Novel Full Chapter 638: Tempting Training
Chapter 638: Tempting Training
Once again, the students saw the craftiness of Professor Hap.
He had no intention of giving his students much time to think – let alone a week – and as the other students hesitated, he called Harry up by name. “How can a man who aspires to be an Auror be short of courage?”
Without waiting for a response, Harry was dragged to stand in the golden circle.
“Since this is an experiential class, let’s just save the trouble, what do you think?” Felix asked with a smile and Harry’s heart leaped as he stammered, “That’s right – um -” “Great.” ” Felix said, and then he reached out and Harry’s body quickly shrank down to become the same grey rabbit as Susan Bones.
“Wow!” Susan exclaimed and couldn’t help but come closer.
“No touching.” Ron said guardedly. Susan rolled her eyes angrily, though she didn’t relent and kept her eyes on the little, furry creature sprawled on the ground.
“You’re still sober and sane, aren’t you, Potter?” Felix asked towards Harry, and the rabbit on the floor nodded dramatically, dumbly with his mouth open, a girl’s eyes glowing with excitement and making suppressed squeals as if she is a Harry admirer. Felix glanced at her, good, you’re next.
“So, let’s get to the questions … first …”
Harry found himself in a strange state, his consciousness seemed to be crudely shoved into a small, cramped drawer that made him feel uncomfortable. Then his mind jolted, with a tidal wave of unbelievable information – first a small cacophony of noise, the “rustle” of clothes, the “creak” of shoes on the floor, giggles, whispers … which was filtered through some kind of organ and then poured into his ears.
The tone of Professor Hap’s voice was not the same as usual, it became sharper.
Then there is a change in the sense of sight and smell.
For the first time, Harry could see directly behind his head – he could see both Professor Hap and his classmates in front of him, as well as Professor McGonagall and the rest of the students behind him, and the colour of their skin had become very strange, appearing in a cold grey shade along with the surrounding tables and chairs became a little blurred, and Harry wondered if it might be due to his own near-sightedness.
If that was ruled out, then the rest was obvious: the rabbit’s eyesight was not good and probably not up to par with his own. But Harry found their sense of smell to be quite remarkable, and he could now clearly distinguish a whiff of small biscuits in the air.
“Potter?” Felix asked with concern, “Still not getting used to it?” Harry snapped back and shook his head, then nodded. Felix smiled understandingly as he raised his voice slightly so that he could be heard by the rest of the group.
“There are many differences in the sensory organs between humans and animals, so transfiguration is often difficult to adjust to, causing unnecessary panic, and this is one of the difficulties when Animagus first transforms …”
“Is that so?” Someone in the crowd asked Susan in a whisper.
Susan shook her head in confusion, and whispered, “It seems so, the sense of hearing and smell have become acute, but the sense of sight has deteriorated dramatically, but I was too frightened to think of anything but the Professor’s question-” “No wonder you had closed your eyes for some time.” A realization dawned on her friends.
A few students let out small “Oops!” yelps.
Felix pretty much repeated the question he had just asked.
Harry lasted a few minutes longer than Susan Bones, but not to the point of astonishment.
As he had watched Susan Bones’ experience earlier, he had thought in his head about how he would react if he ever found himself in such a situation. His first thought was to rely on the Occlumency. But once he had actually transformed, he realized that the situation had turned out to be completely different from what he had imagined: he seemed to have lost his magic powers, and the Occlumency was no exception, so he could only resist it with his will. But living in the body of a beast, his mind inevitably became confused, his instincts began to emerge and gradually took over, and he found his mind growing heavier and heavier, fatigued as if a voice was asking him to sleep …
At that moment, Felix raised his wand and with a loud bang, Harry was back to his old form. He breathed heavily, feeling a little dizzy for a moment, and Felix helped him to his feet. “I’m fine – no, no need for a potion.” Harry panted, as the Occlumency kicked in, clearing the lingering effects of discomfort from his mind. He returned to the group.
“You have reacted a little too dramatically,” Ron said apprehensively, “Is it really that bad? More severe than the Imperius Curse?”
“It’s alright,” Harry muttered in a small voice, “it’s like a temporary body swap, I sort of understand Voldemort-” there was an intake of breath heard from next to him. “-why Voldemort isn’t in his right mind.” He insisted on finishing his sentence.
On the other side, Felix called up another student, this time a witch, the one who he had just suspected to be Harry’s admirer.
“Students who have had transfiguration experiences stand together and share your experiences fighting against beastification with each other. Would you like to try it, Miss Elvira? I believe you have good grades in Transfiguration and Potions …”
Elvira glanced at Harry, who had walked up next to Susan Bones, and hesitated for only a few seconds before agreeing. Professor McGonagall and Hermione shot him a fairly odd look, which Felix pretended not to see.
Elvira only lasted less than five minutes before she began to ignore Felix’s questions. He had no choice but to turn her back and Elvira immediately ran happily over to Harry’s side and chatted happily with them, seemingly unaffected.
With Felix’s skilful persuasion, all the students either actively or passively experienced the rabbit’s point of view, and when the last one had finished, they felt a sense of relief that it had not been as hard as they had thought, and they had so many people with them to keep them in line.
When the students left the room, they were laughing and joking, already treating this morning experience as a novel and interesting experience, and many were ready to brag about it to their friends.
“Minerva, I’m afraid this session will lead to a wave of imitations among the students, so it’s best to publicize it in the near future and strictly forbid any private transfiguration of their classmates.”
Felix stroked his chin thoughtfully. Professor McGonagall grunted in reply, not quite satisfied with Felix’s verbal baiting of her students, “This kind of approach reminds me of Professor Bagshot, except he-” Professor McGonagall hesitated, but didn’t voice her suspicions that Bagshot might be an acolyte. She pursed her lips and said, “He’s on probation now.”
“Minerva, I’m not anything like Professor Bagshot.” Felix shrugged, “I simply dispelled the fear in the students’ minds and let them know that their fear was simply the ‘unknown’ itself, after all – sometimes we have to admit that decisions made in ignorance are often both irrational and unobjective.”
Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, slightly persuaded. She swallowed and continued, “Okay – you have a point, but do you know who I just thought of?” Without waiting for a reply from Felix, she announced the answer dryly, “It’s Dumbledore. Full of weird and wacky reasoning, but the most recently he went to such lengths to try and convince me to add a muggle snack to the school menu-”
“You agreed?” Felix asked, in amazement.
“Of course not!” Professor McGonagall huffed as if she had been wronged, “He’s already unreliable enough, especially this term … hmmm, I’m not …” she whispered with considerable annoyance and ranted the suppressed emotion, which had obviously been on her mind for a long time, and Felix acted as a good listener, nodding and smiling now and then, and chiming in with short words.
“Is that true?”
“That was a surprise to me too.”
“It was really hard on you, Minerva.”
Professor McGonagall paused, her face flushing slightly as she readjusted her boxed glasses, feeling slightly embarrassed by her outburst, and she changed the subject stiffly, “By the way, what’s with your transformation?” She glanced abruptly at his arm.
“Human Transfiguration, I guess.” Felix played dumb.
Professor McGonagall said with some disdain, “I’m a professor of transfiguration.”
When she left, Felix stuck his hands in his shirt pockets and furrowed his brow. The question that had been on his mind for so long resurfaced; is there something wrong with Dumbledore’s body or not? He couldn’t tell now, which seemed to mean one thing, Dumbledore had gone much deeper into the realm of the soul than he had.
But Dumbledore didn’t want to talk about it, and he got no response despite his several attempts to bring up that issue.
Felix suddenly felt a little tricky.
Time went by and the month of December approached. In between the students had several more unique lessons on Animagus magic, and they were exposed to more and more advanced content, involving a portion of the knowledge on human transformation.
“What did I tell you?” Professor McGonagall growled at Ron, “Just familiarize yourself with how the magic is mobilized and don’t let it affect-” Ron grimaced bitterly, his arms twice as thick as normal and his skin surface covered with fine scales.
Professor McGonagall waved her wand and restored his arm to its original shape.
By now four weeks had passed since the first lesson, and with a few more snowfalls, the weather continued to get colder. Felix’s approach did have an effect, no students dropped out voluntarily and only two were advised to leave because they couldn’t keep up, they proved to have a terrible will and transfiguration skills at the same time.
As the students became comfortable with the course itself, Felix also came up with new and more energy-efficient ways of teaching.
For example –
Professor McGonagall arrived a little late one day, and when she did, she found the staff room furnished with the single tables that were used for wizard rank exams, and on the tables, there were small animals, such as rabbits, owls, ferrets, badgers, foxes, lion cubs, hawks, hounds … They stayed honestly on the tables, moving stiffly like a row of taxidermy animals.
Two or three inches above the heads of these animals an assortment of snacks hovered, such as nuts, fruit preserves, owl food, sausages, meat pies, etc., emitting an enticing aroma. Every now and then the creature beneath the food looked up with eager eyes and then quickly looked away.
Professor McGonagall looked at it blankly.
In addition to this, Felix had specially appointed a supervisor.
A house elf stood respectfully on an empty chair, both hands clasped nervously at his chest as if he was praying. He had a protruding nose, and large bat-like ears that flopped around as his head twitched, and he was dutifully observing a wonderful view in the staff room.
Soon his eyes lit up. “Mr. Hap,” the house elf suddenly pointed his finger at a badger and spoke in an excited tone. Professor McGonagall looked over in the direction of the finger; the little fellow propped his body up on two hind legs and swung his forelimbs comically through the air in an effort to reach a yellow honey lump above him.
“Well done, Cloudbur.” Felix complimented, nonchalantly flipping through a page of the book as he flicked his wand.
The badger transformed into a male wizard in a blink of an eye, and Justin hung his head in defeat as he went to sit in the chair next to him. “Thirteen and a half minutes, not bad.” Felix said calmly. But he is the first to fail, Justin thought disappointedly, even the few girls had lasted longer than him.
“Kee!”
He looked down to see a Niffler looking up at him, holding up a piece of parchment in her hand and urging him repeatedly out loud.
The professor had really left no stone unturned … Justin thought to himself, not only had he brought Niffler into the Ancient Rune classroom, but now he had made her his assistant. He took the parchment and began to fill out the contents on it carefully; it was rumoured that these questionnaires would be collected in the Hogwarts library, with a high probability of being stored in the restricted books section.
“Thinking – relatively clear; Self-assessment – seven out of ten; Sample Transfiguration of the Day – Hmmm – Badger, Feelings … not quite used to it, constricted … didn’t feel like a fish out of the water as other students mentioned … what animal are you planning to choose next time – -” He looked up, searching for inspiration from the crowd of small animals.
After a moment of thought, he looked down and wrote, “Pine Marten.” Justin put a question mark on it, and after some thought, he decided to cross it out and fill in ‘pheasant’ instead. A lot of people had chosen their Patronus form today, so maybe he could try it too.
Soon a second student was restored to human form, and one by one, they skilfully found seats and began to fill in the questionnaire. Some picked up a jar of Calming Draught from the table and poured themselves a small glass, drinking it in silence, as they watched with interest the moments in which the others made fools of themselves.
A white peacock strutted around the table, then fluttered down with an “ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh” sound. In a flash of white light, Draco Malfoy appeared with a pale face, stumbling as he held onto the table.
His eye met the lion cub sprawled on the table and Draco gave it a hard stare before turning his head to glare at the greasy hound. A few tables away, a small, pocket-sized beaver kept shrugging its snout and quirking its whiskers.
Within five minutes, they all turned into students.
Before class ended, Felix and Professor McGonagall went from one to another and distributed some fresh leaves to the students.
“Is this a mandrake leaf?” Ron looked at his share with surprise, “It doesn’t look much like it.”
“Because this isn’t mandrake, Weasley.” Felix gave a smug smile, “I pulled it off the Christmas tree Hagrid moved to the great hall this morning by hand, and he didn’t even notice it. I used the Disillusionment Charm …”
“Well done, Professor.” Ron whistled lightly.
Professor McGonagall ignored the silly talk between them as she cleared her throat and said to the crowd, “There are still two weeks to go before Christmas, and it’s about time – now that you’ve persevered this far – both me and Felix intend to give you gradual access to the preparations for Animagus, starting today.”
“The leaf distributed to you is enchanted, and the next time we meet I want you to make sure it’s still in your mouth.”
“At that time I will hand out the real mandrake leaves.”
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