20) A Mysterious Friend

Keith felt everyone’s gazes focus on him. He didn’t really feel much when he made eye contract with the students around him, but when he looked up at Professor McGonagall, he felt a strange sense of both nervousness and excitement.

“What’s the incantation, Keith?”

Keith shifted his gaze to the matchstick in front of him and spoke softly, “Fiat Metallum, Professor.”

Professor McGonagall nodded, “Right, now what’s the most important thing when it comes to transfiguration? The one thing that sets transfiguration apart from other subjects?”

“Visualisation and Intent. One must add visualisation while using the spell and we will need a stronger intent than normal to get the spell to work well.” Keith said and pointed his wand at the matchstick.

He didn’t feel like answering anymore questions, so he softly muttered the spell while also imagining the match stick turning into a needle.

“Fiat Metallum!”

The spell hit the matchstick and right in front of everyone’s eyes, it morphed. The matchstick’s head stayed the same shape, the round phosphorus simply turning into a silvery shade.

The other end of the matchstick extended slightly as it sharpened. Keith frowned as he saw the outcome, clearly unsatisfied with his work.

‘Doesn’t look like a proper needle…’ he thought to himself before sighing, but contrary to his expectations, Professor McGonagall seemed extremely pleased with the outcome.

It was only after he looked up at her smiling face, did the weird silence around him disappear. The sounds of claps and cheers from the hufflepuffs entered his ears, making him smile.

“Ten Points for Hufflepuff.” Professor McGonagall declared before she went back to the front of the class and stood in front of her table.

Malfoy sneered as he too, pointed his wand at the matchstick and transfigured it. Keith couldn’t see what it morphed into, but looking at Professor McGonagall’s expression, he could tell that it wasn’t a success.

He spent the rest of his time trying to improve, taking around two minutes of rest before going for another attempt unlike the others in the class who were just spamming the spells, hoping to get lucky.

On his twelfth attempt, he ended up transfiguring his match into a perfect needle. He grabbed it and squinted his eyes to find any problems with it, but was unable to spot any.

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It looked like a perfect sewing needle, with one pointy end and another end with a hoop for thread.

That morning, Keith left the class with another twenty points for Hufflepuff, which added up to thirty including the first ten points.

He was in a good mood for the next few hours until he realised he had to attend the potions class. With a soft sigh, he rested his head on the table and looked at Hannah who was sitting beside him.

“Do you know anything about professor Snape? My sister didn’t really like him much when she was in Hogwarts.”

She swallowed the food that was in his mouth first and then responded to him, “I heard that he’s extremely biased towards Slytherin. In a way, I feel like we’re lucky to be paired with Ravenclaw for potions. It will probably be hard to get any house points from him.”

“Professor Snape appreciates those who can brew potions well. It might be hard to get house points from him, but our goal is to not lose any. Most of the points lost by houses other than slytherins come from potions so I hope you don’t antagonise him.”

Keith turned around to look at the person who spoke. It was a tall kid who was probably one of the most handsome guys he had seen in Hogwarts.

“Oh my name is Cedric Diggory by the way. Third year.” the boy said, grinning.

“I see… I’ll keep that in mind then. Thank you.” Keith said politely before getting up from his seat.

Hannah looked up at him with a curious look on her face, “Where are you going? The potions class starts in thirty minutes.”

“I’ll be there.” Keith said and headed to the hufflepuff common room before continuing to his dormroom.

Once inside, he pulled out one of his trunks from under his bed and opened it. Multiple potion ingredients lay inside, almost filling it up.

He shifted some of the ingredients from the top right corner to the middle until the cover of a book was revealed. He grabbed the book and a few other books under it before putting the ingredients back where they were.

Keith then pushed the trunk back where it was and pulled out the other one before he stashed three of the four books inside. The one that was left out, was opened.

‘I know you told me that it’s better to start when I turn twelve but I can’t wait… you started when you were just eight so, I think I’ll be fine.’ he thought to himself as he began to read the text.

It was written in mandarin, but he also saw a familiar handwriting at the bottom of each page, translating the Chinese sentences into English. Most of the book’s area was taken up by diagrams showing how to get things right, the drawings of ingredients, etc.

In total, Keith saw just three chapters.

The first one, was just an introduction to all the ingredients he would need. The second one was how to set up a bath and the third chapter explained how to absorb something called the “Essence”.

“Body Magic… the Chinese are the most advanced in this area but I really just wanted to learn about wandless magic instead. Maybe this will also be useful? Though I don’t really see how it can when all our spells are long ranged.” he muttered to himself before tossing the book into his trunk and grabbing another one.

“I’ll have to learn how to sense magical energy in the atmosphere first. Without that, I wouldn’t be able to absorb the so-called essence.”

He then began to read the contents of the book and tossed it into his trunk with a soft sigh, “Even this needs external stimuli. So annoying… but luckily, I have the ingredients to make the potion to get things going.”