Dominique Weasley would never claim to be beautiful, not because she wasn't aware of the fact, but because she was loathe to remind people of it.

Finally here they were casting her admiring glances in the corridor because of her actions, whispering and discussing rather than blankly staring, acting as though she was a person, clearly looking more deeply at her than they ever had before.

Finally they were wondering about the girl, trying to reconcile the one who seemed to want to hide in her oversized robes to the one who had burst into the Gryffindor common room with the same robes billowing behind her the day before.

Dominique would never seek to stop them from wondering about her character, because it made such a wonderful change from what had come before.

Thanks to her quick power nap at lunch she had managed to get through the rest of the day without dozing off, assisted by the fact that her remaining two subjects were Care of Magical Creatures, where the cold outdoor air gave her energy, and Transfiguration, where she sat next to Keire and tried to follow the witch's thought process as she scribbled notes on transfiguring water and levitated a drop from her water bottle a few inches above the table and kept hitting it with spells muttered under her breath in attempts to change it into something else.

Every time the spells hit, the water would just scatter into smaller droplets, and to Dominique it looked beyond frustrating, but Keire seemed to be gaining understanding from the patterns that they scattered into, scribbling notes and diagrams down with every failed attempt.

She didn't dare interrupt the girl during the lesson as Professor Lynnet had demanded that they complete the work in silence that day, but after the bell rang to signal the end of the day she tapped Keire on the shoulder.

"What are you trying to do?"

Keire blinked for a second, before the drop of water spattered onto the desk. "I need to be able to Transfigure water. It's possible, others have done it before, but they used a series of complex preparatory spells, and I think they're unnecessary. The problem is that no one is putting much research into it, as it's viewed as pretty much pointless."

Dominique thought of the huge book that Keire had been reading on the topic and decided that yes, some of the things in there had probably been unnecessary.

A thought occurred to her, but she didn't want to reveal it without double checking first. Telling Keire that she would think on the problem, Dominique could see that the girl didn't expect much.

It really wasn't surprising, while Dominique was above average when it came to her abilities in Transfiguration, she would never come close to Keire's standards.

But she wasn't going to approach it from a view to Transfiguration, she was going to approach it with a view to Charms.

As she was making her way back to the common room, a folded paper owl fluttered to rest on her shoulder. Looking about to see where it had come from, Dominique was slightly disappointed when it unfolded into a piece of parchment that held no creases, beginning to fall to the floor. She grabbed it, only to notice writing on the other side.

Miss Dominique M. Weasley,

Your detention today will be served under your Head of House, Professor Flitwick, as he wishes to speak with you regarding your actions yesterday, so please meet him in his office on the second floor ASAP.

He has been made aware of the antagonisation leading up to your misdemeanour.

After complaints from other students as to a certain Mr Roman Hurst, he has received punishment befitting his actions also, however rest assured that you will never be serving detentions together as we feel this would be counterproductive to both parties and has the potential to cause you upset.

Professors have noted that you appeared exhausted today, so detention will not last more than an hour and be sure to get some rest over the weekend.

Regards,

Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmistress

Dominique neatly folded the message and tucked it into the inner pocket of her robe, changing direction to head towards Professor Flitwick's office instead of the common room. She might had found herself annoyed by the detention when all she wanted was to fall into bed, but at the same time she would get the opportunity to discuss her ideas regarding the transfiguration of water with him, so she couldn't bring herself to feel upset.

Knocking on the door to Professor Flitwick's office, the tiny man welcomed her in immediately. While he was nothing but friendly, he didn't seem as cheerful as usual, and she was sure it was because he was disappointed in her.

However it soon transpired the teacher placed part of the blame on himself for the situation, as he expressed guilt that she hadn't felt comfortable with coming to him to handle the problem.

Dominique immediately felt far worse than the longest of lectures could have managed, and she hastened to explain. "Professor Flitwick, Sir, it wasn't that. It was just an immediate reaction, I wanted to make sure it wouldn't happen again, and honestly I'm sorry for the disruption that my actions caused. If it had been anything else I would have come to you."

"Well, just know that if anything similar happens in the future -- which I sincerely hope it doesn't -- you can talk to myself or any of the other professors. It is after all our job to handle such matters, and many of us have been doing so for perhaps a little too long, so we're very capable."

"Thank you, Professor," Dominique replied, but she knew that if Roman Hurst did say anything to her brother again it wouldn't be a professor she would speak to. She had learnt her lesson when it came to breaking into the Gryffindor common room though, that had been a stupid move on reflection. "I'll bear that in mind. I was just wondering though, could I ask you a few questions on a book I read recently?"

"Of course, go ahead."

"So, technically it's about transfiguration, but I was wondering if there could be a better solution to be found through the use of charms--"

Professor Flitwick immediately frowned. "Charms and Transfiguration are two very different disciplines, Miss Weasley, rarely used in conjunction. I doubt you'll find your answer within my subject."

"Okay. Granted, I'd still like to ask a question in the hypothetical sense."

"Yes?"

"Would the alphabet of Transfiguration work if applied to a charm?"

"Well, I suppose so yes. However it would be pointless, Charms are not affected by the type of object being acted upon as Transfigurative spells are."

With the exception of liquids, Dominique finished in her mind. She technically hadn't learnt that yet, however there had been a book within a summer reading list that briefly touched on the topic. "Thank you, Sir. Er, what am I doing for detention?"

It transpired that Professor Flitwick hadn't prepared anything, merely giving her a desk and telling her to complete any homework assignments, which from the twinkle in his eye Dominique took to be his own little way of protesting against the severity of the punishment. But Dominique would rather ruminate on Keire's problem rather than attempt to work on graded assignments during such a state of exhaustion. Her work would certainly not be up to standard.

Now, the problem Keire was facing was that transfiguring water was as impossible as creating food. In some cases it would merely scatter to let the spell pass through, in others it would explode dramatically, depending on the spell in question. Uncle Arry had once been explaining how a boy in his year had attempted to transfigure water into rum, the result being an extremely amusing explosion, but the idea was applicable here too.

Charming water however, held slightly more plausibility, you just had to know a specialised spell in order for it to work, regular charms didn't do the job. For example, in order to levitate water as she had done in class, Keire would have had to use the spell circumagua levi, rather than the usual spell of wingardium leviosa, since it effectively created a bubble charm that surrounded the water and hit it all equally, sending pressure inwards rather than through. This prevented the water from splitting up during the charm as it would if hit with wingardium leviosa, but the transfigurations that Keire was using afterwards weren't crafted for the same result.

If one merged the desired transfiguration and some sort of bubble  spell to prevent the water from splitting, well, perhaps that would work.

In the alphabet of transfiguration, the characters you linked related the spell to whatever object you planned on changing, with the spellcaster choosing however many they felt were relevant and stringing them together. Students received formulae for different types of objects, and Professor Lynnet hadn't even gotten around to explaining to them that they were able to use whichever they deemed necessary to the spell, but thanks to extra reading, Dominique knew once again that this was possible.

In fact, sometimes it was more effective, since personalised spells were often more powerful.

There wasn't technically a formula for water, but the three characters Dominique deemed to represent it most were "kho" meaning movement, "ki" meaning giving, and "rah" meaning clear or invisible.

The three characters together ended up being pronounced as 'ko-ki-rah' strangely also the compound that was used to mean eyes, but Dominique was fairly certain it would work if applied to water. It probably wasn't exactly what Keire had decided on, but it would do.

There were three parts to a Leonius charm, such as wingardium leviosa. First came the action, such as levi or leviosa which specified how the object should react to the spell, in this case by lifting.

Then there was the pre-determinant, such as gardium which specified the type of action the spell performed, in the sense that a charm ending in gardium would affect the highest point of the object at the time the spell was cast, and then could move about as directed by the wand that cast the charm.

Lastly, there was the nominal, such as win which dictated what object was being affected, except win was kind of a placeholder, simply fitting the cadence of the spell to the wand movement. It didn't really have an effect. Nominals were pretty rare in Charms, only being found in Leonius Charms and Cambrian Charms, and even then often being pointless. Agau was an exception.

Besides, at that moment in time Dominique was only interested in the pre-determinant, specifically the pre-determinant circum which caused the spell to act in equally force over the outside of an object.

Then maybe, just maybe, if she used the Charm pre-determinant circum while applying the transfigurative water compound 'kho-ki-rah', along with a transfigurative base, which was the compound of what you wished to change your original object into. Maybe that would work and allow the transfiguration of water.

Or maybe Dominique was merely mistaking her brain's exhausted logic for actual magical theory. Who on Earth would seek to put Charms and Transfiguration into one spell? It was well known that the most intelligent and famous wizards of each discipline despised the other; they were polar opposites as well as competitors.

Wizards who were good at Transfiguration wondered why anyone would Charm an item to do something when they could fundamentally change it to the same effect, while those who had dedicated their lives to Charms deemed that the lack of control afforded by Transfiguration to make it a "sloppy" subject.

Dominique didn't know of any spell that combined the two disciplines, probably meaning it wasn't possible to do so.

Professor Flitwick had only told her that it would be possible to used a Transfiguration compound in a Charm, he hadn't specified whether the pre-determinant of a Charm would work in a transfiguration spell.

Still, once the hour of 'detention' was over she found Keire in the common room giving advice to a third year about his struggles to balance work and maintaining friendships with those in other Houses, and asked for a moment to speak with her.

Keire obliged, and they made their way up to their dormitory, finding none of the other six girls there as they were probably eating dinner by that point.

"Your water thing," Dominique began articulately, pulling her robes over her head to reveal the tank top and jogging bottoms she wore beneath. "I think I might have a solution."

Keire narrowed her dark eyes, face holding surprised disbelief. "Really?"

"Mmm, yeah," Dominique mumbled, her voice muffled as she pulled one of her many Molly Weasley knitted jumpers over her tank top. Once she had determined she wouldn't freeze to death she pulled a scrap of parchment out of her Transfiguration textbook and showed it to Keire. "Er -- here."

Keire read it carefully, brow furrowing. "Circumkokira lo [base]. What is that? It's not a Transfi--" She stopped suddenly, realisation clear on her face.

"Er, it's partially a Charm," confessed Dominique. "I know it's a stupid thought, just--"

"No!" Keire yelled, then carried on more quietly. "I mean, no, it could work. Let's-- I need to try this. What wrist movement did you have in mind?"

Dominique raised her empty hand into the air and rotated her wrist twice anti-clockwise before slashing a downward diagonally to the left. Keire considered.

"I'll rotate the other way. Okay, I'll just choose 'vessel' as the base, ayo. So circumkokira lo ayo," she made the wrist movement, then picked up her wand and the jug of water that the house elves always left on the window sill.

She began the incantation, pouring some water into the path of the spell just as it ejected from her wand.

The spell went right through it and fizzled into non-existence.

Dominique turned away, shaking her head at her own foolish belief that she could have invented some form of spell that would actually work.

"Wait, Minnie, just wait," Keire didn't look at all disheartened. "I know how to fix this. We need a different compound to represent water. And we can't get it from the existing alphabet. There's this school of thought that started with a guy called Harius Harpinger that the alphabet of transfiguration should be expanded to include the character pha which he recently discovered and claims represents fluidity. He only formally suggested it three months ago, but the idea is gaining traction, it makes sense. Let's just revise the water compound and try again."

Dominique pushed down her exhaustion and nodded. It wasn't even six o'clock yet, she could stay up a little longer. This was history in the making, Keire probably got less sleep than the Minister for Magic each night, she could spare a few more minutes of consciousness.

"Okay, so you used rah, ki, and kho. Invisible, giving, movement. Let's replace kho with pha. Phakirah. Just so my intent is clear, you mean ki in the sense that water gives life, correct?"

Dominique nodded, almost vibrating with anticipation. Now that Keire had given a hand with the incantation, it actually felt like it might work.

The other girl resumed her stance from before, water jug poised to tip, wand held at the ready. She began to move her wrist. "Circumphakirah lo ayo," she chanted, voice paced.

The jug tipped, water beading on the edge and then spilling over into the path of the pale light that emitted from the tip of the wand--

And then a crystal goblet clattered to the ground, landing upright as a stream of water carried on pouring from the jug to splatter into it.

Dominique watched entranced as the clear liquid tumbled and bounced into the vessel, light cutting through the crystal to split her vision in two, until the water overflowed the receptacle, pooling around it on the wooden floor and then finding its way into the cracks in between the burnished planks, until the stream from the jug slowed and then stopped, a final drop of liquid pinging into the full goblet.

She looked up to meet Keire's dark eyes that held the same shock that her own did, the girl's mouth held slightly open with a loss off composure that shocked Dominique almost as much as the success of the spell.

"It wuh-worked," she stuttered. "We--you did it."

"We did it, Minnie," Keire assured her. "In the name of Merlin's entire wardrobe, we did it."

The two girls looked at one another in complete shock, one wearing a jumbled outfit of a frayed jumper and jogging bottoms with holes in the knees, one polished, with school robes worn neatly and dark skin concealing the bags under their eyes from a complete lack of sleep. Both amazed by what they had accomplished.

"It was you using circumagua levi that made me think of it," confessed Dominique, but Keire didn't reply other than to quickly wrap the other girl in a hug.

For the first time ever in Dominique's mind, the other girl actually appeared short, with her head almost able to tuck under her chin. Keire's hands gripped the fabric of her jumper, and when she pulled back Dominique could have sworn that her eyes were moist.

"I-- that was the last piece," Keire explained, her breath hitching. "Thank you. I need to go calculate now, I need to weave it together, work out how to test it." She was preparing to go, tucking her wand back into her robes and swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "Get some rest, Minnie, you look dead on your feet."

Just as she was about to leave, Dominique called after her. "I can't believe your take on 'vessel' is a crystal goblet. Merlin's beard, how dramatic can you get?"

This earned her a peal of surprised laughter, and an indignant: "Says the girl who literally just broke into Gryffindor's common room last night in order to defend her brother in a epic showdown that everyone's talking about! And I'm the dramatic one!"

With this declaration, she flung the door open and left, which was certainly counterproductive if she was trying to deny to be dramatic.