Lesson One (Second Years)

"Haha," Anna agreed. "That's cute. And when we tell our kids about Transfiguration class one day, the first thing we say is, 'Oh - in second year, we had to transform a pincushion into a cat. Mine was called Mospie! From the spell' Not that I want kids. Just saying.



"Maybe the cats are an imprint of our personality. Just saying."

"Maybe. That's all I can think of for a name! Usually got inspirations from my favorite muggle novels and I think fast. But this one's a little tricky." She pointed out and laughed at the reply of Anna, "Can be possible." she joked.

Alexis grinned, 'I know, I know. I'll call mine Bree, since she is twin to Vee. You can call your one Aqtam, it means dark in arabic. How about you two?'

Deciding to get started on the task, she took a seat and started on a pincushion.
"Mospero!" she said.
It didn't change.
"Mospero!" she tried again with the wand motion.
She envisioned a white, fluffy cat with glassy blue eyes. Something that reminded her of her childhood.
"Oh!"

The pincushion turned into a kitty, and it meowed at her and swished its tail.
"How cute!"

Koehl hissed under her breath and slipped inside the transfiguration classroom. She knew she was a bit late.

"Morning Professor." She sat in a desk near the back, and noticed a pin cusion was sitting there. Koehl looked at the other students practicing the spell, and simply compied their movements.

"Mospero." The pin cusion turned into an ahsen kitten with yellow eyes. It meowed and looked up at Koehl.

"Ello there little one. I think I'll call you Smiggle."

Georgie frowned, she seemed to be the only one having any trouble with her kitten. She looked at the fluffy, meowing pincushion and tried again, hoping that she would get something a bit more cat like, but nothing happened

Koehl looked over at a girl who was looking down at a furry pin cusion. She walked over to her and sat down in a chair opposite her.

"Really picture the cat in your mind. And make your wand movements slightly exagerated, but not too much. And prounounce Mospero crisp."

She was second guessing of which name to choose. She went ahead for the first one. "I think Mospie would be good. It's rather cute though. No offense." She smiled and put up a topic she remembered when she was in the muggle world. "You know, I've read a book about a character 'Bree.' She's a vampire. It's a really nice name. That's the first time I heard of it. But she died. Sad." She imitated the face of a person who lost someone dear.

Clarisse was stroking her cat, thinking of a name.
At first glance, the cat was white with a few black marks across its back, but further observation would conclude that it is somewhere between dirty white and white.

"I'll call you... Nyan!" she had no idea if the cat hated the name or something, because it kept meowing at her.

"What is it, Nyan?" she examined the meowing feline.
Was it hurt? Hungry? Bored? In need of affection?

It raised its paw, and Clarisse looked at it.
A pin was stuck on the cat's paw.
"Aww! I wasn't as successful as I thought, then..." she proceed to gently pull the pin out.

'I've read the series. I think the name suites her though, I mean my kitty.

Iris smiled and nodded at Alex.

Alessa smiled and looked around the room. Almost everybody's succeeded in transforming their pincushion into a cat.

She turned to hers and thought for a while. "I think I'll name it Bella. It reminds me of my Granny." she said, stroking her cat.

"Vampires." Iris muttered and smiled. That was her first thought when hearing names like that. The novels she loved in the muggle world and what Alessa also read.

Alessa laughed. "Okay, so who among you guys plans on naming their cat Edward?" she laughed more, apparently amused by herself.

"Haha." Hilarious. "Nah. It would only be suitable for him." She giggled at the thought of the handsome and perfect character she had a crush on when she read the saga. Especially when she watched it.

Alessa giggled as she reminisced her memories reading the Muggle Saga teens wen't berserk about. She partiaslly agrees with Iris, though she prefers Jacob more. He's definitely hotter, she thought.

She planned on eating a box of Chocolate Frogs while waiting for the others, except that she remembered the last time that she did. Oh, right. She sighed.

"No chocolate." She warned Less as if she read her mind. "Don't start. And why did you even ate on the first place? Is there no rule?" She wondered and laughed shyly - thinking if she wa right about Alessa's thoughts.

"I reckon Edward's more romantic. But Jacob's feelings are what concerns me most. " She continued the 'vampire' topic.

'My favorite character was Alice, you know.' she told Iris.
Ummm chocolate, I love chocolate, she thought.
'Would you like some chocolate, Bree?' she asked the snowy white kitten. Bree gave her a look that clearly said, are you off your rocker? Alexis stiffled a laughter.

"Yeah. Alice." She also love that character.

Richard looked around the classroom at all of the apparently successes. He patted the small girl, who's pincushion still had it's shape, on the head,

"Well done, you're the closest." he told her so that the rest of the class, "The rest of the class have failed. And will see the consequences of their failure."

With a sad expression on his face, Richard sat on the edge of his desk and closed his eyes.

It started softly at first.

The first cats to be made by the students began to mew softly and struggle to walk, falling over. Richard sighed as their mewing grew louder, more desperate. Slowly the cats began to fall over and were unable to get themselves back up, still mewing pitifully as blood began to leak out of their ears and eyes. Opening his eyes, and quickly wiping the threat of tears away from his eyes, Richard glared at the class,

"There." he said as the last of the cats died in agony, "You're distraction has cost lives. While you were busy chatting about vampire stories and unimportant BULLSHIT, you were killing your animals! Why do you think people don't keep objects as animals? You must keep your concentration. If you don't their insides begin to liquify. Their blood boils and disappears."

He snarled at them,

"This is not fun and games!" he shouted at them, "You think you can just make a life and then ignore it? If you create life you are the god of that life. You stop concentrating, for an instant, and it's dead!"

Moving back up to the board he quickly wrote out a list of ingredients and amounts.

Water, 35 litres
Carbon, 20kg
Ammonia, 4 litres
Lime, 1.5kg
Phosperus, 800g
Salt, 250g
Niter, 100g
Sulphur, 80g
Fluorine, 7.5g
Iron, 5g
Silicon 3g
15 trace amounts of other elements

He looked back over his class,

"Who can tell me what these ingredients make up?" he glared at them, "Tell me."

Koehl looked at the other participants in the room, not having the slightest idea on what they were talking about. She jumped alittle when the professor began to talk. She looked over at her kitten, frowning slightly when it began to deteriorate. When the Professor asked the question, she knew the answer immediately. Koehl raised her hand tentatively.

"That would be the elemental and chemical makeup of the human body sir."

Alexis was horrified at her kitty's fate. How could she forget! Transfigured objects stayed like that as long as concentration were kept. She swallowed thickly. She knew the answer when Professor Romain asked, but she could make herself raise her hand.
Oh no, oh no, she chanted in her mind. First day in class and she killed an innocent animal.

Richard looked at Koehl for a long time before nodding once,

"Exactly." he turned to the rest of the class, deadly serious, "The ingredients you see on the board are everything you need to create a human being."

He waved at the board dismissively,

"But even then you need more." he shrugged, "I don't think any of you will ever achieve the required level of pure magical power needed for the process, no offence. I'm one in 1000 magicals today with the required power."

Sitting down heavily in his seat, he continued,

"It also requires supreme concentration and power of will." he rubbed tiredly at his eyes, "You have to concentrate your will on it every second you want to keep it alive."

He waved his wand and a cabinent opened, the shelves filled with jars of liquids and glass boxes of solids. He gestured at the cabinet's contents,

"Say hello to my brother." he told the class coldly, "My brother was a waste of human life and I was forced to kill him when he tried to go on a rampage. This is his body, broken down into it's individual components. Now..."

He looked out at the class,

"I want to ask you a question. It's the question you must ask yourself each time you try to transfigure something living." he paused, "Can I accept the consequences if I fail?"

He glanced at the cabinet,

"I have brought my brother's body back into human form no less than five times..." he paused here, closing his eyes, "Once to prove to myself that I could do it. The rest? To prove to others that I could do it."

He opened his eyes,

"I've done it wrong deliberately once." he told them, "To show them what happens when people who do not meet the requirements try to form a human. Most times this is done to try and bring someone back to life. It fails. Every. Single. Time."

He eyed them all critically,

"I must ask you all... never to try this." he told them firmly, "Do you want to see what happens when men try to play with life?"

Laedin felt sick, but couldn't make himself look away from everything in front of him. Was this really something they should be showing Second Years? He wasn't new to seeing this kind of stuff - he had seen some of the things that Dark people do to torture - but every time, he was still disgusted with it. Putting a hand over his mouth, he felt like shouting 'No!' and just leaving.