The first Transfiguration class for Gryffindor and Slytherin was scheduled for Thursday of the third week.
On the podium, Professor Minerva McGonagall was already standing silently.
She wore a dark green robe, her expression precise and unyielding. Behind her square spectacles, her sharp eyes seemed capable of piercing the mind. Her mere presence lowered the classroom temperature, and every new student fell silent.
"Transfiguration is the most complex—and the most dangerous—subject at Hogwarts."
Her voice was clear and stern, completely devoid of emotion. Each syllable fell like a small stone, striking the taut nerves of every student.
"Any student who misbehaves in my class will be escorted out immediately and will not be allowed to return."
She paused, scanning the room.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes, Professor."
The response was crisp, uniform, but betrayed their tension.
Next came a half-hour lecture on theoretical basics. From the five fundamental elements of Transfiguration to the exceptional clauses of Gamp's Law, the dry theory acted like a lullaby, and several students' eyelids began to droop.
Just as some were about to collapse under boredom, Professor McGonagall abruptly stopped.
She raised her wand.
Instantly, everyone's attention snapped to her.
With a flick of her wrist, the heavy podium in front of her began to warp and restructure silently. The wood grain dissolved, replaced by coarse pink skin and stiff bristles.
In the next moment, a lifelike pig appeared in its place, snorting twice.
Before the students could react, McGonagall moved her wand again, and the pig transformed back into the original podium, as if the previous moment had been an illusion.
The precision and sheer power of that Transfiguration drew gasps from the classroom.
"Today, you will learn the most basic Transfiguration."
Her voice snapped everyone back to focus. She waved her wand, and matches appeared in front of each student, perfectly placed.
"What you need to do is turn this into a needle."
"You must visualize the needle in your mind clearly and without error: its length, thickness, material, sharpness… every detail cannot be ignored. Then, channel your will through your wand into the match."
Lecture over. Practice began.
The classroom fell into an eerie silence, broken only by students' suppressed breathing.
Everyone stared intently at the tiny match in front of them, as if it were a deadly foe. Most closed their eyes, furrowing brows, striving to mentally conjure the shape of a needle.
Fred's face turned beet-red, veins bulging on his forehead, struggling in a mental duel with the match. Sweat dripped down his temples.
But Alan was the only exception.
He did not meditate.
In his Mind Palace, the word "meditation" was tagged as inefficient, sentimental, and high-error.
Calmly, he pulled out parchment and quill from his bag.
In the heavy, stagnant atmosphere, the soft scratching of his quill on parchment sounded startlingly vivid.
He began drawing at an astonishing speed.
First, a three-dimensional structural diagram of the match.
He didn't sketch a simple cylinder and hemisphere. Instead, he deconstructed the match into hundreds of microscopic bundles of wooden fibers.
Every fiber's orientation, density, and interconnections were carefully marked with lines and symbols.
Next, on the other side of the page, he drew the three-dimensional model of the needle.
It was composed of perfect cones and cylinders. But he went deeper—flying quill in hand, he sketched atomic lattices, tightly structured, forming a precise geometric pattern.
Beneath the two detailed diagrams, he wrote a formula he had just derived—an almost alien expression in the magical world:
[(Match Mass × Wooden Fiber Magic Constant) + Infused Magic (x) = Needle Mass × Metal Lattice Magic Constant) + Dissipated Energy (y)]
He was applying something akin to Muggle geometry and physics to deconstruct magic, long considered a product of will and intuition.
Professor McGonagall patrolled the classroom with her catlike, silent steps, eyes scanning each frustrated student.
When she reached Alan, she stopped.
Her gaze fell on the parchment.
The meticulously logical diagrams and formulas, unlike anything she had seen, cracked her perpetually stern expression for the first time.
Her pupils contracted involuntarily behind her glasses.
Shock.
Intense shock.
At that moment, Alan stopped writing.
His theoretical analysis was complete. His Mind Palace had calculated a theoretically optimal energy injection path based on the models and formulas.
He picked up his wand.
Unlike the others, he did not point it broadly at the match.
His gaze fixed on three specific nodes marked in red ink on his diagrams.
He tapped each almost-invisible point precisely, wand tip accurate to a fraction.
He did not utter a spell.
A perfect, flawless surge of magic flowed from the wand tip into the nodes.
No smoke, no distortion, no failure.
The match transformed smoothly, visibly, as the pale brown wood gave way to cold metallic shine. Its rounded end elongated, tapering into a perfect sharp needle.
Less than a second had passed.
The result: a shimmering silver needle, flawless, perfectly formed.
Success on the first try.
Flawless.
Professor McGonagall was stunned.
She stood frozen, body rigid. In her years teaching Transfiguration, she had seen countless "geniuses": Hermione Granger grasping concepts instantly, Tom Riddle learning on his own…
But she had never seen anyone understand and execute Transfiguration this way.
This was no longer explainable by "talent."
It was a revolutionary, unheard-of theoretical system.
"Scott…"
Her voice trembled slightly—something she had never felt before.
"How… how did you do it?"
Alan stood calmly, as if he had only solved a simple arithmetic problem.
"Professor," he replied, "I simply modeled the change in shape, density, and mass mathematically before and after the Transfiguration."
Mathematical modeling.
For a witch steeped in ancient magical systems, the concept was foreign, yet carried an irresistible, icy logic.
Professor McGonagall fell silent.
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