Chapter 258: A Magical Creature Animagus?
In the mountains surrounding Beauxbatons, the snow had begun to melt beneath the sunlight, though that only seemed to make the biting cold even sharper.
On a sheltered stretch of open ground, Fleur stood with her wand in hand, a pale silver halo circling her body.
"I'm starting now."
As the words left her lips, she flicked her wrist, tracing a smooth arc with her wand. Crimson flames answered the motion, surging from its tip and dancing lightly at her side like a tamed ribbon.
Then Fleur began to speak. The words that left her lips were no longer a wizard's incantation, but the language of the Veela, carrying a strange, lilting cadence.
A short distance away, Leonardo stood in silence. Deep within his eyes, an almost imperceptible black vortex slowly emerged as the Eye of Arcane Perception opened.
As the Veela words echoed through the air, the originally pure crimson flames seemed as though moonlight had been poured into them, gradually taking on a flowing silver radiance.
The silver-crimson flames grew ever more lively, leaving brilliant ribbons of light in their wake. One moment they gathered into a blooming flower, the next they unfurled like the wings of a bird in flight. Light and shadow intertwined, dreamlike and almost unreal.
Against the backdrop of those magnificent flames, Fleur's already striking beauty took on an ethereal quality, lending her a grace that seemed almost beyond the mortal world.
Leonardo, however, kept his gaze fixed on the flow of magic through Fleur's circuits, and a quiet sigh escaped him.
"Remarkable."
What amazed Leonardo wasn't the flame's shape or colour, nor how docile and controllable it was, but the subtle transformation taking place within Fleur's magic circuits under the Eye of Arcane Perception.
In their normal state, a wizard's magic circuits resembled a tree with a clearly defined structure: a main trunk, roots, branches, twigs, and points where magic gathered like clusters of fruit.
Fleur's circuits had originally been no different.
But now, as she set aside conventional wizarding incantations and instead drew upon the Veela gift deep within her bloodline, that "tree" began to change.
The outermost sections of some of the branching circuits gradually lengthened and divided, transforming into delicate, feather-like structures.
At the same time, two faint concentric rings quietly emerged around the outer edge of the entire magic-circuit system. Shimmering with a soft, moonlit silver glow, they revolved slowly.
Did casting racial magic require a magic-circuit structure with distinctive racial characteristics?
Leonardo immediately thought of someone else with the blood of a magical creature: Hagrid, who was half-giant.
When he'd been with Hagrid before, he'd never deliberately observed him through the Eye of Arcane Perception, nor could he recall ever seeing Hagrid cast either wizarding magic or giant magic.
Would Hagrid's magic circuits undergo similar changes?
Since the events surrounding the Chamber of Secrets fifty years earlier had finally been cleared up, and the injustice done to Hagrid had at last been set right, the Ministry of Magic had once again permitted him to own and use a wand.
Mm, once I'm back, I'll find an opportunity to ask Hagrid about it.
The association was like a key, prying open, just a little, an idea Leonardo had set aside some time ago.
He'd long wondered whether it might be possible to achieve an Animagus transformation into a magical creature.
But that line of thought would require a complete reconstruction of his entire magic-circuit system, where even the slightest mistake could have unimaginable consequences.
Now, seeing with his own eyes the localised, controlled adaptation of Fleur's magic circuits as she used her racial magic, each change precisely tied to a specific magical effect, was like a lamp suddenly being lit in the darkness.
"Perhaps... there's another way."
Leonardo gazed at the figure dancing amidst the silver-crimson flames, and at the strange yet beautiful transformations unfolding within her magic circuits. Gradually, the outline of a new line of research began to take shape in his mind.
He didn't have to begin by aiming to become a fire dragon or a phoenix.
He could start instead by studying wizards with magical-creature bloodlines, such as Fleur and Hagrid, examining the localised transformations their magic circuits underwent when their bloodline abilities were awakened.
He needed to understand the principles governing those transformations and how they gave rise to their corresponding magical effects.
From a single point to the whole; from the local to the complete.
Every undertaking is hardest at the beginning.
If he could take that first step—understanding and gaining an initial mastery of these bloodline- and gift-based changes to magic circuits—then one day, an Animagus transformation based on a magical creature might truly become possible.