The walk back to the Great Hall for lunch was a more subdued affair than the excited chatter of the morning. Jake's own thoughts were a tangled mess, mirroring the frustration he felt from Transfiguration. It was one thing to know something was possible, to have seen it with his own eyes, but it was another thing entirely to fail to do it yourself. The gap between knowledge and ability felt like a chasm.
He slid into his seat at the Ravenclaw table, picking at a shepherd's pie without much appetite. Stewart Ackerley, who sat opposite him, looked equally glum.
"That was much harder than Charms," Stewart said, poking a stray pea with his fork. "My match just got a bit pointy. How did you do?"
"About the same," Jake admitted, not wanting to get into the specifics of colour change. "It's a different kind of thinking, isn't it? Flitwick wants precision, but McGonagall wants... something else. Intent, maybe?"
"Maybe," Stewart sighed. "My dad says Transfiguration is all about willpower. Forcing the world to be what you want it to be."
That resonated with Jake. It wasn't just about a clear mental picture; it was about imposing that picture onto reality. His willpower, it seemed, needed some work.
The afternoon brought them outside, down the sloping lawns towards the greenhouses that sat near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The air was cool and smelled of damp earth and strange, exotic pollens. The Ravenclaws joined the Hufflepuffs again, lining up outside Greenhouse One.
The teacher who emerged was a stout, cheerful-looking witch with a patch of dirt on her nose and flyaway grey hair escaping from under a patched hat. "Welcome, first-years! I'm Professor Sprout. To the greenhouses we go!"
Inside, the air was warm, humid, and thick with the scent of a thousand different plants. They gathered around a long workbench, where Professor Sprout stood beaming at them.
"Today, we will be getting our hands dirty with a very basic, but very useful plant: the Devil's Snare. Can anyone tell me its properties?"
A few hands went up, but it was a quiet Hufflepuff girl who answered. "It likes the dark and strangles things, Professor."
"Excellent! Five points to Hufflepuff!" Sprout said happily. "Precisely. Devil's Snare is a constrictor. It's not malicious, mind you, just very... enthusiastic. Now, the key is to remember what it doesn't like. What might that be?"
This time, Jake raised his hand. "Sunlight," he said. "Or any bright light or warmth."
"Another five points, this time to Ravenclaw! Very good, Mr Bloom!" Professor Sprout beamed. "So, should you ever find yourself in a bind, what spell might you use?"
"The Wand-Lighting Charm," Jake and a few others said in chorus.
"Perfect! But today, we'll be handling non-aggressive cuttings. We're going to be re-potting them. You will need your dragon-hide gloves, and a firm but gentle hand."
For the next hour, Jake found himself surprisingly engrossed. There was something therapeutic about working with the soil, carefully teasing the writhing, tentacle-like roots of the small Devil's Snare cuttings and moving them to larger pots. It was practical, tangible work that required focus but not the intense mental strain of Transfiguration. It was a welcome change of pace.
The final class of the day, however, was the one everyone had been whispering about: Defence Against the Dark Arts. It was also their first class with the Slytherins. The atmosphere in the corridor outside the classroom was noticeably cooler. The Slytherin first-years stood in a tight, quiet group, eyeing the Ravenclaws with expressions ranging from indifference to faint disdain.
Professor Quirrell was even more of a nervous wreck in his own classroom than he had been at the feast. The room smelled strongly of garlic, which Jake knew was rumoured to be for fending off a vampire Quirrell had supposedly met in Romania.
"W-welcome, class," he stammered, his eye twitching. "T-today we w-will be discussing the c-curse of the bogies. A s-simple hex, b-but a nasty one. C-can anyone t-tell me the incantation?"
Silence. The first-years looked at each other, confused. This wasn't the exciting, dangerous magic they had been hoping for.
Quirrell looked around the room, his gaze lingering nervously on the Slytherins. "N-no one? It is Mucus ad Nauseam. A simple j-jabbing motion with the w-wand..."
The lesson went downhill from there. Quirrell's stammer grew worse every time a student asked a question, and he jumped whenever a Slytherin student made a sudden movement. He seemed utterly terrified of his own subject. Jake took copious notes, not on the curse itself, which was laughably simple, but on Quirrell. There was something amiss, a flicker in his eyes when he thought no one was looking, a sense of something hidden beneath the trembling exterior. Jake couldn't put his finger on it, but the man's fear didn't feel entirely genuine. It felt like a performance.
The class ended without a single spell being cast. As he packed his bags, Jake felt a profound sense of disappointment. This was the class that was meant to teach him how to survive, and the teacher was afraid of his own shadow.
As he was leaving, he felt a slight nudge. A Slytherin boy with a pale, pointed face and slicked-back blond hair gave him a contemptuous look. "Watch where you're going, Raven-dork."
Jake didn't need a prophecy to know he was looking at a Malfoy, or a close relation. He simply met the boy's grey eyes, held his gaze for a second without expression, and then walked away without a word. He had bigger things to worry about than the schoolyard posturing of an eleven-year-old bigot. He had a foot of parchment on Transfiguration to write, and a feather that was waiting to be properly levitated.
He trudged back up to the Ravenclaw common room and poured his frustration into his homework. He couldn't force the magic to work, but he could understand the theory behind it. He spent the evening in a quiet corner of the library, structuring his essay on object-to-object transformation with a clear introduction, developed points, and a logical conclusion. It was a method of academic writing drilled into him over years of a university education that hadn't happened yet, and it felt as natural as breathing.
Thursday's Transfiguration lesson was much like the first. He tapped his matchstick, visualised a needle with agonising clarity, and spoke the incantation until his throat was dry. The result was the same: a very pointy, silver-coloured piece of wood. As the bell rang, he packed his bag with a familiar sense of disappointment.
"The class is dismissed," Professor McGonagall announced, her voice cutting through the chatter. "Mr. Bloom, a word, if you please."
Jake's stomach did a nervous flip. The other students filed out, casting curious glances his way. He approached her desk, his heart thumping.
Professor McGonagall was holding his roll of parchment. Her expression was, as usual, severe and unreadable.
"Mr. Bloom," she began, her sharp eyes fixing on him. "I have just finished marking your essay."
"Professor," he said quietly, bracing himself.
She unrolled the parchment. At the bottom, in neat, red ink, was a large 'O' for Outstanding. "This is, without a doubt, one of the most insightful and well-structured essays I have ever received from a first-year student. Your grasp of the foundational theories is exceptional."
Relief washed over Jake so intensely he felt light-headed. "Thank you, Professor."
"You synthesise the information, but you also draw logical conclusions that demonstrate a genuine understanding, not just rote memorisation," she continued, her tone crisp but laced with an undeniable thread of approval. "However, your practical work does not yet reflect this theoretical understanding. I have seen you in class. You are focused, you are precise, but the transformation eludes you."
"I don't understand it, Professor," Jake admitted, emboldened by her praise. "I can visualise the needle perfectly. I know the theory. But it feels like I'm missing a step."
Her gaze softened almost imperceptibly. "Visualisation is only half the battle, Mr. Bloom. Transfiguration is not a gentle request. It is a command. You must impose your will upon the object, forcing it to become what you envision. It requires absolute conviction. There can be no doubt in your mind that when you cast the spell, it will become a needle."
"Conviction," Jake repeated, the word clicking into place. "Not just belief, but certainty."
"Precisely," she said. "Your mind is clearly a formidable tool. Now you must learn to connect that mind to your magic with intent. Continue your efforts. I expect to see your practical work soon match the quality of your written work."
She gave a small, rare smile. "For an essay of this calibre, I am awarding ten points to Ravenclaw. It is not often I am so impressed."
Jake felt a flush of pride. "Thank you, Professor. I will."
He left the classroom with a newfound determination, her words echoing in his mind. Absolute conviction. It wasn't about wishing or wanting. It was about knowing. As he walked, he couldn't help but think that a few decades of advanced education in essay writing had certainly come in handy. Now, he just needed to apply that same certainty to his spellcasting.
Later that day, after dinner in the great hall, he was in the main library surrounded by a dozen or so books.
"I know what conviction, the word, means", he thought. Yet what does it mean here in the magical and mystical sense?
He pushed aside A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration and pulled a heavy, dust-jacketed tome towards him: The Philosophy of the Unseen: A Study of Magical Intent. It was clearly not on the first-year reading list. He'd found it in a remote corner of the 'Magical Theory' section, its spine uncreased, suggesting it had sat unread for years.
He ran a finger down the table of contents: Chapter 1: The Fallacy of Hope in Spellcraft. Chapter 2: Will as a Metaphysical Lever. Chapter 3: The Object's Nature and the Caster's Imposition... This was what he was looking for.
For hours, he read, the whispers of the upper years fading as he focused on his task. The book argued that most novice spellcasters failed because they treated magic like a request. They hoped the spell would work. They wanted it to work. But hope and want were admissions of a lack of control. They were expressions of a reality in which the desired outcome had not yet occurred.
"Conviction," the author, a wizard named Lycoris Black, wrote, "is the act of inhabiting the reality you wish to create. It is not the belief that a matchstick can become a needle. It is the unwavering, absolute knowledge that the needle is the object's true state, and its current form as a matchstick is a temporary illusion you are correcting."
That single paragraph hit Jake with the force of a physical blow. It reframed the entire problem. He wasn't trying to change a matchstick. He was trying to reveal the needle it was always meant to be. He wasn't imposing his will; he was enforcing a deeper truth.
He pulled another book, Transfiguration Paradoxes, and found a chapter on the "Inertia of Being." It spoke of objects having a kind of metaphysical stubbornness. A rock 'knows' it is a rock. To turn it into a goblet, one must overwhelm its "rock-ness" with the "goblet-ness" of your own making. It was a battle of concepts, fought in the space between the wand and the target.
It all pointed to the same conclusion. He had been focusing on the wrong thing. He'd been meticulously visualising the needle, the end product. But he hadn't been addressing the matchstick itself. He had to sever its connection to its own identity before he could give it a new one.
It was almost curfew when Madam Pince, the librarian, shooed him out. His mind was buzzing, not with frustration, but with the thrill of a puzzle finally clicking into place. He didn't have the answer, not fully, but he finally knew what the question was.
Back in the empty dormitory, he pulled a fresh matchstick from his bag. He didn't reach for his wand. Instead, he simply placed it on his bedside table and stared at it. He didn't picture a needle. He focused on the match. He thought of the tree it came from, the feel of bark, the scent of pine. He thought of the sawmill that cut it, the chemical dip for the red tip. He tried to grasp its simple story. I am wood. I make fire.
Then, slowly, he began to dismantle that story in his mind. The tree became abstract energy. The wood became mere fibres. The concept of fire became irrelevant. He stripped it of its purpose, its history, its "match-ness", until all that was left in his mind's eye was a small, inert object with no identity at all. A blank slate.
Only then did he allow the image of the needle to form. Not as something new, but as the correct form for this collection of matter. Sharp, silver, useful for mending. He filled the conceptual void with the needle's story.
He picked up his wand. He felt a different kind of focus now, not a strained effort of will, but a quiet, profound certainty. He wasn't asking. He was telling.
He gave the blank object a firm tap. "Acus."
There was no flash of light. For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then, the object on his table seemed to... resolve. The wood didn't change so much as it was replaced. One moment, it was a matchstick. The next, glinting in the moonlight from the window, was a perfectly formed, sharp silver needle.