Ethan walked quietly through the dimly lit corridors of Hogwarts, the distant murmurs of students in the common rooms fading behind him. The castle was a maze of shadows and flickering torchlight at this hour, but he moved with quiet confidence. His footsteps were muffled by the Silencing Charm he had placed on his shoes. His Disillusionment Charm clung to him like a shimmering cloak, bending light around him and making him nearly invisible. He passed a patrolling prefect without so much as a glance, the older student's bored sigh echoing down the hall.
He reached the seventh floor, his path familiar now. Three passes before the blank stone wall, focusing on his need.
The door appeared, solid and intricate, the warm, dark wood a comforting sight. He slipped inside and let his spells fade, the cool, shadowed Room of Requirement greeting him with its vast, open space. Tonight, it was filled with rows of empty desks, an open area, and a scattered collection of objects, candles, quills, small statues, ready for his practice.
Transfiguration. One of the most versatile fields in magic and one that Ethan found both fascinating and deeply frustrating. He had read about the incredible possibilities it held—turning matchsticks into needles, teacups into tortoises, and even the whispered potential of transforming living beings into other forms.
But reading was one thing. Doing it was another.
Ethan stood before a simple quill, his wand gripped firmly in his hand. He took a deep breath, visualizing the change he wanted. Something simple, turn the quill into a small wooden block.
"Transfiguro!"
The quill's feathers thickened, merging together, and the shaft thickened slightly, becoming denser. It almost looked like a rough, misshapen piece of wood. Almost.
Ethan stepped closer, examining his work. It wasn't perfect, but it was progress. He was starting to understand that Transfiguration was a battle against the nature of the object itself. A quill wanted to be a quill. Changing it into something else meant overpowering that natural state with his magic.
A slow, careful process.
He moved to another object, a small brass candleholder. Something even more complex. He raised his wand.
"Avifors."
The candleholder shimmered, shifting, its metal twisting unnaturally before settling back into its original shape. He frowned. He had wanted it to become a small bird, but it seemed he wasn't quite there yet.
But he wasn't going to give up. For the next hour, he worked, pouring his focus into each attempt. Sometimes he succeeded, partially. The quill became a crude block of wood. The candleholder melted into a misshapen metal lump. A small statue of a cat twisted and warped, briefly resembling a bird before snapping back.
Frustration gnawed at him, but he also felt a strange sense of satisfaction. Each attempt, even the failures, taught him something. But there was something else on his mind as well. A thought that had been growing since he first began Transfiguration as a subject.
If he could turn an object into a living creature, was that creature truly alive? If he transformed a desk into a bird, would it think? Would it feel pain? Would it be aware of its existence? Or was it just a puppet, an imitation of life held together by magic?
He stepped back, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow. He had read about powerful wizards turning objects into living creatures in the stories. Dumbledore's famous conjured birds. McGonagall's transformations in her classroom.
He thought about all the high end wizard battles seen, the main one being Dumbledore versus Voldemort. There was only one moment he thought in that battle between the two most famous and infamous wizards where seemingly no Transfiguration was used. Was Transfiguration used in these kinds of fights, or was it used for something else? He wanted to find out for himself since as of now, there looked to be no practical use for it in a life or death battle.
There were other questions else he found himself curious about too. Was there a difference between a conjured creature and a transfigured one? Was one truly alive while the other was just a magical construct?
Ethan's gaze settled on a small silver goblet. He pointed his wand at it.
"Avifors," he whispered, pouring his focus into the spell.
The goblet trembled, warping, and with a sudden pop, it became a small, silvery bird. It stood still for a moment, then twitched, shaking its head. It hopped, fluttering its metallic wings, but there was a stiffness to it, an unnatural shimmer that told him it wasn't truly alive.
Or was it?
Ethan reached out, and the bird hopped away, flapping weakly before falling onto the floor. It was acting like a bird, but its movements were rigid, almost mechanical.
"Are you alive?" he whispered, almost feeling foolish for asking.
The bird didn't answer. It simply pecked at the stone floor, its silvery form glinting in the torchlight. Was it just a puppet of his magic? A creation that followed the instincts of a bird but with no true thought behind its eyes?
If so, could it feel pain? Could it die?
Ethan's hand tightened around his wand. He hadn't tried any of the darker spells he knew. Not here. Not yet. But the thought was always there. He wanted to understand magic completely, to know its true limits, its darkest secrets. Even the Unforgivable Curses.
But for that, he needed living targets. Or at least… something close to it.
His gaze shifted to the bird again. Was this a solution? A loophole? If it wasn't truly alive, then practicing on it wasn't cruel. Just an experiment.
And yet… he hesitated.
Because even though he told himself that this was just a magical construct, it moved too realistically. It chirped weakly, its beady silver eyes flicking towards him. If he hurt it, would that make him a monster? Or just a curious student?
"No. Not yet," he whispered, dispelling the bird with a wave of his wand. It shimmered and twisted, reverting back into the silver goblet it had been.
But the question remained, gnawing at him. If he ever needed to learn those spells, truly learn them—could he use Transfiguration to create his practice targets? Would that make it less horrible? Or was he just trying to justify something terrible?
He didn't have an answer. Not yet.
But tonight, he was done. He felt a mixture of frustration and intrigue. Transfiguration was far more complicated than he expected, but that only made him want to master it even more.
He turned and walked towards the door, leaving the scattered, half-transfigured objects behind. The room would return them to its collection of random items. Still, he had not wandered inside the main room where everything was present. There were likely dangerous things in there that had been lost within time.
Especially, a certain Diadem.