Spring of 1939 arrived as promised. Beyond the castle, deep-blue mountains lay beneath a violet sky, its edges inlaid with pink clouds.
Some young wizards often ran across the hills, sending up magical kites that needed no strings. Or they played catch with flying discs on the grass.
Their happiness had nothing to do with Hoffa. He had run into an unprecedentedly enormous problem.
He simply had no way to crack Grindelwald's Transfiguration spell.
No way at all.
He had originally been very talented at Transfiguration. He could even transform his wand at will into all sorts of fantastical shapes.
But this particular Transfiguration spell left him completely at a loss.
He practiced bitterly, almost day and night.
He practiced while eating, before sleeping, during class, and even while using the toilet.
He studied Grindelwald's casting movements, the flow of his mental energy, every last detail.
But no matter what he tried, that Transfiguration spell seemed to be locked shut.
After a long period of agonizing practice, he could indeed make some minor changes, but those changes were futile and forced.
Grindelwald had shattered an island, while Hoffa could only crack the ground open by a narrow seam or make a tiny stone hand, no larger than a mushroom, grow from the earth.
Of course, Hoffa also knew that Transfiguration was magic born of understanding. He tried hard to use his mind to understand soil, to understand the earth. Yet no matter how he understood it, the changes he could bring about remained limited.
He had encountered a massive bottleneck.
A bottleneck in Transfiguration.
This time, even Milarepa's meditation technique could not help him analyze the magic.
Days passed one after another. Bright spring began to envelop the entire school, and the lawns outside the windows were blanketed with heather.