Chapter 068

"Who knows," said Harry, his eyes straying to the cat with the strange rectangular markings around its eyes sitting on the teacher's desk.

"What's with the cat?" asked Neville, having spotted the feline perched on the desk as well. "You reckon she's Professor McGonagall's familiar or something?"

Hannah looked over towards the black tabby cat, then shrugged. "Maybe."

Harry frowned. There was something off about that cat. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something about that feline just did not remind him of a cat.

It was probably the stern glare the thing was giving everyone.

About five minutes after the bell rang, signaling a start to the class, Ron Weasley and another boy, Zacharias Smith, a boy with blond hair and brown eyes, rushed into the room.

"Good, Professor McGonagall's not here yet, so we won't get into any trouble for being late," Ron said, breathing heavily, Zacharias nodding his head in agreement but not speaking.

Just then, the cat that had been sitting on the desk leapt into the air. Harry and the other students watched in awe as the cat began to shift in mid-air, changing from a tabby cat into a person. Arms and legs stretched and expanded, claws became hands, fur became clothes and before long Professor McGonagall was standing in front of the shocked crowd of first years, directing a stern glare towards the two Hufflepuff boys.

"Think again, Mr. Weasley," the strict-looking professor said. "That will be five points from Hufflepuff for the both of you for being tardy. Now sit down before I dock more points."

Ron and Zacharias hurried to their seats, properly cowed by the stern woman. Harry mused that it probably had something to do with Professor McGonagall's glare. It was very intimidating, as he could attest to.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," Professor McGonagall soon began, her voice just as stern as her expression. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

Then she waved her wand and the students watched in awe as her desk changed into a large, pot-bellied pig. Even Harry was not immune to feeling impressed by the display of magic. While he could transfigure one object into another, he'd never done such a large-scale transformation, and never transformed an inanimate object into an organic one. He could only imagine how complex that kind of magic was. It was very unlikely they would be getting into anything that complicated for several years at least.

Another wave of her wand and Professor McGonagall changed the pig back into a desk. She then proved Harry's thoughts on not learning anything very complex correct by setting them up with the task of transfiguring a matchstick into a needle.

Harry didn't do anything at first, choosing instead to glance around at the other students struggling with the task. Neville had a look of utmost concentration, his eyes and nose scrunched up almost painfully as he waved his wand at the matchstick which just did not to change into a needle. Susan and Hannah were likewise not getting anywhere. In fact, the only person who seemed to be making any progress was Hermione Granger, whose match seemed to ripple for a second before going still, unchanged.

It hadn't taken very long for Harry to decide just how well he wanted to do in his classes. Many people were already holding high expectations of him thanks to his title as the Boy-Who-Lived, and while that did bother him some, it also provided him with the perfect excuse to not hold back.

After all, if people were expecting him to be great, he might as well show them just how high he could shoot those expectations out of the water.

Holding his wand in his hand, Harry went back to his matchstick. Almost absently, he waved his wand at it, and watched in satisfaction as it near instantly morphed into a needle. Another wave of his wand had it changing back into a matchstick. It was very easy to do. He'd been doing small time transfigurations like that for two and a half years now.

Deciding to give himself a challenge, Harry began adding extra features to the needle. Sometimes he would make the point longer, other times he would make the head larger. He changed the needles base composition to copper, brass, silver, iron and back to steel. By the time Harry was finished, he had made a needle in Gryffindor colors with a decently complex lion head for the shaft.

"How are you doing that?"

The question had Harry stopping his work and looking over at Hannah. The girl, along with Susan, stared at him in shock and just a hint of envy. Neville, too, seemed to have stopped working and was now eying Harry's needle in undisguised awe.

Harry blinked. His eyes almost widened but he stopped himself. Was this it? His chance to shine? To show his new friends and class what he could do? To prove himself to other magical children and his teachers? How exciting!

He cleared his throat.

"Transfiguration is all about focus and visualization; you can't just wave your wand, say an incantation and expect the matchstick to turn into a needle," Harry began, assuming a very minor note of lecture. "You have to picture it changing in your mind, literally visualize the change happening as you cast the spell." He noticed the three still looked confused, so said, "Try taking the spell in steps."

"Steps?" asked Neville, who had the least amount of success with his transfiguration.

"Yes," Harry said. "Try changing the match into a needle using smaller steps. First off, ask yourself what needs to change? What's different about the matchstick from the needle? You have the thickness, the point and eye of the needle, the shaft, and the material. It doesn't matter which order you make the changes, but when I cast the spell I change the thickness first, then the material, then I'll transform the head of the match into the needles eye and finally the other end into the point. By following it in smaller steps, you don't have to try and focus on the whole item changing at once, and that allows you to get each point right."

It had taken him a long time to work this out; he had first discovered transfiguration when he accidently turned a baseball Duddley had thrown at him into a stirofome toy. He eventually managed to reverse engineer his steps and came up with this method, using small objects like pens, pencils and footballs as test subjects.

Those poor, poor footballs. They were never the same after that.

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