boring. Maybe it was Barlow's hair and his curl definition that honestly made Dezi a little jealous. Maybe it was Maybelline. The odds were that it was all the magic tricks. Yup, that was it. He was caught once Barlow produced a galleon from behind his ear.

Muggle magic tricks were the coolest.

BEST. LESSON. EVER.

The fourth year was going to go to the front table and get a deck of cards but, as so often happened with him, something else caught his attention and he was sidetracked. "Ooooh, those get separated even if they look so so so stuck to each other!" MAGIC! He loved it. "Can I watch you do it?" Maybe watching wasn't exactly what Barlow had told them to do but he was excited now.

Analiese frowned. She couldn't seem to think of a trick. "No, I have no idea have to start." She looked over at Avalon and she seemed to be having the same problems. Analiese turned fully towards Avalon and held out the deck of cards. "Pick a card." She had seen various muggles doing this trick. It was the first thing that can to her head. Idea! She could use 'all that psychology jazz' to figure out which card Avalon chose. The bad news was that that method of mind reading didn't seem to work at Hogwarts.

Maeve LOVED Transfiguration, okay. Okay, maybe love was the wrong word, but the sixth year didn't mind transfiguration, which was practically the same thing. What she wasn't sure about was when Professor Barlow introduced the topic of today. Muggle Magic? Uhhh did he get confused? This wasn't Muggle Studies class!! They had a whole subject matter to be devoted to mundane methods used by muggles.

But she did happen to know a supposedly muggle magician, by the name of Houdini. Which was one that she merely wrote down on her notes.

Moving on though, because it seemed they were going to attempt some muggle tricks. Okayyyy... obviously she was going to use it on one of the younger kids because they were the most naive. Swiping a coin from the table, as inconspicuously as possible, the sixth year walked over to a pair of lions (Re: Rylee and Dezi).

"Yo, Willard! Whaddddupp!" Making small talk was the best way to trick him, wasn't it?

Glancing up Patrick looked at their professor.... PADDY? He had never been called that and was fairly certain that he didn't want to be called that again. It felt very odd and he wanted to be sure to maybe talk to their professor after class, although it could be a sign that their professor actually lied him and didn't just tolerate him.

His eyes grew wider at the thought that he needed to try and perform muggle magic. How in the world was he supposed to do that? Well he knew that he wasn't going to try and saw something in half. Seeing a hat, he figured that pulling something out of a hat was safer than anything else he could have tried. Looking over the hat he spun it in his hands a few times envisioning a rabbit in there. Maybe... just maybe if he thought about it enough he would get the chance to pull one out of the ridiculous hat.

Rylee fiddled with the rings for several long moments, tugging at them to see if they were truly stuck together. They were. Or to her they were, the more she tugged the worse luck in getting these things apart, she had. Obviously tugging at them wasn't going to work.

She had seen a magician do this very same trick once at some kids birthday party when she was really little. Seeing someone else do it though was very different than trying to do it yourself.

An excited voice broke her concentration and she lifted her gaze up to see who it was. "Sure you can! I know these are supposed to come apart but I'm not having any luck at all with it," the Gryffindor replied giving the rings another more gentle tug as if to prove her point. "Do you know how to do it? Want to give it a try?" Once more she tried to separate the rings more carefully before holding them out to Dezi.

Well, that egg had to come from SOMEWHERE because he certainly hadn’t seen her conjure it with her wand. Unless her sleight of hand was just THAT good? Perhaps that was it. Except…… while Avalon was somewhat successful with her coins and cup trick, Analiese appeared to struggle with her deck of cards.

“Not as easy as it looks, is it?” Barlow asked the girls on his way past. “It can take years to master some techniques. Makes you appreciate our magic, doesn’t it? So how do you think Transfiguration would make your efforts easier?” Something to consider.




His pacing around the classroom soon brought him in the direction of Cassidy and Barlow stood back to admire her handiwork for a moment. “That’s it, seems like you’ve got the right idea. Remember, it’s all in the movement and practice makes perfect. Try making it come out of your ear!” Just like he’d done. It was a CLASSIC!




He didn’t expect or require an apology from Dorian, after all, it was each to their own. He was, however, glad to note that the Ravenclaw boy hadn’t written the lesson off completely and seemed willing to partake in the activity.

“Have Dorian pick a card, Lili.” He suggested, stopping by their desk. “And then see if you can deduce what card it is he picked. Sounds simple enough but not as easy as it seems without the use of Legilimency I assure you.” He’d stop by and see how they were getting on in a while.



“I like your style,” Barlow observed on his way past the desk of the Slytherin. “Would be a heck of a lot easier if you were allowed to use your wand for this, wouldn’t it?” But alas….





His travels soon took him in the direction of a Gryffindor trio and naturally, he had to stop and observe. “Aaahhh, familiar with the famous metal hoops are you, Mr Willard?” Seemed like they had a fan over here! Can’t say he’d ever seen the young Gryffindor focus this much in lesson before today. It seemed Miss Prichard had hit a spot of bother though, and Barlow found himself grinning. “Make sure you’re familiar with the props… sometimes they might not exactly seem as they appear.”

And as for Maeve? He had no idea what the plan with the coin was, but was he hanging around to catch a glimpse?? You betcha.

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.

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.

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

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?

"Alright," she said with a smirk, plucking one of the middle cards from the deck. At least she wasn't the only one struggling with this activity. She flipped it over to see seven red hearts dotting the card. Whatever that might mean, she had no idea. She had never played with Muggle cards before. "Should I tell you what's on it?"

"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.

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.

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.

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!!!

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?

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.