Chapter 3:

Harry collapsed into his favorite chair in the Gryffindor common room. He was exhausted. When Professor McGonagall said he was going to have to work for it, she defiantly meant it. It was like a sort of game they played. They would throw everything at him, waiting for him to give in, like they were testing him in some way.

If at any point in time during the last year he'd thought school was difficult, his opinion had changed. School was easy. This was another matter. He would get up, then have a special nutritional breakfast laid on for him by one of the overly friendly House Elves. He would have an hour of Physical exercise, overseen by Hagrid, who would get him to run laps of the Quidditch pitch, work in his vegetable patch removing weeds and digging holes for new plants, or collect and carry fallen logs from the forest into the entrance hall, ready for the House Elves to distribute around the school.

At first he'd been confused with how this would help him, but Hagrid explained how besides being able to dodge spells better, the fitter you were the less damage spells would do to you. He'd used the stunner as an example, and explained about a piece of research where younger more healthy people were proven to recover from the Stupefy spell quicker than older less healthy people. It had given him a new enthusiasm for doing exercise, and had made him re-evaluate his opinion of Hagrid, who he assumed wouldn't be interested in such subjects.

Now after only two weeks of regular exercise and healthy eating, he could already see and feel the subtle differences. His features had become more sharp and defined and he'd grown more muscle, moving away from the chubby, round headed, lost boy look he'd been showcasing last year.

After having a cup of tea with Hagrid he would move onto his lessons, split equally between Charms and Transfiguration. With Professor McGonagall, he was learning an application of the transfiguration spell that they'd been learning all year, to make it useful in battle. The ultimate aim was to be able to transfigure either large objects, or if there were none, then the earth, into granite or a similar hard material and shape it into a wall, all in a split second to catch a spell that could penetrate a shield.

At the moment she was having him work on the material. To change what material an object is made from you first had to first understand the properties. The whole purpose was to make the material strong enough to ultimately withstand a killing curse, so McGonagall had told him it was essential to get the strength right and until he was able to produce granite that was stronger than the real thing, they wouldn't be doing anything more advanced for that particular trick.

Another area they were working on was self-transfiguration. McGonagall had explained how although it obviously isn't as reliable as polyjuice potion or his invisibility cloak, he wouldn't always have them with him, and being able to disguise oneself at a moment's notice was always a useful if not essential skill to have during a war.

Being a skill not taught till the final years at Hogwarts, Harry was only working on changing the lengths of his fingernails and hair, but he was making good progress and so far McGonagall was impressed, no matter how hard she tried to hide it.