Transfiguration was held in a large, bright classroom on the first floor, with tall windows and rows of desks arranged in neat lines facing a wide platform at the front.
It was the most orderly classroom Felix had been in since arriving at Hogwarts, and it was immediately clear why.
Professor McGonagall was standing at the front of the room before the first student had even sat down.
She did not greet them.
She did not smile.
She stood with her hands folded in front of her and her back straight and her eyes moving across the room the way a general’s eyes moved across a parade ground, and by the time the last first-year had found a seat, the class had gone completely silent without anyone being asked to be quiet.
Felix sat beside Jonah, with Fred and George behind him and Lee Jordan beside them.
He had been waiting for this lesson since the moment he first read Andros’s notebook.
He had known it was coming, and he had known what it would mean, and he had spent the last several nights thinking about what he would do when he finally sat in this room and faced the woman who had mastered the branch of magic that Andros had called the only one that mattered.
McGonagall began to speak.
“Transfiguration is the most precise and complex branch of magic you will study at Hogwarts,” she said.
“It is also the most dangerous. A mistake in Charms may produce an unintended effect. A mistake in Transfiguration may produce an unintended creature, and that creature may not be pleased about it.”
She paused and looked out at the class.
“You are here to learn. You are not here to experiment. You will follow my instructions exactly, and you will not attempt anything I have not taught you. Is that understood?”
The class nodded.
“Good.” McGonagall turned to the blackboard behind her, and with a flick of her wand, chalk rose into the air and began writing out the word Transfiguration in neat, sloping letters.
“There are four branches of Transfiguration — Transformation, Vanishment, Conjuration, and Untransfiguration. Today we will be starting with Transformation, which is the art of changing one object into another.”
She turned back to face the class and reached into a small box on her desk.
When she opened her hand, Felix saw a plain wooden matchstick resting in her palm.
“This is a matchstick,” she said.
“By the end of this lesson, it will be a needle.”
She set the matchstick down on her desk and raised her wand.
A single, precise movement, and the matchstick shimmered — its shape stretching and thinning and sharpening until it lay on the desk as a long silver needle, gleaming in the morning light.
The class stared.
“That,” McGonagall said, “is Transformation. A simple object into a simple object. The wand movement is a sharp, deliberate flick — no flourishes, no hesitation. The incantation is unnecessary at this stage; the movement is what matters. You will each take a matchstick and attempt the transformation. You will not be successful on the first attempt. That is expected.”
She flicked her wand again, and a matchstick appeared on every desk in the room.
Felix picked his up and looked at it.
He had read about this lesson.
He had read about it in the books, and he had read about it in Andros’s notebook, and he had spent the last two weeks thinking about what he would do when he finally sat in this room with this matchstick in his hand.
He had thought about it more than he had thought about almost anything else since arriving at Hogwarts.
He knew what he was supposed to do.
He knew what the other students would do — struggle, fail, try again, and eventually produce a needle that was slightly crooked or slightly too long or slightly too silver.
That was the lesson.
That was how it was supposed to go.
He raised his wand.
He did not think about the matchstick.
He thought about what it could become.
The movement was the movement McGonagall had shown them.
A sharp, deliberate flick.
But there was something else underneath it — something Felix could not have explained to anyone if they had asked him.
It was the same thing he had felt in the High Library when the first book unlocked itself beneath his fingers.
It was the same thing he had felt in Ollivanders when the wand chose him and the dragon rose behind him.
It was the feeling of magic that was not being learned but remembered, as though it had been waiting inside him for years and had only now been given permission to come out.
He flicked his wand.
The matchstick shimmered.
It stretched.
It thinned.
It sharpened.
It turned silver, and then it turned something brighter than silver, and then it was not a matchstick anymore and it was not a needle either.
It was a small, perfectly formed silver dagger, and it lay on his desk gleaming in the morning light.
The room went silent.
Felix looked at the dagger.
Then he looked up.
Professor McGonagall was staring at him.
She had not moved from her position at the front of the room.
Her wand was still in her hand.
Her face had gone very still — not angry, not even surprised in any way a student would have recognized, but focused in a way that Felix had never seen on her before.
“Mr. Falker,” she said slowly.
“Professor.”
“What did you just do?”
Felix looked down at the dagger.
“I transfigured the matchstick, professor.”
“You transfigured the matchstick into a needle,” she said.
“I asked for a needle.”
“I know.”
“You produced a dagger.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Felix considered the question.
He could have lied.
He could have said it was an accident, that he had lost control of the spell, that he did not know what had happened.
It was the answer most students would have given, and it was the answer that would have gotten him out of the room without another word being said.
He did not give that answer.
“I thought about what the matchstick could become,” he said.
“A needle is one possibility. A dagger is another. I chose the dagger.”
McGonagall was quiet for a long moment.
Then she walked out from behind her desk and came to stand beside him.
She looked down at the dagger on his desk, and then at his wand, and then at him.
“How many Transfiguration lessons have you had, Mr. Falker?”
“This is the first, professor.”
“And you have never attempted Transformation before?”
“No, professor.”
McGonagall looked at him for a long moment.
Then she reached down and picked up the dagger, turning it over in her hand.
It was, Felix saw, a perfect piece of work — clean lines, even weight, the blade so sharp that it caught the light along its edge like a thin line of fire.
“This is not the work of a first-year student,” she said quietly.
“This is not the work of a fifth-year student. This is not the work of most of the wizards I have taught in my career.”
She set the dagger back down on his desk and looked at him again.
“You will stay after class, Mr. Falker. We have things to discuss.”
She turned and walked back toward the front of the room, and the lesson resumed, and the rest of the class slowly came back to life around Felix.
Fred leaned forward from behind him.
“First lesson,” he whispered.
“That’s your first lesson.”
“I noticed.”
“He’s going to be insufferable about this,” George whispered.
“I’m not going to be insufferable,” Felix said, and picked up his wand to try again.
But he was, a little.
The rest of the lesson was uneventful by comparison.
Felix tried again, and the second attempt produced a needle — a proper needle, clean and silver and exactly what McGonagall had asked for.
He did not try for anything else.
He had made his point, and he had no interest in making it twice in the same hour.
McGonagall watched him from the front of the room, and Felix could feel her attention on him the way he had felt Snape’s attention in the dungeons.
Different weight.
Same intensity.
Fred and George produced needles on their fourth and fifth attempts respectively.
Jonah produced something that was almost a needle but had a small wooden splinter still attached to one end.
Lee Jordan produced a needle on his second try and spent the rest of the lesson trying to convince Fred and George that this meant he was the most talented student in the year.
It did not work.
When the lesson ended, the rest of the class filed out, and Felix stayed behind.
Fred and George looked at him as they left — Fred with a grin, George with a raised eyebrow — and then the door closed and Felix was alone in the room with Professor McGonagall.
She gestured to the chair beside her desk. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
“Sit.”
Felix sat.
McGonagall did not sit.
She stood in front of him with her hands folded, the way she had stood at the beginning of the lesson, and she looked at him for a long moment before she spoke.
“Your father wrote to me before the term began,” she said.
“He told me you were coming, and he told me to expect something unusual. He did not tell me what.”
Felix said nothing.
“I have taught Transfiguration at Hogwarts for thirty-five years,” McGonagall continued.
“In that time, I have taught students who were talented, students who were gifted, and a very small number of students who were extraordinary. I can count the last group on one hand, Mr. Falker, and I have never — not once — seen a student produce a perfect Transformation on their first attempt without instruction.”
She picked up the dagger from the desk and looked at it again.
“This is not a first-year Transfiguration,” she said.
“This is not a fifth-year Transfiguration. This is a piece of work that would be considered exceptional from one of my N.E.W.T. students. You produced it in less than thirty seconds, on your first attempt, having never been taught the spell.”
She set the dagger down and looked at him.
“Explain.”
Felix considered the question.
He could lie.
He could tell her he did not know what had happened.
He could tell her he had read ahead, that he had practiced at home, that he had been taught the spell by his father.
All of those answers would have been plausible.
All of them would have gotten him out of the room without another word being said.
He did not give any of them.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.
“Not in a way that will make sense to you. But I can tell you what it feels like.”
McGonagall watched him.
“When I do transfiguration,” Felix said, “it doesn’t feel like I’m learning something new. It feels like I’m remembering something I already knew. Like the magic was already there, and I just had to reach for it. It’s always been like that. Every time. No matter what I try, if it’s transfiguration, I can reach it.”
McGonagall was quiet for a long moment.
“And other branches of magic?” she asked.
“Charms is easy. Potions is easy. Defense is easy. But it’s not the same.” Felix paused, choosing his words.
“With Charms, I have to learn the spell first. With Transfiguration, I don’t. I just have to know what I want it to become.”
McGonagall looked at him for a long time.
Then she did something Felix had not expected.
She smiled.
It was a small smile, and it disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, but Felix saw it, and he understood what it meant.
“I see,” she said.
“Then we will need to make arrangements.”
“Arrangements?”
“You will not attend the regular first-year Transfiguration lessons, Mr. Falker.” She said it plainly, without preamble.
“It would be a waste of your time and a distraction to the other students. Instead, you will attend private lessons with me, twice a week, outside of regular class hours. We will begin with the theory you have missed and move quickly through material that is not in the first-year curriculum.”
Felix looked at her.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you have a gift, Mr. Falker,” McGonagall said.
“And I have no intention of letting it go to waste.”
She picked up the dagger and held it out to him.
“Take this with you. Study it. When you understand what you did today, come back and tell me.”
Felix took the dagger and stood up.
“Thank you, professor.”
McGonagall nodded, and Felix turned to leave.
He was halfway to the door when she spoke again.
“Mr. Falker.”
He stopped and looked back.
“Your father did not tell me what you were capable of,” she said.
“I suspect he did not know. I would like you to write to him tonight and tell him that Professor McGonagall has taken an interest in your education. He will understand what that means.”
Felix looked at her for a moment.
“Yes, professor,” he said.
He walked out of the room with the dagger in his hand, and the door closed behind him, and he stood in the corridor for a moment before he started walking back toward Gryffindor Tower.
He had a letter to write.