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Chapter 17: The Dubois Transform
The Great Hall was swarming with students coming and going like bees from a beehive.
"What are you two pure-bloods conspiring about now?" Róisín asked playfully as she took a seat opposite Anna and Richard, the friend of Eóghan whose father had sent the brandy.
"Just the declining standards of house elves as we head towards the twenty-first century," Richard quipped.
"Ha! Have you seen the state of Anna's room back home? She doesn't have house elves."
"Yeah, my stupid hippie mother freed ours, I grew up toiling over the stove," Anna moaned.
Róisín snorted with laughter and Anna joined her. They both knew Anna hadn't touched a pot in her life. Anna smothered her snickers and struck back,
"Laugh all you want, but I think you Oirsh," she said in a thick Dublin accent, "are infiltrating this fine British establishment from the bottom up."
"What are ye on about?" Róisín asked.
"Well, all there is on offer today is Guinness beef stew and Irish salmon, explain that!"
"And Eton mess for dessert?" Róisín retorted, making Anna's faux serious expression ripple into laughter again.
The familiar banter made Róisín feel like she was slipping back into her old self. When Richard left, she apologised to Anna.
"I was super rude to you the night before last, I dunno what came over me and I'm sorry."
"Don't worry, Róisín," Anna said, "I'm just confused, is something going on? You've been acting… down recently."
"No, it's just, study and stuff, and hormones, I dunno." Róisín shook her head. "I'll be fine…. I'm excited about this party you're planning," she added with forced enthusiasm.
"That we're planning," Anna corrected.
They began organising the party on the way to transfiguration. They decided on Saturday, in the common room, at eleven when the younger students have gone to bed or retreated from their hostile glares. For food they would cajole the kitchen elves into donating dancing gingerbread men and flying fairy cakes. It was a Hogsmeade weekend, so they could sneak in some butterbeer. For music they compromised between playing hits from the muggle world and Anna's favourite "Magikpop" wizarding bands.
"The Theory of Flourishing Knowledge," McGonagall began when the students had settled, "was first proposed by Armando Dippet and later built upon by…?"
"Professor Dumbledore," a Hufflepuff answered.
"Correct. Now, who can explain it?"
Ida spoke up,
"The theory posits that the exact details of an intricate object are not required in order to transfigure the object, just enough information is needed to seed one's magic with its form; wherein it will be completed by the cosmos' collective."
"Excellent, Miss Evrard, ten points to Ravenclaw," McGonagall replied. "Although complete knowledge of the object is unnecessary, the more you know, the better your initial knowledge will "flourish"."
They were each given a blank notebook to transfigure. Róisín squeezed her eyes shut, said the incantation, and opened them to discover a hardback in its place, with "The Chronicles of Narnia" written across the front. The book was overflowing with moving illustrations; Aslan strode across one page, his magnificent mane soft beneath her fingers; on another a faun trotted through forests buried in snow. It only had a few words scattered here and there however, most of which were nonsensical.
Beside her, Anna snorted as she flipped through her own handiwork; a dog-eared paperback featuring a witch in the arms of a handsome vampire on the front. She passed it to Róisín and pointed out a line:
"Stephanie is blond. Everyone wants to be her. She is a bitch." And another on the next page: "There is sexual tension between Elsa and Roberto."
"Well I remembered the gist of it," Anna said.
"I didn't know you had such refined taste in literature," Róisín teased.
"Shut up, you're just jealous your preteen years weren't filled with such steamy material."
McGonagall gave Ida ten points for her recreation of "Transfiguration Perfection" and appraised with pinched lips Anna's simplified version of "Blood that Binds". She gave Róisín a warm "well done" before she even looked at her book, and when she saw the hundreds of illustrations she awarded her another ten points.
"Ravenclaw for the cup," Angus, the Ravenclaw beater, cheered in a little whisper and patted Róisín on the back.
"Today we will focus on Lambert's theorem of pattern generation," Professor Vector said, breaking through Róisín's mental replay of her disastrous meeting with Snape earlier that day.
"Professor," Kiserian, the Slytherin girl from Róisín's potion class, asked, "what about the Dubois transform we were working on last Tuesday?"
"Yes, well it turns out the student body is too small for that transform, so you can use the example of the German village in the text as a reference," Vector said to the blackboard as she wrote out Lambert's theorem.
"But that example only has eight hundred people and there are a thousand students at Hogwarts."
Vector turned around,
"Since the students of Hogwarts are teenagers, they're still developing, and not appropriate for the transform, my apologies," she said sharply and turned back to the board.
Kiserian gave the girl sitting beside her a look as if to say, "What's her problem?" but didn't reply.
Róisín's chest tightened. She had forgotten about the anomaly in the calculations on Tuesday and the look Vector had thrown her way. Róisín didn't buy that Vector had made a mistake in applying the transform to the student body. Vector didn't make mistakes.
After class ended, Róisín debated whether to ask McGonagall about it as she descended the steep stairs of the north-east tower.
Or maybe Snape would know more, seeing as he's apparently the expert on sióga.
"Hey, Feral"
Róisín looked up, surprised to see that Zoltan Kun had fallen into step beside her.
"Hello, Zoltan"
"So, you're playing tomorrow then?"
"Pardon?"
"The quidditch match"
Róisín looked at Kun in confusion.
"No, I'm not on the team."
"Thought you might be filling in for Griffiths."
Róisín snorted.
"Do I look like a beater to you?"
Kun languidly looked her body up and down, before meeting her eyes.
"No, I suppose you don't."
Róisín blushed and looked away. His eyes were striking like a cat's. They reached the bottom of the staircase and Róisín began to walk in the direction of Ravenclaw tower. To her surprise, Kun continued to walk with her.
"So, why'd ye think I'd be playing tomorrow?" Róisín asked to break the silence.
"Well since Griffiths broke his leg last match, rumours were you might fill in for him, seeing as you've been flying with McCormack so often."
"Oh, Angus is fine, Pomfrey fixed his leg and Eóghan's just teaching me as a favour. I'm terrible, definitely not good enough for the team."
"I doubt you're that bad."
"No really, I am."
They turned a corner. The inhabitants of the paintings they passed leaned forward to snoop at the Slytherin so far from the dungeons. Even a raven with a letter in its beak alighted on a windowsill to watch the pair.
"Do you play quidditch?" Róisín asked.
"A little, but I prefer zhouzhan, do you know it?"
"Isn't it a wizarding martial art?"
"Correct. In zhouzhan, you can only use yidong magic and win by forcing your opponent to tap out."
"Yidong magic?"
"A type of wandless, nonverbal magic that physically pushes or pulls your opponent."
"Sounds like a cool sport."
"I could show you a few moves sometime," Kun suggested.
"I'd be awful, I'd tap out before we began."
"Don't worry, I'd go easy on you." Róisín imagined Kun's lean body wrestling with her. She gulped. "Anyway, I thought you were decent wandless," Kun added.
"Em, no… not particularly."
"That's not what I heard, Roman Jacquet said you've done some ridiculous wandless magic in transfig."
The blood pumped in Róisín's brain like a siren. What was Kun doing talking to Jacquet? They weren't even in the same house.
"I didn't mark you as a Slytherin who befriends Hufflepuffs," Róisín teased, desperate to change the subject.
"I associate with a select few," Kun said teasingly.
They had reached the bottom of the staircase leading to Ravenclaw tower. Róisín paused, not knowing what to say. Kun stood a breath closer than normal to her, his tall stance folded with relaxed confidence.
"Would you like to go to Hogsmeade next weekend together?" he asked.
"Oh," Róisín exclaimed, taken aback, "Em… I promised my friend I'd do some shopping with her, but maybe next time."
"Ok, I'll remind you," Kun replied and grinned at her before walking back the way they had come.
Róisín rushed up the stairs, her face glowing.
Why did she say maybe next time? There could be no next time. If she could, she'd go out with Eóghan, not Kun. Why was he interested anyway? The popular Slytherin was swarmed with girls, girls of good, pureblood stock.
She was smiling though, that type of big, boisterous smile that had a life of its own. She bit the inside of her cheek to dampen it.
Ok, so a tiny part of her was pleased that Kun had noticed her.
Outside a paned glass window, the raven with the letter watched Róisín climb Ravenclaw tower before flying away.
Róisín spent the evening practicing transfiguration with Anna in the common room. She attempted to recreate books from her school days in Dublin which Anna insisted on reading aloud from, butchering the Irish language in the process. For her part, Anna transfigured novellas with raunchy passages that caused Róisín to cry with laughter. The dirty looks sent by their more studious peers for disturbing the peace just caused them to dissolve into more giggles.
The next day, against a white, frosted sky, Ravenclaw played Slytherin in the bloodiest quidditch match in Hogwarts' recent history. For over three hours, the players dodged, twisted and smacked into each other in a dizzying blur. At one point, a bludger missed its target and rocketed towards the stands. Just as Róisín and Anna ducked in fear, Eóghan appeared out of nowhere and sent the bludger hurtling towards the Slytherin keeper, hitting him in the gut and propelling him through the hoop, quaffle in hand, scoring a rare own-goal for Ravenclaw. In the end, with only five of fourteen players left on the pitch, Slytherin defeated Ravenclaw 320 points to 300. The atmosphere was grim that evening as the Ravenclaws gathered around their wounded team in the hospital wing, however a disloyal part of Róisín was relieved she wouldn't have to deal with a bad-humoured Head of Slytherin in potions.
Late on Sunday morning, Róisín, ravenous and worried about missing breakfast, found a gaggle of students around the doors to the Great Hall. She pushed through them but stalled when she overheard some of the chatter,
"Snape himself took fifty points-"
"- I heard it was a hundred!"
She craned her head upwards. The Slytherin hourglass, filled yesterday with emerald gems glistening a foot above the other houses was almost empty. Now the ruby gems stood the tallest, followed by the sapphire and the amber.
Anna, Eóghan and Angus discussed with Róisín what they had heard over breakfast. Apparently, there had been a scuffle last night in the Slytherin dormitory during their match celebrations. They didn't know who fought or if anyone was injured. The rumours ranged from dark curses to people being transfigured into mice, and each time they circled the Great Hall the rumours grew more horrid; dark curses turned to unforgivables and mice turned to lice. Only a handful of Slytherins were at breakfast, offering a curt "bugger off" to the delegates sent from the other tables to investigate.
After breakfast, Róisín and Eóghan set off to check on the thestral foal, "Bumbly", that they were monitoring for their assignment. They found the herd in a clearing near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. At first the glade looked empty to Róisín, but then she saw little puffs of steam coming out of mid-air, as if tiny pixies were gathered around smoking pipes. When she got closer she could smell and hear them, huffing and neighing like horses.
Róisín sat on the fat root of an oak tree and took notes as Eóghan examined Bumbly. Although the scratch on Bumbly's leg from before had healed, he now had another deep scrape on his back.
"Maybe he got it chasin' squirrels through the undergrowth, there are mad sharp stabbing thorns on those bristlebacks by Ogg's creek," Eóghan mused. He squatted down to look at the foal's teeth and promptly fell backwards laughing, "He licked mah face!".
"Good boy," Róisín said as she reached out to pet the thestral and missed, causing Eóghan to guffaw again. His booming laughter must've startled the foal, as he quieted abruptly and caressed what Róisín assumed was its mane.
She watched the ridges of veins in Eóghan's arms as he cooed over the invisible Bumbly, remembering his prowess in the match yesterday, how his biceps had flexed inches from her when he walloped the bludger. She realised he was in only a t-shirt, while she was wrapped up like a cocoon.
"Aren't you cold?" she asked.
"No, Ah don't really feel cold, Ah feel hot sometimes, but nae often cold."
That night Róisín stayed up perfecting her polyjuice essay until grey clouds mushroomed out of a black sky. After closing her eyes for what felt like a second, she was woken by the morning sunlight stumbling through her window like an obnoxious roommate after a drunken night out. She skipped breakfast to proof-read her essay for the fifth time, then threw herself towards the dungeons to deliver it to Snape.
Panting, she knocked on his office door.
"Enter"
Snape's expression darkened when he saw her. With a flick of his wand, her essay flew from her grip and alighted on his desk.
"Next time you forget to bring an assignment to class, you'll be in detention for a week."
Did he not remember he had given her an extension?
"But sir-"
"-Mister Kun, you may go."
Róisín's eyes landed on a stooped figure to her left, picking through a jar of squirming black things. The figure stopped its task and turned around.
Kun did not look well. His eyes were ringed with purple and sunk into the waxy pallor of his face, devoid of the charm they had sparkled with when he had asked her to Hogsmeade.
He left the room without acknowledging Róisín, and when he reached for the doorknob, she saw his hands were covered in little nicks and scratches dripping blood. She looked and realised that the squirming things were beetles with sharp pincers. Beside them was another jar with pincer-less beetles and a pile of little black hooks.
"Is that all, Miss Feral?" Snape asked bluntly when Kun had gone.
"No, sorry sir, I was wondering-" her empty stomach squelched its sides loudly, "-if you have an ointment suitable for a thestral wound?"
"What happened to the thestral?"
"I'm not sure, it has a couple of cuts, it might be from thorns."
Snape stared at her for a long second before standing up abruptly and going to a storage cupboard.
Róisín shook her head to dispel the sudden memory of how his bare torso had moved above her and how he had felt inside her.
"Apply this three times weekly," he instructed and handed her a jar of green paste.
It sounded like a dismissal. Róisín hesitated.
"Is there something else?"
"Maybe. I dunno if it means anything, but last Tuesday when Professor Vector was doing the" – Róisín stomach interrupted with a gurgle – "the… the thing that reveals whether there's someone influential or unusual in the population -"
"The Dubois transform"
"Yes that one, anyway she thought something was wrong with the result, saying "it's not probable", and then she kinda looked in my direction."
Snape's eyes narrowed.
"You think it revealed what you are?"
"I don't know, I read the Dubois transform chapter of the textbook, but it wasn't clear on what type of atypical people it-"
"- I will discuss it with the headmaster," Snape interrupted. Róisín turned to leave when he added, "You were right to tell me."
Her heart skipped.
"Thank you, professor."
Snape sat back at his desk.
"Go eat something before you faint, Miss Feral."
The school was still buzzing with talk about the Slytherin point loss. Róisín was itching to tell her friends that Kun had spent an entire night de-pincering Bulgarian biting beetles in detention but she couldn't. If she did they'd ask why she was in Snape's office and they'd never believe he had given her an extension for her essay. She kept her ears peeled for snippets of gossip, fascinated as to what Kun had done to merit such punishment from his own head of house.
The rest of the day flew by. In charms she practiced the Fidelius charm by hiding secrets in Anna, her secret keeper, while Ida tried to discover them, in runes they studied an ancient Sumerian text on magical goat husbandry, and in care of magical creatures they had the ambitious task of trimming the hooves of an asalith, a donkey-like creature the size of an African elephant with the hair of a mammoth.
After dinner Róisín decided to research the Dubois transform in the main library. As she was making her way there, she heard a whisper,
"Well, if he wasn't such a faggot…"
The slur made her stomach turn. She looked back to see a white blond head huddled amongst two lumps of muscle. Of course, it was the infamous Malfoy and his minions. Róisín sighed. She had heard the chronicles of his feud with Harry Potter and they did not paint the young aristocrat in a good light.
"Hey I'm-"
Róisín's coughing interrupted the voice. The primordial dust swimming around the arithmancy section had gone down her throat yet again. She turned from her appraisal of the shelves to a head of bushy curls.
" – I know who you are," she managed to splutter. "Hermione Granger, nice to meet you. I'm Róisín Feral." Granger's eyes brightened at the recognition. "So, how's the saviour of the wizarding world?" Róisín asked.
"Oh, so you believe Harry then," Granger said, looking pleasantly surprised. "He's …fine. I actually have a potions question and a seventh-year told me that you'd know since you're taking NEWTS potions?"
"I am, although I'm hardly a master potioneer," Róisín admitted.
"Oh, well I would ask Professor Snape, but he's very intimidating, don't you think?" Granger asked, her eyes searching Róisín's.
"Yeah, definitely the scariest teacher in the castle," Róisín agreed.
"I get so nervous around him, you know?"
Róisín snorted.
"Yeah, story of my life." There was a pause. The Gryffindor looked as though she expected Róisín to elaborate but instead Róisín asked, "So, what was your question?"
Granger looked down at her notebook,
"Em… here it is, do you know the potions thestral blood is used for?"
Róisín paused.
Strange, that's definitely a question a book could answer.
"Off the top of my head… Alihotsy draught, Draught of peace, Gluck juice, Drink of despair, Draught of living death, Grief soothing paste, em… Memorimatus, Oculus potion, Veritaserum…" Róisín frowned in thought, "…and it's rumoured to be used by Flamel in his elixir of life, but I don't know if that's true. Basically, it's in loads of different potions which play with the balance of life and death, happiness and sadness, enlightenment and ignorance." Hermione was still watching her, not taking any notes. "Why do you want to know?" Róisín asked.
"Professor Hagrid's thestral foals have a few cuts. I'd heard before that young thestral blood is magically potent, so I was curious as to… well, if someone was collecting their blood for brewing," Granger explained.
"I hadn't thought of that, the foal I'm looking after has cuts too. We should ask Professor Snape," Róisín replied.
"Oh no, I don't think that's… thanks anyway," Granger said and hurried off like a mole that had smelt a fox.
Weird, Róisín thought as she returned to reading the spines of books.
A clock chimed. It was already ten o'clock. Róisín shoved "Disrupting Faith through Arithmancy" back onto the shelf, gathered her things and dashed away to her evening Astronomy class.
Professor Vector knocked. The chorus of loud, sharp whispers behind the door died.
The headmaster's office was cold. The fireplace sat empty and a window was open, allowing snow to cartwheel into the room and gather like dust on the ground.
"Good evening Septima, please take a seat."
Snowflakes had fallen on the shoulders of Professor Dumbledore's unusually drab, grey robe. The headmaster looked tired, and old, as though each of his one hundred and fourteen years had carved a new wrinkle across his face. He sat at his desk with his fingers steepled in front of him. When he addressed the arithmancy professor his words were polite but his tone was rigid,
"I apologise for disturbing you so late in the evening, but this could not wait. Not when our world is in such a precarious position."
The former headmasters of Hogwarts looked down on Professor Vector from all sides as though she were a Death Eater on trial by the Wizengamot. She drew her blood red robes closer to her.
"Of course, professor."
"Last Tuesday you performed a Dubois transform that yielded an unexpected result."
Vector straightened in her seat.
"Unexpected, yes, but also highly improbable, I did not wish to bother-"
The headmaster raised his hand.
"I presume you continued to work on this transform."
"I did."
"Show me your workings."
Vector took out her wand, drew a crescent-moon and called,
"Accio Dubois transform"
A minute later a pile of papers slipped beneath the door and fluttered onto the desk. Vector sat in silence as Dumbledore scanned the pages through his half-moon glasses. When he had finished he regarded her. His eyes were livid.
"Do you remember, professor, the pertinent point I tried to impress upon the teachers of this school at our first staff meeting of the year, and each subsequent meeting?"
Vector raised her chin.
"Of course."
"Do you not believe that a result such as this falls into the category of an unusual occurrence?"
"With all due respect Headmaster, arithmancy is my domain," Vector asserted. "This result is inconclusive. To conclude something this inconceivable requires arithmantic proof more certain than a Gringott brick."
"Tell me that I am too rusty, too old for this quick-witted subject, that I misunderstood the Bernard projector and it does not point to-"
"- Headmaster, I firmly believe this is a false positive, this is a subject of probabilities, there may be a probability of an event, but that does not mean it will occur, we must take the priors into account-"
"- Tell me."
Vector sighed.
"The Bernard equation was greater than the Legrand. It implies He was there. In my classroom."
A/N Thank you so much to everyone reading and especially people who reviewed, your reviews make my day.