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Chapter 23 - Chapter 21: Fighting against Form

"A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but only if the castle agrees with you." — Slytherin Prefect's Guide, 1894 Edition

September 3, 1969, The Dungeon Corridor

 The morning air in the Slytherin corridors was cool and crisp.

 Vega adjusted his tie in the mirror of the suite. He looked at Cyrus Greengrass, who was currently wrestling with a stubborn cowlick.

 "Leave it," Vega advised, grabbing his satchel. "Entropy is a force of nature, Cyrus. The hair wants to rebel. Let it."

 "Easy for you to say," Cyrus grumbled, finally flattening the strand with a generous application of Sleekeazy's. "You can just ask your hair to behave. The rest of us have to negotiate."

 They exited the room, joining the stream of green-and-silver robes flowing toward the common room exit. The mood was different today.

 Yesterday had been orientation—theory and philosophy. Today was Transfiguration. Today, they were going to learn how to turn one thing into another, which, in Vega's opinion, was the fundamental definition of magic, he had been defined by the concept of change, since he was born in this life.

 Waiting for them at the serpent gate was Lucius Malfoy. He wore his uniform like a suit of armor. Every crease was sharp enough to cut; his Prefect badge gleamed like a warning beacon.

 "Formation," Lucius said softly.

It wasn't a shout, but the first years fell into line instantly. "Today we ascend," Lucius announced, turning on his heel and leading them out of the dungeon wall. "Transfiguration is on the first floor. To get there, we must navigate the Grand Staircase. I assume you have all read Hogwarts: A History?"

"Yes," Barty Crouch Jr. piped up from the back. "Rowena Ravenclaw designed the floor plan to shift."

"Designed is a polite word," Lucius sneered gently, leading them up the spiral stone steps toward the Entrance Hall. "Ravenclaw was a genius, but she had a chaotic streak. She believed that a static environment bred static minds. So, she built a central nervous system that refuses to sit still."

They emerged from the dungeons into the Entrance Hall and then passed through the massive archway into the central shaft of the castle.

Vega stopped. He had to.

The Grand Staircase was a canyon of marble and vertigo. Hundreds of staircases floated in the massive void, connecting landings, corridors, and dead ends. Portraits covered every inch of the walls, a gallery of thousands of eyes watching their ascent.

But it was the movement that triggered Vega's blood-sight.

 The stairs didn't just drift; they groaned. Massive stone slabs ground against each other with the sound of tectonic plates shifting.

"Listen closely," Lucius said, pausing at the base of the first flight. He raised his cane, pointing at a staircase three floors up that was currently swinging across the void to connect with a third-floor corridor.

 "The stairs do not move randomly," Lucius instructed, his voice cutting through the grinding noise. "That is a myth for the Hufflepuffs. The castle operates on patterns of consumption and circulation."

 He looked at the group of first years.

 "Observe the rune clusters on the banisters. If they glow amber, the stair is stable. If they flash silver, it is about to decouple. If they turn red..." Lucius smiled, a cold, sharp expression. "...do not step on it, unless you wish to visit the third-floor corridor via a three-hundred-foot drop." Vega focused. He dropped his shields just a fraction.

 He saw it.

 Beneath the marble, the magic wasn't fluid like the lake; it was mechanical. It was a massive, complex clockwork mechanism of force. He could feel the intent of the staircase in front of them. It was bored. It wanted to move.

 "It's about to shift," Vega murmured.

 Lucius glanced at him, eyebrows raised. "Indeed. Wait for it."

 A group of Gryffindors, led by a harried-looking Prefect, came rushing past them. Frank Longbottom was in the middle of the pack, looking breathless.

 "Come on!" the Gryffindor Prefect shouted. "We're going to be late! Jump it if you have to!" They charged onto the marble staircase.

 SCREEECH.

 The moment the last Gryffindor stepped on, the staircase lurched. It swung away from the first-floor landing, leaving a ten-foot gap of open air, and began to grind its way toward the second floor.

 "And there goes the herd," Lucius noted dryly, leaning on his cane. "Now they must take the long way down from the second floor. They will be exactly four minutes late to McGonagall's class." He turned to the Slytherins.

 "We do not run. We anticipate."

 The staircase in front of them shuddered. The red aura Vega had sensed faded, replaced by a steady amber pulse. It swung back, locking into place at their feet with a heavy, satisfying thud. "Now," Lucius commanded. "Walk. Do not run. Dignity, at all times."

 They walked up the stairs. Vega trailed his hand along the banister.

It feels like the spine of a dragon, he thought. Warm. Vibrating.

"Greengrass," Vega whispered. "Look at the portraits."

 Cyrus looked up. "What about them?"

 "They aren't just watching," Vega noted. "They're signaling."

 He pointed to a portrait of a knight on the second-floor landing. The knight was frantically pointing his sword to the right.

"The portraits are part of the castle's subconscious," Vega analyzed, his mind racing as he connected the dots. "They know the schedule. Lucius is right. It's a system. If you watch the eyes on the walls, you know where the floor is going."

 "Useful," Cyrus muttered, keeping a tight grip on the rail as the stair gave a sickening lurch. "If you don't vomit first."

 Lucius led them with the confidence of a man who owned the building. He took shortcuts through tapestries that concealed hidden slides. He ignored a step on the third flight that Vega's senses identified as a 'Vanishing Step', a trap designed to swallow the leg of the inattentive.

 "Step over the fourth tread," Lucius warned over his shoulder. "It has a taste for ankles."

By the time they reached the first-floor corridor, the Gryffindors were nowhere to be seen, likely still sprinting down from the second floor.

Lucius stopped outside the Transfiguration classroom. He checked his pocket watch.

 "Three minutes early," he announced, snapping the watch shut. "You are composed. You are breathing normally. You are ready to learn."

 He looked at Vega.

 "You saw the pattern, Black. On the first flight."

 "Red means stop," Vega said simply. "Amber means go. It's a traffic light, Lucius. Just a very heavy, lethal one."

 Lucius smirked. "Keep watching the patterns. The castle tells you everything, if you stop screaming long enough to listen."

 He bowed mockingly.

 "Enjoy the cat."

 The Classroom

 Lucius departed, his robes swirling, leaving the first years alone outside the door.

Vega pushed it open.

 The classroom was large, airy, and high-ceilinged. The windows were tall, letting in the pale Scottish sunlight.

 There was no teacher.

 There was only a desk at the front of the room. And sitting on the desk, perfectly still, was a tabby cat with spectacle markings around its eyes.

 The Slytherins filed in, taking the seats on the left side of the room. They moved quietly, unpacking quills and parchment.

 "Where's McGonagall?" Barty whispered, looking around.

 "She's here," Vega murmured, not taking his eyes off the cat.

 He could feel it. The dense, tightly coiled steel of her magical signature. The cat wasn't just an animal; it was a knot of complex human transfiguration. It was the same sensation he felt when he looked in a mirror during a shift, but magnified by a factor of a hundred.

Toholdtheshapesoperfectly, Vega thought, a spike of admiration hitting him. Torepressthe human mind so completely that you can sit still for twenty minutes and wash a paw. Magic never ceases to amaze me.

 The door burst open.

 The Gryffindors arrived. Frank Longbottom was panting. Alice was flushed. They stumbled in, noisy and chaotic.

 "We made it," a boy gasped. "Can you believe that staircase? It tried to eat us!"

 "Imagine if McGonagall saw us," Frank laughed, wiping sweat from his forehead. "She'd skin us alive."

 On the desk, the cat's ears twitched.

 Vega leaned over to Cyrus.

 "Five galleons says she transforms mid-jump," Vega whispered.

 "What are you on about? " Cyrus whispered back.

 The cat stood up. It stretched. And then, with a fluidity that defied physics, it leapt from the desk.

 Mid-air, the fur retracted. The mass expanded. The paws became boots.

 By the time the feet hit the floor, Professor McGonagall was standing there, tall, stern, and terrifyingly unimpressed.

 "That was brilliant," Frank breathed, stopping dead in his tracks.

 "Thank you for that assessment, Mr. Longbottom," McGonagall said crisply. "Perhaps if I were to transfigure you and Miss Fortescue into a pocket watch, one of you might be on time?"

 "We got lost," Frank stammered. "The stairs..."

 "The stairs require attention, not speed," McGonagall corrected. She glanced at the Slytherin side of the room. Every student was seated, quills out, silent.

 Her eyes landed on Vega. He offered a small, polite nod.

 "Take your seats," McGonagall ordered the Gryffindors. "Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

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 The silence in the classroom following Professor McGonagall's transformation and subsequent warning was absolute. She didn't preen. She didn't smile. She stood by the desk, smoothing the emerald velvet of her robes with a motion that was terrifyingly precise.

 "Five galleons," Vega whispered to Cyrus without moving his lips.

 "Put it on my tab," Cyrus muttered back, staring at the woman who had, seconds ago, been tabby cat.

 McGonagall walked to the blackboard. She didn't pick up a piece of chalk. She tapped the board with her wand, and a complex diagram of intersecting geometric planes and arithmantic variables scorched itself onto the slate in white fire.

 "Charms," McGonagall began, her voice crisp and unyielding, "is the art of persuasion. You ask a feather to fly. You convince water to dance. It is a negotiation with the laws of nature."

 She turned, her eyes sweeping over the class, Gryffindors still breathless from their run, Slytherins watching with calculated interest.

 "Transfiguration is not a negotiation. It is a hostile takeover."

 She stalked down the center aisle.

 "To Transfigure an object is to shatter its molecular identity and force it into a new shape through sheer, unadulterated will. It is the most scientific, the most dangerous, and the most arrogant magic you will learn at Hogwarts."

 She stopped at Frank Longbottom's desk. She picked up his quill.

 "This quill believes it is a feather," she said, holding it up. "It has the history of a bird. It has the structure of keratin. To turn it into a goblet, you must do more than wave your wand. You must deny its reality."

 SNAP.

 With a sharp movement, she didn't just cast a spell; she imposed one.

 There was no smoke. No flash of light. Those were waste products of inefficient casting.

One moment, it was a quill. In the nanosecond between blinks, the reality shifted. It was now a heavy, crystal goblet cut in a complex diamond pattern.

 "Total restructuring," Vega murmured, his blood-sight picking up the aftershocks. To his eyes, the magic around McGonagall was terrifying it was a rigid, crushing lattice of logic that clamped down on the world and ordered it to behave.

 "The history of Transfiguration," McGonagall continued, placing the goblet on Frank's desk with a heavy clink, "is the history of Alchemy without the mysticism. The ancient Egyptians didn't pray to gods to turn lead into gold. They understood that matter is merely energy held in a holding pattern. If you disrupt the pattern, the matter becomes... pliable."

She returned to the front of the room.

"Why is it dangerous?" she asked.

 Alice, the Gryffindor girl, raised her hand tentatively. "Because... if you get it wrong, it gets stuck?"

 "Stuck is a polite word," McGonagall said dryly.

 She waved her wand at her desk.

 The heavy oak desk didn't turn into a pig.

 The desk liquefied.

 The wood groaned, twisting like wet clay. Legs fused. Drawers melted. Hair sprouted from the grain. In seconds, a massive, snorting boar stood in the room. But it wasn't right.

The boar had a drawer handle protruding from its flank. Its eyes were wood-knots. It squealed—a sound of agony and confusion.

 The class recoiled.

 "This," McGonagall said, her voice hard, "is a Half-Transfiguration. I have given the wood the consciousness of a beast, but I failed to fully overwrite the structure of the furniture. It is in pain. It is insane. And if I were an amateur, I wouldn't know how to fix it."

 With a slash of her wand, the boar vanished, replaced instantly by the silent, sturdy desk.

 "You are playing with the fundamental building blocks of existence," she warned. "If your will wavers, if your concentration slips, you do not just fail. You create abominations. You create things that scream."

She looked directly at Vega.

 "And for some of you," she said, her gaze lingering on his shifting eyes, "the challenge will not be the change. It will be the permanence. It is easy to make water flow. It is hard to make it ice."

 "The formula is on the board," McGonagall ordered. "Matchstick to Needle. Wood to Metal. Organic to Inorganic. Porous to Dense. Remember your Magical Control Lessons. The incantation is Vera Verto. Begin."

 Vega looked at the matchstick on his desk.

 To a normal wizard, this was hard. You had to visualize the needle, say the incantation (Vera Verto), and push.

 To a Metamorphmagus, this should have been easy. Vega changed his own nose six times before breakfast. Matter was fluid to him.

 He picked up his wand. The Quetzalcoatl feather hummed, eager to help. The Hum in his blood rose, swirling around his fingers.

 Change, Vega thought.

 He didn't use the formula on the board. He used his instinct. He pushed the Hum into the matchstick, flooding the wood with his own chaotic potential.

 Be silver. Be sharp.

 The matchstick shivered. It didn't just turn into a needle. It flowed like mercury, rippling and reshaping itself until a perfect, silver needle lay on the mahogany.

 "Done," Vega whispered.

 "Too easy," Cyrus muttered, poking his own matchstick, which had merely turned slightly grey.

 "Mr. Black."

 McGonagall was there behind him.. She picked up Vega's needle. She inspected the point. She tested the weight.

 Then, she dropped it back on the desk.

 "Do it again," she said.

 Vega blinked. "Professor? It's a needle. It's perfect."

 "It is a needle," McGonagall agreed. "But it is not Transfigured."

 She tapped the silver needle. It wobbled. For a second, the silver surface rippled, revealing wood grain underneath before settling back.

 "You are cheating, Vega," she said softly, using his first name to cut through the defense. "You are a Metamorphmagus. You understand fluidity. You flooded the wood with your own chaotic magic and bullied it into looking like metal. You painted over the wood; you didn't rewrite it." She leaned down, her voice low so only the Slytherins could hear.

 "That is a disguise. Transfiguration is not a disguise. It is Truth. If I cut this needle, it should be silver all the way through. Yours has a wooden heart."

 She straightened up.

 "Five points from Slytherin for taking the shortcut. Do it again. And this time, keep your blood out of it. Use your mind. Use the formula. Impose your will, not your nature."

 Vega stared at the needle.

 She was right. He had treated the wood like his own face—shifting the surface. But real Transfiguration required him to reach into the atomic structure of the carbon and force it to become silver.

 It required rigidity. It required the one thing his biology fought against: Stasis.

She's good, Vega thought, a spike of frustration and admiration hitting him. She saw right through the illusion.

 He picked up his wand again. He clamped down on the Hum with the Ring, silencing his natural gifts.

 He looked at the needle which was slowly reverting to a matchstick as his focus waned.

 Okay, Vega thought, narrowing his eyes. No shortcuts. No flowing. Just tyranny.

 He pointed the wand. He visualized the lattice of silver atoms. He visualized the death of the wood.

 "Vera Verto."

 Nothing happened.

The matchstick stayed a matchstick.

 Cyrus snorted. "Not so easy when you have to play by the rules, is it?"

Vega grinned. It was a sharp, predatory expression.

 "Finally," Vega whispered, rolling up his sleeves. "A challenge."

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 The matchstick on the desk was mocking him.

 It was a simple, cheap piece of pine, mass-produced in some Muggle factory, possessing the magical significance of a wet sock. And yet, it was winning.

 Vega stared at it. His Hum, that chaotic, vibrant ocean in his blood, was swirling around his fingers, begging to be let loose. It wanted to turn the wood into silver foil, or maybe liquid mercury, or perhaps a tiny, wooden snake. It wanted to play.

 "This is ridiculous," Cyrus Greengrass muttered beside him. His own matchstick had turned pointy and metallic, but it still smelled like sulfur. "I'm casting the formula perfectly. It's the wand. It's too... airy."

 "It's not the wand, Greengrass," Vega murmured, not looking up. "It's the lie. You don't believe it."

 Vega closed his eyes. He retreated behind the Ring.

Analysis: Why was this hard? He was a Metamorphmagus. Changing matter was his birthright.

Diagnosis: That was exactly the problem. When he changed his nose, he didn't stop being Vega Black. He just rearranged the surface. He flowed. Transfiguration demanded that the subject stop being what it was. It required a hard stop. A period at the end of the sentence.

 It's a fight, Vega realized, the tactical mindset of his grandfather kicking in. It's not a spell; it's a submission hold.

 He picked up his wand. The Quetzalcoatl feather vibrated, agitated. It hated this. It wanted to fly.

Quiet, Vega ordered the wand. Sit.

 He placed the tip of the wand against the matchstick.

 He didn't cast immediately. He sank into the meditation Kael had forced on them in the dungeon. He visualized the Hum in his blood, that violet, shifting energy.

 Then, he froze it.

 He clamped down with the Ring, turning the ocean into a glacier. He felt the heaviness settle in his chest. The fluidity vanished, replaced by a cold, geometric logic.

 He looked at the wood. He visualized the carbon atoms. The lattice structure of the organic fiber. You are not wood, Vega thought, projecting the thought with the force of a hammer strike. You are an error. You are silver. You are dense. You are cold.

 "Vera Verto."

 The movement was sharp, efficient.

 There was no ripple this time. No shimmering illusion of change.

 The air around the matchstick seemed to crack with the sudden increase in density. The wood didn't melt; it collapsed inward, the atoms screaming as they were forced into a new, heavier configuration.

 Clink.

 A needle hit the mahogany desk.

 It didn't look like the silvery, fluid thing he had made before. This needle was duller, heavier. It looked industrial. It looked cold.

 Vega exhaled, feeling a wave of exhaustion hit him. He had fought his own biology to make that happen. He had forced his fluid nature into a rigid box.

 "Mr. Black."

 He hadn't heard her approach. McGonagall moved with the silent tread of a hunter.

 She stood over his desk. She looked at the needle. She didn't pick it up immediately. She pulled her own wand and tapped the desk beside it.

 "Revelio."

 A wave of blue light washed over the needle.

 If it had been a disguise, a surface transfiguration, the spell would have revealed the wood beneath.

 The needle remained a needle. Cold. Hard. Metal.

 McGonagall picked it up. She held it to the light, inspecting the eye. Then, she did something unexpected. She pressed the point against the wood of the desk and pushed, applying significant pressure.

 If the core was wood, it would have snapped.

 The needle sank into the mahogany, unyielding, sharp, and brutally strong.

She pulled it out and placed it back in front of him.

 For a long moment, she said nothing. Her face remained the stern mask of the Deputy Headmistress.

 Then, the granite cracked.

 The corner of her mouth lifted. Just a fraction. It wasn't a beam of sunlight; it was the rare, terrifying approval of a master acknowledging a peer.

 "You fought your nature," McGonagall said quietly, so only he and Cyrus could hear. "And you won."

 She straightened up, her voice returning to its classroom volume.

 "Ten points to Slytherin. For a Transfiguration that is structural, not superficial. This is the standard, class. If you cannot sew with it, it is not a needle. It is a splinter with ambitions."

She swept away to terrorize a Gryffindor who had somehow managed to set his matchstick on fire.

 Cyrus leaned over, looking at Vega's needle with a mix of envy and respect.

 "You did it," Cyrus whispered. "I felt the magic. It felt heavy. Like... lead."

 "It felt like a lie," Vega murmured, rubbing his temples where a headache was forming. "A really, really convincing lie."

 He touched the needle. It was freezing cold.

I can do it, Vega thought, the Ring humming on his finger. I can be the stone when I need to be. But Merlin, it's exhausting.

 He picked up the needle and dropped it into his pocket. It was a trophy. The first time he had conquered the world not by flowing around it, but by breaking it.

 "Next time," Cyrus said, poking his own half-transformed matchstick. "I'm going to visualize a sword. Maybe the matchstick will be intimidated."

 Vega laughed, the tension breaking. "Intimidation is a valid magical theory, Greengrass. Let me know if it works." 

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 The bell rang, a sharp, dismissal sound that broke the heavy concentration in the room.

 The class exhaled collectively. Chairs scraped. Bags were shouldered. The Gryffindors scrambled for the door like prisoners escaping a holding cell, eager to put distance between themselves and the woman who could turn furniture into livestock.

 Vega didn't move. He sat calmly, organizing his parchment, watching Cyrus Greengrass retreat with a nod.

 "I'll save you a seat at lunch," Cyrus murmured, glancing at McGonagall, then at Vega. "Don't get turned into a ferret."

 "No promises," Vega replied.

 When the last student had vanished, the room settled into a profound silence. The air smelled of chalk dust and the lingering, metallic scent of forced change.

 Professor McGonagall was wiping the board. She didn't turn around.

 "Mr. Black," she said, her voice dry. "I assume you are waiting for a detention, or you have a question that you deemed too dangerous for a public audience."

 Vega stood up, slipping his wand into his sleeve. He walked to the front of the room, stopping exactly three feet from her desk.

 "No detention, Professor. Just... calibration."

 McGonagall turned. She rested her hip against the desk, crossing her arms. The sternness was still there, but the hostility had dialled down to a professional curiosity.

 "Calibration," she repeated. "A mechanical term."

 "Appropriate for this subject," Vega countered. "You said I was cheating. Using my blood instead of the formula."

 "And you corrected it," McGonagall acknowledged. She picked up the needle he had made, the second one. The one that was cold, hard, and chemically perfect. "You killed the wood. It was a violent, efficient piece of magic."

 "It felt heavy," Vega admitted, looking at the needle. "Heavier than any spell I've cast before." "That is the burden of your gift," McGonagall said softly.

 She waved a hand, and a chair slid over from the front row. She gestured for him to sit.

 "A normal student," she began, "sees matter as solid. To change a matchstick, they have to break their own belief that the world is fixed. It is a mental block."

 She leaned forward.

 "You do not have that block. You are a Metamorphmagus. Your biological reality is that matter is fluid. You change your nose because you feel like it. To you, the world is wet clay."

 "That should make it easier," Vega argued.

 "For the initial shift? Yes. You can melt the world faster than anyone in this castle," McGonagall agreed. "But Transfiguration is not melting. It is freezing."

 She tapped the silver needle.

 "You struggle because your instinct is to keep things moving. To keep the options open. To make a needle that could turn back into wood if it wanted to. But true Transfiguration demands permanence. You have to fight your own fluid nature to create something that stays still. You are a river trying to learn how to be a glacier."

 Vega absorbed that. It tracked with the exhaustion he felt. He was fighting a war on two fronts: against the object, and against his own chaotic biology.

 "So I have to work twice as hard to get the same result," Vega concluded dryly.

 "You have to work twice as hard," McGonagall corrected, a glint in her eye, "to get a result that is ten times more stable. If you master this, Mr. Black, if you learn to lock your will down, you will not just be a good Transfigurer. You will be a dangerous one."

 Vega looked past her, at the empty chair behind the desk where the cat had sat. He thought of the sheer, terrifying density of her magic during the transformation.

 "Professor," Vega asked quietly. "At the feast... I saw the Headmaster."

 McGonagall's expression shifted. It didn't soften, but it grew reverent.

 "And?"

 "He felt like a sun," Vega said, not bothering to sugarcoat it. "I have met powerful wizards. My grandfather. The vampire Thorne. But Dumbledore... he didn't feel like a wizard. He felt like a... event."

 He looked her in the eye.

 "You are powerful. I felt your signature when you were a cat. It was tight. Controlled. Like a steel cage."

 McGonagall offered a wry, thin smile. "I flatter myself that I am competent."

 "But he is something else," Vega pressed. "What is he?"

 McGonagall sighed. She stood up and walked to the window, looking out over the grounds where the Gamekeeper was wrestling a barrel-sized pumpkin.

 "There are ranks, Mr. Black. Not Ministry ranks. Not titles you buy with gold."

 She turned back.

 "I am a Master of the Transfiguration Guild. It took me forty years to earn that title. It means I have mastered the physical laws. I can turn a man into a desk, or a dragon into a snuffbox. I understand the rules of the universe well enough to bend them into knots."

 She pointed upward, toward the Headmaster's tower.

 "Albus Dumbledore is a Grandmaster."

 "What is the difference?"

 "The difference," McGonagall said, her voice dropping to a whisper, "is that a Master plays the instrument perfectly."

 She walked back to him, her eyes intense.

"A Grandmaster is the symphony."

 She picked up the needle again.

 "When I turn this wood into metal, I am using a tremendous amount of energy to force the carbon atoms to rearrange. I am fighting physics, wrestling it into submission."

 She set it down.

 "When Albus does it... he doesn't fight. He simply suggests to the universe that the wood has always been metal. And the universe, out of respect, agrees with him."

 Vega felt a chill run down his spine. Conceptual Transfiguration. It wasn't about atomic structure. It was about rewriting the narrative of reality.

 "He stopped time," McGonagall said softly, staring at nothing. "I saw him do it once. During the war with Grindelwald. He didn't cast a spell. He just... stepped out of the flow. He turned the air into glass and the fire into water, not because he knew the incantations, but because he understood the idea of fire better than the fire did."

 She looked at Vega.

 "You are a talented boy, Mr Black. You have a rare gift and a powerful wand. But do not mistake the pond for the ocean. You are learning to swim. Albus is the tide."

 Vega stood up. The awe he had felt at the feast had solidified into something cold and hard—like the needle. It wasn't fear anymore. It was a target.

 "A Grandmaster," Vega murmured, testing the word. "Is it possible to reach that?"

 McGonagall looked at him. She saw the hunger in his grey eyes.

 "Possible?" McGonagall adjusted her glasses. "Anything is possible, Mr. Black. But the cost of that kind of power is usually everything else you have."

 She gestured to the door.

 "Go to lunch. And practice the formula. If your matchstick has a wooden heartbeat tomorrow, I will be displeased."

 Vega nodded, bowing deeply.

 "Thank you, Professor."

He walked out of the classroom. His head was swimming with concepts of fluid dynamics and conceptual tyranny.

 He suggests, and the universe agrees, Vega thought, touching his Ring. Amazing, he grinned.

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Extra long chapter for the Transfiguration Class. Hope you guys enjoy it! Please Like, Comment and Review if you guys are enjoying it!

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