See chapter one for all disclaimers.
Vivo novatio – the novatio spell – Latin, roughly translated it means 'live change' or 'live renewal'.
Rudolph Johann Glauber was indeed a real man, a German alchemist born in 1603 who believed quite firmly in the Philosopher's Stone and the elixir vitae (the elixir of life). No authentic records of his life were made, but he wrote many articles on medicine and alchemy, among which were Philosophical Furnaces, Heaven of the Philosophers or Book of Vexation, Miraculum Mundi, The Prosperity of Germany and Book of Fires.
The quote attributed to him in the following chapter, however, is my own, and if Herr Glauber ever said it I apologise to him and wonder at the strange coincidences of the world.
Spiro mutatorius – Latin, obviously; roughly translated, it means 'breathe change'. Yeah, really original, I know.
Author's Note: I apologise for this being so incredibly late. Exercising brevity, I'll simply say that in between PC problems and temporary prohibition from internet access, I've not had an opportunity to post. And this chapter is embarrassingly short at an undersized six pages. Please excuse this; they'll get longer soon.
I'd like to thank everyone for the reviews – and Lavinia Lavender, I was delighted at having the quality of my fic compared with Liz Barr's magnificent 'There Is No Such Place', and I assure you that I WILL, on pain of recalcitrant Band-Aids and excruciating indomitable hangnails, FINISH THIS FIC. Unlike some people we could name, eh?
And, save for the fact that I've currently got Kiss's (really annoying but infuriatingly catchy) Rock n Roll All Night playing on repeat, I have no other announcements.
Read on.
chapter five
Lily paid especial attention in Transfiguration the next morning, and managed to transfigure her crystal ball into a Quaffle on her second try, though it did retain a glassy sheen that James assured her was quite acceptable – new Quaffles did have a certain glossiness, he said, and he told her not to mind it.
Lily was anticipating the evening's lesson with something akin to trepidation. James was a free spirit, to put it lightly, and she wasn't sure whether she would take as well to his instruction as she could to Snape's. She could ignore Snape's harsh comments and surly nature easily because she didn't particularly like him to begin with, but James hovered somewhere between the categories of 'friend' and 'adversary' and his joker's personality could get a bit tiresome after a while. Still, it heartened her that she would be learning transfiguration from him; he, along with Sirius, were easily as good at the subject as Snape was at potions, and she couldn't think of anyone else she'd rather be taught by.
That evening, after dinner and revision with the girls in the library, Lily made her way up to the third floor. James was waiting on the first landing, standing beneath a portrait of an old wizard carving a unicorn horn. "You weren't at dinner," Lily said as she joined him at the top of the stair.
"I had a sandwich," James said, rumpling his hair. He walked beside her into the corridor, talking as he did. "So, what's the problem?" he asked.
"What? Oh, with transfiguration? Um…."
"Off the top of your head, what would you say is giving you the most trouble?" James prodded.
"Inanimate to animate transfiguration," Lily said, trying to sound natural. In truth, she imagined it would be more difficult for her to fake total ignorance than actually perform the magic. She hoped James wouldn't notice anything.
"Ho! Nothing simpler," James said enthusiastically as he stopped in the hall and pushed open a door, stepping into a room which Lily recognized only belatedly as the very one she had chosen to tutor Snape in. "Yes, I thought this'd be a good place to study," James said, seeing her expression. "Nice, isn't it? I had the house elves clean it up a little bit. You wouldn't believe how bad it was before… could hardly inhale without choking on the dust…."
Lily made a strangled sound that James didn't notice.
"I thought about doing this in the common room, but I figured the noise would be too much of a distraction…. Anyway, animate transfiguration, eh? Well, it's always more tricky when you bring life and breath into the equation, but it's not a terribly difficult spell. Got your wand? Okay, take a seat…."
They adjourned the lesson a quarter of an hour early, James having happily declared Lily quite adept at the spell. Lily was uneasy. She had indeed mastered the spell – it was rather hard faking incompetence, she discovered – and James hadn't explained much of the theory at all, which was really what she had wanted. Of course, James had no way of knowing that. She didn't blame him in the slightest. She was more than aware that whatever trouble came from this was going to be wholly her fault. And she was worried.
Because what on earth would she do if either James or Snape found out what she was doing? There was nothing inherently wrong with it, of course, but the whole thing was, she felt, incredibly sneaky. And rather brilliant, she had to admit, if she managed to pull it off. But if James found out that she was swapping his expertise for Snape's – that she was only coming to him so she could improve her Potions grade – he would be…. Well, she didn't exactly know what James's reaction would be. He might be outraged, or perhaps just disappointed. But Snape – she knew without a doubt what his reaction would be. He'd be absolutely furious. She knew that it would wound his pride most grievously to discover that he'd been getting second-hand lessons from James Potter, his arch-nemesis. She was sure she'd feel the same way in his position.
And she wasn't sure he wouldn't hex her when he found out. She was sure that James Potter, while not exactly angelic in nature, would be able to control his temper – at least with her – to some extent. Snape, on the other hand, bore her no goodwill whatsoever, and she wasn't sure whether his code of ethics – if he even had one – extended to the reach of 'thou shalt not strike a woman'. Or hex. And he knew some pretty nasty hexes.
Lily pushed these thoughts out of her mind and thanked James for the lesson. "It was very helpful," she lied, feeling more than a bit guilty for using him – because, of course, that was what she was doing, wasn't it? "Same time next week?"
"Same time, same place," said James. "Are you going back up to Gryffindor?"
Lily nodded. "Yeah," she said; "I've got some stuff to look over. Charms stuff."
"I'll walk you," James offered.
"You don't have to," Lily said.
"Well, I'm going back anyway," James shrugged. "I've a letter I need to take up to the Owlery, and I left it in the dormitory."
"Oh," said Lily. "Okay, then." They walked out of the room together, Lily speaking quietly. "I've been meaning to write home, too," she said. "I've not written since we got back and my mum'll be expecting it…."
"You have a sister, don't you?" James said after a moment.
Lily nodded. "Petunia," she said. "She's older than me by two years."
"Muggle," James said softly.
"Hm. Yes." Lily smiled down at her feet. "Very Muggle."
"What does she think about… all this?" James asked with an expansive gesture.
"Very little," Lily said. "She thinks it's quite unnatural."
"Sorry to hear that," James replied. "Merlin."
Lily shrugged. "It's not bad," she said. "We weren't that – well, we were close before, but I've pretty much… gotten over it."
James didn't say anything. Tactful of him, Lily supposed.
"What about you?" Lily asked. "You don't have any siblings. What's it like, being an only child?"
James grinned at that. "I wouldn't know," he said. "Since Hogwarts, I haven't been home by myself. Every holiday, at least one of the boys comes home with me… usually Sirius, but Remus and Peter pop by quite often, too. Peter lives close."
Lily laughed. "I'll bet your mum loves that," she said. "A houseful of mayhem in the form of four teenage boys."
"I'll have you know we're perfect saints at home," James said piously. "Relatively, anyway. We don't blow up half as many toilets during the holidays, at any rate."
Lily laughed again. "Mad," she said.
"Only sometimes," James replied.
Dear Mum and Dad,
Sorry I didn't write sooner – I'd say we've been quite busy, but truthfully I'll tell you to chalk it up to simple laziness. Have you gotten any letters from Petunia? How is she doing at Saint Christine's? If you remember, please tell her I said hello – I'd send her an owl, but you know how she is about that kind of thing. By the way, I'm sending this with a friend's owl. His name is Remus (the friend, not the owl – the owl's called Eko) and he's a real sweetie – one of the few Gryffindor boys in my year who seems to take his academic studies seriously. Anyway, this owl should wait for you to get a reply together, but do hurry, because I don't want to hold up Remus's correspondence longer than necessary.
Another friend of mine – James Potter, I told you about him – is currently helping me out with transfiguration. Tonight he showed me how to change a book into a bird. He actually let me practice on his old copy of Quidditch Through the Ages, which is a highly prized book among the Quidditch enthusiasts – you wouldn't believe the state of the library's numerous copies. Anyway, it ended turning into a puffin. Why a puffin, I have no idea. The spell doesn't specify a particular bird; I can only assume that my subconscious is puffin-shaped, which is a disconcerting idea if you think about it too much.
Anyway, I have to confess that I'm not taking these lessons purely for my own academic benefit. That is not to say that I'm spending an hour a week in James Potter's company simply to spend an hour a week in James Potter's company. The fact is that I'm actually taking potions lessons from another student – and he demands payment in the form of transfiguration lessons, which I misleadingly told him was my second-best subject. While I'm not bad at transfiguration – well, you know I'm not; you've seen my marks! – I'm not half as good at it as Snape is at his potions. And I imagine he'll figure that out without some sort of divinely inspired intervention. Which is why I'm taking lessons from Potter, as well.
I'm afraid to imagine what you think of your dear, sweet Gryffindor daughter displaying such Slytherin tendencies. Bad and awful things, no doubt. But I'm at a loss as to what else I should do, short of revealing my dastardly plot to both boys – who, incidentally, hate each other with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Hopefully I'll be able to pull through 'til end of semester without either of them finding out. Unless you have any suggestions? (Hint, hint!)
Have I ever mentioned how excruciating it is writing with a quill? It's almost unspeakable. Why wizards haven't adapted to some form of ballpoint pen is beyond me.
I hate to say this, but my shoes are getting small again. It's ridiculous, I know; we just bought them in August. It's not terribly urgent, but in a month or so it will be – if you could spare a few pounds I'd appreciate it. And a bottle of aspirin. They don't sell it in the village and the headache cures these people come up with are effective but they taste terrible.
Also, do you think you could send a few of my tapes with your next letter? Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon – it's on my dresser, beside the radio; it's black and it's got a picture of a prism reflecting light on the front. (I can't believe I forgot that! I was listening to it the night before we left for the station, and I was meaning to put it in my bag, but it completely slipped my mind!) And David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs', which should be in the cardboard box on my cedar chest. It has a picture of a fellow with the bottom half of a dog on the front. You should be able to find it easily; it's right on top of the rest. And Imagine, if you're finished with it, Dad. There's a girl in my dormitory who hasn't even heard of John Lennon, if you can believe it. If I can get this stupid cassette player working I plan on introducing her.
Could you say hi to Aunt Leona for me when you see her on Michaelmas?
Have to run now – if this letter gets much longer Eko won't be able to carry it!
Much love,
Lily
Lily walked down from the Owlery, her satchel swinging from her shoulder, wondering whether she should get her own owl. She certainly could use one, especially during the holidays; it was a pain having to go all the way to the public Owlery in Diagon Alley just to send a note off to Eliza or Remus, her two chief correspondents. But owls were so expensive – good ones, anyway, the ones that were bred for all-weather speed and dependability. They cost Galleons upon Galleons, and that wasn't even beginning to count the cost of the various protective enchantments you could have placed on them. And owls weren't the only creatures you could get to deliver your mail, though they were the most popular. She'd seen songbirds, ravens, and even falcons delivering mail in the Great Hall, and once she could have sworn she'd seen a bat drop a scroll off to Professor Eberwulf.
Ruminating on the subject of owls, Lily stopped at the painting of the Fat Lady and gave the requested password – errare humanum – and climbed through the portrait hole. The common room was a blaze of red and gold upholstery and candlelight; it was fairly deserted, owing to the fact that half of the students were still in class (the other half were expecting an Astronomy lesson later in the evening) and it was far too nice of a day to be sitting inside around a fire. Lily, though, had a lesson to prepare for, and she ran up to her dormitory to gather together all her transfiguration books.
After an hour or so of feverishly cramming information she already knew into her head, she decided that she was as ready as she ever was going to be. She put her things away and then headed off to the third floor.
In the room she had chosen – clean now, due to James – she arranged a jumble of odds and ends on the table and began to practice transfiguring them. It was strange doing this on her own without the distractions of classmates or dorm-mates to divert her attention; she could focus on the magic better, feel it flow through her veins in fitful, erratic pulses, tingling beneath her skin like a sheen of electricity imbued within her flesh. It was hard to pinpoint the exact sensation that accompanied actual spellcasting; it felt a little like the static jolt that occurred when one walked across a carpet in socks and touched a metal doorknob, but somehow more subtle than that, smoother and not half so startling. It was a satisfying feeling, and it fascinated her.
Eventually, she was distracted by the sound of the door opening. She looked up from the jewellery box she had just refigured to see Snape edge into the room, looking dubious and rather insolent.
"Evening, Snape," Lily offered in greeting.
"Evans," he said.
She gestured towards the chair on the other side of the table. "Have a seat."
He glanced at the chair, a sneer lifting his upper lip –: "I prefer not to sit with my back to a door," he said.
Lily rolled her eyes, ducking her head to hide it. How affected. "Of course," she said with exaggerated sweetness; "just pull it around to this side, then."
Surprisingly, Snape did so without comment, and in a minute he was seated on her side of the table, spaced a cautious few feet away.
Lily had to admit to herself – no, she freely admitted to herself that she was nowhere near ready for this. She wasn't a teacher; she didn't function well in that aspect. She was not as gifted with words as James was, and neither was she as familiar with the concept of this branch of transfiguration as Snape was no doubt expecting her to be. But she refused to be cowed by these thoughts; she cleared her throat and began.
"Take our your wand," she directed, feeling a smug satisfaction when Snape silently did exactly that, and she pushed towards him the jewellery box she had just been practicing on. "Now, cast the novatio spell on this."
Snape touched the box, as if to confirm its position, before drawing back, aiming his wand, and softly uttering "Vivo novatio."
For a moment, nothing happened. Lily took her eyes off the box to see Snape scowling at it; for a moment, everything was still, and then the jewellery box had transformed into a small, silvery statuette of a box tortoise.
Lily didn't laugh, or even smile; she simply nodded. "All right," she said softly. "Now change it back."
Snape muttered the counterspell, and the tortoise turned back into the jewellery box with seemingly no trouble at all.
Lily frowned, and pushed a teacup towards him. "Try it on this," she said.
Snape did so. The teacup shuddered before sprouting tiny porcelain paws.
"Change it back," she ordered, and once again, the counterspell worked perfectly.
Lily made him try the spell on several other different objects before pronouncing him very bad at the subject. "Strange, though," she said, doing her best to ignore his murderous expression; "your intonation and wand movements are… well, perfect. And that's where most go wrong. And I think," she said, feeling rather excited at the prospect; "I think I know what your problem is."
"You think?" said Snape. "Shouldn't you know?"
Lily shot him a disgusted look. "I never claimed to be a transfiguration Master," she said. "I have a theory, though. A hypothesis, more like – I've not found anything about it in the books we study, so it's kind of like wandering blindfolded in the dark – but it's my belief that a lot of transfiguration trouble has to do with the mindset of the spellcaster."
Snape snorted. "That's hardly an original concept," he said.
"Thank you," she snapped. "If you know so much about it, why are you even coming to me?"
Snape gave her a mutinous look, but fell silent.
"Anyway," said Lily, "like I said, I think it's your mindset that's the trouble. I imagine you're inclined to believe that transformations like this – turning doornails into dormice, for example – are rather ridiculous?"
"I do find it… difficult to see the point," Snape admitted stiffly.
"There's your problem," Lily said, feeling a rush of satisfaction that had nothing to do with Snape admitting a weakness and everything to do with a problem well solved. "You've cultivated yourself a nice mental block. Rudolph Glaubersaid that condescension to the Craft is the downfall of the wizard, and I think you've been taking the wrong sort of approach to transfiguration from the start…. What you need to do is attempt to… clear your head of… scornful thoughts." She cleared her throat, aware of how awkward that had sounded. "That is to say, forget that you're turning a doornail into a dormouse. Or a snuffbox into a box turtle. Don't think about why you're doing it – because that's pointless; I mean, who on earth would want to turn a newspaper into a newt? And that's the kind of thinking that defeats the spell. Do you see what I'm saying?"
"You want me to pretend that I have a perfectly legitimate reason for turning a twig into a twig insect," Snape said tonelessly.
"No, no," Lily shook her head. "Don't pretend at all. Just don't think about it. Don't analyse it, just do it."
Snape looked at her, expressionless. He opened his mouth to speak – to snap out a critical remark, no doubt – and Lily cut him off before he could form a word.
"Just try it," she said, pushing the jewellery box towards him again.
Snape looked down at the box, and after a moment she saw his brows furrow slightly as he concentrated.
She wasn't aware that she was holding her breath.
Finally she heard him murmur the spell. "Vivo novatio."
She looked and saw the box change: the silver dulled, smoothed, broke into sections; it sprouted legs, a head, a tail; its eyes opened and it blinked.
Lily gave a soft cry of delight. It wasn't perfect, by any means – the turtle still retained a definite metallic sheen, and the only signs of movement it showed were its blinking eyes and its slightly twitching tail, but it was a lot better than his first attempts.
"Oh, good! Ha! I was right!" This last remark was aimed more towards herself than Snape; she clenched a fist in triumph, and then, aware that Snape was staring at her with a faintly appalled expression, she composed herself. "Sorry," she said with a little sheepish laugh. "Why don't you change it back and try it on the teacup."
Snape did so, muttering something under his breath between spells. He cast at the teacup, and it sprouted gleaming hair and ceramic limbs and a long, whippy china tail and became a twitching, almost-comatose-but-definitely-alive rat.
"Better, better," Lily chimed, changing it back herself with a wave of her own wand and shoving an empty inkbottle towards him. He turned it into a glassy-looking scarab beetle. She thrust a pen case in front of him; he changed it into a salamander with leather-patterned skin; she gave him an empty coin purse and he transfigured it into a somewhat stiff mole-like creature Lily recognized as a Niffler. Lastly she handed him a pair of gold stork-shaped scissors, and he turned them into a fluttering brown bird. To her delight it immediately flew away to perch on the top of a high cabinet beside the door.
"Perfect," Lily proclaimed, and Summoned the bird and changed it back into a pair of scissors before it could fly away again. "You see what you were doing? You were transfiguring them before you had time to think about what you were doing. Try this here." She set a slightly bent spoon before him. When he cast the spell at it, it turned into a praying mantis that was a little too large and a little too still.
"There," said Lily. "You were thinking again. But you do understand what I'm saying?"
"Thoroughly," Snape said. He was frowning, eyes keen, but he didn't appear as surly as he had when he first entered the room.
"Let's try some of the other spells," Lily said. "Spiro mutatorius next."
An hour later Lily had packed her various articles back into her satchel. Snape was looking decidedly winded, and with good reason; transfiguration was a difficult subject, and he'd been casting almost non-stop the entire time, and improving, no matter how slowly and slightly. Lily felt quite proud of herself. She was lucky Snape was a fast learner; if he hadn't caught on to her theory as quickly as he had, she doubted her patience would have lasted longer than the first quarter hour.
"Practice," she said as she snapped her bag shut. "Practice those spells during the week. And don't think about them. Practice not thinking." She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and nodded to Snape. "I'll see you Tuesday evening."
"Tomorrow, actually," Snape said. "Arithmancy."
Lily slapped her forehead. "That's right. Arithmancy. Anyway, I'll see you."
"You needn't reassure me," Snape said, his tone more matter-of-fact than sneering. "I'm perfectly capable of deducing that."
Lily felt her face heat up momentarily and she wondered whether she should be irritated with Snape for being so fastidious or ashamed of herself for making such an obvious statement. "Whatever," she said awkwardly. "Night, Snape."
Snape gave a small smirk. "Good evening, Evans."
Evans exited the classroom in a sweep of dark robes and red hair, leaving Severus to his thoughts. He was drained; all that casting had worn him out entirely. He figured he shouldn't have let her push him so far; he should have stopped sooner, but he had been doing better than he had expected. Evans seemed to know what she was doing, and what was more, she was evidently patient and intelligent enough to explain it lucidly.
She was strange, though. Her enthusiasm was disquieting; her encouragements unnerved him. She seemed to gain some sort of personal triumph out of his success, however minimal it was. He wondered – not for the first time – whether she had some ulterior motive in tutoring him, whether she was doing it for some other reason than the fact that she owed him.
Snape shook his head. He realized that Evans was a riddle he didn't have enough clues to solve. It was pointless sitting here and mulling it over when there were more productive things he could be doing.
He left the disused classroom, feeling hungry for once and hoping they were still serving dinner in the Great Hall.