Because the girl's prefect was late getting my class schedule to me, I was one of the last people to slip into transfiguration class. I saw an empty seat at the front of the class, and I saw Hermione Granger waving enthusiastically for me to sit beside her.
There was another seat at the back of the room; it would have felt better to sit with my back to the ball, but I didn't want anyone thinking I was anxious or afraid about anything.
I slipped into the seat beside Hermione.
There was a cat sitting on the teacher's desk; I'd heard that McGonagall could turn into a cat, and the cat even seemed to have markings on her face like spectacles.
"How was your night?" she asked. "I've heard some disturbing rumors."
"I'm fine," I said. "Some other people aren't. Hopefully they'll learn their lesson. Has out professor always been a cat?"
"What?" she asked.
"That cat is clearly the professor," I said.
Hermione stared at the professor, who chose that moment to step off the desk and become a human. It was the fastest, and smoothest transformation that I'd ever seen, and I'd seen a lot of Changers back in my homeworld.
The entire classroom gasped.
"Transfiguration is some of the most dangerous magic you will learn here in Hogwarts," she said. "As such, anyone who chooses to engage in horseplay will be asked to leave and will not come back."
How did that even work? Would the student have to make up the work on their own time, or would they simply have an entire branch of magic that they didn't learn by the time they were an adult. The reading I'd done seemed to indicate that transfiguration was one of the fundamental things required to be a wizard.
Presumably almost everything learned in the early years would be of use; it was a little like normal school; the basics learned in elementary school would be used by everyone, while classes learned in high school would be hit or miss. I knew people who hadn't done algebra in twenty years, and I knew people who used it all the time.
McGonagall turned and with a wave of her wand transformed her desk into a pig. It snorted and stared at us, and I found my mind racing. Had she actually given an inanimate object a form of sentience, even if only a low form?
Could the pig be eaten, or would it revert to normal, creating splinters in the stomach that would be fatal..or even splinters in the bloodstream?
Would that be a perfect form of assassination?
I knew better than to ask any of those questions. While I enjoyed prodding Snape, I couldn't afford to alienate McGonagall or any of the other teachers.
"Transfiguration is a branch of magic that focuses on the alteration of the form or appearance of an object, down to it's smallest fundamental parts," McGonagall began once she'd reverted the desk. "You should pull out you paper and quills and begin to take notes."
I grimaced. I'd tried writing with a quill in the past, and I had a tendency to blot the paper with ink. You had to re-dip the quill every three to six words, and I found myself balking at the inefficiency of it.
I watched Hermione, who seemed to somehow have already picked up the trick, and I tried to imitate her. I found that I'd been holding the quill too far upright, which made my lines too thick to make for legible words. She held hers at a forty five degree angle. How in the hell had she already learned to write with these things?
"Transfiguration is very hard work," McGonagall continued. "And it requires a mind that is much more focused than some of the other branches of magic. Sloppiness results in failure. It is important to make firm and decisive wand movements; failure to do so will result in failure."
"There are factors to be considered with transfiguration. First is weight; smaller objects are easier to transfigure than larger. The task grows more difficult the larger the object, until some objects are simply too big to transfigure."
I wanted to ask what the upper limits were, but I figured I'd be able to find it somewhere in the library.
"Wand power is also a factor," McGonagall continued. "Some wands are better suited to this kind of work than others. That does not mean that any of you have substandard wands; wands are simply a tool, and some tools are better for some tasks than others."
"Concentration is the third factor. Allow your concentration to lapse, lose your hold on the mental image of what you are trying to achieve, and the transfiguration will either fail of be incomplete. For that reason, those who are better able to imagine the things they can create often have an easier time."
"Viciousness is a factor with living transfigurations," she continued. "A highly vicious creature is much more difficult to force out of his form, and also to create."
"The fifth factor is more complicated," she said. "And it requires some mastery of mathematics to understand."
I glanced around at the people around me. They all seemed to be engrossed in the lesson, even Malfoy. It made sense. The Ravenclaws liked to be seen as intelligent, at least according to the hat, and the Slytherins liked to see themselves as being sly.
I did catch some of them glancing up at me from time to time, only to hastily drop their gaze when they caught me looking at them.
McGonagall spent the first half of the session laying out the theory behind transfiguration. I found it fascinating. I could see all kinds of possibilities to transfiguration, even given the limitations that had been laid out.
The fact that food couldn't be created from nothing wasn't a surprise. The fact that it could be successfully duplicated was. What was the difference? If I had one hamburger and I made a second one, hadn't that second one come from nothing?
Money couldn't be transfigured, but although McGonagall acted as though it was a law of nature, that didn't make much sense to me. What made more sense to me was that Wizarding money was enspelled not to be copiable. I'd have to try to see if muggle money could be copied, not that I had any intention of becoming a counterfeiter. Even if it was possible, it was undoubtedly against the law, as it would endanger the whole Secrecy the Wizarding world depended on.
It was apparently impossible to bring someone back from the dead. Even if you tried to transfigure a corpse into someone who was alive, the best you'd get was a zombie. No surprise there.
Curse wounds couldn't be healed, even by transfiguration.
The second half of the hour was to be dedicated to the practical portion of the course. Our first task was to change matchsticks into needle.
This wasn't something that I'd done before, and so I watched carefully as McGonagall went through the wand motions.
It was complex, and I could feel the frustration of the children around me as they struggled with the spell. It was the first real spell we were being taught, and apparently even the purebloods weren't doing a lot better.
I saw that Hermione's matchstick was shimmering, and I focused my attention on the match in front of me.
They'd started with matchsticks because they were close in form to the needle. The changes she was asking us to make weren't that difficult; we needed to change the matchstick from metal to wood, and we needed to make it sharp.
I found myself sweating as I forced myself to focus on what a needle was. Over and over I moved my wand; McGonagall corrected my wand movements a couple of times, and she moved around the room doing the same for the other students.
Finally I felt my needle beginning to change. I looked over, and Hermione was doing the same. She was looking at me with an expression of triumph, before looking disappointed when she saw my needle.
Her needle was silvery and somewhat pointed.
Mine was of a dull metal, but it was sharp; I drew blood when I touched the tip of it. I felt a sense of satisfaction. I wondered if I would be allowed to get a supply of matches from the Deputy Headmistress to continue practicing.
Not only would that let me get control over this ability, but there were things that could be done with a large supply of needles.
"Congratulations Ms. Hebert, Miss Granger," McGonagall said. She took our needles from us, and held them up to the class.
"You can see the difference that concentration and focus and sometimes point of view can make in a transfiguration. Neither got the transfiguration completely right, and it is obvious that they focused on different things. Miss Granger focused on changing the metal, while Miss Hebert focused on the sharpness."
I could see that it was true. My needle still had the pattern of the wood on it, while Hermione's was more purely metal. Her needle was blunt, but mine was more functional.
"It's impressive that you both managed to accomplish it on the first day. Five points to Ravenclaw and Slytherin."
As far as I was concerned, Hermione was more impressive. She was actually eleven, and her mind hadn't matured yet, and she was keeping up with me, and she'd already figured out how to use a quill.
Hermione beamed, although she kept glancing at me.
As we rose to leave class, she followed me outside. "Is it true that a whole crowd of your classmates attacked you, and now two of them are dead?"
"Not that I know of," I said. "Unless they died in the middle of the night. I'm sure Professor Snape would have said something."
"So you were attacked," she said, looking scandalized. "What did you do?"
I glanced around. Several of the other students were looking away, but they were obviously listening to our conversation.
"Who says I had to do anything?" I asked. "Aren't the girls stairs guarded in your dorms?"
"They are," she said. "But I overheard Draco Malfoy saying that it was a prefect."
I sighed, and I pulled Hermione into a bathroom. My bugs had already told me that no one was inside.
"As a hypothetical," I said. "If a first year really did put three fifty year students in the hospital wing, would she admit to doing it?"
Hermione stared at me.
"You've been to public school before," I said. She'd mentioned it once of twice during the interminable train ride on the way to school. "What would happen if popular kids with a lot of friends get hurt by a kid they were bullying? What would the school do? Would they pat the kid on the head and tell him it was a good job?"
"No?"
"They'd punish the kid and apologize to the parents of the bully, because their poor little babies got hurt," I said. "A kid who fights back isn't a hero, he's a problem."
"Is that what it was like in America?"
"Is it any different here?" I asked. "Or are schools more interested in protecting themselves than their students?"
She stared at me for a moment, then her gaze dropped to her feet. I figured that someone like her would have some experience with bullying; she would have been too annoying to her peers not to have been. As an adult, she was somewhat less annoying to me, but that was only because I had a different perspective.
"So when that kid says that someone had an accident, you don't question them," I said.
She looked up at me.
"It's really that bad?" she asked
I nodded. "It's that bad. I'm handling it, but it could very easily go bad for me. I need for you to support me in this, and in return I'll help you."
Doing this alone was probably more than I could handle. I needed allies, and even if Hermione was only eleven, she was another set of hands. Two wands could do a lot more than one, and if I could get her combat capable, maybe two could do a lot more than one.
Her lips tightened. "It's not right what they are doing. I've had some of the girls look down on me in Ravenclaw... I think because I'm a muggleborn, but they mostly ignore me."
They probably looked down on her because of her personality, but I could work with this. It would increase her sense of solidarity with me, and it would make her more loyal.
"Better to be ignored," I said. "Until you are ready to do something about it. Don't brag about how smart you are; them seeing it will be all the proof they need that their superiority complexes aren't real."
"We've got Defense against the Dark Arts class next," Hermione said. "I've got Herbology with the Gryffindors later."
"Let's go," I said.
We found the Defense classroom without issue, and found seats. Already the class was dividing itself up by house; the Slytherins sitting on one side and the Ravenclaws on the other. How much worse would it have been with Gryffindors, given the hatred I'd overheard from some of the Slytherins last night?
Professor Travers slipped into the room.
"I am Professor Travers," he said when everyone had settled down. "And this is Defense against the Dark arts. Does anyone know what that is?"
The room was silent, with not even Hermione lifting her hands.
"In this class we will be teaching the magic you need to learn in order to not die," he said. "That's what it breaks down to. There are all sorts of magics that can be used to kill you, and if I do my job right, they may not kill you as quickly as they otherwise might."
Everyone was staring at him.
"I say that because there is no such thing as a perfect defense. Sometimes spells are designed that are superior to the ones commonly in use, but it's only a matter of time before someone designs a better offensive attack spell to get around that defense. Attack and defense are in a race, you see, and they challenge wizardly ingenuity."
"That is why you can never simply depend on one defense to protect you from everything. There are general defenses that will be generally useful, but those can be overcome. To survive you have to be flexible, and able to roll with the punches."
"Today," he said. "We will begin with how to defend yourself against one of the most dangerous threats that face all wizards... muggles."
"What?" I heard Hermione ask under her breath.
"Some of you may look at muggles as harmless. They have no magic, so how could they possibly hurt you?"
He shook his head. "It's surprising how many Wizards are killed every year by muggles. Their vehicles alone are a large cause of Wizarding deaths; a shield charm has proven ineffective against a car striking at high rates of speed. Worse, most adult wizards aren't even capable of casting a good shield charm."
Hermione raised her hand.
"Yes, Miss..."
"Granger," Hermione said. "How can you claim that muggles are the most dangerous threat to Wizards. Isn't that racist?"
Internally I sighed.
"Does anyone have an answer to that?" he asked.
Reluctantly I raised my hands.
"Yes, Miss..."
"Hebert," I said. "It's a matter of numbers. Would you think a shark is more dangerous than a cow?"
Hermione stared at me, then nodded.
"But lots more people are killed every year by cows than sharks. The reason is that not very many people are around sharks, but a lot of people are around cows."
The professor nodded approvingly. "Five points to Slytherin. It's much the same with Wizards. A dragon is much more dangerous than a muggle, but outside the preserves, how likely is a normal wizard to see one? You will always have to deal with muggles, though. Even purebloods are unable to completely isolate themselves, as much as they would like to pretend to. Sooner or later you will have to interact with them."
He paused and looked around at us. "This class is not muggle studies. If you want to know about muggle culture, there is a class for that. What we are focused on today is how to defend yourself in the unlikely, but still possible event that you come face to face with a hostile muggle."
He continued., "Not all muggles are dangerous. Most of them are completely harmless. The problem is that there are so many of them that inevitably some of them are. Often it's difficult to tell the difference, although there are some possible tells."
"Today we will be going over those signs. Again, not all muggles who display these signs are bad. It's simply that the odds are increased when they show these signs. Once we discuss that we will discuss some counterstrategies that can be used."
Hermione calmed down, although her face was still a little flushed.
We both began to take notes.