Harry, Hermione and Neville strode into Transfiguration class somewhat early to find no teacher, and a half-filled classroom. Since it was Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, he assumed no one would be late, and the three of them moved to take spots together in the second row (Ravenclaws having staked out the front row as the Eagles were prone to do).
Hermione stopped to pet the pretty tabby cat sitting on the teachers desk, cooing to it gently as she scratched its ears.
"Such a pretty kitty!" Hermione cooed softly.
Harry felt Noodle slither out of his robes and down beside Hermione. Noodle began to hiss.
"$ Speaker, tell Mouse Bringer that is NOT A CAT. Tell Mouse Bringer to back behind me slowly.$ Noodle hissed excitedly.
Harry translated for Hermione who began to back away in confusion. The class began to whisper, the cat to purr, tail lashing as it eyed the Rock Viper with amusement.
"Noodle, what is wrong with the cat? She looks lovely?" Hermione asked, and Harry translated hissing.
Noodle swayed hypnotically back and forth, trying to catch the cat's attention away from Hermione.
"$ Mouse Giver, that cat is the greatest predator in the room. If she decides to eat you, I cannot stop her. I authorize you to take out one of my treat mice, and offer it to the Most Terrifying Not Cat.$ " Noodle hissed. Harry translated, and now the class was visibly pulling back in their desks from the approaching drama.
Hermione looking confused, pulled one of the potion enhanced vitamin mice from her stasis pouch by the tail. As it squeaked in protest, Noodle struck. His fangs not extended, he struck to stun the mouse.
Mouse in its jaws he slithered to the desk, rose to place the twitching mouse beside the cat, who extended one paw, claws extended , to pin it in place. Noodle drew back before the first row of student desks and bowed deeply.
"$ Speaker, please tell the Most Terrifying Not Cat that we offer this mouse, that she not kill or eat any of the students. $" Noodle hissed.
Harry translated, and while the class who had been seated remained silent, the group piled up at the door, led by the Ravenclaw Anthony Goldstein laughed.
"What is with all the drama, it's just a cat. Now get your snake out of the way before McGonagall comes and catches us being late." Goldstein said making a shooing motion with his hands.
The cat pounced, moving between being a cute tabby cat and a stern looking Professor McGonagall so seamlessly the moment of transition was impossible to truly note.
Stunning the mouse with her wand, she bowed slightly to Noodle, then whirled on the Ravenclaw boy and said somewhat acerbically.
"That is Professor McGonagall, and in the event you are late, you would do well to note you were not in the class when I made the bargain not to kill and eat any of the students!" She said sternly, gesturing the late comers to their seat.
With a non-verbal levitation charm, she sent rows of wooden matches to deposit one on each desk. For the next twenty minutes she explained the theory of transfiguration, using magic to turn one thing into the seeming of another. It was not a true transformation, as the material was no longer in its true form. That change would be known as Alchemy, and involved changing the true nature of the thing. Transfiguration was a major tool of combat and utility wizardry, as it allowed you to transform one thing into another to make it easier to transport, or more useful for attack, defense, or structural need.
Intent was key, for it formed the mold into which you poured the energy of the thing you transformed. Your magical power took the energy that was bound into matter as you found it, and shifted it into a state between being and non being where its actual nature was now undefined. While it was busy being undefined, you spent some more energy pouring it into the mold of your intent and then let it snap back into being, hopefully in the new form.
In essence, the wand movement and incantation made a two dimensional rune matrix, the wand forming a rune in the air from the empowered inscription of the wand tip and the verbal incantation providing a second rune chain based in sound, both bound by the same intent as poured into the mold of your desired end form.
It was complex and power intensive magic, but could do what muggle science could not, and could take the transformation farther than any potion, and with more substance than any charm. It was similar to the work goblins did laying down their goblin silver.
The spell was the same, no matter what you transfigured. The change between states cost different levels of focus and power, depending on how dissimilar the beginning and end states were. The laws of consumption of mass and energy seemed to be violated most terribly by the entire practice, but nothing was free. Magic was paid to make up the difference, and because entropy was a thing even for wizards, much was lost in transformation.
While any first year could learn transfiguration, how much they could transfigure, and how long it persisted scaled up painfully slowly, as reality truly did not like to be reshaped at will. Harry tried hard to force his match stick into the form of a needle. A steel needle.
Harry had never actually seen or touched a steel needle. His mother had their needle. Made of goblin silver by Griphook when he determined to win her as his mate, he had forged the goblin silver from his soul and with that needle she had wrought the marriage runes of their wedding, and worked the runes of power into the flesh of all three of their children, including Harry. That needle had woven the charms in his clothes, the charms in his trunk, and the runes of his home.
Harry could not make the spell work. He could not imagine a steel needle at all. He could not imagine even owning a steel needle. Needles were goblin silver, and they were made once and only once for the Hearth Mistress.
"Well done Miss Granger!" Professor McGonagall said, as a beaming, if sweating Hermione had transformed her matchstick into a somewhat crude but functional needle.
That wasn't right. Hermione deserved better. Hermione's needle should be perfect. Intent snapped into place and power howled from his core in a maelstrom. The runes of his forehead and chest began to burn, and even his flesh began to burn as power flooded his wand like a tsunami trying to squeeze into a tight river mouth, with all the sea pressing behind it.
Power flowed into the match stick and Professor McGonagall was shouting somewhere in the distance.
"Mr Potter! Mr Potter, let the power go. That it too much power for any spell!" McGonagall's voice was unbearably distant. All there was room for in his mind was Hermione. Hermione and the needle. Her needle.
His muscles shook, he felt and tasted the blood coming from his mouth, and his breath came in gasps as he struggled to fill the howling debt as his entire body processed energy at a rate far beyond any sprint or weightlifting.
In the end, the form snapped into being, woven from a piece of his soul, and nearly all the energy in his body. He slumped to his chair, conscious, but unable to move or speak.
He noted Professor McGonagall had put a strong shield up around him to protect the class from any explosion. His lips twitched slightly as Hermione's needle punched through the shield like it was so much cloth and shot over to Hermione where it orbited her hand like a happy electron around its nucleus.
Professor Flitwick had crashed through the door, wand in hand, at the feeling of Goblin magic at a scale that should have indicated a rather large formation of goblins working war magic together. His face watching the needle fly to Hermione to orbit her hand was a shock so complete the dueling master dropped his wand.
"That isn't' steel, that is Goblin silver, Mr Potter. That cannot be transfigured at all, it is a completely unworkable magical substance. That was not Transfiguration Mr Potter, that was Alchemy!" McGonagall whispered in shock.
Professor Flitwick examined the needle closely, making passes with his recovered wand and chuckling softly before offering an odd bow to Hermione.
"Worse than that Minerva. It wasn't Alchemy at all, it was engagement. A goblin only makes one needle in his life, and that is for his Hearth Mistress. A goblin silver needle will only come to one hand in all the world, it comes to the hand and call only of the mistress of that clan or hearth. Congratulations Miss Granger. You are now numbered among the mothers of the Goblin Nation. I should expect several owls and more than one discussion are probably called for." Professor Flitwick said, walking to Harry and shaking his hand in chuckling congratulations. Somehow, Flitwick was less worried about how the Goblins of Gringotts would take the news, and more worried about how a certain headmaster would react.
Neville looked at the totally gobsmacked looks Harry and Hermione were exchanging, and decided he had better head to the owlery right after class. He was the only one of them that was going to be able to communicate anything that wasn't a stammer or blush, an odd fact for Neville when he thought about it, so he thought it best to owl both sets of parents, and his Gran, before Dumbledore tried to get his long and every so authoritative beak involved.
As it turns out, the castle was remarkably scandal free at the moment, and no one seemed to have anything better to do but gossip. Professor Sprout was given strict, non-discretionary orders to keep Harry and Hermione from being alone together at any time. The phrase 'broom closet' was not specifically mentioned by Dumbledore, but the entire staff seems to have somehow decided that youth today are somehow more advanced than twelve year-olds were in their own school years, especially those with the combined dating skills of the planet Pluto who was so far distant from other planets that it hadn't even known it had been booted from the planet club because it never got close enough to one to find it had once been a member.
Professor Sprout was busy planting some very odd bulbs that looked a bit like baby heads in freshly potioned potting soil in Greenhouse #3. Greenhouse #3 was where the quietly magical things the Headmaster didn't need to concern himself with were grown, as opposed to Greenhouse #7 which held very flashy and obviously dangerous magical plants Dumbledore had quietly inserted his own runic spycraft inside her greenhouse wards to monitor 'in secret.
Working for Albus Dumbledore, Champion of Light, Supreme Mugwump of the Wizagamot, head international know it all of the ICC and interfering git of legend required a certain amount of handling. Professor Sprout had been handling men since before Dumbledore ever found his way into a broom closet, and knew that as long as you made it easy for them to 'know' they were outsmarting you, you barely had to exert any effort at all to hide things from them.
Professor Sprout put the effort in anyway, because while Albus believed his own press enough to play the fool more often than his terrifying intelligence and magical power should allow, Minerva McGonagall had at least three witches worth of wits about her, and dear Minnie could be tiresomely about following dear Dumbledore's little temper tantrums about what magic other people should be allowed to practice. Honestly, he defeated Grindewald in 1945, a good ten years too late if you asked her, or knew the true story, he didn't discover the wand, found Hogwarts, establish the Witangamot or even stop Voldemort when he knew he was gearing up to be the next (and most damaging) Dark Lord yet.
Whatever Dumbledore thought about the Greater Good, magic was a lot older than him, and a lot wilder than the tepid Light Magic he openly swore by. Magic wasn't good or evil, neither were light and dark magic. There is no light that does not cast a shadow, and there is not a single element that cannot be used to heal or harm. Honestly, this is why Morgana locked Merlin up in the first place. When a Wizard's ego grew longer than his wand, they became a problem.
Professor Sprout was potting Mandrakes in her greenhouse on a sunny Saturday morning with three of her eager young Hufflepuff's in attendance. Neville Longbottom absolutely knew that Mandrakes were forbidden for cultivation outside of Ministry approved beds, that honestly produced a very lackluster quality far below the legitimate needs of the Healers of St Mungo's let alone Hogwarts, to say less the rest of Wizarding Britain. Longbottom House held territory in South Africa where they grew their own, and she knew the Greengrass also held territory in the Congo where they grew some as well for the domestic import market.
Given a school budget, there is no way Madame Pomfrey would ever be able to afford true quality Mandrake, nor would Professor Snape for the many potions it was required for. As a result, the Mediwtich and Potion's Master quietly buried Professor Sprouts entire operating budget for Greenhouse #3, and received quality restricted ingredients for free. Witches knew laws were like trees, one lived best in their shadow, but you had to be prepared to walk around them at need.
Happily engaged in teacher approved felony, Hermione finally nerved herself up to ask Professor Sprout about something Harry had told her about, but which the books in the Hogwarts library told a far different story.
"Professor Sprout." Hermione asked as she used her fingers to make a little hollow for the next Mandrake bulb.
"Yes dear?" Professor Sprout asked cheerfully, turning to face her with her best soft, non-judgmental smile.
"Harry was telling me that his mother was part of a 'coven' of witches that met to do old style ritual magic, and that, according to his goblin family, it was one of those rituals that allowed him to survive Voldemort's killing curse." Hermione said, hoping to get the criminal part out in a rush before invisible Aurors fell from the sky to arrest her.
Professor Sprout reached out and tousled Harry's unkempt hair, adding some soil to the bits he already put there himself.
"Ah yes, Lilly. I was there when she was inducted. She spent weeks trying to tease around the edges, Dumbledore led quite the witch hunt after Grindewald for any of the public covens. Claimed it was all dark magic and had the ministry ban it."
Professor Sprout laughed, and Neville laughed too.
Hermione turned on Neville and hissed at him. "Neville, why are you laughing. You could go to Azkaban for joining a coven after the Ministry outlawed them!"
"Good luck with that." Neville said. "My gran was part of the coven here at Hogwarts, and her coven meets at the manor ever Sabbat. I mean, Lady Malfoy, Greengrass, Abbot, Black, Bones, Marchbanks, Ogden, are all a part of it. I don't think there is a single lady of the Sacred Twenty Eight who isn't and the number of seriously powerful half blood and muggle born witches that are a part of it is scary enough on its own." Neville said happily.
Professor Sprout thought a bit before deciding how to dance lightly between her oaths.
"Hermione, Dumbledore is a Great Man, and Great Men often feel the burden of the decisions they have had to make very strongly. So strongly in fact, that they decide that the burden is too heavy for lesser beings, that being everyone who isn't them, to bear. As a result, they decide that they are the only one who gets to decide things about light and dark, safe and dangerous, necessary and not. While they are Great Men, they are also Greatly Flawed.
So flawed in fact that they will destroy anyone and anything they cannot conceive an immediate use for. They are so very great, in fact, that they cannot conceive the needs of the world, of its peoples, and of magic itself stretch beyond the reach of their, admittedly great vision.
Dumbledore is a very great man, and the most powerful wizard currently striding the world. When he is right, he saves the world. When he is wrong, and he is often wrong, he makes pretty speeches over graves filled with other people's loved ones, and goes back to his office with a smile on his lips and song in his heart.
There are any number of things that are indeed Dumbledore's alone to handle, and there are at least as many things it is best for everyone concerned that he not be troubled with. Things like covens and mandrakes. Things he has no idea he could need, and thus cannot be allowed to stamp out, or when he discovers he is wrong, there will not be any left." Professor Sprout said as she carefully inserted, then tamped down her freshly planted Mandrake.
Harry, Hermione, and Neville stared at Professor Sprout. She was dressed in rumbled robes that wouldn't look out of place on a farm worker. Worn dragnonhide gardening gloves covered her hands, and the smear of dirt from them on her brow from when she last wiped the sweat off it made her look like a common farmwife. The wand jammed through her hair bun like a hairpin didn't exactly make her any more intimidating, yet she just openly admitted that she, as one of Dumbledore's own teachers and heads of house, actively conspired, if not against him, then certainly in defiance of many of the laws he had put into place in his last fifty years in office.
Hermione worked herself up to ask. "So, um, could I..." She stammered through the question of could she join them in the law breaking forbidden thing that somehow seemed to be the answer to questions not only absent from her precious books, but actually LIED about in said books not coming gently off her tongue.
Professor Sprout gave her a quick, somewhat potting soil speckled hug, and said simply. "Of course dear. Just tell your room mates Hannah Abbot and Susan Bones you will be joining us, and they will introduce you around the other girls. Professor Sinestra, Babbling and of course Poppy Pomfey are all part of it, so feel free to sound any of them out about the theory and practice of ritual magic as done by traditional witch covens. Hogwarts founders always knew their school must be greater than its headmasters, or every generation would be less than the one before."
Hermione looked scandalized that the semi-sacred founders of Hogwarts had set the school up to encourage breaking the rules of its own headmasters. Neville shrugged, as if it simply seemed obvious and Harry grinned like a monkey with stolen pie at the confirmation they could indeed learn things at Hogwarts even the professors didn't want them to.
Dinner at the Great Hall was a fairly rowdy affair, students were given several hours to eat, and more food than they reasonably could, so it tended to devolve into a social occasion and depressurizing event from the various mind numbing, mind expanding, mind bending, and sometimes life threatening classes at Hogwarts.
While people began the year exclusively at their own House table, joint projects, cross house friendships and hormone related urges began to break that down by early October. As it was just a few days before Halloween, and Quidditch practices had been kicking Harry and Neville's collective asses, they were at the Slytherin table where they had spotted the dreaded Griffindor Weasleys, Marcus Flint and Milicent Bulstrode arguing some point of beater tactics. Deciding that anything they could learn from the more experienced Flint and the acknowledged kings of beaters at Hogwarts, the Weasleys, was worth knowing, they arrowed to the Slytherin table and took seats.
Draco Malfoy was not happy with the First Year end of the Slytherin table being taken over by beaters. He had bought his way onto the team when his father bought the whole Slytherin team Nimbus 2000 brooms, but Marcus Flint was a fifth year beater, a Slytherin Prefect, and of a high enough standing in both society and house to tell Draco to be a good little Firstie and shut his pie hole. He had to take it from Flint, and both Flint and Pucey had made it clear Bulstrode was off limits as the more valuable new addition to the Slytherin team. While Draco would not admit he was scared of the Weasley twins, he had his dignity to consider, and not even professors were immune to the pranking Griffindor twins when they decided someone needed to wash down their pumpkin juice with a large helping of public humiliation. That left Potter and Longbottom as legitimate targets.
Draco had a sausage on his fork, which he wasn't quite willing to put down, as Zabini was in a growth spurt, and a proximal threat to any sausage left on this end of the table. He drew his wand with his off hand and decided to spin and Hex potter with a jelly legged jinx to make him fall on his face before the whole Slytherin table. Plan in mind, wand in hand, he spun and opened his mouth to chant.
He never got the chance. While Potter was already answering a question from Bulstrode and utterly ignoring Draco, the young Malfoy only had time to scream and drop his wand as the whip of black death flashed before his face, as Draco's young life flashed before his eyes. The Rock Viper had struck cleanly, taking the sausage from Malfoys fork and retracting to Potter's shoulder where it gulped down the sausage in three quick gulps. Turing to face Draco it hissed something at Potter.
Potter, startled from his conversation turned and translated for the shocked Draco.
"Noodle says he accepts your offered tribute sausage. He says it is the wise snakelet who determines which threats are to be appeased with offerings, and which are to be opposed with fangs. He says he didn't think you this wise and compliments you on your growth." Harry said, as if delivering a simple pleasantry, not a combined insult and threat.
When Draco resumed his plate, he noted Zabini had also stolen his last remaining sausage. He resolved not to cry. Malfoy do not cry over stolen sausage!
Dumbledore watched the attempt at getting Harry involved in a duel fail, and determined the The Boy Who Lived was entirely in danger of becoming too bound to living people and actual support networks to be properly motivated to die for the Greater Good, as was in fact, his destiny.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had sacrificed the only love he had ever known on the altar of the Greater Good. He had sacrificed not only his hopes and dreams of the future, but any potential for happiness on that altar. He had sacrificed the boys own parents and a line of brave and noble souls that stretched out beyond sight behind them. It could not be for nothing. It would not be for nothing.
He had given the warning of the terrible danger on the third floor corridor under the assumption he was getting Harry Potter the Griffindor, who would charge any challenge like a bull to a red cape. Instead, he got Harry Potter the Hufflepuff who could ignore fame and glory, who did not in fact burn for revenge but was in danger of spending his years at Hogwarts getting an education, rather than fighting a shadow war with Voldemort.
Voldemort was coming. Voldemort was in fact already in this school and making moves. The black king was on the board, and the white pawn kept refusing to move. Albus Dumbledore was the finest chess master the world had ever seen. Voldemort had been tricked into stepping onto the board here at Hogwarts where Dumbledore could begin to strip away his pieces, those so deadly Horcrux Voldemort must never suspect he knew about.
Albus had one of those Horcrux, the boy who lived. A Horcrux even Voldemort did not know existed. Voldemort had lost the second he stepped onto Dumbledore's chessboard, if only his bloody pawn would move when it was told! Harry Potter existed to die in the service of wizard kind, the last sacrifice in a war that stretched back before his birth. He was not here to write OWLS or NEWTS, he was not here to find his soul mate. He was here to die.
Pulling out a treasure that he had sough half his life, that he and Grindewald had sought together before they found themselves forever enemies. James Potter had inherited it, believing somehow that a cloak of invisibility that should last less than a decade could be in the family for three hundred years they knew about and not be special. One of the tree Deathly Hallows, the Cloak of Death. James had it when he died, and Dumbledore had quietly stolen it after Voldemort and the Potters had been slain. It was effectively not much more than a very good invisibility cloak while Dumbledore only had two of the three Hallows, but it might just be the tool required to convince a reluctant pawn that it was time to step out on the board, and join the game.
He penned a note to go with the cloak.
"Dear Harry.
Your father entrusted me with this cloak before he died. I think you will find it to be most useful. I know your father and his friends used it to get into no end of mischief, as it can in fact conceal you from even the most powerful wizards and witches.
Your father used this to escape You Know Who many times, and to sneak into his most hidden meetings to learn secrets that kept a desperate and terrible war from being lost almost before it began.
I am hoping that you remember your Hufflepuff caution, and do not use this to go into forbidden places. While this cloak will keep you safe, things in this school are forbidden for the student's own good.
In paternal regard,
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore "
Dumbledore gave it to one of the postal owls to deliver. He could have a House Elf place it on his bed, or Fawks deliver it in person, but to be delivered at his House table before all his friends would make it impossible for the little suicidal tots not to use it to investigate anything older and wiser heads had taught them to avoid. That is what students did.
There were times, late at night, when he feared that is why he always returned to teaching at Hogwarts. The Light was forever in need of those poor misguided children who would charge into danger with a song in their heart, and a better tomorrow in their eyes. He wept over the grave of each he lost, but always he would be searching for the next. For the Greater Good. He was too close now to stop.