Regulus turned. The door swung wide and Sirius walked straight in.
Good. He'd found some ambition.
Students who sought out a professor's office on their own account were rarely hopeless. It meant they'd learned to take something seriously.
The corner of Regulus's mouth lifted, and something pleased crossed his eyes.
McGonagall glanced up then, her gaze passing over his face before moving to Sirius in the doorway.
Her expression didn't shift, severe and composed, square spectacles giving nothing away.
But after she noticed the look on Regulus's face, her lips pressed together for an instant before she smoothed it out.
Sirius nodded to her first, casual about it. "Professor."
Then his eyes went sideways and found Regulus.
They widened. His brows shot up, teeth bared in something between a grimace and a grin, and his mouth was already open. "What are you doing here?"
A mindless question, in Regulus's estimation.
What could he possibly be here for?
Hauled in over an unwritten Transfiguration essay?
He'd come to consult on advanced magic, obviously. What else?
He regarded his brother, tone mild, verging on kindly. "You made it."
Sirius's teeth itched.
That voice again.
Every time Regulus used it he felt like a small child being humored.
He ground his back teeth, wrinkled his nose, and managed not to erupt in front of McGonagall. A breath went out through his nostrils instead, and he crossed the room in long strides.
Her eyes drifted up from the desk, traveled between the two brothers, and revealed nothing.
Without waiting to be invited, Sirius dragged out the chair beside Regulus and dropped into it.
Then some wire crossed somewhere, and he twisted his head around to flick his eyebrows at Regulus, mouth pulling sideways, smugness all over his face.
Regulus had no idea what ailed him and returned a look that told him to behave.
Sirius pursed his lips, shifted his backside on the seat, and settled.
He laid the roll of parchment on the desk and pushed it forward, respectfully enough. At least he hadn't flung it at her.
McGonagall took it, pressed a palm over it, and raised her eyes to Regulus.
Anything else? If not, you may go.
He stayed exactly where he was.
Sirius turning up was no shock, but he had another matter to raise. The academic half was finished; Dumbledore hadn't come up yet.
He'd wait. And in the meantime he could see how the boy's practice had been going.
Her gaze lingered on his face, some thought crossing behind it, then withdrew. She didn't look at him again.
When her attention landed on Sirius, he straightened at once, spine lengthening, eyes lowered, model of a seated student.
Quiet settled over the office.
McGonagall read the parchment with a slight furrow between her brows, one finger tracking slowly down that earthworm scrawl.
Sirius lasted a few minutes.
His toe started tapping. Then the knee began to swing. Then the whole leg was going.
Regulus caught it in the edge of his vision and didn't bother looking twice.
A few minutes more and Sirius lifted himself off the seat, hoisted the chair, and shifted it toward his brother an inch at a time, silently.
Then he leaned in and jabbed Regulus with an elbow.
"What are you here for, seriously?" His voice dropped to a whisper.
The office was not small, but it had gone quiet enough that a quill dipping into ink would carry. No whisper was ever going to be quiet enough.
Regulus glanced toward McGonagall. She kept her head down. One eyebrow rose, nothing else.
She meant to enjoy the show again.
He tilted his head toward Sirius and answered lower still. "Asking about a problem."
Sirius's eyes lit. He leaned in further, shoulders nearly touching. "Spatial Transfiguration?"
Regulus shook his head.
Brows knitting, Sirius considered. "Human Transfiguration?"
Regulus looked past him toward the fireplace.
"Cross-species Switch?" Refusing to let it go.
No response.
Sirius's nose wrinkled too. He drew a breath and tried several angles at once. "Summoning? Vanishment? Untransfiguration?"
The corner of Regulus's mouth twitched.
The boy could guess, at least. Every one of those belonged to N.E.W.T. material, sixth and seventh year work.
Having the terms on the tip of his tongue meant he'd been through the relevant reading, maybe even started dabbling.
Though he could burn out his brain and never land on the real question. Getting within reach of it would itself be proof his Transfiguration was up to standard.
Go ahead and guess.
Head cocked, Sirius stared at his profile, hunting his expression for a crack.
Regulus turned back and gave him a look that said enough.
Sirius huffed through his nose and screwed up his mouth. "Fine. Don't tell me."
Ten minutes or so later McGonagall lifted her eyes and pushed the parchment aside.
Sirius squared himself instantly, hands back on his knees, sitting up straight, then whipped his head around for a glance at Regulus.
That glance carried everything. Mouth curling up, brows arching, gray eyes full of anticipation and self-satisfaction, his whole face announcing that something impressive was coming.
Regulus raised an eyebrow.
Sirius grinned wide, turned away, and faced the professor.
She was already watching him. "How far have you got?"
The question he'd been waiting for.
His eyes drifted toward Regulus once more, snapped back, and he cleared his throat. The smugness on his face resolved into concentration.
He rolled up his left sleeve, baring a stretch of forearm, and lifted his wand in his right hand, aiming it at the skin.
His lips moved without sound. His wrist turned, and the tip cut a short arc.
Color began to change along the forearm, elbow toward wrist.
A pale gray rose out from under the skin and spread across that stretch.
Then the gray sank in and deepened, pale to iron, iron to something darker still, a cold dull silver picking out the edges.
The texture followed.
What had been smooth started to rise in patches, spreading down toward the wrist.
Not quickly. Each layer pushed up from beneath, every plate roughly the same size, about a fingernail across.
The rear plate overlapped the lower edge of the one before it, edges rounded, centers slightly domed, ranked one over another.
Dozens of them packed the span of a palm, the color shading toward black-gray and finally to something near pure black.
Dark scales sheathed the forearm in ordered, interlocking rows.
Grain radiated from the center of each plate outward, fine and even, running the same way across every one, smooth and natural, catching a hard cold light.
Color, texture, arrangement, the direction of the grain. Regulus knew it. Hebridean Black scale armor.
Visually striking. That alone qualified as Human Transfiguration.
Magic Perception traveled along with his gaze, sweeping the plating, and the picture came clear.
The scales were a change of skin form only. The keratin structure of the epidermis had been rearranged, texture and density transfigured, laid out in a scaled pattern.
Hardness had risen accordingly, a great deal tougher than ordinary human skin.
But go deeper and there was nothing.
Muscle unchanged. Bone density unchanged. Fascia the same elasticity as before. Vessels and nerves still distributed like a human forearm.
At the level of magic it was clearer still. Not a trace of draconic magical signature.
Shell without a core. The form was achieved; the magic was blank.
Physical hardness he did have. Dragon scale is famous for defense, and even with no magic behind it, the sheer arrangement of that keratin would probably ring under a flick. Ordinary blunt force or a not-too-forceful puncture should hold.
Magical attacks were another story. With no magic involved, the barrier effect was zero. The scales wouldn't stop a single proper spell.
Handsome, hard, still not enough.
Then again, Sirius was fifteen.
A third year producing localized transfiguration of human tissue at that precision was remarkable. There weren't many in the whole of Hogwarts.
Human Transfiguration lived in the N.E.W.T. syllabus, and the vast majority of wizards reached seventh year able to lengthen or shorten their own nose, or change their hair color.
Sirius was already swapping human material and texture at the level of form. Only skin-deep, but that was a high place to start.
The talent had shown itself long ago. Morphological Intuition.
Form was form. What skin looked like, how scales sat, what grain ran through them, a picture in the head sufficed. Magic followed the picture. No derivation, no modeling required.
Regulus could produce form transfiguration to that standard too, though for him it was a lower application of Essential Transfiguration.
But when he worked, structure came first, then principle, then parameters.
Why does the thing look like this, what function does it serve, what does the change mean at the level of existence, how do you alter it from the root.
Only after the logic held together did he lift his wand. Get the essential thing right and the change of form came along for free.
Sirius skipped the entire procedure. He'd seen it, the picture was in his head, and the magic came with it. Between his mind and his magic there were no steps.
Talent is talent, and no amount of drilling produces it. But talent isn't work.
For most wizards the work never catches the talent. And talent without work never flies far.
Talent gets the door open. The road on the other side you walk yourself. However good it is, refuse to push and you stop at the threshold.
This one had started spending himself on both ends now. The talent had a direction, and the work was coming up behind it.
Good.
Sirius held it a while before the scales grew unsteady.
The edge plates loosened first, color bleeding from black toward gray, grain blurring, and then they retracted one by one, sinking back beneath the skin.
The color withdrew with them, iron fading to pale, pale fading to flesh, and within seconds the forearm was ordinary again.
He let out a breath, rolled his wrist, shook the arm out, and turned at once to look at Regulus.
Regulus was already watching, his eyes still on that patch of skin.
Sirius's mouth got away from him, teeth showing, gray eyes bright.
Smugness filled his whole face. He tried for a little dignity, hauled at the corners of his mouth, failed, and gave up, sitting there grinning at his brother.
Regulus checked McGonagall first. Satisfaction showed in her eyes, the line between her brows smoothed out.
Progress, then. Considerable progress.
He turned back and gave a nod, tone mild and patient. "Not bad."
Sirius couldn't contain it another second. His mouth flew up, every tooth on display, chin lifted to the ceiling.
His eyes worked hard to convey one particular message.
Who asked you?
Nobody asked. But if you want to watch, go ahead and watch.
He caught a few breaths, and his eyebrows went up again with more force than before. "I'm not done!"
Regulus's mouth tugged sideways, and he played along. "Oh?"
McGonagall flicked a finger across the desktop. The cork stopper of the inkwell rose on its own, drifted unhurried across the desk, and settled into Sirius's open palm.
He closed his hand around it and grinned at her with a nod. "Thanks, Professor."
Then he balanced the stopper on his palm and pointed his wand at it.
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