The Rise of a Dark Lord

Chapter 4 - Getting a Pet

The first week of classes was interesting although not that difficult. Harry was expecting a bit more, but he supposed that each subject would become more challenging in the following months, at least he hoped so.

Just like the prefect Rosier had told them, they helped the first years to find their way the first few days, something for which Harry was thankful, Hogwarts was enormous and he was sure that he would have lost himself at least once trying to find the right classrooms. However he did want to explore the castle, it was huge and he was sure that it had to have hundreds of secrets, he could hardly wait to uncover them.

Classes were something he found just as frustrating as interesting, and he could only hope that it would change. Still it was something he was used to, in muggle school he always found classes to be boring and he always had to find something new to study to keep himself entertained.

His first class was Charms with professor Flitwick and though it had the potential to be an interesting class, they had done nothing more than theory, theory that he already knew, and it looked like it wouldn't be changing in the near future. What Harry wanted to do was practical classes, he wanted to do the charms, he wanted to cast magic but knowing it would take a while for it to happen he decided he would do it on his own in his room, at least like that he would learn something.

Transfiguration was far more interesting for him, he had to admit that he quite liked it. They had a bit of theory at the start of class, but after that professor McGonagall gave them a match and told them to turn it into a needle. Harry pointed his wand at the match, said the spell and nothing whatsoever happened. He frowned, he had done exactly what the book said, why hadn't it worked?

Theoretically a needle was supposed to be on his desk in front of him, but no, on his desk, practically laughing at him, was still a match. Aside from that, he hadn't felt anything. Every time he had used magic he had felt something, just under his skin, and all around him, it wasn't always the same feeling, but he did always feel something, but now there was nothing. What was the difference? He was still looking at his match when his eyes went wide. It took him a little bit but he knew what was different. It was so obvious that he had to ask himself why he hadn't noticed it before. Every time he had done magic he had focused on what he wanted, had focused on his will, and when he tried to change the match into a needle he had only said the spell without even thinking about his will. Was that the reason why it didn't work? Well there was only one way to find out. Trying again, Harry not only said the spell he also focused on his will, on how he wanted the match to change into a needle. To his delight the match changed completely and on his desk was a needle.

"Well done Mr. Potter." a voice said from behind him, making Harry turned to see professor McGonagall looking at him, "Now try turning that needle back into a match."

As it didn't seem like the professor was going away Harry turned back to his needle and said the spell again, not forgetting to focus on his will, and the needle became a match again.

"Wonderful Potter," professor McGonagall said with a small smile on her face, "I never had a student that was able to do both of the transfigurations on the first class, 20 points to Slytherin. Continue to transfigure the match until the end of class, try changing the needle, try adding a pattern to the metal or something similar. The spell is the same, it's just a matter of visualization."

Having said that, professor McGonagall continued walking around the classroom helping the students that needed it.

Visualization? Harry took a while pondering what the professor meant. When he thought that he had understood what she was implying he admitted that it made a lot of sense. The spell he had used to change the match into a needle and the needle into a match was the same, so logically if he wanted a different needle he had to imagine that the needle was different. When he was transfiguring the match into a needle he hadn't thought about the needle because they were both already quite different, but because he hadn't visualized the needle it turned into a basic needle, he supposed that if he had no idea how a needle looked that it wouldn't have worked. But seeing as he knew what a needle was his subconscious must have provided the needed image to complete the spell.