What *Really* is the Purpose of Transfiguration?

[greg_a126]

No: HPFGUIDX 39671

So far we've all read 4 Harry Potter books.  Thus far, we've seen a 
grand total of 3 uses of Transfiguration: the Animagus 
Transfiguration, Cedric Diggory turning a rock into a dog during the 
first task, and Victor Krum partially transfiguring himself into a 
shark for the 2nd task.  Just for comparison's sake, there were a 
total of 4 champions, & through the first 2 tasks they used 
transfiguration twice, & at least 6 different charms: a Sumoning 
charm, whatever charm Fleur did to make the dragon fall asleep & 
then a charm to put out the fire on her skirt, the Conjunctivitis 
Curse (which I really think is just a specific type of a charm), the 
Bubble-Head Charm & the charm that Harry used to get the Grindylows 
to leave him alone.

And even in the bit of normal wizard life that we see when Harry 
visits the Weasleys we never see anyone use Transfiguration.  We see 
Mrs. Weasley use tons of charms to cook & clean, but never 
transfiguration.  If they could, why wouldn't they use 
Transfiguration all over the house to turn all of their old looking 
stuff into new looking stuff.  

Through 4 years of school, I've only seen the trio learn a single 
bit of Transfiguration I'd like to know how to do, and that's the 
very first one they learned.  On occasion, buttons pop off & I can 
never find a needle, but they learn how to make one w/ a match & 
those are usually much easier to find.  But from there, they just 
learn more and more useless stuff.  And Professor McGonagall on the 
first day of the class they ever had showed them something that they 
may one be able to do, turn their desk into a pig.  I'm not sure 
about anyone else out there, but really, I have never looked at my 
desk & thought to myself, well that's fine and good, but what I 
really need right now is a pig. 

So I guess the real purpose of the last three paragraphs is this.  
What really is the purpose of Transfiguration?  The rest of the 
classes I can understand.  Charms is easy enough, they're used all 
the time, DADA is obvious, Potions is easy to understand, Herbology 
helps you identify the ingredients you need to find to make your 
potions, History of Magic, well, "Those who don't know the past are 
condemmened to repeat it."  But as far as I can tell, 
Transfiguration seems about useless.  Write me back & tell me why 
I'm wrong.

Greg