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The rain had yet to fall, but streaks of living lightning were already slithering through the storm clouds. At the moment when a flash of lightning illuminated the sky, a pair of hands dug into the soil, uncovering the buried crystal vial of potion. The liquid inside, once silver-blue, had now turned a deep, blood-red—almost as if it had absorbed the raw energy of the distant lightning above, glowing with a vibrant and fiery hue.
This was the highest peak within a vast mountain range spanning several thousand meters. At its summit, nothing grew—no wild grasses, no towering trees—only bare rock and soil. Beneath this desolate terrain, buried deep within the earth, lay a mineral that had long been a crucial energy source for the world: high-energy storage crystals capable of holding vast amounts of electrical power.
These crystals were widespread across the world, though their mining depended on factors such as purity, density, and total reserves. The veins in the mountain beneath Harry's feet were relatively small and impure, making them unsuitable for large-scale extraction. But sites like this were common across the globe.
One thing remained consistent: every location rich in these crystals became a no-go zone during thunderstorms. The lightning that descended from the sky had no mercy. It was fair, unbiased, and equally unforgiving to all who dared step into its domain, bestowing upon them the same privilege—to bathe in its wrath.
The potion, now a deep blood-red, contained only a single mouthful. Once a full vial of shimmering silver-blue liquid, less than a quarter remained. Without hesitation, Harry twisted open the cap. The storm overhead had grown denser, and the once-heavy mountain air was now thick with moisture, enough to fog up a person's glasses.
A stray thought crossed Harry's mind—In a downpour, an umbrella is nothing more than an inverted boat against the sky.
Though he had meticulously prepared for this moment, standing at the precipice of the final, most crucial step still sent a thrill of anticipation through him. As the first raindrops were squeezed from the clouds and hurled toward the earth, Harry raised the vial to his lips, recited the incantation—"Amato, Animo, Animado, Animagus."—and drank the crimson liquid in a single gulp.
The potion was smooth on the tongue, though its taste was difficult to describe. But compared to Snape's concoctions—or even Harry's own attempts at potion-making—this one was almost unnervingly normal.
A fiery sensation slithered down his throat, as if a serpent made of flame had entered his body. Yet even this heat paled in comparison to a well-aged bottle of Dragonfire Whiskey. Finding the taste a bit underwhelming, Harry smacked his lips in thought. This stuff really isn't that strong…
But the moment that gentle warmth spread through his limbs, the pain that followed made him furrow his brow.
"Was the dosage too low, or is this formula just not that effective?"
Compared to the agony of magical body refinement, the pain from drinking the Animagus transformation potion was almost trivial—nowhere near enough to make him cry out. Unlike other transformation seekers, Harry didn't need to overcome pain or struggle to adapt to the unnatural sensation of a second heartbeat pumping within him.
With nothing to distract him, he simply observed his body's changes with curiosity. Though the Animagus transformation had advanced over time—leading to the development of secondary forms and expanded applications—most researchers were obsessed with pushing its upper limits. They sought ways to deepen and broaden its effects, but few had ever considered studying it from the opposite perspective.
That wasn't entirely surprising. Even in the scientific world, understanding something meant first unraveling its core mechanics. But magic was different. Wizards had studied and practiced magic for thousands of years, yet the number of unsolved mysteries in the magical world was enough to make one's skin crawl.
It wasn't that wizards didn't want to study magic's fundamental nature—it was that, despite being its users, they still had no clear understanding of what magic actually was.
Even how magic produced its effects remained largely unknown. Wizards could use magic, but they could not fully comprehend its deepest principles, laws, or underlying mechanisms.
The Animagus transformation was no exception. Wizards only knew that an Animagus form was intrinsically connected to, yet distinct from, their original body. Any injuries sustained in the transformed state—curses included—would not completely transfer back to their true form. Once transformed, a wizard's flesh and blood body was entirely replaced by that of their animal counterpart.
Some particularly bored wizards had even conducted DNA sequencing tests, only to be left utterly bewildered by the results.
Your transformed body wasn't exactly your body—it was a new entity with a distant genetic relationship to you, as if it were a relative several generations removed. There was a connection, but it wasn't particularly close.
Even Muggle scientists studying genetic engineering would likely tear their hair out if they saw this phenomenon. Every time a wizard transformed, their genetic sample showed slight variations. Magic, it seemed, could not be neatly explained by the principles of the physical world.
After sacrificing several high-end precision instruments to their research, scientists and wizards alike were forced to abandon their efforts. No amount of funding was enough to sustain the relentless destruction caused by this unscientific force known as magic.
But Harry—Harry felt he was beginning to understand something.
He had firsthand experience with bodily transformation. His evolution toward the state of an Awakened being had not been painful, but it had been profound. Over the course of a two-day and one-night ritual, left with nothing to do, he had simply observed himself—watched, not with his eyes, but with his magical perception, as his body changed.
The evolution of an Awakened's body was a process of shedding old cells and rebuilding new ones. When he first completed the transformation, his motor control was so poor that even basic movement was a struggle. Had Fleur not been there to care for him, he would have been forced to rely on his senior, Li Jiannan, to feed him and take care of all his basic needs—including, humiliatingly, even using the restroom.
Ever since then, Harry had occasionally caught glimpses of something in Fleur—something that didn't quite belong to a girl her age. At times, she seemed to radiate an oddly maternal presence.
Fifteen-year-old mother and her two-meter-tall son— Now that was a ridiculous thought.
The Animagus transformation, of course, was nowhere near as thorough as an Awakened's bodily evolution. It could not alter a wizard so completely. But Harry could sense the shift occurring within him. Unlike the Awakened transformation, which created something from nothing using raw magical power, the Animagus spell functioned by using the wizard's own body as a template. It cultivated a new form—one that was fully tangible, yet would never truly be independent.
Magic stimulated Harry's cells to undergo an unusual form of growth—not by division, but through an almost parasitic expansion. It felt as if new cells, identical to the original, were being stuffed inside, merging seamlessly. But when transformation occurred, these new cells suddenly took over, engulfing the originals and making them the core of the new form. The old cells didn't disappear; rather, they were wrapped up and integrated into the new structure. This was how the transformation achieved a complete bodily replacement.
"If I were transforming into something smaller than a human—an insect, for instance—would the number of these transformation cells be significantly lower?"
The thought flickered through Harry's mind. Although Animagus transformation was classified as Transfiguration, its nature was fundamentally different from other transformation spells. Unlike human or animal transfiguration—where any inflicted damage was immediately transferred and could forcibly revert the transformation—Animagus transformations functioned independently of such limitations.
The torrential rain had soaked Harry to the bone. Dressed in nothing but a thin vest, he stood there, drenched, as lightning crashed around him. But the violent power of the storm was absorbed soundlessly by the surrounding mountain rock.
His transformation was agonizingly slow. Under normal circumstances, he would have fully morphed by now. Even transformations enhanced by the Philosopher's Stone—used in magical creature transfiguration—would have reached their final stages. Harry had confirmed this with Nicolas Flamel himself.
The legendary alchemist had once transformed into a fire salamander, a magical beast closely tied to alchemy. These creatures thrived in volcanic magma, their blood reaching a scorching three hundred degrees Celsius. In a letter, Flamel had even complained to Harry about how drinking the potion had burned his mouth, and half-jokingly wished that Harry would be electrocuted into spasms by the Thunderstorm Dragon's blood in his own transformation attempt.
Yet, the supposedly intense electric surge hadn't even been strong enough to make Harry's hair stand on end. His Awakened body possessed resistances far beyond normal human limits.
"Don't tell me..."
Harry stared at his arm, now covered in silver-blue scales, and reluctantly admitted the truth—he hadn't drunk enough potion.
"But this was already a super-dosed version!"
He grabbed the empty crystal vial from the ground and muttered in frustration. The thing had held 500 milliliters—five times the amount used in a standard Animagus transformation. And it still wasn't enough?
"I should've used a bucket."
"No—an eighteen-liter water jug! How could I be so stupid?!"
Harry clenched his fists, cursing himself for trusting the advice of so-called experts who had come before him.
"What a joke!"
With a sharp crack, he hurled the crystal vial to the ground, shattering it.
The transformation was happening, but at a pace so slow it was agonizing. Watching his progress was like watching an elderly woman cross the street—except Harry was the impatient driver, about to be late for work and lose his attendance bonus.
The fiercer the thunderstorm, the shorter its duration. Now, in mid-October, the storm season was at its end. This rare lightning storm was fading fast—like a man who had popped his last blue pill but still couldn't get the job done. No matter how hard it tried, it was running out of power.
The thunder was no longer as wild, and the torrential downpour was losing strength. No one knew what would happen if an Animagus transformation failed mid-process, but whatever the outcome, it wouldn't be good.
"I need to act—now."
Time was slipping away, and Harry had no choice but to take matters into his own hands. He had no idea what the correct solution was, but magic—magic wasn't something that always required understanding.
I think, I want, I take.
That was how wizards wielded magic. Simple, crude, even mindless—but effective.
Animagus transformation was driven by potion. But whether it was the magic in nature, the energy within the Thunderstorm Dragon's blood, or even the Philosopher's Stone itself, none of them could compare to the power of Awakened magic.
This was the power to create the impossible—an ability to manifest something from nothing, containing a fragment of an incomplete yet divine authority over creation itself, a remnant of the world's will.
Like a dense black mist, iron-gray Awakened magic surged forth, pouring unreservedly into the regions of Harry's body that had been altered by the potion. He closed his eyes, repeating his command in his mind, urging the transformation forward. The iron-gray magic enveloped him entirely, wrapping around every inch of his being. And then—at that moment—the speed of his transformation underwent a fundamental shift.
It was as if an old, broken-down Ford had been retrofitted with a futuristic antimatter engine from an interstellar warship. This was no longer a matter of movement—one push of the accelerator, and the very atmosphere itself would be left in the dust.
His once-muscular body expanded and elongated at a startling rate. Size was a matter of perspective, and what had once seemed broad—thick as an oak barrel—now appeared sleek and slender. His coiling form stretched an astonishing seventy-seven feet in length, and though the silver-blue scales lacked the lightning that had once danced along their surface, they gleamed even more brilliantly than the radiant thunderstorm dragon, Thor, above him!
As the iron-gray magic fused into his body, fully completing his transformation into a magical creature, Harry opened his eyes.
A pair of striking emerald-green pupils now radiated the commanding presence of a dragon's gaze.
With a sudden motion, his four mighty wings unfurled from his back. The elongated appendages were covered in a unique fusion of feathers and scale armor—both sturdy and weightless. His wingspan stretched an astounding 154 feet—twice the length of his body—a proportion seen only in the offspring of Thunderbirds and Storm Dragons.
His voice tore through the mountains—a hoarse yet thunderous roar. The sheer force of it sent shockwaves through the rocky terrain, causing fractured boulders to tumble down the slopes. His wings, now fully extended, stirred a violent whirlwind, sending dust and debris into the sky. And as the storm winds howled, the thunderclouds above let out one final, defiant bolt of lightning!
Beneath the relentless downpour—
The heavens would not tolerate a challenge from the earth below!
The Storm Dragon reared its massive head, lifting its upper body as swirling air currents struggled to keep up with its ascent. Its silver horns, sharp as blades, seemed to pierce the heavens, poised to strike at the very heart of the raging storm!
For there would always be those among the earthbound who dared to face the brilliance of the thunderhead.
His silver-blue dragon form had been missing something—an essence, a divinely bestowed grandeur. But in that moment, as the storm's final lightning strike descended upon him, nature itself, the great sculptor of all things, completed its masterpiece.
A dragon, born from a mortal shell, baptized by the heavens.
(End of Chapter)