Chapter 37: Diamond and Graphite
Friday's Transfiguration class. Professor McGonagall began teaching them to turn beetles into buttons.
This was a step up from matchstick-to-needle — involving the more complex transformation of a living form into an inanimate object, demanding greater precision and a clearer intent.
Most students were wrestling with beetles that kept trying to crawl away. The room buzzed with faint droning and soft pops of failure.
Regulus picked up the beetle, raised his wand, and spoke the incantation softly.
The beetle stiffened faintly in his palm. Its shell began to shift — the deep brown fading toward sleek black, the form contracting and flattening.
In three seconds flat, an exquisite button lay in his hand — jet-black, glossy, with a faint spiral grain across its surface.
The transformation had been fluid, the result flawless. It even retained a whisper of the beetle's original texture, making it more distinctive than any ordinary button.
He no longer raised questions beyond the lesson's scope the way he had before.
He knew McGonagall remained wary of him. No need to probe further; silence would suffice.
McGonagall paused at his desk during her patrol, picked up the button, and inspected it. A sliver of satisfaction crossed her stern features. "Mister Black, a perfect transformation. Five points to Slytherin." She nodded and moved on.
After class, as Regulus packed his things, McGonagall stopped him.
"Mister Black, a moment, please."
Once the other students had filed out, she stood before him, gaze sharp and serious behind her spectacles. "Your Transfiguration talent is outstanding — well beyond your peers."
"Thank you, Professor."
"I've noticed that you've been... asking fewer questions in class of late." Her tone was even, free of any readable emotion.
Regulus felt a small ripple of surprise. He hadn't expected McGonagall to address it directly; he'd assumed mutual, unspoken understanding would be best.
He answered openly: "Yes, Professor.
I gave thought to your earlier guidance and concluded that, at this stage, I should focus on building a solid foundation and mastering the syllabus rather than venturing prematurely into complex issues that may exceed my current level."
McGonagall studied him for several seconds, apparently weighing the sincerity in his words.
At length she gave a small nod, her tone softening a fraction. "A solid foundation is of the utmost importance.
However, should you encounter a genuinely valuable question in the course of your studies — one grounded in the class material and carefully considered — my office remains open.
Hogwarts encourages thought. But thought must rest on sufficient knowledge."
"Understood, Professor. Thank you very much." Regulus bowed politely, more than a little surprised.
As he left the classroom, his mind turned.
Since McGonagall had explicitly welcomed well-considered questions, Regulus saw no reason to stand on ceremony.
That very afternoon, after Herbology, he presented himself at the Transfiguration professor's office door.
He knocked. Permission granted, he pushed the door open.
McGonagall sat behind her desk marking papers. She looked up, and at the sight of him the stern line of her brow seemed to ease by a hair. She gestured for him to sit.
"Mister Black, is there a question?"
"Yes, Professor. Something I've been thinking about regarding Transfiguration." Regulus drew from his bag two objects, each wrapped in a soft cloth, and laid them on the desk.
A piece of graphite — smooth, soft, dark grey, leaving a mark when drawn across paper.
And a small, perfectly cut diamond, refracting brilliant fire.
"I'd like to ask about these two substances," Regulus said, his manner respectful and focused.
"From a certain perspective, graphite and diamond are understood to share an incredibly close connection at their most fundamental level — even deriving from the same base element.
They differ vastly in appearance, hardness, luster, and value. But in the eyes of a Transfiguration master, might there be some kind of... inner similarity, or potential for mutual transformation?"
He went on: "I've tried using Transfiguration to explore the link between them.
Attempting, for instance, to turn graphite into diamond, or diamond into graphite. But the process is arduous, enormously draining, and difficult to hold stable.
It seems to involve something far deeper than merely altering shape and texture — something relating to the stability of the material's inner structure."
In truth, Regulus knew the difference was rooted in bonding geometry and atomic arrangement. But that was obviously not a line of reasoning he could present to McGonagall.
What he wanted was to learn how these two substances — so drastically different in properties, yet both pure forms of carbon — appeared in the eyes of a Transfiguration master.
And how they might be transformed into each other.
The question clearly exceeded the textbook — it grazed the borders of advanced Transfiguration and alchemy.
McGonagall's eyes brightened behind her spectacles. She looked at Regulus with evident surprise, apparently not expecting a first-year to think at this level.
"A very... profound and unusual question, Mister Black." Approval sounded clearly in her voice.
"Graphite and diamond? Very few people — especially not at your age — approach Transfiguration from the angle of seeking a common origin between seemingly disparate materials.
Typically, when we learn to turn a matchstick into a needle or a beetle into a button, we focus on the shift in form and function, not on tracing a shared source between two apparently unrelated substances."
She picked up the piece of graphite, running a fingertip along its slick surface, then studied the diamond with equal care, falling into a brief reverie.
"In my own practice of Transfiguration," she began slowly, "I do perceive that different materials exhibit different magical signatures.
Turning a feather into an iron block is considerably harder than turning an iron block into a feather, because the former requires constructing a denser and more stable structure.
The two substances you've presented... the contrast is so stark, yet you have pointed out a possible shared origin. That is very interesting."
She continued: "I have never specifically researched the transformative link between these two.
But from a magical-perception standpoint, diamond feels markedly harder, more condensed, and far more orderly than graphite.
Graphite feels loose, layered, prone to sliding.
To turn graphite into diamond is perhaps not simply a matter of adding hardness and changing luster.
It would be more like rebuilding a stack of loose, slideable sheets into an intricately structured crystal palace — every part tightly bonded to every other.
The difficulty of that far surpasses an ordinary form-change."
"That is precisely what puzzles me, Professor." Regulus picked up the thread at the right moment.
"In my own attempts, I felt that the two seem to share some most fundamental substance, but the way that substance is arranged is completely different.
As you said — graphite is loose, layered, and slideable, while diamond is a three-dimensional lattice, every node tightly connected to every other.
What Transfiguration must achieve, I suspect, is indeed not merely swapping the exterior.
It is completely rewriting that deepest structural blueprint — forcing one stable configuration into an entirely different, yet equally stable — or even more stable — configuration."
McGonagall listened with intense focus, her eyes alight with thought.
Regulus's description had offered her a highly illuminating lens: understanding the difficulty and essence of Transfiguration through the internal structural rules — the architectural patterns — of matter itself.
"A brilliant insight, Mister Black." McGonagall allowed herself a faint smile.
"It reminds me of certain forms of high-level magic concerned with the fundamental transformation of matter — even... the Philosopher's Stone."
She flicked her wand. The piece of graphite on the desk rose gently into the air. "Let us test this idea."
She did not recite a lengthy incantation. She merely touched the graphite with her wand tip, her gaze fixed upon it in absolute concentration.
Regulus could feel a wave of formidable, refined, and extraordinarily condensed magic envelop the graphite. Within that magic was a crystal-clear intent —
The will to reconstruct the material's internal bonding rules.
The graphite began to change before their eyes.
The dark grey drained away. The texture became impossibly dense, transparency increasing, light refracting within.
Seconds later, a clearly diamond-like crystal — transparent, hard, brilliant — sat on the desk.
Then, with another tap, the crystal underwent a further refinement: invisible forces polished its facets, and dazzling fire leapt from within, until a small diamond lay complete.
The entire performance was effortless — far smoother and more stable than anything Regulus had managed on his own.
This was what mastery looked like.