alchemical blurb

[mswoods]

The following day, Sadde has Transfiguration in the morning.

She is all over it at lunch.

"Okay, so, Transfig is just about the coolest thing," she says first thing to the Ravenclaws as soon as she sits at the table.

Comments

[mswoods]

She shrugs again. "I don't think it does, I think it's probably just a coincidence. Then again, I've never not been a metamorphmagus, so I don't really know what it's like or how one thing could affect the other."

[chanuphis]

"Maybe it helps with the underlying mindset somehow. Or maybe it has nothing to do with anything but metamorphmagi are too rare to collect statistics on."

[mswoods]

"Is there a stereotype about metamorphmagi being particularly good at Transfig?"

[chanuphis]

"Yeah."

[mswoods]

"How rare, exactly, are metamorphmagi? I guess rare enough that there aren't any others in our year, except maybe they're being even sneakier than I am about it, but in any case there are very few firsties so."

[pleating]

"I don't know any others personally and I don't think there are any more in the school right now."

[mswoods]

She munches on some generic lunch stuff.

"And how big is magical society, in general? I think I heard that Hogwarts is the only school in the UK and going by how many older students there are, even being conservative because of the, um, war thing, it seems like we're a ridiculously tiny group."

[chanuphis]

"It's never been big. There are some homeschoolers, but not enough to throw your estimate that much. We do live longer than muggles assuming nobody curses us to death or something, though."

[mswoods]

"Ooh, really? How much longer?"

[chanuphis]

"Not that much. Like a hundred and forty years on the high end."

[mswoods]

"Hmmm, interesting. Do we age differently as well, or do we just get much older without dying?"

[chanuphis]

"We age about the same for the first while but don't accumulate as much damage from regular wear and tear. So your estimates will start being off past around fifty or sixty."

[mswoods]

She nods thoughtfully.

Om nom nom.

[msmaxwell]

Very nom!

[chanuphis]

"I'm interested in healing; I might want to train in it some even if I don't wind up being a full time healer as a job."

[mswoods]

"Ooh, healing sounds interesting."

She takes a bite of something and thinks.

"Can Transfiguration be used to heal people? Like, can you transfigure a bruise into health or mend bones with it?"

[chanuphis]

"I'm not sure if healing spells tend to technically be transfiguration or not. Do you know if you can shapeshift injuries away?"

[mswoods]

She shakes her head. "I haven't ever actually tried, when I was little I didn't have fine enough control to even be able to try, and then I never did try because of habit and also because it'd be suspiciouser to muggles if injuries vanished too quickly. Well, the kinds of injuries that tended to bother me the most, at any rate."

[chanuphis]

"I can write Renée, she knows some first aid and might know if it's a charm or what."

[mswoods]

"That sounds good!" Pause. "How quickly can broken bones be mended by magic, in general?"

[pleating]

"It depends on how badly it's broken. Not that long, though, like a few minutes if it's only breaks and nothing worse."

[mswoods]

She puts some more food in her mouth and chews on it thoughtfully. "I'm now considering breaking something just to see if I can morph it better," she says. Then something else occurs to her. "Metamorphmagi live just as long as regular wixen, though, don't they?"

[pleating]

"Yeah, of course."

[chanuphis]

"Wixen in general treat injury pretty casually - you'll notice that we fly without helmets, even the Quidditch players who have angry balls actively trying to kill them - so you are not likely to have to deliberately break something to find out what the deal is."

[mswoods]

"Hmm, I think if we could just Transfigure injuries away, we could probably Transfigure old age away, right? I mean, otherwise Metamorphmagi would be immortal, and we wouldn't live to 140 we'd live to always. Unless there's a cultural thing against immortality? ...a very, very strong cultural thing, that would make literally every wix who has ever lived not want to Transfigure themself youth and health?"