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From one full moon to the next, hold a single leaf of mandrake grass in your mouth, ensuring that you never swallow it or remove it at any point. If the leaf leaves your mouth, the entire process must start over again.
When the second full moon arrives, remove the leaf and place it in a crystal vial filled with saliva, allowing it to soak under the moonlight. If the sky is overcast with clouds, then unfortunately, you must start over again.
While the vial is bathed in moonlight, add a strand of your hair and a silver teaspoon's worth of dew that you've collected in advance. This dew must come from a place untouched by sunlight or humans for a full seven days. If the substance is merely a typical Animagus, the final step is to add the pupa of a ghostfaced moth and place the vial in a quiet, dark place. Do not disturb it or look at it again until the next thunderstorm arrives.
However, if you are attempting a nonordinary animal form of Animagus transformation, after adding the ghostfaced moth pupa, you must also add a drop of fresh magical creature blood and grind a magic stone into a fine powder to place in the vial.
The blood of the Thunderstorm Dragon, Tor, is not the usual bright red; instead, it is a beautiful silverblue, somewhat like mercury. The blood contains an incredibly dense magical energy, which, when mixed into the potion within the crystal vial, causes the liquid to become tinged with flickering silver lightning. Only when the powdered magic stone is added does the dancing lightning gradually subside.
While waiting for the thunderstorm to arrive, each sunrise and sunset, you must take your wand and point the tip at your heart, clearly reciting: "Amato, Animo, Animato, Animagus."
Thanks to weather forecasts, Harry did not need to rely solely on the whims of nature to prepare for his Animagus transformation. What magic could not achieve, technology could, after all—thunderstorms are a natural phenomenon that follow a predictable pattern.
As you recite the incantation daily, at some subtle moment, you will feel the emergence of another heartbeat. Animagus transformation is not simply a physical change; this magic grants the wizard the body of another creature. Wizards who excel in Animagus transformation, like the Wagadou wizards, can even take it further, mastering a hybrid transformation that combines both human and animal traits during a single phase.
However, this requires learning their traditional magic, which differs significantly from most other forms of magic. The Wagadou use a unique system of Rune Magic, marking their skin with the blood of a corresponding beast or magical creature. Even without the aid of a magic stone, they can harness a portion of the creature's powers during their transformation. Though incomplete, this allows them to retain some magical abilities after completing the partial beastlike transformation.
Holding the mandrake leaf in your mouth is incredibly difficult. The leaf is hard to find; you may not even locate a single wild mandrake among a hundred plants. But most importantly, this leaf has a powerful numbing effect. In the initial days, even someone with Harry's strength will struggle, finding eating a challenge as the numbness makes it hard to control saliva, which keeps flowing uncontrollably. Whether spitting it out or swallowing it, it's easy to accidentally ruin the leaf.
For an ordinary wizard, the first step in learning the Animagus transformation is already enough to frustrate anyone, requiring many repeated attempts.
Cedric had originally planned to try the Animagus transformation with Harry, especially since the group leader had a surplus of magic stones. Nicollemé had given Harry a whole magic stone, which, although used and with most of its power already depleted, still contained enough magical energy for several attempts. This stone, unlike the one given to Dumbledore for fishing, could at least make one more dose of the Elixir of Life.
However, while holding the leaf with Harry, Cedric struggled with excessive saliva production. Over the course of a week, he went through two different leaves—one of which he accidentally swallowed. For the next three days, he completely lost sensation in his lower body. He nearly soiled himself due to a lack of control, which terrified him enough to immediately declare, "If I try holding another leaf now, I probably won't make it in time for the last thunderstorm of October. I'll try again next year after training myself a bit more."
Aside from the difficulties of eating and drinking, Harry didn't find the process particularly troublesome. Perhaps the biggest impact was that, despite living right across from Fleur, he was practically living like an ascetic monk. His days consisted of nothing but attending classes and selfstudy. His already ironclad willpower seemed to be evolving into something closer to titanium alloy within just this short month.
As the second full moon arrived as scheduled, a bright, silver disc hung high in the clear night sky. Durmstrang was not the place Harry had chosen for his transformation ritual. Instead, he stood atop an unnamed mountain peak, where he buried the prepared crystal potion vial beneath the soil. He even went the extra step of sprinkling some of Snape's beastrepelling potion over the area. Forget ordinary wild animals—even magical creatures with innate resistance would be driven away by its overpowering stench.
Snape's potions weren't just unfit for human consumption; even beasts wouldn't dare touch them. When the threeheaded dog, Fluffy, had once been forcefed one of Snape's concoctions, it remained depressed for an entire month. If Hagrid hadn't personally forcefed it, Fluffy would have likely lost its appetite and wasted away by at least a hundred kilograms.
Reciting the incantation while pressing a wand to his heart and pulling the imaginary trigger was surprisingly exhilarating. Normally, a wizard's own magic wouldn't cause selfinflicted damage upon contact, but that first sudden surge of magic slamming into his heart was still enough to startle him.
No wizard understood the feeling of a second heartbeat better than Harry. After all, he actually had a second, magical heart. As his body underwent its transformation into that of a Awakened semidivine being, this phantom magical heart had materialized as a new organ, positioned in his right chest cavity, mirroring his physical heart. He lived with two heartbeats, though the second, the Heart of Magic, pulsed with the surge of raw magical power—an ethereal sound that could not be heard by the naked ear.
A third phantom heartbeat appeared in the first week after he began reciting the incantation. This pace was neither too fast nor too slow—just in time for the thunderstorm expected the following week. It would be the last storm of October. The usual storm season ran from April to September, but thanks to modern transportation, wizards no longer had to remain fixed in one location to wait for the weather.
Now, wherever a thunderstorm was likely to strike, they could simply go there. Times were changing, and the magical world was evolving along with them.
During class, Harry received a message from Vice Headmaster Cestian. This elderly gentleman, whom Grindelwald treated more like a steward than a mere administrator, did not involve himself in academic affairs. Instead, he managed everything at Durmstrang that Grindelwald couldn't be bothered to handle—from annual budgeting to firstyear admissions. Naturally, this also included informing Harry the moment a thunderstorm was imminent.
A roaring Boeing 777 carried the truant wizard to the land of promised storms. Overhead, dark clouds churned, brewing nature's violent fury. The beasts of the land fell silent, the insects ceased their song, and birds either huddled into their nests or took to the sky in frantic flight.
And atop an unknown mountain peak, a lone figure stood still, gazing at the stormladen heavens—waiting in silence.
(End of Chapter)