The corridor leading toward Transfiguration hummed with low chatter, the clatter of shoes on flagstones echoing against stone walls polished by centuries of magic.
Cassius moved through it with calm precision — not hurrying, but never dawdling.
His books were neatly tucked under one arm, wand secure in its holster, expression unreadable.
He'd always enjoyed Transfiguration, even before coming to Hogwarts.
It was magic at its most direct — control over form, matter, and essence.
Transfiguration was one of the main schools of magic, while not as grand as Charms which covered three school of magic, Evocation, Conjuration, and Abjuration magic, then Transfiguration would be Transmutation.
And as listed in Gamp's law, only five things cannot be created using this magic: Food, Money, Life, Love, and information.
The main reason for the first two is because an item will always revert back to its origional state once the magic runs out, but beyond that even if food could be transfigured it would have no nutrients, simply like eating tofu, a means to only fill the belly.
Love, and Life were to complex and in almost all cases touched upon forbidden or dark arts.
And lastly information which would belong to another school of magic, such as Divination, or Astrology because even with magic you cannot transfigure a map of a region you yourself have never seen, sure you could configure a map in duplicate of another map you've seen but that is still something from something.
All the greatest wizards in history were masters of transfiguration, and Cassius young though he might be intended to be another.
When he arrived, the classroom was empty.
The morning sun fell across neat rows of desks, glinting off brass instruments and stacked chalkboards.
At the front of the room sat a tabby cat perched perfectly still atop the teacher's desk, tail flicking rhythmically, amber eyes half-lidded in quiet appraisal.
Cassius stopped short.
Ah, he thought.
Professor McGonagall.
He recognized her immediately.
He had read the books and seen her tabby form in the movies.
Anyone who checked the Animagus registrar at the ministry of magic could also know the professor was an animagus as well as her animal form if they were bored as well i suppose.
The cat's gaze followed him as he entered.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Typically the reaction was either to ignore the cat, or try to pet the cat.
The latter was the correct approach since to lay your hands on a teacher would come at a serious cost beyond the heart attack when she transformed back right in front of you.
Then, a spark of mischief tugged at the corner of Cassius's lips — rare, but genuine.
His mind was still alive with the memory of his success in Charms, the way the magic had obeyed, reshaped itself according to his will.
Why not try something different before class began?
He drew his main wand and held it against his chest.
The air seemed to tighten around him, drawn into a single thread of intent.
His thoughts coiled inward, focusing on density, balance, musculature — the structure of a body that wasn't his own.
Once he had everything pictured just perfectly, he then cast the spell.
"Gwist hû"
The transformation happened soundlessly.
His bones compressed, hair rippled into fur, and his vision sharpened until he could see the faint shimmer of heat in the air.
Until at it's end a medium sized dog stood where Cassius Snape had previously
The Shibu Inu — small, agile, alert.
Strong memory, strong instincts.
Perfect.
He shook once — experimentally — and padded forward, claws ticking lightly against the stone.
The cat's tail froze mid-flick.
Cassius — now the dog — trotted up to the front desk, gave a polite little bow of the head (he wasn't sure if dogs bowed, but the thought amused him), and then calmly sat beside the feline professor, mirroring her posture exactly.
The cat's pupils widened.
For a long moment, the room was utterly still.
Then, McGonagall — or rather, the cat — tilted her head toward him, ears twitching sharply.
The two of them regarded each other in absolute silence, as if caught in a standoff of decorum.
~
From Professor McGonagall's Perspective
Minerva McGonagall prided herself on her composure. She had seen students turn each other into frogs, cauldrons into puddings, and even once a broomstick into something unrepeatable.
But this—
This was something else entirely.
Her first-year class hadn't even started yet.
The boy hadn't spoken a word.
And yet here she was, watching a student perform a full human-to-animal transfiguration upon himself!
Her heart lurched.
For a moment, pure academic panic flared — every rule, every warning she'd ever given about the irreversible risk of such magic shouted in her head.
He'll lose himself!
she thought wildly.
He'll forget who he is before I can even reverse—
But then, the dog — no, the boy — looked at her.
And there it was.
Intention.
Awareness.
Not the dull, instinctual blankness of a creature caught in spellshock.
The dog's gaze was calm.
Curious.
Intelligent.
He even had the audacity to sit like a trained companion beside her desk, as though assisting her in teaching the lesson about to be delivered unto the students who arrived, or worse yet to those who arrived late to class.
Minerva's fur bristled.
Her whiskers quivered with a dozen competing emotions — outrage, admiration, fear, and, somewhere beneath it all, reluctant amusement.
Merlin's sake, so this is severus's son, she thought grimly.
This new House Draconis is going to drive me grey by Christmas, that and that bloody hat sending me nothing but troublemakers once again into Griffindor.
She debated changing back immediately, scolding him on the spot — but curiosity won out.
She wanted to see what he would do next once he found out he was stuck like this.
So she stayed silent.
Together, cat and dog sat sentinel at the head of the room as the rest of the students began filing in.
The chatter was immediate.
"Aw, look at the dog!"
"And the cat! They're so cute!"
"Do you think they belong to the professor?"
A few students stepped forward, clearly tempted to pet one or both, but stopped when they noticed how still the animals were.
The cat's amber eyes were razor-sharp.
The dog's gaze, though friendlier, had an almost unnerving intelligence.
"Bit creepy," one Hufflepuff whispered. "Cats and dogs don't just sit together like that."
"Maybe they're trained?" offered a Ravenclaw uncertainly.
Cassius sat perfectly still, tail wagging once — precisely once — every ten seconds as if routinely chasing away an invisible fly.
His control over his canine body was delicate, but difficult, he could control all his normal parts but wagging his tail proved difficult, afterall he didnt have a tail as a human.
He could feel his magic still coating him, the feeling being almost exactly like what was written in a book on animagus's except for the fact this was human transfiguration as a spell not a ritualized conversion.
But using the concept of an animagus, gave Cassius rise to the belief that if one properly compartmentailized their abilities with Human Transfiguration then a false animagus was possible.
In the back of his mind beyond the control there was another conciousness, one that wanted to bark, to have him run around the room, but he managed to hold it back.
He resisted, forcing the will of his human mind to remain dominant.
The balance was delicate, but not impossible.