When I woke up, I felt something damp on my face. Hermione was holding me and crying.
"Why are you crying...?"
"Len! Thank goodness..."
"Your crying face is pretty, though."
"You were just about to get into serious trouble, and that’s what you have to say?"
"Well, what could be more important than you being pretty?"
"I thought you were dead and nearly scared me to death!"
"I’m fine. I just used too much magic and fainted for a bit."
"What...? How do you know that? Has this happened to you a lot before? Are you insane?"
"Ow! Stop hitting me, Hera! It didn’t happen often. I just got too absorbed in practice once. I’ve never had it happen again after that."
Hermione looked at me with a face full of worry.
"Shouldn’t we go to the hospital wing?"
"No, I’m fine. I’ll be better after a little rest, so let’s stay here a bit longer. What time is it?"
"What time? Hold on."
Hermione summoned a clock by asking the Room of Requirement.
"It’s already past nine! What do we do? Curfew’s over. Even if we go back now, we’re already late."
"Really? Nothing we can do about it. Since we’re late anyway, let’s rest a little longer before we go."
"Honestly... why are you so calm...?"
Hermione, the model student, must really be worried. But I had the secret map I’d gotten from the twins.
"It’s fine, Hera. Since we’re resting anyway, let’s rest properly before we leave."
I asked the Room of Requirement for a bed of a suitable size, then lay down on it.
"Hera, why don’t you lie down here too?"
"What...?"
"Why? If we’re going to rest anyway, wouldn’t lying down be better? It’s a lot better than being on the cold floor."
"Th-that’s true..."
Hermione reluctantly lay down beside me. I took her hand and laced our fingers together.
"Let’s rest like this for a bit, and once my magic recovers, we’ll head out."
"Honestly... if we get caught outside alone with a boy at this hour, we might get expelled..."
"You worry too much. Hera, didn’t I tell you earlier? Wizards are gods. With magic and conviction, there’s nothing they can’t do. If I put my mind to it, we can absolutely avoid getting caught. Ah! Except Professor Dumbledore."
"What? Then you’re saying we could get caught."
"It’s fine. That senile old man’s famous for slacking off. He always dumps the headmaster work on Professor McGonagall and goes off somewhere else to have fun."
"Len, aren’t you being a little too rude to the headmaster?"
"No, it’s fine. That old man would probably be happier if I called him that."
By the time we’d finished our idle chatter, my magic had recovered somewhat.
It wasn’t much, but enough to get back to the dormitory.
"I think we can head back now."
"Right, we should hurry back. But do you have some way to do that?"
"Of course. I’ve already thought it through."
I pulled the secret map out of the inside pocket of my cloak.
No, wait, why isn’t this thing turned off? Come to think of it, I forgot the deactivation spell too.
I think there was some kind of ending something... but I couldn’t remember. I’d have to ask the twins tomorrow.
"Oh, right. This was here."
"Yeah, with this map, there’s no way we’ll get caught. Besides, we’re wizards, right? A little projection magic is a piece of cake."
"Projection magic? We haven’t learned that yet."
"Hera, what did I just say? Wizards are gods."
I took out my wand.
Earlier, I’d deliberately avoided using my wand because the point had been training, but now that my magic was running low, I absolutely needed its support.
"Watch closely. Whether you’ve learned the spell or not doesn’t matter much. You just do it."
I pointed my wand at myself and imagined becoming invisible.
"Wow, it really works?"
Of course it did. There was no way I’d fail. Who did she think I was?
I was Leonard Oppenbach, Hogwarts’ super rookie.
"Hera, you can do it too. You already tried it earlier, didn’t you?"
Hermione tried projection magic the same way I had, and as expected, she succeeded on the first try.
"Now all we have to do is get back to the dorm without making any noise."
"Right, I want to hurry back and sleep."
*
With the power of the map and projection magic, we made it back to the dormitory safely without anyone noticing.
After saying goodbye to Hermione, I returned to my room and fell into thought.
I could move objects just by thinking about them?
Then why on earth did they bother separating summoning magic and levitation magic?
Couldn’t you just grab something with magic and pull it over, or make it float?
What’s the difference between Wingardium Leviosa and Accio? They’re just words based on Latin anyway.
Then what about places that don’t use Latin, like the Far East? Do they use spells in their own language? Or do they just borrow ours?
If they use their own language, then spells clearly aren’t that important.
If that’s true, then you should be able to chant "suri suri masuri" and still make magic work.
To take it to an extreme, maybe you could shout Stupefy while using Wingardium Leviosa.
If they’re borrowing our spells, then that means Latin itself contains magical power, which doesn’t make sense either.
Latin isn’t some divine language or anything.
There were a few English-based spells too, even if not many compared to the Latin-based ones.
So the idea that power is inherent in Latin itself didn’t hold up.
Looking at it this way, there were definitely a lot of strange points.
When wizards first triggered magical surges, they could use magic just fine without chanting spells, without a wand, and without waving one around.
But once they had a wand, spells and wand movements became mandatory? And they had to be exact?
Of course, using a wand made magic much stronger and saved magic power. Fine, I could accept that much.
But why were wand movements and spells necessary at all? If you slash left, it succeeds, and if you slash right, it fails? That made no sense. Why would a wizard need something like that?
I’d heard when learning the Patronus charm that emotion mattered far more than the casting motion.
The same went for Professor Snape’s specialty, Sectumsempra.
That spell was basically just a slash of the wand while chanting the incantation, right? Then a transparent blade flew out in that shape and cut the target.
But wait, now that I was saying Sectumsempra, that sounded weird too.
When Harry first used Sectumsempra in Half-Blood Prince, didn’t he say he didn’t even know what spell it was and just flailed around before using it?
He didn’t even know what he was trying to do, but just chanting the spell made magic go off?
In that case, maybe the spell itself did contain some of the magic’s nature after all.
Anyway, if wand movements were that important, then how had I been using magic all this time?
My wand was too long and cumbersome, and with this small body I still couldn’t control it perfectly.
And yet even if I waved it clumsily or just jabbed with it, magic still came out just fine.
I could use magic perfectly well without those useless movements or incantations, but other people had to memorize complicated casting motions and spells just to do it.
No, then how had people used magic before wands existed?
Wasn’t the Ollivander family said to have been making wands since 382 BC?
Then does that mean people couldn’t use magic before that?
There were too many strange things.
Hah, tsk. Thinking about it by myself wasn’t going to produce an answer.
I should just go to sleep.
*
The next morning, in the Great Hall.
I turned off the map as soon as I saw the twins by figuring out the activation word.
Thinking back on what I’d thought about before bed, I honestly wondered whether this map even needed an activation word at all. Still, since it might be necessary, I memorized it for now.
While I was eating breakfast, I received a letter from Professor McGonagall saying she had something to discuss about my paper and wanted me to come to her office.
I went to the Transfiguration classroom at a time when Professor McGonagall didn’t have class.
"Good morning, Professor."
"Yes, Mr. Oppenbach. As I wrote in my letter, I called you because I have something to discuss regarding your paper."
"Did the results come in?"
"Yes. To sum it up, your paper passed. It received favorable reviews from many schools. However, I’ve heard that it wasn’t very effective at the African wizarding school of Uagadou. They seem to have an educational policy that focuses less on classroom instruction and more on going out into the field and gaining practical experience."
"That’s a relief. But the reply came back pretty quickly, didn’t it?"
"Yes. That’s all thanks to Professor Dumbledore. He’s the greatest wizard in the world, after all. If it had been the paper of an ordinary person, they would’ve had to go through a mountain of unnecessary procedures, but once Professor Dumbledore sent the letter himself, everyone processed it quickly."
So our senile headmaster was finally doing something worthy of the title headmaster.
I give that one a thumbs-up.
"Um... then what about my scholarship...?"
"Ah, don’t worry. There will be an awards ceremony for your achievement at the upcoming Halloween feast. And the Ministry of Magic will send someone for it."
"The Ministry of Magic? Do you mean...?"
"Yes. The Wizengamot has decided to award you second-class Merlin’s Order. That, too, is thanks to Professor Dumbledore’s efforts."
There were many people in the Wizengamot’s internal discussions who said second class was too much because you were still too young, but Professor Dumbledore strongly argued that age had nothing to do with achievement and that you should be given second class.
You may not know this, but Professor Dumbledore is also the head of the Wizengamot. If you meet him, be sure to thank him. I’m sure he’ll be pleased."
"Professor Dumbledore really helped me a lot. I’ll definitely thank him."
Wow! As expected of the world’s greatest wizard! The greatest headmaster in history!
I give that two thumbs-up.
"Ah, and I helped a little too. There are quite a few of my Gryffindor students in the Wizengamot. I praised you a great deal, saying you were a remarkable talent from Gryffindor after such a long time."
"Thank you, Professor. And what about the Slytherin graduates?"
"I didn’t send anything to those fellows. It would only backfire. They think pure-bloods are superior, so they’d never do anything good for a Muggle-born like you."
Actually, I didn’t know whether I was Muggle-born or half-blood myself, but there was no need to find out and I had no intention of correcting it, so I’d just stay quiet.
Still, the odds that I was Muggle-born were pretty high. After all, I’d never heard of wizards sending their children to orphanages.
Well, maybe Voldemort.
But even that was a special case, since Merope Gaunt used a love potion on Tom Riddle and forced Voldemort into being.
Once the love potion wore off, Riddle abandoned Merope, and after being thrown out of her home for marrying a Muggle, Merope struggled with poverty, gave birth in an orphanage, and eventually died.
You couldn’t exactly say Merope dumped Voldemort off somewhere.
"Well, even so, second class is a shame. Personally, I think you deserve first class."
"That much? Why?"
"Some of the people who received first class actually bought it with money. And there was also someone who received it for inventing the repairing spell Reparo. Reparo is certainly a spell used all over the place, but your theory is no less of an achievement. If we limit the scope to education, it would be hard to find anyone with results as good as yours. And your theory isn’t even limited to education. In particular, your unique theory about the structure of eyes can also be applied to magical creature research. Newt would be delighted if he met you."
Newt Scamander? That walking disaster? I’d rather not get involved with him...
"Anyway, just keep that in mind. You may go now. Oh, and I trust your Quidditch practice is going well? Remember that I have very high expectations of you."
"Of course, Professor. You can look forward to it. Whoever I’m up against, I’ll crush them completely."
"That’s quite the confidence. I suppose practice must be going very well. As a professor, I can’t personally oversee every Quidditch practice, but I do hear things."
"Of course. I’ll deliver results worthy of what I’m being paid."
Was practice going well? Yes. In fact, it was going too well.
I was playing Chaser with the talent that should have been at Seeker, so there was no one in Gryffindor who could stop me.
On top of that, I was tall for my age and strong, so I didn’t lose much in physical contests, and my broom was the latest model, so no one could beat me in a speed race either.
At the last practice, I’d even scored by breaking through alone with every dangerous trick I could use and then firing off a powerful shot.
A Bludger? They thought that would stop me? Too slow.
Of course, we’d only been practicing against other Gryffindors, so things might be different in a real match, but still... no matter how I thought about it, I didn’t seem likely to lose.
As I left Professor McGonagall’s office, I thought to myself:
No matter how you look at it, Muggles really are far better than wizards.
Compared to all the scientific achievements of Muggles, wizards had basically been standing still for a thousand years.
They didn’t even make the Hogwarts Express themselves, did they? They just sent a special forces team to steal a train.
And in terms of access to knowledge, there was no comparison at all. It was an insult to computers and the internet.
Just wandering around internet communities a little would turn up all kinds of random scientific knowledge.
Even ordinary people like me could easily access the latest research, but wizards still treated the Hogwarts library like the greatest repository of knowledge.
That thing about the structure of animal eyes wasn’t my achievement. I just read a ton of Namuwiki because I was curious about how insanely cool Tyrannosaurus was.
Ha... I suddenly missed 2025.
I wanted to hear the rain, drink cola with pajeon, and watch a Shin Hyuk game...
Lost in useless thoughts, I walked aimlessly until I reached the Gryffindor common room.
Harry and Ron were in the common room, working on overdue homework.
"What, you still haven’t finished your homework?"
"Oh, our savior, Leonard Oppenbach!"
"Hey! I told you I’m not showing you my homework."
"No, I’m not asking to copy it. I’m almost done. I just wanted to ask about the part I got stuck on."
"Oh, really? You’re finally starting to do your homework yourselves. Fine, I can help with that much. What are you stuck on?"
"It said to write what you know about the angle of the wand movement when casting Incendio, but I forgot."
"For something that simple, why didn’t you ask the twins?"
"I already did. They wouldn’t tell me, though. They said something about needing to make their little brother strong or whatever."
"The angle of the wand movement, huh... all right. That’s easy enough. I might as well help a friend review."
I’d attended class properly, so I knew the answer, but honestly I wanted to hand in a one-line response saying wand movements were meaningless.
After finishing the homework, I said to Ron, who was sprawled on the sofa in the common room:
"Ron, you remember that thing you were the only one who didn’t do last time, right?"
"Oh, yeah, I remember. Why? Are we doing it again now?"
"No, not right this second. First I need to convince your parents. There’ll be a chance soon. I think I’m about to get what I need to persuade them."
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