Chapter 40: Transfiguration, Mate!
Hermes glanced at the oddly shaped object in Regulus's hand and felt dismissive.
He conceded the importance of foundational magic, and he conceded that Regulus's foundations were terrifyingly solid.
But he clung to the conviction that in a real fight, the deciding factor was whether one possessed spells powerful enough to determine life and death in an instant.
The Transfiguration and Charms parlor tricks taught in school were mere flashy juggling when set against genuine Dark Magic.
He could see no point in what Regulus was practicing, nor could he grasp the horrifying potential inherent in microscopic material-restructuring — an entirely different plane of power.
To his eyes, it was just making a rock harder or shinier. What practical use was that?
Was one supposed to throw a hardened stone at an opponent in a duel?
Absurd.
He ignored Avery's silent-eye attempt to signal him to be quiet and let his footsteps fall deliberately heavy.
At his bedside, he set a battered book — its cover completely blank — on the nightstand with a resounding thud. The noise was jarring in the hushed dormitory.
That thud finally pulled Regulus fully out of his deep focus and practice.
He slowly dissipated the magic around the graphite. The piece reverted to its original state and dropped to the desk.
He looked up. Grey eyes, calm, settled on the source of the noise.
"Something you need?" Regulus's voice was toneless.
Hermes turned, leaning against his bedpost, face wearing its habitual gloom and a faint thread of challenge.
"Nothing. Just feel it's a shame when people waste their time on... showy gimmicks with no real bite.
True power doesn't come from molding rocks into different shapes."
The jab was obvious. Avery frowned. Alex lowered his head nervously.
Regulus regarded Hermes. "Your understanding of power is too radical — and too narrow.
You see only the surface of destruction and pain, but you're blind to the force contained in the fundamental rules that constitute this world.
As for perspective..."
He shook his head. "You probably don't realize that the wizard universally acknowledged as the most powerful alive — Albus Dumbledore — is a supreme master of Transfiguration."
Hermes's expression stiffened. He knew Dumbledore's name, of course. But what exactly Dumbledore specialized in was something a young wizard obsessed with Dark Arts had never bothered to research.
"Moreover." Regulus stood. His wand had slid into his hand at some unnoticed moment.
He happened to need a subject on which to test a recent idea, and Hermes's arrival and attitude provided the perfect opportunity.
"You seem thoroughly unimpressed by my magic. Coincidentally, I don't think much of yours either."
Before the last syllable faded, the wand was already up, pointed at Hermes.
Hermes's instincts flared. He reached for his own wand to block or retaliate.
But Regulus was faster — or rather, the way his magic took effect defied convention.
No flash. No sound. Nothing at all.
Hermes simply felt the breath he was drawing halt mid-intake.
The air entering his nose and mouth had, in the instant of inhalation, lost every property that made it breathable.
It was like inhaling something utterly inert — incapable of reacting with any function of the lungs, incapable of providing even a trace of oxygen.
His eyes bulged. Mouth open, he tried to force the breath harder, but no satisfaction came from the heaving of his chest — only a deepening, suffocating panic.
He tried to speak, to demand an explanation — no sound came. He tried to lift his wand, but his brain, oxygen-starved, was already going light. His arms turned to lead.
And he couldn't cast silently.
He stared at Regulus in terror. The other boy merely held his wand level, motionless, gaze devoid of any feeling one might direct at a living creature.
This was the extension of Regulus's earlier theorizing.
He had not performed complex elemental transmutation — at his current level, that was still too slow.
What he did was simpler and more brutal: he left the specific outcome undefined, providing only a broad definition.
Through Non-directional Transfiguration, he deployed raw magical force, flooding the designated zone and forcibly reshaping the gas within into something unbreathable.
He cast the spell; magic did the rest.
At this stage, that was more feasible than directly converting oxygen into a toxic substance — and besides, he wasn't trying to kill.
Avery watched with shining eyes. He didn't understand the mechanics — couldn't even be sure whether it was Dark Magic — but none of that dulled the blazing look he turned on Regulus.
If anything, the incomprehensibility made it more impressive!
Alex had already gone white. Both hands clamped over his own mouth, terrified of making a sound.
He could never have imagined that the dormitory atmosphere he'd just been praising would, in a blink, produce a scene this horrifying.
They were first-years!
This wasn't friction between classmates — this was... the prelude to murder.
He watched Hermes's face shift from red to blue, eyes protruding, body twitching involuntarily, and fear filled him to the brim.
Inside, Hermes's terror crested.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't cast. In the agony and panic of suffocation, his magic refused to coalesce.
He felt himself dying. The cold shadow of death had never loomed so tangibly.
His mind raced: 'What kind of magic is this?
Silent. Invisible. Its mechanism is grotesque — it strips away the very basis of life!
This has to be some supremely evil, supremely advanced Dark Art!'
He was beaten. Completely. He couldn't even comprehend what had been used against him.
Half a minute passed. Hermes's struggles had begun to weaken; his eyes were glazing.
Even Avery — enthusiastic at first — now had cold sweat beading on his forehead.
He revered power, but he knew where the line was.
Killing a schoolmate at Hogwarts — even a Mulciber — would be catastrophic. It would ruin everything.
He opened his mouth, ready to ask Regulus to stop, but looking into those absolutely calm eyes — devoid of even a flicker of madness — he swallowed the words.
Somewhere deep in his instinct, he felt Regulus would not go through with it.
A person this composed, this rational, who seemed to calculate every step, would not commit murder over a snide remark in a school dormitory.
At the very instant before Hermes lost consciousness entirely, Regulus gave his wrist the lightest twist and withdrew his magic.
"HAHHH—!!!"
Hermes lurched forward, hands slamming the floor, and sucked in air with the rasping, bellows-like desperation of a man drowning. Violent coughing followed — tears and snot streaming — his appearance a picture of utter wretchedness.
It took him a full minute of gasping before he could so much as lift his head. Blood-webbed eyes, filled with terror and disbelief, locked onto Regulus.
Regulus had already pocketed his wand. He stood over Hermes, tone bland: "So — how do you feel about Transfiguration now?"
He offered no explanation of what he'd done. Let Hermes guess. Let him fear. Let him rack his brain over what invisible, formless, lethal force could operate on such a principle.
Hermes lay crumpled on the ground, body still trembling with residual dread.
His mind was chaos.
Transfiguration?
How was that possible?!
Transfiguration could stop him from breathing?
It overturned everything he knew about the discipline!
But if it wasn't Transfiguration, then what?
No evil aura of Dark Magic. No clammy sensation of a curse...
The unknown bred a deeper fear.
He realized he could not see through Regulus Black at all.
Not only did Regulus crush him in raw ability — the boy appeared to command magical methods he could neither understand nor categorize.
Methods that were, in every sense, unblockable.
Avery exhaled in relief, and immediately a fiercer surge of pride and commitment washed over him.
Look!
This is the person I chose to follow! Immense power, a clear head, and means beyond reckoning!
Then he began to wonder: if he were facing that technique, how would he counter it?
Cast a Bubble-Head Charm on himself in advance?
Or maintain a protective spell at all times?
Too passive!
Alex also sagged with relief, though his legs were still jelly.
He looked at the collapsed Hermes, then at the serene Regulus, and gained a bone-deep awareness of who the truly dangerous person in this dormitory really was.
He silently resolved to watch his every word and step from now on — and never, ever provoke Regulus.
Regulus paid his roommates' disparate thoughts no mind.
He returned to his desk and sat down. His own thinking had not stopped.
The experiment just now had confirmed one of his hypotheses: tampering with the ubiquitous basic substances in the environment was indeed a blind spot in most wizards' thinking — and an attack vector of enormous potential.
But what if he pushed it further?