Chapter 112: Animagus, Constant Form?
"No!"
"So close!"
Two anguished cries echoed through the Room of Requirement.
Leonardo watched Ron and Malfoy beat their chests in despair, then shook his head and handed the two copies of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to Hermione and Harry, respectively.
The former had, of course, taken first place on the final exam. The latter had won Most Improved.
Both accepted their prizes and thanked him.
Harry opened the cover, saw Newt Scamander's handwritten signature, then glanced up at a dazed Ron and Malfoy. He could not help asking, in a lower voice, "Leonardo, Ron told me about Mr. Scamander's standing and what a signed copy is worth, but are they… is this reaction a bit much?"
Watching the two of them, Leonardo almost laughed. "They will get over it."
Ron was staring at the book's monetary value. Malfoy was staring at its prestige. After he learned what the prize would be, Malfoy had even approached Leonardo in private, asking if he could trade for it. He did not care how much it cost; he simply wanted something rare. Ideally, something truly unique.
Leonardo understood pure-blood nobles very well, nobles in general, in fact. They cared less for the thing itself than for the superiority it made them feel when they possessed it. What they chased was a feeling, the feeling of standing above others.
Hermione hugged her book, pleased and proud. First place was its own reward, but an extra gift did not hurt.
"Harry," she said, "in the wizarding world, getting Mr. Scamander's signed book is like, in our world… having afternoon tea with Ms. Hepburn."
Harry understood instantly. For the first eleven years of his life, he had known only the Muggle world. The comparison clicked at once. Fame was fame; the value made sense in a heartbeat.
He hugged the book tight and sighed. "Put that way, I get it. I wonder what it would be like to spend time with her."
"Elegant," Leonardo said lightly while gathering their exam papers. "And kind."
Harry and Hermione both looked over at him.
"Er, Leonardo, you do not mean you have actually had tea with Ms. Hepburn, do you?" Harry asked, hesitant. It sounded absurd. Then again, Leonardo corresponded with Newt Scamander and got his autograph. So, as for Audrey Hepburn…
Leonardo stacked the last of the papers and smiled. "If you keep this up next term, I will take you along."
The effect on Harry and Hermione was immediate. In truth, this rocked them even more than the news about Newt.
"You really had tea with her!"
"What does your family even do?"
Leonardo headed for the door, papers in his arms. "Business. Lots of acquaintances. Come visit over the summer. The house is fairly large…"
Christmas Eve.
The sky hung leaden and cold, as if wrapped in a damp wool blanket.
Leonardo patted Aurelius. "Try it exactly the way I told you. Go."
Aurelius dipped his head. His body blurred into a pale golden streak and shot into the heavy cloudbank.
The instant he vanished into the sea of cloud, scores of red-gold flames erupted from him as their source, gouting upward. They were like tongues of fire torn from the sun, or molten meteors streaming together. The flame-dragons did not burn at random. They moved with a living order, circling the Qilin's body and spiraling higher.
Where the fire passed, the air cracked under the strain. It superheated, swelled, and surged upward in a mighty thermal current. Stable air shattered beneath this unreasonable force. The clouds boiled like an ice lake after a hot stone plunged through it. Vapors raced skyward, then struck cold and, at unheard-of speed and scale, massed into towering anvil-headed cumulonimbus.
The rain came down.
Leonardo raised his wand, and a clear umbrella of air blossomed above him. Through the rippling veil of drizzle, he looked up at the seething cloudbank, at the occasional flicker within.
He remembered a recent exchange with the system:
"System, Aurelius has no magical pathway. His power is not the same as this world's magic, is it?"
[Similar in form to magic, but different in essence. Aurelius does not belong to this world.]
[It is a mythic creature from another realm.]
With that answer, much had made sense: Aurelius's unbounded Apparition, the horn that could suppress magic…
Which was why, over hotpot, he had asked Dumbledore whether a storm without magic would suffice.
Let us see what changes, then.
Leonardo glanced at the marker stones and let the vortices bloom in his eyes. Through earth and box, the Peeking Fiend's Eye peered straight at the crystal phial. He tracked the flows inside, mapping every shift.
Boom.
In the clouds, the fire-driven updraft raged. Ice and water crashed together, tearing charge from each other. A white bolt split the darkness. Thunder did not rumble from afar. It detonated overhead.
Red-gold fire rolled through black cloud. Each flare lit the storm's writhing latticework of lightning. Heat and cold smashed together, birthing wind and rain.
A thunderstorm, rare for the season, born entirely from the power of a mythic beast, made its violent announcement over Hogwarts.
"That did it."
At the first stroke and blast, the potion's magic inside the phial began to boil. Black and white threads, once interwoven, fused. Between them, a vein of crimson appeared. In a blink, red swallowed everything. No black. No white.
When the flow steadied, Leonardo flicked his wand. Earth peeled back, and the little box leapt into his hand. He took a breath, opened it, and fixed his eyes on the crystal phial.
Inside was a mouthful of blood-red potion.
He remembered the second heartbeat he had felt when he touched his wand to his chest and spoke the Animagus incantation for the third time.
Everything was ready.
Once he drank, there would be no turning back.
Aurelius flashed to his side. Leonardo laid a hand on the Qilin's neck. The world snapped and reformed. They stood in a clearing ringed by tall forest trees.
Before Leonardo could speak, red-gold purifying flame spilled from Aurelius and swept over the clearing.
Leonardo smiled, floated a tiny phial of dew to the Qilin, and uncorked the crystal phial. The blood-red potion quivered. He raised it slightly to Aurelius.
"Merry Christmas."
"Cheers."
—
In the clearing wrapped in red-gold fire, Leonardo set his wand tip to his heart and spoke.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
He drained the blood-red potion.
Almost the instant it hit his stomach, pain surged through him, and with it two fierce heartbeats. One was his own. One was the beat he had heard every dawn and dusk as he spoke the words. Now both pounded in his ears like drums.
Perfectly normal. So far, so good.
Next, an image of the animal-to-be should rise in his mind. It would be too late to flee the change.
He held onto calm and waited.
One second. Two. Three.
The pain and the twin beats stayed, but no animal took shape behind his eyes. That should not be. In this step, an animal that best matched the wizard's nature usually appeared. The wizard did not choose it. In the same moment, the wizard had to recall exactly how to become that animal in the first place. That demanded meticulous knowledge of living Transfiguration. Talent and work are both essential.
But nothing appeared.
Pain rose from the level of his cells, breaking in wave after wave. He did not notice his eyes, their dark green leaking outward to consume the whites. He did not feel the smile stretching his mouth.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
"Master…"
"Master. Master!"
Aurelius's cry exploded in his mind, and a thin filament of clarity ran through the pain. Leonardo looked at the Qilin and met those clear, glass-bright eyes.
My face.
This mask.
Reflected there, a half-real, half-illusory mask had settled over Leonardo's features. Its black-green contours warped crazily, now fitting a human face, now a bird's, now a tiger-wolf snarl.
Loki's Faceless.
Animagus. Transformation. Transfiguration.
A thought like lightning split his mind, a line he had seen when he first obtained the mask:
"Constant form is the limit of mortals. For Loki, change is the only truth."
Change.
He followed the thread of intuition and, in his mind, built a living model. Vein by vein. Muscle by muscle. Feather by feather.
The pain clenched again, deeper. His bones creaked with a tooth-hurting crackle, stretching, warping, rebuilding. His skin tore without bleeding, covered at once by what rose beneath: a flood of hard feathers limned with dark gold.
His vision bent and widened. Human color peeled away, replaced by a razor-edged, layered sharpness.
A clear cry cut the air.
His sight shot upward. He rode the remnant winds of the storm, a dark gold bolt lunging for the cloud-sea.
Aurelius scooped up his wand. Auspicious cloud coiled underfoot, and the little Qilin sprang aloft to dance with his master.
In the Qilin's eyes, his master had become a golden-plumed hawk.
Leonardo felt the power in his wings and shoved aside the strangeness of the first transformation. He climbed, nearer and nearer to the bottom of the cloud.
Then he stilled his wings.
No. Not finished.
He pictured his human shape, clear as daylight.
Without pause, the hawk snapped back into a man.
Normally, a brand-new Animagus needed time and trial to transform back. Leonardo fell through no such gap. He turned from beast to man at once.
Aurelius readied himself to catch the falling wizard.
"No need."
Without taking his wand, Leonardo shaped a different creature in his mind, smaller, more beautiful. The instant the model set, his form blurred again.
A butterfly hung in the air, all dark green, with riotous patterns painted across its wings.
He fluttered between the sparse raindrops and drifted down. The Black Lake's thick ice came up to meet him.
"Aurelius, melt me a hole. Small is fine."
"Yes, Master."
A thread of purifying flame drilled through ice to black water.
Leonardo did not resume his human form. He built a third model instead. The pretty, delicate butterfly twisted and reformed into a bright carp.
Plop.
The fish slid through the ice hole and into the lake.
Aurelius shrank and dove in after him at once. Below the surface, he saw only a short, thick, silver-gray bighead carp peering back at him.
Even the Qilin was puzzled. "Master, why… this shape?"
The bighead carp blew a bubble. "Got carried away. Forgot how cold it is. A koi will not do."
"I see. Master, are you an Animagus now?"
Another bubble. The fish swayed lazily toward the dark lake. "Yes."
"But I am not quite like the others."
He traced, in his mind, the steps from the blood-red potion to the end.
Loki's Faceless. An SSS Transfiguration talent, judged beyond the human scale, already brushing the divine. It had revealed its strange truth at the very instant of becoming an Animagus.
No animal had appeared in his head because none was required.
A normal Animagus became one animal. The form is fixed. No choice existed; the creature reflected the wizard's nature.
Leonardo's trials had already proved otherwise. His Animagus had no such lock. At will, ever-changing.
Perhaps Malfoy's book deserved some credit. The meditations in Divination and Inspiration had deepened his intuition and, in the crucial moment, brought back the line that mattered most:
"Constant form is the limit of mortals. For Loki, change is the only truth."