Dumbledore picked himself up from where he'd fallen on a well manicured grass lawn. He brushed himself down. Damn. He shook himself. That was a mistake. Ugh. He was getting old.
He looked around. It looked like a muggle park.
Wards like that wouldn't have deposited him far, so he must still be in Crawley. Professor McGonagall hadn't joined him, so presumably she was still with the Grangers. That was good. Maybe she could learn something more useful.
He frowned. The Grangers were convinced that Slytherin was a protector. And to be fair, the man certainly had invested a lot of money into giving the Grangers magical protection powerful enough to stop even him. Slytherin had done far more for this muggleborn family than he had ever been able to. Was he mistaken about Lord Slytherin? But then, why did Slytherin seem to distrust him so much? It made no sense. Slytherin still wouldn't speak with him. After all these years.
He sighed. What he really needed was a iron clad reason to speak with the man. One that Slytherin couldn't refuse and still maintain his image with those he led.
He stilled.
Oh, he was being stupid ! He reached into the pocket of his robes and brought out the letter Lord Slytherin had written, baring him from speaking with Miss Granger without her magical guardian's presence. He smiled and let out a held breath. Of course. That's how he could get his meeting with Lord Slytherin. Now he just needed to find a valid academic reason to speak with Miss Granger.
He looked off into the distance. But first, he had an appointment with the goblins to keep. He focused on the nearest apparition point to London and vanished.
...
Hermione sat next to Daphne in the transfiguration classroom. A blank piece of parchment lay in front of her. Her quill was ready inked and lay perfectly parallel to the parchment.
A cat padded down the aisle past her and jumped onto the desk.
She stared at it.
"Professor McGonagall is a cat animagus," Harry had said.
She smirked.
Out of the corner of her eye, Daphne did the same.
A large bell sounded, indicating the start of class. Several minutes after that, two more students hurried into the classroom, looking relieved at dodging their presumed teacher based reprimand. One of them was Dean Thomas.
The cat leapt from the table and resolved itself into the upright and stern visage of Professor McGonagall.
The late student's faces fell.
"Thank you Messrs Thomas and Finnigan. Please take your seats and if you are late again, I shall turn you into a clock."
The professor walked down the aisle.
"Welcome to transfiguration. The magic of transforming objects into alternate forms. You will soon be shocked to discover that in the next five years, you will only learn five actual spells in this class." The old witch paused and walked back up to the front of the lecture room.
A few of her classmates did indeed look surprised. Not her, of course.
"This is because one spell will cover almost all our efforts up until your NEWTs." McGonagall pointed her wand at a goblet on the desk in front her. It turned into a small statue of a knight on horseback. Another wave of her wand turned it back. She then picked up the goblet and pointed her wand at the table itself. The desk turned into a pig.
"I just used the same spell on both the goblet and the desk, the general transfiguration spell." McGonagall said, turning the pig back into a desk again. "This is the spell we shall spend the majority of our time with." You may well be able to cast the spell by the end of this class. But to master it, will take a lifetime."
She diligently wrote down, 'Point 1. General transfiguration spell - lifetime to master.'
"To cast the general transfiguration spell we channel our ready magic through our wands with intent to affect the change."
McGonagall picked up a stick of chalk and wrote - A SPELL IS READY MAGIC WITH INTENT. "This applies to all magic, not just transfiguration. When you cast a charm, or a jinx, you are doing the same thing. Of course, for the spell to work, magic has to also agree with your intent, and that often requires additional actions. Hence, magic words, wand motions, rituals, etc."
She copied this down too. She already knew it, but that was beside the point. Good students wrote things down.
"When we cast the transfiguration spell on an object, we channel the spell into the object. The object will continue to change as the intent channelled into the object changes." The professor wrote - A TRANSFIGURED OBJECT HOLDS THE SPELL WITHIN ITSELF.
"When the magic in the object reaches zero, the object reverts back to its original form."
McGonagall then reached under the desk and brought out two large glass bowls, a block of wood, and an hourglass.
"Class, please watch closely."
She leaned closer to get a better view.
McGonagall placed the block of wood in the first bowl, flipped the hourglass, and pointed her wand at the wood through the bowl's top. The wood turned into water.
"I have just channelled a tiny amount of magic into the wood."
The professor looked down at the bowl and glanced at the hourglass. Several seconds later the wood turned back into water. McGonagall tapped the hourglass - 5.09 seconds.
"This time, the transfiguration lasted five seconds. Now, watch what happens this time."
McGonagall turned the wood back into water, but this time, she poured half the water into the second bowl. The moment the water in the second bowl lost contact with the water in the first, it turned back into wood, a block, just like it had been before, but half the size. The first bowl, though, still contained water. They waited. They waited some more.
The water turned back into wood. McGonagall tapped the recently re-flipped hourglass - 9.65 seconds.
"Can anyone tell me what just happened?"
Her hand could not have moved faster.
"Yes, Miss Granger?"
"Once you poured half the water into the second bowl, it lost contact to the spell, so it turned back into wood. The first half then had only half as much mass to keep transfigured, but the same amount of magic, so it stayed transfigured twice as long."
"Well done, Miss Granger. Two points to Slytherin."
She beamed.
....
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