//------------------------------//
// Chapter 11:  Troll 
// Story: Gift of Divinity 
// by computerneek 
//------------------------------//

Draco Malfoy released the spell he’d been maintaining for the last five seconds and dispersed the magic, before letting out a sigh and collapsing onto a chair, completely exhausted.  It was hardly the end of September, and she was already working him harder than all the teachers put together.
“Yes,” Sunset told him.  “Just like that.”
“Why do you need me for this?” he asked.  “Wouldn’t a higher-year student be better?”
“One would think,” Sunset sighed.  “Unfortunately, I tried it with all the higher-year students in the Research Program, and none of them could do it.  Yet you can, Hermione picked it up in about a minute, and Hailey didn’t even need a wand!”  She chuckled softly.  “So unfortunately, I have to go to those students that haven’t already learned how to use their wands.  I’m thinking it’s because this is unthinkable according to the standard spellcasting methods- you probably don’t realize it, but you’ve actually been casting even normal spells in a very different way than most, after studying with me.”
“Weird,” he muttered.  “I haven’t had any trouble performing the various spells at all.”  He chuckled softly.  “I even managed to cast one before I said the incantation!  That got a lot of points.”
“It’s probably because the common method is…”  She paused.  “The method you three are using has been refined by my people, who have a much more…  intimate connection with magic than you do.  Specifically, our magic instruments are part of our bodies- so while your wand does a ton of work to stabilize the magic you use and manage it, we are used to performing those tasks ourselves.  It makes using a wand a pain, I tell you- if I do those steps myself when using a wand, it actually disrupts it and causes the spell to fail.
“But the overall technique, that allows us to minimize the amount of effort we have to expend on magical management tasks and actually exhaust our often vast magical reserves…  That technique works exactly the same when using a wand as without.  Speaking of, I think you’ve exhausted your magic reserves.  That’s usually a very exhausting thing to do.”  She looked at the stone he’d been creating out of sand.  “That said, that was a very demanding spell.  Not quite the same as the people of my home use- they compress sand into gemstones when measuring absolute capacity, and there are some people they had to take to the desert to properly measure…  including myself, but I don’t mean to brag.
“That said, there’s nothing absolute about our reserve capacity.  Mine was very large since birth, but it grows with you, as you grow up- and the more you use it, the faster it grows.  Meaning, my reserves have basically, well, stagnated a long time ago, because I never really use more than a tiny fraction of the magic available to me.  Yours, on the other hand, will be growing rapidly- even after you stop using it- and will likely exceed mine someday.”
“Huh,” he muttered.  “So with this…”
“Yeah.  Turning sand into rocks- and later into gemstones- also serves as a strength-building exercise.  A couple months of that, I expect, and you’ll have the reserve depth to really start contributing to our research!”
“What about Hermione?”
“Hers is a little bit deeper than yours, but not by much.  There likely won’t be all that much of a difference as you two mature.”
“And Hailey?” he asked.
Sunset paused, tilted her head, then smiled.  “I’ve debated taking her to the desert, but I’m also a bit afraid of what might happen if I do.”
He looked at her.  “Oh?”
She sighed.  “I’m powerful enough to measure other people’s absolute power levels and reserve depths directly, and I know how to do that,” she informed him.  “She’s the only person I’ve ever met that’s so powerful I can’t see through her natural wards to do so.”
“...  Oh.  You’re worried about a desert-sized amethyst, aren’t you?”
“Something like that, yeah,” Sunset muttered.  “She probably wouldn’t go that big, even if she could, but she might just make something impossible to hide from muggle eyes.”





Draco took a deep breath and concentrated, holding his wand steady as he watched a ball of magic form in front of him.  Most of his work with Sunset was one-on-one during mealtimes, since that was about the only time he could get rid of Crabbe and Goyle.  Today, he was skipping the Halloween Feast; he hated the two crones’ performances at feasts.
“Yeah, just like that,” Sunset told him.  “Make sure you remember to disperse it before your reserves run out,” she cautioned him.
He nodded softly, holding the spell.  His magic reserves had grown far faster than he had expected- so he had graduated first to making gemstones…  then to conjuring this strange, blue-white magic power and just holding it.  The more there was, the harder it was- but he wasn’t holding so much of it that it was burning through his reserves too quickly.  He had a good few minutes- and she’d trained him to recognize exactly what his limits were, and to be able to disperse and close out potentially dangerous spells- like this one- before he ran out of mana.  “What is it?” he asked.
“It’s a higher form of magic,” Sunset told him, her wand in hand, “and the target of my research.  I haven’t been able to do much with it just yet, but I do know it can rather casually violate the laws of magic as we know them.”  She smiled.  “It’s probably going to be the foundation of that spell you want to make.”  She sighed.  “Last time I used it for real, I lost control when something surprised me, and it nearly killed me.”  She paused.  “You’re maintaining about as much as I was using at the time.  I’ve been, er, reluctant to draw so much ever since, focusing on the more efficient containment- back then, it took almost all of my power to hold it for just a few seconds, and you’re still nowhere near my capacity- you’re doing really well, by the way.”
“A higher form of magic?” he asked.  “How do we use it?”
“I don’t know,” Sunset answered.  “So far, I’ve really only been able to throw it at things, but I think I’m pretty close to getting it to actually perform tasks.  It’ll be at vastly reduced power than the amount I’m spending on it, but I’ll be able to refine my technique from there, and improve the efficiency.”  She paused, and glanced at the door.  “I think there’s someone outside,” she told him.  “Don’t be surprised if they knock.”  She rose to her feet to walk towards the door, wand still in her hand.
There was a sudden, deafening boom, and the last thing Draco knew was something flying towards him in his peripheral vision.





BOOM.
Professor Dumbledore stumbled as the castle shook and the noise resounded from somewhere above him.  “What the?” he began, looking up.  That was the last thing he needed- some sort of magical disaster while a troll was on the loose and the students hadn’t yet had time to reach their dormitories!
Professor McGonagall looked up.  “Th- That’s what we heard when Sunset exploded your office,” she told him.
He cursed, and started running.  Hopefully, nobody had died.
When he got to the scene, half of the research room had been blown apart- and, sure enough, it looked like the damage from Sunset’s higher form of magic had.  No bodies were in evidence, though- either they had been destroyed, or they had already been carried away.
Then he turned the other way, at the wall opposite the Research Room’s entrance.
That…  wall had basically ceased to exist.  From the entrance of the research room, he could see the remains of the troll, shattered into pieces and thrust through no less than three walls.  The damage looked different, though- this was a different, albeit extremely powerful, spell.
He cast a quick charm to check for lifesigns in the wreckage in either direction, but there weren’t any- so he made his best guess at the path Sunset would have taken to the Hospital Wing, assuming she had been awake, and followed it to the infirmary.
When he arrived, it was to find that Sunset had beaten him there.  Her clothes had been badly damaged, but she looked to be completely unharmed, nervously watching Madam Pomfrey work on someone lying on the bed between them.
“There doesn’t seem to be any major damage,” Madam Pomfrey was telling her.  “Just that concussion and…”  She trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards her patient.
As Dumbledore walked up close, he saw that the patient was a first-year girl with twin royal blue stripes in her brilliantly silver hair.  She was wearing a hospital gown, a few shreds of black Hogwarts uniform were piled on the floor next to the bed, and the label on the headboard, which always reflected the identity of its occupant, read ‘Silversong’...  with no surname or anything else.
He could swear he’d never seen that hair, or heard that name.  “What happened?” he asked.
Sunset looked.  “We were…  We were practicing a technique required for future experiments when the door exploded.”  She paused.  “You witnessed an early version of that same technique in your office some eight years ago.  I wasn’t actively using magic, but Draco was a different story.  He was doing really well…  until a piece of the door hit him in the side of the head and knocked him straight out.”  She sighed.  “As you probably know, an unconscious man has a lot of difficulty controlling major spellwork, so it naturally destabilized and exploded before I realized what was going on.
“I’m not sure exactly why the effects were so different.  Maybe it’s because the technique to do it was so much more refined, maybe because he was holding about twice as much energy as I did that one time, maybe it’s because we were drawing it for a different purpose- but it wrecked the research room…  and rather than injuring Draco, it…”  She gestured towards the girl on the bed, and sighed again.  “He was using his wand to do it, rather than leaving it in a pocket, so his wand took the brunt of the blast and was destroyed in the process.  I…  I have its remains here.”  She pointed at the nightstand, where Dumbledore recognized the base of a magic wand…  with the rest of the wand splintered apart like string cheese.  The unicorn hair inside had been split into several separate pieces, clinging loosely to the remains of the wand as it gleamed dully.
He sighed.  “This is going to complicate things,” he muttered.
Sunset nodded.  “As you might be able to conclude by comparing hair colors, she wouldn’t look out of place in my homeland,” she told him.  “I’m not sure why, though, we weren’t working with that kind of magic.”
“What is that…  technique?” Dumbledore asked.
“The summoning and containment of a higher form of magic,” she answered.  “With the more efficient techniques we’ve been using, it’s quite safe- and I’ve been carefully controlling interruptions so we don’t get a repeat of last time.”  She sighed.  “Troll didn’t care.  Blew the door off its hinges, caused the explosion.  I wasn’t hurt- not entirely sure why, but it might have to do with the distance- so I disposed of the troll and took her here.”
“You…”  He paused.  “Disposed of it,” he said.
She nodded.  “Yes.”  She paused as well.  “I didn’t expect it to go through so many walls, but that was also the first time I’d channeled any significant amount of power into an offensive spell since…  recovering.”  She sighed.  “I guess I’m stronger than I thought I was.  Anyways.”  She looked at the girl again.  “I’d take responsibility, but I’m not sure where the troll came from- and anything less wouldn’t have penetrated the anti-disturbance spells I had around the experimentation area.”
He sighed.  “We’re going to have to tell his parents,” he muttered.  “Especially if his wand was…”  He paused.  “It might be best to bring them here after…  After she recovers, and introduce them gently.”  He scowled, accessing the ward network to check the castle records.  “Then…  Then we’ll need to hold a Late Sorting Ceremony.”
Sunset looked at him.  “Sorting?”
He nodded.  “The Castle magic appears to have been confused by whatever happened.  She’s marked as unsorted, but the grades seem to have transferred properly.”
“...  There,” Madam Pomfrey said suddenly.  “Got the concussion taken care of, but I want her to stay here until she’s got a new place to sleep,” she informed Dumbledore.  “For…  ‘observation’, officially.”
“Unofficially,” Sunset nodded, “it’s because it’s very dangerous to be female in the Slytherin boys’ dormitories.”
“And we likely don’t want it to get out that she’s the same person,” Madam Pomfrey nodded.  “It’d cause an uproar.”
“Yes,” Dumbledore muttered, rubbing his chin.  She was right; it had to be the first time anyone had ever managed to change a wizard’s biological sex by magic, intentionally or otherwise.  It was something even he was having trouble believing.
Very suddenly, the girl’s eyes opened- and she immediately sat up, looking around.  “Huh?” she asked.  “What-  What happened?  Where am I?”  She paused, looking between Dumbledore and Sunset.
“Calm down,” Madam Pomfrey told her.
“It was a troll,” Sunset told her.  “Looked like a mountain troll.  No idea how it got in, but it attacked the door hard enough a piece of it hit your head.  Then…”  She paused, and gestured silently at her.
Silver winced, putting one hand to the side of her head as Sunset spoke, then glanced down at herself when she finished, and looked back at Sunset.  “Then what?” she asked.
Sunset didn’t answer.
Silver looked back down at herself…  then slowly raised her hand to her chest.  “...  Oh,” she muttered.  “Crap.”
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Finally, Silver sighed, and set her hands in her lap.  “Well.  Unless you know how to reverse it…”  She glanced around.
Sunset shook her head.  “We don’t.”
Silver paused in her search, then reached over to the nightstand to pick up her wand and look at it.  “Ouch,” she muttered, then rubbed her chin with her free hand.  “Do you think this might be the reason I wasn’t blown apart?”
“It might be,” Sunset conceded.  “It was hit first, and did seem to have a secondary explosion- but that doesn’t explain why you look like you come from my homeland.”  She sighed.  “No idea on that.”
She set the busted wand back on her nightstand, then laid down again.  “How’re my robes?”
“Completely shredded,” Sunset told her.  “They were reduced to small bits of scrap…  and wouldn’t fit anyways- you’ve shrunk.”
“I bet,” she muttered.  “Boys are taller than girls anyways.”  She sighed.  “How badly was I hurt?”
“Not at all, actually,” Sunset muttered.  “Well…  there was a concussion from the piece of the door, but the magic didn’t do any damage at all.”
“Despite shredding my clothes and rewriting my body.”
“...  Yeah.”
“Maybe it hit me so hard it killed me, then brought me back to life by rebuilding my body?”  She sighed, and put one arm up over her eyes.  “Dad is sooo not going to be happy.”
“Uh…  The nameplate says Silversong?”
Silver let out a soft chuckle.  “Yeah, it would, wouldn’t it?”  She lowered her arm and sat up again, attempted to fold her arms but gave up when her arms ran into her chest, and settled on putting them in her lap again as she folded her legs under the covers.  “So, my clothes won’t fit, my wand is destroyed, my sex has changed…”  She paused.  “How thoroughly?”
“Thorough enough to ovulate,” Madam Pomfrey told her calmly.
Silver looked at her.  “What’s that?”
Sunset let out a snort of laughter.  “Very, very thorough,” she told her.  “I’ll teach you about the differences later.”
“Okay,” Silver muttered, then rubbed her chin with one hand, her elbow sticking out so she didn’t touch her chest.  “Is that all?”
Sunset turned to Dumbledore.  “You said something about ‘unsorted’?”
Dumbledore nodded.  “Yes.  You seem to have lost your House assignment.”
“That’s going to make things complicated,” she muttered.
“You’re taking this a lot better than I expected,” Dumbledore observed, gesturing at her.
“Well yeah,” she answered.  “I’m probably going to worry myself half to death about it later, but for now, I want to concentrate on moving forwards, so I don’t get stuck in a rut.”
“Really?” Madam Pomfrey asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Figure of speech,” Silver answered, waving off the question.
Sunset rubbed her chin, making no effort to avoid touching her chest.  “Hmm…”  She looked at Dumbledore.  “Do you think we could invite Mr. Malfoy to the school, and reveal the changes in person, while we’re around to help explain?”