While Anne had recieved a map from Flitwick, resorting to asking the other Ravenclaws was still easier. Even if she had a map, it was tedious to withdraw it from her pockets. Asking Padma was just that much faster and easier.

"Right Padma, what's our next lesson?"

Padma seemed mildly annoyed and hoped that this wouldn't go on for the whole year. "Herbology with Slytherin."

Anne's first guess of what Herbology was was that it was some sort of Wizarding Biology. She found her guess to be quite wrong as Herbology was little more than gardening. Of course, Sprout felt somewhat offended when Anne had compared it to something as simple as muggle gardening, seeing as the plants they were handling were magical.

"If we view this from a muggle perspective, what difference is there between a magical and a non-magical plant? A lot of the plants you've told us about, or the ones present in our book seem to be completely unknown to the muggle world. I'm certain that they would remember something as eyecatching as man-eating plants with teeth, or mandragora. How come muggles haven't discovered these? If the plants can be found in the wild, then certainly there's no wizard around them to obliviate any muggle that finds them." Anne said.

"Both of plants that you used as examples are possibly lethal. Muggles usually don't survive their encounters with either of them."

"Fine, non-lethal plants then. Why are they not found?"

"Most magical plants have the innate attribute of looking like any other plant that the muggle recognizes, thus they ignore them. Now miss Valerian, continue with your project."

Anne sighed and did not notice the Slytherins that were looking at her with hateful eyes. "Mudblood," they called her.

She had heard them say it, and responded. "I would agree, I personally think that I'm working with far too much dirt at the moment, although I have managed to not cut myself with the scissors. My blood isn't muddy just yet."

The Slytherins hated her for being muggleborn and for bringing up 'muggle knowledge' in their classroom. "She's also a stupid, ignorant fool." They thought. Anne didn't take any notice of it, or them for that matter, thinking they were neutral just like she assumed everyone was.

This lesson basically consisted of learning the name of a plant, what it's used for, and learning how to tend to the plants. This specific plant in particular (which Anne couldn't be bothered remembering the name of) needed to have its branches cut off once a week lest it would overgrow. Anne's thumb had never been very green in her life, and she quickly got bored of the repeated motions of her hand. "There's no end to this kind of job." she thought and really hated it quite a lot. Mowing lawns was much more fun, you'd see unmowed parts shrink as you did it and get a sense of completeness. But to Anne, this felt like all work and no gain.

She was considering if she should try cutting the branches with her magic as she had done with her table at home. She wasn't completely sure that it would be reliable though, she still had problems doing that. She decided that she would take the risk though, should she end up with disaster she could blame it on accidental magic or she could skip the lesson due to injury. She held out her hand, and the branch, without a sound, fell into her hand. Anne smiled, and kept doing it for the rest of the lesson without failing once. It was a lot less boring as it was practice on something that she actually found fun. She thought that no one noticed anyway.

Defense against the Dark Arts. Anne wasn't quite sure of what they would be learning. She expected that it would either contain generic combat spells, or how to dispel curses (because to Anne's knowledge of muggle literature, curses were long-lasting effects put on an object that were hard to get rid of), or they would only be taught how to deal with 'dark' things. What classified something as dark, she didn't know.

The other Ravenclaws didn't seem to agree. She and Terry were the only exceptions. Most of them had a somewhat sour look on them as they made their way to their classroom, the rest were neutral. They would be having this class with the Hufflepuffs, and those at least somewhat more eager to learn. If the subject taught any of the things that Anne thought it could, she thought that it would be at least somewhat interesting. Surely it had some applications for daily life!

The teacher that stood in front of them in their classroom wasn't exactly what Anne had been expecting. The man wore the coolest piece of headgear that Anne had ever seen in real life; It was a lavender-colored turban. One of its ends was twirled around his neck which also gave her the image that it was also a scarf. While the turban was undeniably awesome, she thought that the demeanor of the man didn't fit very well with it. He seemed extremely nervous, not knowing where to place his hands. He didn't exactly look scared, but he did seem uncomfortable with the situation. Actually, Anne had briefly seen him him at the sorting, and he had looked just as he did now, so she corrected herself and instead thought that he was uncomfortable with every situation. Really, the man would probably not speak if it wasn't neccesary for the job he had for some reason applied to.

Anne wondered whether the man wore the eyecatching turban to boost his own confidence. She felt pity for him. Had she not, she would probably have found the combination to be comical.

"G-Good afternoon, students. I am P-P-Proffessor Quirrell, I will be teaching you D-Defense against the D-Dark Arts." He looked nauseous at the idea.

"Good lord he stutters." Anne thought. It was without malice or irritation.

"In this class you will be l-learning how to defend yourself, not only ag-gainst other wizards b-but also against magical c-creatures such as d-d-d-dragons." Most of the other Ravenclaws seemed scared of the idea rather than excited about it. Some Hufflepuffs seemed more concerned about not harming the endangered dragons.

"Well, that clears up a lot. It's a class about combat." Anne thought.

"It however n-not only about learning a repertoire of s-spells, but also s-steeling your c-consciousness to recognize the t-tricks that some creatures use, such as b-boggarts. I-It is not only knowledge but also d-d-discipline and will."

"I can understand why most of the other Ravenclaws aren't too fascinated by the subject." Anne thought. "It's not something you can only study on. Although maybe they will change their minds when they become older out of need." Anne already considered herself mature enough.

"For today, we will p-practice the D-Disarming charm, Expelliarmus. Find a partner to work with or p-practice on one of the suits of a-armor, I d-do not mind which. A p-perfect Disarming Ch-Charm will not only d-disarm your target, b-but it will a-also send what y-you disarmed towards you. I-If it is too strong h-however, your target m-may instead be flung b-backwards, often q-quite violently. Be c-careful!"

Anne decided that she would use some armor for practice, but she had a question before they would start so she raised her hand. The other Ravenclaws had been expecting it.

"Y-Yes, miss... ?"

"Anne. Please call me Anne without any prefix. I was wondering, what makes an art 'dark'?"

The Ravenclaws couldn't figure out why she was being so personal. The Hufflepuffs probably thought that she was taking advantage of the frail proffessor.

"W-Well miss Anne, what usually classifies (Anne noted that he did not say define, suggesting that it was something agreed upon) something as 'd-d-dark' is more than one th-thing. Dark m-magic is u-usually addictive, dangerous, requires n-negative emotions to be u-used, destroy your s-sanity, or require you to prepare s-s-sacrifices b-beforehand."

"Something is dark because they need negative emotions? That's just stupid. Anger sprung from evolution because it was beneficial to our survival, therefore it isn't 'dark' or 'bad'."

"For example," Quirrell continued, "the three unforgivable curses. The K-Killing curse will... anyone it hits. The Tormenting curse c-can turn someone b-braindead for the r-rest of their lives, and the Imperius curse f-forces you to perform a-any order given."

She agreed. That did sound bad. "What is an unforgivable curse?"

"You would b-be sent to Azkaban s-should you perform or practice one on s-someone else." Anne didn't bother asking what Azkaban was. It was probably some sort of asylum, a prison, or execution camp. In other words, bad.

Unless Quirrell gave her an interesting answer, Anne only had one more question. The others were getting tired and wanted to practice. Was this common knowledge? "Then, why are all the unforgivable curses, well, 'curses'? What defines a curse? If something is classified as a Dark Art, is it a curse?"

Quirrell was silent for a short period. "M-Most, but not all curses are h-harmful and deliver p-pain and destruction, but s-sometimes d-destruction is useful. Some c-curses only disable their t-target for a while, such as the L-Leg Locking c-curse, a-and are therefore safe f-for use. We w-will even be learning a f-few in this class."

Anne was very satisfied with the answers she got and went to experiment with her suit of armor.

Casting a charm upon an object was not as mentally easy as it was to transfigure something. You couldn't imagine the armor as being in a state, because the Expelliarmus charm has a projectile that is associated with it, which must hit its target, and it takes time for the projectile to reach the armor. Fine, it wasn't really a 'projectile' as it wasn't composed of anything material, but for her it was the best word for it. It had velocity and direction. That was enough for her. With transfiguration, she could just imagine the object that she wished to transfigure already was transfigured and it would change instantly once her wand touched it. She didn't get far when she tried to do the same with this charm, as there were far more variables for her to consider. A shy girl from Hufflepuff that had also been practicing with armor had offered to help her as she could not even produce the projectile for the charm, but Anne doubted that she would be of any help and thus declined the offer. Yes, all of the other students had at least managed to produce the projectile. Terry was one of the few who had managed to disarm someone, or something. As for what disarming a suit of armor meant, it meant that the arm would dislocated by its shoulder and fly away.

"If being insane is good for transfiguration, then it is crap for charms. This calls for experimentation."

She walked up to the suit of armor.

After finishing her wand movements, she said "Expelliarmus!" and poked the armor with her wand. The arm flew off.

"T-Two points to Ravenclaw for original solution." Quirrell said, who had noticed her problems beforehand. Anne gave him a quick glance, assumed that an 'original solution' was inferior to a properly cast charm as it had not given her 5 points, and then returned to her thoughts.

"Well, at least I'm not incapable of charms. Although if I can't do it from a distance, that defeats the purpose of why I want to learn magic. This is something that I need to fix quickly." She realized that this was why she couldn't change the color of her Rubik's cube without touching it. Although she had seen magic being done, through non-prepared wand magic, that didn't have projectiles. Sprout had closed the door to the greenhouse they had their lesson in merely by waving her wand towards it. So, at least some magic didn't require projectiles.

"Wait, Rubik's cube?"

She retrieved the cube from one of her ever-filled pockets and changed its color. The match to needle transfigurations that she had done earlier today would last roughly 20 seconds unless she reapplied the transfiguration. She stared at her cube intently, waiting for it to return to its original colors. It did not.

"And thus, whatever magic I am doing with my hands is not transfiguration. Minerva can't stop me from doing it whatever I wish with it then." Anne had a mischevious grin on her lips.

The lesson finished without Anne being able to produce a proper Disarming Charm. She wasn't too happy about it, but accepted it. They had no more lessons for the day. Back in the common room, the other Ravenclaws were reviewing what they had learned today, and they didn't look tired even one moment. They hadn't gotten a lot of homework, just a little from Minerva. Anne didn't bother, she was always late to the minute. Normally she would use this time to laze off with her internet, but as the darn thing would not work at all, she would be doing other things to entertain herself.

Anne tried to find a place in Hogwarts where she could be alone. She decided that she would look in the library first. As it turned out, it wasn't empty, there were a few people there reading some books, but luckily there were rooms there that you could use for private reading. Anne entered an empty one and took out the two pieces of the needle that she had made during Transfiguration.

"This may take a few tries." This was her experiment:

Experiment 1:

1. Take one needle, transfigure to match.
2. Break match in half.
3. Turn both parts of the match into mush (a la failed wandless magic).
4. Mix both parts of mush.
5. Wait for the clump of mush to untransfigure.
6. Observe result.

"Since my wandless magic of turning things to mush is permanent, it is not transfiguration and should not interfere with the matches turning back into needles." Anne thought. She didn't bother writing anything of this. She preferred experiments that were trial and error and she was not fond of documentation.

Back in her house, turning things to mush wasn't really a reaction that she appreciated, and she found that trying to replicate something that you really tried hard to forget was quite difficult. Luckily, she had a bunch of random objects in her pockets that she could train on to make sure that her chances of doing two mush-changes in in sequence would be higher. Even if she managed to turn one half of the broken match into mush, if the other one exploded she would have to restart. And she didn't have much time to do both mush-changes, her transfigurations only lasted 20 seconds at the moment. She had a limited amount of needles and could not practice the mush-change on those.

After getting her mush-change up to something like a 50% success rate, she decided that she would start actually trying the experiment. On average, her total chance of success was 25%, as she had to do two successful mush-changes in a row.

On Anne's third try, she observed the following:

Turned match part 1 into mush.
Turned match part 2 into mush.
Mixed mush part 1 and mush part 2.

She waited intently for the mush to untransfigure. And there it was, a full needle, not two parts of it.

"Woohoo! Success!" She exclaimed. She had forgotten that she was in a library but it didn't matter, the private rooms were soundproof (Although they had windows to make sure that students wouldn't use them for purposes that were less appreciated by the library, Anne didn't think anything of it).

Experiment 2:

"What the hell is up with these spell names?"

She retrieved a very small and tiny teddy bear from one of her pockets and sat it upon the table.

"Expelliarmus!" she said and poked it. The arm of the poor toy was ripped off. Oh well, she could always fix it later by the mush-repair process once she was good enough at transfiguration to transfigure the toy. Atleast she knew it worked on objects other than armor. "Kinda wierd that it would do this to anything other than living things." she mused.

She retrieved an identical teddy bear from the same pocket.

She did the same wand movements. "Expel Arms!" she said and poked it. Unfortunately, nothing happened. She wasn't very surprised about it, but she had wanted to test it.

For the rest of the evening she just practiced cutting things as she had done in Herbology. It was impossible to perform without touching what she had wanted to cut, and the objects had to be absolutely tiny. She did however manage to do it to the needles, which she could not have done with just brute strength. Feeling satisfied, she went back to the Ravenclaw common room to be greeted by the painting hanging on the door, awaiting her with a riddle.

"What, is the circumference of a moose?"

"I'm a ninja?" The answer being a question was part of the answer. The door opened and she made her way to her bed. She was tired.