Ron was unrepentant. "The boy-who-lived needs proper Gryffindor friends, not to be hanging about with Ravenclaw girls and Neville. The way you took down Malfoy was bloody brilliant! What quidditch team to you support?" Harry's gaze would have had anyone else in the class moving seats, Ron was too stupid to know he was in any trouble. Harry had to quickly decide the best way to play this. "I paid Malfoy the compliment of at least admitting he could be dangerous. You, on the other hand, are an idiot!"
Padma and Hermione were already on their feet, guiding Neville to their new seats. Harry then joined them, leaving behind a livid Ron who was now stuck sitting at the front of the class. The reason he was stuck there was that a certain cat had just watched the entire incident, transforming into Professor McGonagall before Ron could move or even reply to the insult. Minerva decided that no action needed to be taken, she was actually delighted to see three Ravenclaws standing up for one of her cubs. That the youngest Weasley possessed the social skills of a troll was something that other members of staff had actually commented on.
McGonagall's transformation from her cat form led the professor neatly into her introductory remarks about how transfiguration was some of the hardest magic they would learn. Transfiguring her desk into a pig was always something that caught and held the new first years' attention. McGonagall was continuing her well honed introduction before noticing she didn't have the entire class' full attention, one of them actually appeared bored. This had never happened before so she cut short her talk to discover what the problem was.
"Is there something you don't understand Mr Crow?"
"Basically, all of it Professor."
McGonagall's lips tightened at this. "Could you please be a trifle more specific Mr Crow?"
Ron couldn't resist a jibe. "It's because he's an idiot!"
The sniggering this caused was all the invitation Harry needed to shut them up. "Well, I understood changing your desk into a pig was purely a demonstration, though not very practical one since you couldn't actually eat it!" McGonagall didn't seem too pleased with that analysis but could hardly refute the facts, she grudgingly nodded in acceptance so Harry continued. "It's all the different spell incantations and wand movements that confuse me. Since transfiguration is basically changing one thing into another, why do you need a different spell for every occasion? Transfiguration is one of the easiest branches of magic to master, you're just asking your magic to perform the same function over and over again."
In all her years teaching, McGonagall had never came across this argument before. She could now see how someone who wasn't raised in their community could struggle with the concept. "What you have failed to grasp Mr Crow is the different types and complexities of transfiguration. We'll be starting off today attempting to turn matches into needles. Since they are approximately the same size, the spell has merely to tweak the shape and transfigure wood into metal. As we progress through the courses, we eventually move to configuring living material - which is much more complicated and taxing."
"That is where we are having the trouble professor, I've been taught the exact opposite. The only limitations governing the spell are the power and experience of the caster - and the mass of the initial object. Transforming your desk into a fly or an elephant is practically impossible because you are limited by the mass of material you start with. Whether that material is living or not is immaterial. I could probably transfigure my book into a pigeon but not a turkey - unless you know of a miniature variety?"
McGonagall was gobsmacked. If this boy was speaking the truth then everything she'd been taught - and in turn had taught others - was wrong. Minerva didn't know how she would deal with that. If this was a prank, Mr Crow was going to find himself in detention to at least third year. There was one easy way to find out.
Minerva had taught the marauders and now the Weasley twins, she had no intentions of being caught by any prank book. "Mr Crow, I'm going to give you one of my books. If you can transfigure it into a chicken, I will give you an 'O' - not for today but the entire year."
She placed a rather large tome in front of him and fixed her beady eyes on it. The boy removed his knife and began to wave it over the book. Minerva watched in astonishment as the leather binding started to grow feathers before a head and neck appeared as the chicken took shape. McGonagall was speechless as the chicken bobbed its head and strutted over the desk, it was left to Hermione to ask Harry the questions.
"You never said any incantations or performed a recognised wand movement, how is this possible?"
"Hermione, I speak English, Spanish, French and a smarttering of Italian - do you think it makes a difference what you say, or what language you say it in, to your magic as it does what you want? Oh I of course speak goblin, though I refuse to use the derogatory terms wizards refer to that language as."
Hermione had never heard about this before so asked. "What do wizards call it?"
it was Neville who answered her. "Gobbledegook!"
Hermione's sense of injustice sprang to the fore. "What! That means talking gibberish - and is very insulting..."
McGonagall had found her voice again and didn't want the issue sidetracked. "Leaving goblin/wizard relations aside for the moment, I would like to hear a fuller answer to Miss Granger's initial question."
Harry waved his knife over the chicken and it slowly transformed into a basket.
"Chicken in a basket? I suppose this is more of the fabled goblin humour?"
Harry couldn't help but smile at Hermione's friendly jibe. He once more performed the goblin equivalent of the transformation spell and the basket became the cutest ginger kitten he could visualise. A tiny miaow and the kitten sauntered over to Hermione, it was soon on her knee and receiving the cuddles and petting it deserved. Hermione thought this was her idea of heaven. A kitten she could play with that would eventually turn back into a book - it didn't get any better than that. "Harry, you have so got to teach me how to do that."
Harry now gave McGonagall, and the rest of the class the answer they were waiting for. "Once you master the basic transfiguration spell, it's then all about being able to visualise what you want the item to transform into and practice - lots and lots of practice. I can transfigure items up to about the size of a medium dog. The bigger the item though, the slower my transfiguration will be. It will get quicker with practice and larger items will come as I get older." Minerva had been a transfiguration prodigy and now held a mastery in the subject, an eleven year old goblin-trained wizard had just totally destroyed everything she held to be true. She was a powerful witch but couldn't even contemplate repeating the feat this boy just achieved when she was the same age. It wasn't just that though, Harry Crow just threw the transfiguration rulebook out the window. Where the hell did they go from here?