Chapter 23
As soon as Hermione learned about Metamorphmagus magic, she was practically ablaze with enthusiasm and began to study rituals and runes at an accelerated pace. And we have a feeling that the only thing she cares about in our idea is the ability to change her appearance however she wishes—which, in a way, is understandable. After all, who wouldn't want to look like a perfect 10 out of 10. Another reason we think this is because we warned her in advance: to achieve biological immortality, she would need to combine Metamorphmagus abilities with Muggle science, specifically something as complicated as genetic engineering, which means she'd have to study in the Muggle world after Hogwarts. Hermione responded to this rather indifferently.
Still, that's not so important now—what matters far more is that today we're going to create our first ritual circle.
"Is everything ready?" asked a slightly nervous Hermione, who was currently looking at the magic circle, around which various runes were neatly drawn. And, going clockwise in small circles, there were precious stones whose numbers increased the way numbers appear on a clock.
"Yes," we replied, finishing checking what we'd done against the instructions from the book. After all, we're not about to try inventing a ritual from scratch. First, we need to practice with what's in the books.
"So, who will go first?" Hermione asked.
"Definitely not us," we said, pulling out a vial, which, according to the shopkeeper, was filled with dragon blood—and thus, magical energy. The relatively harmless magic circle had been created to determine its level. In fact, we could have just gone in ourselves right away, but, as they say, better safe than sorry.
"What's that?" asked the girl.
"100 milliliters of Norwegian Ridgeback dragon blood," we explained, putting the vial in the center of the circle right on the Gebo rune, which was supposed to link the object to the rest of the ritual circle. After a second, the circle activated: first, the rune under the vial lit up blue, and then the circle began to fill clockwise, first reaching the stone where the number 1 would be on a clock, until it reached a second, at which point the light stopped.
"Hm, so one vial of dragon blood contains 3 units of magic energy?" we said thoughtfully, recording the result in the notebook through Regulus. The number of these units was calculated based on the number of stones that lit up.
"Well, there don't seem to be any problems—so now it's my turn," Hermione said impatiently, and, after removing the vial of blood from the magic circle, stepped into it herself.
"You're surprisingly impatient," we commented, shaking our head at her, before focusing on the new readings.
"I just want to know how big the difference in magical energy is between us… Whaaaat?" Hermione began, only to be, to put it mildly, startled by the reading of her magic volume. While the dragon blood registered three magical units, Hermione only got six.
"Could I really have that little?" the girl asked in shock, mentally picturing how much more magic a dragon must have compared to her, if 100 ml of its blood was half her reserve.
"Unexpected," we commented calmly, making note of the result. "But for the sake of the experiment, we should test ourselves as well."
"Andromeda will go first," we decided, urging Hermione out, and had our female half step into the circle. The circle began to fill rapidly until it stopped at the segment with eleven stones.
"Hm? So, sixty-six? No wonder we never got tired compared to you," Regulus noted, while Hermione stared at the result, open-mouthed. She knew she was weaker than us, but eleven times weaker?
"Now Regulus," we said, switching places. To be honest, since we shared the same soul and mind, we doubted there would be any difference. And yet…
"Sixty-four?" we looked in confusion at the two unlit stones on the eleventh segment, and then switched places several times just to make sure the circle wasn't 'malfunctioning.' But the results stayed the same.
"That's strange, how can we have different levels of magic?" The question stumped us.
"What does it matter? At least you have a lot of it," Hermione said gloomily, obviously shaken by just how huge the difference in reserves was. "It's… because I'm Muggle-born, isn't it?"
"We don't think so," we answered carefully, noticing that the result had hurt our friend much more than she let on.
"Wait! Let's make a portable tester and check everyone in our common room!" Hermione suddenly brightened up.
"Are you sure that's a good…"
"Yes, I'm sure," Hermione interrupted us, her eyes blazing with determination.
"All right," we sighed, realizing we'd have to order the materials.
So, as we developed, essentially, an artifact this time, a week went by without us realizing, during which we managed to forget that we had planned to visit the Headmaster and talk about our vision of the past. Speaking of visions—we'd started to suspect the reason for the differences in magical power. Digging carefully through our memories of what we'd felt during the visions, we concluded that each of our bodies had, so to speak, their own gift of foresight. While Andromeda had prophecies and glimpses of the future, Regulus' gift was entirely different—it was through him we saw the past. It's quite possible the differences in gifts caused the divergence in magical power. The real question is, does that mean there are other differences between us we haven't discovered yet? Also—something we honestly dislike—is the realization that more and more evidence suggests magic is tied to the body and not the soul. Yet we had hoped to take all the power we'd earned in this life with us into the next one.
"Regulus! There you are," boomed the loud voice of Angelina Johnson, snapping us from our thoughts.
"Angelina? Is something wrong?" Andromeda asked.
"Boot ended up in the hospital wing. We need Regulus to substitute for him in the match."
"Wait—did he really injure himself just to win?" we asked in shock.
"Don't be silly. What good is a win to him if he didn't participate?" the girl retorted. "He was attacked by the Slytherin Seeker, so they're both out. The thing is, Slytherin has a substitute among the first-years, and we only have Regulus to fill in for Boot."
"Well then, they'll have to regret their actions because in this match, they won't score a single goal," Regulus said with a grin, standing up from the common room armchair.