Transfiguration: Pod 4 - Lesson 1

Adrienne smiled over at Benjamin as he announced his amusement at the assignment, glancing around the room to see how the students were doing as they gave it their initial attempts. When one girl, a Hufflepuff, succeeded, Adrienne nearly beamed at her, thrilled that someone had caught on so quickly. "Brilliant, Christine! Two points for Hufflepuff," she added with a nod.

But then the Slytherin girl caught Adrienne's attention, and the professor frowned for a moment. "I can understand how this specifically could seem unhelpful. But you'll be interested to note that this will most definitely be on your OWLs exam. Besides, if you can master this, can't you master the more difficult spells down the road?"

Lifting a shoulder, Adrienne carried her tortoise on the front table and allowing him to crawl about - though she did put up barriers around the edges so he wouldn't fall off. Tortoises certainly walked quickly, but that didn't mean that they fell any slower. Turning back to Emily, she added, "You should probably trust that the things we teach you will be useful. Who knows what animal you may need - an owl, perhaps, if you need to send a letter one day. This is your first step there."

She turned to glance around the room again, asking, "Are there any more questions? Anyone having difficulties? I can show it again. I don't think this tortoise would mind a friend, after all," she joked lightly, leaning on the front table.

Throwing side glances at the young boy who supposedly would be his partner, and addressing his personality quickly so he could remember it, he quickly put on a smile and, seemingly happy, answered the boy.

"Sure, we can be partners. Name's Brice."

Looking around the class and listening a "Two points for Hufflepuff!" exclamation, he examined the girl who had just done it. A bit disappointed at not having done it before, he quickly picked up his wand and looked to his partner.

"Alright, so, it's not that hard. As you saw the Professor do, I'll just repeat it so you can see it more closely. After that, I'll help you out if you don't get it first try."

Brice said the incantation as he swirled his wand around the top of the teapot, a blue light coming off the tip. No time later, where there once was a little teapot, there was a turtle, moving its head from side to side, confused.

Emily listened what the professor said and just nodded her head there along now. She didn't really thing like she did but who can blame here at that. She shrugged and looked then at that teapot. She saw how the one older boy did it away, okay actually she was just one year older than her and in same house as she but she didn't care about these things. She didn't know him that well to care.

She then took her wand out and pointed at that teapot. She said the words what she needed to say and blue light came out. Soon after that was there instead of teapot a turtle. "That was easy," she mumbled there now and looked at that turtle, she wasn't sure when she would find these spell in her life useful but she didn't want to take points away from her own house too right now.

Not all days were bad.

In general, days had been horrible last year. She would wake up and motivate her day by thinking of how each step, each second brought her that much closer to sleeping once more. It was a pitiful existence and much of the time after her disappearance was even worse. She never waited for sleep - she was fairly sure there were days where she slept for close to eighteen hours. The waking day had become a memory, and a nightmarish one at that.

But something about the change of residence. Teddy was not at all happy about her being from out of a place where he could constantly take care of her, but living with Stewart had given Lily something she had never really felt like having - a choice. What she wanted to eat, what she wanted to do, how she wanted to feel... suddenly, there was no one telling her how it all had to be done. Stewart was there to support the decisions she wanted to make. It was a wonderful feeling and she had begun eating, begun taking care of herself. She was still skinny, but her limbs were now less angular, and there was color and roundness in her once drowned, corpse-ish features.

Still, every good thing changed. And it changed when she had to return back to the place where her dignity had died. She was going to have to face the heathens who laughed when Nott ridiculed her. She would have to sit in classes with those who had once considered her smarter than all of them, and she would have to bear the title of a drop-out, of a repeat student. And her pride was going to have t stay buried six feet under if she was going to survive.

It had not been as horrible as she had assumed. Not every day was torture. Most days were just days, nothing more. She woke, she ate, she went to class, she studied, she read, she slept. She saw little of Casey, as the two had been yet to reconfigure their broken relationship, even though each knew that the other loved them more than anything. Still - healing did not come overnight. Lily was the champion for that sentiment.

Today, however, had been a bad day.

The night had been wrought with anxieties, doubt, existential crises, and the onslaught of depression that had once claimed her for its own. Nightmares riddled the sleep she did manage, and she awoke with such horror that she emptied her stomach of everything from dinner the night before. Unable to eat, she curled up on her bed for a long time, willing herself to disappear, or attempting to conjure Stewart or Teddy or Casey by hope alone.

Instead, she conjured Glenda Jonson, one of her dormmates. Glenda was perpetually optimistic and had a bad habit for being annoyingly maternal. She came in, sweeping in as though the dorm was her home and her dormmates her children, when her eyes found Lily. She spun, looking to the clock, and the stomped over to Lily, throwing back the covers. "What are you doing?! You are horribly late to class!" Lily sighed and closed her eyes, causing Glenda to push on. "Lilian-"

"That's not-"

"I know you don't always feel your best, but get you to class. A sense of purpose does us all well sometimes. I promise you, if you get to class, this day won't be wasted! I'll find your uniform."

Lily swung out of bed, sighing. "It's dirty."

Glenda turned, beaming, hands on hips. "We'll just have to improvise!"


Lily threw on the first clean clothes she could find, and tucked her books into a threadbare shoulder bag, hurrying off. Her hair was full of flyaways and was barely contained in its position tucked behind her ears. She could feel eyes on her, as she was so accustomed, as she hurried through the hallways and onward to her class.

Heads turned and craned to see the late comer as the door squeaked open. Lily had, in all honesty, been a pretty exemplary student for all that it was worth. She had, in the least, tried to be on time, had studied for every exam and quiz, and had not missed an assignment. Surely, everyone had assumed she had quit when she didn't show up.

Her eyes stayed on the professor, refusing to notice the looks she had been given, and she blinked. "Sorry - felt sick." She dropped her bag off at the first open seat and dropped into the seat, rummaging through the bag for her book.

Christian was poking at the nose of the tortoise he had transfigured, as he was supposed to have done, surprised that the little guy wasn't biting at his finger. When the door opened, though, he looked up as the rest of the students did, surprised when the professor didn't make a comment about it. Adrienne struck him as someone who wanted to get along with her students as the year went on. If that meant taking it a bit easy the first day, so be it, he supposed.

When the girl sat beside him, he glanced over, trying to keep his curious looks from being too obvious. The professor made her way over, checking her class roster. "Miss Potter?" she asked, gesturing to a name on the list.

Christian's eyebrows pulled together as he realized he had not actually met her before. Everyone knew about the Potter family. How could they not? But there was something curious about this girl, in that she seemed somehow put together but at the same time, completely frazzled. Or perhaps she just wanted to exude an air of being comfortable when she really wasn't.

Adrienne looked over at him, likely catching onto his poorly-veiled curiosity. "Why don't you catch Miss Potter up with what we're doing, considering you seem to have it under control, hmm?" Christian blinked at her, but nodded once, then shifted about in his chair to face Lily properly.

"Um, we're turning the teapots into tortoises. Have you done that before?" he asked, deciding that his desire to delve into her personality would come later. After he had initiated a simple conversation. After he had given her some reason to trust him. Something told him he could help fix whatever problem she had, but only if he could convince her to let him.

She wanted to punch everyone who looked at her, but she could not really be mad - this was brought upon herself. Her fault. Her fault. Her fault. Like so many other things, there was no one else to blame for her failure and embarrassment. If she could just stop being such a screw up, she could maybe get to a point where there was no feeling. Even numbness had a feeling, a faint tickle that reminded her of all of the absences in her life - absence of family, of friends, of love, of direction. When she was living with Stewart, that numbness was replaced by contentment, but it seemed impossible to find it here at Hogwarts.

The professor approached her and Lily dipped her head, pulling her book out and flipping through it, squinting at the board for direction. She was unfortunate enough for the professor to assume she needed the help of a peer, which was the last thing Lily Potter wanted, and soon, her assigned partner was swiveling about to behold her in all of her tragic, messy glory. She continued flipping through her book, staring down intently. She had been told she had a resting B**** face and she didn't want to scare her classmates off so soon.

He caught her up on the assignment, and an audible "Oh" left her mouth and she closed the book, straightening up. "Accio tortoise." The poor creature floated in the air towards her and she caught him from the air, setting him down. A silent wave of her wand, and the tortoise became an antique teapot. She waved again and the bemused tortoise reappeared. She set her wand down and sat back, sighing. "Yeah... I've done this before."

It seemed the whole year was going to be deja vu.

Christian stared, eyes wide, as Lily essentially stole the tortoise he had just transfigured out of his teapot. His first instinct was that she was going to claim his work as her own, but then she just ended up transfiguring it back and forth, causing one of his eyebrows to lift, clearly skeptical. So she had done this spell before... Why did he have a strange feeling about her, then? It was like she was hurting somehow, and that sort of person always called to Christian, even if they didn't mean to.

Lily wasn't the first person who had interested the Hufflepuff for that reason, after all. But he had not really tried to intervene in the way that he wanted to do for the Gryffindor sitting at the desk next to his. There was something almost dark about her, and it made him as nervous as it made him curious. Frankly, he just wanted to investigate and see if he could help her fix it. Whatever 'it' was. But first he had to figure out how to get her to talk to him. She was being to-the-point and almost cold, which he supposed could have been based on her seemingly bad morning, but something told him that wasn't the whole story.

So he didn't say anything about her picking up the tortoise, instead calling over another teapot and transfiguring it so they each had their own. His fingers tapping against the top of his desk, Christian watched the little animal for a bit as he peered about, discovering the world as he did so. Finally, he just couldn't help it anymore.

"So, you've done all this before because you learned the work early...?" He asked slowly, tilting his head as he looked over at her. "I mean, I haven't really seen you around much, and I think I would have remembered."