Chapter 38: Are You Serious?
It was clear that the new students wouldn't be learning how to transform living creatures in their first lesson. Professor McGonagall used a single match to demonstrate that it would take considerable time to move from turning simple objects into animals.
Despite their best efforts, the young wizards waved their wands with all their might, but the matches in front of them stubbornly refused to change. Sometimes, that's just how it is—others can make it look easy, but when it's your turn, everything goes wrong. And that "other" was undoubtedly Professor McGonagall.
"Careful, it's supposed to turn into a needle, not a silver wand," Professor McGonagall instructed, walking up and down the classroom aisles, constantly correcting their mistakes.
As time passed, half the lesson slipped by, and yet the matches remained unchanged, still ordinary matchsticks. No one had succeeded in turning them into needles.
The Hufflepuff students had managed to turn their matches into lumps of charcoal, but this wasn't good enough for Professor McGonagall, and they lost a point for destroying the teaching aid.
Ravenclaw, being the resourceful lot, tried a different approach. Seeing little progress, they altered their strategy. Rather than trying to transform the matches into needles, they changed the color of the matchsticks or sharpened one end in an attempt to fool the professor. Some even went so far as to bring their own needles, claiming they had completed the transfiguration.
But, of course, Professor McGonagall saw through all of these attempts and promptly deducted twenty points from Ravenclaw for cheating.
...
As Professor McGonagall glanced around the room, she couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. There didn't seem to be many exceptionally talented students in this year's class. The only one who had made any progress was...
Her eyes drifted to the front row. There sat Kyle, resting his chin on one hand while lazily waving his wand with the other. To her surprise, the matches in front of him were actually changing. Though they hadn't fully transformed into needles, they were halfway there—quite literally.
Kyle had conjured a needle, but only half of it. The transformation wasn't in a fixed position, either. Sometimes the needle would appear at the top of the matchstick, sometimes at the bottom, and sometimes it seemed stuck right in the middle.