Kurumi spread her items out around her to get a better look at what she was working with. OK…just breath…this isn’t going to be that bad…just made a tent like you did in Ancient Runes only this time using Transfiguration spells…nothing to worry about…nothing to worry about… Kurumi repeated her pep talk over and over again in her heard not really sure if she believe any of it, but kept saying it anyway. Holding her wand in her still quivering hand, she looked around the room at the other students. Some were already finished while others were still in progress. While this was her first Transfiguration final and she didn’t know too much, she did know that she wasn’t going to get anyway just standing there holding her wand.

Time to get down and dirty. Well, she had the dirty part done already after her little slip in the mud previously. OK, it was time to come up with a game plan. She would transfigure the scarves into blankets and tie those to the trees using the vines and snakes after she had turned those into ropes. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the soggy leaves and twigs, but that would come after she had already got the base of her shelter done.

Kurumi then arranged her potted trees in a square formation only a few feet a part from one another – just big enough for her to lie down and be within the boundaries. OK, so step one was complete. Now, sleeping on this muddy floor was no deal, so she needed to make a base out of something…of course! The wet leaves and twigs! Skipping back over to the pile, she grabbed a single leaf to start with. No sense in there being a near disaster this early on into the final. OK, just remember concentration and visualization… Steadying her wand hand, she pointed it at the leaf. “ Temran Madera!” she said with as much conviction as she could. Slowly, but ever so surely, the leaf began to change and it turned into a nice study cherry brown plank of wood. YES! Kurumi said giving herself a mental pat on the back. She returned to her other leaves and after Temran Madera-ing all of them individually – she still couldn’t quite get the hang of transfiguring more than one leaf at a time just yet – she set all those to the side and turned her attention to the potted plants. Rather, the squirmy creatures that lived below the dirt.

“You’ll be fine,” she said to reassure the worms as she pulled a few of them out of the dirt and lay them down on the floor. OK, concentrate Kurumi. No squished worms this time…only nails… With a wave of her wand, Kurumi said “Tacque!” and kept her eyes closed to keep the image of a nice sturdy silver nail in her head. When she opened her eyes, she practically started doing back flips when she saw that all her worms had turned into nails. Picking up each one, she hugged them as if they were teddy bears instead of cold metal. “Thank you!”

OK…now for the part that she had been struggling with the most during the practical part of the lesson: using her wand as a hammer and not squishing the poor worms. Nope. That was so not going to happen this time around. After Fixate-ing one of her transfigured worms over two of her boards – the two she was going to nail together – she raised her wand high and said “Malleus!” as she came down with her wand. She heard a nice solid thud and looked down to see that there were no worm guts but a nicely nailed board. YES! she said after another mental pat on the back. She continued to Malleus her transfigured worms and leaves until she had finished making a nice wooden platform that she then pushed in the square area she had made with the potted plants. “There, now I won’t have to sleep on the mud,” she smiled. It would almost be like sleeping on a tatami floor. Ooooh…was there a spell to turn wood into tatami? Now that would be something very useful to know!

Step two now completed, now it was time to make the walls. While it technically would be best to use some more leaves and turn them into wooden planks to make walls, Kurumi decided to use the scarves into blankets method and then use them as a sort of teepee on top of her base instead. Kurumi grabbed one of her vines and took out her wand. After another swish and flick movement, she casted Palus and managed to turn it into a solid pole when she then casted Fixate on to keep it standing in the center of her wooden base. Next step was making some blankets!

Jenny and her had had plenty of practicing transfiguring scarves into blankets, so Kurumi figured this wouldn’t bee too difficult to do. “Vestis vellus!” she said as she envisioned a large soft and warm blanket that she could use to wrap around the top of the pole. “Cordage Creatus!" she said as she turned her snake friend into a rope and tied it around the massive blanket at the top of the pole. She then used the remaining nails and nailed the ends of the blanket down to various places around the wooden deck-base-thing she had made. She then transfigured a few more of the scarves into various types of blankets and set those inside her now completed shelter.

“Hmmm….I wonder what else it needs…” she yawned as she lied down on the blankets and absentmindedly pulled another blanket over herself. Ah, it was so nice and warm under the blanket and inside her shelter. She closed her eyes, for just a second, but ended up dozing off. Clearly, she had been up too late studying for her finals. Hopefully Professor Kingsley wouldn’t mind. She had completed the assignment after all.