The passage closed behind Edmund with a soft, final click. The darkness was absolute. Not the dim glow of the Chamber, not the green flicker of torches, but a blackness so complete it felt like a physical weight pressing against his eyes, against his chest, against his very breath. He raised his wand and whispered, "*Lumos.*" The light bloomed, casting pale shadows on the walls of a narrow corridor carved from the same dark stone as the statue. The air was cold, still, ancient. It smelled of dust and something else—something metallic, like old blood, like rust, like the memory of death.
He walked forward.
The corridor sloped downward, spiraling deeper into the foundations of Hogwarts. The walls were smooth, worn by centuries of something—footsteps? Serpents? Or perhaps the slow passage of time itself. Every few feet, runes were carved into the stone—warning runes, protective runes, runes that pulsed with a faint, silver light. Edmund recognized some of them: *Eihwaz*, for endurance; *Nauthiz*, for constraint; *Isa*, for stillness. Others were unfamiliar, their meanings lost to time, their shapes twisted in ways that hurt to look at. He did not stop to study them. He kept walking, his footsteps echoing in the narrow space, his breath misting in the cold air.
The corridor opened into a chamber.
It was circular, perhaps fifty feet across, its ceiling lost in shadow so deep that even his wandlight could not pierce it. The walls were bare stone, unadorned except for a single phrase carved above a door on the far side: *Transfiguration is the art of becoming.* The letters were old, written in a script that predated modern English, but Edmund understood them. The meaning seeped into his mind not through translation but through recognition, as if the words had been waiting for him to read them.
He approached the door. It was made of polished obsidian, smooth and seamless, with no handle, no lock, no visible way to open it. His own reflection stared back at him from its surface—pale, tired, his dark hair disheveled, his eyes shadowed from weeks of sleepless preparation. He pushed. Nothing. He cast *Alohomora*. Nothing. He pressed his palm against the cold stone. Nothing.
The runes around the doorframe pulsed once, and a voice spoke—not aloud, but in his mind. Cold, ancient, commanding. It was the voice of Salazar Slytherin himself, preserved in magic for a thousand years.
*The first gate: Transfiguration. To pass, you must become what you are not. Enter the chamber. The test begins now.*
The obsidian door dissolved.
Edmund stepped through.
---
The chamber beyond was vast—far larger than the circular room he had left. Its walls were lined with mirrors, hundreds of them, thousands, each one reflecting his own image back at him from a different angle. The floor was polished black stone, so smooth he could see his own face staring up from beneath his feet. The ceiling was lost in darkness, and the air was cold, heavy, and smelled of ozone—the sharp, electric scent of powerful magic.
He walked forward, his footsteps echoing. The mirrors showed him from every angle—his front, his back, his sides, his face from above, from below, from angles that should not exist. He was surrounded by himself, a legion of Edmunds, each one watching him with the same wary eyes. It was disorienting. He felt the first stirrings of panic.
Then the walls began to move.
The mirrors shifted, sliding inward, shrinking the chamber. The floor tilted, throwing him off balance. The ceiling descended, a great weight of darkness pressing down. Edmund ran toward the far side, but the mirrors moved faster, cutting off his path. He was trapped in a shrinking cube of reflective surfaces, his own face staring at him from every direction, each reflection mocking him, judging him, watching him fail.
The voice spoke again, calm and pitiless.
*Transfiguration is the art of becoming. You cannot escape this chamber by staying as you are. You must change. You must become something else. Something that can survive the crushing weight of the stone.*
Edmund's heart pounded in his chest. The walls were closing in. He had seconds before they crushed him. He could feel the cold glass pressing against his shoulders, his back, his chest. He could not stop them with force—the magic was too old, too powerful, woven into the very stones of Hogwarts. He needed to transfigure himself into something that could fit through the shrinking space, something that could survive the pressure.
But into what? He could not become a mouse—the space would still crush him, grind his bones to powder. He could not become air—he would suffocate, his consciousness dissipating into nothing. He could not become a shadow—he had no guarantee that shadows could think, could remember, could change back. He needed to become something that could exist in the gaps between the mirrors, something that could flow like water, slip like oil, survive like nothing mortal had ever survived.
He thought about his studies. Advanced Transfiguration included the theory of self-transfiguration—the most dangerous branch of magic. Professor Wainwright had warned them about it in sixth year, his voice grave. *One mistake can kill you. One wrong thought can leave you permanently transformed, trapped in a shape that is not your own. There are witches and wizards in St. Mungo's who have not spoken in decades because they cannot remember how to be human.*
The walls pressed closer. His shoulders touched the mirrors on either side. The cold glass bit through his robes, and he felt a sharp sting—the edges of the mirrors were not smooth. They were cutting him. He could feel warm blood trickling down his arms.
He made his decision. He had no choice.
He raised his wand—his left arm, the one that was not pinned against the glass—and cast the spell. He did not think about becoming an animal, a liquid, a gas. He thought about becoming nothing. A shadow. A ghost. A thing without form. He thought about the space between the mirrors, the gaps that were too small for flesh but not for thought. He poured his magic into the transformation, feeling his body shift, compress, dissolve.
The pain was excruciating.
It began in his bones. They cracked, not breaking but bending, softening, losing their structure. He felt his femurs bow, his ribs flatten, his skull compress like an eggshell. He screamed, but no sound came out. His throat was collapsing, his vocal cords melting into the mass of his neck. His skin stretched, thinning, becoming translucent. He could see his own organs through his chest—his heart, still beating, still pumping blood through veins that were becoming threads.
His organs rearranged themselves inside his body. His stomach shifted upward, pressing against his lungs. His liver slid sideways, nestling between his ribs. His intestines coiled and recoiled, shrinking into a tight ball. He felt it all. Every movement, every shift, every violation of the body he had inhabited for seventeen years. He was being unmade.
The mirrors closed around him, but he was no longer solid. He was a flat, two-dimensional shape, a reflection of himself, trapped in the surface of the glass. His consciousness spread across the mirror, thin and fragile, like oil on water. He could see the chamber from within the glass—the other mirrors, the other Edmunds, each one frozen in a moment of transformation. He was everywhere and nowhere. He was a reflection of a reflection, an echo of a self that no longer had form.
The walls stopped moving. The chamber was still.
Edmund existed in the mirror. He could not breathe—he had no lungs. He could not feel—he had no skin. He could not think—not clearly, not in words. He was a smear of consciousness, a ghost in the glass, watching the world from a place that was not a place.
He needed to change back. But he did not know how.
He had not practiced self-transfiguration. He had only read about it, studied the theory, understood the risks. The spell to reverse the transformation required the same precision, the same focus, the same willingness to become something else. But he was already something else. He had to find himself again.
He searched his memory for something solid, something real, something that would anchor him to his humanity. He thought about the Prince manor, the cold rooms, the overgrown garden. He thought about the ring on his finger—was it still there? He could not feel it. He thought about the blood in his veins—did he still have veins? He could not feel his heartbeat.
He thought about his friends. Cassius, laughing at breakfast. Arthur, practicing Shield Charms in the Room of Requirement. Horace, muttering about potion ingredients. Astrid, carving rune stones in the common room, her knife moving in small, precise strokes. They were waiting for him. They did not know where he was. They would never know if he stayed here, a ghost in the glass, a forgotten reflection in a forgotten chamber.
He would not let that happen.
He focused on his name. Edmund Alistair Prince. The last heir of the House of Prince. He said it to himself, over and over, forcing the words through the fog of his dissolving consciousness. *Edmund. Edmund. Edmund.*
The mirror trembled. He felt something shift—a crack in the glass, a weakness in the enchantment. He pushed against it, willing himself to become solid, to become flesh, to become Edmund Prince again.
The pain returned, worse than before.
His bones reformed, snapping back into place with a series of sickening cracks. His organs slid back into their proper positions, each movement a fresh agony. His skin thickened, re-knitting itself over his body. His lungs expanded, and he gasped—a ragged, desperate breath that tasted of blood and dust. He tumbled out of the mirror, landing on the cold stone floor, his body a wreckage of pain and broken things.
He lay there for a long moment, unable to move. His left arm was shattered—the bone had reformed incorrectly, twisted at an angle that made his stomach turn. His ribs were cracked—he could feel them grinding together with every breath. His legs were covered in deep cuts where the glass had sliced him during the transformation. Blood pooled beneath him, warm and sticky.
He needed to heal himself. But he could not move. He could barely think.
He forced himself to focus. He was a healer. He had trained for this. He had healed broken bones before, on animals, on himself, on his friends. He could do it again.
He reached across his body with his right hand—his left arm was useless—and grabbed his left forearm. The bone was displaced, the ends no longer aligned. He would need to set it before he could heal it. He took a breath, held it, and pulled.
The bone ground together with a sound that made him gag. He screamed, a raw, animal sound that echoed through the chamber. Tears streamed down his face. He held the bone in place with his right hand and cast a healing charm—the simplest version of *Episkey*, enough to stabilize the break but not enough to heal it completely. The bone fused, but it was not straight. He would need a proper healer later, someone who could break it again and reset it. For now, it would have to do.
He cast the same charm on his ribs, sealing the cracks, feeling the bones knit together with a sensation that was almost pleasurable after the pain. He cast it on the cuts on his legs, closing the wounds, stopping the bleeding. He was weak from blood loss, shivering from shock, but he was alive. He was still himself.
He staggered to his feet, using the wall for support. The mirrors had returned to their original positions, no longer moving, no longer threatening. The door on the far side of the chamber was open.
The voice spoke.
*The first gate is passed. You have shown that you understand the first principle of Transfiguration: to change yourself, you must first be willing to lose yourself. Take your reward.*
A pedestal rose from the floor in the center of the chamber. On it lay a small silver key, its head shaped like a serpent, its teeth gleaming. Edmund limped toward it, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, his blood dripping onto the polished stone. He picked up the key. It was warm, pulsing with a faint, silver light. He tucked it into his pocket.
The chamber dissolved.
---
He stood in a narrow corridor, the walls rough and unadorned. The door behind him had sealed shut, the obsidian surface once again smooth and seamless. Ahead, the corridor stretched into darkness. The second gate was waiting.
Edmund leaned against the wall, breathing hard. His arm throbbed. His ribs ached. His legs were weak from blood loss. He had nearly died. He had become a reflection, a ghost in the glass. He had felt his bones crack and his organs shift. He was not the same person who had entered the chamber. He could not be. He had been unmade and remade, and something had changed in the process.
He looked at the key in his hand. It was a small thing, simple, unremarkable. But it was proof that he had survived. Proof that he was worthy. He tucked it into his pocket and began to walk.
The trial was not over. There were six gates left. And he had no choice but to face them.
---