TNFG-301 Lessons

Just Keep Swimming

Welcome
Professor Mitchell yawned and glanced at the clock as she waited for her Third Years to arrive.  She sat up straighter and tried to put on an enthusiastic expression as the students entered the classroom.  Perhaps she stayed out a little too late at the Three Broomsticks last night with Professor Penrose… but nevertheless, the class must go on.

Introduction
Welcome back to your second lesson of Year Three Transfiguration!  Today we will be learning a transformation called Piscifors, or the Object to Fish Transformation.  You should all remember the Fera Verto spell from last year and its unique characteristic.  Well, like Fera Verto, Piscifors is a transfiguration that may be cast on many different targets, so long as they are not too large.  I will discuss more about the restrictions on the spell a little later, but first let us discuss some details surrounding our aquatic friends.

Fish
We covered fish in detail at the end of last year, so I’m not going to go too far into it today, but I will give a brief review of what we’ve already covered.  Fish, as you know, live in water and breathe through gills.  These gills function by filtering oxygen from the water and releasing carbon dioxide back into it. To think about this in another way, note that the gills area fish’s equivalent of our own lungs.  The fish takes water in through its mouth then passes it over the gills, which contain a multitude of tiny blood vessels that perform the gas exchange.  When all is said and done, the water exits the body through the flaps on either side of the fish’s head.

To move, fish use a series of five fins, each controlling some part of their motion, be it steering, balance, or acceleration.  These fins are diagrammed in the picture below and are important to keep in mind if you want to create a fish that is able to move and swim as though it were alive.  If you happen to leave one of these out, the fish may be unable to move, steer itself, or remain upright.

Environment
An important thing to take into consideration when performing inanimate to animate transformations is the environment that you are introducing this creature to.  Though the animals we are transfiguring are not truly alive, it is still a good idea to consider their quality of existence.  As you get further into the field of transfiguration and become more adept at these transformations, you may get to the point where the creatures you are creating do have a sense of feeling and emotion, albeit limited, like that of magical paintings.  Therefore, you always want to be thinking ahead to the environmental necessities of the creature you are creating.  Today’s transformation is a perfect example as we are transfiguring fish, which require water to survive.  I have up on my desk bowls of both freshwater and saltwater so that your soon to be fishies can have the most comfortable “life” possible.  Aside from these slight ethical concerns, you all should also be asking yourselves why you are casting a particular spell every time you pick up your wands. What is the point of transfiguring a creature if it is unable to truly accomplish anything where it’s been created?

The Transformation
Due to the versatility of this spell, today I am allowing all of you to pick your target object.  The only restrictions on your targets are that they have to be inanimate, by the transfigurative definition, and of the appropriate size.  When talking about the size, this transformation has even fewer restrictions than those for Fera Verto.  All that matters is the size relation between your target and your desired fish.  This spell can be used to transfigure nearly any species and size of fish, from as small as a tetra to as large as a grouper.  The only limitation is your level of willpower.  Other than that, nearly any object can be transfigured into a fish via this spell, though it has been noted that it seems to work best on petals and leaves.

So, when you are ready, I have the spell information up on the board and some bowls of water up here on my desk.  When you have successfully completed the transformation, please call me over so I can check your work.

When performing this transformation, your fish will probably still be a little brain-dead as it takes a lot of practice to be able to transfigure a creature that is truly life-like.  That being said, I want you all to focus your attention today to the breathing and movement of the fish, and I expect your fish to be able to swim from one side of the bowl to the other by next week’s lesson.  If your concentration is lacking, you might find yourself with a fish without gills, or one that swims slightly to the left and lacks a dorsal fin. 

Where did this come from? Why do I care?
The invention of Piscifors is credited to researcher Alan Simon.  Mr. Simon had dedicated his studies to testing the limits of transfiguration, in particular Gamp’s Law and its exceptions.  He managed to create this spell in 1892 in an attempt to get around the exception of food.  His goal was to create a fish that could be “killed” and then eaten.  Unfortunately for him, he failed in his endeavors as every attempt he made to halt the fish’s apparent life came to nothing.  As the fish was never truly alive, it could not be killed.  The spell was cast with the intention of creating a moving, life-like fish, so nothing physical had the ability to reverse that.  Even trying to chop the fish up resulted in little squirming fish pieces.

As we moved into the 20th century, many tried to use this spell when fishing for sport, either to boast to their friends or in an attempt to win a fishing tournament.  Piscifors was soon banned from all fishing competitions and it is strongly advised to refrain from performing it around any bodies of water which contain natural fish life.  Doing so could be harmful to the natural wildlife if the transformed fish gets away and one of the real fish attempt to eat it.

Other uses for the Piscifors transformation include decorative and gift giving purposes.  Some have attempted to use it for Ichthyomancy, a form a divination that involves watching the movement of fish.  The only problem with this is that it is not as accurate as using live fish, though it may be more convenient.  As the transformed fish does not have an instinct of its own, some argue that the movements actually come from the caster, not from the fish itself, and are therefore useless to the divinatory art. 

Double Transformations
Something to consider, for both this transformation and others, is the concept of a double transformation, or transforming an already transformed object.  Taking Piscifors as an example, this could mean transforming a bottle into a fish and then transforming that fish into a flower via the Fish to Flowers transformation.  While not much needs to be changed to perform this second transformation, the mental components of the casting do need a slight adjustment.  When considering concentration, the fact that the starting object is not in its original form adds an extra similarity with the final product, meaning the spell will work with just a little less focus.  Willpower as well will be slightly lower than when casting on a natural object, at least for an inanimate to animate back to inanimate double transformation.  This is because the transformed creature has much less of a natural will than a natural creature.  This is why many people prefer to go through a double transformation rather than a regular animate to inanimate: it is easier to perform.

Also interesting to note is that the object created from a double transformation only needs to be untransfigured once to return to its original, natural state.  This is due to the nature of the untransfiguration spell.  It searches for and latches onto an item’s natural essence in order to revert it.  But we will study this further in Seventh Year.  For now you just need to know that the item only needs to be untransfigured once.  In fact, it is impossible to get back to whatever state the item was in in between the natural and final forms via untransfiguration.  The only way to return to, say, the fish state in our earlier example, would be to untransfigure the flower back into a bottle and then re-transfigure the bottle into a fish. 

Conclusion
I hope you all enjoyed today’s transformation and are looking forward to next week, when we will be transforming the elements into birds!  Until then, you just have a quick quiz and some spell practice to complete for homework.  

*Fish image credit: https://www.pinterest.com/debjones/fish/*