The Snake and the Emerald Apple

The Choice

Harry was turning in his bed. Sleep would not embrace him and then take him to dreamland. The conversation with Voldemort haunted his mind. His reactions, both physical and mental, continued to amaze him. Why was he so responsive to Voldemort's words? He had repeated the conversation a hundred times in his head, but he had heard no deceit in the words. Harry also doubted that Voldemort had enough strength to influence him wandlessly. He had felt nothing, just his presence.

Harry was horrified by Voldemort, his current form was not in the man's favor. The creature looked weak and helpless, like a parasite: a blood-sucking, nasty creature, which had to drain others of their life force to survive. That was Voldemort. Harry was therefore not attracted to the man.

But what was it then? Was it the attraction to the dark side? Was it Voldemort's way of talking about magic, as if it were alive and sentient?

Harry just couldn't make up his mind.

Deciding that he would not find any more sleep this night, Harry sat up and picked up a book. It was his copy of the third-year Transfiguration book. Harry had a lot of trouble with this subject last school year and hoped he could improve it by going through the book again.

'It doesn't help that the book is written in an incredibly boring fashion,' Harrie thought irritated. In his opinion, most of the magic books were terribly outdated. Wizards and Witches could learn a thing or two from Muggles, at least they keep innovating. Harry couldn't imagine Muggles being taught at school from a book written in the 1940s. The idea alone was too ridiculous for words. Why didn't the wizards make a revised edition of this outdated book?

Harry decided to make cards with all spells. He'd seen all kinds of craft shops in the village, it wouldn't be difficult to find pre-cut cards. Preferably in different colors, so that he could apply a color code to the different spells. In this way he could distinguish between personal transfiguration: changing his hair color, or Animagi; changing inanimate objects to living beings and vice versa (although Harry wanted to make a distinction between them as well); Summoning and Vanishing-Spells, and so on.

Enthusiastically, Harry began to explain the subject matter, first, he wrote down all the spells and their applications. He did not go into depth yet, the name and definition were sufficient to apply the first sorting. He hoped to find other books on Hogwarts about Transfiguration's intent so that he could get closer to the spells. His idea was the same as his book on Potions, he believed that everyone learns differently and it is foolish to think that any student could struggle through a boring text. It had nothing to do with mastering a spell, but everything to do with reading comprehension.

After three long hours, Harry was done with his first draft. He noticed that there were surprisingly few different spells, there were hundreds of variations on the same spell. He also thought some spells immoral and did not understand why they were taught. Turning mice into snuff boxes was completely crazy, why would a wizard want that? At least changing a chair into a bed was still practical. But turning a living being into an object was ethically irresponsible.

Harry felt a shiver run down his spine as he came up with a lurid idea. He could see himself sitting in the Gryffindor common room in his favorite armchair. In front of him was a side table with luxurious crockery. The set consisted of a teacup with a saucer. A teapot, sugar bowl, milk jug, and a plate with biscuits completed the picture. Upon closer inspection of the cup, Harry saw a fine drawing of a dragon. All the edges of the service were green, except for the teapot, which had a beautiful yellow shine, like Hufflepuff's color. The teapot let out a cry of relief as some hot liquid left the belly of the pot. The cup had a different reaction, it seemed to perish with pain as soon as hot tea was poured in.