Julian moved on to the next spell on his list.
"Falsus Aurum," he incanted.
A streak of yellow shot from the tip of his wand and struck him square in the chest.
He winced as the magic took hold. In the next instant, everything in his field of view turned into gleaming, reflective gold.
For a brief moment, someone under this illusion might actually feel delighted, surrounded by apparent riches and glittering surfaces. That feeling did not last.
Every object, every wall, every tool shone with a blinding metallic sheen, throwing off tiny flashes of light at the slightest movement. Within seconds, the constant glare and lack of color made simply looking at anything almost unbearable.
Julian cancelled the spell immediately. He could already feel the beginnings of a headache pulsing behind his eyes.
That was awful. Gaudy, eye searing and awful, he thought irritably.
...
The next spell proved even worse for his nerves. Whoever invented it clearly had issues.
"Chorus Cicadae," he said.
At once, his ears were filled with the sound of thousands of crickets chirping all at once.
It was not just loud. The noise shifted constantly, moving around as if the invisible insects were swarming in circles around his head. The overlapping waves of shrill sound scraped against his nerves in a way that felt almost physical.
Julian ripped the illusion away as quickly as he could, then stood there breathing hard, forcing himself to calm down and not scorch something.
Note to self. Learn Occlumency for anger management, he thought grimly.
This was the second time today that his temper had slipped its leash, and it was starting to become a problem.
He had no idea why controlling his emotions suddenly seemed so difficult. Something was clearly wrong, and he knew it.
He checked himself once for any enchantments or curses that might have been cast on him, but found nothing. Which meant the cause lay elsewhere.
...
There were too many possible triggers to narrow it down easily.
Stress. The ongoing conversion into an elf. His wand. The raw saturation of magic in a place like Hogwarts. The list went on and on.
In the end, he did not actually need to know the exact cause. What mattered was regaining control of himself, even if it meant dampening his feelings with Occlumency techniques.
He spent the next couple of hours working his way through more illusion spells, repeatedly subjecting himself to their effects and wrestling with the emotions they stirred up, most often anger and frustration.
These particular spells acted directly on the target's mind, not on the environment around them, which was likely the sort of thing Snape wanted his commission to detect.
Despite the uncomfortable process, the experimentation paid off. His understanding of this branch of illusion magic grew significantly as he experienced each spell from the inside.
...
By the time dinner rolled around, Julian headed into the Great Hall feeling wrung out.
His friends noticed. They exchanged concerned glances when they saw how strained he looked, but they could not pinpoint what exactly was wrong.
There were three master Legilimens in the room, however, and none of them missed it.
To their sight, Julian was like a lantern with no shade, constantly radiating emotional energy. That in itself was not strange for a child. What disturbed them was the constant and random shifting.
Anger, sadness, weariness, brief elation, frustration, dull melancholy, then back to irritation, all swirling and rotating without any clear pattern.
On top of that, each of them could see there was a glamor laid over his face, smoothing out his expressions so no one else would notice how fast his mood was changing.
That meant Julian was aware that something was wrong.
Dumbledore and Snape both worried that he might have been cursed.
Voldemort, on the other hand, came to a different conclusion. From his perspective, it looked like Julian had tried to teach himself Occlumency and damaged his own mind in the process.
For the Dark Lord, this was good news. Many advanced spells required very specific emotional states to function properly. If Julian's emotions remained unstable like this, he would be crippled beyond a certain level of magic.
None of the three made any move to intervene. Each hoped that, left alone, the situation would shift into something they found favorable.
...
Julian only discovered the actual source of the problem when he went to sleep that night.
"You know, I am starting to think your luck might be a bit off," the familiar elf said with a soft chuckle as the dreamscape formed around them.
"This situation has something to do with my transformation then?" Julian asked, his tone serious.
The elf shook his head. "It is a bit more complicated than that, I am afraid. From what the 'system' told me, it is a mixture of that, your wand, and the sheer amount of ambient magic around you."
He folded his arms and continued, speaking slowly so Julian could follow each part.
"Your soul's transformation into an elvish one has reached the portion tied to your emotions. At the same time, your wand, through its connection to your soul, is pushing the personality of its core into you."
"According to the system, the spirit of the celestial bird did not fully fade when it died. It went dormant in the feather it gave. What remains now is its power and personality. As your transformation progresses, the wand is using that process to pass those aspects along to you, and the clash between what you already are and what it is trying to imprint is scrambling your emotions."
The explanation was long winded, but it painted a clear picture.