Catalyst

Chapter 19: Shots in the Dark

Studying was by far the most boring part of pretending to be a terran. Reviewing things that had already been memorized for the sake of pretending to have a mind that hadn't already had its ability to forget removed. Even worse was that his camouflage insisted in doing it in a group, as if more human minds somehow corrected the weakness shared by all of them. And worst of all, it was done in the library, where there were yet more terrans and more flaws in memory to frustrate Abathur, and more risks to expose him. He was starting to wonder whether getting camouflage was really worth the risks.

Unfortunately, Abathur still found himself sitting at a table surrounded by books and terrans discussing topics from the inane, such as what color of robe was somehow "in," (exactly what they were in was never specified), to the blatantly pointless, like the random "rules" of psionics that Abathur knew from experience were, at best, largely inaccurate.

Eventually, Abathur couldn't take the ritualistic torture anymore, and pulled out his own, more interesting book. A text describing something called an Animagus. Abathur had been meaning to read it for years, but never seemed to have a good moment for it. Abathur eagerly cracked open the cover.

"Hey, Abathur, what's that?" Harry chose that moment to interrupt him. Absolutely great timing.

"Book. Information for Animagi. Desire to read. No interruptions," Abathur stated, somewhat aggressively.

And, of course, Hermione took that as an opportunity for discussion. He should have been less subtle. "Oh, I've heard about those! They're wizards who can turn into a certain type of animal!"

That was what they were? Mildly interesting, but only so much of the human species flaws could be corrected for with extra creatures. The process may be interesting, but not the result.

Unknowing of Abathur's disinterest, Hermione continued. "They're like werewolves, except they can transform into other things, and whenever they want. But you have to be really good at transfiguration to become one, so I'm not sure you could do it, Abathur."

Werewolves... Where had he heard of those before? Ah yes, the lesson with the Potions "master" who didn't understand basic chemistry. The semi-humans who transformed into wolves every full moon. Now that he thought about it, that sounded quite similar to the traits he collected from the competent one, Lupin. Well that was interesting, but it didn't change his inability to use the essence as it was. The transformation was still too strenuous to be sustainable. Maybe if he had some form of catalyst...

But he did. The Boggart essence, practically all of it, was devoted to transformation. It would be simple to repurpose its strands to make the transformation simpler. But transforming into a wolf-like thing would be pointless, near useless. It would be a downgrade in all but speed. If he had a way to get essence from something more useful, that would be very useful.

Abathur returned to his reading. It would still be fascinating to find out how humans who didn't even know the shape of their own essence were able to pull off such delicate transformations.

The first few pages were a pretentious introduction. The next ones were warnings, accompanied by images of the horrific accidents that were described in the text. Those ones made Abathur somewhat nostalgic. He missed making those. The pages after that were covered in prerequisites, boring things that Abathur could sidestep. After that, though, was something very interesting. The mechanism by which an Animagus determined their form. Simple potion based meditation, and nothing else, not even essence from the creature they would become.

Was it that simple? A potion to gather his essence again. More essence to hide it and yet more to make it available whenever he needed. All he needed was to make that potion, and he could be whole again. He would be a zerg once more.