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A Talent for Transfiguration


Sirius pulled off his sweater vest and was tugging loose his tie in the hallway between Charms and Transfiguration. Remus held the vest in his hands as he followed along. “What’re you doing?” James asked, looking at Sirius with raised eyebrows, “Stripping in the corridors now? Is that the level of your depravity?”

“Getting a rise off McGonagall,” Sirius answered, and he quickly tightened the tie up on his head like he’d done before so it trailed off down his shoulder.

Remus shook his head.

James laughed, and, imitating McGonagall’s voice, said, “Mr. Black, how many times must I tell you to wear your bloody uniform to this class!?!

Sirius snickered and took his sweater back from Remus, shoving it roughly into his bag and unbuttoning the top four or five buttons of his oxford shirt. His eyes glittered joyfully. “She’ll be driven mad.”

They entered the classroom to find it empty, though, and looked about in confusion - particularly when Dumbledore arrived a few moments later and closed the door behind him.

“Where’s Lily?” James whispered to Sirius.

“Where’s McGonagall?” whispered Sirius to James.

Sirius looked at James with wide eyes and sat forward, quickly shooting his hand into the air, worried. Dumbledore hadn’t even made it to the front of the room yet, so when he turned around and found Sirius’s hand up already, he said, “While it has been a very long time since I have taught a Transfiguration class myself, I can’t help but be perplexed because, Mr. Black, as I remember it, questions come in reaction to a lesson.”

“Where’s Professor Min--McGonagall?” Sirius asked, “--sir?” he added.

“Ah yes,” Dumbledore said, adjusting his glasses, “While I am sure you are all very thrilled to be privileged enough to be taught from the Headmaster of the school, it is not to be comparable to your beloved Professor Minney…” Dumbledore was looking directly at Sirius’s tie with a bit of an amused expression playing the edges of his lips. “Minerva has been otherwise preoccupied this afternoon and will not be able to return until tomorrow.”

“But she’s okay, though, yeah?” Remus asked.

“Professor McGonagall is quite well, yes,” Dumbledore replied. “No need to worry, my boy.”

Dumbledore smiled, “Now. If we’re quite ready, we can begin our lesson for today. I’ve a silver sickle for each of you here…” he pulled out a little purple coin purse from his robes.

“But we aren’t all here yet,” James pointed out. “Lily’s missing.”

Dumbledore looked about the classroom.

“She was in Charms,” Remus said.

“I saw her in the corridor,” Peter supplied, “She was with us until at least the stairs.”

“Come to think of it, if she’d seen me taking off my uniform, she would’ve squawked about it,” Sirius said, “She must’ve disappeared before we got to the transfiguration wing.”

James had a sinking feeling that she’d met up with Severus Snape some place along the way and was probably snogging in some empty classroom. James turned to Dumbledore, “Can we go and find her?”

Dumbledore replied, “Miss. Evans will join us when she sees fit, I am sure.” He jingled the coin purse and looked about at them. “For our lesson today -- we’ll be transfiguring the sickles into hummingbirds… Now I do expect you to do a good job, seeing as this army of birds is costing me a good deal of money to see made.” He walked along, handing each of them a coin.

If it hadn’t been for wondering where Lily was, James would have enjoyed the class very much. The sickles easily changed to the birds as he waved his wand (although Peter struggled and Sirius elbowed James to get him to change his sickle, too, when Dumbledore wasn’t looking). James kept glancing back at the doorway, waiting for Lily, but she never came. Dumbledore had seen to it that each of their hummingbirds were jewel toned and flapped at least 50 times a second. James was the first to gather up his things and shove them into his bag - eager to go and find where Evans had got off to that she missed an entire class - and he was about to lunge to the door, when Dumbledore called, “Mr. Potter, a word?”

James halted, turning ‘round to look at Dumbledore in surprise.

Sirius patted his friend’s arm. “Tough luck, mate, gonna have to leave Lily be for a few minutes longer…” he grinned mischievously, and ducked from behind their table to follow after Remus and Peter into the hallway.

James looked up at Dumbledore, “What?” he asked.

Dumbledore was shooing all their humming birds into a little golden cage with the end of his wand, being exceedingly gentle. “Well, Mr. Potter,” he said, turning back as the birds fluttered and bumped into one another, “I was rather curious if you were enjoying your time in studying Transfiguration?”

James shrugged, “Yeah. Sure. It’s swell.” For this he’d been kept from going after Evans?

Dumbledore smiled, walking over and putting himself between James and the doorway, where he was peering, even now. Dumbledore waved his hand before James’s eyes. “Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore said, amusement wrinkling his features, “I know it may be quite a shock for you to hear this, but I’m afraid that you might be quite talented at Transfiguration.”

James blinked, not sure he’d understood what the headmaster had said. “...excuse me?” he asked, looking up at him. “I thought you’ve just said that I’m talented at Transfiguration.”

Dumbledore chuckled, “Yes, that’s what I said.”

“And you were joking, yeah?” James asked, momentarily distracted from thinking of Evans.

Dumbledore shook his head, “No, Mr. Potter, I lament to tell you that I was most definitely not joking. Your Transfiguration skills are alarmingly good, even with your current distraction that you are, er, indulging in.”

James stared up at Dumbledore, sure the old man was cracked. After all, he hadn’t been the only one that had turned their sickle into a Hummingbird - Sirius had managed to do it for himself, and so had Peter eventually. Remus had even managed to do it before James had. It wasn’t as though he was some outstanding student in the subject, either. He thought fleetingly of those mice back at the start of term, dancing along to the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B. “There must be some mistake, sir.”

Dumbledore continued to shake his head, “No, I’m sorry Potter, though you do seem to be doing your very best attempts to keep anyone from noticing your academic talent, I do assure you that, to the trained eye at least, the signs are all there.”

James looked skeptical still. “But Remus did his bird before me, so --”

“Perhaps, yes, but speed is not always an indication of quality, especially in the magical world, Mr. Potter. Your hummingbird’s wings beat nearly twice as fast as Remus’s - his only beat 54 times a second while yours were beating nearly 86 times per second. Your bird’s tones were much more realistic, the underside of the wings were a perfect magenta and the upper side a lovely blue-emerald…”

“Well Peter’s bird sparkled,” said James quickly.

“Because he was still silver from the sickle!” Dumbledore explained. “You should know by now that magic is not all about shine and sparkle.” He put his hand on James’s shoulder. “You ought to consider focusing a bit more on your Transfiguration lessons. You have a very bright future ahead of you, Mr. Potter.”

James was still not really able to believe what he was hearing.

“Professor McGonagall was telling me recently that you were a bit interested in becoming an animagus,” Dumbledore continued on. “Is that still an ambition of yours?”

James nodded. Little did Dumbledore know, this was certainly his greatest evidence against the claim that he possessed any sort of special talent in the field of transfiguration. After all, they’d been trying to become animagi for nearly eight months now and he hadn’t yet managed to do more than grow a couple antlers on his head. Sirius could change from man to dog with ease and had been able to do so since summer. Even Peter had managed a full transformation - though changing back had proved a challenge for him, and he had yet to be able to replicate the results (or, knowing Peter, to even give it a go). James, however, hadn’t even managed to do it the first time yet.

If he was so grand at Transfiguration, why wasn’t he able to simply change?

“I think you would be excellent at it, if you were to study under Professor McGonagall,” Dumbledore smiled. “She may well be the best animagus of the time.”

Something occurred to James and he looked up at Dumbledore with a curious expression. “Sir -- are you an animagus?”



Dumbledore shook his head.

“Well how could you have taught McGonagall without being one yourself?” he asked.

“I understand the theory quite thoroughly,” Dumbledore explained, “I studied the art of it quite extensively once, with a friend. But I never went through with the transformative steps myself…”

“Did your friend succeed at becoming an animagus?” James asked.

Dumbledore smiled. “A story best told another time.” He patted James’s shoulders. “Do consider what we’ve talked about, Mr. Potter. It would be a shame to see such a brilliant talent as yours go to waste in a haze of frivolousness.”

“Yes sir,” James replied.

Dumbledore’s eye sparkled. “Now go and see if you can’t find Miss. Evans,” he said.

James blushed, “I’m not --”

But Dumbledore’s eyes silenced James. The headmaster knew all too well exactly what had distracted James through the entire class, and there was no point in hiding it. “Run along, Mr. Potter.”

James hurried out the door before he could be stopped again and rushed down the corridor. Sirius was leaning against the wall a couple doors away, looking a bit like a hoodlum the way he slouched and fluidly stood up when he saw James come running toward him. “Are you in trouble for something?” he asked, as the two boys fell into step.

James shook his head, “Dumbledore thinks I’m brilliantly talented at Transfiguration.”

“You bloody liar,” Sirius accused, but James didn’t laugh and he realized he was telling the truth, “How’s he think that? You never study.”

“Apparently if I do, I’ll be even better.”

Sirius shook his head, “Well then, I suppose you’d better study it then!”

“Yeah… and he brought up the animagus thing… when I asked McGonagall, she offered to teach me, remember? Well Dumbledore reckons I’d be great at it and that McGonagall would do a good job of showing me how.”

“But you already know how,” Sirius argued.

“Well I know how you did it, but I haven’t managed it yet myself and… I still think it would be really useful if one of us at least knew the real theory behind it. It’s got to be really important if both McGonagall and Dumbledore think it’s important to learning it,” James shrugged.

Sirius smirked, “You don’t have to make excuses, James, if you want to take the extra lessons with McGonagall, you don’t need to be explaining to me why.”

James asked, “You don’t think I’m a horrible nerd for wanting to take extra lessons?”

“Of course you’re a horrible nerd, but you were that without the extra lessons.”

James laughed and ran a hand through his hair roughly, messing it up as though he’d been flying for the past few hours. It fell floppily about his head, framing his face. “So.. uh.. Did any of you see Evans yet?” he asked, trying to be casual.

“Peter said he saw her downstairs. He went for butterbeers to bring back to the dorms,” Sirius said, but he didn’t explain any further, so James inserted the unspoken statement that she’d been with Snape and let it drop.

When they reached the common room, Sirius kicked a couple of firsties out of their spot on the couch by the fire and the four boys sat about again. James pulled out his Transfiguration textbook, though, a lingering tug of interest in his chest as he thought about the way Dumbledore had looked at him with a mixture of pride and amusement. He rather liked the idea of being good at something academic - something besides quidditch, which he had always been very good at. It was nice to know he had options. Although he was still going to grow up to be a professional quidditch player - obviously - it was sort of cool knowing that he could possibly have the brains to do something else if he wanted to.

He tried very hard to study without being distracted, thinking about how some place in the castle, Lily Evans was snogging Severus Snape. Maybe he could use his newly discovered talent and transfigure Snape into a giant ball of ear wax and never have to deal with him again.

James’s mind drifted from the textbook as he absently doodled, dotting the margins with little drawings of all the different things he could change Severus Snape into…