ATOMIX; Chapter 09: A Hand of Cloth

Hello my dear Patron family, here's Chapter Nine of ATOMIX. I hope you like it!

Hearty thanks and congratulations to our first seven members of the Guildmaster Tier: Camo, I am Lord Dems, StormFox, RyanMK666, Lyrical, Tyler and HadesReynes. 🥰🤩

I have changed the name of the Fanfic. Because the more I wrote the more it became 'ATOMIX' instead of 'A Castle of Flowers.' So, everything is same, but with a different name.

Author out!

“I am Talking.” 

‘I am Thinking’ 

Spells

ATOMIX

-Dev Sagittarius Black

 ~~Chapter 09: A Hand of Cloth~~

.

“I still don’t believe it, Harry… this is… I don’t even know what to think of it!”

“I am not going to explain it to you again, just because it seemed unbelievable the first two times.” 

“But I still don’t understand how this is even possible!”

“You think I do? Why do you think I came to you in the first place?” 

There was a pregnant pause after that and Hermione, the smartest witch of our generation, chewed on her bottom lip and looked at me as if I was some sort of mystery that she couldn’t figure out. 

Something that I couldn’t deny.

After the skin of my hand had turned to a green cloth, I had tried my level best to revert it back to the skin of my hand, but even after repeatedly forcing my connection to The Zone and then trying to revert the particles of my skin from cloth-like to skin-like, all I had received was failure.

It seemed that changing the material of something wasn’t as easy as changing the colour. Therefore, now I sat in Ginny and Hermione’s room, with the latter of the two beside me, who was looking at my hand which was normal in colour but still made of cloth. 

“So, let me get this straight again — yes Harry, no need to make that face. We are doing this for your own good. Remember?” Hermione sighed and repeated what I had told her twice already. 

“You don’t remember anything after the accident that happened during the holidays, and since you woke up, you are somehow able to manipulate your body?”

Well… when she put it like that, it did sound disbelieving, but that was as close to the truth as I was going to tell her. To be honest, I didn’t want to tell her everything, because, for some reason, I still didn’t trust her enough. 

This was another thing that confused me a lot. Hermione Granger and the trust issues I had with her. Frankly, she was a good girl, brilliant as hell, and had been with me through thick and thin, even going as far as to help me with Sirius’ escape in our third year, and then help me last year even when Ron had left.

Then, why didn’t I trust her? Where was this distrust coming from? Why was I not telling her everything? Yes, I knew that she wasn’t the best person to tell a secret because of her ‘Adults know best’ habit, but that didn’t mean she was untrustworthy, right? 

So, why was my mind hellbent on shutting up the moment I wanted to tell her about the weird nightmares, the voice, the pillar of ropes and the bloody ceiling? Why didn’t I want her to know the true extent of my powers?! 

‘She will snitch you to Dumbledore, you idiot,’ my mind supplied helpfully. But then, what if she did? It’s not like Dumbledore was a Death Eater in secret, right?! He was Dumbledore, there wasn’t anything wrong with telling him. 

I looked back at her, the way she chewed on her bottom lip and looked at me, I could practically feel the gears in her brain move rapidly to come to a conclusion for the bizarre problem that I had presented to her. 

Actually, call it another bizarre problem because the first one was still the ‘House-elf issue’ that she had encountered earlier during breakfast. 

Apparently, both Dobby and Winky had actually listened to me, and straightaway popped in the kitchen during an on-going breakfast session conducted by Mrs Weasley and attended by half the house. 

After the introductions had been done, two of them had been against the induction of the house-elves — Mrs Weasley and Hermione. Each had their own reason, and both of their reasons were, with all due respect, utter bullshit. 

A shouting match had taken place after that between the three of them, Hermione’s ‘issue’ regarding the house-elves solved when Winky herself told the girl about how she had been utterly devastated and actually wanted to serve a family, while Dobby had simply claimed ‘Harry Potter is the best wizard ever, and anyone who tries to separate Dobby from him will be severely maimed.’ 

Perfectly reasonable argument, in my opinion, but I think others perceived it as a threat instead. 

Mrs Weasley, on the other hand, was actually angry that house-elves were brought in the house—pun intended—even when they were hiding from everyone, and there wasn’t any real need for a house-elf. Afterall, she could easily cook for everyone, and the children were already cleaning the whole house. 

Other than these two, everyone else had been extremely relieved that they had actual working house-elves now, and that they wouldn’t need to scrub the dirty house anymore. Something that was immediately squashed down by their mother, who decided that her children will still clean the house by their own hands.

Something that Hermione supported. 

I shook my head at all of that nonsense. According to me, it had been such a small issue that no one should’ve batted an eye to it, but both Mrs Weasley and Hermione had made it seem like two house-elves would be the reason for Voldemort to enter the damn house.

“I think I’ve found it.” 

I blinked at the sudden interruption and looked at my friend. “What?” 

“Your issue, Harry!” She responded, a bit excitedly, “I don’t have any proof right now, so call it a hypothesis of sorts, but I have a theory to suggest what has happened to you.” 

“Well?” 

“Alright, so I think it’s something called human transfiguration.” Hermione smiled excitedly. “It’s a form of advanced transfiguration that will be taught to us in our sixth year. I don’t know much about it but I had read a book last year when we needed something for you to survive the second task.”

“You went through a sixth year transfiguration book for me?”

“Victor and I used to spend time after the Yule Ball, remember?” She said, “And I saw him reading the book. Especially the Human-to-Animal transfigurations part. Back then, I didn’t know what he wanted it for but the topic had seemed quite interesting so I read it alongside him.” 

I shrugged the information off, I wasn’t bothered by the fact that she was spending so much time with Krum. Infact, I am glad that she did because that gave me enough time to find my own ways for the second task. 

‘Thanks for that, Dobby.’ I smirked before I urged her to complete her theory. 

“So, as I was saying, I read a bit about ‘Human transfiguration’. It’s a way to change yourself, or parts of yourself to that of an object or an animal. It’s especially helpful if you want to become an Animagus like Professor McGonagall, and Sirius.” 

“So… you’re telling me that after the accident, I have somehow gained the ability to transfigure my skin to anything I want it to be?” I blinked, was it just me or did that actually sound absolutely unbelievable? 

“I mean… probably?” She scrunched her face a bit. “Your dad was said to be exceptionally good at transfigurations, right? Maybe, just like trauma causes children to show their bouts of accidental magic and then their magic activates for them to use whenever they want, my guess is that the accident was the pivotal force needed to somehow activate this inside you.” 

“You know that sounds logical and absurd at the same time, right?” I chuckled a bit but had to stop when she glared. “Look, Hermione, I understand that you are trying to be helpful, but this isn’t helping me at all. An accident that caused me to wake up hidden powers? What am I? A superhero from the muggle comic books?”

“Well, you did survive the Killing curse, nobody has done that either. Maybe you are a muggle comic superhero.” She smirked back, and I couldn’t help but smile a bit. 

“That was different, I was way too young, and I didn’t do it voluntarily either.” I shrugged, “This on the other hand is somewhat like a known accident.” 

“Then, tell me about a single person who can do this.” She folded her hands over her chest. “Even by wizard standards, this is the first time I am hearing something like this. We don’t have any reference of anyone who has ever had a power like this, and we don’t know what caused this sudden change in you. Only thing we know is that you’ve had this since the time of the accident and that you can’t control it.”

I wanted to tell her that I can control the power, that there wasn’t a single thing that I couldn’t do when I was connected to the Zone, but, for some reason, I didn’t do that. My mind stopped me, it supplied me with the memories of my past years where I had lived through some of the worst and best possible times of my life. 

But through it all, one thing that I had learned was that no matter what you are; a muggle, a wizard or a squib… standing out in a group was never a good idea. 

“So, how do we test it out?” 

“Hmm?” Hermione blinked at my response, probably because she had expected me to refute her claims. Pity, Ms Granger, I am more interested in solving the issue than fighting with you over it. 

“Ah… I think the best way would be for Professor McGonagall to see it as she’s the Transfiguration Professor — But you don’t want that, obviously,” She hastily added, “Well, then… how about we ask Sirius’ help with this? I mean, he is an animagus, isn’t he? He knows more about human transfiguration than others who are in the house right now.” 

“Alright, but what are we going to tell him?” 

“You’re not going to tell him about this?” 

“I—” 

Well… that was a good line of thought, but was it actually useful? I mean, I know that Sirius was my godfather, my father’s best friend, and was obviously the last person to snitch my… issue, to someone else. So, why not tell him? This might also get me access to some transfiguration related books in the Black family library.  

‘Wow, brain, thinking like a real nerd now, are we?’ I thought amusedly before I agreed with Hermione and we left to find Sirius. 

If luck served us right, he would probably be in the living room, or the Lord’s study.

⁂

He wasn’t. 

My all time great Potter luck supported me here as well as we rushed through the rooms to find Sirius, only to learn from Mrs Weasley that Sirius was in the attic with Buckbeak. Apparently, it was Sirius’ job to feed the hippogriff everyday.

So, we dodged the twins who were working on something that caused black smoke to erupt from inside their room, probably that Peruvian Black crystal thingy? Who knows? Ron and Ginny were both scrubbing the floors when we passed them, and I completely ignored Hermione when she looked at me when we did. 

She still wanted me to talk to Ron once more, and then settle things with him. I knew I would do that, yeah, but not now. I will do it… later.

When we reached the attic, we found Buckbeak preening his feathers while my godfather was sleeping peacefully with his back resting on the magical creature’s large feathery body. 

"Sirius?" I shook him a bit, waking him up from his beauty nap as Hermione and I stood beside Buckbeak. The half-bird looked at us once, his golden pupils glaring at us, before he gave a small bow to me.

‘Still remember that, huh?’ I thought amusedly before I bowed back. After that he gave a squawk and flapped his large wing which threw the sleeping man forward. Apparently, the intelligent creature was smart enough to understand why we came, or he was just annoyed to be used as a glorified bed. 

“You little shit…” Sirius mumbled as he shook the sleepy haze from his mind, and blinked to look at us. “Harry? What happened?” 

That was the question which took us fifteen minutes to clear. 

I had to repeatedly explain the strange thing about ‘The Zone’, then I had to tell him that it’s not voluntary control, and then I had to restrain him from jumping in joy when Hermione said that this might be a hidden gene of sorts that helped me —and my father— get the expertise they had in transfiguration, and got activated due to the trauma of the accident.  

“Is this why you wanted all those books? The ones you asked me to get you from the family library?” Sirius asked me after everything was said.

“Yeah, I was a bit freaked out… and I really didn’t know what this thing was, so I asked Hermione and she suggested those books to me.” I shrugged, it was the most truthful thing I had told to the both of them.

“You didn't tell me it was for this reason!” My friend cried, “I would’ve researched this issue with you instead of just telling you the books. I really thought that you were just curious about some obscure magic back then.” 

I just gave a small smile and shrugged again. “It wasn’t a big deal back then, just a small thing that was nagging me. So, I felt it was better to do some research before I asked you or anyone else about it.” 

“And…” Sirius frowned a bit as he reached out to hold my cloth-skin hand. “Is this a result of that ‘research’?” 

“Yeah… I—” What do I say now? That I’ve been experimenting for days?! And that, this isn’t the result but the mishap? “I mean, this isn’t the result, I am sure this isn’t what the book meant so… I don’t know.” 

There was a small pause as the two digested the fact that I had unlocked some sort of weird powers that weren’t in my control and altered my body. 

“Well, if it’s actually human-transfiguration, as Hermione said, then this will definitely revert it back.” Sirius flicked his wand out and pointed it towards my hand. “This will also tell me the tricks as to how Prongs was so good at it, innit?”

“Finite Incantatem.” 

And…nothing happened. 

There were three more tries but even with increased power and concentration, Sirius just couldn’t revert my hand back to normal. Instead, for some reason, my hand started to hurt a bit each time the spell was used. 

“I don’t know why it’s not working, Harry,” Sirius sighed as he released the wand back into the holster. “I know my magic is intact, the wand works. In fact, I had just used it to apply cushioning charms to the floor beneath me before you came.”

I reassured Sirius that it wasn’t his fault, that he wasn’t a lesser wizard either and that maybe, just maybe, my dad was indeed a gifted wizard at transfiguration instead of relying on some sort of family magicks. 

⁂

I re-entered my new room with nothing but disappointment. Hermione and Sirius had decided that this issue with me was something else entirely and, therefore, they had decided to check out the numerous books and scrolls that were present in the Black family library. 

Well, it was more like Sirius wanted to ‘do’ something and Hermione was super excited to finally do what she does best; Read and research.

Me? I didn’t want to join them at all. Instead, I decided to return back to my room and think about the rest of my problems. Plus, there was also something that I wanted to try with this new anomaly that was my hand.

I went into the bathroom and turned the tap on before putting my cloth-skin hand under the flowing water. Funny enough, I felt the water that fell on my palm, slowly sinking in it. The entire palm area was drenched in water, and after a few seconds, water started pouring down my wet skin. 

I closed the tap and checked my hand, it felt heavier, also there was water that kept on dripping down the cloth part of my hand, which meant that the water was actually stored inside it. 

I tried to dry my hands but they wouldn’t. It was as if the skin of my hand had turned to become an actual glove because all of its characteristics were exactly like a wet cloth. 

‘This really fucks things up for me now…’ I sighed once more. This just meant that somehow I had turned a part of my body into a piece of cloth, and not just in looks. It was actually a literal piece of cloth. 

‘What if I were to cut it? Would it hurt? What about blood? What about…’ I shook my head to stop the intrusive thoughts that were slowly turning me more into a creepy scientist than a normal boy… with a cloth-skin hand and weird powers of manipulation. Yeah, totally normal.

When I returned back to my room, I decided to try something else. Something that I had done back then but hadn’t been successful — Enter The Zone again. 

Yes, it was probably not a good idea for now, especially thanks to my last experiment that had rendered the skin of my hand completely useless, but it wasn’t like I had anything else to do either, right? 

My theory about this being some sort of transfiguration had been kicked out of the window when Sirius had failed to reverse the effect of the Zone, which meant that this thing was something else entirely. 

Something that wasn’t related to magic at all, but that gave rise to a question — Exactly what was the Zone? And… what was this power of manipulation?

I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feeling that pushed me in the Zone. The only good thing after weeks of practising the same thing was that now, I could enter the zone within twenty seconds. Something that was a HUGE improvement from my first attempt where I didn’t even know what I was doing or why. 

The Zone felt way more comfortable to connect as an involuntary smile graced my lips when I felt my consciousness merge with that of my surroundings. I could feel every single thing in a one-metre radius once again, and the god-like urge to manipulate everything to my liking returned.

But this time, I already had something that I wanted to do. So, instead of giving in to my intrusive thoughts, I controlled my mind and concentrated on the water that had soaked the cloth like skin of my hand. I needed to remove that water from my hand completely so that the skin becomes dry once more. 

My mind traced the thin layer of water particles that were in my hand and slowly started to push them out of my hand. It was way easier than when I had tried to turn the red wall of my room to solid. 

This also made me remember the time when I had just arrived at Grimmauld Place, back then I used to try to access the Zone and then push the dust particles away from me as a practice. Back then it seemed quite tough, but now, I could bet a galleon that I could push particles in the air with a mere thought. 

It took a few minutes but finally, I felt that the cloth-skin of my hand was dry again, all of its stored water had been squeezed out successfully. 

I tried to revert the skin of my hand back to normal again, but like the numerous times before, all I received was failure as the cloth-like texture remained no matter how many times I tried to revert it back to human skin. 

“Alright, I need to make a list of things that I can, and cannot do with the help of the Zone.” With that goal in mind, I sat at the writing desk that the room hosted, and pulled a parchment from the stack that was kept near it before pulling out a quill and started writing. 

So far I had been able to vanish dust from shelves and fill it in the cracks present in the shelf, I had also been able to push-and-pull dust particles in the air, merge two things that were separate and then separate them once more, change the colour and hardness of anything, and finally, I could change parts of my own body to anything. 

Wait… anything? 

I looked down at my hand when that thought crossed my mind again. If I could actually change parts of myself to anything, then… shouldn’t I try to change it to other things first? Maybe that’s how I would gain enough experience to be able to change the skin of my hand back to human skin. 

‘But what if the experiment failed, Potter?’ My insidious thoughts came back to bite me, and even though I tried to stay positive, the seed had already been sowed. 

What if the experiment failed and instead of getting rid of cloth like hand, I got stuck with something like… stone or wood? Or maybe Iron? What if instead of staying in one piece, my hand turned to sand and fell off?! 

I shook my head, this wasn’t doing me any good. I needed to focus my mind right now, not let it wander away with scary possibilities of the experiment that I had wanted to do. 

“Alright, first things first…” I dipped the quill again in the ink-pot and wrote the disadvantages which I had experienced.

Things like struggling to manipulate the particles that were outside my area of coverage. The concentration that was required to fall back, and stay in the Zone with open eyes, as well as the small bouts of pain that erupted when magic was used on things that had been changed with the Zone’s help.

So, now I could see both the pros and the cons of using the Zone, which meant that it — and, by extension, this power — wasn’t as superior as it had seemed to me back when I connected to the Zone. There were drawbacks to it, and the most serious one was the bouts of pain that erupted whenever magic was casted on my hand. 

Did this mean the Zone was so different that it actively hated magic? It was another thing to think about. To be honest, my ‘to-think-about’ list was already quite big, and it didn’t look like it was going to decrease anytime soon. 

It was at this point that I felt my head throb, as if there was something inside it that wanted freedom. I touched my forehead and rubbed a bit, but it was all for naught as the pain doubled immediately. 

“AAAGGhhhhh…” I clutched my head and fell face forward on the bed. 

Everything was dark, not a single speck of light or even a small sound. All I could sense was complete darkness around myself. All of a sudden, I saw a small speck of bright light, I urged my consciousness to follow it. Maybe, it was something that would get me out of this pain? 

Unfortunately not. 

The moment I touched that speck of light, my mind was pushed into it and I started hearing voices again. The same ones that I’ve been hearing for the past few months in my nightmares. 

“You need to know that what I do is not for you to judge. You wizards have always taken magic for granted.”

The broken house with dried up grasses and broken fences came into view again. I was wary of the house, as my last time inside it hadn’t been a happy experience. 

Everything from the broken fences to the rotting garden was the same. There wasn’t a single thing that could be said to make a difference in the scenic beauty ahead of me, which was a bit confusing because last time when I had been in this… ‘lovely’ place, I had seen that the garden had been lush green with Larkspur flowers. 

“The power would be unfathomable. I will combine your magic with my very cells, my whole body will be saturated with divine power…”

“Who are you?!” I screamed back, intent on getting a few answers this time. 

I looked around and yet all I could see was barren wastelands, nothing… absolutely nothing looked lively. Dead plants, dry barren land full of cracks criss-crossing through it. 

The only change was the door that was already open. This was a bit surprising to me but I shrugged it off. 

“You will know the pain, Harry Potter! The pain that my family gave me! You will suffer the pain that I have suffered for this long!” The voice resonated through the entire landscape. 

“What are you?! Give me answers or I will leave this place!” I shouted back at the voice, there was no way I was going to leave the place without answers but the voice didn’t need to know that. 

Suddenly, the landscape started to tremble as laughter echoed around me. I could feel the vibrations pass through my body and it didn’t give me a good feeling. There was no way that even the broken fences and the lawn chair were laughing at me, right? 

I flicked my hand, only to be surprised when my wand didn’t come out. Another surprise was in the form of my hand itself because the cloth-skin that had annoyed me throughout the day was gone, and in its place normal human hand skin was back. 

‘If only this was the real world…’ I sighed but had to control myself from falling as the raspy laughter increased in volume with the shaking. I took a step back from the house, only to slip and fall on the ground.

“STOP THIS! WHAT DO YOU WANT?!” I shouted at the house,  “WHY WON’T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?!” 

The shaking abruptly came to a halt, but before I could be relieved that voice returned once more, “I am your worst nightmare… Harry Potter…”

And with that everything turned black once more. 

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Ending Note: There you have it fellas, chapter Nine of 'ATOMIX', hope you liked it.

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