It was the third or fourth cracked teacup that made it click. Watching the fracture knit itself shut, he recognized the "feeling" of it— the same feeling for every time he cast "Reparo", that instant, whole-object settling at the same time rather than crawling outward from one point. He held onto that feeling.
Turning it over, he realized there was nothing stopping him from using the exact same method for transfiguration instead of mending. If "Reparo" could settle through an entire crack at once, there was no reason he couldn't do the same with transfiguration.
After that, he started small, working his way up rather than lunging straight back at the stone block that had nearly taken the roof off his table at home.
A teacup first. Easy— he could do that half-asleep. Then a stack of three books, bound together, roughly the size of a large brick. Still easy, though he made himself hold onto the same wave-like feeling rather than his old point-of-impact instinct, letting the intent settle through the whole mass at once instead of from a single point.
He worked up from there. A wooden stool. A small desk, hollow but bulky. Each one took longer than the last, not because the transformation itself got harder, but because holding that feeling steady across more volume took more sustained concentration— like trying to keep an even pressure across an ever-growing surface.
By the second week, he started the real test: the stone block— the same one that had nearly exploded over the summer. He set it on the classroom floor, stepped back to a more sensible distance than he probably needed, and exhaled once.
Wand raised, he didn't go for raw power. He reached for the same feeling he had felt through a dozen mended teacups— intent settling through the object all at once, like water finding every corner of a container at the same moment, rather than a fist trying to punch through from one side.
"Verto."
For a second, nothing happened, and he thought he would have to start over. Then the stone's surface rippled— not cracked, rippled, like the surface of a pond, very slowly— the grey stone darkened, smoothed, and drew inward at the edges, resolving into a rough but unmistakably steel shield, dented at one corner where his concentration had wavered.
But the most important thing is that... it didn't explode!
Aegeus stood still for a moment, turning the shield over with his wand rather than his hands, half-expecting it to destabilize and explode. But fortunately, it didn't. It just sat there, nearly the exact shape he wanted it to be.
He let out a small, satisfied sigh before immediately trying something bigger.
Over the following days, the size crept upward— a writing desk transfigured whole into a slab of stone and back again, then a stack of three desks together, testing whether the wave method would hit a new wall further up. It held. Slower each time, more taxing, but it held, without a single fracture or a dangerous flare.
He didn't mention any of it to McGonagall— not yet. But the next time she passed his desk during a lesson, she paused half a second longer than usual, studying the button he transformed with a measured look, as though she had noticed something in it today that hadn't been there before.
She didn't say anything. But she left an extra book on his desk on her way out— thicker than his usual, its spine worn soft with age, the title too faded to read at a glance.
Marcus leaned over his shoulder as they packed up. "What's that?"
"How would I know? I haven't even opened it"
"She just leaves you books now?"
"Seems so."
Marcus made a face that suggested he found this both impressive and mildly unfair, and went back to stuffing his own half-finished essay into his bag with considerably less ceremony.
That evening, back in the same forgotten fourth-floor classroom, Aegeus cracked the book open under wandlight. The pages were dense, the print small and old-fashioned, and it took him a few minutes of skimming before he understood why McGonagall had given it— it was a book on Bulk Transfiguration.
Dealing specifically with mass transfiguration, structural change resistance. Exactly the thing he needed right now.
He read it twice through before setting the stone block back in the center of the room— no longer his limit, just a stepping stone now— and reached, this time, for the writing desk stacked with three more behind it, six pieces of furniture in total, easily past anything he had attempted before.
The wave took longer to settle across that much volume. He felt it, this time— a kind of drag, like wading through something thicker than air, his concentration having to stretch. But it didn't crack. It didn't destabilize.
When the ripple finally passed all the way through, the stack resolved, very slowly— like it was crawling— into a long slab of solid stone, cool under his palm when he finally lowered his wand and touched it.
He stood there for a moment, breathing harder than usual. He let himself feel satisfaction for now, because he knew that the next wall waiting past this one was going to take considerably more than a book and a few weeks of practice to get past it.
Which was exactly the kind of problem he preferred!
He didn't push further that night. The book had made clear enough that Bulk Transfiguration wasn't something to brute-force— pushing volume too fast, without letting the underlying control catch up, was exactly how wizards suffered catastrophic misfires.
He changed the stone slab back into six separate desks, then restacked them against the wall, and sat with the book a while longer, cross-legged on the dusty floor, working through the next section by the glow of light cupped in his left hand.
It was well past curfew by the time he made his way back to Gryffindor Tower, the corridors dim and mostly empty, portraits dozing in their frames.
He passed the Fat Lady, who gave him a disapproving look, and then he climbed the stairs to the dormitory, careful not to wake Marcus, who'd long since abandoned any pretense of waiting up for him.
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TO BE CONTINUED
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