It was Saturday—but Hogwarts bore none of its usual liveliness.
Normally, weekends transformed the castle. Students who spent weekdays buried in dormitories or the library, wrestling with essays and homework, would finally emerge.
First- and second-years might gather by the Black Lake to pester the Giant Squid—an activity almost exclusive to the younger students.
Older ones would walk hand in hand with sweethearts to Hogsmeade, browsing Honeydukes or warming themselves at the Three Broomsticks. Occasionally, a traveling circus even set up there on weekends. Hogwarts students, pockets jingling with Sickles and nowhere else to spend them, were ideal customers.
But scenes like that gradually vanished every March—especially as Easter approached. Classrooms and the library reclaimed their status as the most crowded places in the castle.
If students had to vote for the most hated holiday of the year, Easter would win by a landslide.
All because of exams.
Lower-year students—fourth year and below—were cramming for June's promotion exams. Fifth-years were preparing for the O.W.L.s (Ordinary Wizarding Levels), while seventh-years faced the dreaded N.E.W.T.s (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests).
By comparison, only sixth-years were truly relaxed. Having already completed their O.W.L.s, they were in a transition year; even slacking off wouldn't stop them from advancing.
On his way to the fourth floor, Vaughn passed several hurried fifth-years. Crushing academic pressure had reduced their conversations to rapid-fire exchanges.
"—Merlin, I've still got twenty-six reference books left, and only two months! What am I supposed to do?"
"Same here. Bloody hell—why do both wizards and Muggles have to suffer exams?"
"Muggles have it easier. Exams don't lock their future in place. N.E.W.T.s do. If you want a decent job, your N.E.W.T. results are everything."
"I don't think I can take it much longer. Say… can seventh-years repeat the year?"
"I think so—but don't. You only need to pass one of twelve subjects to graduate. Surely you won't fail all twelve? As far as I know, no one in Hogwarts history has ever managed that."
Vaughn passed them without expression.
They had no idea that, within a couple of years, someone would achieve that very "miracle."
And tragically, that student would be a Slytherin.
Yes—Marcus Flint.
A future legend, forced to repeat a year after failing every single subject.
Back in Vaughn's old world, there was a saying: Speak of the devil, and he appears.
No sooner had Vaughn thought of Flint than he ran into him at the fourth-floor entrance.
Flint greeted him enthusiastically, his troll-like face stretched into a grin so foolish it was painful to look at.
"Mr Vaughn Weasley! Will you have time to come back and train with the team soon? Everyone's been longing for your return! We've worked out new tactics against Ravenclaw—guaranteed to make them suffer while you breeze straight through!"
Vaughn had to admit—no one was completely useless. Flint, at least, had talent for flattery.
After brushing him off, Vaughn couldn't help adding, "Flint, if you put just a little more effort into your studies, I'd appreciate your dedication far more. For instance—could you manage to pass at least one subject?"
Flint blinked, mouth hanging open, buckteeth protruding.
He didn't understand.
Vaughn sighed and clarified, "I mean—if you don't want to disgrace Slytherin someday by failing every exam, and then being thrown by me into the Forbidden Forest's Acromantula nest, you'd better start studying now."
He waited patiently.
It took a full twelve seconds before Flint's mind caught up. His face drained of color.
Seeing that the message had finally landed, Vaughn nodded politely. "Please consider my advice carefully. I'd rather not see you still on the Quidditch team when I'm in third year. Have a pleasant day."
Among Slytherins, Vaughn's habits were well known.
The more polite he became, the more it meant he'd lost patience entirely.
Leaving the pale, trembling Flint behind, Vaughn continued to the fourth floor.
Passing the vertical shaft guarded by Fluffy, he entered a vast, empty chamber—the former location of the Philosopher's Stone defenses.
Those trials had been dismantled. This room now served as a transfer hub to the new mechanism.
At the center stood a perfectly ordinary wooden door.
Vaughn walked straight up to it, grasped the handle, and spoke the password:
"Fizzing Whizbees."
The handle twisted on its own, and the door opened—
Not into the other side of the room, but into a long corridor.
It stretched so far that its end was invisible.
The corridor was brightly lit, though the source of the light was unclear. What created the illusion was the walls, floor, and ceiling—each covered in kaleidoscopic geometric patterns.
Standing out sharply against the shifting colors was Albus Dumbledore, wearing pale pink pajamas, hands folded over his stomach, clearly waiting.
"Ah, my dear boy," Dumbledore smiled. "How is Hagrid's little fire dragon? You didn't dissect it, I hope?"
"Relax. It'll outlive you."
"How reassuring. Minerva was praising your Vanishing Spell last night—I rarely hear her commend a student so highly. Of course, since it's you, that feels entirely reasonable. Still, she'd never imagine you used it on a dragon."
"Are you threatening me?"
"No, no—praising you. I'm quite glad you spared your friends any trouble. Had Minerva seen the dragon, she wouldn't have punished you—she'd have come straight to me. Your discretion saved me a great deal of explaining."
Vaughn snorted. "If I'd known, I'd have let Professor McGonagall see it—just so she could witness how many rules her beloved Headmaster broke to 'test the Savior.'"
Dumbledore coughed and wisely changed the subject.
Spreading his arms, he beamed. "Well then—what do you think of the new construction?"
The corridor's patterns—perfectly symmetrical and hypnotic—were borrowed from Muggle optical illusions. Simply looking at them gave the impression that space itself was shifting.
And Vaughn knew it wasn't an illusion.
With a clap of Dumbledore's hands, the corridor came alive.
Walls, floor, and ceiling flowed along the geometric patterns like a moving tesseract—rising, folding, inverting.
In seconds, the straight corridor reshaped itself into a cross.
The motion continued. Walls assembled and disassembled, sealing paths and opening new ones. Hexagonal and octagonal voids formed where dead ends had been, creating new routes. Entire sections flipped inside out, becoming unfamiliar spaces.
Every second, something changed.
Every second felt as though the observer had been transported elsewhere.
Dumbledore clapped again.
The ceiling peeled back, revealing emptiness. Beneath their feet, the floor rose—forming a hexagonal platform that carried them upward, piercing through the ceiling until they could see the corridor's true form.
Suspended in an endless void rotated a colossal cube—composed of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of smaller cubes—turning slowly like a massive Rubik's Cube.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Dumbledore murmured. "Your design—the Hyperdimensional Maze."
He sighed. "Thank Merlin this is Hogwarts. Over a thousand years, beyond the brilliance of the Founders, countless exceptional witches and wizards have expanded and reshaped this castle."
"No one truly knows how vast it is. Or how many rooms it contains. Even as Headmaster, I understand only a fraction. What you see here is merely a tiny portion I've accessed with my authority."
Vaughn nodded. "Excellent execution. Now it finally deserves the name hyperdimensional."
Dumbledore tilted his head. "That reminds me—why call it hyperdimensional? What does that mean?"
Vaughn smiled. "A Muggle concept. Their scientists believe the universe has many dimensions, but humans can only directly observe and measure three—length, width, and height. Anything beyond that is called higher-dimensional."
Dumbledore frowned. "Only three? How is that defined?"
"Think of it this way," Vaughn said. "I draw a square on a sheet of paper. From a two-dimensional perspective, that square is a closed space. But we—three-dimensional beings—can see its interior at a glance."
"Now place a sealed box in front of you. You can measure its length, width, and height—but you can't directly observe its interior. If a four-dimensional being existed, it could see inside effortlessly, because space itself would be trivial to it."
"Oh."
Dumbledore nodded slowly.
Vaughn continued lightly, "Confusing? That's fine. Wizards generally lack structured logical training. Not understanding is perfectly normal."
"…I feel like that was an insult."
"Perish the thought. In my view, wizards are roughly3.5-dimensional beings. Through magic, we can observe the inside of the box without opening it—there are countless spells that do exactly that."
They fell silent for a moment.
Then Dumbledore asked, "So even legendary wizards wouldn't qualify as four-dimensional beings?"
"Of course not," Vaughn replied. "Another analogy—imagine I draw a stick figure on paper and give it life. To it, the paper is the entire world. If I place a sphere onto the page, what does it see?"
Dumbledore's eyes lit up. "Only the sphere's shadow."
"Exactly. A higher-dimensional being descending into our world would appear only as a projection. Like blind men feeling an elephant—we'd perceive fragments, never the whole."
He paused. "Don't you think that sounds… a lot like souls?"
Dumbledore went still.
Everyone knew that after death, the soul vanished. Not destroyed—ghosts proved otherwise—but no wizard in thousands of years had discovered where souls went.
Now, a possibility surfaced.
Perhaps the soul ascended to a higher dimension—beyond the perception of three-dimensional Muggles and 3.5-dimensional wizards alike.
Watching Dumbledore sink into thought, Vaughn smiled.
He knew his greatest difference from other wizards—aside from the system—was his way of thinking.
Other wizards grew up immersed in magic. Even Muggle-borns, from age eleven onward, spent their formative years entirely within the magical world. Their thinking gradually drifted away from scientific frameworks.
Vaughn was different.
In his previous life, he'd received a full scientific education. His worldview had solidified long before magic entered the picture. Even after accepting magic's reality, his thinking never changed.
That gave him a unique perspective—using Muggle theory to interpret magic, letting the two collide.
That was why he'd deliberately steered the conversation toward dimensions. As his magical studies deepened, he'd begun testing whether materialist science and magic could be merged to explain questions that were "obvious," yet never truly understood.
But he couldn't do it alone.
He needed help.
One kind of help was a true assistant—someone who could grasp his ideas and support his research without dragging him down.
At present, only Hermione truly fit that role. Others could work—but would need training.
Fred and George, for instance.
The other kind of help was more like a mentor or trailblazer—someone who could guide him into the deepest frontiers of magic, absorb risks, and test failures.
There was no question who he'd chosen.
Albus Dumbledore.
Vaughn was not someone who liked losing.
Earlier, Dumbledore had deftly exploited his softer emotions—nudging him into becoming the destabilizing variable between Harry and Tom.
Vaughn had agreed of his own will—but the sensation of being maneuvered still rankled.
He wasn't petty—but if he had the chance to push Dumbledore into a very deep pit, he wouldn't refuse.
And what was Dumbledore most obsessed with?
Death—and resurrection.
Not for himself, but for Ariana, and for Harry.
Vaughn remembered canon well: Dumbledore had once possessed the Resurrection Stone. He'd admitted he was "a fool," who tried to drag the dead back at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.
Ariana was his lifelong nightmare—the one person he wished to revive even on his deathbed.
Harry was his lingering attachment to the world—the safeguard against Voldemort, and the one he felt most guilty toward.
Dumbledore could accept his own death, calling it "the next great adventure."
But he could not force that philosophy on Ariana or Harry.
In his final years, he'd researched death relentlessly—trying to resurrect Ariana, trying to guarantee Harry's survival.
He failed.
And that failure led to Draco and Snape killing him—and ultimately to Snape's own death at Voldemort's hands.
Vaughn didn't want that ending.
He hated predestined tragedy.
So he intended to drag the old man forward with him.
Of course—before flying together, it was only fair that Dumbledore test the waters first.
"Vaughn," Dumbledore said dryly, "as a man over a hundred years old, I feel you're smiling rather… maliciously."
"An illusion. I'm simply pleased you find my madness interesting. It means my ideas aren't pure fantasy."
"Hm…" Dumbledore murmured. "No conclusions yet. Everything requires verification."
Seeing his hesitation, Vaughn didn't press further.
"According to Muggle theory," he continued, "four-dimensional beings have another defining trait—they can manipulate time and space. To them, spacetime would be as intuitive as length and width are to us."
Dumbledore stared. "…That's the real reason you classify wizards as 3.5-dimensional, isn't it?"
"Exactly."
Any properly trained adult wizard could use Extension Charms or Apparition.
Space was already trivial to them.
As for time—
Dumbledore lowered the platform, guiding Vaughn through a series of hexagonal openings into a sealed architectural complex.
It resembled a castle section from an unknown era—militaristic in design. Narrow outer walls built to repel invaders, followed by open ground filled with stone buildings and streets. Inner walls featured wide walkways and round towers.
Animated stone soldiers patrolled with weapons in hand.
With a flick of two fingers, Dumbledore shifted the scene.
Whoosh.
Like a stage curtain changing, everything transformed.
The same castle—but now fireballs arced through the sky. Flames engulfed the walls. Stone guardians lay crushed beneath rubble and fire.
Before Vaughn could study it, another flick.
Whoosh.
The fire vanished. The ruins rearranged. Only the inner wall's walkway remained clear and intact.
Vaughn pointed to it. "In two months, when Norberta grows up, she can perch there and breathe fire straight down the walkway."
"…You're cruel," Dumbledore said—smiling. "But this is my favorite trial. You've scattered challenges across different points in time, weaving them together through time travel. I'm certain Harry and the others will have an unforgettable summer."
"You're no less impressive, Albus," Vaughn replied sincerely. "I provided ideas—you made them real. How?"
"I modified a Time-Turner," Dumbledore said. "It cycles through fixed frequencies, ensuring they reach the correct moments."
"And Minerva contributed as well. She prepared an even finer chess match than before—those animated statues are the pieces."
The two shared a smile.
Then Dumbledore produced a necklace—a golden hourglass pendant—and offered it to Vaughn, though his hand did not release it.
"You may look," he said gently. "But you may not take it. I don't think you're ready to meet another you."
Vaughn's hand paused—then slowly withdrew.
"You're right," he admitted. "I'm not."
He knew himself well. Even prepared, he had no idea how he'd react to facing another version of himself.
Better not to touch Time-Turners at all.
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