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Friday afternoon.
Transfiguration professor's office.
The fire in the hearth breathed warmth; the air carried the comforting scent of Scottish shortbread and black tea. Yet the cozy atmosphere did little to soothe the tension.
This was Professor McGonagall's advanced Transfiguration study group. Everyone present—except for the anomaly that was Lucian, a first-year—held at least Outstanding O.W.L.s. There were even two seventh-year prefects.
"Regarding the essence of the Vanishing Spell (Evanesco)," McGonagall said, surveying the room. "When we vanish a snail, where does it go? Mr. Prewett?"
The Gryffindor prefect straightened instinctively. "It enters a state of 'non-being,' Professor. All things return to nothingness."
"A textbook answer. Safe, but also utterly pedestrian." McGonagall's tone was neutral. She turned to the corner where Lucian sat cradling a teacup. "Mr. Ashford, I hear you hold rather distinctive views on the persistence of matter?"
Every eye turned to the first-year. Curiosity, yes—but mostly scrutiny.
Lucian set down his cup; porcelain met saucer with a crisp clink. He didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he drew his wand and tapped the lid of the teapot.
"Evanesco."
The lid vanished from the wand tip in an instant.
"It has not returned to nothingness."
"If it had truly ceased to exist, then the very act of 'existing' would have been erased from reality—an outright violation of the fundamental law of magical conservation."
He flicked his wand again. Phantom images of the teapot lid appeared in overlapping layers, forming a spherical distribution centered on its original position.
"I severed the principles that bound its form, temporarily folding its concept of existence into the crevice between reality and unreality. Its physical substance has become… in Muggle terms, a probability cloud."
Lucian regarded the stunned older students and added calmly: "What we call 'vanishing' is merely the limitation of our crude, flesh-bound perception. To the fabric of the world itself, it has never left—it has simply adopted a more chaotic mode of being."
"That… that's impossible!" Prewett's face flushed crimson. "No such state has ever been recorded!"
"Because most wizards treat magic as a wish-granting lamp rather than a tool for understanding and reshaping reality."
Lucian rose and gave McGonagall a small, impeccable bow. "Thank you for the tea, Professor. I must excuse myself."
The office door closed softly behind him.
After a long silence, McGonagall murmured, almost to herself: "Perhaps… we are the ones imprisoned within the cage of our own common sense."
…
Leaving McGonagall's office, Lucian didn't pause for even a moment.
He could feel the beast inside him growing more and more restless, slamming against its restraints.
The discussion with the professor had brought insight—and cracked the seal suppressing his Obscurial nature.
He had to return to the Room of Requirement immediately and carry out the long-planned, nine-deaths-and-one-life gamble.
He strode quickly through the corridors until he reached the tapestry of the giant clubbing Barnabas the Barmy. The door materialized in the blank stone wall.
Inside, Lucian sat cross-legged on the stone floor.
Hands folded over his dantian—the convergence point of magic.
He released every restraint.
A roar detonated deep within his soul.
The long-suppressed Obscurial—the parasitic monster born of despair and raw magic—seized control of his body.
Black, oily magic erupted from every orifice and pore, instantly enveloping him in a throbbing, ominous black cocoon.
This was torture that could grind even the soul to dust.
Lucian's consciousness teetered on the edge of the raging storm, yet he clung fiercely to clarity.
He channeled the grey magic he had painstakingly cultivated, following the violent spiral of the Obscurial's flow—
guiding it, accelerating it,
until it became a chaotic maelstrom that tore everything apart.
Differentiation began.
The most violent, most filthy negative emotions—fear, rage, hatred—were exiled.
The purest magical essence was forcibly compressed toward the center.
"Strip!"
Lucian gritted his teeth and growled.
In that razor-edge instant where ultimate agony and ultimate clarity intertwined, his heart-phase vision suddenly expanded—beyond the flesh, beyond the room.
He saw the shape of time.
Time was a vast, roaring river, constrained by invisible banks.
Within its waters wove countless faint golden threads—causality, fate, the pre-written script of this world.
They stretched from the distant past, binding every "now" in the current flow and pointing toward an almost-certain "future."
"So that's it…" Understanding dawned.
"The way of heaven is to reduce excess and supplement deficiency. The so-called World Will exists to drag every variable that tries to stray from the channel back onto these golden tracks."
"Converge!"
With the final dregs of impurity purged, the raging Obscurial at last collapsed under the hammer of his will. It transformed into a deep, heavy, earth-like grey current that flowed through his meridians like a hundred rivers returning to the sea, slowly pooling in his dantian.
"Inner Core Technique, Small Heavenly Cycle—complete."
Deep in his dantian, the violent monster vanished.
In its place spun a marble-sized vortex of magic.
With each slow rotation it breathed, drawing in and exhaling ambient energy.
Lucian opened his eyes. Light shimmered within them.
If he wished, he could now unleash power capable of crushing an adult dragon.
Destruction had been tamed—and made part of his body.
But he also discovered something else.
With every cycle of magic, those golden threads—gentle yet relentless—were attempting to entwine him, to merge with him.
Even stranger "intuitions" began surfacing in his mind, intuitions that did not belong to him:
"Shouldn't I go save Hermione Granger? It seems like the right thing to do."
"Perhaps I should demonstrate my talent now and draw Dumbledore's attention."
A bone-deep chill ran through him.
This world was assimilating him.
It had granted him power—and now sought to steal his selfhood. It wanted to twist this variable back onto the scripted path, turning him into either a stepping stone for the Chosen One or another pitiful casualty of plot.
"What a clever trick… truly clever."
Lucian whispered, "This is arsenic coated in sugar. If I submit, I become the world's puppet. If I resist, I become the enemy of all."
As his thoughts raced, a sudden change occurred.
Reality turned transparent, overlapping.
He saw another version of himself in this very room—devoured by the Obscurial, reduced to a mindless monster, finally slain by the arriving Dumbledore.
The scene shifted.
He glimpsed Voldemort stroking a massive serpent. The Dark Lord seemed to sense the gaze and snapped his head up, staring directly at him.
Then everything vanished without a trace.
Realization struck.
If he could stabilize this state, perhaps one day he could briefly slip free of the fixed channel and touch the adjacent parallel timelines!
…
Late at night. Gale-force winds howled.
On the battlements of Ravenclaw Tower, a figure stood at the edge of the abyss. The wind tore viciously at his robes, trying to drag him into the Black Lake below. He remained utterly still.
If anyone had looked up, they would have witnessed a terrifying sight:
Lucian was not standing on the stone.
What supported him was a pair of enormous phantom wings slowly unfurling behind him—constructed entirely of grey magic.
He extended a hand, palm upward.
The magic vortex hovered above it; space around his hand rippled faintly.
If one could see fate, they would notice that the golden threads once trying to bind him were being snapped one by one by the grey force—yet more and more kept climbing back.
High above the castle, hundreds of feet in the air, he overlooked the brightly lit Hogwarts.
Along those golden lines, he seemed to see the restless troll, Quirrell plotting to steal the Philosopher's Stone, and the Chosen One standing at the cusp of his destined turning point…
Everything lay spread out like a chessboard.
"So now… it's time to take this predetermined play and make a few quiet revisions to the footnotes according to my will."
As for the vision he'd glimpsed when meeting Harry—perhaps it was merely one of countless possibilities.
"In a world where all beings have fate…" Lucian closed his hand. The black singularity turned into flowing light and sank into his palm. The wings behind him snapped once, unleashing a sonic boom of displaced air.
"I am the only variable."