Chapter 40: Transfiguration, Mate!
Hermes watched the odd little object hovering near Regulus's desk and felt only contempt.
He could admit it, at least in the privacy of his own skull. Regulus Black's foundations were frightening. His spellwork was clean, his control unnervingly steady, and his grasp of theory was the sort that made Professors speak more carefully around him.
But Hermes still clung to a simple belief, stubborn as a burr under skin. In real combat, victory belonged to the wizard who could end a fight in an instant. Life or death magic. Pain that crushed the will. A curse that left no room for recovery.
Compared to that, what did Transfiguration amount to? Tricks. Classroom juggling. Making objects look impressive for marks and applause.
He could not see the point of Regulus's current practice, and he certainly could not see the terrifying potential behind it. The microscopic rewriting of a thing's essence was a kind of power Hermes had no language for, so he dismissed it.
In his mind, Regulus was only making a stone harder. Brighter. Stranger.
What practical use was that?
In a duel, would you throw a hardened stone at someone?
Absurd.
Avery tried to catch his eye, a sharp silent warning to keep quiet. Hermes ignored it on purpose.
He made his footsteps heavier as he crossed the dormitory, as if volume alone could prove a point. At his bed, he dropped an old book with a blank cover onto the nightstand.
Thud.
The sound landed like a brick in the quiet room.
Regulus's magic dissipated at once. The faint shimmer around the graphite vanished, and the little stone slipped back onto the desk, plain and dull again.
Regulus lifted his head. His grey eyes settled on Hermes without heat, without irritation, as if Hermes were no more remarkable than a draught through a window.
"Something the matter?" Regulus asked. His voice carried no emotion.
Hermes turned, leaning against the bedpost. His expression wore its usual gloom, with a thin edge of provocation.
"Nothing," he said. "Just thinking it's a shame some people waste their time on flashy tricks with no substance. Real power doesn't come from moulding stones into different shapes."
The words were aimed like a jab.
Avery's face tightened into a frown. Alex Rosier immediately lowered his gaze, as if staring at the floor hard enough might make him invisible.
Regulus studied Hermes for a moment and then spoke slowly.
"Your understanding of power is extreme, and narrow."
Hermes's eyes sharpened.
"You only see the surface of destruction and pain," Regulus continued, calm as ever. "You fail to see the force that lies in the fundamental rules that make this world what it is. As for knowledge…"
He gave a faint shake of his head.
"You probably do not know that the wizard most widely recognised as the most powerful in the world today, Albus Dumbledore, is a master of Transfiguration at its peak."
Hermes's face tightened, just slightly. Of course he knew the name. Everyone did. But he had never bothered to ask what, precisely, Dumbledore excelled at. In Hermes's mind, power meant curses, not classrooms.
"And," Regulus said, rising from his chair, "you seem to think poorly of my magic. Coincidentally, I also think your magic is nothing to praise."
His wand was already in his hand. Alex did not even see when it happened.
Regulus lifted it and pointed it at Hermes.
Hermes's instincts snapped awake. He reached for his own wand, preparing to block, to counter, to do anything that might seize the initiative.
Regulus moved first.
Or rather, the magic took effect first.
There was no flash. No dramatic sound. No visible beam, no spark, no sign at all that something had been cast.
Hermes simply felt his breathing stop working.
The air he dragged into his mouth and nose became useless the instant it entered him. It did not feed his lungs. It did not satisfy the body's demand. It was like inhaling nothing, less than nothing, something that could not be turned into life.
His eyes widened. He sucked harder, faster. His chest rose and fell, but the panic only deepened because the relief never came.
He tried to speak, to demand an explanation, to spit out a threat. No sound left his throat.
He tried to raise his wand. His mind, already starving, began to swim. His arm went heavy, as if his bones had filled with sand.
He could not cast without words, not like this, not when his thoughts were breaking apart.
Hermes stared at Regulus in raw terror.
Regulus stood with his wand raised, utterly still. His gaze was not the gaze of someone struggling with rage. It was the gaze of someone looking at a problem.
At a demonstration.
It was the extension of Regulus's earlier theorising.
He had not attempted a precise elemental conversion. That would be too slow at his current level, too detailed for a moment like this. Instead he chose something simpler, and far more brutal.
No specific target. Only a definition.
With non directional Transfiguration, Regulus forced the gases in the immediate area to become unbreathable. He cast the spell and let magic handle the rest.
It was more feasible than trying to turn oxygen into poison, and he did not intend to kill.
Avery watched with shining eyes. He understood none of the mechanics. He could not even tell whether it counted as Dark Arts. It did not matter. The mystery only made it feel higher, more frightening, more absolute.
Alex had gone pale. Both hands clamped over his mouth, as if he might accidentally make a sound that invited attention. He had not imagined that their dormitory could become a place like this.
First years.
This was not a childish scuffle. It looked like the opening note of murder.
Hermes's face flushed red, then began to darken. His eyes bulged. His body started to twitch, jerking in small involuntary spasms.
Fear hollowed Alex's stomach.
Hermes's inner terror reached its peak.
He could not breathe. He could not cast. His magic scattered under the agony, impossible to gather. He felt death pressing closer, real and cold, wrapping around him.
What sort of spell did this?
Silent. Invisible. Not a curse that struck flesh, not a jinx that shattered bones, but something that tore away the very foundation of living.
It had to be Dark Arts.
It had to be something vile and deep and forbidden.
And he had lost so completely that he did not even understand how.
Time crawled.
After about half a minute, Hermes's struggles weakened. The panic remained, but his body began to fail. His eyes started to glaze, focus slipping away.
Even Avery, who had been thrilled at first, now felt cold sweat gather at his temples.
He admired power, yes. But he understood boundaries.
To kill a classmate at school, even a Mulciber, would be disastrous. It would be the sort of trouble that swallowed families whole.
Avery opened his mouth, intending to beg Regulus to stop.
Then he looked at Regulus's face.
Those eyes were calm. Not wild. Not lost. Not mad. Sane, measured, and utterly in control.
Avery swallowed the words.
Somewhere deep down, he was certain Regulus would not do it. Not here. Not over a provocation. Someone so calculating would not shatter his own future for a moment of anger.
Just as Hermes was about to lose consciousness entirely, Regulus gave a slight flick of his wrist and withdrew his magic.
"Haaa!"
Hermes lurched forward and collapsed, hands scraping against the floor. He gulped air like a drowning man hauled to shore, coughing violently until tears streamed down his face and his nose ran. He looked wretched, broken, and small.
He kept gasping for over a minute before he could lift his head.
His eyes were bloodshot. Fear and disbelief twisted together in his expression.
Regulus had already lowered his wand. He looked down at Hermes and asked, flat and unhurried, as if finishing a lesson.
"Now, what do you think of Transfiguration?"
He offered no explanation.
He let Hermes sit in the unknown, in the space where fear grew teeth. Let him guess. Let him dread the invisible method. Let him wonder how to defend against something he could not even name.
Hermes lay on the floor, shaking, his body still trembling with the aftershock of near death.
His mind was a mess.
Transfiguration?
How could that be Transfiguration?
Transfiguration made him unable to breathe. It overturned everything he thought he knew about the subject.
But if it was not Transfiguration, then what was it?
There had been no obvious curse sensation. No cold venom of Dark Arts. No telltale aura.
The unknown was worse than any confirmed horror.
Hermes realised, with sickening clarity, that he could not see through Regulus Black at all.
Regulus's foundations were overwhelming, yes, but worse than that, he possessed methods Hermes could not comprehend, could not categorise.
Methods that could not be guarded against by normal instincts.
Avery let out a slow breath of relief, and then pride surged through him even more fiercely than before.
See?
This was the person he had chosen to follow. Powerful, clear headed, and unfathomable.
His mind immediately leapt to tactics. If he faced that move, how would he respond?
Cast the Bubble Head Charm in advance?
Keep a protective spell running at all times?
That was too passive, too reactive, too much like waiting to die.
Alex also exhaled in relief, though his legs still felt weak. He looked from Hermes on the floor to Regulus standing quietly over him, and he understood something he would not forget.
The most dangerous presence in this dormitory was not the gloomy boy with the secret book.
It was the calm one.
Alex decided, silently and firmly, that he would be even more careful with every word and every action from now on. He would never give Regulus a reason, not even a small one.
Regulus ignored the storm of thoughts around him.
He returned to his desk and sat down, as if nothing unusual had happened.
Inside, his reflections continued without pause.
Tonight's demonstration confirmed one of his hypotheses. Interfering with the omnipresent substances in the environment was a blind spot for most wizards, and a direction with frightening promise.
But what if he went a step further?