After Charms Harry and Neville met up with Hannah and Susan on their way to Transfiguration. After shared greetings the four entered the classroom and, at Harry's insistence, sat down together with Harry in between Susan and Neville, and Hannah taking a seat on Susan's left side. The group of newly formed friends then conversed about how their first classes went.
Many of the other students present stared at them strangely, like they were expecting some kind of scandal to happen any moment. Their wide, disbelieving eyes making it seem as if seeing people from separate houses conversing had never happened before. Harry had the feeling it most likely hadn't—not in this day and age, at least.
He was a bit curious at their shock, though. These students were all first years like him, so they shouldn't have any of the house biases others did. So why were they acting like the idea of two Hufflepuffs sitting with a pair of Gryffindors was unfathomable?
Maybe it had something to do with their parents. He didn't know, and it probably didn't matter. Harry was sure that, given time, things would change.
“Where do you think our professor is?” asked Hannah as she took a look around. Most of the desks were now filled up with students, all of them chattering excitedly—after the initial shock of seeing students from Gryffindor and Hufflepuff sitting together, most of the other students seemed to just accept it and now spoke amongst themselves. Yet she could not find their teacher.
“Who knows,” said Harry, his eyes straying to the cat with the strange rectangular markings around its eyes sitting on the teacher's desk.
“What's with the cat?” asked Neville, having spotted the feline perched on the desk as well. “You reckon she's Professor McGonagall's familiar or something?”
Hannah looked over towards the black tabby cat, then shrugged. “Maybe.”
Harry frowned. There was something off about that cat. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something about that feline just did not remind him of a cat.
It was probably the stern glare the thing was giving everyone.
About five minutes after the bell rang, signaling a start to the class, Ron Weasley and another boy, Zacharias Smith, a boy with blond hair and brown eyes, rushed into the room.
“Good, Professor McGonagall's not here yet, so we won't get into any trouble for being late,” Ron said, breathing heavily, Zacharias nodding his head in agreement but not speaking.
Just then, the cat that had been sitting on the desk leapt into the air. Harry and the other students watched in awe as the cat began to shift in mid-air, changing from a tabby cat into a person. Arms and legs stretched and expanded, claws became hands, fur became clothes and before long Professor McGonagall was standing in front of the shocked crowd of first years, directing a stern glare towards the two Hufflepuff boys.
“Think again, Mr. Weasley,” the strict-looking professor said. “That will be five points from Hufflepuff for the both of you for being tardy. Now sit down before I dock more points.”
Ron and Zacharias hurried to their seats, properly cowed by the stern woman. Harry mused that it probably had something to do with Professor McGonagall's glare. It was very intimidating, as he could attest to.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall soon began, her voice just as stern as her expression. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
Then she waved her wand and the students watched in awe as her desk changed into a large, pot-bellied pig. Even Harry was not immune to feeling impressed by the display of magic. While he could transfigure one object into another, he'd never done such a large-scale transformation, and never transformed an inanimate object into an organic one. He could only imagine how complex that kind of magic was. It was very unlikely they would be getting into anything that complicated for several years at least.
Another wave of her wand and Professor McGonagall changed the pig back into a desk. She then proved Harry's thoughts on not learning anything very complex correct by setting them up with the task of transfiguring a matchstick into a needle.
Harry didn't do anything at first, choosing instead to glance around at the other students struggling with the task. Neville had a look of utmost concentration, his eyes and nose scrunched up almost painfully as he waved his wand at the matchstick which just did not to change into a needle. Susan and Hannah were likewise not getting anywhere. In fact, the only person who seemed to be making any progress was Hermione Granger, whose match seemed to ripple for a second before going still, unchanged.
It hadn't taken very long for Harry to decide just how well he wanted to do in his classes. Many people were already holding high expectations of him thanks to his title as the Boy-Who-Lived, and while that did bother him some, it also provided him with the perfect excuse to not hold back.
After all, if people were expecting him to be great, he might as well show them just how high he could shoot those expectations out of the water.
Holding his wand in his hand, Harry went back to his matchstick. Almost absently, he waved his wand at it, and watched in satisfaction as it near instantly morphed into a needle. Another wave of his wand had it changing back into a matchstick. It was very easy to do. He'd been doing small time transfigurations like that for two and a half years now.
Deciding to give himself a challenge, Harry began adding extra features to the needle. Sometimes he would make the point longer, other times he would make the head larger. He changed the needles base composition to copper, brass, silver, iron and back to steel. By the time Harry was finished, he had made a needle in Gryffindor colors with a decently complex lion head for the shaft.
“How are you doing that?”
The question had Harry stopping his work and looking over at Hannah. The girl, along with Susan, stared at him in shock and just a hint of envy. Neville, too, seemed to have stopped working and was now eying Harry's needle in undisguised awe.
Harry blinked. His eyes almost widened but he stopped himself. Was this it? His chance to shine? To show his new friends and class what he could do? To prove himself to other magical children and his teachers? How exciting!
He cleared his throat.
“Transfiguration is all about focus and visualization; you can’t just wave your wand, say an incantation and expect the matchstick to turn into a needle,” Harry began, assuming a very minor note of lecture. “You have to picture it changing in your mind, literally visualize the change happening as you cast the spell.” He noticed the three still looked confused, so said, “Try taking the spell in steps.”
“Steps?” asked Neville, who had the least amount of success with his transfiguration.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Try changing the match into a needle using smaller steps. First off, ask yourself what needs to change? What’s different about the matchstick from the needle? You have the thickness, the point and eye of the needle, the shaft, and the material. It doesn’t matter which order you make the changes, but when I cast the spell I change the thickness first, then the material, then I’ll transform the head of the match into the needles eye and finally the other end into the point. By following it in smaller steps, you don’t have to try and focus on the whole item changing at once, and that allows you to get each point right.”
It had taken him a long time to work this out; he had first discovered transfiguration when he accidently turned a baseball Duddley had thrown at him into a stirofome toy. He eventually managed to reverse engineer his steps and came up with this method, using small objects like pens, pencils and footballs as test subjects.
Those poor, poor footballs. They were never the same after that.
“That is a very impressive display of knowledge and magic, Mr. Potter,” a voice came from the front. Harry looked up to see Professor McGonagall standing before him.
Most of the other students stared at him in unmasked amazement. The only one who didn't seem to quite share their sentiment was Hermione, who didn't look pleased.
“Twenty points for Gryffindor, ten for getting the spell right, and another ten for the enlightening and knowledgeable explanation,” Professor McGonagall said, giving him a rare smile.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Harry said with a small nod, wondering if he might have gone a bit overboard. When he explained anything, especially anything involving theories he'd come up with through his own hard-earned research, he tended to get... a little too passionate at times.
“And since you can clearly do this, perhaps I should give you a more advanced task,” Professor McGonagall began, but Harry interrupted her.
“Actually, I was thinking it might be a good idea if I went around and helped out some of the students who were struggling,” Harry suggested. Professor McGonagall looked surprise by his offer, but soon her lips turned into that smile-grimace he was coming to recognize that told him she was proud.
“An excellent idea, Mr. Potter. You may assist your fellow students for the rest of your time in my class. And take fifteen more points for Gryffindor.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
And so went the rest of class. Harry helped students who appeared to be having trouble. By the end of the class, he had managed to walk both Hannah and Susan through the steps he'd devised and they had managed to change their matchsticks into needles, though Susan's looked better than Hannah's. Neville had gotten close, and only needed to fix the head, while Seamus' had inexplicably blown up when he tried to transfigure it. Dean changed the matchstick's tip into a point, but not much else. On the other hand, Sally-Ann Perks, a Hufflepuff with light brown hair and eyes, alo turned the match into a needle. The only other person who accomplished that task was Fay Dunbar, who sat beside Pavarti Patil and Lavender Brown, two girls who were far too giggly to actually make much headway when Harry tried to help them.
He had even gone out of his way to help Ron a bit, though the boy seemed leary of him. Not that Harry could blame him—he would be wary, too, if someone who had verbally reemed him was suddenly being so helpful. Still he tried, and that's what mattered to Harry.
The only person Harry had not been able to help was Hermione Granger, who had refused to use his unorthidox methods under the claim that it was not in the book they'd been assigned, and therefore was not the proper way to do transfiguration. Harry assumed the girl's real reason for not wanting his help was jealousy. From what he had seen of Hermione so far, the bushy-haired witch was used to being at the top of her class, and to see someone doing better than her had sparked her competitive streak. It was unlikely she would accept help from him.
In the end, she had only managed to change the matches color and gain a pointed tip, a fact that seemed to humiliate her. By the end of class she looked like she was just a few seconds from crying.
Harry might have felt pity for the girl, but considering it was her own pride that spurned his help, felt nothing more than exasperation. It wasn't like he could do much anyway. One could only help those who wanted it, and Hermione Granger clearly did not want his help.
When class finally ended, Harry stood up with the rest of his friends, but rather than leave, turned to them and said, “you three go on ahead to lunch without me. I'll meet up with you in a few minutes.”
They looked at him for a second, but decided to just go along with it and said goodbye before heading out the door.
With everyone gone, Harry walked up to Professor McGonagall, who looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you, Mr. Potter?”
“Yes, actually,” Harry said with a polite, inquisitive smile. “I wanted to ask you about your ability to turn into a cat.”
It had been on his mind ever since he'd seen it. He knew what it was, of course; Sirius could change into a dog and Harry had even ridden on his back before he and his parents had gone into hiding. And he knew that his father had the ability to transform into an animal, though he'd never seen it before.
Professor McGonagall's other eyebrow joined its bretheren in being raised. “You mean my animagus ability?”
Harry gave her a nod.
“Yes, I was wondering if you could tell me more bit about it.”
The truth of the matter was he only knew a little bit about animagus transformations. That being that it was the ability for a human to transform into an animal, and that his dad, Sirius and another of his dad's friends named Peter Pettigrew, had become animagi sometime in their third year.
Harry was interested in learning to become an animgus, not only to honor his dad, but also because of how useful the ability sounded. And to prove himself the best, Harry had every intention of becoming an animgus before this year was over.
Professor McGonagall looked at the boy in surprise before that small, almost imperceptible smile found its way onto her face. “You really are your parents son, Mr. Potter. Your father was quite gifted in transfiguration, much like you seem to be, and you have your mother inquisitiveness.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Harry said with a genuine smile. It was hard not to feel good at being compared to his parents, especially from someone who clearly thought so highly of them.
“Very well,” Professor McGonagall said, “I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give you some information on animagi. What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” Harry said almost immediately, before he began firing off all the questions he had with barely contained excitement. “What kind of animal transformations are there? Are they fixed? Or can you transform into any animal in the animal kingdom? Does becoming an animagus offer any benefit to the user beyond the transformation itself? Just how does one become an animagus in the first place? Also—”
“Slow down, Mr. Potter.” Professor McGonagall interrupted his rapid-fire series of questions with the air of someone on the verge of being completely overwhelmed. “I can see you have a lot of questions, more than I initially thought. Tell me, are you interested in becoming an animagus?”
“Of course,” Harry said. “Who wouldn't?” At seeing her stern and skeptical look, Harry hastened to add. “Though, I doubt I could accomplish it right now. It sounds very difficult, but I figured if I could learn everything there is to know about becoming an animagus, I would have a headstart for when I actually begin attempting the process.”
Professor McGonagall stared at Harry for a few, long seconds. Seconds which almost felt like hours to Harry. For a moment, he thought he might have overstepped his bounds, but after a few seconds, the stern teacher walked over to a small bookcase and ran her index finger across the spines of the books on it. Her finger stopped at one of them, and she pulled out it of the bookcase, before walking back over to him and holding it out in offering.
He took the book from her and looked down at its front cover. It was titled, A Guide to Discovering Your Inner Animal by Morgana le Fay. His eyes widened when he saw the author.
“This was written by Morgana le Fay,” he breathed, turning wide eyes to Professor McGonagall. If he didn't know any better, he would almost say she was smirking at him. “The Morgana le Fay? The half-sister of King Arthur, infamous Dark Witch and quite possible Merlin's most bitter enemy?”
“You seem surprised,” Professor McGonagall said, her smirk now undeniable. “Morgana Le Fay was a student at this school, much like Merlin himself.”
“I didn't know,” Harry said in shock. While a part of him felt silly for not having come to the conclusion that, if Merlin had been a student at Hogwarts, surely Morgana must have been as well, he still couldn't help but feel a sense of astonished perplexity.
“That book will tell you everything you wish to know about animagi and how to become one yourself,” Professor McGonagall said, her smirk being replaced by her stern glare. “That book is a part of my personal collection, and I expect you to not only bring it back when you are finished, but to bring it back in perfect condition. It is not lightly that I am giving this to you, Mr. Potter.”
Harry looked down at the book with newfound reverence. When he looked back at Professor McGonagall, his smile was quite possibly one of the brightest he'd ever given anyone.
“Thank you very much, Professor,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist. “I promise to take excellent care of your book, and return it in the same condition it was given.”
“See to it that you do.” Professor McGonagall's stern look was slightly butchered by her smile. “Now, best be off with you, Mr. Potter, lest you miss the rest of your lunch.”
“Right.” Harry gave her one last nod before hurrying out the door, the book on animgus transformation in his hands. He could hardly wait to see what knowledge this book contained.