Harry Potter Headcannons

Chapter 75

Can you imagine how differently their lives would've gone if Ron, in trying to transfigure Scabbers, had actually transfigured him back into a human?
Just take a moment to imagine McGonagall's reaction if Peter Pettigrew had abruptly appeared in her classroom from Ronald Weasley's rat.
Take a moment.

Or if Ron had messed it up a little worse and couldn't get 'Scabbers' back and McGonagall had take him to disenchant him and next thing we know there's a naked Peter Pettigrew sitting on McGonagall's desk and the kids in that class learn six new swear words, a hex they will never dare to use, and a fear of Minerva McGonagall's wrath that will be with them until the day they die.

Ten and twenty years later first years are being pulled aside and warned never mess around in Transfiguration seriously the last time a kid mucked something up in that class Professor McGonagall used two semi-legal hexes, took down a Death Eater and sabotaged the rise of the Dark Lord before Potter had time to get his wand out.

What most of Hogwarts learned first on that otherwise-unexceptionable day was that Professor McGonagall could sure scream loud.

Professor Flitwick's Charms 5th-year Charms class was close enough to catch the full effect, and the door had been left open besides; en masse the students recoiled with shock and a miscast Hiccuping Charm broke one of the windows (out which the entire flock of ravens they were practicing on escaped to the Forbidden Forest where they only had to worry about centaurs, rather than annoying young humans with wands).

Up in the Divination Tower, Sibyl Trelawny preened over her foresight to have warned her students of an unprecedented catastrophe likely to occur before the hour was out.

Out in Greenhouse Five, a NEWT-level Herbology class looked up in puzzlement, and most of them were subsequently bitten by the Venomous Tentaculae they were attempting to propagate. It does not do to ignore a Venomous Tentacula when you're prodding at its intimate parts with a cotton ball held in tweezers, so the class was cancelled while two-thirds of the students headed for the infirmary and the rest of them headed into the castle because if they stayed with the Venomous Tentaculae they'd be outnumbered, and nobody wants that.

And down in the dungeons, Professor Snape turned away from comparing Lee Jordan's Pepper-Up Potion to spoiled cream at what sounded like a woman screaming from the entrance hall. At the second scream, he ordered the class to remain where they were and behave, sweeping out of the room just in time to miss Theodore Nott suddenly jumping up and yelping as if someone had put a crocodile heart down the back of his robes.

Fred Weasley stepped back from the unfortunate Slytherin, shared a smirk with his twin, and stuck his head out the door to make sure Snape had rounded the corner before leading the way out of the classroom.

Back in the Transfiguration classroom, about four minutes ago, it had started innocently enough. Ron Weasley, possessed of a broken wand and a lurking suspicion that most of the family's magical talent had been soaked up by his siblings before he was around to get any, had attempted to turn his pet rat, Scabbers, into a teacup.

Scabbers had not become a teacup.

Scabbers, blast his useless furry little backside, had become a furry, vaguely teacup-shaped monstrosity out of which absolutely no one would have been tempted to drink, and to make matters worse, he still had a tail.

It was moving.

Harry was hiding a smile behind his hand. Dean and Seamus weren't even trying to hide, elbowing each other and laughing. Parvati and Lavender were looking with disgust and horror at either Scabbers or him, and Hermione was opening her mouth, no doubt ready to tell him exactlywhat he'd done wrong.