The corridors of Hogwarts were buzzing with the chaotic energy of students returning from the Christmas holidays. Trunks scraped against stone floors, and the air was thick with the chatter of reunited friends.
Alister moved through the crowd with a practiced ease, though his mind was miles away. He was mentally reviewing the stabilizing formulas for the Magic Circulation Method he was working on. They was crude, barely a prototype, but the passive mana regeneration was already showing results.
He was just turning the corner toward the Transfiguration class when he spotted Cho Chang. She was in the middle of a laugh, surrounded by a gaggle of her Ravenclaw friends, but the moment her eyes locked onto Alister, the laughter cut off.
With a word to them, she broke away from her group, leaving her friends looking confused as she beelined straight for him.
Alister slowed his pace, they met in the middle of the hallway. Cho stopped abruptly, closing the gap until she was uncomfortably close. She didn't say hello. She just stared up at him, her dark eyes scanning his face with a dead-serious expression that made Alister's stomach knot.
"Uh..." Alister blinked, genuinely unnerved by the intensity of her gaze. "What are you doing, Cho?"
She ignored the question, stepping even closer, her eyes darting from his hairline to his chin. "Have you grown taller?"
Alister froze. He blinked again, the tension deflating instantly, replaced by a different kind of panic. He quickly checked his internal status.
Dammit. He had been so focused on the power his physique brought him, he hadn't realized his body had gone through a growth spurt during the process to accommodate the new power.
"Is it?" Alister forced a casual laugh, waving his hand dismissively. "No, you must be confused. It's just the boots. New soles."
"I am not confused." Cho narrowed her eyes. She moved her hand to the top of her head, leveling it flat, and then moved it toward his chin, trying to gauge the difference. "Before the break, I was up to your nose. Now I'm barely at your chin. You grew at least two inches, Alister!"
"Impossible," Alister denied smoothly, though he gently caught her wrist to stop her from measuring him like a tailor. He looked down at her, a mischievous smile curling the corners of his lips. "There is only one logical explanation, Cho."
"And that is?"
"You must have become shorter."
Cho's jaw dropped slightly. "I— I did not!"
"It happens," Alister shrugged with mock sympathy, stepping around her. "Too much holiday pudding compresses the spine. It's a known magical phenomenon."
Cho didn't give him a response; she walked briskly down the corridor. But he could practically feel Cho puffing her cheeks out in a sulk.
The moment she turned the corner and was temporarily out of his direct line of sight, his posture slumped. He let out a long, shaky breath of relief, running a hand through his hair.
'That was careless,' he scolded himself mentally. 'I was so focused on the Rune sequences and the mana circuits that I completely ignored the body changes but I didn't think it would add two bloody inches of height in a week. That's not a growth spurt; that's a biological overhaul.'
Realizing he was left behind by Cho—and that acting suspicious was the worst way to handle this—Alister shook off the worry and stopped. He turned around and jogged forward a few steps to catch up to where she was slowly walking, still looking annoyed.
"Hey, wait up," Alister called out, falling into step beside her. He bumped her shoulder gently with his own—carefully measuring his force this time. "I was kidding. You look fine. Actually, did you do something with your hair?"
Cho glared at him sideways, though the corner of her mouth twitched, betraying her. "Nice try, Alister. Flattery won't save you."
"It was worth a shot," he grinned. "Come on, we're going to be late for Transfiguration. I heard McGonagall is starting the term with inanimate-to-animate conjuration. I want to see if you can manage it before me."
Cho's competitive streak sparked instantly, overriding her annoyance. She sped up her walking pace. "In your dreams. I practiced all holiday."
_________________________________________________
The scratching of quills and the muttering of incantations filled the air, but Alister sat in a bubble of calm silence. While Cho was furrowing her brow, trying to turn a beetle into a button, Alister was casually flipping through a heavy, leather-bound tome on advanced magical theory he'd checked out from the library.
He glanced up at the podium. Professor McGonagall was gone. In her place sat a stiff, tabby cat with spectacle markings around its eyes, watching the class with hawk-like intensity.
Alister's eyes narrowed slightly, shifting his vision to perceive the mana structure.
'Self-Transfiguration,' he analyzed. 'Specifically, the Animagus transformation. It requires complete biological and magical restructuring. Most wizards wait until their thirties to even attempt it. But my Transfiguration Mastery is already at Tier 2.'
He suppressed a smirk.
When the bell finally rang, the cat leaped from the desk and morphed seamlessly back into Professor McGonagall to dismiss them.
"Don't forget the essay on the moral implications of Vanishing Spells," she called out over the noise of packing bags.
"I'll see you at dinner?" Cho asked as they filed out into the corridor. She looked exhausted from the mental effort of the lesson.
"Yeah, save me a seat," Alister replied, giving her a quick wave. "I need to drop these books off. My bag is getting heavy."
He didn't wait for her to respond, slipping into the flow of students heading toward the towers. He moved quickly, bypassing the common room where students were playing Exploding Snap, and headed straight up the spiral staircase to his dormitory.
Luck was on his side; the room was empty. His roommates were likely still downstairs catching up on gossip.
Alister moved efficiently. He closed the door and muttered a locking charm—"Colloportus"—followed by a silencing ward for good measure. He drew the heavy velvet curtains around his bed, creating a dark, enclosed space.
He sat cross-legged on the mattress and reached into the pocket of his robe. He bypassed his borrowed books, his clothes, and his potion ingredients, his hand closing around the Secrets of the Darkest Art wrapped in black cloth.
He pulled it out. The air in the enclosed bed seemed to drop a few degrees.
Alister opened the book, the pale leather cover cool against his fingers. For the next hour, the only sound in the dormitory was the rhythmic turning of pages. His eyes scanned the text with unnatural speed, his high Intelligence stat allowing him to process complex arithmancy and ritual theory in seconds.
He found dozens of successful cases of Animagus transformations—wizards becoming wolves, beetles, cats. He skimmed past them. They were mundane.
Then, he found it.
Buried near the back, written in a jagged, aggressive script attributed to Morgana Le Fay herself, was a chapter titled: The Ascension of the Soul: Mythical Transmutation.
It detailed a ritual not to become a beast of the earth, but a legend of magic—a Phoenix, a Dragon, a Basilisk. Morgana had meticulously recorded the method used by the Court Sorcerer Merlin himself to assume his legendary forms.
But the footnotes were a graveyard of ambition. Morgana noted that while the ritual formula was perfect, every figure in history who had attempted it after Merlin had failed. Some were consumed by their own magic; others were trapped in half-formed, monstrous states.
'Only Merlin succeeded,' Alister read, tracing the ink. 'Everyone else... broke.'
He closed the book with a heavy thud. The knowledge was enticing, but incomplete. He knew the how, but he needed to understand the why. Why did Merlin succeed where powerful wizards like Morgana's disciples failed?
Alister moved quickly. He wrapped the dark tome back in its black cloth and hid it in robe's pocket. He waved his hand, untying the curtains and unlocking the door, leaving the room exactly as he had found it—impersonal and innocent.
He grabbed his school bag and headed straight for the library.
The vast room was quiet. Alister bypassed the magical theory section and went straight to the dusty aisles of Wizarding History and Biographies.
He pulled down every book he could find on the figures mentioned in Morgana's footnotes and the life of Merlin. He sat at a secluded table and began to soak up the information. he devoured the history, cross-referencing dates, power levels, and causes of death.
As he turned the final page of The Life and Myths of Merlin, the pieces clicked together.
The wizards who failed were powerful, yes. But they were human. Merlin, according to the texts, was rumored to be a Cambion—born of a demon and a human. His body, his very biology, was superior. But Alister wasn't giving up, he started turning pages of history again.
"Egbert the Egregious," Alister whispered, reading the faded footnote in a crumbling history text.
The same wizard who recorded the Blood forging of the war magus in the secret of darkest arts which was used by Alister. This body-strengthening method has a small chance of overcoming this problem.
But according to the text, Egbert was slaughtered in his sleep, and his method wasn't spread other than being recorded in the book, he died centuries before the Animagus transformation was even invented.
The reason no one since Merlin had succeeded wasn't just a lack of power; it was a tragedy of timing. The only method capable of preparing a human body to hold a Legendary Spirit—Egbert's method—was lost to time before anyone knew they needed it for the Animagus ritual.
"And even if someone found it," Alister muttered, his mind racing through the calculations, "the requirements are absurd."
Master Potion Brewing to recreate Egbert's strengthening elixirs and to being the process of Animagus, Transfiguration Mastery to navigate the complex Animagus shift without splinching the soul, Monstrous Magic to fuel the transformation, Iron Willpower to keep the beast's instincts from erasing the human mind and Terrifying Magic Control to bind the two forms together.
For a normal wizard, achieving even one of these was a lifetime's work. To have all of them? You'd need three lifetimes, or you'd need to be a like Merlin.
BUT, Alister stared at his status window, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face.
"Impossible for them," he thought, gathering his books. "But I have a cheat code."
Where others saw insurmountable barriers, Alister saw a mountain he need to climb step by step, the body-strengthening method only has a small chance of pulling this off what he need to do is to modify the potion needed for Animagus to make the odds favor him.
The standard potion is designed to bridge the gap between a human and a mundane animal and merlin's method won't work for him as merlin designed that ritual for his own body. He needs to use merlin's research as guide to walk his own path.
(END OF CHAPTER)
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