A/N I don't own anything to do with Harry Potter

Transfiguration

At the end of lunch Al and Mia headed off to the transfiguration department, eagerly talking about the content of their first lesson.

"James said that our first lesson would be really basic. He refused to say anything about the teacher though. I wonder what we'll be doing."

"Al, did you not look at the book we were told to get? Surely the first thing we learn will be the first one mentioned in the book."

Al looked at her sheepishly and said "I didn't look at it as such. It probably would have been a good idea in hindsight…"

"Yes, well, the first spell was transfiguring a matchstick into a needle and back again. I don't really see the point of it – "

Al laughed at the unintended pun.

"Oh grow up!" said Mia irritatedly.

In due time, they were joined by the Hufflepuffs and the rest of the Gryffindors. Mia pointedly engaged her dorm-mates in conversation, ignoring Al, who smiled good-naturedly and waited for their teacher to arrive.

After a few minutes, their teacher stormed out of the classroom and said "Well, what are you doing standing outside the classroom? Waiting for a personal invite. Get in! The lesson started five minutes ago, so that will be five points from each person from their respective houses. Don't be late again."

All of the assembled first years looked at each other nervously, and shuffled in after their teacher. Once they had all entered, they saw that the desks had been organised in a circle, with a gap on one side so that the teacher could enter and leave the circle.

"Find a place and sit!" the teacher shouted.

Everyone jumped and made their way to a desk accordingly. Mia found herself seated between Al and Rose and felt slightly comforted. She really didn't like the grouchy man in front of them.

"My name is Professor Emirvan."

"Professor is a funny first name." whispered Al to Mia.

In a second Professor Emirvan was upon them. "Ten points each from Gryffindor."

"But Mia didn't do anything! It was entirely my fault." Al said outraged.

"Ten points more from Gryffindor and a detention with me tomorrow evening! It seems all Potters are alike. Your brother will be joining you."

After this Al kept his mouth shut, to Mia's relief.

"As I said before Mr Potter interrupted, I am Professor Emirvan, and I am hopefully going to be teaching you how to turn one object into another. You will have the lesson to practise, and ten minutes before the end, I want everyone to stop practising, so that you can be assigned with a new object. I will then go round the circle, so the class can see how everyone is doing. The person to do the best transformation will gain five points for their house. The worst person will lose ten. The task for this lesson is to change a matchstick into a needle. The incantation is 'Compositus Verto'. Imagine the change taking place as you say the incantation. Begin."

Cries of 'Compositus Verto' could be heard throughout the classroom as everyone tried to accomplish the task they had been assigned. Rose managed to change hers completely half an hour into the lesson. She took a handful of matchsticks from the box and continued practising. After a while, she tried changing them back using 'Verto Compositus'. She managed this just before the time came to stop.

When Professor Emirvan stepped into the circle everyone fell silent. Mia watched as he went round the classroom, feeling sorry for the Hufflepuff who managed to somehow light the match instead of change it into a needle. To everyone's surprise he didn't take any points away but just moved on to the next person.

Most people had managed to accomplish some form of transformation, though no-one had completely changed it yet. When he reached Rose's desk, he looked at her neat little pile of needles and smiled. Needless to say this shocked the class.

"Miss Weasley, please could you demonstrate the transformation both ways."

Rose did so, and he moved on to the next person without comment. Mia felt that she had done alright – she managed to make her matchstick silver and slightly pointed, but she couldn't manage to form the hole in the base of the needle. Al hadn't done as well, but he was by no means the worst.

Once he had gone round the whole circle, Professor Emirvan said "Ten points will be deducted from Hufflepuff for Mr Finnegan's appalling attempt, and ten points will be added to Gryffindor for Miss Weasley's perfect demonstration of both transformations. Everyone except Miss Weasley will take five matchsticks from the box and will practise transforming them so that you can do it before our next lesson on Wednesday. Anyone wishing for help should come and see me before dinner. Points will be taken away from anyone who cannot do both transformations by Wednesday. Class dismissed."

Everyone hurried out once he had finished speaking. Mia became lost in her own mind thinking about the lesson – so much so that she didn't realise that Al was speaking to her until he shouted in her ear.

"That hurt Al!"

"Sorry, but you weren't responding. Anyway, as I was saying, what is wrong with him? He is really nasty!"

"At least he's fair! He shares his love among the houses equally, he doesn't favour anyone, and he does always have a relatively decent reason for punishments." This was said by James, who had just joined them.

"That doesn't mean he's any more likeable." Al answered.

"Al. I don't think he was bad – yes, he said everything nastily and took loads of points away, but what else did he do?"

"Mia," Al replied exasperatedly, "He took points from you when you didn't do anything."

"What do you expect? You were being rude and he wanted to make you think twice before continuing. Which you didn't – hence your detention. Anyway, as James said, he was fair, and he gave Rose more points than he originally said he would. Plus he said that he would help anyone who wanted help. Which other teachers have said that? And you can't deny that he is a good teacher."

Rose privately agreed with Mia, but she didn't want to say anything out loud, because her cousins would just say that she took to anyone who gave her praise and was a teachers' pet.

Once inside the room the four of them went over to one of the larger sofas so that all four of them could sit together. James sat down in the middle and pulled his books out onto the nearby table. The two girls sat the other side of James so that Al couldn't sit next to them. Al sat on the other side of his brother and enquired about the detention they would share the next night.

"What did you do to get into detention? Do you know what we'll be doing, or the time that the detention will be at?"

James looked at his brother in surprise. "You have detention too? Professor Emirvan doesn't like to take away from our study time; he usually sets the detention to begin at around seven – so we will have to have an early dinner. He will probably set us lines. He's good at finding deadly dull things to do."

"But I have astronomy that evening! And what did you do to get the detention? I was rude to him – sort of."

Rose injected herself into the conversation finally. "Al! What do you mean sort of? You will just have to deal with the fact that you have astronomy - it shouldn't make any difference. And yes – you skated over that question James, what did you do?"

"I, well, I skipped class." James said shamefacedly. "I have tons of work to do that he set me now, so I am going to do that now if you don't mind."

Mia and Al decided to join James in doing transfiguration homework whilst Rose made a start on the potions homework, considering she had no transfiguration homework to do. By 4:30 both Al and Mia were able to consistently and quickly do both transformations. Al and Mia then joined Rose in doing their potions homework. When six o clock came, most people stopped doing their homework and headed down for dinner.

Mia and Rose had decided to forgive Al for being an idiot and were talking pleasantly with him again. James headed off to join his own friends half way down the table, leaving the three of them to find a space. Once they had sat down, they tucked into their food voraciously. The food wasn't as delicious as it had been the night before, but it was still very good.

After dinner Rose quickly finished her potions homework and headed off to bed, leaving Al and Mia together in the common room. They chatted for a while about various things, until Mia decided she wanted to go to bed.

"Night Al. See you in the morning." She gave him a quick hug then went to join Rose in their bedroom.

Al said goodnight to his brother, then followed suit.

A/N I was originally going to include the other 'first lessons' in this chapter, which would have taken me until then end of their second day of school, but this was about the right length on its own. The pace should get faster at some point! Otherwise it will take me hundreds of chapters just to get to Christmas!

Also, feel free to have a look at 'Dear Edward'. It is an accompanying thing to this and is basically Mia's diary entries. I am going to update it a lot more regularly than I do this, and it will show parts of Mia and her life that might be hinted at, but not shown in this fic.