"Awesome," Leon yelled as he bounced off the floor, ignoring the looks he was getting.
"So, you learned a new spell in the same amount of time we took to learn the Lumos spell variation," Susan asked, pointing her wand at Leon which was emitting a rainbow-colored light.
"No, I started practicing this spell in the morning. And the affected area is still not bigger than two feet."
Susan pouted at Leo, before continuing her practice.
The girls practiced relentlessly showing why the hat sorted them into Hufflepuff.
By dinner time, they both were successful in their endeavor. The common room corner, which the trio occupied, became a mini concert hall as various colorful lasers that spit physics in its face danced around, bringing smiles to the three Hufflepuffs.
...…
Stars in the night sky boldly peeked at the bustling great hall, merrily winking at the Hogwarts students.
The Hufflepuff table buzzed with warm murmurs as the students ate their scrumptious meal.
Leon was there too, dining with his friends.
'I don't think I can live without a house elf anymore,' he thought eyeing the wide spread of dishes on his table, hesitating on which one to try next.
As he was busy stuffing himself, Susan, who was sitting in front of him, suddenly giggled.
Leon looked at her, frowning. She giggled even harder and nudged Hannah, gesturing towards him.
Hannah followed her friend's gesture before she started giggling at him.
Leon noticed they were looking at his mouth and wiped it with a handkey.
'No way, I am a messy eater.' He thought and the clean handkey supported him.
As he looked on at his friends confused, he suddenly noticed a translucent ray of light, pointing at his face, totally unnoticeable if you don't concentrate enough.
"You have pink whiskers on your face," Hannah said, giggling.
Leon shook his head and looked towards the Gryffindor table.
Rose was sniggering, with her wand pointed at him.
He waved at her and went back to the holy mission of filling his tummy.
Rose quickly got bored, and just like that the light disappeared after a couple of seconds, making Susan and Hannah crane their necks to see Rose's next target.
The girl who lived didn't disappoint, a red-colored screaming face appeared on Tonk's forehead, who was minding her own business, seated at a little distance from Leon.
Tonks didn't notice anything at first, but her friends pointed at her forehead, making the face disappear whenever Tonks tried to check her face in the utensils.
As Rose played with the seventh year, turning the angry face off and on, Leon who finished his meal, decided to enjoy the byplay.
'Hmm! I wonder how to do that. Changing the shape of light is one thing, but that much detail isn't possible.' Leon was sure of that because he tried to create a free-floating orb of light with Lumos spell, instead of turning his wand into a cheap torch light.
And it didn't work, curving the laser light was also difficult, at least not as easy as changing the colors of the light.
'Maybe the spell affixes, Professor Flitwick talked about, will help.'
As he was lost in thought, Tonks caught onto the prank. A threatening wave of her wand in Gryffindor's table direction made Rose stop her mischief.
...…
The next day, after waking up at his standard time, well before the sun rose, Leon entered his first defense class in a good mood.
However, the satisfaction of turning the floor's surface into a 6 ft diameter trampoline didn't last long as he was hit with a strong garlic smell.
Professor Quirrel sat at the front of the classroom, muttering, observing the shadows with nervous looks.
'I remember his cover for his personality change is something about him escaping from a nest of vampires or something.'
Leon quickly occupied a seat and took out his DADA textbook, ignoring the pretender.
'Offensive spells, here I come.' He cheered as Quirrel started the class.
His enthusiasm soon got doused as he couldn't understand a thing coming out of Quirrel's mouth.
'Vampires, I wonder how powerful they are,' Leon's mind got slowly distracted as the turban-wearing Quirrel stuttered on about jinxes.
Shaking his head and ignoring the stuttering professor, Leon started reading the chapter.
Even after Leon reread the chapter two times, Quirrel was still stuttering- reading- the same chapter.
Just when Leon was considering headbutting Voldy in the face to ask him to take the class, Quirrel closed his textbook with a snap, mercifully.
With a flick of his wand, every table and chair in the room became alive and started to skitter around, their wooden legs springing to life.
Leon's chair too started moving, making him reflexively leap out of it.
At least he tried to, but he was somehow stuck to it, just like every other student in the class.
After the class calmed down from the sudden rebellion of chairs and tables, Quirrel got their attention with a loud bang.
"Aim your wand above your head and start casting the spell we talked about- the Vermillious spell," he instructed, still stuttering.
'Damn! That was some impressive magic!' Leon looked around the class to see students sitting far away from each other.
'He could have just asked us to maintain some distance from each other for safety,' Leon grumbled, opening the Vermillious spell in his textbook.
Memorizing the wand movement and pronunciation, he flexed his arm, making his wand appear in his palm.
'Ho! I am a magician.' Leon snickered patting the enchanted sheath he bought before concentrating on the spell.
He recalled the night sky lighting up with fireworks and decided to use it as the base for the spell.
Picturing a firecracker soaring into the sky before bursting into multiple lights, he incanted the spell.
'Hmm! Nothing…'
2 meters away from him, Susan's wand glittered. Small red sparks burst at the end of her wand, catching the class's attention.
'A partial success.'
Giving her a thumbs up, Leon redoubled his efforts.
'Damn! I will let down every transmigrator of HP world if I let another student in my class perform a spell before me,' he lamented.
He tossed away the big picture and concentrated on just producing the bright red sparks.
And Leon was met with success.
His wand's tip chittered with red sparks bursting into life.
"Now I just have to turn these little sparks into a raging inferno…literally," Leon mumbled.
The Vermillious spell doesn't have any attack power and is supposed to be used as flares. And a flare that even a person 10 feet away can't see isn't much of a use. So, Leon continued to practice the spell.
After he lost count of the number of attempts, a red line of fire snaked across the air before bursting into fiery red sparks near the roof of the classroom.
And he wasn't alone in his success, a second red line of fire burst into sparks at the same time.
Susan was smiling proudly, her eyes twinkling as both of their spells covered the roof of the class.
Most of their remaining classmates' wands just started to spark, they still had a long way to go before using the spell as a beacon it meant to be.
'A tie. At least it isn't a loss. However, it is safe to assume that my previous life experience balances the scales of talent when it comes to talented witches.'
'That coupled with me being talented in charms- the connection I feel with charms- exponentially increases my prowess in charms… I just hope my talent doesn't lie only in charms.' He thought ignoring Quirrel as he rewarded some points.
'DADA is overrated anyways, who wants to throw magical bombs and turn things into ash anyway.' Leon scoffed, holding back his anguish at having average talent in DADA.
If his talent in transfiguration is as high as charms he was going to dedicate more of his time to them, to get quicker results. 'No hexes, jinxes, curses for me anymore.'
"Transfiguration.. Don't disappoint me," Leon murmured as the professor dismissed the class. He ignored the thought of him being average in Transfiguration just like how people ignore their credit card debt.
The Hufflepuffs surrounded Susan as Leon and Hannah made their way towards her.
"Of course, I will help.."
After Susan finished talking with everyone, she made a beeline towards Leon and Hannah and gave them a proud look, raising her chin.
Hannah immediately hugged her and gushed about how awesome Susan was.
'Damn! what's with this difference in treatment, I also got that Vermillious spell, and Lumos charm on my first try too… why is no one congratulating me.' Leon grumbled, sarcastically.
Shaking his head, Leon gave Susan a thumbs up and a smile when she escaped from Hannah's hug.
'I shouldn't just totally ignore the DADA spells, though. They are handy,' he thought as they walked towards the great hall.
...…..
The Hogwarts students, Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, were sitting in the Transfiguration classroom, waiting for the professor. Many didn't know the said professor was on the desk, imitating a cat's statue.
Leon nudged Hannah and Susan and pointed at Rose as she rose from her seat.
They watched as Rose Potter walked up to the cat on the professor's desk and pointed her wand at it.
After she mumbled a spell, her wand lit up and projected a rat-shaped light on the desk.
The Cat shivered looking ready to pounce on the light but suddenly stiffened before giving Rose a stern glare.
Rose just giggled and went back to her seat.
"Why did you do that for?" Ron Weasely loudly questioned before Rose shushed him.
The bell rang, followed by the closing of the classroom's door.
A cat's cry reverberated in the classroom catching the first year's attention.
Murmurs erupted as the students wondered about how a non-magical cat could be so loud.
"Silence." A stern voice emanated from the professor's desk again.
The students could only see a stiff cat, sitting on the desk.
"Did the cat talk?" someone murmured.
Under the puzzled eyes of the first-year students, the cat transformed into the deputy headmistress.
"The study of Transfiguration is never-ending. It is as extensive and branched as magic itself. I am an Animagus, some of you know what an Animagus is," after directing a glare at Rose, she continued.
"For those who don't, an animagus can change into a non-magical creature that best represents their inner self. It is a small branch of Transfiguration and as you have evidenced it doesn't end with a witch or wizard gaining the ability to transform at will."
"If you want to become a decent wizard or witch in transfiguration, it requires, discipline, patience, and hard work."
The Transfiguration professor let it digest for some time and broke the silence.
"Now, who will tell me what Transfiguration is?"
A hand shot into the air quicker than others, making the professor nod at the student.
'Did that hand just break through the sound barrier?' Leon smiled looking at the student the hand belonged to.
"Transfiguration is a branch of magic that focuses on the alteration of the form or appearance of an object, animal or a person."
Hermoine Granger answered, her voice crisp and clear.
"5 points to Gryffindor for taking the initiative to read the textbook before class."
'Hey! I was busy learning new spells, so I didn't have time to open the textbook.' Leon lamented as the professor gave everyone stinky eyes like they were lazy kittens.
After giving Hermoine a nod, which made the braces girl beam, the professor continued explaining the theory behind the transfiguration.
"Any object a first year like you transfigure will return to its original state before the end of the day, even if it isn't disturbed. But an adult wizard can transfigure objects that won't return to their previous state even after hundreds of years if left isolated. The difference in time lies in firmness of the intent and practice." She paused.
"Any proper wizard can transfigure an object which remains transfigured when it is ideally isolated."
"Can anyone tell me how you can revert a transfigured object to their original form without spells?"
Hermione's soared into the air again.
"Any physical damage to a transfigured object can make it revert to its original form carrying the damage."
Professor McGonagall nodded her head.
"Unlike other branches of magic, transfiguration is essentially masking the reality with magic. So transfigured objects can be dispelled in three different ways. We divide them into three levels of Scrutiny: Intent, Force, and Fundamental."
"Intent scrutiny will be covered in your charms class as most transfigured objects easily pass intent scrutiny. Only under very rare conditions does it affect transfiguration. So, we focus on Force and Fundamental scrutiny in transfiguration."
"Let's take a matchstick." A matchstick appeared in front of her before ballooning to 2 ft long.
"Pay attention, you will be performing this spell at the end of the class," she said and waved her wand in a certain pattern and incanted a spell, turning the giant matchstick into a slender needle.
She silenced the murmurs with a stern glare.
"Yes, you will be turning a matchstick into a needle at the end of this class, but they won't be this big," She pointedly looked at a group of Gryffindors before reverting the needle and transfiguring it again.
With a wave of her wand, she soundlessly broke the needle into two pieces.
"Now, if any object you transfigured is broken into two like this, it will revert to its original form. In this case, the needle will turn into two broken pieces of the matchstick."
"Again, it takes practice to stop your transfigured object from reverting after taking damage. Enough practice will make your transfigured objects inert to force scrutiny."
With a wave of her hand, McGonagall summoned a cube-shaped jelly. And transfigured it into a cube of ice.
"Now, observe it," she said.
After a couple of seconds, the cube of ice reverted to jelly.
"Can anyone tell me, why the transfigured ice went back to its original state?"
Hermoine and a couple of muggle-born students raised their hands.
'That hand is going to pop out of its socket someday,' Leon snickered, amused at the undiminished enthusiasm of the Gryffindor.
"Why don't you answer us, Mr Astraeus." McGonagall looked at Leon with a raised eyebrow.
...............
A/N: Thoughts, suggestions, and stones are welcome and encouraged.