Eccentric Wizard Chapter 8: Classes part 2 Transfiguration (Patreon)

Beta read by Shigiya and DOOMRAIDER.

Edit one: Corrected some grammatical errors and added 800 words.

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-Hogwarts-

Hogwarts castle was an enormous territory which expanded upon many acres of land. It was impossible to imagine what feat of magic was used to hide such a place from the highly curious eyes of the muggles. Magic was the answer but what I wanted to know was how exactly they went about to do it in the first place.

Any non-wizard coming close to the place would only see an empty ruin with a small board warning them from going any further. But would people even listen to such signs? Of course, they wouldn't! I could just imagine some wannabe archaeologists wanting to study the place despite the warnings and risk their lives like Indiana Jones, or how those horny kids you see in horror movies come out camping here and end up getting hit by a Densaugeo in the face!

I know that was one of Draco's favorite spells as it wasn't lethal but merely caused the victim of the in hex to have their front teeth elongate at an alarming rate. I know how it felt, I had to clip my front tooth which grew a foot in length and trust me that shit was painful as hell. After that, I stopped going easy on Draco and rained hell on the poor fool. I used Intrant Expellens, which if translated to English would be; Entrail-Expelling Curse.

Let's just say that our mother wasn't pleased with our state in the end.

Oh, wait! I was getting distracted by the beautiful view of the terrain that I nearly forgot the person I was dragging behind me. We did get a few weird stared from the other students, though no one stopped us.

"Hey, let go! You're hurting my hands!"

Oh right, I immediately let go of Hermione and she massaged her wrists.

"What is wrong with you!?"

Wrong question.

"No, what is wrong with YOU."

"What? T-There's nothing wrong with me."

As expected from an eleven year old. She couldn't even lie while looking at me straight in the face. Her tone was shaky and even her bossy tone was gone. Her entire demeanor changed as if she was trying to act normal but failed miserably to do so. We barely knew each other for a few days, nevertheless, I recognised the signs of when someone tried to lie to me.

And I could think of only one person responsible for her change in attitude.

"Was it Pansy?"

"..."

"It was her wasn't it," her silence was more telling than any words. "Let me guess, she approached you when we first got taken to our dorms and belittled you for being a Muggle-born and threatened you to not hang around with me. She probably even insulted you by calling you a good for nothing mudblood who didn't belong in the Slytherin. Just how much of what I just said was accurate."

"..."

She remained quiet and I knew this was a bad sign. If I kid stayed quiet for too long like she did, they would most likely end up crying. The last thing I wanted was to deal with a crying girl.

"Listen, I told you we were friends, right? True friends support and help each other out when they are in trouble. You shouldn't be bottling everything up and become a stranger to me. You're a clever girl, you must know that if you continue acting this way, Pansy will only be more aggressive with her treatments. The best course of actions during such moments is to always seek help from those you trust and even though we met recently, I do consider as a friend."

Sniff…

Shit! Code Red! Crying girl, I needed a professional to help me!

And who else could calm a crying eleven year old girl?

"Whiteley!"

Hermione jumped a bit with my sudden shout. For the next few seconds, nothing happened and she just looked at me in confusion. But not too long after, we both watched a white owl coming from the sky and the bird descended on my shoulders.

"Yo-your pet?" she said while hiccuping.

"Yes, this is my Snowy Owl, Whiteley. A bit of an troublemaker, but a good bird nonetheless." I said while scratching the back of his neck, hoping the latter wouldn't turn around bite my fingers.

"Hooo~"

The owl looked at me in confusion, asking me what I wanted. I pointed at Hermione and said, "Console her."

"Hoot!"

It grew angry.

Pa!

"Ah! My face!"

Whitley flapped his wings so hard that he slapped me in the face! The look he was giving me was both offended and like a sneer. Basically stating that I shouldn't be treating him like a plushy bear.

"Don't make me take out Jonathan on you…"

"Hoot!"

He brought his wings out in a challenging motion, daring me without fear. What a fearless beast, I wondered if it would react the same way if I brought him near a Basilisk.

Knowing him, probably.

Just what kind of owl did I buy!? He was the smartest animal I've ever met so far, yet he's also the most difficult to control. Sometimes I felt he was following me because of boredom and to find more owls to fight. For a bird who symbolized intelligence, this one certainly had a preference for violence.

The best way I could discribe him is if a dragon was reborn inside the body of an owl.

"Listen to me, you damned bird!"

"Hoot!"

Scratch!

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This soon to be cooked bird scratched my cheeks with his talons.

"..."

I'm going to kill him.

"Incarcerous!" I brought out my wand and fired a hex at Whiteley who swiftly dodged the attack and flew off from my shoulders.

"Intrant Expellens!"

He dodged it again.

"Densaugeo!"

It missed just like my previous attacks, was this bird part eagle? Did he really have some dragon blood or soul within him to be so adept at flying?

Fortunately, I didn't have to continue firing at Whiteley for long as our little act seemed to have an effect on Hermione.

"Pft—"

She couldn't take it anymore.

"Hahahahahaha!"

The no longer crying Hermione burst out laughing. She continued to do so for the next minute, even holding her stomach from the pain of giggling so much. I joined her as well, at least she wasn't crying. A scratch was nothing, a few healing spells and it would be gone in seconds.

Whitley was a nuisance, but still a smart owl.

"Yo-you're crazy, Jarius." she said in between her laughs. "Both you and your pet are so weird! I've never seen someone act like that with an owl."

"Why thank you, I would call myself eccentric rather than crazy. The real crazy one is you thinking you could get away with such behavior with me."

Her laugh died down and she didn't look as miserable as before. There were still traces of fear and sadness inside her, but she was getting better by the second.

"Yeah… it was Pansy who told me to not interfere much with the Slytherins and mind my own business… amongst other things."

"Quite rude of her to say that."

I will have to deal with her soon.

"Remember what I told you? Slytherins can be jerks when it comes to blood purity and may make your first year a living hell. Do you regret your decision to be sorted here? A girl like you could have easily gotten accepted in Ravenclaw and Gryffindor, you could have been surrounded with people who would have accepted you for who you are rather than in which family you were born in."

"No, I don't." she wiped her tears away. "That would have counted as giving up and I'm not a quitter. Such a small inconvenience won't stop me from being the best Slytherin and Witch in all of Hogwarts. And not all of them are bad, you, for example, Daphne was somewhat nice and even Tracey was kind to me. So I won't let a single person ruin my year in Hogwarts."

"Didn't the other girls back you up?" I mean, they were young kids, so I didn't expect much. Still, it didn't hurt to know.

Hermione shook her head.

"No, Pansy got them to not interfere much."

"It's barely been a week since we've started our year and that girl has already become so influential with the other girls? Impressive." I really needed to make sure she doesn't try doing anything bad in the future. "So, what are you going to do now?"

Her actions spoke louder than words, if she wanted to oppose Pansy and her soon-to-form gang, she needed to show that she wasn't a pushover.

"We have Transfiguration with Professor McGonagall next… want to study together? We can help each other if you want."

I grinned, "Sure, you can help with my homework. I heard the teacher is notorious for handing out a lot of those."

"That's not a good habit, Jarius." She scolded me.

"That's what friends do, they help each other out!"

"Now you're pushing it."

Yup, she was in a better mood now compared to herself a few minutes ago.

{Break}

Professor McGonagall was just like I remembered her from the first movie. She wasn't a teacher to cross for any reason. Strict and clever, she gave us a talking-to the moment we sat down in her first class. Some students came a few seconds late and already got a major scolding from the teacher.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned." That thick Irish accent was weirdly pleasant to listen to, coupled with her lower tone of voice—similar to Snape—made everyone listen attentively.

Woosh!

""Wow!"" Everyone awed in wonder at her next action.

The woman changed her desk into a pig and back again. Everyone was very impressed and couldn't wait to get started, but soon realized they weren't going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time.

"What do you think you're doing? I never said to bring out your wands, yet. Put them back and take out your notebooks, I will first explain the basics to you all and I expect to have my notes copied, perfectly."

After taking a lot of complicated notes, we were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle.

"Are you familiar with the steps?" I asked Hermione who was carefully re-reading her notes. I was twirling my wand on one hand while copying the notes from the blackboard.

"Imagination is always the first step one must take before casting a spell. Just shouting the name won't be enough, and might even cause the accumulated magic to explode near your face. Like the Gryffindor kid, Seamus, who accidentally caused a small explosion by casting a simple reparo spell. If he were to use a levitating charm on… let's say a feather—it would burn."

"That happened? Why didn't I see it?"

Because I saw the movies and the kid was too funny to forget.

"Who knows, you were probably moping around acting all meek and scared to notice. But seriously, reading your notes is important as it gives you a general understanding of the inner workings of the spells, but visualization is also a key component. It's a matrix of different factors that make or break the casting of a spell and unless you're someone like Dumbledore—don't think you can just use all spells just because you know their correct spelling. Many fools in the past have tried using powerful hexes and charms just because they read the incantations in a book they'd found.

"Of course, not all spells require the use of imagination. Offensive attacks like Bombarda only require a concentrated amount of magic released in a single devastating instant. Other spells require the wielder to think of their most happiest memories and Transfiguration mostly requires imagination."

Flash!

Some of the students tried to transform their matches to needles but failed when the wood burst into flames or broke apart. A few students somehow managed to get splinters stuck into their fingers.

"Yeah, just like most students here—they just recite the words and stop at that. Heck, most of the things I just explained are written in the book." I don't even think she needed my long explanation since she most likely memorized the entire book.

I showed it to her by pointing my wand to the match, closing my mind and carefully whispering the spell. The match's wood cracked slightly and morphed into a silver coloured pin in less than a second. Hermione followed my example and managed to change the match into a pin on her first attempt.

At the end of the lesson, only the two of us had made any difference to our matches; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and congratulated the both of us—though she didn't reward us with any points, unfortunately.

I was very relieved to find out that Draco was taking the lessons seriously and wasn't miles behind everyone else.

"Now, I know many of you are curious about other charms that are related to transfiguration; like turning animals into objects. But I assure you that most of you younglings still have so much to learn of the basics to even attempt such a spell and have it go out of control on a poor animal. Given that Miss Granger and Mister Malfoy over here have managed to use such a simple spell on their first attempt I expect the same from all of you during our next class. And to be sure that all of you remember this our lesson today, I will be giving you all a small homework assignment. Write a ten page long essay on the benefits of knowing the basics on Transfiguration and the detriment of using such spells blindly."

Here it was, the infamous homework loving witch.

No wonder she and Hermione got along quite well in the movie. They were basically the same person in two different bodies! Again, I wasn't against having homework, but writing a mini novel over the course of a few days along with juggling other assignments was a bit too much for me. I still needed to work on Occlumency and set up a proper defense for my mind against future enemies. But it was hard when I didn't have someone trustworthy to practice Legilimency on me. I needed someone to test my limit and show me the existing flaws I had unknowingly set inside my mind. The small cracks that needed to be mended with an external force taking the advantage of them.

I couldn't ask Hermione to help me on this issue yet.

Draco was a no go as well.

Lucius was a possible route I could take, but what stopped me from asking for his help was whether or not he would catch glimpses of my past life.

Even after each year, my past memories would get blurrier, some aspects remained ingrained in my head and couldn't be so easily forgotten.

"It's almost dinner time, we should return to the main hall," I said to Hermione as we walked out of class.

"We still have two hours before dinner, why not just take the opportunity to finish our homework?"

"Write ten pages in two hours? Do I need to remind you that we need to do a lot of research from the books in the library? We need much more than two hours. And I promised Ron to indulge in a game of chess with him, join me. I promise to only play for an hour and then we can work together on our assignment after dinner in commons."

Hermione reluctantly agreed with me, we entered the main hall with half of the students still missing and noticed Ron and Neville already playing a round of chess. Harry was talking to the twins and I noticed how his hair was tainted blue—guess he had fallen victim to one of their infamous pranks.

They also had a plate of some kind of cake which Fred kept banging against the table. From the noise I was hearing, I wondered if that was not a rock disguised as a pastry. And from the looks from Harry's and Ron's pockets, they had much more inside.

They visited Hagrid, didn't they…

I should really go and say hello to the gentle giant. Being my favorite character of the series, there was no way I was going to let the chance to form a friendship with him go to waste.

"Again, how will I get all of this paint off of me?" Harry muttered quietly and looked at his blue hands. "I have Potion making class tomorrow with Snape, that man will definitely punish me for this."

"Oh, don't worry Harry! That paint is a handmade one which comes off with some pumpkin juice and nothing else. Not even magic can get rid of it, ain't that right, Fred?" Said, George.

"Bloody hell mate, is this a rock or a cake!?" And he wasn't even listening to his brother. He held his aching jaw as he looked incredulously at the cake Harry and Ron got from Hagrid. "I think I chipped my tooth!"

"That's worse! I'll smell like pumpkins all day!"

"Might not be that bad, people will hound ya during Quirrell's class."

Harry was fuming, "I got caught by Filch who gave me extra hours of class and homework for, in his words—befouling the castle. The least you could do is help me out a bit, Ron doesn't understand most of the material."

The Weasley twins nodded in understanding. "Don't worry Harry, potion making is our strong suit, I'm sure we can help ya out."

That was an interesting conversation they were having.

"Hey guys, got any spot left for two more?" I greeted them with an easy going smile. Harry tried to hide his hands but it was kind of pointless if he looked like a human sized smurf. Ron was lost in his own world, trying to figure out the next move.

"Look at that, George."

"We got ourselves some Slytherins."

"A Malfoy no less, think he fell for the exploding toilet?"

"Don't know, I see no toilet seat glue to his bum."

"Maybe next time."

Note to self, don't use the Slytherin dorm toilets before sending Draco first. How did these two get the password in the first place was a mystery. Another possibility would be that our house had a traitor among us a and was helping these two set up their small pranks. That second option was quite smart actually, the only problem bring finding someone who would even consider doing such a thing, but knowing these two—it was very possible.

""What do you want?"" They both spoke at the same time.

At least they were far more welcoming than Ron on our first meeting. Both of them had the familiar Weasley traits; red hair, freckles and pale skin. They were both wild cards, capable of pranking anyone from any house, even their own—just like Harry here.

"Heard both of you are quite talented with pranks."

""The best!""

I buried my hand in my pocket and retrieved a single golden coin.

"I have a deal for you, a certain girl that I want both of you to teach a lesson to."

Of course, I would confront her on my own as well. But I also wanted a bit of payback from the prank masters.