Transfiguration

Considered a branch of magic, this may be the least explained and most confusing of the classes that Harry actually takes. This is interesting, because even more than Flitwick, and totally unlike both Snape and Slughorn, we actually read about Harry taking notes in this class. We just do not have solid information about the content of these notes.

Animate to Inanimate Transfiguration

The story Meaning of One, Part One was written around the time of the sixth official book. Despite the contradiction with cannon, it brings up an interesting point. In that story, Bill talks about the ancient Egyptians using transfiguration as a trap.¹ Per the ideas in that story, the victims of such a trap experience a severe form of sensory deprivation, and often never fully recover from it.²

Contrast this to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in which Slughorn disguises himself as an arm chair. Rather than experiencing sensory deprivation, he is acutely aware when Dumbledore pokes him with a wand, despite being in the form of a chair.³

Did Slughorn, who certainly did not intend to damage himself, purposefully only incompletely transfigure himself? Or is Sovran's theory of sensory deprivation entirely uncanonical, despite its logical soundness?