How to make a Binder

Durmstrang, March 22 nd

"And you're sure that this wouldn't be illegal?" Harry asked. "Did you double check the ban on experimental breeding?"

"Stop second guessing yourself Harry," Calypso said impatiently. "Your idea is brilliant and you aren't breeding anything, so it's not against the law."

Harry grinned and looked down at the creatures he and Calypso had spent the last few days catching on the Durmstrang grounds. After he had explained his plan, Calypso had refused to let him ignore the idea. After double checking every source he could find, and, with his friend pushing him to experiment, Harry's curiosity about what would happen eventually got the better of him.

His idea was a direct challenge to one of the longest standing rules governing switching spells. Everyone, from the greatest master of transfiguration to the stupidest third year student, knew that switching spells between living and nonliving things didn't work, it was one of the first things that was taught about them. Professor Rosemburg explained it as nonliving objects lacking a certain 'spark of life,' which resulted in switching spells between living and nonliving objects not being possible.

While Harry believed that the rule was fundamentally correct, he remembered during his first year how a botched enchantment had turned one of the first floor storage closets into a mouth, which attempted to eat everything inside of it. The closet wasn't alive, but it certainly had living properties, such as the desire for food. For Harry, that raised an interesting question. If something had a property of being alive, was it actually alive?

In order to test that, he had done his best to remember exactly what he did wrong when first casting the enchantment on the closet. Eventually, he was able to successfully mess up an enchantment on his pillow, causing it to try and eat anyone who laid their head on it. His plan was to transfigure the pillow into a small animal, and then use switching spells to switch the limbs from living animals with the transfigured animal. According to all literature, a transfigured animal from a nonliving object was still considered a nonliving object, and so a switching spell between the two creatures shouldn't work.

After carefully searching in the library, Harry and Calypso discovered that no one had ever tried to purposefully botch an enchantment, transfigure the result, and then test it against switching spells, though they could easily understand why. Enchanting was a difficult skill to master, and as you grew more experienced at it, you trained yourself to instinctively avoid those kind of dangerous mistakes. No experienced enchanter would ever think of purposefully screwing up an enchantment, especially not to test it against a rock solid transfiguration theory.

Since there was no literature about what would happen, Harry felt that if he could somehow demonstrate it was possible to use a switching spell between living and nonliving things, Rosemburg would award him the Master rank for pioneering a new discovery in Transfiguration.

"Alright, turn the pillow into a rabbit," Calypso said, clearly excited about what was about to happen.

Harry cast the spell, and a moment later the pillow had become a small fluffy white rabbit.

"What do you think we should do now?"

"Let's start small," Harry said. "We'll switch the rabbit's two large front teeth with the snake's two fangs."

Calypso levitated the petrified snake they had caught the day before next to the rabbit, and Harry cast an Immobulus charm on the rabbit to stop it from running away from a perceived threat. Not knowing what to expect, Harry performed a textbook switching spell on the rabbit and snake's teeth. The large front teeth of the white bunny were instantly replaced by the two sharp fangs of the Milos Viper.

"It worked!" Calypso said excitedly. "I wonder what would happen if you turned the rabbit back into a pillow right now?"

"I don't know." Harry had considered doing just that after he saw the switching spell worked, but something else had caught his attention. "Does the rabbit seem different to you?"

"You mean besides the two fangs?"

"Yes," Harry said slowly, "it seems more... menacing."

"It does have fangs now, Potter, of course it's going to look more menacing," Calypso replied. "Now, try to switch something else. Let's see if a transfigured animal can have multiple limbs switched with a living creature."

"Okay," Harry said, switching the rabbit's four legs with the eight legs of a small wolf spider. Harry then cast an engorgement charm on the legs so they could easily support the weight of a rabbit.

"That's really disturbing," Harry said looking at the small rabbit/spider/snake.

"I don't know what's stranger to look at, a rabbit with spider legs or a spider with rabbit legs. I wonder if the rabbit can actually use the new limbs? Let's unfreeze it and find out."

"Calypso, I don't think that's a good ide–"

"Finite."

Harry watched as the bastardized creature was released from the Immobulus charm and immediately charged at Calypso. The creature opened its mouth, exposing the fangs dripping with viper venom. Calypso immediately cast a severing curse, but the strange magical construct dodged out of the way and quickly began climbing one of the walls.

"Kill it," Harry snapped as the creature hissed at them from the wall.

"That is not how a rabbit is supposed to act," Calypso commented as the creature began angrily circling them on the wall and ceiling.

Before the creature could decide to attack again, Harry cast the counter-transfiguration, causing the rabbit's body to be replaced by a white fluffy pillow. Much to Harry's astonishment though, the spider's legs continued to move the white pillow body with two protruding fangs around the room.

"Have you ever seen anything like that?" Calypso asked in disbelief.

"No," Harry said in astonishment. "But it sort of makes sense. A transfigured animal takes on the characteristics of the creature you transfigure it into, and by switching parts of different animals..."

"We gave the transfigured rabbit the instincts of both a spider and a snake, which overpowered the instincts of the rabbit," Calypso realized. "But... how is it still alive?"

Harry glanced down at the two animals they had used as test subjects. The spider seemed to be spasming in agony as its legs had been replaced with a fluffy piece of pillow. The snake's eyes had glazed over, having choked to death, when the rabbit's teeth had gone back to being part of the pillow. Hearing two soft drops, Harry turned around and saw that the viper's teeth had fallen off the pillow and landed on the floor. "Calypso, kill the spider." Harry said curiously.

Pointing her wand at the struggling wolf spider, Calypso cast another severing curse, splitting it down the middle. Almost immediately, the spider legs on the pillow fell off.

"That's very interesting," Harry muttered. "The switching spell left the spider and snake instincts, even after I transfigured the rabbit back to a pillow, but once the living animals died..."

"The switched body parts of them died as well." Calypso paused before a smile crossed her face. "Harry this is incredible, you just defied one of the longest standing laws of magic! We have to show this to Professor Rosemburg."

"Oh yeah, we should definitely do that," Harry said.

Calypso smirked as she helped Harry gather his notes before leaving the room.