Chapter 183: Chap.180 - Stalled right from the start.

The days passed quickly as Rigel went about his routine, but soon the day came to remove the mandrake leaf from his mouth.

Late one night, Rigel appeared at the astrology tower that day. The room was well lit by the moon. He took the crystal phial he had prepared and began the process, placing the leaf soaked with his own saliva into the crystal phial. He found it particularly disgusting, like a lettuce leaf that had been in his mouth for a month.

Even so, he completed the process easily, brought his hand to his head and plucked a strand of his own hair, placing it inside the crystal phial as well, the mixture only became more and more disgusting.

He didn’t stop, taking out a phial of dew and adding a teaspoon of it inside. As soon as he put it in, a strange smell, somewhere between herbal tea and damp earth, emanated from the crystal phial. Looking inside, Rigel saw that the Mandrake leaf and his hair were slowly dissolving.

He took the chrysalis from Death’s-head Hawk Moth and added it, the chrysalis began to dissolve as soon as he did so. The smell of the potion changed again, this time he couldn’t quite define the smell, he didn’t seem to have smelled anything like it before.

The materials continued to dissolve within the crystal, bathed in moonlight as a catalyst. It took little time for the potion to change completely, the smell changed again, taking on a metallic scent. The potion then appeared a vibrant blood red. Rigel nodded as soon as he saw this, whether it was the smell or the color, it looked exactly as expected. He knew that this part had been successfully completed.

With a soft sigh, Rigel stored the potion in his king’s treasury. By this point, the potion was considered a magical ‘item,’ so he could place it directly inside the treasury without needing to put it in a bag.

Rigel hadn’t left yet, he was lost in thought. Should he try transforming into the Dragon’s Dream tonight?

In fact, this would give him good clues, after all, the sun hadn’t risen yet, so he could try saying the incantation, ‘Amato Animo Animato Animagus’, right before drinking the potion.

Would it work without performing the ritual at sunrise and sunset at least once?

Judging by the fact that this incantation must be said every day before drinking the potion, there was a high probability that this incantation was there simply to prevent the potion’s effect from wearing off.

In fact, Rigel was even thinking of trying something in the future: leaving the potion inside the King’s Treasure would theoretically keep time static, so the potion probably wouldn’t lose its effect even if he didn’t complete the enchantment, right?

Of course, that was something to try in the future, at that moment, Rigel wouldn’t attempt it, risking having to start over again.

Rigel stopped thinking about it as he grabbed his broomstick and flew straight from the astronomy tower window to the Gryffindor tower.

As soon as he entered in his room, he noticed that everyone was fast asleep, he paid no attention to them and went straight to the bed, getting into the coffin.

When he appeared in the Dragon’s Dream, the environment was clearly a fierce storm, lightning striking continuously in the distance, but there was no rain. Rigel was on top of a mountain, as close as possible to the storm, he wanted to see the effect there first.

Curious, Rigel made the potion materialize in his free hand, then, in the next moment, he pointed his wand directly at his heart and recited: “Amato Animo Animato Animagus”

Rigel’s eyes gleamed as he noticed that double heartbeat appearing inside him.

While the heartbeat was still pounding, with the sound of thunder nearly bursting his eardrums, he drank the potion.

The double heartbeat inside Rigel’s chest, which had initially been weak, became extremely fierce the next moment, so strong that at some point Rigel almost stopped hearing his own heartbeat. The beats began to change rhythm until Rigel’s own heartbeat overlapped with the foreign heartbeat.

By this time, Rigel was already feeling the change in his body, initially, everything seemed to tingle, his senses began to cloud over, a feeling of discomfort followed, his body began to thin and lengthen, scales appearing everywhere, his bones cracking inside him.

There was no pain, but it was extremely uncomfortable.

Rigel didn’t struggle at all, his Transmuter class was working to facilitate the change. For him, who had been practicing physical transmutation, he didn’t hesitate for a moment, but rather accelerated the transformation.

According to the books he read, the first transformation was the longest and most exhausting, because wizards tended to instinctively resist it. Rigel was possibly the first Animagus whose transformation was completed so quickly.

When he came to, Rigel was stunned.

He was no longer human, that much was obvious. His form, however, lacked hands or feet, his body was elongated, cylindrical, and very muscular. His head was broad and somewhat distinct from his neck, his eyes and nostrils were positioned high on his head. His body was enormous, measuring slightly over 6 meters. He had a dark green background coloration, adorned with oval or dorsal black and brown spots along his body.

Rigel knew this snake, he had summoned it many times before. It was an anaconda.

Well, you couldn’t say he was surprised, it was a possibility he had considered, but it was something he strongly hoped wouldn’t happen.

That’s because there were two more likely possibilities for his animagus form to be a snake.

The first was the Gaunt blood, if that were true, it would basically limit him to transformations into snakes in the future.

The second was similar to his previous idea, believing he was closer to snakes due to his Parseltongue. Subconsciously, Rigel himself believed he was more suited to a snake. If this were true, it would be just as big a problem, because to overcome this mindset, he would need to completely forget who his father was and that he could speak snake language.

How much memory would he have to lose because of that? Rigel isn’t interested in messing with his mind that much, he’s known this information for years. One could even say that his current personality was intimately linked to the fact that he discovered he was Voldemort’s son years ago.

Messing with this… can be complicated and dangerous.

Rigel was not satisfied, but for the moment, he did not limit himself to that, instead, he began to analyze his own form. He knew quite a bit about snakes, not everything, but enough to know that snakes relied on their tongues for their sense of smell.

He extended his tongue in a smooth motion and brought it back to his mouth, there, he discovered that he had indeed smelled the scent around him, although it seemed completely different from a normal sense of smell. In Rigel’s mind, he could perfectly distinguish this scent.

Basically, soil, grass, and ozone.

Rigel created some animals around him, just to find out if he possessed a thermal sense, yes, he could feel it again, he could sense the creatures around him, it was almost like an internal map.

His hearing seemed strange, to be more precise, he created a copy of the twins and left them chattering, although he had no ears, he could understand what they were saying through the vibration that ran through his body.

This left him speechless, he had no idea how he understood, but he did understand.

His vision, on the other hand, was a special case, when something moved, he could see it much better than when it was stationary. You know when someone seems camouflaged because they wear clothes that blend in with their surroundings? It was almost like that. If something remained still, he almost felt as if it were part of the environment.

However, when something moves, he could see the movements, although it was not yet clear, in terms of dynamic vision, his eyesight had made great progress.

The colors he could see were also basically limited to blue and green, red had practically disappeared, the twins’ hair, for instance, looked more like a dark brown.

Rigel tried something, he started using transmutation on his eyes!

To Rigel’s surprise, it worked! There were no instances of wizards using magic in their Animagus form, but it actually made sense, after all, Transmuter was a class, not a skill. If he had to define it, Wizard is one class, Transmuter is another. Although he couldn’t currently use the Wizard class, he could use the Transmuter class.

With this idea, Rigel quickly began to make changes, he altered his eyes to regain his previous clear human vision. However, Rigel felt that this vision seemed a little strange, it was clearly the vision he used daily, but using it as a snake made him feel incongruous. Because of this, Rigel became increasingly certain of his theory of the Spirit.

Although he is in control now, the serpent spirit acts as an intermediary, it is as if his form were a two-pin socket and his spirit the three-pin plug, the serpent spirit serves as an adapter.

Rigel regained his snake-like vision, finally feeling normal again, which was ironic.

Rigel tried to return to human form and succeeded easily, then tried to transform into a snake again, he didn’t even need the wand, he went back and forth several times, each time getting a little faster.

Finally, he extracted those memories and placed them in a glass phial, erasing that event. He tried again, and again, and again.

Until sunrise, Rigel could only transform into an anaconda, no matter how much he tried to alter the transformation with his transmutation, no matter how much he extracted from his memory, no matter what kind of environment he tried, in the end he either turned into an anaconda, or he caused a total collapse and died.

That was really annoying, his experiment seemed completely stalled right from the start!