The door was open when the first students began to arrive.  There was a message written on the blackboard in large white letters.



Fourth year students had always been Leopold's favourites.  They had developed enough confidence in their ability that they were more enthusiastic than any other year in his opinion.  It was going to be an interesting year.


OOC:  There are 16 desks, each with two seats, arranged in a 4 x 4 pattern.  As you chose a seat, please indicate which one. 

Another new professor. Was the last year just that bad that everyone left at once? Sure, about half the professors Zoe had stayed the same, but half of them seemed to have been replaced at the table in the feast. Hopefully Transfiguration this year would be fun, unlike most other subjects she had no one to turn to in her family for Transfiguration. It was probably the only subject she took that one of her family members didn't specilize in.

Walking into the classroom Zoe saw she was the first one. Good, puncuality always made good first impressions. It showed you cared about being there and on time. Reading the board quickly, she took a seat at the front (2) and withdrew her wand and textbook. "Good afternoon, Professor Sandusky." The name felt strange in her mouth, not what she had gotten used to the past three years, but she'd have to adapt. "I'm sure you have already recieved some greetings, but welcome to Hogwarts."

"Thank you, my dear,"  Leopold said in answer.  "I'll be asking everyone to introduce themselves when they've all arrived.  There may even be some sort of game involved."

Kelvin entered the classroom, his bag bulging from bringing more than just the required books to class.  He couldn't help himself, transfiguration was the one subject he got without trying, not that he didn't work hard, but it was the subject he loved most, other than maybe history, but he had been looking forward to transfiguration class since exams had ended last year, and transfiguration books had been a refuge over the summer when he couldn't take his mother ignoring him.

Reading the board quickly, Kelvin took a seat in the second row near the center (7) and dropped his bag with an audible thump managing to fish out the required textbook from the several other transfiguration books in the bag.  He blushed slightly when it hit him, he'd brought extra books to class...for no reason.  "G' afternoon, Professor." He said as he placed his wand on the desk next to the required book.  "Hi Zoe," he added to his housemate.

desk 6

"Huffing puffs, Watkins, I thought you had read enough Transfiguration over the summer," Casey said as he sat, observing the amount of books on the subject the Ravenclaw boy had at his desk. It seemed his collection had grown since their impromptu iced treat conversation in Diagon. Reflecting on it, Casey had found the conversation went well, just talking to someone, excluding his blueberry allergy that had decided to flare up.

Casey had an extra book too. It just wasn't visible.[1] After ditching Spicer a few more hours of covert searching in Flourish and Blotts had earned him an Invisible Book of Invisibility forgotten in a back room corner. It was still in the shop so Casey considered it still purchasable, although he could pay the price several times over if he needed to pry it out of hands of the shop staff. The attendant that rang up his purchase had not realized what the book was until Casey was about to leave.

Casey indulged in a private chuckle. He had told them he found it in a gap in a bookshelf stocked with Muggle Analysis literature, causing the staff to rip apart the upper floor as he left. With the proper wand taps, it was easy to reveal the book when you wanted to read and vanish it when you didn't. Casey carried it along with his school texts should any classes prove to be boring.

Although he would allow Transfiguration to try and catch his interest. He had the concrete stuff down, like Switching Spells and the -fors animation family of spells. His mind was open to see if there were any duel applicable adaptations from the coming lessons, since that first evening with Blossom had shown him that Transfiguration-like spells could provide an unexpected advantage.

1.	Seen and Unseen

Leopold watched as the students arrived.  He was wearing a burgundy robe with a yellow over tunic, topped with his ever present black hat.  He smiled at all the eager little faces.  He'd missed this.  Leopold loved teaching and now he was in a place where he could make a difference.  Not only was he teaching transfigurations, something he was quite adept at, he was also a head of house.  He had the chance to actually inspire and that was even more important than teaching.

"Take your seats please," he said, eager to begin.  "Seeing as how this is the first class, we'll try to keep it light and fun but it is still a classroom.  I'll be explaining my class rules once everyone arrives and the door is closed."

Ambrose had learned one thing about lessons and choosing a seat. If you sat near the front, you looked eager and would be preyed upon to give out parchment, or carry things. If you sat the back, that was immediately where the Professor's eyes went and he would prey on you the moment he thought you were not paying attention. Second row, well, possibly too eager and visible... the third, or just before the back, perfect to try and blend in and not be asked too many questions that would prove you weren't the brightest star in the sky.

Leopold was new blood however, an unknown teaching quantity. However, he looked older than Storm, which normally smelt like bookish and rather traditional in his approach to transfiguration. It would be good to have one Professor in this subject for a while, the unfortunate transitions last year under Snark hadn't really helped Ambrose's weak grasp of the subject in his third year.

Zoe, who Ambrose remembered meeting over summer in the Magical Menagerie, had taken a seat at the front of the room. It wasn't too surprising, Ravenclaw, privileged (given the fact she'd pointed out money wasn't a problem when it came to purchasing her owl.) Her fellow Ravenclaw, Kelvin was in the row behind her, flanked by another know-it-all, Casey.

Ambrose sloped past them all, (after nodding and mildly blushing towards Zoe first) to sit behind Casey (10). Best place to be, if he had eyes in the back of his head, he'd be able to see Ambrose taking the piss out of him occasionally, or otherwise leave him alone, as he was out of eye-line. With luck, Winnie would come and sit beside him, so he'd have some company.

"Seeing as how this is the first class, we'll try to keep it light and fun but it is still a classroom.  I'll be explaining my class rules once everyone arrives and the door is closed." The Professor announced to them.

"Joy." Ambrose muttered, "light and fun, do those go with Transfiguration?" He uttered, hoping it hadn't carried to the Professor who seemed preoccupied by the rest of their classmates coming in through the door.

"I hope you're all bright and eager to get started,"  Leopold said.  "I know I am.  Trasnfigurations is the most fascinating branch of magic.  You're turning one thing into another.  Bread into cheese.  Granite into marble.  Lead into gold.  Incidentally, if any of you can tell me the secret of turning lead into gold with out using a philosopher's stone, I'll give you fifty house points, several moments before I retire."

He looked at them all and smiled.  "Who can tell me something significant about the list of objects I just gave?"  Raise your wands to answer and start with your name, your house and something about yourself.  For example, Leopold Sandusky, Hufflepuff and I own a pet monkey."

Zoe nodded to the professor, turning to the door to watch everyone else come. "Hi Kelvin," Zoe responded to the greeting from her fellow Ravenclaw. As Casey sat directly behind her Zoe gave him a cold look, she didn't want him trying anything on the first day of having a new professor. She noticed another boy enter soon, Ambrose. He seemed to gain a slight rosy color on his cheeks when he nodded at her. Did he actually like her? She was sure his friend just made him practice complimenting a girl on her, maybe he was just embarrased. No matter, if he continued to hit on her maybe she already had a date to the Yule Ball.

It was when she heard a farmiliar voice that she turned back around. Ambrose apparently didn't like Transfiguration. The young witch rolled her eyes, it was silly to talk ill of a subject in front of a professor, especially if they are new to a group of students. An easy way to get on their bad side. Luckily, Professor Sandusky didn't seem to notice.

Once again the professor began to speak Zoe once again gave him her full attention. Transfiguration was one of her favorite classes, as Hogwarts was the only place she could easily learn it from an adult. For almost every other subject she could turn to a family member, Charms, Muggle Studies, Flying (just for her own purposes, it had been years since she took that class), Care of Magical Creatures, Herbology, even to certain extents Arithmancy and Defense Against the Dark Arts. But no one in her family was particularly good at Transfiguration, not one.

Zoe wanted to be the first one to answer the question, but she wasn't sure of the answer. Time to go with her strategy for everything she wasn't sure of the answer, just state what she did know and that might be enough. She raised her wand looking pretty confident. "Zoe Torret, professor. I'm a Ravenclaw and my family is served by an elf we freed named Lily. She cleans the house and cooks when my parents are too tired and tends to the garden when my mum's at St. Mungo's." Finishing her introduction, Zoe continued. "Well sir, what you mentioned was in categories, food, rock, and metal." And she left it at that. It was all she knew for certain.

(Desk 8)

Once Naomi had entered the room and seen how chipper the new professor was, she wasn't sure how she felt about it. She could handle Storm and his rather bleak and routinely difficult Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Even Aileen's sour and strict demeanor in Ancient Runes was somewhat comforting. But Transfiguration was definitely not her favorite class--she was good at it, yes, but it was an uncomfortable awareness that came with being a metamorph, and just made her feel odd. Awkward.

And so she picked a desk sidled against a corner as everyone conversed with the professor or rather grumpily made a home in the classroom. The dark-skinned witch just took out her book, crossed her legs, sat back, and started to twirl her wand between her fingers as she waited for class to start.

Her green eyes settled on Torret as she piped up to answer the rather unexpected question. Naomi reviewed the objects in her mind before she twirled her wand to point up in the air as her lazy lilt chimed in, "Turning food to food, ore t' ore, and metal ta' metal," she lowered her wand to the desk, "'dat it?"

Then the witch began to fiddle with her wand again once she eventually remembered to say something personal, "My name's Naomi Foley. Slytherin. And I own four bothersome brothers." A light and dreamy pitch in her tone was the only indication she gave at her acknowledging her own amusement.

Zoe was giving him a hard stare. At first Casey thought she was looking past him, as usual, so he glanced back to see Ambrose looking none too pleasant either. It was like the punitive looks of a garden gnome before you checked them out of the garden. Make that Dingy chucking them out of the garden when Casey had gotten bored with levitating them.

What did he do? Did these people actually like Herbology, or not like being shown up by the glorious wand casting that was Casey's pride and joy? Then learn to catch up.

And oh, Torrent's little charitable story about the family elf. They'd freed the thing, how could it possibly be considered a reliable servant if orders meant nothing to it anymore?

"Excellent observation, Torrent, one step past the obvious." Foley's answer was also lacking. It was like they weren't even trying. Rather than mention how his family had three house elves, the favored way to ruffle Zoe's feathers, Casey said "Casey O'Doherty, Professor. I'm in Slytherin House and I am awesome." There had to be a phrase that could catch everything.

"You have basically laid out one of the fundamental principles of Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, that the easiest Transfigurations are to things that are inherently similar. Like food cannot be transfigured from anything inedible, but you can transfigure existing food. Same with gold from other metals, although that requires a Philosopher's Stone."

If Casey ever found a way to create gold without a Stone, he surely would not give up such valuable information so a professor could have a cushy retirement.

Zoe clearly heard Casey behind her. He was the only reason she had used Lily as the fact about herself, just to get on his nerves. She knew it would set him off, and so it did. It was almost fun hating Casey, he was always quick to retort so you'd never miss out on a battle of sorts. Plus she really hated no one else, it was sort of like getting all of her negative emotion out on him, but she knew his responce might be a lot harsher than her's so she always watched out.

Contemplating for a few seconds her responce she decided to play the doesn't understand sarcasm card. She turned around and with a pretty sincere smile said, "Thanks O'Doharty, it really was a excellent observation, wasn't it?" purposely getting his last name wrong because he had added an 'n' to her's.

Ugh, she had forgotten the Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration! How idiotic of her! Well, now she looked stupid in front of a professor, wonderful. Zoe tried not to show her dissapointment.

"Boiled down to it's most basic principles, you are correct, Miss Torrent.  Three points for Ravenclaw," Leopold said.  "Miss Foley, I'm afraid you get no points for Slytherin, either for repeating almost exactly what you heard or for your wand twirling, which I expect you to practice on your own time.  Twirl it again in my class and I will confiscate it until the beginning of the next class.  I'm sure your other professors will be very understanding when you explain why you've without a wand for two days."

Leopold's usual jovial demeanor had vanished.  "You will find that, although I try to make this class fun and interesting, I will not tolerate inattention from my students.  Neither will I tolerate personal attacks.  Your citing of Gamp's law would have earned you the other two points that were available for that question but your rudeness cost you those same two.  Not exactly what I would expect for someone who was 'awesome', Mr O'Doherty."  Leopold actually hooked his fingers to put quotation marks around the word.

"So, we know that like is easily turned into like.  An apple can become a pie but it is far easier to turn it into an apple pie than a cherry pie.  I hope you brought your thinking caps, because here comes the quaffle.  Is it easier to transfigure a glass of water into ice or is it easier to chill it until it freezes?"

Kelvin blushed at Casey's question about the transfiguration books, truthfully he had twice as many more transfiguration books still in his trunk.  But before he could respond, the professor started the class.

What a way to start with a new professor,Kelvin thought shaking his head at the exchange between Zoe and Casey.    Though in truth, Zoe's answer had been a bit on the obvious side without detail, leave it to Casey to point it out rather than just add the additional information.

He raised his wand in the air, "Kelvin Watkins, sir. Ravenclaw.  I enjoy muggle fantasy.  Especially when they get magic so wrong."  He took a breath before answering the question.  "I would say it is probably easier to chill the water until it freezes since you are only changing the temperature not the object itself and transfiguring the water into ice would be overkill."

One of the residuals of his Euro Disney trip that summer was that he regularly intoned a certain series of words in his head whenever he was running late for something.

To his credit, Blake had tried to get his year started on the right foot, especially following a year where he had been given Straight A's. Plenty of people -- From his Head of House, to his father, to Naomi -- had expressed their disapproval of his lazy finish to 3rd year.

Running late to Transfiguration class was not exactly helping to keep his slate clean. And the fact that he was coming from downtime at lunch didn't help either. But he had had to rush back to the Ravenclaw dorms to grab some of his class materials for the rest of the day. He had underestimated the time it would take.

Despite longer strides that came with his growth spurt, at times Blake felt that his limbs didn't cooperate with what his brain was telling him to do. This caused him to to trip several times on the various staircases he encountered and at least once, his materials went sprawling on the castle floor.

Eventually, he did skid to a halt at the open door to the Transfiguration classroom and he paused momentarily to catch his breath, fully prepared to offer the professor and the rest of the class his most apologetic and sheepish smile.