Dumbledore Frightened

As for something like the Campus Supply System, if they only needed a rough idea, the club could easily handle it. Andrew thought the idea had real potential.

However, the monthly regular meeting was still a long way off. (For an ordinary club, meeting this rarely would have meant it had already disbanded, but perhaps it was a matter of faith—it remained remarkably stable...) All he could do was wait, steadily practice Transfiguration, and begin studying Arithmancy.

But while he waited for the right moment, Magical Legends Magazine erupted once more.

"Print more! Print more! This is definitely far more explosive than last time!"

"Not having to revise the manuscript is pure bliss! Check once more for anything the other Houses could report us for. If there isn't, we can send it out!"

"A little this way, a little more to the side..."

Dumbledore was not in his office.

But the poor Phoenix Fawkes was being ordered by the picky Sorting Hat to drag the alert hat over and cover a book with it.

"The stories in books have no feelings. Compared to that, I prefer reading little wizards' stories, but this time is different..."

It began laboriously drawing the story from the book—countless spells beyond ordinary imagination had been cast on it by the Four Founders. This was only slightly difficult for it.

"Mm, just as I thought. There's a role for a clever and beautiful hat. I knew it!"

It happily wagged the tip of its hat.

"Oh, this part is good too. Very good, very good—they are the essence of magic!"

It cheerfully ended its reading, then had Fawkes return it to its original place.

"Damn it! How could you do this?!"

Lockhart had gotten his hands on the new issue almost immediately, but he was in a terrible mood—adventure novels had competition too, and fellow writers were the most nakedly hateful rivals.

He had already striven for authenticity. Every story was as real as could be. For those compelling yet true tales, he had nearly traveled through most of the remote backwaters.

But how could they do this?!

They shamelessly made Dumbledore the protagonist, and the adventure story was so fake it was terrifying. But why did everyone like this sort of thing?!

The previous issue had practically dug up every secret in Hogwarts. He had thought they could not possibly come up with anything new this time, but how could there be something like traveling to ancient Hogwarts at the time of its founding?!

Think about it! Wasn't a Time-Turner something only minors could use? Why did they like this business of Dumbledore finding Gryffindor so much?

"Albus."

Professor McGonagall stood beside a pile of documents, staring at Dumbledore with sharp eyes.

"I'll finish the paperwork soon, Minerva."

Dumbledore nudged the magazine toward her. "Would you like some candied fruit?"

"All right..."

After hesitating for a moment, Professor McGonagall still abandoned her stance—after all, plenty of professors were reading the magazine too.

"All right, I have to admit that these stories are imaginative enough. But Albus, I hope you can hold a meeting for the students and let them know that you have already dug up most of the treasures on school grounds. Mr. Filch has nearly been overwhelmed these past few days."

Enticed by the stories and aided by the location, more and more Hogwarts students had been staying out at night lately.

Though it felt somewhat like shattering the students' fantasies, it was time to make them obey the school rules a little—adults could at least tell the difference, but the younger students had truly taken it seriously.

"Perhaps it might unexpectedly increase their drive to improve their grades. After all, applying for a Time-Turner requires time—and didn't Madam Pince say that the students have been spending more and more time in the library?"

"Yes, because Dumbledore said—knowledge is the stairway to magical progress."

"Dumbledore also said that only by mastering the most basic magic and combining it could one turn magic into miracles."

"Dumbledore said there are no spells that cannot be mastered, only lazy wizards."

Professor McGonagall rattled off five or six of Dumbledore's Study Quotes in one breath. "It is precisely because we thought those words could inspire them that you never took issue with their nonsense."

"Not entirely."

The Sorting Hat beside them suddenly spoke.

"Gryffindor really did fight Slytherin, and then Slytherin left the school."

"They truly were the pinnacle of magic. Otherwise, where would I have come from?"

As a hat that had to compose a song every year, it had eagerly read Andrew's story as soon as the magazine published content related to Gryffindor. After discovering long passages about a marvelous hat, it decisively concluded that most of those stories were true—especially the part about the great Four Founders being the pinnacle of magic, which put it in a wonderful mood.

I'll sing about this next year!

Kind-hearted but slightly vain, the hat discovered after reading the magazine that as long as it acknowledged some of the content as true, no one could refute it.

This time, it was Dumbledore's turn to lose his composure.

"Really?"

He had actually read through it roughly once—for the perfect adventure of not damaging history, Gryffindor had not learned of Hogwarts's future development from him, and he had likewise used his wand to permanently extract the relevant memories.

[Only occasionally, in the dead of night, would those experiences he thought he had forgotten surface in his dreams... making Dumbledore even more familiar with the essence of magic.]

"Not entirely—I did not meet you back then."

The hat decisively came to its conclusion—it knew nothing about the later stories, so how could it possibly have made them up?

Somewhere Andrew did not know about, he had nearly been sent by a hat to hang from the Astronomy Tower.

"Perfect—now there's enough money to buy an astrolabe. The broomstick for second year is half taken care of too. If I don't get one from the Nimbus series, I can buy it outright."

This time, the utterly fearless Andrew finally had time to listen to readers' reviews.

Everyone highly approved of the time-travel premise, so there was no pressure at all when it came to coming up with something new for the next issue. Meanwhile, Hufflepuff was recreating the food Andrew had made up in the book, while Gryffindor righteously went two-on-one against Slytherin in several arguments in the dining hall.

The school still did nothing to control the situation, while Ravenclaw had almost no reaction—though their readership was quite high too.

"Freshmen really are easy to fool. Back then, they were all practicing the Levitation Charm..."

As he thought, he pulled his wand across the wooden strips strung on his left hand, plucking out a rose.

"Could you not practice at the dining table?"

His roommates were no longer surprised. "You've been like this for two days..."

"Sorry, it's become a habit..."

He assessed how well the rose had been restored, then turned it back into a wooden strip.

Mm, another day of practicing Transfiguration.