Apples to Cocoa PV A. Vanes

Alan, a young Gryffindor with a lot on his mind, wandered through the endless and confusing hallways of great Hogwarts. He wondered if he would ever figure out those corridors that turned and twisted how they pleased, turning every way to his destination into an adventure and a half catastrophe. His memory already failed in Muggle buildings, how could he keep up with an enchanted castle?

Today's destination would be the Transfiguration professor's office because he had a very important question. He ran out of chocolate and remembered the lesson they had in Transfiguration, where the professor Lian had turned an apple into chocolate and that was an ability Alan couldn't help but be amazed by. He could not wait but to learn these spells that would give him the power to choco-fy things. Especially if he could turn healthy to treat, that would be the best! He would always ask if he could eat in his room and then turn the evil veggies into chocolate without anyone noticing!

Getting closer to professor Lian's office he noticed that it was rather dark in there. Was she even there? His footsteps slowed down and came to a halt in front of the curtain. He tucked out his wand from the wand holster hidden beneath his left robe sleeve. ”Lumos”

The young second year would use the wand to push aside the curtain, letting the tip of his wand softly illuminate the surroundings in a gentle light. He could make out the frame of his professor in the dim light and a smile tugged at his lips. ”Good evening, professor Lian, would it bother you if I switch on the light?” He asked, his voice soft and respectful, even though his speaking was rushed as always making his pace of speaking twice as fast as the average person would speak. Or something like that.

The footsteps she'd heard slowed as they neared, then stopped completely, although the slight pause might be better described as hesitance rather than cessation. For just a moment, the young woman started to rise, realizing that the room was still black and that nobody would be able to see - the common mistake of the blind.

She didn't make it before she heard the voice of the young wizard outside mutter the Wand-Lighting Charm - an easy charm, but one that some in particular didn't feel comfortable casting, for the difficulty of its control. She'd never needed to use the charm, although she had learned it; Cy mostly opted for lanterns. Upon her arrival, she'd had her system of lanterns installed in the ceiling of the wide Transfiguration classroom - an easy alternative to flicking on the light switch back home.

"I wouldn't be able to tell, would I?" Cypresse chuckled in response to the student's polite query. She pushed her chair backward with a foot, the scrape of the chair legs against the stone floor loud in the near-silence of her office, allowed it to tip back on two legs, and angled her wand toward the corner where the adjoining walls met the ceiling and a small chute opened up to darkness.

"Incendio Duo," she intoned, and a jet of flame, a bit stronger than usual, surged forth from the tip of her wand, drawn into the chute as if vacuumed. A moment later, the lamps spotting the ceiling and walls glowed with firelight, fire rushing through the tunnels set into the ceiling's stone. A puff of smoke dispersing into the night air would have been visible had the blinds been open.

"Is that bright enough, or should I go for Incendio Tria?" the professor asked as she tipped her chair back into place. Indeed, she'd berated students for exhibiting the same habit during teaching hours, and when they accused her of hypocrisy, she'd responded only with these are my chairs, not yours. And it was true.

The voice that had interrupted her from her work seemed familiar. Definitely a student, not an upperclassman for sure - his voice wasn't dead enough to be any more than a Third Year, and probably fast-speaking enough to be a First - but she'd definitely heard it before. Cy tilted her head to the side, considering.

Oh! Could this be the student she'd used in her lesson for an example, mostly because of his interest and as a prop stand? He'd shown enough intrigue to have a chance at success; the inquisitive tended to put the most effort into homework. Yes, he seemed to match - but what was his name... ah, yes. "Mr. Vanes, if I remember correctly? How can I help you?"

The young Gryffindor stood there in the entry of the young professor's office. Her words seem to make sense but Alan shook his head ever so slightly, even though she would not be able to see this gesture. Alan himself communicated a lot through hand gestures and body language.

”You wouldn't, professor. But this is still your room so everything that happens in here should be happening with your consent-” he replied choosing his words carefully to bring his point across without sounding rude or anything.

The young Gryffindor was wearing his usual school uniform even though it was already past school hours so they were not bound by the rules as strict anymore. The only thing Alan variated were his shoes, as he had changed into a pair of more comfortable sneakers because he could not deal with the uncomfortable dress shoes all day long. He never got talked to about it and he needed that footwear for when he was doing parkour or just ran a bit.

He had pulled the hood of his school robes down, as he watched in amazement how the witch that was also his professor ignited the room with a construction that just looked amazingly beautiful. He had stared up at the lanterns for a while the dancing flames reflecting in his green eyes, before he shook his head to pull himself into reality again, before he turned to Professor Lian.

”No, I can see enough like this” he informed her happily as he took a bit of time to look around in her office. He did not even comment on the way she tipped her chair back, he was in no position to lecture her and there was no point in doing so anyway. It was a comfortable sitting position after all and her being comfortable meant only something positive; that she was not in a bad mood.

He was caught by surprise that she remembered his name and a bright smile stretched over his lips. ”Exactly! Well I was wondering if you could repeat this spell for me where you transfigured apples to cocoa” he offered, taking place on one of the chairs.

Oh, my. A faint smile graced her lips. Some children were so polite these days, at least a lot more than she'd been in her first few years. Cy was not so formal in her classes as she could have been, as some others were; the burden of needing to comply with a blind professor was already hard on the students and she didn't wish to make it any more difficult. Basic respect was still demanded, of course, but the smaller formalities, for example, calling her by her surname, were not so closely ruled, although most children did it out of habit.

This student in particular had been called up to assist her in her class. He showed curiosity, inquiry; therefore, he showed potential. Transfiguration was tricky, it was true; many students gave up on it early on, as hard as she tried to inspire - it wasn't for everyone. But she'd always keep her eye on the ones who seemed at least open-minded; even if they didn't start out partial to Transfiguration, many could become hooked on it as their years progressed. Actually, that was what had happened to her.

The front legs of her chair clicked as the met the ground again, fire crackling once, but no more. Had Second Years learned the variations on the Fire-Making Charm yet? Hmm. Well, he seemed to understand, at least. The smile on her face morphed unsurprisingly into a smirk as the young Gryffindor spoke, making Cy look infinitely more childish, although the authority still rested in her posture.

"Do you just want chocolate?" she chuckled, removing one hand from the chestnut wood she'd been fidgeting with and pointing the wand to the mound of apples obscured by the pile of papers, still unfinished, levitating a singular piece of fruit from it. Cy allowed it to hover in front of her. "Is that it?" she grinned, spinning her wand in tight circles to make the apple do flips in the air with her boredom.

With a snap of her wrist and a flash of red light, the apple shifted from red to brown, from juicy to sugary, whooshing out of the air before she caught it again with a cushion of air, bringing it back up to eye level. A perfectly shaped bar of chocolate now hovered where a good, healthy apple had been moments ago. "That what you wanted to see?"

When the professor asked him, if the whole purpose of asking her that question was to get some free chocolate, the young boy felt how the heat crept on his face. He felt as if he had been caught red handed and froze up for a moment, while his cheeks grew hot in embarrassment. She was not that wrong with the assumption, but he really believed the spell was an awesome one and if only it was because it could turn things into chocolate. Was he being stupid and childish? Maybe. But was some chocolate worth it? Definitely!

”N-no... the spell really sounds interesting-”, he said, a bit flustered. Still it was not really a lie, but his reason to come here really had been to get some free chocolate. This was troublesome but not a lie, even though his mother would have tapped his nose for that. He chuckled lightly as he watched the professor transform the apple into a bar of chocolate. Now that was some awesome magic and a spell Alan can imagine to use a lot, when he gets older. Probably to turn everything into chocolate. Was it possible to live in a castle made out of chocolate?, the young boy wondered.

”Yeah, that was it... uhm... can I keep the chocolate bar as an uhm... souvenir?”, he asked cheekily, his eyes glinting in amusement and light humor. He got that the professor already caught his game the second he asked his question, but he had his dignity. That did not change that he is a bad liar.

Still chuckling, Cy lowered her wand, allowing the transfigured chocolate to drift slowly toward the boy's hands. "What a great souvenir, one that's going to melt within a few hours if it's a hot day," she commented, flicking her wand at it to accelerate its movement. "There's your bar of, as you said, souvenir chocolate. "

Absently, Cy flicked her wand at the wall behind her, undoing a latch that kept a sort of black tapestry rolled near the sibling. It spun back down the wall with a loud thump - no more than a dark sheet of fabric, like the chalkboard wall in the classroom. Another spin of her wand, and the sketched image of chocolate, half opened and checkered as usual, began appearing in white thread, sewing itself into the black fabric. At the same time, the words Gamp's Law and Exceptions wrote themselves across the top. "I'm guessing you've already gone through this lesson, but you seem interested - let's try going a little deeper. How much do you remember of Gamp's Law?"

She spoke as her wand moved, conducting the white embroidery. An arrow pointing from the drawn chocolate to another drawn image of an apple, the apple's drawing itself. For a moment, she paused her drawing to flick upwards in a beckoning gesture toward the apple pile, levitating two apples toward her, and flicked again to morph one into more chocolate. Both went to the tapestry, adhering themselves over their likenesses.

"I don't know if you've ever read this in a textbook, but it's probably in Magical Theory somewhere. I don't use textbooks, you know, they're only for reference, really," the young professor added conversationally. "Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. To recap, there are Five Principle Exceptions to it, and the thing everyone gets wrong is that they think the exceptions are the law itself, which they aren't - the law states that to change form, matter must lose form, however strange that is, but you already know that." She pointed toward the tapestry with her non-dominant hand. "Food is the first exception, but you can still Transfigure it. However..."

Cy waved her wand at the tapestry, and the chocolate bar swelled in size, suddenly three times as large as it had been before - an engorgio charm cast silently. Better to start simple and not scare students off before they had a chance to get at the interesting parts. "Now, why do you think it would be harder to transform an apple into that chocolate bar instead of the one you're holding right now?" 

♫

”I don't think this souvenir will survive until a hotter day~”, the young Gryffindor admitted his plans sheepishly. This bar of chocolate was just too delicious to not eat it right away when he was in the Gryffindor rooms again. Maybe he could share it with one of his friends; maybe Hugh or Riley would like to get some of it? A smile appeared on his lips just by the thought of sharing the chocolate with his friends.

”Gamp's Law? It is that Law about the Exceptions of Transfiguration and how there are five exceptions that cannot be transfigured out of thin air-”, he mentioned the basics and took a look at her. He was a bit confused. What did this have to do with now? He watched on as she transfigured another apple into a chocolate bar and could not help but wonder, if he would get that one too whenever she was finished with her explanation or small extra lesson.

His eyes widened even more when the chocolate bar grew in size, because Professor Lian must have used a spell that could make thing bigger. Or was it just an illusion? He wondered, but was sure that he could find out later. Her question made him grin toothily. He knew the answer to that one too, or at least he thought he knew it.

”It is because the smaller chocolate bar matches the apple in size and weight more than the enlarged chocolate bar does, isn't it? Professor Yornikovych had told us about that! About how it is easier to transfigure things into stuff that matches their properties!”, he told her excited. He loved those lessons, even though the previous professor seemed a bit scary-looking. But he was smart and seemed too calm to be really scary.

Cy grinned as the young boy readily met her queries with answers. Those who were interested in Transfiguration honestly were so rare these days; few of her classmates had attempted O.W.L.s back in Seventh Year. However, there did exist those who believed it to be just as interesting as the other magical sciences - some who might not have realized it at all without a good teacher. Perhaps she herself was one of those. "Precisely," she affirmed as the boy fired off answered. "A little more detail...

"You probably know that everything is made of small particles. Those are called atoms." She waved her wand, and with a myriad of great crackling noises, the giant chocolate bar split itself into numerous small chunks the size of chocolate chips. "Obviously, atoms are a lot smaller than the human eye can see, but we´re just going to pretend that those are chocolate atoms. Now you have this apple," crackle went the apple, "split into similar atoms, but much fewer. If you subtract the smaller number of apple atoms from the larger number of chocolate atoms, then that-" the apple atoms as well as the equivalent number of chocolate atoms vanished - "is the number of atoms you would have to conjure. Understandable?"

She'd gone through this in general detail in her First Year classes; this would be a good review. She'd never paid attention to the details of what her predecessor had done, only the general frame of his lessons. Hopefully this Gryffindor comprehended enough. "Now, when you transform something of a similar size, you rearrange atoms around to make a different form. There's another branch, a sub-branch of Transformation that you'll learn about later, I suppose. It's called Transmutation."

Cy reached for an eraser, then tossed it in the air. "Take this eraser. It's made of rubber. But if I do this..." she waved her wand, and it hardened, shifting from a rosy ink to spongy tan without so much as a whisper. "Now it's made up of cork. Same shape, same size. That's what Transmutation is - the change of material without changing shape or form. I think you'll be going over this in more detail later this year, but it's a fairly simple concept, so you should be able to understand it."

The young woman turned back toward the wall behind her, this time deigning to levitate a piece of chalk from the ground and physically -well, more or less physically - draw a passable illustration of a circle that was most definitely not even.  Drawing circles was not her forte. "All right, that's a ball of the element nickel, hopefully you know what a element is. What do you think happens if I transmute this ball of nickel into a ball of zinc, same size and shape? What happens to the atoms in it?"

♫

Alan looked at the professor and tilted his head. He was not sure what he should think about this. He already had his homework, so why was he supposed to do extra work now, without being able to think much about it. ”Uh...”, the young student bit his lips. His mind was not in the mood to do much thinking right now. His mind was occupied with an image of a cruppy chasing its tails and other trivial things. ”Why are you asking, Miss? We are not in class and I am sure you know the answers yourself...”, he mumbled nervously, heat spreading in his cheeks, reaching his ears even.

He was not sure about all the atoms stuff and he would rather change the topic than risking giving the wrong answer and dropping down a grade. It seemed far too complicated than to risk it without a book that helped him to collect his mind. He was thankful for what she taught him though, it looked cool. How she had changed the shapes or the material. It was cooler than all the explanation that she had done, but he would not tell her that. After all he did not want to be rude, he really liked the subject after all.