It was the blue dream again.
Suspended, weightless, surrounded by liquid that pressed in from all sides, Gabriel drifted in a cocoon of quiet. Only this time, he knew exactly where he was, and who he was.
Through the curved glass, he could see his own room. To the left, the window framed the pale morning light of the British wilds. Straight ahead stood his desk and chair, still cluttered from the night before. Above them, his Puffapod - given to him by Neville, with exacting instructions on the care required for it written on a note - was perched in its pot, its blossoms glowing faintly pink and purple in the sunlight. A small stack of books leaned beside it: Hermione's Christmas gift, and the heavier tome Dumbledore had given him, 'A Treatise on Magical Combat Through the Ages'. The latter was still open, left where he had stopped reading - in the middle of the chapter titled 'Shamanism and the Birth of Potions'.
Gabriel let out a soft breath. Bubbles rose lazily through the fluid, tickling his cheek as he closed his eyes, letting the stillness wash over him.
When he opened them again, his mother was there. Sitting on a chair just beyond the glass, a book resting casually in her hands. As though she had been waiting, she lifted her gaze to meet his the very instant his eyes opened. Her lips curved into a smile, warm and quiet.
She stood. With practiced ease, she drew her wand from behind her ear, tracing intricate patterns in the air. At her command, the liquid began to drain, rushing away in steady streams until Gabriel stood upright in the chamber, the oval glass wall now clear and glinting in the bright sun. The sudden flood of light made him wince.
A sprinkler hissed to life above his head, showering him in crystalline water. Another spray followed, this one tinged floral, with notes of alfazema - lavander, he reminded himself - and then another rinse of clean water. Finally, warm air gusted through the chamber, drying skin and hair alike until the last traces of dampness vanished.
With a soft click, the pod opened.
Eloá stepped forward, wrapping a towel around him before he could so much as shiver. She pulled him into her arms, pressed a kiss to his forehead, and whispered, "Bom dia, meu anjo."
"Bom dia," Gabriel murmured back, voice relaxed and a little drowsy still.
Her chuckle rumbled softly against his hair. "Still better than a bed, isn't it?"
He nodded.
"Would you like me to have one delivered to your Hogwarts room?"
He shook his head, stubborn. "I need to get used to sleeping outside it."
Her sigh was quiet, reluctant, but she let the matter drop.
For a moment, they simply lingered there - mother and son wrapped in warm silence. Then Eloá clapped him gently on the shoulder. "Come on."
They left the room together, descending the stairs. Gabriel veered toward the kitchen, already daydreaming about the leftovers from the night before, but his mother blocked him with a single glance.
"Not now. The exams will go better on an empty stomach."
He groaned, but followed her good-naturedly, grumbling under his breath.
The first underground level opened into her potions laboratory. The air smelled of herbs, smoke, and acrid sweetness, sharp enough to sting his nose. Shelves groaned under the weight of jars filled with powders, roots, and shimmering liquids. Vines and rare plants hung from hooks in the rafters, some curling as though aware of his presence. Benches were lined with glassware - beakers, alembics, pots and pans of copper and silver - each alive with its own bubbling concoction. Flames of different colors flickered beneath them: violet, green, white, blue, each calibrated with meticulous precision.
But they did not stop there.
They descended again, to the second lab. The air grew colder.
Here, the exploration of the organic reigned. A vast circle was etched into the stone floor, carved with sigils and inscriptions that shifted and rewrote themselves as he looked at them. To the side stood another chamber like his own, this one half-open, its glass misted with condensation. Racks of medical instruments gleamed in the lamplight: scalpels, syringes of silver and bone, rune-etched clamps. Shelves lined with jars contained the preserved fragments of creatures - feathers still iridescent, a wolf's paw, a serpent's skull, something that might have been a human rib, each floating in alchemical solutions. A preserved heart throbbed faintly inside its jar, though no veins fed it.
In the center of the chamber, Eloá conjured a chair - metal and leather, uncomfortably reminiscent of a dentist's. She set it within the circle with a flick of her wand.
"Lie down," she told him.
Gabriel obeyed. The moment his back touched the chair, the inscriptions around him began to glow, shifting and rearranging as though responding to his presence.
Eloá walked the circle slowly, eyes sharp, notebook in hand. She observed the changes, recording each shift of the glyphs in precise strokes, while the air in the chamber thrummed with unseen power.
When the inscriptions finally dimmed to stillness, Eloá flicked her wand and conjured a tray of implements: syringes, slender needles, gleaming scissors, scalpels of silver and steel. They floated beside her like obedient birds, glinting coldly in the lamplight.
"Stay still," she murmured, almost absently, as though this were a perfectly ordinary morning ritual.
She began with saliva - swabbing his mouth deftly - then clipped strands of his hair. Without warning, she plucked a few more free, sharp enough to make his eyes sting. Eloá caught the tears with a vial before they could roll down his cheeks. Blood was next: a needle slipped into his arm, the tubing filling with dark red. She took nail clippings, and even scraped at the black leather scar that wrapped across his hand, shearing off a fragment and dropping it into another glass.
Each piece of him found its place among the vials.
All the while, she kept him talking. "Why am I using conjured tools and not my enchanted set?"
Gabriel exhaled, half-wincing, half-smiling at the obvious distraction. "Because of the diagnostic spell."
"Mhm." She tilted her head. "Go on."
He repeated the lesson she'd drilled into him a hundred times. "You made ink out of a magical creature - one that senses magic in order to hunt and hide. Then you charmed it into an array using… dozens of diagnostic charms, layered together. It reacts to the magic it detects."
"And conjurations?"
"They're physical constructs without a metaphysical component," Gabriel recited, shifting in the chair as another lock of his hair was clipped away. "No innate magic. Nothing for the array to pick up. But enchanted tools would interfere, since they carry magical signatures."
Her lips curved in satisfaction. "Yes, that's precisely right."
The tray of samples drifted past him to a table he couldn't see. Behind him, her quill and notebook scratched steadily, taking down notes in flowing script even as she worked.
"Now," she said, voice lilting as she measured a droplet of his blood against a clear solution, "what do you know about the Gorjalas?"
Gabriel rolled his eyes. They'd had this exact conversation so many times, but he answered anyway, almost by rote. "Subspecies of giant, native to Brazil. Isolated, usually found living on mountaintops, coming down only to hunt. Extremely violent - no peaceful contact has ever been recorded with any other living beings. Their diets are entirely composed of meat and blood. Smaller than other giants, about three to three-and-a-half meters. Black hide that's absurdly resistant to physical and magical attacks - it is also why they're called 'Ebon Giants.' Four fingers on each hand and foot. And some are cyclopean, like their Mediterranean cousins."
As he spoke, Eloá swirled his blood in vials of different colors, spinning them with a flick of her wand until they blurred into streaks. She leaned close to observe the changes: colors shifting, viscosity thickening or thinning, each result prompting a scratch of her quill.
"And did you know," she said suddenly, turning to him with a playful smile, "that they're magical?"
Gabriel deadpanned, "Really? I had no idea."
Her grin widened. "Oh yes. Very magical indeed. You see, in nature, a Gorjala simply couldn't - shouldn't - exist. It consumes too little for how much it expends - too strong, too fast, too resistant by any natural measure. Its biology doesn't make sense."
Gabriel snorted. "You just defined pretty much every magical creature."
Eloá's eyes lit up with enthusiasm. "Exactly! Dragons, nundus, sea serpents, chimeras, griffons, basilisks, giants themselves - all of them are sustained by their innate magic. Without it, they'd collapse under their own impossible natures."
"And the Gorjala's special because…?" Gabriel prompted, feigning ignorance.
"It isn't." Eloá's smile was bright, almost childlike. "Nothing unique, nothing of note beyond being more humanoid than most."
She turned back to her notes, her tone shifting from excitement to a colder, sharper edge. "But that alone made them valuable. Humanoid stock is easier to compare against. The Gorjala was only one of many I studied, of course, in my work to convert innate magical traits into usable spells - or transfer them entirely."
Her quill scratched. Another vial of blood spun.
"To understand that, I had to track how their innate magic developed," she went on. "Which meant studying them from the very start. In vitro."
Gabriel rolled his eyes in fond exasperation. He knew this part by heart, too. She had explained it enough times.
"And when the translation failed…"
"Hybrids," Gabriel completed.
"Hybrids!" Eloá agreed brightly. "Humans are such horny little things. Wizards and witches are no different. Their magic practically conspires with them to ensure the possibility of… unions. As long as the other partner is humanoid enough and magical, procreation is possible. And the children - surprisingly enough - are always born whole. No deformities, no sterility. And always, always with a spark of the inhuman parent's magic."
Gabriel smirked. "So you made a bunch of babies with all the monsters you could find compatible?"
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Please. I'm no harlot. I made Homunculi. Artificial life, shaped with alchemy. My own genetic material, and that of carefully chosen donors. Much cleaner, faster, more ethical."
"Ah, yes, ethical. Because Homunculi don't have souls. Their bodies can hold magic, but they don't have True Life. No mind, no will. They need constant alchemical scaffolding to even survive."
Eloá nodded gravely. Then she stepped close, dispelling the glowing array with a sweep of her wand. She cupped his face in her hands, her eyes fixed on his as though searching for something hidden deep inside.
"Except… you happened," she whispered. "My little miracle. A Homunculus with a soul. My son."
Gabriel's lips softened into a smile. She pressed a kiss to his forehead before returning to her instruments, the array blooming back to life around him in a halo of runes and shifting script.
"Of course," she continued briskly, as if snapping herself back to the work, "being a third generation meant the Gorjala blood in your veins was incredibly diluted - around twelve percent. Which is why you never showed their traits growing up. At best, I expected you to turn out taller, maybe twice as strong as your peers, once you've finished growing up."
Gabriel frowned. That wasn't anything new, but it did leave the question- "So why the change now? Was it really Accidental Magic?"
"That's the most likely answer." Eloá didn't hesitate. "You never had outbursts as a child - no floating toys, no broken glass. Maybe if you had it would have surfaced earlier. But puberty is both a physical and metaphysical threshold. The emotional surge, the biological upheaval - it could have triggered a restructuring. Your blood is now much closer to that of a proper half-giant - less than fifty percent still, but it's fluctuating"
She glanced at him. "Some traits are receding for the moment. Your magic is protecting you, softening the shock. But they'll return as you grow. Some of your teeth will become fangs. Your scars, if not quickly healed - especially those that come from spells - will harden into hide. Your body will grow stronger, faster. And surges of magic, especially when tied to impulses closer to the nature of a Gorgala, will at least temporarily intensify the transformation. How far, we'll have to see."
Gabriel hesitated before asking, voice low, "And… What about mental changes?"
"Ah." This time, she paused - but only for a breath. Then she answered firmly. "I'll begin teaching you Occlumency. It will anchor your mind, keep your sense of self whole, isolate instincts. And I'll also research other safeguards, should something unexpected surface."
Her certainty settled him. His shoulders eased, the air he hadn't realized he'd been holding leaving in a slow sigh.
They lapsed into quiet, broken only by the hum of magic and the scratch of her quill as she finished her notes. When at last she extinguished the array, she brushed her hands together as if closing a ritual.
"When the results are in, I'll know more," she said. "Whether your body will demand a different diet, whether other changes loom. For now…" she waved her wand, freeing him from the circle, "you're done."
Gabriel rolled his shoulders as he stood. "So, what now?"
"Now," she said with a sly smile, "a proper breakfast. Then, we'll test your strength. I want to expand the garden, and there are a few trees in the way."
He groaned. "Of course you do."
Her laughter rang out as they left the laboratory together, her arm draped casually around his shoulders.