The Great Hall was filled with boisterous children of all ages eating breakfast and talking to their friends when Lucien made his way through the double doors.
Taking an empty seat at the Ravenclaw table, he began conversations with some of the children around him. While looking around for the perfect food, Lucien spots the holy grail. Using levitation magic, he spirits away a plate from the middle of the table and deposits half its contents onto his dish.
'BAAACCCOOOON!' thinks Lucien as he proceeds to chow down on his favorite breakfast food.
After a few moments, everyone proceeds to ignore him and continue with their breakfast. Before long, breakfast was finished and class schedules were being passed out.
Taking a look at his own, Lucien memorized his schedule and asked for Aurora to scan the sheet for future reference.
'So, it's Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and finally double Transfiguration. This is great if my class schedule is this light I won't have to choose between training and investigating what Riddle and his gang are up to.'
'Boss, I think we need to make sure that they are thoroughly looked into before we make any moves. We don't know the extent of the changes that man could have brought to the timeline,' councils Aurora.
'Ahh yes, that is very true Aurora. Thank you for looking out for me. I don't know what I would do without you, partner,' admits Lucien.
'Okay, now let's get down to business. I have a very important task for you, do you think you're up for it?'
'You got it, Boss!' affirms Aurora.
'Good! Okay, what I need for you to do is to use our link to record what I'm seeing through my mage sight. I need to see how magic flows when we cast our spells, how certain motions affect magic, and the different movements of magic for each spell. With this, we may be able to come up with a uniform way to do spells from different power systems. All we would need to do is mimic how they move their spiritual energy. With this, we can easily integrate magic from any world we go to!'
'No problem, Boss! I won't let you down!' announces Aurora. 'Just make sure to be careful with your mage sight. You know that right now we don't know what continuous usage will do to your eyes.'
'I will, I will,' grumbles Lucien.
*******
To say that his first two classes were boring, would be an understatement. All that was covered was a discussion of the syllabus and what would be expected of them throughout the year.
For the majority of the day, Lucien pretended to pay attention, while actually playing strategy games against Aurora. Normally this would seem unfair, but with his advanced intellect and out of the box strategies, they were evenly matched. In fact, Aurora was having a blast! Other than the random Huffle-scrub question and Professor Slughorn trying to get into his pants, the day was so far uneventful.
Lucien and the rest of the first-year Ravenclaws were making their way to their last class of the day, a double period of Transfiguration.
'A double period, huh? I hope that means we might actually do some magic.'
'I'm sorry, Boss. I know you were really looking forward to at the very least getting to mess around with some magic in class. On a happier note, I was able to record the usage of spells that were demonstrated by Professor Merrythought.'
'Thank you, Aurora. Would you please work on creating a digital library with a moving diagram of the human body showing how the magic moves for each spell? This way, I will have a leg up on everyone else when learning to do silent and point-to-cast magic. Instead of all of the visualization and chanting in my head, all that will be needed is to know the internal mana movement needed to work and the intent to cast the spell. Although I'm sure someone had to have thought of this method before, I don't know if it would be possible without your help or at least a supercomputer.'
Lucien made his way through the entrance of the classroom and took a seat at a table closer to the front. Next to him sat one of his housemates from Ravenclaw, Ava Selwyn. They had met a few times at some of the young pure-blood indoctrination parties and were cordial enough. Both made some small talk while waiting for the professor to arrive and class to begin.
As if on a timer, Albus Dumbledore steps into the room right as the clock struck two. Dressed in a muggle inspired blue suit and holding his jacket over his shoulder, Dumbledore leans against his desk and surveys the class.
"Hello, class, welcome to your first Transfiguration lesson," greets Dumbledore.
The class then greets Albus back in a cacophony of tones and differing levels of enthusiasm.
Dumbledore proceeds to lecture the class on the different types and forms of transfiguration before going through their syllabus of what they will actually be learning this year. Although discouraged they won't be attempting any animate transformations this year, at least they will get to use magic regularly in class.
"Alright, good job listening so far. It's very important to get a bigger picture of any subject before you decide to tackle it piece by piece," praises Dumbledore.
"We will be doing something of a Hogwarts tradition today during our lab period. Today," he says flourishing his hands, "we will be learning how to turn match sticks into metal needles!"
At the idea of getting to use magic, Dumbledore had sufficiently enraptured the class. He then went over the proper incantation and wand movement, along with the 'do's and don'ts' of the whole procedure.
After he finished his explanation, the children were told to begin trying their hand at the spell. They were told to create a standard steel needle and that next lab they would be working on finer details and embellishments.
As Dumbledore made his way through the class he noticed Lucien sitting at his desk with a book open, not participating in the activity. Before jumping to conclusions, Albus made his way over to Lucien's area only to find a steel needle placed at the front of the table.
"Ah, fine work you've done here Mr. Black."
At this, Lucien raises his eyes from his book to see Professor Dumbledore. Acknowledging his presence, Lucien closes the book and answers his teacher.
"Thank you, Professor, I've practiced a bit," says Lucien cheekily to which Dumbledore just chuckles.
"I can see that, let's get you started on the next step then," says Dumbledore. "Now you need to create finer details and embellishments on the needle. The more intricate they are, the harder it is to visualize, which can result in the spell failing. Give it a try and I'll come back around to see your progress."
As the professor was walking away, Lucien waves his wand and announces, "Done."
Albus turns around to look at Lucien's needle and sees intricate etchings of wolves and thunderbirds dancing in a lighting storm. Impressed and more than a little intrigued, Albus, picks up his needle for a closer inspection.
"How long have you been able to create such fine detail with this spell Mr. Black? I'm afraid you are leagues ahead of the rest of the class. This may be a little boring for you I'm afraid."
"Please feel free to call me Lucien, Professor," he offers, which Dumbledore gives him a thankful nod.
"And I've never really done intricate embellishments or anything like this before today. Whenever I practiced, I would mostly just work on speed from wood to steel. Sometimes I would even work on changing the medium from steel to iron and back to wood again."
At this, Dumbledore's mouth is left slightly ajar before he composes himself, now with a glint in his eye.
"Let's see something shall we? Change the medium to bronze and make the lightning into snowflakes without effecting the other figures," Dumbledore prompts.
Lucien focuses while visualizing the changes before performing the spell. The needle was easily changed without any issues.
"Now, make the snowflakes and the animals filled with silver, while the needle itself transforms back to steel," prompts Dumbledore again.
Lucien once again takes a moment to visualize the changes before attempting to cast the spell. Although, he took a bit longer this time around he was ultimately successful once again.
Now, Dumbledore looked thoroughly impressed.
He nods and continues, "I've seen enough, you can go back to your reading young Lucien. Please stay behind after class is over, I'd like to have a little chat if you don't mind."
"Of course not, Professor Dumbledore, I don't mind at all," replies Lucien.
Dumbledore thanks him and goes back to surveying the rest of the class who might need help.
To his right, Ava Selwyn just keeps alternating between staring at him and then at his needle.
'Ahhh Aurora, I think I broke her. It's not my fault that visualization comes easy to me after all fo the practice I've using Arc of Embodiment. But hey, with this, maybe I can get Dumbledore to start teaching me some of his tricks. I just hope he won't try and play with Cthulu and his buddies up in my mind-scape... I'd have a really hard time explaining that I don't have a tentacle fetish.'