He sat in his usual low-visibility corner near the back of the library, surrounded by towering stacks of defensive theory, practicing the exercise for an hour every night before curfew.
He would focus on a single word and compress it until it was the only thing occupying his consciousness. It was exhausting work, a different kind of strain than any physical activity.
By the second week, he had smoothed the technique into something instantaneous.
He still needed a wand. But at least he didn't have to spell it aloud, and of course the most important part was prolonged eye contact.
He opened his status window to check his progress before heading back to the dormitory.
[Name] Aegeus Granger
[Age] 11 years
[Strength] 14
[Intelligence] 20
[Magic] 16
[Defense] 13
[Control] C
skills
(Ordinary Skills — collapsed, previously maxed)
Linguistics level 1 (98%)
Spells: Level 2 (3%) Charms: Level 1 (85%) Transfiguration: Level 2 (6%) Potions: Level 1 (90%) Astronomy: Level 6 (26%) Arithmancy: Level 8 (35%) Mind arts: Level 1 (40%).
Charlie found him after dinner, in the corner of the common room Aegeus had more or less claimed as his own, and sat down across from him with the air of someone who'd rehearsed the conversation on the way over.
"Got a minute?"
"Of course."
The other prefects had reached out, asking him to speak to Aegeus. Although Aegeus was the reason Gryffindor had a strong lead for the House Cup, he was also the person threatening to offset that advantage.
So if they could somehow convince him to ease off Snape this year, the house cup would be as good as theirs!
"I've heard that you and Professor Snape have a bit of... disagreement," said Charlie carefully.
"You could say that." Aegeus wasn't sure about calling it as such, but he also had no intention of revealing the true nature of what's really going on, so he decided to roll with it.
"Well, you see..." Charlie leaned forward, elbows on his knees, doing his best impression of an older sibling who is trying to talk to his younger sibling out of a bad habit. "I'm not asking you to stop asking things in class. But maybe... ease off a little."
"I am just asking questions," said Aegeus plainly.
"Well, but you see, it's costing us a lot of points," Charlie said, rubbing his temples.
"Don't worry." Aegeus said calmly, "I make sure I always earn back what I lose. You can go and check— Gryffindor is still ahead."
Charlie blinked. "...we are?"
"Yes," Aegeus said simply.
The only reason this deal worked at all was that Gryffindor actually had a shot at the cup. If they were sitting last regardless, Snape wouldn't bother docking points— he'd hand out detentions instead, which would have been a massive waste of time.
Charlie shook his head slowly, the rehearsed speech he'd walked in with now sitting useless in his mouth. He'd come here to talk a stubborn firstie out of a losing fight, on behalf of prefects who'd all but promised him the house cup was theirs to if he could just get one eleven-year-old to behave for a term.
It's simple enough, in theory. Snape docks points, losing points hurt, the boy stops giving Snape reasons to dock them. That was how it was supposed to work.
Except it didn't seem to bother him. That was the whole problem. Aegeus wasn't gritting his teeth through the losses. He genuinely didn't care.
Which left the punishment with nowhere to land. Snape could take ten, fifty, the whole hundred— it would sting the house, sting Charlie, sting every other Gryffindor watching that board in the entrance hall with their stomach dropping a little each time. It would never once sting the person it was actually aimed at.
What's worse, Charlie realized, was that what Aegeus had said could be summarized as: I got them back, alright?— like throwing a bone at a dog and hoping it would stop asking questions.
"So... what am I supposed to say to the others?" Charlie said, mostly to himself.
"Tell them they don't have to worry. I always earn back what I spend," Aegeus said.
Charlie blinked. "Spend?"
Charlie waited a beat for the rest of the sentence, and when it didn't come, he gave up. "Right," he said slowly. "Good talk."
He lingered a moment longer than he needed to, half-hoping the silence might coax something more out of him— some actual reasoning he could relay to the other prefects, a promise, anything. Aegeus offered none of it, entirely absorbed in his book.
He stood, shaking his head slightly, replaying the word "spend" on his way to the portrait hole without managing to land on what it actually meant.
Spend... What did he mean by spend?
~~~
Aegeus had started using an unused classroom on the fourth floor for practice, back when he had first started learning to do transformations on the larger scale.
It was old and dusty, with enough scorch marks in the stone floor that adding a few more wouldn't be noticed.
It had taken him the better part of a week just to find it. Most of the empty rooms in the castle are empty for good reason— one had a ceiling that dripped a faint, ice-cold mist no matter the weather outside, with no visible source, it looked to be the result of a failed magic experiment.
Another still had furniture stacked floor to ceiling behind a door that groaned like it hadn't opened in decades. This one, by contrast, was simply forgotten. A single dusty window, a cracked slate board, and enough open space that he could work through increasingly large objects without worrying about how many holes were acceptable in a room.
That had been weeks ago now. Looking at the stack of desks in front of him tonight, he began to reminisce about all the progress he had done till now.
In the beginning he only transformed small objects, working his way up rather than lunging straight back at the stone block that had nearly taken the roof off his table at home.
But before any of that, he had spent a full evening doing something that had nothing to do with transfiguration at all— cracked teacups, split wooden blocks, snapped quills, he gathered them and started mending them with "Reparo", over and over, until he got used to the motions and began to feel exactly how the magic in the objects was getting it fixed.
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TO BE CONTINUED
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