First Years, Lesson Two

[Professor Edward Pirrip]

First Years, Lesson Two: Transfiguration and the Ministry of Magic
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As he had done the previous week, Professor Edward Pirrip stood outside his classroom greeting the first years. He greeted each student by name as they arrived, keeping a quiet count in his head as they passed. Once confident that everyone had arrived, Edward followed them into the classroom and closed the door behind him and limped towards the front of the class.

"Welcome back first years! I'm pleased to see you all survived your first week." He greeted, flicking his wand towards the blackboard behind him to make a piece of chalk start writing Transfiguration and the Ministry of Magic. "As you probably picked up last week, Transfiguration is not only fascinating and complex, but also one of the most dangerous and powerful branches of magic. And with great power," he paused for effect, "comes a department full of Ministry rules and regulations, along with punishments in place for any misuse of Transfiguration. And yes, the Ministry will find out. They always do."

Edward paused briefly, his expression serious as he covered something important, he did not want the students to think he was joking, "Using this type of magic on another human, or even an animal, with the purpose of harming them or entertaining yourself will lead to severe punishments." He continued, hoping these kids understood this was a serious situation. "There are also laws for using Transfiguration on yourself. People who have mastered Transfiguration to the point of altering their physical selves into an intelligent creature that represents them are known as Animagi. They must be registered with the Ministry of Magic. This registration must include both their Animagus form as well as any special markings that can help identify them." He gave the class a moment to catch up, noticing a few frantic scribblers. With a wave of his wand, the chalk began writing bullet points on the board to help them out.

"But it’s not just about people and animals. Even inanimate objects can be dangerous since most weapons are inanimate objects. There are also some objects that are classed as 'muggle artifacts' - things created by non-magical people or are specific inventions of theirs. Meaning that if we would like something like that, we would have to obtain it the non-magical way. This is the reason flying carpets are outlawed in most countries, but broomsticks are not."

He straightened up when he realised the time and clapped his hands together. "At the end of the day, there are numerous ways to abuse Transfiguration and each of its branches, which we'll be covering more in depth in future lessons. Unfortunately, that's all we really have time for today. If you're interested, you can read up on more about it in the library or come and visit me in my office. Class dismissed!"

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Homework: RP attendance! Tag @Professor Edward Pirrip if you would like me to interact with your character! Write out notes from the lesson for extra credit.

 

[Aaron Dela Cruz]

Aaron lingered outside the classroom before being invited inside. He wasn't used to just straight walking into classrooms because back home they were expected to great the teacher at the entrance before walking in. None of this made a lot of sense to him and he had little idea if this was just wizard culture or... western culture. Well he couldn't say he was completely without western culture himself, since he was from Manila, but still. As he sat down, there was a lecture about the ministry, which he could only assume from context was the governing body? He wasn't sure, he didn't really know what a Ministry was. He supposed they could have meant a church, but that didn't really fit he thought. "With great power comes great... bureaucracy," Aaron muttered under his breath, a wry grin tugging at his lips. He didn’t entirely dislike rules - they were like lines of code in a program - but it did seem a little far fetched to be able to track something like this. Although if he was being honest, they had to register everything against their national id back home, so maybe this was sort of like that?

He took a lot of notes as the teacher talked about what an animagus was. He guessed it was sort of alike a digital avatar online for games. One of the things he didn't quite understand was why a broomstick was not considered a muggle artefact but a magic carpet was, or rather perhaps just the carpet part. Perhaps broomsticks are like an open-source platform, and flying carpets are proprietary tech? Aaron leaned back, arms crossed, as the lesson wrapped up. Transfiguration was starting to feel less like magic and more like a set of rules for manipulating the world - rules he could potentially figure out.​

 

[Daisuke Kaster]

Daisuke walked into the Transfiguration classroom, ducking as the professor addressed him and hurrying inside. The professor's attention made him feel slightly nervous so he just quickly went and took a seat. He pulled out his parchment, quill, and ink, ready to take notes. The class was fascinating, the idea that Transfiguration was both powerful and dangerous, intriguing. When Professor Pirrip mentioned Animagi, Daisuke's eyes widened slightly. The thought of transforming into an animal seemed incredible, though the mention of Ministry registration and regulations made it sound more intimidating than he'd initially imagined and he started to rethink his opinion on it being cool. He scribbled notes furiously as the professor spoke, trying to write every detail about the laws and restrictions he could. His handwriting was getting a little messy in his haste, but he managed to get most of the key points down. The mention of flying carpets being illegal while broomsticks were not puzzled him for a moment, and he couldn’t help but wonder why one was allowed and the other wasn’t. Maybe he'll look that up in the library.​

 

[Angelo Dela Cruz]

Transfiguration was both Angelo's most interesting and confusing class this semester he thinks. History is similar enough, except he's just studying a different culture's history rather than the Philippines which he's used to. Herbology was kind of like a gardening class. Flying well... That was cool. And Charms was too. Transfiguration was admittedly cool, but it seemed to be the one with the most rules based on this lecture alone. His head was practically spinning. He didn't even know the magical world had a church. It was weird for him that the church was the one deciding on the things like punishment and stuff like that but he supposed it was a thing. While he says it's weird, it was also pretty common for the church back home to try and get involved with laws and stuff - even though they weren't supposed to. He had to admit though that transforming into other creatures would be so cool. Maybe he'll study hard and he could transform into a lion. Or a shark. Oooh or maybe a bird! So much possibilities. But also so many rules for a class that's being taught to kids his age. By the time the class ended, Angelo felt a bit overwhelmed but also excited.​

 

[Henri Fontaine]

Henri didn’t enjoy how much time his classes took. He was pretty determined to really not go along to them if he didn’t want to. If the weather was nicer he wouldn’t go. If things were just better elsewhere, he just wouldn’t go along. He knew his sister wouldn’t be happy if she heard him doing that, but Henri didn’t mind. She could have all the issues with it until she was blue in the face he wasn’t going to change. He headed out of the dorm room, knowing he’d decide at the last moment whether he’d actually bother with the class.

Henri knew that that transfiguration was theory heavy, he had done a bit of reading on the sorting hat and from that had done some reading on the transfiguration stuff. He looked to the professor trying to pay attention to what was being said, but he struggled, it just wasn’t that interesting to him. He tried but he didn’t really care about creatures, and he wasn’t sure that the hat would count as that, or if it would count as something else. He found himself almost falling asleep, but thankfully the professor wrapped things up and Henri walked out of the room.