The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom on Tuesday afternoon was filled with the smell of old leather mixed with dust.
Regulus sat in the third row of the Slytherin section, watching Professor Galatea Merrythought, a self-proclaimed former adventurer, on the podium.
She was using exaggerated gestures to describe how to identify and avoid Grindylows in swamps.
"...And remember, children! If you see bubbles rising to the water's surface and hear a giggling sound, step back immediately! Grindylows love nothing more than to drag solitary wizards underwater!"
Merrythought waved her wand, conjuring a blurry image of a water demon in the air; clearly, she hadn't prepared a live specimen.
Tom Riddle, Regulus recited silently in his mind. Voldemort. The Dark Lord. Just because he wasn't selected as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, he placed a curse on the position.
Ever since then, no professor had been able to hold the post for more than a year. They either met with misfortune, were forced to resign, or simply disappeared.
A childish and cruel revenge.
What was even more laughable was that this curse seemed to genuinely affect the quality of teaching.
Perhaps the professors subconsciously knew this was a cursed position, so they phoned it in. Or perhaps they were afraid that the better they taught, the stronger the curse would become.
Regulus looked at the podium. Merrythought was demonstrating how to use the Wand-Lighting Charm to dispel shadow creatures in dark corners, but the light from her spell flickered dimly, as if to illustrate her own absent-mindedness.
The first-year curriculum was atrociously shallow: identifying a few low-level dark creatures, learning basic defensive gestures, and reciting a few safety guidelines.
These things were covered in the first two chapters of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. The rest of the time should have been used to practice actual coping skills.
But there was no practice, because Merrythought didn't teach it. And the students in the classroom didn't feel anything was wrong; on the contrary, they were quite happy.
It was better not to have class at all; self-study was better than this.
The library was perhaps the quietest place at Hogwarts, free from the noise of endless chatter from little wizards.
Regulus nodded to Madam Pince at the entrance and received a stern look in return.
He walked straight to the Magic Theory and History section.
Since enrolling, his physical body had been continuously strengthened with remarkable results.
But Regulus sensed a bottleneck.
The body is a container that holds the soul. He could make the container larger, but if the water inside didn't increase accordingly, it would just be an empty shell.
Meaningless.
The source of a wizard's power is magic, and according to mainstream theory, magic originates from the soul and is expressed through mental will.
So, can the mind itself be trained?
He stopped in front of a bookshelf, his eyes scanning the spines.
Most of these books were introductory readers on meditation, mental focus, and Occlumency. The content was shallow, but the direction was correct.
Regulus pulled out a copy of Consciousness and Magic: An Examination of Ancient Meditation Techniques.
The book was thin, its parchment cover worn. He opened it and saw the title of the first chapter:
[Wizards change reality not because of magic, but because will comes first.]
He read on.
"Ancient runic wizards believed that magic is a bridge connecting the inner world with external reality.
A powerful will can cross this bridge and leave a mark on the real world.
Weather magic changes the sky, war magic distorts the environment; essentially, it is the wizard's will forcibly rewriting reality through the medium of magic."
"Therefore, the difference between a strong and a weak wizard lies not only in the amount of magic but even more so in the intensity and clarity of their will, as well as their resonance with reality."
Resonance?
Regulus closed the book and fell into deep thought.
Why could some wizards cast advanced magic with ease, while others struggled with a simple Levitation Charm?
Beyond age, knowledge, wisdom, and magical power, what else was there?
He thought of Dumbledore, the greatest white wizard of the century. Regulus knew he was particularly skilled at Transfiguration.
The original books never mentioned it explicitly, but he believed Dumbledore could change the weather and terrain, and perhaps even more.
When magic reaches that level, does it count as will rewriting reality?
And Voldemort, his magic was another extreme.
Perhaps it was tearing?
The Cruciatus Curse tears at pain receptors, the Killing Curse tears the connection to life, and Horcruxes... those tear one's own soul.
These thoughts could wait until he was capable enough. For now, he needed to find a way to strengthen his mind.
He continued searching, flipping through almost the entire bookshelf. Finally, in the darkest corner of the bottom shelf, he found a pamphlet with a faded cover. He could barely make out the title:
Astral Meditation: Training Mental Extension through Stargazing
The author's signature was blurred, but there was a handwritten note on the title page:
[Those who look up at the starry sky are not confined by the earth. The trajectory of the stars is the writing of the universe. Imitate it, understand it, and finally, resonate with it.]
Resonance again?
This was the one.
"Black?"
A hushed voice came from the adjacent bookshelf. Regulus looked up to see Lily Evans standing in the aisle between the two rows of shelves.
She was holding a stack of books, the top one being Analysis of Common Magical Plant Toxicity.
"Miss Evans." Regulus closed Astral Meditation and tucked it behind a thicker book.
Hide it for now, retrieve it later.
"Looking for materials?" Lily stepped closer, her green eyes looking at him curiously. "I heard... you said some very interesting things in Charms class."
Regulus raised an eyebrow slightly. "What things?"
"About memories of Hogwarts." Lily placed the books in her arms onto a nearby table and stretched her sore arms. "Someone said you told the class that thirty years from now, what we'll miss most are the people we copied homework with."
"That remark made it to the Gryffindor common room. A lot of people thought it didn't sound like something a Slytherin would say."
Is that exactly what I said? Regulus felt a bit speechless. I said other things too, but you only heard 'copying homework'.
"That sentence doesn't require a house sorting, and I spoke the truth.
Think back to your primary school, I mean, Muggle primary school. What do you remember most clearly? Is it ranking first in an exam, or a classmate sharing half their umbrella with you on a rainy day?"
Lily paused for a moment, then smiled. "It's the umbrella. I forgot mine in first grade, and Martha Cotton moved her big floral umbrella over. Both of our shoulders got wet, but we laughed all the way to the school gate."
"You see," Regulus nodded, a hint of a smile in his eyes. "Magic doesn't change these things. Wizards are human too; we just have magic added on."
Lily looked at him, her gaze becoming bright and eager. "You're different from the Slytherins I imagined."
Regulus looked at Lily but didn't take the compliment directly. Instead, he asked, "Do you know why the four houses have classes together?"
Lily thought for a moment. "To... let us understand each other?"
"Partly. The more practical reason is that after graduation, there won't be any house sorting.
In the future, if you enter the Ministry of Magic, your colleague might be a Slytherin. If you go to St. Mungo's, your attending Healer might be a Ravenclaw.
If you go shopping, the shop owner might be a Hufflepuff. If you become an Auror, the person you're arresting might be a Gryffindor.
Houses are labels for our school days, not brands for a lifetime."
Lily was silent for a few seconds, then said softly, "Thank you for telling me this. I never thought about it that way."
"Actually, everyone is different," Regulus said seriously. "Houses are just broad classifications; one shouldn't follow them blindly.
There are narrow-minded people in Ravenclaw, ambitious ones in Hufflepuff, and in Slytherin..."
Lily finished his sentence, "There are also people who know how to share an umbrella?"
The corners of Regulus's mouth turned up slightly. "Perhaps."
Lily Evans was a potion genius personally certified by Slughorn. It was a settled conclusion in the original story that her talent was on par with Severus Snape's.
His own future path would inevitably require high-level potion support. Some needs could be openly requested from Slughorn, but those more secretive matters obviously required a more reliable private collaborator.
Slughorn was good, but he was a shrewd intelligence hub; any request would turn into conversational fodder in his club.
Snape could be driven by profit, exchanging knowledge and secrets, but that relationship would be built on a dangerous balance that would collapse the moment interests conflicted.
Snape had never been a particularly decent character.
But a friendship truly based on mutual respect was the strongest framework.
Moreover, Lily Evans herself was one of the key nodes of this magical world.
In the future plot, she played a role that practically linked the past and the future.
She was a successful example of a Muggle-born in the wizarding world, the mother of the key future figure Harry Potter, and the emotional core of many tragedies and turning points in the original story.
Establishing a friendship with her was equivalent to tying a string of his own onto the pulse of this world.
When the day came in the future that he truly needed a potion no one could know about, or needed an absolutely reliable helper, Regulus was almost certain: she would help.