POV of Parvati Patil

After lunch, we had Defense Against the Dark Arts. I have to say, the more I thought about it, the stranger Professor Quirrell's behavior seemed to me... I was really starting to wonder what had happened to him during his research trips this summer. Ron had mentioned that he had heard from his older brothers that Quirrell had been quite normal before he started teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. Maybe this subject just wasn't right for him. He was probably more suited to being a Muggle Studies teacher. At least I was quite disappointed in this class. In the nearly three weeks we've been here, we hadn't learned a single spell. Not even one to disarm opponents or anything! Instead, we listened to Quirrell stutter about various dangerous creatures for half the class, and for the rest of the time, we read our textbook or played Hangman discreetly. That's another Muggle game where one person thinks of a word or phrase, draws the same number of lines as there are letters in the word on a piece of parchment, and the others have to guess letters. Every time a letter is in the word, it's noted above the lines in the correct position; if it's not, a hill with a gallows and a stick figure is gradually drawn. Once it's fully drawn, the person who thought of the word wins. It was probably not surprising that I guessed James' word, which was 'Quidditch team.'

Then, fortunately, the lesson was over, which meant we had to move on to Transfiguration. At least I was satisfied with that class, as we had already made great progress since we were supposed to turn matches into needles in the first lesson. Today, we were supposed to transform an object into a living creature for the first time. Back when Professor McGonagall turned the podium into a pig in the first lesson, it looked so easy. But now, faced with the task of turning a button into a beetle, we suddenly realized what McGonagall meant when she warned us that transformations of living creatures were particularly challenging. This subject required immense patience and continuous concentration to achieve success. Those who were easily thrown off by things not working right away had little chance of doing well in the subject. That was at least my theory as to why Ariana and Ron struggled particularly in this subject. In my opinion, they were just too impatient and too quickly frustrated by failures. To be honest, I wasn't very focused either, but that was because both Bella to my right and James to my left were fooling around. Sometimes they poked their buttons with their wands, claiming they were at least alive, or they exaggeratedly waved their wands while muttering the spell in different tones. This led to some annoyed looks from Hermione, some admonitions from Professor McGonagall, and glares from the Slytherin faction around Draco and Veatrix. They even made me grin, but the buttons showed no reaction and remained unchanged.

Halfway through the double period, Hermione was once again the first to succeed in conjuring a beautiful ladybug from her small red button. She let it crawl on her palm for a while after Professor McGonagall spoke with her and awarded 5 points to Gryffindor. Then she began helping Ariana, who was sitting next to her, learn the spell. Her successful transformation spurred me to finally focus again. After all, such challenges were exactly my thing. It wasn't easy to tune out Bella and James, but about 20 minutes later, I managed to turn my black button into a small pollen beetle. I was really glad that not too many beetles were crawling on the tables yet, as insects weren't my favorite animals, but ladybugs and pollen beetles were better than those huge beetles I found most disgusting. When I turned my beetle back into a button, even Bella and James managed to work seriously for the rest of the lesson and, like Ariana, who was supported by Hermione, succeeded in casting the spell by the end of the lesson. Infinitely relieved that Professor McGonagall didn't assign any homework given the class's success rate, we packed our things. We already had way too much homework in the other subjects, and today we had planned to spend the evening until Astronomy class playing cards because, after all, it was Hermione's birthday.

I had no idea how I was going to manage all the homework, as the first real Quidditch practice was scheduled for Saturday, and Wood had already warned us that it would last several hours because he wanted to discuss basic strategies with us beforehand. Well, that could only be exhausting, but it didn't diminish my anticipation for the training in the slightest.