Chapter 25

I took a few minutes to concentrate and visualize the intended effect in my mind. Then I gently tapped the syringe sitting virginally on the table in front of me with my wand. A metallic sheen quickly spread out from the point of contact until it enveloped the whole thing. The shape also changed to accommodate its new form of a functional needle. With a hole and all.

I looked up at my grandfather, who was sitting down on the other side of the table. He returned my gaze with a raised eyebrow. Looking around the rest of the sparsely decorated practice hall, I quickly determined that reality was still in-tact. At least from what I could tell visually.

It was odd. Grandfather had performed one of the most complicated charms in existence last month. I could wield fire as if it were playdough at this point, and I was fully capable of intruding into someone's mind, their holiest place as if it were a whim. And yet, turning a syringe into a needle… It baffled me. I unceremoniously plopped down on the floor. Still eight years old this meant I wasn't capable of seeing above the table anymore.

"I have all the time in the world, Draco, it's one of the reasons I abdicated as head of house," The pair of elegantly sat robed legs on the other side of the table said to me. "However, I must say that this is one of the more baffling things you've asked for my presence with and I think an explanation would be good." They finished.

"I just turned a syringe into a needle." I eventually said. "One object becomes another, at least until the magic, intent, whatever, I stuck into it runs out."

"I'm spoiled by how talented you are, to be honest." The legs said. "This would be a thing to celebrate more grandly if it had been accomplished by any other child."

"I don't care about the milestone of having successfully started on another branch of magic. I'm more worried about the fact I just turned a syringe into a needle, without having any idea how." I answered

The legs spoke, but only after a moment. "Don't you know how? You've been reading the theory of transfiguration for three weeks, ever since you successfully breached Narcissa's mental defences."

"I do, technically." I grudgingly answered. Transfiguration was a science, like any field of magic in this world. It was just that every now and then I was reminded that science in this world was based on concepts such as magic, cultural symbolism and apparently lexical networks. "But still," I complained, "one of the reasons I managed that so easily is because of the cultural encoding, in other words the lexical connection between a needle in the syringe both being able to be referred to as a needle. It's just dumb. What about people who don't speak English and who don't have that connection, it's just harder for them?" I asked.

I heard the shrug in my grandfather's reply. "It is us who wield magic, and thus naturally some of that also flows into the things we do with it."

I stood up and dusted myself off. "Alright, I'm done sulking. Linguistics of all things just helped me do transfiguration by giving me another conceptual reason why a syringe would want to be a needle. This is a thing now."

Abraxas nodded approvingly. "It's definitely a novel approach. I've never thought of how the language that we use to encode physical reality could aid in performing transfiguration." He then paused as he said that. "I don't think anyone's ever thought of that actually. Where did you get this idea from?" He then asked while looking at me intently, at which I rolled my eyes at him and pointed at my head.

"Transfiguration laws that concern themselves explicitly with explaining why certain changes are easier than others are basically half actual laws and half suggestions on mental models. Of course something like a horse doesn't want to become a lawn-chair, it's a horse for a reason. However, a horse doesn't want to be a lawn-chair any more than it wants to be a wooden horse replica of the same size, but that transfiguration is easier because our intent is more easily formed when thinking in symbolic connections. A syringe, also referred to as a needle, being easier to transform into a needle than… let's say a nutcracker would be, is simply another application of this process. Rather than using similarity based on appearance, material and culture to aid us, we are doing so on the grounds of linguistics. Which is a big part of magic anyway, since in the beginning it's mostly vocalized." I said, taking pauses for breath while looking down ruminating on my discovery that any type of mental model, as long as it was comprehensible and not something you were just forcing yourself to believe in because you thought it would help you, was capable of aiding or retarding transfiguration. Probably a bunch of other magic as well. I sighed, before a thought came to me. Did that mean that a robin would resist more when being turned into a penguin, than an eagle, because a penguin was less prototypically a bird. Or would a stone rather turn into a spoon than a fork, because they started with the same sound. Did hierarchy matter, did metaphors? I looked up blankly, unwilling to put up with uncertainty. My eyes caught my grandfather who was looking at me as if someone had just thrown galleons in his face before doing a jig. I turned my attention downwards at the table, before quickly slamming my head down onto it full-force, only to hit nothing but a soft-pillow. I kept my face parallel to the table nonetheless, slightly tilting it to look at my grandpa with his wand raised and looking exasperatedly into the air.

"You are, by far, worse than Lucius ever was. At least he consigned himself to trying to ride peacocks, rather than making me seriously reconsider if I should force you to write all of what you just said down and to submit it to transfiguration weekly so as to further an entire area of magic." He eventually said.

"Give me time to do more research and I'll give you a proper thesis." I mumbled dejectingly, wondering how it had all come back full circle to doing scientific research despite being a fucking wizard. But I knew that now that I'd been confronted with a possibility to fuse a muggle "science" from my previous life and magic, I wouldn't be able to let it go.

"You're eight years old." Abraxas commented lightly as he laid his chin on his crossed arms on the table and closed his eyes.

I wondered if it was too late to reconsider the direction I'd taken my life.