"That’s all for today. Anyone who still hasn’t settled on a class can continue next lesson, or come to my office and discuss it with me. Class dismissed."
The noise in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom gradually faded as the students left in twos and threes, rushing off toward the Great Hall for dinner.
Harry and Ron had already packed up and reached the door when they noticed Hermione clutching her books and walking up to Professor Gray.
"Is there something else, Miss Granger?"
"I have a question I’d like to ask, Professor Gray." Hermione spoke in an unusually timid tone. Ever since publicly contradicting Lynn in that first class, she still had not quite figured out how to face him.
"I’d be happy to answer. Go ahead." Lynn had long since forgotten all about that incident in class.
"I want to know, in The Adventurer’s Handbook, what’s the difference between the 1st-circle spell Disguise Self and the potion Polyjuice Potion?"
"Excellent question." Lynn smiled with clear approval. "On the surface, the difference between the two isn’t all that great. Both can make you appear as someone else."
"But their essence is different. Once you drink Polyjuice Potion, the very composition of your body is temporarily transformed. That is an extremely dangerous process. If there is even the slightest mistake in brewing it, for example, if the core ingredient, lacewing flies, wasn’t harvested at the proper time, then the result could be temporary, or even permanent, bodily damage."
"On the other hand, its advantage is equally obvious: perfect disguise. Other than things that can’t be changed, like speech patterns and personality, there is no person or magic that can expose the transformation."
"Mhm, mhm. Then what about Disguise Self?" Hermione looked at Lynn with eyes full of curiosity.
"Tell me, which school does Disguise Self belong to?" Lynn had already finished packing up and turned to look at Hermione, answering her with a question.
"The School of Illusion." Hermione had read The Adventurer’s Handbook several times over by now.
"Exactly. Illusion usually represents a kind of deception."
As he spoke, Lynn waved his wand and used the cantrip Minor Illusion. A flock of blue birds flew from his wand, circled above Hermione’s head a few times, then passed straight through her body before vanishing.
"This lowest-level cantrip, Minor Illusion, deceives only your sight. So when it passes through your body, you feel nothing at all."
"Disguise Self works on the same principle. It’s simply much more realistic than Minor Illusion, and it changes along with your own movements and expressions."
Hermione nodded thoughtfully.
"So that means if someone physically touches you while you’re using Disguise Self, the disguise would fail because the details of your body wouldn’t match?"
"Exactly right, Miss Granger. But in many situations, Disguise Self is far more convenient and practical than Polyjuice Potion. After all, it doesn’t require a host of rare ingredients or a full month of brewing."
"I understand now! Thank you very much, Professor Gray!"
With that, she waved goodbye to Lynn and headed toward the Great Hall with Harry and Ron.
...
Two days later, in the Gryffindor common room.
Hermione was curled up in a corner, letting out what had to be her dozenth sigh of the day.
Ron and Harry sat awkwardly nearby, chatting quietly and not daring to disturb her.
The table in front of her was covered with draft sheets filled with three-dimensional coordinate systems, polyhedral structures, and spell calculations. If any other wizard had seen them, they would probably have thought she was writing a final-term paper for one of her classes.
"This makes no sense! Absolutely no sense!"
Hermione irritably ran a hand through her hair, only making it even bushier. She closed her eyes, and the complicated icosahedral spell model surfaced clearly in her mind, exactly matching the example in the textbook.
She snapped her eyes open, gave her wand a perfectly textbook motion, and pronounced the incantation:
"Dis-Guise-Self!"
The air stayed quiet for two seconds.
Nothing happened.
Sitting beside Harry and Ron was still the same Hermione Granger as before.
"Failed again." Hermione slumped back into her chair in frustration. "I’ve already carved the model into my mind. I’ve memorized every single node. Why won’t the magic obey me?"
"Er... Hermione, maybe you should take a break?" Harry scratched the back of his head awkwardly from the side.
"A break? The culprit isn’t going to wait for us, Harry!" Hermione snapped. "If we don’t hurry up and get Malfoy talking, what if there’s another victim before then? Harry, how’s your practice going?"
"Uh..." The moment Hermione finally asked, Harry’s face immediately turned awkward.
"Don’t tell me you still haven’t practiced at all, Harry! We really don’t have-"
"It’s not that I didn’t practice. I actually tried it the same day you told me to..."
"Wait, you succeeded?" Hermione stared at Harry in disbelief.
Harry could only nod awkwardly.
He and Hermione had been friends for more than a year now, and this was the first time anything magic-related had come more easily to him than to her.
"Quick! Show me!" Hermione, however, did not look discouraged in the slightest. Her eyes were filled only with hunger for knowledge.
"Er... all right. But I’m not sure I can do it the same way as last time..."
Harry put down his wand and stood up somewhat stiffly.
Hermione widened her eyes and stared at him without blinking, trying to record every tiny detail of the casting process. Was it a flick of the wrist? A specific path of magical guidance?
But there was nothing.
Harry simply closed his eyes. After about three seconds, he gave his wand an unstructured little wave and said, "Disguise Self."
Pop!
Magic flowed around his body in a shifting shimmer, and in the blink of an eye, Harry vanished from in front of Hermione, replaced by a tall figure in Slytherin robes.
Hermione stared in shock.
Harry had turned into Gregory Goyle... but something about it seemed off.
This "Goyle" in front of her was still broad and bulky like a wall, but he no longer had Goyle’s usual dull, muddy expression or fleshy, brutish face.
Instead, the man before her had smooth, refined skin, a sharply defined jawline, and even that signature blunt, ugly bowl cut had somehow become sleek and glossy under the firelight in the common room, radiating a bizarre kind of confidence.
Most absurd of all, those tiny beetle-like eyes had turned into a pair of deep, enchanting green eyes.
"How is it?" Harry, or rather, that "handsome Goyle", asked in a low, magnetic voice. "Did I pull it off?"
"Pfft, cough, cough, cough!"
Beside them, Ron sprayed a mouthful of pumpkin juice all over the essay he had been writing for History of Magic.
He laughed so hard he slid out of his armchair and rolled onto the carpet clutching his stomach.
"Harry! You turned into Goyle! But... if he actually looked like that, Pansy Parkinson would probably send him a love letter tomorrow!"
Hermione, on the other hand, could not laugh.
It was not perfect, but Harry’s Disguise Self had undeniably worked.
"How did you do it? Is there some trick to building the spell model? A casting posture? The pronunciation or rhythm of the incantation?"
"I... don’t know." Harry dismissed the spell and turned back into himself, scratching his head innocently. "I just thought about what Goyle looked like, thought about turning into him, then gathered the magic and let it flow along with that image. And it worked."
"Imagined it? How is that possible? I don’t understand!"
Hermione shot to her feet and grabbed the pile of draft sheets covered in formulas.
"I’m going to ask Professor Gray."
Grinding her teeth, she shoved the papers haphazardly into a book, clutched it to her chest, and strode out.
"At this hour?" Ron watched the rapidly shrinking figure of Hermione’s back and shook his head, muttering softly,
"Poor Professor Gray."
...
Ten minutes later, in the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor’s office.
"So Mr. Potter already succeeded, though with the side effect of accidental cosmetic enhancement, and you still can’t get the model to activate?"
After listening to Hermione’s explanation, tinged with the verge of tears, Lynn did not look surprised at all. Instead, he set down his quill with interest.
"Yes, Professor." Hermione lowered her head, her voice full of self-doubt. "Does that mean I don’t actually have the talent to learn spells? I’ve memorized every structure, and not a single node is wrong..."
"On the contrary, Miss Granger. It is precisely because you are too intelligent and too rigorous that you can’t cast the way Potter does."
"Potter is following the Sorcerer route. His power comes from bloodline and instinct. For a Sorcerer, casting relies much more on imagination and emotion, so he doesn’t need to understand the underlying principles."
"But spells cast that way are crude and imprecise, like how he just made Goyle more handsome. That was magic overflowing randomly under the guidance of emotion."
Lynn looked at Hermione, his voice becoming softer and deeper.
"But Wizards are different. Our spellcasting is precise and elegant. That is also why Wizards can master far more spells than Sorcerers, and produce far more varied effects."
He pointed to the parchment on the desk covered in geometric figures and continued,
"You treated spellcasting like a mathematics problem, assuming that as long as the model was correct, the answer would automatically appear. But to a Wizard, the world of magic is not only the spell model. There is also... the Weave."
"The Weave?" Hermione looked up, her eyelashes trembling slightly.
"Close your eyes." Lynn guided her gently. "Forget the specific incantations. Forget those shapes you’ve been forcing yourself to memorize. Let your awareness sink down... Imagine yourself in a vast library, or any place you love."
Hermione obediently closed her eyes.
"Tell me what you ’see.’ Not with your eyes, but with your magical perception."
At first, there was only darkness.
But as Hermione gradually emptied her mind, no longer clinging to memorization and instead trying to analyze the energy flowing through the air around her, she felt it.
It was a strange kind of synesthetic sensation.
In her perception, the world was no longer empty. The air was filled with the smell of old parchment and freshly ground ink, the scent of knowledge itself.
Then, within the darkness, countless silver threads lit up.
They crisscrossed one another without becoming chaotic. They looked like glowing geometric axioms, like flowing magical formulas, weaving together into a precise, immense net full of logical beauty.
Every tremor of every thread seemed to come with the clear note of a plucked harp string.
"I can see it..." Hermione murmured, awe written across her face. "Silver lines... like sheet music, and like star charts. They’re ordered and perfect!"
"That’s right." Lynn’s voice seemed to come from very far away. "That is the Weave. Sorcerers crash against it by instinct. Wizards weave it."
"Now, bring out the spell model for Disguise Self from your mind," Lynn continued guiding her. "Look at those silver threads. Then use the wand in your hand... and pluck them."
Hermione raised her wand.
In her vision, the once abstract spell model had become a framework waiting to be filled. She no longer moved her arm stiffly. Instead, her wrist turned lightly, and the tip of her wand reached precisely into that great silver web.
She lifted a thread that represented light and shadow.
Hooked a thread that represented perception.
Twined them together, knotted them, and threaded them through the framework.
The sensation was exquisite.
It was like unraveling the most complicated riddle in the world, each step fitting seamlessly into place, with not the slightest waste of magical energy.
And when the final thread settled into position, the spell model floating in her mind lit up all at once.
She did not need to shout the incantation aloud. She merely whispered it, as though confirming the final step in a calculation:
"Disguise Self."
A cool current of magic, clear as water, flowed instantly through her entire body, a perfectly controlled, exquisitely precise flow of power.
Hermione opened her eyes and looked toward the standing mirror nearby.
Reflected there was no longer a young witch.
Instead, it was a stern-looking adult woman: Professor McGonagall.
Even the tightly bound bun and the severe lines around her mouth had been recreated perfectly.
"Perfect." Lynn applauded.
Hermione stared at "Professor McGonagall" in the mirror, so excited she nearly jumped. But in that instant, an excellent idea flashed through her mind, and a sly smile curled at her lips.
"Thank you very much for your guidance, Professor Gray!"
Hermione bowed to Lynn, but did not dismiss the spell. She cleared her throat, adjusted the collar of her robes, and in a single instant, the excitement vanished from her face, replaced by McGonagall’s trademark severity.
"I believe I should go inspect discipline in the Gryffindor common room," she said in McGonagall’s signature tight, sharp voice.
Lynn smiled and waved her off.
"Go ahead. Just don’t dock too many points."
...
Ten minutes later, in the Gryffindor common room.
It was already late at night, and most of the students had gone back to their dormitories. Only Harry, Ron, and a few older students were still left in the common room.
Ron was sprawled gracelessly across a sofa by the fire, idly playing with a Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Bean as he complained to Harry:
"Honestly, Harry, don’t you think Hermione’s being a bit too impatient? If it were me, I’d never bother a professor this late..."
Tossing the bean into his mouth, he continued around it,
"Do you think Hermione’s going to get sent back with a scolding?"
At that moment, the portrait hole suddenly swung open.
Several older students who had been talking nearby looked up, then immediately fell silent, because entering through it was a tall witch in emerald tartan robes with a stern expression, their Head of House, Professor McGonagall.
Ron was still chewing his bean. It was only when he felt the room go strangely quiet that he looked up, and met that severe gaze head-on.
"Cough, cough, cough, cough!"
The bean shot straight into his throat. He sprang off the sofa like a startled cat, his face turning bright red as he slapped frantically at his chest, barely managing to swallow it in the end.
"P-Professor McGonagall?!" Ron’s voice shook like a dry leaf in the wind. "W-what... what are you doing here?"
Harry was also startled, and instinctively shoved the Potions essay on the table, the one that belonged to Hermione and had been borrowed for "reference", behind his back.
"Potter. Weasley."
"Professor McGonagall" strode up to them, her sharp gaze sweeping over the mess of parchments and snack crumbs on the table.
"Just look at the state of this common room!" Her voice was severe. "Mr. Weasley, your tie is twisted all the way around to the back of your neck, and your robes are stained with pumpkin juice. And this is how you treat your History of Magic essay? Using it as a mat for Every Flavor Beans?"
"I, I didn’t, I’m sorry, Professor!" Ron looked as though he were about to cry. He snapped his legs together and stood ramrod straight. "I’ll clean it up right away! I’ll go to bed immediately!"
"And you, Potter."
"Professor McGonagall" turned to Harry.
"I hear you’ve been very active in Defense Against the Dark Arts lately. What, do you think learning one spell means you no longer need to write essays?"
"N-no, Professor." Harry also scrambled to his feet.
Watching the two boys shrink together like frightened quails, "Professor McGonagall" pressed her lips tightly together, her shoulders trembling ever so slightly as she fought to hold back laughter.
Ron, horrified, thought McGonagall was literally shaking with anger.
"P-professor? We really are sorry, please don’t take points..."
"Pfft..."
Pop!
A shimmer of magic flashed.
Professor McGonagall vanished, replaced by a smug-looking Hermione laughing so hard she was bent double.
"Hahahahaha! Ron! You should have seen your face just now!" Hermione laughed until tears nearly came out, and had to clutch the sofa to stay upright. "’P-Professor McGonagall, please don’t take points’! Hahahaha!"
"Hermione!!!"
Ron stood there in stunned silence for a full five seconds, then pointed at her in outrage.
"That is not funny at all! I nearly had a heart attack!"
Even Harry let out a long breath and slumped back onto the sofa.
"Good lord, Hermione, that was way too convincing... Even the way you talked was exactly the same."
"Sorry, sorry." Hermione wiped at the tears in the corners of her eyes, but her face was glowing with a kind of confidence she had never had before.
She lifted her wand with a movement that was elegant and precise.
"We can get ready to make Malfoy talk now."
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