Back after my little break! Except this chapter, I bring you a new story about Pandora Hearts, very possibly the last thing I will write for a while (of course I'll finish both of the stories in progress). So if you're interested: "Let's just pretend that nothing's broken": www fanfiction net / s / 9369757 / 1 /

Ch. 9: Transfiguration

Breakfast was the only time when Oz, Alice, Elliot and Leo could meet with Gilbert and Break, which was the only reason why they were always having it in their private common area, rather than in the Great Hall. That and the fact that the breakfast prepared by Gilbert was much better than the one the students ate.

'Good morning,' Oz called cheerfully, emerging from his bedroom to see Reim reading the newspaper to Break and Gilbert, while the latter prepared breakfast. Break looked exactly at him, which was still disturbing, since he couldn't see at all, and grinned. Obviously the trip to London has gone well, Oz thought.

'Good morning,' Gilbert answered, sounding quite happy as well, further reassuring Oz that the two managed to find at least some Chains.

'Will there be meat?' Alice asked, all but bouncing out of her room. 'I learned the animating charm properly,' she added and the fork Gilbert was holding shot out from his hand to do a dance around the lamp hanging from the ceiling.

'There will be no meat,' Gilbert replied with a glare. 'And if you take somebody's eye out with that, there will be no food at all for you, stupid rabbit.'

'I'm not a stupid rabbit, seaweed-head,' Alice shot back, glaring at him while the fork fell on the table with a loud clang. 'You have better made some meat or you will regret it,' she threatened. Oz could smell bacon, but he didn't put it past Gilbert to ask the House Elves to take it away now, just to annoy Alice. He has done that twice already.

'You're free to eat in the Great Hall, they have platters full of bacon,' he replied, not sounding impressed by her threat.

'Seriously, don't you ever stop?' Elliot's voice cut through the hostile silence. 'Alice, if you cannot smell the bacon,' he added. Alice sniffed the air. 'You are more stupid than I ever expected.'

'Says a guy who didn't realise he was an Illegal Contractor until it was almost too late,' Alice shot back, furious to be insulted. Elliot paled at the accusation, probably remembering the terror of finding a seal half-finished on his chest. It was still there, despite him denying the Chain in the last minute possible. Signing a proper contract with Humpty Dumpty didn't erase it, like some had hoped, but it didn't make it worse either.

'Really guys,' Leo sighed. He had arrived unnoticed and was already sitting at the table, next to Break. 'Can't we avoid the screaming this early in the morning?' he asked and both Alice and Elliot sat down on their chairs, although still glaring at each other. Oz took his place as well and Gilbert brought breakfast to the table.

'So how did it go last night?' Elliot asked, back to his serious and official tone. Next to Oz, Alice busied herself with the bacon.

'It depends what you're asking,' Break replied mysteriously. Elliot glared at him, but the white-haired man continued his breakfast unperturbed. Then again, it was not like he could feel the glare, could he?

'We got three Chains,' Gilbert replied, also glaring at Break. The Hatter grinned.

'That's good, right?' Oz asked, wondering why Break said that it depended. However, judging by Gilbert's sigh at his question, it was not really good.

'We managed to talk with the last one a bit,' he said. 'If he didn't lie then it's their leader who found the information about Chains and controls who signs a contract.'

'Isn't their leader that Voldemort guy, who terrorises the whole community?' Leo asked without enthusiasm. Gilbert and Break nodded. 'So you are telling us that we have to bring him down in order to stop the leak of information?'

'It seems that way,' Break confirmed. 'Of course it's open to interpretation, but the last contractor said that he was called for a private audition with his Dark Lord. He more or less described the ritual to contract a Chain illegally although he didn't have the slightest idea what it was that he did.'

'He drank blood without a question?' Alice sounded amazed. 'What kind of people are those Deatheaters?'

'Brainwashed,' Gilbert replied promptly. 'Once he was told that now he has a weapon that will serve his Dark Lord he left and went to kill.'

'And he didn't know how many Deatheaters are contracted,' Elliot guessed.

'On the good side, it seems like Voldemort doesn't like to share, so it's pretty safe to say that he didn't tell anybody what it is that he is doing or how to do it on their own,' Break noted, stabbing his fork into a muffin and eating it.

'I'll try to get some information about Voldemort's whereabouts from the teachers today,' Reim said, getting up from the table. 'Although I don't think it will do any good, they don't seem to know anything,' he added, putting a cloak over his clothes. He has apparently been asked to either wear robes or a cloak over his clothes.

'Be discreet about it,' Break advised him. 'Last night we have probably met members of the Order of the Phoenix and, while they shouldn't have recognised us, they will get suspicious if you go asking about Voldemort immediately after last night.'

'Alright then, I will wait,' Reim agreed. 'I have to go anyway, because the headmaster sent an urgent message for all the teachers to meet. I shall hope now that it has nothing to do with your stunts from last night,' he added, making it sound like he was scolding two kids for misbehaving.

'It is possible that the Slytherin students might know something about Deatheaters,' Elliot said quietly, after Reim has left. 'The way some of them speak about the matter makes it obvious not only that they are sympathetic to Voldemort's cause, but also that their families might be aiding him.'

'It is absolutely too dangerous for you to try to get into their circles,' Gilbert said categorically, earning a glare from his adoptive younger brother. 'Don't make me order you,' he added.

'Don't make me remind you who the Duke of Nightray is,' Elliot shot back. Almost immediately, he winced, probably remembering that Gilbert really wasn't a Nightray after all. However, neither of the adopted brothers was willing to say that out loud it seemed, because Gilbert only frowned at Elliot looked away.

'All the more reason for you to not risk by approaching dangerous people, Duke,' Break pointed out in a delighted tone. 'Now I shall go to sleep because the night spent hiding in London's dark alleys with the charming company of Raven was definitely tiring,' he added, earning a glare from Gilbert. 'While you, my delightful, innocent children, should hurry for your private lesson of Transfiguration I believe.'

'Oh no,' Oz exclaimed, noticing the time. 'If we're late, McGonagall will kill us.'

For some reason, the Transfiguration teacher and the deputy headmistress seemed to particularly dislike them and made it clear that she thought they didn't deserve to be at Hogwarts.

'I'm sure she will not hurt you in the slightest,' Break laughed as they all rushed out of their common room and through their private door out onto the corridor. It was time for students to go to lessons and so all the corridors were full. Oz caught snippets of conversations as he weaved his way between the students.

A Quidditch match was coming up the next weekend and he was looking forward to watching it. Most of the conversations seemed to be centred on the game and who would win and who had the best chances for the Quidditch Cup that year.

'… is worried because she didn't get her weekly package from her father,' he heard and glanced at the Slytherin student who probably spoke the words. Another Slytherin, with whom the student was talking, said something about overreacting, but Oz was already too far to hear it properly.

He didn't have time to wonder, because he reached the classroom where, together with Alice, Leo and Elliot, he had the Transfiguration lessons. He supposed it was the same classroom in which the other students were studying the subject, although McGonagall insisted on giving them private lessons, rather than putting them together with the first year students.

'Good morning, professor,' Oz said politely, taking his seat. The other three did the same, undaunted by McGonagall's glare. She looked at them for a couple of seconds, before sighing and standing up.

'I think you should now be able to attempt a Transfiguration of a simple object,' she said in her usual, unfriendly tone. Oz knew, from Harry, that the first-years started with Transfiguring something on the very first lesson and he wondered if McGonagall wanted to delay their education by going through tons of theory in the beginning.

To annoy the teacher, who seemed to be unhappy that her obvious enmity didn't seem to affect the exchange students, Oz smiled at her brightly. Alice clapped her hands in excitement and McGonagall scowled. Out of nowhere, she produced four black feathers and put one in front of each of them.

As she placed one in front of him, Oz immediately recognised it as a raven's feather. After all he has seen them every time Raven used his Chain to transport them somewhere and that was often. Just as this thought stroke him, he wondered if there was something more to McGonagall's choice of object. Could she have somehow known about Raven's and Hatter's escapade last night? Did she find those feathers in the place from where they left or at which they have arrived?

He fought down the instinct to look at the others. It would do no good and only tell the teacher that the feather bothered him, if that was what she was waiting for. Besides, there was really no reason why it couldn't be a perfectly innocent choice. Didn't Hermione say that one of their first tasks was to transfigure a feather into a needle?

'You are to transfigure this feather into a needle,' McGonagall said in a dry tone after a moment of silence. Oz told himself that the look of disappointment that flitted across her face was just his imagination, while the teacher went back to sit behind her desk, watching them like a hawk.

Looking at the feather was not going to transfigure it, Oz thought dejectedly. Worse, the more he looked the more he thought about Gil and that was surely not a good thing to do on this particular lesson. Especially if McGonagall did suspect something and gave them raven feathers on purpose.

With a sigh, he extended his hand over the feather, closing his eyes and trying to focus on the magical power that he somehow had. Flitwick had taught them to do that, to find the silvery trickle of power deep in their consciousness and draw from it, directing it to do their bidding.

It was easier said than done, Oz had quickly realised, because the B-rabbit didn't seem to appreciate this trickle and sometimes tried to disturb it or block it. Or at least that was the mental image of the situation that Oz had. He knew there was no physical silvery trickle and it was just a projection of his magical powers.

Well, now he needed that trickle to change this black feather into-

'A mini-scythe?' McGonagall's astounded and outraged exclamation called Oz back to reality, where the teacher was glaring at him and his desk in turns. He looked down and, sure enough, under his outstretched hand, in the place of the raven's feather, was a tiny version of B-rabbit's scythe.

He looked back at McGonagall, grateful that her attention was fully on him, because he could just imagine the horrified expressions on the faces of the other three students. Explaining them to McGonagall would be more then problematic.

'I think I might have concentration problems, professor,' he said after a moment of hesitation.

'How would a mini-scythe enter that empty head of yours?' McGonagall growled and Oz remembered that he could only transfigure something into an object that he could somehow, consciously or subconsciously, visualise. He smiled sheepishly to buy some time as he tried to come up with a plausible explanation.

'You see, when I was a kid, my mom would read me this story about a talking mouse that had a mini-scythe like that,' he started, inventing the story as he went. 'The mouse was travelling and one day, she found a raven's feather and-'

'Enough,' McGonagall said. Oz was very grateful, because he had no idea what the mouse would have done with the raven's feather. 'In the future, please refrain from daydreaming about fairy tales and focus on your education,' she said sternly. 'I will inform the headmaster that it has been a mistake to not assign you to any House, since there is no way I can punish you for this mishap.'

Oz didn't think that concentration problems warranted a punishment, but he kept his point of view to himself. McGonagall changed the mini-scythe back into the raven's feather with a flick of her wand and went to look at the progress of the other three. As he closed his eyes again, to focus on a needle, Oz heard her unhappily praising Leo for managing to produce a needle.