Transfiguration

Yet before she had fallen two meters, a staircase appeared out of thin air and caught Miranda.

Miranda looked up at Hoffa. "Jump!"

Hoffa cursed under his breath. What kind of lunatic built this school?

With the portraits cursing and grumbling around him, he jumped over the railing. After falling two meters through the air, a moving staircase suddenly turned and caught him, as if afraid he might fall to his death.

Following Miranda, the two of them weaved through the shifting staircases in midair.

They somehow made it down seven floors by jumping and leaping from stair to stair.

The moment they touched the ground, Miranda shoved open a wooden door in a moving wall.

Before them, the corridor was constantly shifting as well.

The doors spun around like lottery wheels.

Miranda was decisive, pushing them open one by one.

At the end of the corridor stood a black iron door. Hoffa wanted to push it open, but Miranda grabbed him.

"Wait a moment."

Hoffa stopped.

Ten seconds later, another wall slammed into this one, as though saying, Hey, this is my turf, buddy.

There was an oak door in that wall.

Miranda immediately pulled Hoffa through it.

After the two vanished through the door, that wall was unhappily shoved aside by another wall.

Beyond the door was the Transfiguration classroom.

It was a circular classroom with ring-shaped desks. The room was full of children, along with a tall man with reddish-brown hair casually leaning against the lectern.

Hearing the commotion, the children all turned toward the two of them in surprise.

Hoffa's heart sank. Were they still late?

Dumbledore watched the two who had pushed through the door with great interest.

He glanced up at the clock and smiled. "You're three minutes late. By the rules, I should deduct three points from each of you. But today is the staircases' day off, so I'll give you three points instead. Now hurry and find somewhere to sit."

Hoffa sighed in relief.

The staircases had days off?

No wonder those things had been running around so excitedly.

All four Houses were taking the class together, and Dumbledore was a highly popular teacher, so all the good seats near the lectern were already taken.

Miranda sat in a corner. Once she was settled, she waved at Hoffa and gestured for him to sit beside her.

Hoffa was somewhat reluctant, because there was already a silver-haired girl sitting in the corner she had chosen.

But class had already begun, and he could not be picky, so he could only sit down beside them.

Argeleia glanced at Hoffa and Miranda, then frowned and shifted one centimeter to the right, making her disgust toward them clear.

The two Gryffindor boys on her right immediately flushed red and were too embarrassed to say a word.

The squabbles between little brats bored Hoffa. He took out his notebook and listened carefully.

In Hoffa's mind, becoming an Animagus was one of the goals he had to achieve.

If he came to the world of Harry Potter and could not become an animal he liked, how would that make him any different from a useless nobody? Of course, if he wanted to become an Animagus, he could not afford to miss any of Dumbledore's Transfiguration lessons.

Once everyone was seated, Dumbledore nodded in satisfaction. He cleared his throat and tapped the lectern beside him with his wand.

At once, the lectern let out an earth-shaking roar.

"ROAR!"

It suddenly changed from a four-legged table into a four-legged lion.

The students in the front row were startled and all shrank back.

Dumbledore waved his wand again. The lion, which had been lunging forward, turned into a tiny black-and-white badger in midair.

It wriggled its nose and sniffed around a few times. Then wings suddenly sprouted from its sides, and amid everyone's gasps, it transformed into a huge eagle with an enormous wingspan.

The eagle flapped into the air, circled the classroom three times, and slowly descended.

As it landed, its legs fused and lengthened. By the time it fully reached the ground, it had become an elegant giant spotted python, flicking its tongue with a hiss.

The python slithered back onto the lectern. With a tap of Dumbledore's wand, it turned back into the lectern.

All the students were stunned, Hoffa included. In his previous life, he had seen dazzling magical special effects in countless films, but he had never seen such real and precise transformations.

After becoming headmaster, Dumbledore rarely displayed his accomplishments in Transfiguration, to the point that no one knew he was a true master of the art.

Under the students' astonished gazes, Dumbledore slowly began to speak.

"Transfiguration is the most complex and demanding of all magic. How to alter the structure of a thing without destroying its essence has been an eternal subject of debate for generations of wizards."

Seeing that the students below were listening attentively, Dumbledore waved his wand.

At once, the curtains closed.

The classroom darkened, and several projection screens suddenly dropped down around them.

Dumbledore said, "For your first Transfiguration lesson, the first thing I will teach you is not magic, but the most important quality in Transfiguration—caution."

As he spoke, black-and-white photographs flashed across the screens.

Hoffa widened his eyes. The projection screens showed horrifying monsters one after another.

Dumbledore said, "In Transfiguration, some wizards have gone farther than ordinary people ever could. Every great transformation you can imagine has already been attempted by wizards of every kind. Some succeeded, but far more failed in their pursuit of knowledge.

"Without exception, they failed because they were not cautious enough."

The black-and-white photographs stopped.

Hoffa saw a hand-drawn image of a gigantic Sphinx.

"Two thousand years before the Common Era, the great Transfiguration master of Ancient Egypt, Sphinx, reached the pinnacle of his age in his pursuit of transformation. Unfortunately, he ultimately confused the difference between structure and essence. During one transformation, he turned himself into a half-human, half-lion monster and lost his sanity."

The image on the projection screens changed again.

A harpy with a human face and a bird's body appeared, her expression twisted in pain.

Dumbledore said, "One thousand years before the Common Era, the greatest witch of Ancient Greece, Siren. In pursuit of flight, she sacrificed her sanity and completely stripped away her humanity, becoming a monster with a human face and a bird's body. Even now, her descendants still wander the Greek Peninsula in misery."

The projection changed again into a drawing of a half-human, half-bull creature.

Dumbledore said, "In the year 13 CE, the famous wizard Minotaur tried to turn himself into a bull during a duel. Unfortunately, anger clouded his mind, and he could only remain a creature neither human nor bull for the rest of his life, surviving on his own vomit."

As the man at the lectern spoke calmly, everyone in the classroom turned pale.

Hoffa had never expected that some monsters from myth and legend were actually real, and that most of them were related to Transfiguration.

When reading novels in his previous life, he had only seen the fun side of becoming an Animagus. He had never imagined there were so many dangerous stories behind it.

After Dumbledore finished recounting more than a dozen cases of failed transformations, the classroom fell completely silent.

Suddenly, an arm shot high into the air.

Dumbledore nodded. "Tom, speak."

Tom Riddle slowly stood and asked respectfully, "Sir, what does it mean to change the structure without changing the essence? In my view, if the structure changes, the essence must change with it."

"A very crucial question, Tom," Dumbledore said calmly.

"Every Transfiguration master has a different view on this matter. But in my opinion, essence is your purpose and your heart. Take the goal in your heart as your beacon, and let love and tolerance guide you. Only then can you preserve yourself amid the complexities of transformation. Of course, this sort of change is limited to the biological transformations of an Animagus."

Tom said politely, "Thank you, sir."

He sat down, and Hoffa could not make out his expression. When he had read the books in his previous life, he had not known whether Voldemort was an Animagus. But now it seemed Voldemort's greatest strength was probably Dark Magic, not Transfiguration.

After answering Tom Riddle's question, Dumbledore had every student go up and take a small piece of wood, then told them to use their wands to turn it into another shape.

Once they had taken their pieces of wood, Hoffa saw the students pull out their wands and begin repeatedly tapping the wood.

At once, cheerful lights of every color flashed throughout the classroom. Some students muttered incantations as they cast spells on their pieces of wood.

Some pieces of wood burst into flames with a bang. Others turned into puddles of mud beneath the glow of wands. Some even grew two legs and ran away.

Dumbledore loudly reminded the students, "Be rational, do not be chaotic. Keep your goal firmly in your mind!"

But it was no use. A group of young wizards together had no idea what they were doing.

The Ravenclaw and Slytherin students were relatively calm, but the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff students were practically about to blow the roof off.

The two Gryffindor boys beside Argeleia were the same. One poked his wood into the shape of a pig's head, while the other made his piece of wood explode with a loud bang, blackening his face and sending his hair straight up.

Argeleia wore an expression of disgust and mockery as she shifted her seat slightly to the left.

Without saying a word, Miranda took out her wand and tapped the wood. It floated into the air and slowly transformed.

In the end, it became something shaped like an owl. It was ugly, but it could barely count as one.

Miranda said to Hoffa, "Dumbledore should give me at least five points for this."

"How ridiculous," Argeleia answered instead.

She folded her arms and sneered. "You're satisfied with transforming it into that piece of trash?"

Miranda looked at Argeleia with gentle but unfailing politeness, as if saying, If you can do better, then do it.

The silver-haired girl arrogantly pulled out a wand gleaming with silver light and pointed it at the piece of wood before her.

Then, under Hoffa's stunned gaze, her wood slowly began to grow and spread across the desk, turning into an exquisite tree-shaped carving. The carving was lifelike, even possessing tiny leaves. The veins on those leaves were clearly visible.

Once the transformation was complete, she put away her wand and sneered at Miranda.

Miranda looked at the other girl's tree carving, then at her own owl, and shrugged. "You're amazing, then."

She did not argue with Argeleia. She was not even angry.

Hoffa was a little impressed by Miranda. She could be mocked like that without getting angry. If it had been him, he feared...

Argeleia said to Miranda, "Still, you're not bad. At least some people don't even dare to try."

As she spoke, she lifted her chin, the corner of her eye fixed firmly on Hoffa.

She wanted to see this arrogant, cold boy make a fool of himself.