Chapter 16: Order and Chaos
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2 September 1991, Hogwarts
The witch then gave them a severe frown, "I will provide each of you with a match. Using the information, I just gave you, you have until the rest of the class to transform them into needles. The first to accomplish such a task will gain a personal lesson from me, on any transfiguration topic you want, that is valid until the end of your schooling. If you don't realize it, it is not an opportunity I grant easily. Now, get on with it. Let's see what you can do."
With a wave of her wand, dozens of matchsticks levitated from her desk and were divided between the students, each with a small pile to use.
The entire class stared at the matchsticks in front of them waiting for more instruction, but the professor gave them a glare, "Are you waiting for the matchsticks to turn by themselves?"
Hurriedly, everyone started to try casting the two spells, while Harry was simply flabbergasted by the fact that no instruction beyond the name of the spells and the wand movements. He had read a few magical theory books during the previous month, and there hadn't been a single explanation why waving your wand in a certain pattern and muttering a few words in Latin could result in a spell. The only guide was a reference to arithmancy, which he still hadn't started studying.
Curious about the effects, he picked up his wand, waved it at one of the matchsticks with the correct wand movement and muttered the spell, "Verto".
Suddenly, he could feel the magic travel throughout his body to the wand, then be expelled by its tip. The magic was different than any of his bastardized wandless spells. Its melody was a paradox of order and chaos that seemed to work, and yet the match stayed unchanged.
Seeing that something was different, he retraced the steps to casting the spell while making sure to picture the change of the matchstick to become pointier. The melody changed again with the same frequency and organized chaos, and the magic travelled through his body to his wand and the matchstick slowly became pointier.
He redid this process until it looked more like a wooden needle than a matchstick. It was baffling. There was no reason why the magic worked. When he tried using his wandless spells, he needed to convince his magic towards his arms and shape it, imbue it with intent, to get the result he wished for, and even then, it was chaotic. And yet with a few movements of his wand, everything was so automatic. The magic was absorbed by his wand, the movements did the control for him, and the intent was put in the incantation. It was just wrong that weeks of effort could be completed with a wand in seconds.
No wonder wands were so commonly used in the magical world.
Well, back to the assignment at hand, Harry decided to try his hand at changing the material of the spell, "Muto."
As expected, the spell worked immediately, and the matchstick started to turn silver. Harry, though, listened to the spell's melody. It was very similar to the alteration spell, but it was more robust, more fundamental, in a way. For lack of a better explanation, the chaos was more influential than the order. It was very hard to put into words, but McGonagall wasn't lying when she said that Transfiguration was the magic of change. In a way, its melodies felt more like transitions between order, chaos, and then order, battling each other yet fitting perfectly.
It didn't take Harry long to master the two spells. He could turn the matchstick pointy with a single spell, and then change its constitution with another. He even decided to add decorations a few times to make things more challenging. Although Harry couldn't make it so the needle could have multiple materials.
Harry looked around to see how his classmates were doing, and they seemed to be absolutely stuck. No one was able to do anything, except for Seamus Finnigan that exploded one of his matchsticks. Even Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom were looking at their matchsticks with frustration on their faces.
Seeing that he didn't have any competition, Harry chose to make it interesting. He was going to try to turn the matchstick into a needle in one go. At first, he started to use the two spells in successions, with both the wand movements and the incantation, "Verto Muto."
It worked. The matchstick had turned into a needle, but the spells weren't really in succession. There were two distinct spells, but they sort of merged into each other. He could feel it in the song. The final order stage of the first spell had slightly merged into the second one, and in a way, the final melody became longer.
This was new. He had never known that spells could merge like this before. Frowning, he remembered that the magic he had listened to all over the castle was not sequential. It was not a single melody, but a veritable symphony where every stage was working together.
And so, he tried to find a way to combine the two spells. After all, wouldn't it be better to use one spell instead of two?
He closed his eyes to feel the two melodies of the spell. Their structure was very similar; order, chaos, and finally order once more. He tried to combine the two melodies of order, the preparation phase into a single one. The two spells combined seamlessly.
However, it was in the chaos phase when something was wrong. The chaos was simply hard to combine with a similar element. After a few tries, Harry decided to simply follow the rest of the magic in the castle and simply turn the chaotic aspect into two melodies instead of a combined one. He compressed and stretched the tempo slightly until it just seemed to click. The final order phase was easily done.
With that done, Harry grabbed his wand and waved it with the same tempo as the symphony in his mind, and spoke the words, "Muto Verto."
The matchstick then turned into a needle with a simple spell. The wood became pointier while turning into metal at the same time. Harry grinned at his accomplishment before stiffening when he noticed the Professor standing in front of him and the look of awe Blaise was giving him.
He looked up to see the deputy headmistress with a small smile on her face, "Well done, Mr Potter. It seems like you have a gift for Transfiguration. Very impressive indeed. Twenty points to Slytherin!"
The entire classroom had stopped talking or trying to cast and was just looking at him with looks of awe and envy on their faces. Hermione Granger seemed to try to disintegrate him with her glare and Neville Longbottom was glaring hatefully at him for some reason.
Harry simply shrugged. He didn't care what they thought of him. As the professor walked back to her desk, Blaise gave him a curious look, "How did you do that?"
Shrugging, Harry answered, "I just followed the instructions. Incantations and wand movements, until I got used to it."
Ignoring his grumbling roommate, Harry looked at McGonagall who was telling him to come to see her at her desk. When he arrived there, she waved her wand, and the entire class became silent.
He looked around in confusion before the professor answered his unspoken question, "A simply privacy charm, Mr Potter. They cannot hear us, and we cannot hear them."
"You asked to see me, Professor?"
"Yes, I did. Do you realize what you were doing in the end?" said Professor McGonagall.
"I combined the two spells together. I wanted to change the shape and the material of the matchstick at the same time."
The professor raised an eyebrow, "Yes, and in the meantime, you created a spell. You made up the wand movements and changed the incantation. Sure, it was a simple combination of effects, it is impressive, and also dangerous."
"I don't understand, it worked as it should have." Harry protested.
"Accidents during spell creation are very common, and they can be fatal. There's a reason it's a NEWT elective, after all. Many brilliant wizards and witches have lost their lives trying out spells that rebounded and killed them. In trying out what you did today, you could have accidentally not only injured yourself but your classmates as well," she explained with a severe tone.
Harry looked down, embarrassed, "I didn't know that. I'm sorry."
The woman huffed in amusement, "I'm not admonishing you, Mr Potter, but try to be more careful next time. Speaking of this, how did you even do it without using any arithmancy?"
"I guess it just came to me naturally, professor," Harry replied.
The professor grumbled something about prodigies and released a chuckle, "Well, I know that you will try to do that again. Although, I insist that you do it in the company of a professor or at the very least a prefect, in case you hurt yourself. Do not be afraid to experiment Mr Potter but remember that your safety is more important than whatever spell you're trying to create."
The young Potter gave her a bright smile but then asked, "Professor, I had a question."
"What is it?"
"I read our textbooks and I never saw any of the spells we did today…"
The Professor gave him a slight smile, "You probably won't find them in any recent textbook. They were standard when I was a student, but the ministry tends to regulate which books are allowed to be on the recommended reading list. Not one of them had the appropriate spells inside, choosing to rely mostly on the theory, with the spells that are necessary for students to complete their OWLS. I always give my first years this challenge to teach them the foundations of transfiguration books."
Harry decided to ask her another question, "I have to ask, are there any limitations to these two spells? Because I don't think I mastered transfiguration in a single spell."
The Professor had mirth in her eyes, "I would be out of a job if you did, Mr Potter. Yes, there are many limitations to these two spells. The alteration spell can only change solid structures with similar mass, and the mutation spell can only alter solid materials, and even then, a lot of materials cannot be turned into, like gold, silver, and copper, although there are certain transfiguration laws involved. Your achievement may be notable, but there are many similar spells, that are more efficient, that have been created. You're not a transfiguration master yet, Mr Potter, although, I can certainly see the potential for you to do so. Now, get back to your desk and help your classmates."
Harry gave the professor a smile and walked back to his desk. Blaise gave him a curious look, "What did she want?"
"She just congratulated me and answered a few questions I had regarding the spells she gave us."
"Like what?" Malfoy asked with a sneer on his face.
Harry shrugged, "Like why they were not in the required books for the class. Apparently, she can only recommend certain books because of the ministry, and none of them had these spells in there."
Finding no interesting gossip, they all returned to their assignments, while far more subdued since the prize was already taken by Harry. As for the young Potter, he simply practised his new spell trying to make the change occur faster and more efficiently magically. He was quite proud of the results.
He also tried to help Blaise, but it didn't seem to work. By the end of the class, the only other person who had any results was Hermione Granger, whose match was slightly pointy with a silver tinge. It wasn't anything close to even Harry's first attempt, but McGonagall seemed to think it was impressive, considering the small smile on her face when she awarded the young Gryffindor five points. The girl had given him smug looks after that, for some reason. Even in this life, he couldn't understand girls.
Afterwards, Harry and the rest of the Slytherins made their way to the charms classroom for their first lesson. Considering Professor Flitwick's reputation as a charms master and a former duelling champion, Harry was especially excited about this lesson.
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Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.