Chapter 35: Transfiguration Club
The night slipped away quietly. Back in his dormitory, Ezio slept soundly and contentedly.
The next morning, he woke while everyone else was still deep in their dreams. After heading to the kitchens for a sumptuous breakfast, Ezio began his morning studies. Since he needed to see Professor McGonagall in the afternoon, he changed his morning magic training to Transfiguration practice. After receiving pointers from Professor McGonagall, he had now found some of the knacks for casting Transfiguration spells.
He still needed to continue practicing inanimate transformations. He couldn't yet properly perform the advanced transfiguration of turning paper into a wooden stick and then being able to break it. Otherwise, last night, he wouldn't have had to turn the soil into a soft mound, but could have made it a haystack instead.
Turning the soil soft was a form of object shaping. This type of change, which doesn't alter the object's material state, can be long-lasting.
The statues made by wizards are crafted using this method. This simple alteration of a substance's structural form doesn't require magical energy to be maintained.
But the price was that after doing it, Ezio had to spend half an hour scrubbing himself clean when he got back to the dorm. The patch of land where the troll slept was highly contaminated soil, its foul body odor deeply seeped into it.
As for live transfiguration, Ezio had also begun to get the hang of it. He could now turn small objects into living creatures of a similar size, for example, turning a button into a beetle. For him, this was already rapid, visible progress. This type of primary live transfiguration was part of the third-year curriculum, and Ezio had only been at Hogwarts for his first week.
Time flew by when he was practicing with absolute focus. He had lunch in the dining hall, rested for a bit, and soon it was the appointed time to meet with Professor McGonagall. Arriving ten minutes early, Ezio knocked on the door of her office.
"Come in," Professor McGonagall's voice came from within.
"This way." After seeing Ezio enter, Professor McGonagall stood up. "Because many questions have accumulated over the holiday, your upperclassmen have arrived early. We'll go in through here; the practice room is in here."
She led Ezio through a wooden door on the left side of her office. Pushing it open, a large room of about two or three hundred square meters appeared before them. It was filled with various practice props, and even many living creatures, such as goats, rabbits, toads, mice, and various beetles in glass tanks, all used for Transfiguration practice. Students would also use these things in class.
"Professor McGonagall, if I'm not mistaken, is this a first-year student?" a boy in a Ravenclaw uniform asked in surprise.
"This is the pride of our Slytherin. What's wrong with being a first-year?" The one who spoke was an acquaintance of Ezio's, the Slytherin prefect Rabastan Foley. "It would be strange if he didn't come, Daniel."
"Alright," Daniel shrugged. Like Rabastan, he was also a prefect of his house. "I was just lamenting why he didn't come to Ravenclaw."
"Because Slytherin is the best house," Rabastan said with some pride.
There weren't many people in Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration Club, only seven in total, and that was including Ezio. As the most complex subject at Hogwarts, there were very, very few people with talent worthy of Professor McGonagall's attention. And of these seven, Slytherin accounted for three: the male and female prefects and Ezio. Of the remaining four, Ravenclaw had two seats, and Gryffindor and Hufflepuff each had one.
"Normally, I wouldn't invite students below the third year to join my club. But Mr. Firenze has already completed the first and second-year Transfiguration studies. You have now started to work on live transfiguration, haven't you?" Professor McGonagall glanced at Ezio, and seeing him nod, she gave a satisfied smile.
"The third and fifth years are the watersheds for Transfiguration. Live transfiguration is the first major hurdle; only about sixty percent of students can keep up with the learning pace. And two years after that, the number of students who can enter my advanced class to learn advanced Transfiguration will plummet to less than one-fifth. Transfiguration is a subject that truly tests a wizard's talent and learning ability."
"Hard work is necessary, but mastery over one's magic is of the utmost importance," Professor McGonagall said flatly, stating a very realistic but also harsh truth.
In fact, after truly starting his Transfiguration studies at Hogwarts, Ezio could somewhat understand why all four of Harry's father's group had been able to learn to become Animagi.
The Peter Pettigrew he had once looked down upon, if you set aside his timid and cowardly personality, was actually quite capable. After all, a wizard who could blow up an entire street with a single spell was an absolute elite in the entire English wizarding world.
One had to remember that many employees at the Ministry of Magic forgot how to use basic protective spells after a few years on the job. And in Harry's father's generation, Hogwarts was truly teeming with geniuses; it was a dazzling era.
"I will remember that, Professor," Ezio nodded slightly. Even if Professor McGonagall hadn't said it, he had always been very self-disciplined.
"Then let me introduce you to the others. You should know these two, Mr. Rabastan Foley and Miss Josephine Shafiq."
"These two are Mr. Daniel Cogbore and Mr. Mark Williams from Ravenclaw." The two of them nodded slightly at Ezio. The relationship between Ravenclaw and Slytherin students wasn't bad, but the little eagles only recognized a small portion of the little Slytherin snakes; they looked down on the idiots completely.
"This is Percy Weasley, the new prefect for Gryffindor." Red-haired Percy had a slightly arrogant demeanor. Due to the hostile rivalry between the houses, Percy didn't show much enthusiasm.
"And the last one is Mr. Cedric Diggory, who, like you, has just joined the club this year. He is the most outstanding among all the third-year students. You two can discuss and learn from each other."
Cedric was a bona fide handsome boy, but unlike Ezio, this fellow always had a gentle and elegant smile on his face. He was a warm, gentlemanly type of handsome, a style that was worlds apart from Ezio's. Upon hearing Professor McGonagall's introduction, Cedric smiled a little embarrassedly, then took two steps forward and extended his hand to shake Ezio's.
"I've heard your name for a while now. It's a pleasure to meet you, Ezio."
"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Cedric." Ezio nodded at him. He wasn't particularly keen on making friends, but he wouldn't refuse the goodwill shown to him by someone with outstanding talent.
"Now then, I will begin to assign your individual learning tasks. Cedric and Ezio, you two wait a moment. I would like you to practice the prerequisite for live transfiguration ahead of time: object animation training. For example, making a teapot run quickly and smoothly." Professor McGonagall pointed to a long table to the side, where the practice items were placed.
Ezio and Cedric nodded in agreement and walked over to the long table.
Object animation is different from live transfiguration. This type of animation only makes an inanimate object partially transform to have movable limbs, for example, making a teapot grow two or more legs, but it doesn't completely turn the teapot into an animal.
According to the difficulty ladder of Transfiguration, from easiest to hardest, it is: shaping of inanimate objects, inanimate to inanimate transformation, animation of inanimate objects, inanimate to animate transformation, animate to animate transformation, and human transfiguration. The larger the target of the transformation and the more complex the object, the higher the difficulty.
"Did you really get this far just by self-studying?" Cedric asked curiously, his face not hiding his surprise, after seeing Ezio easily make the teapot sprout eight spider-like legs and run back and forth on the long table quickly and smoothly.
"I couldn't do this before I came to Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall taught me some techniques, which were very useful to me."
"So you mean, in just one week?" Cedric's surprise did not diminish in the slightest. He praised sincerely, "That speed is simply too fast."
"There's actually a knack to it," Ezio said, waving his wand and returning the teapot to its original state. "When I first started practicing, I tried to turn it into this first—"
The base of the teapot suddenly turned into four wheels, and it shot out a long distance with a 'whoosh'. On its way back, the wheels turned into tank treads, the structure becoming even more complex.
"Compared to growing legs, this kind of mechanical transformation is much simpler. By gradually increasing the difficulty from easy to hard, the efficiency of practice is significantly improved. If I had just gritted my teeth from the beginning and tried to practice how to make a teapot grow two legs and run..." Ezio then turned the teapot into a wobbly, two-legged form that ran forward. "Then I think I'd probably still be stuck on how to keep it balanced without falling over."
"That is indeed an idea worth referencing." Professor McGonagall, having finished assigning tasks, came up behind them. "Mr. Firenze has also given me a reminder. A step-by-step approach is more conducive to learning and practicing Transfiguration. But before, I seem to have fallen into a misconception myself, which was to try and achieve it all in one step."
"After all, you hardly see any cars in the wizarding world. I came from the Muggle world, so I have a slight advantage in this aspect." Ezio bowed slightly. He didn't think this was some great discovery. Although it could lower the difficulty of practicing Transfiguration and speed up mastery, if one didn't have the required talent, it wasn't of much help. It was a small technique, an icing on the cake, but it couldn't change the fundamental nature of the matter. "I just made the teapot move ahead of time to train myself to find the feeling of its movement. In essence, it's a shortcut. Whether it's wheels or treads, it's still essentially an inanimate-to-inanimate transformation and doesn't involve the animation of an inanimate object."
"But it cannot be denied that this is a clever approach. Finding the 'feeling of movement' is also something that is not easy to grasp during practice."
"Alright, now I need to give you all a more comprehensive test to assess your current level of mastery in Transfiguration. I will then formulate future learning tasks for each of you based on your different learning stages. The club meetings are mainly for summarizing and solving the problems you encounter in your studies and practice. Here, I will answer them all for you."