I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up to No Good: Animagus transformation again

[alt_terry]

Fred and George, thanks for those books you slipped me from the Restricted Section, but I'm afraid they didn't do me any good. I don't think there is anything in them about the Animagus transformation that wasn't already in the books I saw in the Headmistress's private library.

It's so weird. Most of the Transfiguration textbooks I've seen are real practical: use this wand movement (and they'll give you a diagram). Use these specific words with this accent on these specific syllables. But the Animagus transformation is a different sort of thing altogether, and you don't use a wand to do it. All the books that try to describe it are so vague, it makes me want to tear my hair out. I wonder if any of the blokes who wrote these books could even do the transformation themselves. It's all so mystical, with long boring chapters about how you're supposed to meditate to try to channel your inner spirit animal. And a whole lot of stuff about something called chakras that I don't understand. How can a book explain to you how the inside of your mind works, especially if you're changing into something you're not?

I haven't quite worked up enough nerve to ask the Headmistress anything about it. I don't want her to suspect I'm working on this.

I've only found one thing that gives me any kind of real clue. There's this one book the Headmistress had, real slim, more like a pamphlet, called The Beast Within, and it suggests the beginning of the transformation starts in the fingernails and the hair. And the first step in mastering it is figuring out how to make your fingernails grow, like really fast. Or your hair. It's part of your body, and a part that's always changing, but sort of a dead part, see. I guess that means that if you cut your hair or your fingernails you can't feel it. Which I guess sort of makes sense: if you're trying to use your magic to mess with your body, it's better to start with something that won't hurt if you get it wrong. Anyway, near as I can tell, what it's suggesting is that if you can figure out how to make your fingernails or hair grow really, really fast, so fast you can even see them changing, then you've got a shot at mastering the transformation. And then, after you learn how to make then grow, the next step...and the harder one...is to make them shrink.

So anyway, I've been spending the last week staring at my fingernails, trying to figure out how to tell them to grow.

Nothing's happening so far. Except that staring at my fingernails so much makes me realise I probably should keep them cleaner. And it makes me feel sort of like an idiot.

Comments

[alt_gredforge]

Sorry the books didn't do you much good. We'll continue to keep our eye out for anything that might help and maybe check the shelves again in a month or two, in case any stuff has come back in that was checked out.

[alt_neville]

That's interesting stuff about the theory, though. But I bet I wouldn't be able to make any more sense of the books than you can. Transfiguration textbooks baffle me, even the ones for beginning students.

[alt_ron]

I don't think the stuff in books helps very much. I mean, for me, I do stuff best if I can see someone else do it and then try it. And I think it's loads better to have someone tell you about while they're showing you than to read some old book while you're sat in the common room. Or, y'know, for me when I am.

Anywiz, have you ever seen someone change? Shame none of us is an animagus or we could show you and tell you about it.

[alt_sally_anne]

Hair and fingernails, really?

I used to think I would LOVE to learn to do an animagus transformation but as I've learned more about Transfiguration, changing things about my own body has started to scare me a little. I worry I wouldn't be able to change back. I'm not sure if animagi ever get stuck, you know?