After more than half an hour, the arguments had begun looping in circles. Tempers were rising, and Loren could tell fists—or wands—were only a step away.
He raised his voice. "Stop a moment. This kind of shouting won't solve anything. To fix the problem, we need to return to its source."
Silence fell. Even McGonagall, still lost in thought, looked up at him.
Loren leaned forward. "Gamp's Laws say Transfiguration cannot create matter from nothing—it must work on what already exists. So the real question isn't whether we can transform *air*, but whether that counts as creating something from nothing."
Heads tilted. Students who'd been snarling at each other now frowned, piecing it together. Loren let the pause hang. He didn't want to hand-feed the answer—better to spark their minds and see what they produced.
Soon the focus shifted: was air itself a material, or not?
"If Vanishing turns objects into air, then air must be a valid substrate," argued a Gryffindor upperclassman. "But if we can't cast directly on air, perhaps we're missing some condition."
The debate surged again, this time about the nature of air as substance.
Irene Adler pushed them further. "For Transfiguration, the material must be observable. If we cannot perceive air, how can we target it with magic?"
Loren, listening, felt a wave of frustration. Wizards were trapped centuries behind. They still thought like Greeks: air as one of four primal elements. Muggles, meanwhile, had split the atom. By the late 18th century, they already knew air was a mix of nitrogen and oxygen. By the 20th, they catalogued every trace gas. If the wizarding world refused to learn from them, its ignorance would eventually eat it alive.
As the group spiraled again into abstractions, Loren sighed. He dropped another stone on the scales.
"Think simpler. Transfiguration always requires a base. But what defines that base? Must it have a certain size, weight, or only be visible to the eye?"
That struck. McGonagall herself flushed, eyes blazing with sudden clarity. She, who had spent decades at the pinnacle of Transfiguration research, felt the stir of true discovery.
Her voice was tight with urgency. "From today, the club will pursue this together. By Halloween, we will have results. This will be our article for *Transfiguration Today*."
Excitement rippled around the circle. Parchment and quills came out. Students began hacking wood into cubes, trying to measure and test. McGonagall herself bent to join them.
Loren pressed a hand to his temple. Wizards, when they "researched," were chaos incarnate—no methodology, no framework. Just hack and hope. No wonder magic had never built a coherent system.
He stood. "Stop. This isn't going to get you anywhere. First: define the goal. We want to know the limits of Transfiguration's base material. Second: design a controlled experiment to test that. Random chopping won't work."
Blank stares met him. Loren exhaled, switched tactics.
"Pair off. Eight groups. Each group takes at least three materials—wood, stone, soil, whatever. Cut them into cubes. Vary the size and weight. Keep them consistent for comparison. Record results."
Still blank stares. With a groan, Loren dragged out his own measuring tools—metric rulers, scales—and began teaching them how to use them. They fumbled, baffled by units. To them, mass was "heavier" or "lighter," nothing more.
Patiently, he demonstrated. Wood, marble, and dirt, each cut to measured dimensions, grouped by weight and density. He set up an example control set, then turned the rest loose.
The room hummed with awkward effort. Loren shook his head. Herding pigs would have been easier. But McGonagall… yes, McGonagall had reach. With her network and authority, the field might actually evolve.
He pulled her aside. "Professor, our definitions are too vague. That makes Transfiguration dangerous. Students end up in the hospital every year because of it."
She nodded grimly. She'd seen it.
"Then publish," Loren pressed. "Design a standard experiment from this. Submit it to *Transfiguration Today*. Call for replication. With enough data, you can establish a framework—rules every witch and wizard can rely on."
Her eyes flared bright as lanterns. She nearly turned back at once to draft the proposal—only the tolling of the dinner bell stopped her.
Reluctantly, she dismissed the club. Each member was tasked to form groups, design their own experiments, and send her their data. She would collate and prepare it for publication, fulfilling the year's article requirement for them all.
For Loren, it was a start. For the magical world, perhaps the first step toward order.
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