'Now let's start with the spell, the intent is the image of a small iron needle. It should be very sharp, but not to sharp so it doesn't become blunt too quickly. Channelling; I don't know what it is, so I am going to ignore it for now. Understanding: Uhm, well, afterwards the needle consists of iron with a set percentage of C-Atoms within. Too low and it would be steel. And it can't be too pure, real iron isn't very pure and the process make iron and steel pure is very expensive and sometimes it even makes the metal less hard, depending on what you remove. I should concentrate on hardness and solid iron. I don't know too much about this topic, only a bit and I do not even know how it changes transfiguration.'
'The mass should be in grams, as it is a very small transfiguration, and I don't have much understanding and the transfiguration class can't be changed anyway.'
Sebastian finished thinking about the details of the spell and concentrated on the small matchstick in front of him.
"Needolo", Sebastian cast the spell.
The matchstick began to change. It became grey and turned a bit harder, while the tip shrunk and became sharper.
Sebastian picked up the needle and pressed on it, watching closely how it turned out. Part of it didn't fully become iron, but it still became harder, though it still was wood, just grey. After watching it, he put it on his table and looked at Andreas, who had a perfect needle in front of him. I even had an 'A' at the top.
"How do you do that?", Sebastian asked, in awe of Andreas' talent.
"I do not know. I just concentrate on it and imagine its feel, how it pricks my skin and the smell of iron and how it looks and combine it into a needle. That is all.", Andreas answered, smiling.
"The difference is called talent. While it is not mentioned in your book, talent is playing a big part in magical arts. As a matter of fact, everyone has at least one kind of talent. It's just a part of being magical. Unluckily, it could be everything, even being wandless magic or a very specific field of curses or warding, so some people never find out about their talent.", Professor Kuhn, who had come to them to inspect everyone's first try casting the spell.
"Andreas, you have a high level 'O' talent, as for you, Sebastian, it is very close to O, but I don't think, that it is talent. Maybe you are very good at using intent, at least compared to most others, and some kind of understanding, though not a lot. Unluckily, your talent should only be early 'E' or upper 'A', which is also very good, though.", he explained and smiled a reassuring smile.
"If you work hard, everyone can develop an edge in understanding and a little bit in intent. You would not be a natural, but depending on effort, you could trump over other talents. Hard work rarely lets you down.", the professor explained and went on to inspect the others, telling them to study the book and what ideas it offers on intent and understanding in general in the last chapter.
Like this, transfiguration class ended, and Sebastian was able to transfigure a complete needle after consulting Andreas once more.
-Hp-
Their afternoon was spent learning about celestial phenomena and the planets of our sun system. While the topic itself wasn't very fascinating for Sebastian, it was interesting to learn about things they can influence and to know that wizardkind was always far more advanced in Astronomy than muggles and that their knowledge and experiences about phenomena traces back for more than three and a half millennia, because all the knowledge about astronomy from prior was wiped out.
After asking, Sebastian learned that wizardkind tended to focus on several single locations from time to time. In the medieval ages, it was Britain, but after the statute of secrecy was put in place, this behaviour lessened, as all interactions worldwide did between wizards.
One of the prior centres was Egypt, where all knowledge was gathered in the library of Alexandria which was burned down. Because of that, a lot of recent progress as well as ancient texts were lost.
It was proven that the area around Egypt had been a centre before that, during the time of the great pharaohs, where the development of curses and wards flourished.
Though all of that was interesting, Sebastian rather liked spending his time on charms or practicing dodging than talking about planets.
Therefore, after class, Sebastian was taken to practice once again and the difficulty was raised immensely, at least for his standards, and after continuing this after dinner, Sebastian fell asleep like a stone.
-HP-
Wednesday was potions class and rather uninteresting. It was like chemistry, just that you didn't try to understand what you were doing in depth, but rather just doing something and learning about existing recipes. Another difference was that the dosage in the early staged mattered a lot more and in potions, the made something useful, if they succeeded.
They had to make the first stage of a strengthening potion several times, each time a bit different, as to watch the differences the next week, when they would finish the potion.
One thing, Sebastian had to commend the teacher for, was that he wasn't Snape. He helped them to prepare the materials and explained every single utensil and how to use it.
The afternoon was spent training. He still had to dodge and in between the was tasked to send a knockback jinx at Marc, to make him stop casting spells at him and dodge too. This training was continued the next day, after Sebastian learned about local plants and visited the greenhouses before in the morning.
Then came Friday with a class Sebastian had looked forward to for the whole week.
DADA, or defence against the dark arts, was a class he had no real idea about. In curriculum was not really mentioned in Harry Potter, as each professor just did his own thing during their employment. Some years, they didn't even learn anything.
-HP-
Friday, DADA classroom
When Sebastian came into the classroom, he was shocked. It was a way larger hall than in any other class. It was nearly three times the size and the number of seats shared this growth. What shocked Sebastian even more, was that there were a lot of older looking students. Not like the 7th year students he had seen, but at least one or two years older. They looked a lot more casual than any of his year mates and didn't go looking around the room but focused on their own discussions.
In the end, Sebastian and Andreas just sat down somewhere in the middle, trying not to disturb the older students, but it looked like they didn't care about them anyway.
The bell rang and a door at the left side of the hall opened, inside came the same teacher Sebastian had seen in New Coven Market.
"Please quiet down everyone. My name is Theodore Krieg, and I am your DADA professor. You might wonder why there are a lot more students than in your normal classes, at least the 1st years shouldn't know, in this class, the first, second- and third-year students are being taught together by me. Do not worry, the class tests are still going to be on your given level."
"The reason for you being taught together is, that you will be learning the same anyway. And for this class, it does not matter whether you learn it in your first or third year, as most of it will be theoretical or spellwork.", Professor Krieg introduced himself and his class.
"This year's focus is going to be on dark creatures, and we will be starting with our resident evil: The Erkling.", the teacher finished, as a murmur went through the room.
"I heard of them, they are supposed to be vomit inducing and just disgusting!", someone nearby whispered.
"Now, now class, let me start.", the professor said and waived his wand, upon which the board in the front was filled with information and drawings,
"The Erkling is native to our lovely country, Germany, and can be found in Bavaria and the Black Forest. It is a XXXX rated beast and feasts on human children."
The professor told them a bit more about the creatures and ordered them to come together in groups of six, two from each year, and to read in their books about them and to discuss ways to combat and even eradicate them.
They supposedly played a larger role in medieval times, as most villages didn't have any chance to contact wizards or others, if they even knew about the wizarding world, and these beasts sometimes even threatened the statute of secrecy.
Sebastian thought that this class seemed a lot more interesting than in Harry Potter, unluckily, this would probably be his first and only time having it. And the professor seemed nice too…
Sebastian was a bit down the whole day, after this class. Even during training.
In the end he went to bed, not being able to sleep, knowing that tomorrow, at the same time he could be at home, having forgotten about all of this. Maybe even forgotten about his past life, if they found about it while wiping his memories…
He just could not sleep, always clinging to the memories and the experience if doing magic, but in the end, his eyes fell, and he couldn't do anything against it.
It felt like his body could not resist and that he was in some kind of quagmire, his body refusing to sleep.
It felt like he was falling…
…asleep.
---------------------------------------------
Fell free to give me feedback and tell me what you thought about school so far.
Remember, it's my first fanfiction.
Feel free to comment and correct my grammar and writing, or to leave a review.