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(HPMM)Chapter 50: Hitting the books
🕑 Added 2025-10-27 15:18:57 +0000 UTCIt still hurt a lot to move my arms and I had already checked to make sure Madam Pomphrey wasn't nearby so using a little wandless magic shouldn't cause me any problems. I didn't push my luck though and use it even to turn the pages after I opened the book but rested my right hand at the bottom corner of the book to turn the pages with little more than a flick of my fingers. Still quite painful but not beyond my tolerance. The book was quite fascinating in truth as contrary to how it seemed in the books and movies how you moved your wand mattered.-
For example the swish and flick movement represented the gathering of magic in a smooth manner and then the release of it smoothly. Stabbing your wand forward represented an aggressive powerful release of magic but not a stable one. Additionally the more exaggerated the movement the larger the resulting spell tended to be. All of these insights into the mechanisms that governed wand based magic were absorbed and added to my mastery of the art hungrily. I only got through half the book before Madam Pomphrey showed up for my regularly scheduled torture and it was off to yet another dreamless slumber for me.-
Professor Mcgonagall was waiting for me to wake up in her cat Animagus form on my nightstand when I came to next.
"Professor Mcgonagall." I said with a polite nod of my head towards her.
Even though I fully expected it actually seeing her jump off the nightstand and expand and morph into her human form left me awed all the same. She seemed almost annoyed that her usual trick of showing off was seen through so easily but you'd barely be able to tell.
"How did you know that was me?" she asked calmly as she waved her wand and created a chair to sit on next to my bed.
"In the past century there are only seven registered practitioners of the Animagus art and you are one of them with your beast form being that of a cat. I purchased a second hand copy of this years transfiguration textbook that had a handwritten note in the front talking about this little display of yours. Simple research filled in the rest." I said with a grin.
"Five points to Ravenclaw for thorough preparation. I assume you are prepared for your quiz on transfiguration then?" she asked and I nodded.
The quiz itself was mostly just questions on the principals of transfiguration and all it's basically known laws and a limitations. For example how the magic couldn't make something out of nothing or even permanently transform anything under normal circumstances. She did praise me for heeding the warnings about not attempting it on my own as those abnormal situations where the change was permanent tended to happen because of a botched transfiguration job. I did ask if those circumstances were permanent then why not try and find a way to copy them but in a controlled way.-
She gave me another five points for the excellent question before explaining that such attempts had been made. But after the many failures with sometimes grave consequences the idea was almost entirely scrapped due to it simply not being worth the cost in most eyes. I could respect that since that was just the way of things sometimes. It came down to needing to objectively look at what you wanted to achieve and the costs it had taken to try and do it and weigh them. -
Would permanent transfigurations have revolutionized the art? Sure. But the cost to figure it out was simply too high on a personal standpoint for most and thus the idea was left alone for the most part. Like the quizzes before this one I passed with flying colors and the stern but kind professor agreed with my plan for additional reading in place of practice work. If we went by my class schedule Sprout would be next but I would only be visited by the professors once per week to give me time to read the books they left for me so that wasn't going to happen.-
That unfortunately left me with only a two professors left to visit me for a quiz and I genuinely wasn't looking forward to it, Snape and Sinistra. The first wasn't the real problem as professor Sinistra was a fairly young upbeat dark skinned woman and taught astrology. Snape on the other hand seemed to take joy in making life uncomfortable for all but Slytherins students with a particular hate boner for Gryffindor specifically. Not that I could entirely blame him for it given his past with that house but he was a grown man bullying children at this point, shameful.-
And i'm not talking just during Harry Potters time covered in the books either as the second hand copies of the potion textbooks are filled with complaints about it. Naturally my first visitor was professor Sinistra who was a fairly attractive woman all things considered with smooth skin and a near constant upcurve to her lips and bright eyes. She clearly hadn't been prepared to deal with my situation as she was a bit awkward when quizzing me on the constellations and movements of the planets. I didn't make things difficult for her and remained polite and calm even when she stumbled slightly.-
I earned another fifteen house points by the end of the matter but no new books since according to her the entire years course was based entirely around identifying the various constellations and alignments of the planets and their meanings and uses in magic. To put it bluntly the class was all theory and very little practical's. Don't get me wrong she made it clear that even if that was the case the class was very important as many rituals and higher forms of long term spell craft needed particular celestial events.-
I got maybe another two hours of study time before Madam Pomphrey came for her part and knocked me out again. I finally got to finish Flitwick's book and was just about to grab the next tome chosen by Sprout when Snape arrived. He was a tall pale man with shoulder length greasy looking hair and a stern face that made it seem like he hated absolutely everything.-
"So you are the one who has caused such a disruption so early in the year. I'm sure you've no inkling of the sort of inconvenience you've caused my fellow professors and I do you?" he asked sharply.
"Are you here to teach or waste time bullying a child? I expected better from a renowned potion master but I suppose I was merely setting myself up for disappointment. Yes I am in fact VERY aware of how much inconvenience this matter has caused. But as you no doubt already know it also isn't entirely my fault so that weight does not belong to me alone and I won't shoulder it just because you want to make things difficult for me. So start your quiz and stop wasting both our times." I said staring him right in the eyes calmly.
Comments
spike drake
YOU DID THE THING YESSSS im SO happy he called Snape out!
Christian Jeffress
Nice snapback against Snape lol. Thanks for the enjoyable chapter.
