"To qualify as a quack you have to claim to be a doctor."
— Theodore Sturgeon

#

Getting The Hang Of Thursday.

When the wand-alarm prodded him awake, the last thing in the Potter's mind from the previous night was still fresh, the question he'd posed: What's it like not-being-you, Harry?

The first thing in his mind was even fresher, and the answer was: "During the day it's like you're a dream I'm having. And then at night I wake up just long enough to say hello. And then things get complicated. Look, do you mind if I clean up in here? It really is a mess."

He sat up in bed and stilled the alarm, and then rubbed his provisional hands together in the darkness. Warm and slightly callused.

Do as you think best, Harry.

How could I not be safe in hands like these?

#

"Good morning Mrs Norris, and how are you?" said the Potter.

Mrs Norris glared up at him.

He looked down at her politely. "Come to that, how's Mr Norris and all the little Norrises?"

Glare.

"Oh, there is no Mr Norris? I hope he didn't run afoul of a Ford Popular, I hate irony."

Glare.

"He left you for a younger cat?"

Glare.

"A younger ferret? Shame on Mr Norris!

"—Look, if you don't talk you can't blame me for holding up both ends of the conversation. How are you? Simple question. We're clearly not friends, I wouldn't presume, but we needn't be enemies."

Mrs Norris sat back and looked down before looking up again.

=(Sad.)=

"Because you miss Mr Filch?"

=(Why else?)=

Good, that makes you worthwhile. "And nobody's bothered to tell you what's going on with him in hospital, have they? No, of course they haven't. He's a squib, he couldn't possibly have a familiar." He adjusted his beanie and flicked its prop to life. "Not to worry, I'll apply questions for you where needed. But now, let us away! I have a destiny with dirt."

#

In the 1943 MGM musical Thousands Cheer, Gene Kelly briefly danced with a mop.

Did he dance the tango with said mop?

He did not.

And so it was left to the Potter to push back the bounds of terpsichory. It was a burden he accepted with both grace and the near-total absence thereof. Mrs Norris thought he was a loony but that was all right, Gene Kelly also danced with mice, terpsichory-dickory-dock, imagine her reaction to that.

(Look at all this dust. This is magic dust! Given that dust is mostly skin cells, there should be a whole subsection of Defence Against The Dark Arts devoted to custodial work! Forget fingernails, J. Random Darklord could control all Hogwarts with the contents of this mop!)

"Have you noticed, Mrs Norris," he said, while waiting for the tap-worthy floor to dry, "that this school has far too many rooms?"

=(For what?)=

"I counted 28 doors on this floor, and yeah, okay, some of them are fake but some of the walls are actually doors, so it evens out, and basically you could fit the whole school population into this floor alone — but they use every single floor plus the dungeons. All these candles, fireplace-lighting...pulling quills out of the ceiling...what do you think, Mrs Norris? Does it make sense?"

=(Humans don't do sense.)=

"I wonder if some past headmaster enrolled all the portraits as students?" he mused. "Some sort of subsidy scam...if they let everybody out of the portraits they'd need all this space — oh hello, what's this?"

Along the entire length of the corridor, a yard below the ceiling but still above normal viewing range, was engraved a motto in Latin:

QUOD EST INFERIUS EST SICUT QUOD EST SUPERIUS ET QUOD EST SUPERIUS EST SICUT QUOD EST INFERIUS AD PERPETRANDA MIRACULA REI UNIUS

"As above, so below," translated the Potter, "and vice versa, to bring about the miracle of Thing One. Very famous magical principle, that.

"Holographic universe, whole sort of general mishmash, however you phrase it, the part reflects the whole. Which would therefore mean that, at least in terms of magical thinking, the whole universe is crammed into this corridor." He looked up and down the corridor. "Well, it is dark and mostly empty..."

There was a statue four doors down from where he was. He went and had a look at it. It was of a lost-looking wizard. So, immediate failure there — he wasn't a wizard, or a statue, and knew perfectly well where he was; it was everything else that was lost.

The base of the statue had an inscription: Boris the Bewildered. Boris looked bothered. Perhaps he'd been bewitched. That might explain why he was wearing his gloves on the wrong hands.

"Hello, Boris!" said the Potter. "You don't talk, by any chance? No? If I had a non-orientable wormhole I could fix the chirality of your gloves — no, strike that, they'd explode when you put them on, bit counterproductive that solution, anyway I haven't got a wormhole. Maybe you should just pull them inside out? No, they're already inside out..."

Oh, wait. An inside-out as-above-so-below correspondence would mean that a lost-looking wizard with gloves on actually did refer to a non-lost non-wizard wearing callused hands.

That was a bit...literary, wasn't it?

Maybe that was it the universe was being literary at him. Perhaps Boris was bewildered as in Thornton Wilder (17 April 1897 – 7 December 1975)!

That's it! this is all an adaptation of Our Town! I'm dead! also a girl! and I've returned to Earth to relive my 12th birthday in the body of Harry Potter! It all fits! No, no, wait, doesn't work — I don't know when my birthday is.

Come to that there was no point in trying literary analysis, you never really resolved anything with it, people were still arguing about motivations in Hamlet just because somebody had combined two divergent revisions of the script...

It was probably best to just keep one's eyes open.

#

There didn't seem to be any reason not to move on to doing the fourth floor, so he did exactly that.

This floor wasn't quite so well lit, candle-wise, and had patches and pools of darkness here and there; some of these were broken up by the light of the moon through windows, others were not, and could have been quite scary if not for the fact that this was Hogwarts and could therefore safely be assumed to be absolutely jam-packed with lurking monsters. Having made that assumption he was logically in no danger, and proceeded through the dark areas without concern, verifying with Mrs Norris that he was doing a proper job on them.

And then, about halfway through the job, he come to a door that was not a door — not the trompe l'oeil kind, either, the because-it's-a-jar kind. And he was Tempted. His presumed jurisdiction was limited to the hallway, but it would be nice to get a look inside a probably enormously dangerous darkened mystery classroom...

...but no, it wasn't his body.

He just pulled the door shut until it latched and moved on.

Ten seconds later the door opened decisively behind him.

He whirled around in a rather complicated motion that involved stumbling backward over his bucket (even though it had originally been behind him and he'd turned around) and which terminated with him on the floor supine (or is it prone? no, from supinus bent or thrown backward), bottom jammed into the bucket and dirty water rushing up his back and down the hallway.

He awarded himself fifty Potter Points for style, debited sixty for yuck, decided he didn't feel like ending up with a negative score and awarded twenty because he'd managed to keep his hat on.

Not to say he was scared. Was he scared? Of course not, he'd noticed perfectly well that Mrs Norris wasn't scared. Then why the splashy pirouette? Ah, well! — startled, yes, he was startled, no reason not to be startled...perfectly reasonable being startled upon having doors opened at you (away from you) yes, thank you, point taken, honestly, in the dark of the night...

A tall figure moved out of the darkness.

There was a flash of glass in the moonlight.

A flash of glasses, in fact, half-moon and gold-rimmed.

"Good morning, Mr Potter," said Professor Dumbledore (for it was he).

The Potter ventured a tiny wave. Hello, he mouthed.

"Dear me," said the Headmaster, peering down at him. "Is that the Slytherin Beanie of Shame? I haven't seen that in use since they retired my classroom in...1953, I believe." The Headmaster reached down and with a firm hand pulled him up and out with a shluck. "With, I perceive, an intriguing aesthetic modification. Well done, Harry." A hand moved through the air and the dirty water vanished from its various improper places before appearing in the self-righteous bucket.

Use voice now? Yes. "Thank you, Professor!"

Thoughtful micropause from the Headmaster. "At this hour of night and both of us doing the school's business? Professor seems too formal. I have so many middle names pining for lack of use — I think, perhaps, Brian might do?" Behind the glasses there was an obscure twinkle, if such was not self-contradictory. "Merely one notch above the surname, suitable for some student use."

"Well, thank you very much then, Brian!" said the Potter, momentarily doffing his cap. "—Speaking of school business, how is Mr Filch? Mrs Norris is concerned."

"He is still in St Mungo's Hospital, doing well but providing endless fascination to Healer Litehus. Every time they fix something they find something else wrong with him. Lurgi, pink toenails, spon plague — at last report they suspected gobberwarts, but that seems improbable to me; I would venture a knut on misdiagnosed nadgers. We hope to have him back by Monday." The headmaster pointed his crooked nose toward the cat. "Perhaps I should take her to visit him?"

Mrs Norris glared up at him with surly gratitude.

"I shall go make arrangements, then. Unless there are any other matters requiring my professional attention?"

"Ah," said the Potter. "Well. In regards to Mr Filch and his particular circumstances — I was wondering — while I have considerable respect for, shall we say, traditional methods of clettering — in the muggle world there is a device called a rotary floor polisher..."

#

After waiting for the Dumbledore to depart the area, the Potter returned to the magical mystery door whence the professor had emerged. In somewhat eroded gold lettering, it bore the legend TRANSFIGURATION on its frosted glass.

Hmm.

He turned away from the door, and found that he was being watched by a portrait on the opposite wall.

This one was a black-haired girl, and he had to squint to make out her name on the traditional small metal plate.

"Well, hello there, Katerina," said the Potter, "and what do you suppose our headmaster was up to in there?"

She just smiled and pressed index finger to lips.

The Potter frowned as a world bubbled up in his head.

Spoilers?

In a sudden grump, he abandoned the fourth floor half done.

And the world went about its business.

#

Transfiguration was apparently the word of the day, for this was also the first day of that class.

The Longbottom was not looking forward to it, and had doured and gloomed about it almost from the moment he woke up to the moment they all walked into the classroom, and past the latter. (At least he'd gotten a good night's sleep, punctuated with the occasional pizza-induced murmuring hiccup of "Abbondanza...!")

"It's Gran's big thing," he said (again) from his position behind the desk to the Potter's left (the Weasley of course being the Potter's right hand man) (the Granger was sitting in front of him, and really wanted to be sitting at the foot of the teacher's desk). "If you can't do Transfiguration you're just nothing."

"That must be why we have Transfiguration once a week but Herbology three times," said the Potter. "Think how important it would be if we didn't take it at all!"

"..." said the Longbottom.

There were two doors to the Transfiguration classroom, one to the hall, one presumably to a teacher prep area; clock clock clock came footsteps from beyond the latter door, which opened of its own accord in advance of the McGonagall, and closed behind her with a sigh, possibly of relief.

"Good morning," said the McGonagall, taking a standing position twixt desk and blackboard and setting a white mug on the desk. The mug did not have a humourous statement on it. "This is Transfiguration, the most difficult, complex, dangerous and frankly irritating subject in magic.

"There is no room for messing about in this course; even making significant inroads requires total concentration, and if you cannot provide it —" her roving glance inexplicably slowed on the Potter — "you will leave the class, one way or another. Hence I will take roll at the end of the period rather than now.

"Those of you who know your own minds and wish to take this opportunity to make your exit an honorable one may now do so." She drew her wand and with an oblique gesture produced a small silvery cat, which took up a waiting position at the hallway door. "You will be escorted to the Headmaster's office, and assigned to a fallback class."

Four heartbeats later, the Longbottom abruptly stood up and began to make his way over to the door; there was a pair of snickers from the Slytherin section of the room.

"Ten points to Gryffindor, Mr Longbottom," said the professor, and then directed her gaze toward the origin of the amusement. "I will not be taking points from Slytherin today."

There was a sudden dampening of jollity from the Slytherin section as the implication settled in.

"Will there be anyone else?"

The Malfoy's minions, Crabbe and Goyle, packed up and joined the Longbottom. He didn't look terribly happy about it.

The McGonagall nodded gravely. "Twenty points to Slytherin." She waited, but there were no further withdrawals.

The silvery cat pushed the hallway door open and led the three outside.

"Quills out, please," said the McGonagall. "There will be many boring notes taken today.

"There was an excellent introductory discussion of our subject in the previous edition of the Magical Theory coursebook; unfortunately the current one apparently needed the space for additional bad woodcut illustrations.

"Broadly, transfiguration can be analogized to sculpture. Hard-form sculptors, like those who work in granite, study raw blocks of matter and attempt to reveal the forms concealed within. If there is a hole in the object, there is a hole in the subject. Soft-form sculptors, like those who work in clay, have more control in that they can break and heal at whim, though of course once the piece goes into the fire matters are out of their hands, and if the artist is inadequate to the task the result will at best require a pot-healer.

"Transfigurational magic can persuade or force, and you must know which technique to apply.

"Here is a proper illustration."

She reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out a glass cylinder labeled Tesco Everyday Value Coffee Granules, followed by a cardboard box of sugar cubes. She unscrewed the the cylinder's lid and measured some of its contents into the mug by dead reckoning; when she re-capped it, the container was no less full. From the cardboard box she shook six cubes, probably not reducing its contents either.

She directed the tip of her wand to the mug and filled it halfway with hot water, followed by milk.

And then, with a complex and/or compound gesture, she changed her desk into a pig. The mug became a donut. The coffee ran all over the pig and the donut rolled off its back. The pig ate the donut.

With another gesture, in some respects a reversed one, the pig changed back into a desk and the spilled coffee disappeared; finally the McGonagall opened a drawer to retrieve her (clean) mug, which she set on the desktop.

"Which techniques did I use? —Miss Granger?"

The Granger lowered her hand. "Conjuration for the hot water, multiplicative transfiguration for the coffee and sugar, summoning for the milk, switching and untransfiguration to make and unmake the pig and donut, and finally vanishing to return the coffee, sugar and water into nonbeing, plus scourgio to clean up the spilled milk."

The McGonagall gave a mildly pleased nod. "Ten points to you, Miss Granger, to use as you see fit.

"Conjuration and vanishment are nicely symmetrical. Switching — or transformative transfiguration when it's not at home — and untransfiguration are much the same. Alas, we then run up against all the exceptions.

"It was twenty years ago today that a smart first-year named Eli Solomon raised his hand in this class and said to me, Professor, if we can conjure light, we should be able to transform it into anything; it's called mass-energy equivalence. And he should have been correct. As it is, I had to summon the milk because we can't conjure foodstuffs either from the void or from light. We can't produce the Hogwarts Christmas turkey dinner, though we do stretch the leftovers straight through until June. The pig you just saw would never yield a bacon sandwich that didn't give you fatal splinters and worse.

"Why? We don't know. If you ask the tea leaves you may get messages like that is beyond you, such is not permitted, or you have not the privilege.

"In any case, we'll begin with the parts that do make sense." She began to write on the blackboard — from a distance, with her wand; there was neither chalk nor eraser, and so the Potter gave up his hope of being named blackboard monitor. "Our first polysyllabic phrase of the day is conceptual homeomorphism. If you wish to transfigure a raven into a writing desk, it is necessary to understand how they are alike. As someone once said, all islands are connected under the sea..."

#

Towards the middle of class the professor distributed matchsticks, the purpose of which was to be transformed into pins.

The Potter took two, concealing one of them in his palm.

Along with the rest of the class he went through the motions toward the stated goal; he was scrupulous in his demonstration of the wand mechanics to Harry's body, but by virtue of not being a wizard his performed gestures yielded as little result as those of Neville Longbottom (who of course wasn't actually there).

At the end, though, while the McGonagall was calling everyone's attention to the Granger's progress — Hermione's matchstick was indeed silvery and pointy — he had a little chat with Harry.

Harry, why is a matchstick like a pin? he thought, expecting in answer, if anything, something about the physical similarity.

Because of the sharpness of the flame, replied Harry Potter.

He bore that poetic thought in mind when he Harried the matchstick in his palm.

He squinted down at the result.

It was neat as, and bright as, and — if pins were legal tender — would be sound money.

#

Come lunchtime the Gryffindor table found the Longbottom positively joyous. He was on the verge of bursting into song. In fact he was well past it, and in progress:

Don't live like vegetarians (sang the Longbottom)
on food they give to parrots,
blow out yer kite from morn til night
on boiled beef and carrots!

"I know that song!" said the Weasley.

"One of the big hits of 1910 for Harry Champion," observed the Potter. "How do either of you know it?"

Continued the Weasley, "My dad used to sing it for Fred and George cos it's got ginger twins in. Where'd you learn it, Nev?"

"Muggle Studies!" declared the Longbottom.

"Oh, is that where they put you when you...withdrew?" said the Granger, with only the slightest hint of disapproval.

"Yeah! It's brilliant! You remember the teacher from the first night who left the lanterns on in his vardo?"

"Kind of," said the Weasley. "The one with the porkpie hat and umbrella?"

"That's Doctor Vinovii! he teaches from the piano — he sings all these muggle songs and he has conversations with this muggle puppet called Moogie! and he went to America over the summer and got shot like six times and can't wait to go back!"

"Wow," said the Weasley. "Wonder if I could get in there?"

"Don't be like that," said the Granger. "Transfiguration is useful."

The Weasley shrugged.

#

And the Longbottom sang all the way through Herbology, too. He sang "If It Wasn't For The Houses In Between", he sang "I've Only Come Down For The Day", and when he eventually came around to "Boiled Beef And Carrots" again, he didn't even mind when the Potter started chipping in...

Now we've got a lodger, he's an artful cove,
I'm very, very sad, he said.
We called for the Doctor, he came round,
and told him to jump in bed.
The poor chap said, I do feel bad,
then Sophie with a tear replied,
Said, What would you like for a pick-me-up?
and he jumped out of bed and cried:
Boiled beef and carrots, boiled beef and carrots!
That's the stuff for your Darby Kell,
it makes you fat and it keeps you well!
Don't live like vegetarians,
on food they give to parrots,
blow out yer kite from morn til night,
on boiled beef and carrots!