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Anthony was pecked awake. The chicken stood at the head of the bed, head tilted, watching him. Familiar chicken, familiar ceiling, familiar dream...
He yawned and shrank back into his blanket. "Right, you're back... Thanks. You're reliable."
The chicken clucked softly. The cat jumped onto the bed, rubbed against Anthony, then rubbed against the chicken. Its bones jabbed uncomfortably.
Anthony patted the cat's skull and slowly got up to wash. He changed out of his pajamas, put the kettle on the stove, and decided to make himself a pot of tea first.
He had basically nothing to eat in his house.
The whole neighborhood was celebrating Christmas. The corner shop, convenience store, restaurants—all closed for the holiday. Owners had gone home, cheerfully hanging Christmas wreaths on their doors. He'd originally planned to buy some food from the convenience store where he used to work, then calculated the dates and realized nobody would be working at this time.
Fortunately, his electricity was billed quarterly. So when he returned home after several months, aside from an electricity bill in his mailbox, everything was normal. His fridge still hummed along, dutifully cooling a bottle of milk that had expired into yogurt.
The kettle shrieked on the stove. Anthony set down the Transfiguration notebook and made himself a cup of tea.
Professor McGonagall's notes were quite detailed, almost tailor-made for him. A thin volume, but it greatly improved his learning efficiency. She'd written on the title page: "Very glad to have you join us. Hope this helps."
Anthony tapped his teacup and changed the yellow floral pattern on it into Christmas reindeer.
It did help. He could now easily turn pencils into straws, kettles into baskets, chairs into sleds... But he still couldn't turn beetles into buttons or snuffboxes into mice, no matter what.
He didn't know what was wrong. He could only make some notes, planning to ask Professor McGonagall again after returning to school.
The cat circled twice looking for alcohol, hesitated, wanting to drop its fire into Anthony's teacup. He pushed it aside to roll around with the chicken.
To give the cat something to do, Anthony conjured its fur. It immediately abandoned the chicken and jumped onto the coffee table to groom itself.
Now the chicken flew over to mess with the cat. This was its first time seeing the cat's disguise. It experimentally grabbed a tuft of fur and tugged. The angry cat flipped it onto the coffee table. The two started fighting again.
Anthony persistently poked his wand at the precious beetle in front of him. When you had both a cat and a chicken in the house, finding beetles was extremely difficult.
After a bout of chaos, the defeated cat mewed pitifully at Anthony. Its fur gave the chicken many opportunities to strike, while it could barely touch its opponent—when the wraith wanted to, it could pass through anything physical, disappearing anywhere.
"It'll have a physical form too. I'm working on it," Anthony scratched the cat's ear soothingly. "Even if I find a way to take it out of the house, I can't tell Hogwarts this translucent chicken is my owl."
The victorious chicken strutted proudly along the sofa back.
Since people need to eat, Anthony dug out flour from the back of the cupboard and got butter from the fridge. He planned to make some butter biscuits. The chicken sat motionless on the sofa, watching Anthony scrub the glass bowl with the cat.
He washed for a while, then suddenly slapped his forehead. He shook the water off his hands, pulled out his wand, and tapped the sink.
Bowls and plates queued up and jumped into the sink, clinking and clattering as they washed themselves spotless. A towel hovered in midair, catching the clean dishes flying out, drying them and stacking them in a neat pile.
Anthony had to admit, magic was really convenient.
"I'm starting to understand why some wizards are so ignorant and arrogant..." He watched a bowl jump to the top of the dish pile. "They probably genuinely can't imagine life without magic."
When this idealistic, miraculous power could affect the external world, perhaps it was hard not to develop some arrogant thoughts—like "I can make anything happen" or "The world is built around me."
And humans without this power—Muggles—were dismissed as insignificant dust by these magical but brainless people, completely unaware that in the corners their upturned noses couldn't see, this dust comprising the vast majority had gathered into such tremendous force.
But the part of Anthony's brain belonging to Muggle life—the part that built his twenty-six years—told him it wasn't like that. Outside the magical, magnificent world, there was another vibrant, ordinary world. A world of most people.
A world that could bake sweet, crispy butter biscuits without any magic at all.
Anthony contentedly dipped a biscuit in his tea. At one in the afternoon, he ate his first meal since the Christmas feast.
Unexpectedly, when researching how to make the chicken appear completely opaque, the most helpful resource wasn't the Necromancy notebook. It was Professor Quirrell's Christmas gift—that Dark Arts book about souls.
The book opened with a very detailed review article listing attempts and results in several fields of soul research, attempting to summarize experimental findings.
The review's conclusion was that depending on death's mark on the soul, each person's soul would manifest differently. Interestingly, it refuted the claim that "a broken soul cannot cast the Patronus Charm." Instead, it argued that even with a broken soul, theoretically, as long as enough positive emotion was provided, one could still summon one's own Patronus.
Anthony couldn't help feeling tempted. He'd always been interested in the Patronus Charm. But all spell books and Defense Against the Dark Arts books said Dark wizards couldn't possibly summon those silvery-white visions of light.
After learning more about the magical world, Anthony had calmly accepted that waking up in a coffin had suddenly made him a natural Dark wizard—after all, he really was toying with life and death. Even if not human life and death.
The only thing he could say in his defense was that he'd never harmed humans. No matter how bloodthirstily the instinct in his body whispered in his mind when he first woke, how his magic tried to seize the walking materials beside him, he could proudly say he'd never truly lost control.
If this pride could also count as positive emotion, perhaps he too could summon a wise and beautiful Patronus. Perhaps it could dispel his nightmares, let the chicken and cat not have to guard him sleeplessly, let him sleep peacefully at Hogwarts without worrying what terrible thing he might do upon waking.
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