57 Chapter 54
There, on the board was written a single formula,
T = {(WxC)/(SxA)} x Z
where,
T=Transformation Success rate
W=Wand Movement
C=Concentration
S=Subject's Sentience Level
A=Body weight
Z=Magical Capacity
After the entire class settled down, the side door opened and a stern looking McGonagall entered and the class started.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall, her gaunt face frozen into a grave mask, "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
With that, her right hand slipped into her sleeve, pulling out her wand with a flourish and using it to tap her desk twice. Almost like she'd broken some invisible table-shaped bowl holding the material in the shape of a table, the wood turned liquid before smoothly reshaping itself into a pig. A couple of Muggleborn students let out small yelps.
It looked around curiously, before fixing its eyes of Susan Bones's pigtails and snorting. Susan let out a shrill shriek, upon hearing which the Professor gave another flick of her wand, turning the pig back into a desk again.
"Transfiguration is a dangerous discipline. More dangerous than Conjuration. More dangerous than Ritual magic. More dangerous than high Arithmancy. Even more dangerous than Apparition. In the days of the Founders, Apprentices were not allowed to learn Transfiguration until their seventh year. Unfortunately for you as well as myself, research has since shown that Transfiguration must be learned and practiced at a young age in order to improve your capability as an adult."
She paused to give a warning look to a pair of snickering Hufflepuffs in the back before continuing on, "It means that as your Professor, I am obliged to walk the fine line between my responsibility to keep you all safe, and to make you into competent Transfigurers. There is no dearth of accidents in transfiguration, nor is there any lack of deaths. You should be quite scared of making any mistakes, because if the accident does not get you, you will have to deal with me and that, I assure you, will not be pleasant."
Several students gulped. Harry noted that most of them wizard born students. It made sense since they understood what conjuration and apparition were and how dangerous they could be.
Professor McGonagall stood up and walked around her table to the board behind her desk, "Why, I believe, you must be wondering, is Transfiguration so dangerous? What so incredibly terrifying about turning a teddy bear pink or turn a matchstick into a needle?"
"Transfiguration is not permanent," said Professor McGonagall, writing it down on the board in neat capital letters. She then repeated it in a sharper voice, "Repeat this phrase a thousand times in your head. Write it down in your notebook. Draw it onto the insides of your eyelids. Memorize it at all costs. Forgetting this rule can and will have lethal consequences. Mr. Potter. Stand up. So you understand what I am telling you?"
Harry stood up and stiffly nodded, "Yes Professor."
"Do you now?" McGonagall asked, before turning around and muttering a spell, encasing her desk in a transparent bubble. 'The Ebublio Charm," Harry realized with a start. It was the spell Professor Flitwick had used to contain the air near his wand tip while demonstrating the Aguamenti spell.
McGonagall pointed her wand at the table, before twisting and pulling away. In a cloud of brown that slowly disappeared into the colorless air inside the bubble, the table disappeared.
Turning back to Harry, she asked, "Do you understand what I have done here Mr. Potter?"
"You have used a Banishing charm," Harry replied, "in order to make the table disappear."
"A good answer, but incorrect," McGonagall said, before looking around at the class and asking, "Would anyone else like to take a guess?"
No one raised their hand. McGonagall turned back to the giant bubble at the head of the classroom, before explaining, "What I have done here is convert the wood of the table into air of a similar composition as the atmosphere surrounding it. Now do tell me, Mr. Potter, since you seem to be one of the few who understand, what do you think will happen when I breathe in that air and then the Transfiguration wore off?"
Harry tapped his fingers on the edge of his desk, fidgeting nervously as he tried to think of an answer to that question. Gamer's Mind went to work on the question, drawing conclusions from all the science he knew…if someone were the inhale the air, they would take in the oxygen, including the oxygen that was created by Transfiguration…it would be absorbed into his bloodstream…travelling into his muscles…being converted into complex compounds and materials…if it turned back to wood suddenly…converted back to the complex organic compounds that wood was made of…the entire metabolism would go haywire.
Energy carrying ATP molecules would implode, molecular transport systems would collapse, muscles would atrophy, nervous system would shut down, and the body would simply shut off.
You have gained +1 Wis and +1 Int for coming to a scientific conclusion.
Harry paled.
McGonagall's face was stiff as she nodded, waving her wand to make her table materialize back out of thin air before removing the Bubble charm from it. Harry knew that she saw his terror clear as day on his face. "Yes, Mr. Potter. You would become extremely sick and if the wood is not taken out of you soon enough by proper magical healing processes, you will die."
"Professor," Harry said quietly, if rather urgently, "if something like that ever happens, and someone inhales or drinks something that has been transfigured, is there any way of maintaining the transfiguration? Keeping the air as air until every bit of it goes out of your body?"
"Not by an individual," Professor McGonagall said, "While the healing cure follows a similar procedure, it is extremely precise and needs the proper equipment. Sustaining a Transfiguration on your own is an incredible drain on your magic which increases with the size of the target form."
She turned to the formula.
"The principle of Transfiguration is represented by this very formula. For centuries, it has been used to predict if a transfiguration is magically possible and whether it will have negative effects on the subject and has many other uses. Note how the wand movement and concentration increase the success rate while body weight and subject's sentience decrease it. Your magical capacity tells how long you can maintain the transfiguration. Note it down."
Quills scribbled as students rushed to note down the formula. Harry could tell that most of them were shaken. He was surprised to notice that his hands were trembling a bit. He put down the quill and looked back up towards the Professor, who'd decided to sit down at her desk.
When everyone finished, Professor McGonagall leaned forwards. "Today's lesson was not meant to teach you to Transfigure. It was to teach you what not to. You must never attempt to Transfigure the human body without a designated spell to do it. You must not, under any circumstances, Transfigure something into a consumable, air, or anything that might enter the human body. This is a reason why the formula states that the mass of the subject must be constant. If it's not, the transfiguration is unsafe. If you are unsure if a particular free transfiguration is safe, apply the formula. If it is not well above the average success rate, you must not do it."
She looked around, driving her point in. "Is that well understood by every single student?" she said.
"Yes," they all said.
After casting a piercing look around the class, she told them to pull out their notebooks and went on to teach them the different types of Transfiguration, including the branch of silent spell-less Transfiguration most taught at Hogwarts, called 'Transformation' and the existence of Transfiguration spells for specific transformations. She also talked about inborn abilities such as Animagus or Metamorphmagus, as well as Potions such as Polyjuice Potion.
And so, after taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. Harry was one of the few that completed the Transformation that class, after which, he received a new level up.
Ping!
Skill has leveled up twice because that INSANE class you just had.
Transfiguration, Lv-4(25%)
Your skill in transfiguration branch of magic with your magic is shown in this skill.
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