Tracey shook her head.
"Can't."
"Won't," Harry corrected with a smile. "You could tell me if you truly wished to, but won't because you'd be betraying your friend, and I respect that. I don't know anything about Daphne, but it's clear she doesn't trust easily. That she trusts you obviously means you're very important to her. It would incredibly cold-hearted to betray her trust, and I won't force you to do that."
"Thank you," Tracey murmured softly, her smile much smaller than the normal ones she gave. More heartfelt. Harry offered her one last smile, before turning his attention to Lisa, who asked him to look over her Transfiguration Essay.
Harry leaned over Lisa's shoulder and began to carefully read over her work. Her writing was very meticulous and neat. Very small too. Much like he had expected from anyone in Ravenclaw, she tried to cram as much information as possible with the amount of length given for each essay.
"There are a few errors in this. Firstly, you need to remember that the transformation in any Transfiguration is directly influenced by several factors. The weight of the item you are transfiguring. How many abnormalities its body has. The amount of power you place into your spell. How hard you concentrate on the spell. And a fifth unknown variable."
He paused, allowing himself a breath and Lisa a moment to scribble down the corrections in her essay.
"Think of it like this, you need to know how much an item weighs compared to what you want to turn it into, and whether or not this item has any disfigurations or imperfections that may effect your transformation. These two factors will directly effect the other two. If the item you are using weighs more than the item you're trying to transform it into, then you need to use less power and more concentration. By that same token, if the item you are using weighs less than the item you are trying to transform it into, you will need to use more power and less concentration."
"What do you mean concentrate less?" asked Lisa, frowning as she wrote a bit more. "I would think if you were using more power you'd want to concentrate on the transformation more."
"Most people would assume that. The thing about using magic is that when you use a lot of it, it's very hard to control. Many people believe that means you need to concentrate on your spell more, but the truth of the matter is that focusing on your magic too much is like lighting a bottle of nitrogen on fire. Magic is a very chaotic form of energy, very volatile. And the more you use, the harder it is for you to control. Think of it as trying to contain water in a cup. Your magic would be the water, the cup is the spell, and your wand is the faucet that opens the gates for the water to flow and directs it into the cup."
"Only instead of water we're dealing with a highly unstable power that could blow up in our face if we're not careful," Lisa caught on quickly.
"Exactly," Harry said with a smile. "I think you believe that concentration is the same as imagery, that is to say, you believe that imagining what you're trying to transform your object into and the amount of detail you put into it is the concentration variable when it comes to Transfiguration, yes?"
He waited for Lisa to nod before continuing.
"Which is not actually true. The variable known as concentration only constitutes the amount of concentration you place on the spell itself, the transformation, not the image you are picturing in your mind when you focus on the transformation. The image you conjure in your mind is actually the fifth variable. The concentration is merely the amount of effort you are placing into the spell."
With a flick of his wrist, Harry summoned his wand. Another flick conjured a small red ball on the table in front of them.
"The best way I can think of it is will. How much of your will are you trying to enforce on the object you are transforming. In some cases, you may need to place more or less of your will, your focus, on the object. This is directly dependent on the weight."
A flick of his wrist and the ball became a baseball bat of about the same size. Another flick and it was back to a ball, then broom, then a chair, all about the same size as the original ball.
"A bat, a broom, a chair, they all weigh more than a ball, even if they are the same size due to the materials they're made out of, so you need to focus less of your will on it. Magic generally has a will of its own, and it will change the weight of the object for you, therefore, you don't need to use as much of your own will to effect that change. You just need to add more power and gently coax the magic into doing what you want."
"But if the object weighs less I need to use less power and enforce more of my will on it," Lisa showed that she belonged in Ravenclaw by catching on very quickly. "Because I am not using as much magic, I need to enforce more of my will on it to direct it. In other words, concentration."
"Exactly!" Harry beamed at the girl, causing her to flush.
"That... that makes a lot of sense." Lisa hurriedly turned back to her essay to get her blush under control. She scribbled in her neat, tidy scrawl for several seconds, before turning to Harry with a thankful smile. "Thank you, that explanation is much better than the one my sister gave me when I tried asking for her help."
"Having family problems?" asked Harry, bemused.
"You don't know the half of it," Lisa groaned in response. "Ever since she found out I'm friends with you, she's been bugging me to introduce her to you."
"She's a seventh year, right?" asked Harry.
"Yes," Lisa huffed, "and she's really annoying. Always bothering me about something or other. Always complaining to our parents. I swear, sometimes it's like I'm the older sibling while she's the younger one."
"I think I understand how you feel, at least a little bit," Harry said sympathetically. "My muggle friend, Lisa Crawft, is older than me, but most of the time I feel like I'm the older one. Of course, our age isn't that far apart. A few months at most."
"Trust me. You may think the situation is similar, but it's really not," Lisa declared adamantly. "Try imagining a seventeen year-old girl whining to you about how your friends with the Boy-Who-Lived while she's not. Or having her complain to your parents about how they bought you a skirt she's been wanting for ages, and then throwing a fit when she doesn't get it." She shook her head. "If she weren't so smart, I doubt she'd be in Ravenclaw."
Harry nodded absently.
"So your sister is interested in seeing me?"
"Obsessed is more like it," Lisa grumbled in complaint, "Every time I see her these days it's always 'I can't believe you're friends with the Boy-Who-Lived' or 'when are you going to introduce me to Harry Potter' or something equally annoying."
A small grin crossed Harry's face.
"Is that why you spend so much time with us?" he teased, "To avoid your sister?"
Lisa smiled and held up her left hand, spacing her thumb and forefinger barely a centimeter apart from each other.
"Maybe a little."
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