"Ah—ha—"
The next morning, at the Hufflepuff table, Maca, yawning, sleepily stuffed sliced white bread into his mouth, forgetting to even spread jam on it. His school robes were also askew, obviously thrown on haphazardly, a messy look that didn't quite match his usual neat style.
"Hey, little brother, why are you so sleepy? Didn't you sleep well last night?" Charlotte, the senior, didn't seem to care about how others dressed – although she always dressed beautifully herself.
"Mmm… yeah, a little," Maca nodded listlessly, his eyelids drooping, as if he would fall asleep any second.
"Are you thinking about which little girl?" Charlotte teased.
"Mmm, thinking about you, ha—" Maca replied instinctively, and then yawned again.
Miss Charlotte obviously hadn't expected him to counterattack so quickly even half-asleep, and couldn't help but show a face of "I give up on you."
"Come on! Snap out of it, class is about to start," she said, raising her hand and smacking Maca on the back with all her might. Maca jumped, startled, and the bread in his mouth fell onto the table.
"Hey, senior, did you have to be so rough?" Maca winced, pretty sure there was a red handprint on his back.
Just then, the owls arrived.
Maca looked up, watching the large flock of owls flying around the Great Hall, dropping packages and letters onto the recipients' laps.
"Come to think of it, my Malfarion spends all its time in the dorm (it won't even go to the school's owlery), just eating and sleeping, hardly ever doing anything useful!" Maca slapped his thigh in sudden realization. "Why did I even buy it? Looks like I need to find it something to do..."
Just as Maca was considering sending his owl out for a stroll, a dark shadow flew in from the Great Hall entrance, scaring all the other owls away.
"Huh?" Maca looked up again and saw his own owl, Malfarion, diving towards him. Then, like a bomber, it dropped a large package onto the empty space behind Maca, which made a loud "Boom" sound.
"Goo," Malfarion hooted, then landed on the table and pecked at another piece of bread on Maca's plate.
"Is that your owl?" Charlotte asked curiously, staring intently at Malfarion. "It's really strong. I'd like to have one like that. Where did you buy it?"
"The 'Giant Spider' in Knockturn Alley," Maca replied casually, pulling a slip of paper from the package. "Oh, my books from Flourish and Blotts have arrived."
Maca had specifically gone to Flourish and Blotts a few days before the start of term to order some books on Potions and Herbology. Although he could find these books in the library, the library wouldn't allow him to scribble all over them.
Charlotte leaned over to take a look, and then exclaimed in surprise, "Little junior, are you planning to finish all the Hogwarts courses in your first year?"
Maca stuffed the book list back into the package, saying it was impossible as he picked up the large parcel and headed towards the common room – he had to put the books back in his dormitory before class.
As he passed the Gryffindor table, Harry called out to Maca.
"Hey, Maca! Hagrid asked me to go for tea. Are you coming?" He waved the note in his hand at Maca.
"When?" Maca asked.
"Around three o'clock this afternoon!" Harry replied.
"I have classes this afternoon. Give Hagrid my regards; I'll go see him some other time."
Harry nodded, then wrote something on the back of the note before giving it to Hedwig to deliver.
This morning was Hufflepuff's first Transfiguration Class.
The Transfiguration professor was Minerva McGonagall, who, like Snape, was a strict instructor.
But unlike Snape, Professor McGonagall treated all four houses equally. She would severely punish any student who violated school rules.
Therefore, although most students were afraid of this senior female professor who always had a stern face, it was a genuine form of respect.
Undoubtedly, there were many students who genuinely respected her.
Professor McGonagall's teaching style was always concise and effective. She immediately set the tone for the class, giving all the students a stern warning.
"Transfiguration is the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," she said. "Anyone who misbehaves in my class will be expelled, and will not be allowed back. I've said this to every first year, and I hope you take it as a warning."
Then, she transformed her desk into a deer and back again.
Most of the students were fascinated by this display of magic, and naturally, so was Maca. In fact, Maca was probably the student in the class who best understood the difficulty of the subject, having already learned about it from the Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration.
Maca had already read several of the required textbooks, and he thought this one would be the hardest.
The difficulty of Transfiguration wasn't just about a wizard's understanding of its principles; that was only the starting point. The biggest challenge in mastering Transfiguration was a thorough understanding of the properties of the objects before and after the transformation.
Wizards studying Transfiguration not only had to deeply understand the physical properties of the objects, but also had to have a high degree of understanding and control over their magical properties – a very complex and profound undertaking, and one that could be considered endless.
For example, if a novice wizard could turn a match into a needle of roughly the same size, then a Transfiguration master could transform that match into needles of various sizes, materials, and even textures, and maintain the transformation for hundreds of years!
Of course, the biggest difference, aside from the accuracy and consumption of magic, lies in the understanding of the subject.
This is a long-term research course that consumes a lot of time. Maca also found that there were no shortcuts, only accumulation through daily study and research.
In class, Maca turned the feather assigned to him into a lump of metal. He didn't have good control over the object's form, but Professor McGonagall still nodded at him—for a beginner, being able to make an object undergo a qualitative change was already a very good performance.
In the afternoon, it was another boring History of Magic class. Professor Binns always used his monotonous and tedious tone to drone on about the dry major historical events of the wizarding world. The colorless way of teaching made almost all the students uninterested in this class.
But Maca listened with great interest. Because he found that what Professor Binns was saying wasn't just reading from the textbook, but was organized in a very orderly manner, and occasionally there were some contents that even the textbooks had missed. He believed that this respected Professor, the only ghost professor at Hogwarts, would carefully prepare for his classes every night.
Of course, this might also be because ghosts don't need to sleep, which gives him a lot of extra time. If he didn't do something, he would definitely be bored to death again.
"I heard that Professor Binns was the History of Magic professor at Hogwarts before he died, until one day when he came to class, he accidentally forgot to bring his body," Ernie whispered to Maca.
"As you said, Professor Binns not only contributed the second half of his life to teaching, but he also continues to maintain this very difficult persistence even after death," Maca nodded and said.
"Now that you mention it, you're right!"
Ernie was taken aback, realizing that it was indeed the case. He straightened his back and listened attentively, but it wasn't long before he slumped again – the class itself was just too boring.
The History of Magic class might be excruciating for the other students, but for Maca, the time flew by.
"Maca, where are you going? Aren't you going to the common room to play some wizard's chess?" Ernie asked, a little surprised.
The History of Magic classroom was on the second floor. The Hufflepuffs heading back to their dorms were exchanging gossip and heading downstairs, but Maca was going up the stairs.
"Oh, I need to go to the library, I need to look up some information." Maca said, turning his head, but he didn't stop walking. He quickly disappeared from Ernie's sight as he followed the automatically turning staircase.
The library, located on the fifth floor of Hogwarts' main castle, was a colossal structure that housed a vast number of books.
Here, you could find almost every magical book currently in print, or that had been in the past. Of course, a large area was the so-called "Restricted Section", which could not be accessed without a signed note from the Headmaster or the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
Madam Pince, the librarian, was a thin, elderly, and easily angered woman who looked like a grumpy old vulture driven mad by hunger.
She treated the books in the library as if they were her life, and she would kick out any student who dared to deface or damage them. In her eyes, these precious books were her treasures, and ideally, no one would ever enter.
It had only been a short time since classes had ended, and there were only a few Gryffindor first-years in the library – their house didn't have any scheduled classes this afternoon.
"...Humanoid Magical Creatures...Humanoid Magical Creatures...here!"
Maca tiptoed and pulled a book titled Habits and Origins of Humanoid Magical Creatures from a high bookshelf, immediately standing there and flipping through the pages.
....
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