I woke up early, but this time without pain. That was worse, because the calm in my left eye didn't mean everything had returned to normal. It only meant I had stopped getting warnings.
I lay for a moment in the dormitory's silence, listening to the others breathe, as if I were counting their rhythm instead of my own. Last night I realized for the first time that the eye could react faster than my decision, and that was a fundamental difference. An experiment assumes choice. A reflex doesn't ask.
I got up and did my training, but without the same satisfaction as before. The exercises were movement, and movement was something I could control. What was happening in my eye was no longer just a tool. It was starting to feel like a habit.
In the shower I didn't keep my eyes closed for longer than a second. Not because I was afraid. More because I was beginning to understand that curiosity could push me further than it should.
I didn't want to test blindly. If this was going to be research, it needed structure. If it needed structure, it needed conditions.
People were too unpredictable.
They differed in personality, mood, fears, and habits. Every human reaction was a mixture of stimuli. That made drawing conclusions difficult.
Objects were simpler.
In the Great Hall, the usual morning noise reigned. Gryffindor laughed too loudly, Ravenclaw spoke too quietly, Hufflepuff sounded as if everyone had known each other for years. Slytherin, as always, whispered, judging and weighing every word.
I sat in my place and ate slowly, but my gaze worked automatically. Every time my eyes lingered on someone for too long, I felt an impulse in my eye, as if something inside immediately wanted to press. I had to consciously push that urge away, like the reflex to reach for a hot pot.
Malfoy glanced at me once, briefly, as if checking whether he would feel something unpleasant again. I gave him nothing. Not because I was being cautious. Because I was curious whether I could avoid using the eye completely when I had the chance.
It turned out I could.
But it cost me more attention than it should have.
In Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall began the lesson as usual without introduction, as if simply being in her classroom was warning enough.
- Transfiguration is not a trick, she said, her gaze sweeping over the desks. - It is the closest you will come to truly changing reality. And that is why it does not forgive mistakes.
Simple objects appeared on our desks - wooden pegs, similar to matches, only thicker and clumsier.
- Today I want needles from you. Stable. Even. I am not interested in decoration.
The students began immediately. The repeated incantation could be heard, the scrape of benches, quiet sighs of frustration. Metal appeared reluctantly, sometimes only halfway, sometimes not at all.
I took the peg into my hand and for a moment simply examined it.
Wood had a structure you could imagine. Fibers, empty spaces. Metal was something else. Density, uniformity, cold. It wasn't difficult.
I raised my wand.
- Acus.
The peg turned into a needle at once. Straight, stable, gleaming.
McGonagall passed my desk, gave it a brief glance, and nodded.
- Correct.
That should have been enough.
It wasn't.
I looked at the needle and let my thoughts return to what had happened over the last few days. The pressure. The reaction. The fact that I could affect more than just people.
If the pressure was real, it should be measurable without a human as a variable.
An object doesn't fear. An object doesn't pretend. An object doesn't interpret. An object simply is.
I focused on my left eye.
The tension appeared immediately, as if the eye had been waiting for that decision. There was no pain. There was an impulse. Like a spring pulled tight.
I stared at the needle.
Not at its shape, but at what held it together. At what made the transfiguration not fall apart a second after the spell was cast.
I increased the pressure.
The metal trembled, barely. So slightly that no one nearby would have noticed. But I noticed, because I felt the response in my eye. For a moment the needle seemed to lose certainty in its form. The surface became uneven, then stabilized again.
I released.
It was... repeatable.
I swallowed and tried again, this time shorter, more precise, like tapping a finger against a string.
The needle trembled.
Just once.
I stopped the pressure.
It kept its form, but a barely visible mark appeared on its surface, as if the metal had been soft for a moment.
This wasn't imagination.
This was influence.
- Mr. Peverell.
McGonagall's voice appeared beside me suddenly, without warning, as always.
I looked up. She stood at my desk, looking at the needle, then at me.
- I see you have found a way to complicate a simple instruction.
Her tone was neutral, but unpleasantly precise.
- I'm checking stability, Professor, I replied calmly.
She looked at me for a second longer than a teacher usually looks at a student.
- Stability is checked through repeatability and control, not impulses, she said at last. - Please remember that transfiguration does not like being forced.
The sentence sounded strange, as if she were speaking about more than just a spell.
I nodded.
- Yes, Professor.
She moved on.
I looked at the needle for a moment longer, then stopped. Not because she had scared me. Only because there was something in her voice that suggested she had noticed a difference.
And if someone notices...
Then it stops being only mine.
The rest of the day was ordinary, but I didn't listen to the lessons the way I had before. One question kept returning in my head.
If I can press on the structure of transfiguration...
then what else is structure?
Spells. Barriers. Protections. Charms.
And maybe even - a person.
That evening I sat in the common room, pretending to read. A first-year tried to talk to me again, something about a Herbology assignment, but I answered briefly and the conversation died. Not because I didn't want to talk. My mind was simply elsewhere.
At one point Malfoy laughed loudly by the fireplace. I looked in his direction on instinct and felt the same impulse in my eye as in the morning.
Pressure.
I almost used it.
Almost.
The awareness that I had to hold myself back was new.
I closed the book and returned to the dormitory earlier than usual.
That night, before I fell asleep, I thought of one thing.
If it works on people and on objects, then it isn't just a look.
It is a tool.
And every tool has uses I haven't discovered yet.
My left eye was calm.
And that was no longer reassuring.
That night I fell asleep late, but the sleep wasn't restless. It was shallow. I woke a few times for no reason, as if my body was checking whether it could still trust its own senses. My left eye remained calm. The calm stopped being relief. It became silence before the next movement.
In the morning I got up faster than usual, not because I was rested, but because I no longer had the patience to lie there and pretend nothing had changed. I did my training as always, but for the first time I noticed that between sets my thoughts automatically returned to one question.
How?
Not why, not what for. How.
How the pressure passes from the eye into the world. How it catches on magic. How it makes something tremble or stabilize. How it touches the structure of a spell instead of the effect itself.
What I had seen in Transfiguration wouldn't leave me alone. The needle had trembled not because I was having a bad day. It trembled because something in it - in the spell - could be pushed. As if transfiguration were a construction, and my gaze a hand that could press that construction down.
Objects were simpler than people. And since objects reacted, I could test it in the Room of Requirement without witnesses and without the risk that someone would start asking questions.
That evening, when most students were busy with conversation or homework and the prefects began making their rounds, I left the dungeons quietly and without hurry. I wasn't sneaking. I was simply going where I could think.
Seventh floor.
The tapestry.
Three times back and forth.
I need a place to practice. A place where I can test things without the risk that someone will call them strange.
The door appeared without a sound, as always. The room accepted me coldly and familiarly. The desk was where it always was. The shelves were fuller than last time. The training dummy stood still, as if waiting.
But something had changed.
On the table lay a bowl of water, several pieces of wood, a metal rod, and a simple clay figurine. Materials for practice. As if the Room wasn't only granting my request, but understanding my intent.
I sat down and stared at the objects for a moment.
If I described this to someone else, it would sound like paranoia.
And yet it worked.
I took a piece of wood, placed it on the desk, and raised my wand.
- Acus.
The wood turned into a needle. Stable. Correct. Just like in class.
That wasn't the point.
I set the needle down, moved the wand aside, and focused my gaze on the metal.
Not on its shape. On what held it together.
My left eye reacted immediately. The tension came fast, almost automatic, as if my body remembered the path. With each breath I felt the pressure deepen, as if the world at one point was becoming heavier.
The needle trembled.
Slightly.
I didn't destroy it. I didn't want to. I wanted to find the boundary.
I released.
The needle returned to stability, but a subtle trace of tension remained in my eye, like after clenching your jaw. It felt like training a muscle I shouldn't have.
I tried again, shorter. More precise. One push of pressure and an immediate release.
The needle trembled exactly once, like a string.
Repeatability.
That meant I could control it.
Or at least I could control the beginning.
I moved to the next test.
The bowl of water sat still on the table. Water has no shape, but it has a surface. It reacts to the smallest touch.
I focused on the surface.
The tension in my eye appeared instantly, but this time there was nothing to latch onto. Water had no structure like metal. No form to maintain. It was like trying to grasp fog.
And yet at some point the surface rippled faintly.
Not from air movement. Not from vibrations in the desk.
From pressure.
I felt a brief satisfaction that came too quickly and was too clean. It was the satisfaction of solving a puzzle. Except the puzzle wasn't homework.
The puzzle was the world.
And me.
The third test was riskier.
I took the metal rod, placed it on the desk, and cast a simple charm.
- Leviosa.
The rod rose a few centimeters above the table. Stable. An invisible field of force held it in the air.
I started looking.
Not at the rod.
At the spell.
That was the strangest part of the entire evening - realizing that a spell has its own structure, as if built from thin lines you can touch with your gaze. I didn't need to see it clearly. It was enough to feel where the tension was.
I pressed.
The rod dropped a centimeter, as if the charm weakened for a moment.
I released.
It rose again.
I repeated it.
Again.
It began to look like testing the breathing of magic. Like checking whether I could weaken a charm not with a counterspell, but with pressure.
It was dangerous. Not because the rod might fall.
Because it worked.
Too well.
On the fifth attempt I felt the first real warning of the day - a short sting in my temple and warmth beneath my eyelid, as if the eye was beginning to tire.
It didn't bleed.
But the message was clear.
Stop.
I ended the pressure immediately. The rod fell onto the desk, and I set my wand down and took a slow breath.
There was a cost.
Small. But real.
I sat at the desk and stared into the empty space in front of me for a moment.
If I can press on a spell, what does that mean in practice?
Counterspells exist. Protections exist. But pressure wasn't a spell. It was something from another category. Like touch.
And touch can be felt.
I remembered McGonagall's gaze. Her comment that transfiguration "does not like being forced."
Had she felt something?
I didn't know. But the thought that someone could notice it was unpleasant.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I didn't want the world to start interfering yet.
I returned to the dormitory late.
The boys were already asleep. One of them mumbled something in his sleep, rolling onto his side. I changed and lay down in silence.
My left eye was calm, but my temple pulsed faintly. The fatigue was strange, different from after training. As if part of me had been working all day without rest.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about how easy it had been to move a spell. How easy it had been to move metal. How easy it had been to move a person.
It didn't work.
The thought from the previous days came back, the same one, only sharper.
I don't think of them as people.
I think of them as variables.
And if I start thinking like that, the question is no longer "is this wrong".
The question becomes "how far can I push it before someone notices".
And only after a moment did I realize that the second question had come faster.
Much faster.
The next day, in Transfiguration, I didn't try anything anymore. I followed McGonagall's instruction exactly. Stable. Correct. No traces.
But I noticed something else.
When students were nervous, their spells were weaker. When they were afraid, the magic began to tremble. Matches became half-needles, the metal dull and uneven, as if the form couldn't decide.
Pressure wasn't only my ability.
Pressure was part of magic.
I simply knew how to find it and press it down.
That meant I could do it consciously. Or unconsciously.
And if I could do it unconsciously, one day I could do it to someone when I wasn't looking like a researcher.
Only like someone having a bad day.
That thought should have scared me.
It didn't.
Instead I felt something completely different.
Almost childlike curiosity.
And that was the worst part.