Professor McGonagall Wanted a Do-Over Too

Roger's thoughts were actually quite simple. He merely believed the world was wonderful, and as both a "spectator" and a "participant," he was unwilling to leave before he had seen and experienced enough of it.

A person's lifespan was limited, and the years when one possessed the greatest creativity, capacity for learning, and energy amounted to only a few. Many outstanding scientists had made their most important discoveries in their youth.

Roger absolutely would not waste those precious seven years at Hogwarts.

So he chose to speak plainly.

Roger did not believe there was any particular risk in doing so.

The pursuit of eternal life was something most people had considered.

It was not considered taboo in the wizarding world.

There might not be many who, like Nicolas Flamel, had lived for roughly six hundred years and still had not died.

But there were plenty who used their powerful magical abilities to extend their lives to one or two hundred years.

For example, Hogwarts' former headmaster, Armando Dippet, had taken office at around two hundred years old.

What was truly taboo was achieving eternal life through Dark Magic.

Such as Horcruxes, which could only be made through cruel methods.

And reality was just as Roger had expected. Professor McGonagall had no particular opinion about Roger's desire to pursue eternal life. What concerned her was something else.

"...Roger, the continuation of life may have traces to follow, but revival is an absolutely untouchable taboo." Professor McGonagall's face held both sternness and a hint of sorrow as she spoke earnestly to Roger.

Given infinite time and magic, perhaps... wizards might gain the power to reverse everything, erase every regret, and obtain everything they desired.

Those words stirred Professor McGonagall somewhat.

They also made her worry that Roger intended to touch upon the wizarding world's true taboo—bringing the dead back to life! It was only natural for Professor McGonagall to think so.

Because she knew that Roger had lost too much and witnessed too much death on the battlefields of the Middle East.

Professor McGonagall had even helped arrange the funeral for the parents of Roger's current body.

Seeing Professor McGonagall's expression, Roger knew she had misunderstood.

But he did not refute her. Instead, he followed her line of thought. "Resurrection is impossible. I understand that clearly. But what exactly counts as death?"

"In ancient times, a stopped heartbeat was considered death. With modern medicine, only brain death counts as truly dead. But for wizards, only the dispersal of the soul counts as death."

"The definition of death changes along with the advancement of technology and people's evolving understanding of, and ability to intervene in, the world."

"Perhaps one day, as long as a person leaves behind a trace in history, as long as someone still remembers them, they will not truly be dead. Wizards may even be able to pull those they wish to save from the river of time."

If Professor McGonagall had only been somewhat moved before, she was now truly horrified. Even her walking steps came to an involuntary halt.

Because Roger's topic had touched upon something even more taboo than resurrection.

Reversing time and space!

Roger noticed the gradually sharpening look in Professor McGonagall's eyes and gave a light laugh.

"Professor, don't look at me like that. I value my life. I wouldn't do something so dangerous."

"What I mean is, as long as someone lives long enough, they can slowly wait for civilization to keep advancing. In the future, there will always be one person—or many—who will stop at nothing to undo their own regrets. I only need to plant trees and flowers, then quietly watch them bloom and wither. When the peach and plum trees have grown thick with shade, I can simply pick a couple of fallen fruits."

It was like a modern person who did not know how to make a mobile phone returning to ancient times and gaining eternal life. As long as he spread the concept of mobile phones and some ideas from modern science, perhaps after three or five hundred years, he might be able to use one. If several hundred years were not enough, then a thousand certainly would be.

He would not even need to actively do much during that process. There would always be clever people to do it.

Roger would plant certain ideas upstream of the timeline, then harvest them downstream. It was only natural. That was enough; there was no need for anything overly elaborate.

He only needed to preserve the results of every technological advance, ensuring they were not lost to history and forcing people to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

People often said that a thousand years was too long, that one should not squander one's youth and must seize every moment. That was because ordinary people could only seize each passing moment. But to an immortal, time was something altogether different.

...Of course, those were matters of the distant future. Roger did not know whether he would ever have a day when he could live long enough to see eternity.

The fact that most Hogwarts graduates would not go on to work in fields deeply related to magic—at most learning a few spells and becoming wand-wielding "magical technicians" or "magical armed personnel," while only a tiny minority could continue down the path of magical research—showed that studying magic was not easy.

His conversation with Professor McGonagall had merely been casual nonsense prompted by the topic of life plans.

For him now, the most important thing was still learning magic first.

Unfortunately, after leaving the Middle East and spending some time as a prisoner in the United Kingdom, Roger had forgotten something.

Roger thought he was merely chatting nonsense as people did when discussing politics late at night after the lights went out in a boys' dormitory. He was walking anyway and had nothing better to do, so saying a few idle words did not matter.

But in Minerva McGonagall's eyes, it was completely different!

Minerva McGonagall had never forgotten that Roger was a seer.

And unlike Sybill Trelawney, the Hogwarts Divination professor who spoke only in riddles, he was a powerful seer closer to Gellert Grindelwald—the man who had nearly changed the wizarding world—capable of accurately foretelling the future! A joke? Nonsense? Minerva McGonagall was more inclined to believe that this young seer had truly foreseen something?!

In the future, would magic capable of rescuing people from the river of time truly be born? Minerva McGonagall, who also carried many regrets in her heart and had just wanted to warn Roger about the taboos and dangers of reversing time and space, could not help but lose herself in thought.

It was no wonder Minerva McGonagall thought this way. Whether souls or time and space, both were advanced fields of magic, far beyond the reach of a young wizard who had not yet learned even a single spell.

The notion that one was not dead as long as one still had a soul also vaguely touched upon the secret Dark Magic of Horcruxes.

Why did Roger know such things? Other than being a seer, was there any other answer? Time quietly passed amid the two's casual conversation.

By the time Professor McGonagall came back to her senses, they were already standing at the entrance of The Leaky Cauldron.

Roger stood beside her, his eyes filled with longing for the magical world.

Wands, spellbooks, all manner of knowledge from the wizarding world—the things he had dreamed of lay beyond The Leaky Cauldron.

Diagon Alley, the United Kingdom's largest trading center for wizards.

And when the two stepped over the pub's threshold, the previously lively tavern, which had still held quite a few patrons, fell so silent that a pin could have been heard dropping!