"Oh? You've decided?" Louis said from the side, dropping heavy hints and giving Harry a preemptive warning. "You know, the side effects might be more than you can accept."
Better to say it up front—if Harry complained after transforming, that would be troublesome. When Louis did things, he made sure there were no loose ends.
"Yes. I've decided. I want to become stronger," Harry said seriously. "And then learn magic from you."
"Once you're stronger, learning magic won't be a problem," Louis agreed without hesitation.
There were countless branches of magic. Even if Harry finished everything in the textbooks, Louis could still teach him Dark Magic. And before long, Louis felt he'd be acquiring Dark Magic spells with terrifying power levels anyway. This little issue didn't bother him.
Since Harry had already made up his mind, Louis didn't hold back. He carefully twisted open the crystal vial and handed it to Harry.
This crystal vial was a product fused with endless small red bottle. Each time, it could pour out a precise dose of the Spring of Drowned Maiden—no risk of drinking too much or too little.
Harry, unlike Louis, wasn't careful at all. He took the crystal vial boldly, tipped it back without a word, and drained it in a few seconds.
"Is this a potion?" Harry wiped the water from the corner of his mouth, puzzled. "Why doesn't it taste like medicine?"
It tasted like plain water—nothing like a potion at all.
Harry hadn't had much exposure to potions, but whether it was the ones he'd brewed himself or those he'd drunk in the hospital wing, they'd all had strange smells and awful tastes.
By comparison, this "enhancement potion" was almost disappointingly ordinary in flavor.
Of course—this was spring water. What potion taste would it have?
Louis muttered that in his head, then said aloud, "That's exactly what makes this potion special. How do you feel?"
"Feel?" Harry looked down at himself. "Nothing in particular… ah!"
Harry suddenly cried out in pain, clutching his stomach as his face went deathly pale.
"What is it? Stomach ache?" Louis asked.
It couldn't be that he'd upset his stomach, right?
"It's not pain—this is strange. It feels like something is running wild inside my body. I feel like I'm about to lose control of it."
Something running wild?
Louis immediately thought of the basic effect of this special Magic World version of the Spring of Drowned Maiden.
An increase equivalent to the magic power of three adult wizards—something like that was bound to be hard to control.
Was this going to trigger a magical outburst?
A magical outburst often occurred when underage wizards awakened their powers. Unable to control the surging magic within them, it would burst out and cause unpredictable changes to the surroundings.
This could include flickering lights, exploding bulbs, shattering glass, objects vanishing, or even matter being transformed or transfigured…
Harry's current situation was extremely similar to a magical outburst, and the principle was basically the same—he couldn't control the power inside him.
Faced with this, Louis didn't have many options. He wasn't exactly a proper wizard himself, and as a black-qi wizard, there wasn't much he could do in an emergency.
But he could give advice.
"Harry, grab your wand and guide that power outward," Louis said. What Harry needed most right now was to release the pressure inside him. Even after releasing it, his magic would still increase to the combined total of three adult wizards plus his own.
But through the repeated process of releasing and refilling, his magical capacity would keep expanding.
Combined with the special effect of the Spring of Drowned Maiden—doubling physical fitness in a male state—he should be able to endure it without much trouble.
And a wand itself helped guide magic. With a wand, the effort would be twice as effective.
"My wand?" After hearing Louis's words, Harry instinctively grabbed his wand.
In that instant, the force tormenting him surged straight into the wand. Being so closely attuned to it, Harry could even sense the swelling and power as the magic flooded in, the wand resonating with his will as it expanded under the sudden influx.
Right now, he felt as if simply swinging his wand would produce something terrifying.
No—he couldn't use any offensive magic here.
Harry took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the urge to wave his wand.
"Don't hold it in. Let it out," Louis said.
"It would be dangerous," Harry gritted his teeth and replied with difficulty. "I can feel it—my spells are terrifyingly powerful right now."
"Then just use a spell that doesn't have any offensive power, wouldn't that solve it?" Louis rolled his eyes. "You've been studying for so long—don't tell me you don't know a single spell like that?"
A spell without offensive power?
Harry thought hard, only to realize that most of what he was good at seemed to be spells with offensive effects—what people called jinxes and curses.
Those definitely wouldn't work. His instincts told him that no matter how ordinary a jinx was, if he cast it now, its power would be enormous.
He didn't even have the presence of mind to consider whether he might hurt Louis. In his current state, careful thinking was simply impossible.
The swelling sensation inside him grew stronger and stronger. Just as Harry felt he was about to burst, a memory suddenly surfaced—
In Herbology class, Professor Sprout had taught them a spell for watering plants…
That spell had absolutely no offensive power!
Harry clearly remembered that no matter how much force he put into it, no matter how firm his resolve, those weak spells had never been able to produce any kind of attack.
That was it.
Harry raised his wand and shouted loudly, "Aguamenti!"
Louis: ???
Louis felt completely blindsided. He'd been wondering how long it would take Harry to realize that he'd turned into a girl—after all, there were plenty of chances to come into contact with cold water, and the odds of an accidental transformation were pretty high.
But he hadn't expected it to happen now. After all, the entrance to the headmaster's office didn't look like a place where one would come into contact with cold water at all.
Even less had he expected Harry to cast Aguamenti at a moment like this.
Wasn't this basically guaranteeing a transformation? Aguamenti didn't summon hot water.
A powerful jet of water burst from the tip of Harry's wand, like a high-pressure water gun juiced up on some blue miracle pill, blasting straight into the ceiling.
After striking the ceiling, the torrent scattered like rainfall, pouring down into the corridor. Naturally, neither Louis nor Harry escaped the fate of being drenched.
At first, Harry didn't notice anything amiss. He only felt a sense of relief, as if the discomfort inside him had eased. The rampaging magic within his body seemed to have completely calmed down.
Spring of Drowned Maiden Special Effect II: When transformed into a female, magic power increases twelvefold, and control over magic is greatly enhanced.
Louis stared with a strange expression at Harry, whose appearance had undergone a drastic change. For a moment, he didn't even know how to explain Harry's current condition to him.
Should he say, "Congratulations, you really have turned into a girl"?
Just as Louis was wrestling with that dilemma, an angry voice rang out.
"What do you think you're doing here?"
Oh ho—someone's here. Who was lucky enough to behold Miss Hally's visage?
Louis and Harry turned their heads at the same time, looking toward the source of the voice.
And then they saw Snape, his face twisted with anger, soaked through by water.
Professor Snape looked rather disheveled. His long hair was plastered wetly against his shoulders, his pale face set in a cold, severe expression, thin lips pressed into a line sharp enough to make any student who saw it tremble in fear.
But the moment his gaze landed on Hally as she turned around, that expression shattered completely.
His face went even paler. His body swayed slightly, as if he were about to faint, his lips turning white as they parted just a little.
"Lily?" he said, his voice trembling.
----
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