CHAPTER EIGHT
“Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous
magic you will learn at Hogwarts,” she said. “Anyone messing
around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been
warned.”
Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were
all very impressed and couldn’t wait to get started, but soon realized
they weren’t going to be changing the furniture into animals for a
long time. After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each
given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end
of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to
her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone
all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.
The class everyone had really been looking forward to was De-
fense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell’s lessons turned out to be
a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which
everyone said was to ward off a vampire he’d met in Romania and
was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His
turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince
as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they
weren’t sure they believed this story. For one thing, when Seamus
Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the
zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather;
for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the
turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of
garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.
Harry was very relieved to find out that he wasn’t miles behind
everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and,
like him, hadn’t had any idea that they were witches and wizards.
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