The Marauders Year Five Part 2 #Wattys2017

You're Not My Mother

"Nothing."

"Mr. Black."

"Letters."

"Just updating you on the latest family news?" McGonagall said with a bite of cold to her tone.

Sirius looked away again.

"Sirius, please. Let me help you."

Tears were in his eyes. "I just want to study, Professor."

She stared at him for a long moment. "You owe me an apology for this afternoon."

The tears in Sirius's eyes trembled on the edge of his eyelashes. He drew a deep breath, blinking rapidly up at the ceiling as he did, and said, "I'm sorry."

McGonagall contemplated it a moment.

"Really," he said after a moment, his voice shaking. "I didn't mean it. You aren't a --" he stopped, unable to even repeat it. "I'm just... tired. I'm tired is all." He turned around and went over to his textbooks and sat down. He started to lean back in the chair, like he usually did, but thought better of it and kept his feet on the floor, firmly planted.

McGonagall took up the teacup from her desk and put it back on the shelf, staring at it for a long moment, turning it carefully so the handle pointed just so. She turned back to see him. Sirius had pulled open his Transfiguration book and flipped to the page they'd been studying that afternoon and now sat, bent over the book, reading intently. She picked up her teacher's copy of the text and went over and lowered herself into the chair that was usually James's seat and opened her copy to the same page and cleared her throat, "The operative theory behind any Transfiguration spell is essentially the same - whether you are changing a mouse into a teacup or a man into a penguin. No matter what, you are taking up a piece of matter, a collection of atoms, and rearranging them, remolding them - though the atoms are the very same as they were before you began, you have reordered them to create the illusion of a new or different thing. The effects of a transfiguration are permanent until otherwise specified; where many charms will fade and stop, the effects of transfiguration are not so fickle...." She tapped her finger against the textbook, "That's important, Mr. Black. You'll want to underline that in your notes. It will be on your O.W.L."

"Yes Professor," he drew two lines beneath the sentence.

She stared at hm for a long moment. "Mr. Black - do you understand what that means?"

Sirius stared at the sentence for a long time, then, "It means whether it looks like a mouse or a teacup, it's still the same atoms. But rearranging them makes it mouse or teacup, depending on how they're placed. When we transfigure them we're just messing with how the atoms are placed and that's what changes the appearance."

"And if we apply that theory to a larger scale?" she asked.

It was this question she had asked him earlier - specifically him - when he had not been paying attention. This point that she had wanted him - specifically him - to understand.

Sirius stared at the sentence longer than he had before, even, and he looked up at her, "I don't know, Professor."

She paused, then she said, "It means, Mr. Black, that if we can take the atoms of a mouse and rearrange them to make a teapot, so, too, can we take the atoms of the sun and make a moon. It means we can take the atoms of a man and make a horse. It means, Mr. Black, that we can take the atoms of a negative and make a positive. It means, Mr. Black, that no man nor woman is confined to being what they were born, it means that every one of us in this world, good and evil and tall and small and brave and afraid and light and dark... we all have the potential to be anything in all of the world. We all have the power within us to change the things that appear to be unchangeable, to overcome what we are. The atoms just need to be placed in the right order and we're something else entirely." She waited for a long moment. "Do you understand this Mr. Black?"