Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Regulus sat down in the chair, placing his hands on his knees, sitting upright.

The office was spacious and clean, with bookshelves on two walls reaching the ceiling, filled with heavy magical books. The dark brown leather spines were embossed with gold lettering, some of which had been worn dark.

On the mantel was a slender-necked vase with a few dried flowers in it.

Several animated paintings hang on the wall. In one painting, a tabby cat chases a butterfly within the frame, leaping from left to right, only to turn back after missing its target. In another, several field mice nibble at a small piece of cheese, which shrinks with each bite, only to regenerate a few seconds later.

Another painting depicts Hogwarts Castle at night, with warm yellow lights shining from the tower windows and stars slowly moving across the canvas.

McGonagall moved the parchment on the table aside, making room for it, and placed her hands, clasped together, on the table, looking at Regulus. "Speak, Mr. Black, what's the problem?"

"Regarding permanent deformation, Professor."

McGonagall's eyebrows twitched slightly, and a glint flashed in her eyes.

She didn't show any surprise. She wasn't surprised by whatever question Little Black asked, but the question about permanent transformation showed that he hadn't been neglecting his studies lately. She nodded, signaling him to continue.

"Once an object is deformed, it always carries the tendency to return to its original form," Regulus said directly. "The more complete the structure, the stronger the tendency to return."

My understanding is that maintaining a transformation is essentially using magic to continuously suppress its return.

He asked in a questioning tone, "What I'd like to ask is, where does this tendency to regress originate? Can it be fundamentally eliminated? If it is eliminated, can a permanent transformation be achieved?"

After listening, McGonagall took her hands off the table, looked at Regulus, and her eyes showed a hint of satisfaction.

This was a serious question, not something you'd find in textbooks, and not something a second grader should be concerned with, but she didn't find it abrupt when Mr. Black asked. This child's understanding of Transfiguration had always been far deeper than her peers; thinking about its essence, she'd known it since the incident with the match turning into linden wood. Permanent transformation was certainly not something profound for her, nor was it entirely incomprehensible to this child. It was just that no one had ever explained it to him, and there were few related records in the restricted book section.

But the fact that he can think of this step on his own is truly rare.

Many wizards have practiced Transfiguration their entire lives, treating it merely as a craft, never once considering how it truly works. She looked at Regulus, straightening her posture again; this was a question worthy of a serious answer.

"The tendency to revert," the professor began slowly, his tone still serious, but unlike in class, it carried a hint of private conversation: "It comes from the deformed object's recognition of its original nature."

Regulus listened respectfully and quietly.

McGonagall continued, "You turn a table into a pig, you change its appearance, but you don't change its self-identification at all."

The new form is something you imposed on it from the outside; its original essence remains unchanged—it's still the same table.

Since the two are contradictory, the thing that has been changed will always return to its original form as it perceives it to be.

"So what you've been maintaining has never been that new form. What you've truly been maintaining is the struggle between its internal and external forces." Regulus nodded.

This is not hard to understand; what the professor said is the same thing he perceived in class.

The force pulling it back came from the stone slab's conviction that it was stone.

The outward form can be changed, but the inner essence cannot. This is the contradiction, and the tendency to revert to the original state comes from this contradiction.

I've thought about something similar before, but I never summarized it with specific vocabulary.

The professor's words about identification and reality, upon reflection, do indeed make sense.

McGonagall waited a moment, and seeing that he had no questions, she nodded and continued, "There are two ways to eliminate the tendency to regress."

Regulus focused his attention.

"First, the vast majority of transformations follow this path: suppression," McGonagall said. "If the caster's magic and will are strong enough, they can keep suppressing its old nature and prevent it from ever turning back."

But this is ultimately just suppression, not change. Suppress it your whole life, and you can never go back to the way things were. Once you let go, it will immediately revert. This path has no end, because the internal conflict is always there; you're just preventing it from erupting.

Regulus continued to nod.

The conflict the professor referred to was what he understood as a contradiction.

Seeing that he understood, McGonagall's eyes flashed with satisfaction, and her voice rang out again.

"There is another way," she said, her tone turning serious, "not to suppress the old reality, but to change it, allowing the thing being changed to accept the new form in terms of what it is."

The new form is no longer something added from the outside; it is an integral part of itself. Once it recognizes its new appearance, the tendency to revert to its original form loses its basis. It will no longer want to return to anything else because it believes it should be this way now. At this point, there is no need to maintain it; that is true permanent transformation.

"The first path tests how strong your magic is, the second path tests whether you can change the true nature of something." "Changing its appearance is easy, changing its true nature is extremely difficult," she looked at Regulus, her tone becoming more solemn: "Transfiguration at this level is already a completely different realm."

Regulus listened, his face still showing the same respectful expression, while his mind continued to ponder.

He understood the first path, which was what he had been doing all along: suppressing it with magic and supporting it with his will, keeping its form in place so it couldn't change. But he hadn't considered the second path the professor mentioned.

His previous ideas all revolved around the first path: stronger magic, more sustained suppression, or infusing the caster's will into it to firmly suppress the old nature.

Suppression and reshaping—he kept thinking about how to suppress more thoroughly.

The last time we used spatial distortion, we were fighting against the elasticity of space with magic. It wasn't until Mag demonstrated the elasticity itself as the target of the distortion that we realized what was happening.

What I thought was the most fundamental and untouchable thing can actually become an object of transformation.

Reason, pushed to its limit, can get stuck in a dead end, while magic can somehow bypass it.

This time, the same mistake was made again.

However, he hasn't seriously started working on permanent transformations yet; the direction is still undecided, he's just exploring a direction first.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't a complete failure, but rather a near failure.

McGonagall, observing his expression, roughly understood what was going on, and her tone revealed a hint of displeasure: "Mr. Black, I thought you would figure it out yourself. Didn't I already teach you about spatial distortion that time?"

Regulus bowed slightly, his tone sincere: "Professor is right. I should think about it from a different perspective. Thank you for reminding me."

McGonagall exhaled softly through her nose, not pursuing the matter further, and her expression softened.

Regulus snapped out of his thoughts.

He was indeed reminded, but this time he wasn't being stubborn. Besides, what he really wanted to ask wasn't how to make permanent changes.

This long string of questions is all setup; what he wants to ask is yet to come.

Disintegration Curse.

To dissect an organic living organism at the level of its existence, breaking it down to its most basic constituent units.

At that point, the decomposed thing no longer retains any original form; it is no longer itself.

According to Professor McGonagall's reasoning, the tendency to revert to the old ways stems from that very truth.

So, if something is broken down to the point where it no longer retains any sense of what it is, and has no original self, does it then have no direction to return to?

If deformation is applied to the basic unit during this window after decomposition but before it reforms, wouldn't the regressive force be bypassed?

Since this new form doesn't care where it goes back to, could it actually become permanently fixed?

Connecting decomposition and shaping is the answer he wanted.

But you can't ask that directly.

That's too specific a question, going so far as to break it down; it's tantamount to directly admitting that he has such methods.

McGonagall is the second most skilled Transfiguration master in the British magical world after Dumbledore, and her understanding of existence and form is incredibly profound. Whenever she hears a description of breaking down existence, she will always start working backwards.

Where did this child get this idea? Has he ever seen this kind of magic before? Or is he even capable of doing something like this?

Even if you can't piece together the whole picture, getting close enough to get a general idea is enough.

He wasn't afraid the professor would know, but it was better if he didn't know.

The Disintegration Charm was his trump card, and besides, it didn't seem like orthodox magic at all, so it was best to keep it from Professor McGonagall. Therefore, he needed to rephrase the question, but fortunately, he had already planned ahead.

The same problem can be broken down into smaller parts, hidden in different ways, and solved one by one.

Today we're only asking about Transfiguration; any deeper questions we ask are still purely theoretical.

He looked up at McGonagall: "You said that the tendency to revert stems from the deformed object's self-identification." His tone was still inquiring, his posture respectful: "Then I think, theoretically, is it possible for this self-identification to be stripped away, besides being altered?"

McGonagall's gaze lingered on his face for a moment, a hint of satisfaction in her eyes, before she nodded slightly.

"A transformed thing," Regulus continued, "if its self-identification is completely stripped away, leaving it in a state where it is no longer defined as anything definite—"

Is there no way back to it, since there is nothing to return to?

If we give it a new form in this state, can this form be permanently maintained because it has no tendency to revert to its original state?

He only asked whether it was theoretically possible, not how to do it.

After the Disintegration Curse breaks down the target, the basic units are still there, but they have been broken down into their original form and are no longer the same things, but the materials have not been lost.

Theoretically, there should be an extremely narrow window between the goal of "no longer being the original thing" and "dispersing into useless basic units." During this period, those units have not yet dispersed completely, nor have they re-aggregated; they are nothing, they simply still exist.

What he was really concerned about was whether the cracking and deformation process was even feasible.