A Different Slytherin

The Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom on Tuesday afternoon was filled with the mingled smell of old leather and dust.

Regulus sat in the third row of the Slytherin Area, watching Professor Galatea Merlisse, who called herself a former adventurer, at the lectern.

She was using exaggerated gestures to explain how to identify and avoid Grindylows in swamps.

"...And remember, children! If you see bubbles on the water's surface and hear cackling laughter, back away immediately! Grindylows love dragging lone wizards into the water!"

Merlisse waved her wand, conjuring a blurry image of a Water Monster in midair. Clearly, she had not prepared any live teaching aids.

Tom Riddle, Regulus murmured inwardly. Voldemort. The Dark Lord. Just because he had not been chosen as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, he had placed a curse on the position.

From then on, 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 vanished.

A childish and cruel revenge.

More absurdly, the curse seemed to have genuinely affected the quality of teaching.

Perhaps the professors subconsciously knew it was a cursed position, so they merely went through the motions.

Or perhaps they feared that the better they taught, the stronger the curse would become.

Regulus looked toward the lectern. Merlisse was demonstrating how to use Lumos to drive away shadow creatures lurking in dark corners, but the spell's light flickered unsteadily, as though proving that even she was distracted.

The first-year curriculum was outrageously superficial: identifying a few low-level dark creatures, learning basic defensive gestures, and memorizing several safety rules.

Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection covered all of that in its first two chapters. The remaining time should have been spent practicing practical response techniques.

But there was no practice, because Merlisse did not teach it. Nor did the students in the classroom think there was anything wrong with that. On the contrary, they seemed quite pleased.

It was a lousy class. Skipping it would be better; even self-study was more worthwhile than this.

The Library was perhaps the quietest place in Hogwarts. There were no little wizards making endless noise here.

At the entrance, Regulus nodded to Madam Pince and received a stern look in return.

He headed straight for the Magical Theory and History section.

Since enrolling, his physical body had been continuously strengthening, with remarkable results.

But Regulus had noticed a bottleneck.

The body was a vessel that held the soul. He could make the vessel larger, but if the water inside did not increase accordingly, it would only be an empty shell.

It was meaningless.

A wizard's source of power was magic, and according to mainstream theory, magic originated from the soul and was expressed through mental will.

Then could the mind itself be trained?

He stopped before a bookshelf, his gaze sweeping over the spines.

Most of these books were beginner readers on meditation, mental focus, and Legilimency. Their contents were simplistic, but they pointed in the right direction.

Regulus pulled out a copy of <Consciousness and Magic: A Study of Ancient Meditation>.

The book was thin, its parchment cover worn with age. He opened it and saw the title of the first chapter:

[Wizards alter reality not through magic, but through will first.]

He continued reading.

"Ancient Runic Wizards believed that magic was a bridge connecting the inner world to external reality.

"Powerful will could pass through this bridge and leave its mark upon the real world.

"Weather Magic changed the heavens, War Magic distorted the environment. In essence, a wizard's will forcibly rewrote reality through the medium of magic."

"Therefore, the difference between strong and weak wizards lies not only in the amount of magic they possess, but also in the strength and clarity of their will, as well as its resonance with reality."

Resonance?

Regulus closed the book and fell into thought.

Why could some wizards cast advanced magic with ease, while others struggled even with a Levitation Charm?

Beyond age, knowledge, intelligence, and magic, what else was there?

He thought of Dumbledore, the greatest white wizard of the century. Regulus knew that he was particularly skilled in Transfiguration.

The original work had never mentioned it, but he believed Dumbledore could alter the weather and terrain, perhaps even more.

When magic reached that level, did it count as will rewriting reality?

And Voldemort—his magic was another extreme.

Perhaps it was tearing things apart?

The Cruciatus Curse tore apart one's perception of pain. The Killing Curse tore apart the connection to life. Even Horcruxes—those tore apart one's own soul.

He could consider these matters when he had the ability. For now, he needed to find a way to strengthen his mind.

He continued searching, nearly going through the entire bookshelf. Finally, on the lowest shelf in the farthest corner, he found a small booklet with a faded cover. He could barely make out the title:

<Astral Meditation: Training Mental Expansion Through Stargazing>

The author's name was blurred, but there was a handwritten note on the title page:

[Those who gaze upon the starry sky are not confined by the earth. The paths of the stars are the universe's writing. Imitate them, understand them, and ultimately resonate with them.]

Resonance again?

This was the one.

"Black?"

A hushed voice came from the bookshelf beside him. Regulus looked up and saw Lily Evans standing in the aisle between two rows of shelves.

She held a stack of books in her arms, the one on top titled Analysis of Common Magical Plant Toxicity.

"Miss Evans." Regulus closed Astral Meditation in his hands and slipped it behind a thicker book.

Hide it for now. He could come back for it later.

"Are you looking for reference material?" Lily stepped closer, her green eyes fixed on him with curiosity. "I heard... you said some very interesting things in Charms Class."

Regulus raised an eyebrow slightly. "What things?"

"About Hogwarts memories." Lily set the books in her arms on a nearby table and stretched her aching arms. "Someone said you told your classmates that, thirty years from now, what we'd miss most would be the people we copied homework from together."

"That made its way to the Gryffindor Common Room. A lot of people thought it didn't sound like something a Slytherin would say."

Did I say that? Regulus felt slightly speechless. I said other things too, but all you heard was "copying homework."

"That has nothing to do with Houses, and I was stating a fact.

Think back to your primary school days—your Muggle primary school. What do you remember most clearly? What rank you got on an exam, or the classmate who shared half her umbrella with you on a rainy day?"

Lily froze for a moment, then smiled. "The umbrella. I forgot mine in my first year, and Martha Cotton moved her big floral umbrella over for me. Both our shoulders got soaked, but we laughed all the way to the school gate."

"See?" Regulus nodded, a smile entering his own eyes. "Magic doesn't change those things. Wizards are people too; they just have Magic Power."

Lily looked at him, her eyes lighting up. "You're different from the Slytherins I imagined."

Regulus looked at Lily without responding to that. Instead, he asked, "Do you know why the four Houses have classes together?"

Lily thought for a moment. "So that... we can get to know one another?"

"Partly. But the more practical reason is that, after graduation, there won't be any House divisions.

When you enter the Ministry of Magic, your colleagues might be Slytherins. If you go to St Mungo's, your attending physician might be from Ravenclaw.

When you go shopping, the shop owner might be a Hufflepuff. If you become an Auror, the person you arrest might be a Gryffindor.

Houses are labels for our school years, not brands that last a lifetime."

Lily fell silent for several seconds before saying softly, "Thank you for telling me that. I'd never thought about it that way."

"Everyone is different," Regulus said seriously. "Houses are only broad classifications. We shouldn't follow them blindly.

There are narrow-minded people in Ravenclaw, ambitious people in Hufflepuff, and in Slytherin..."

Lily picked up the thought. "There are people who know how to share an umbrella?"

The corner of Regulus's mouth lifted slightly. "Perhaps."

Lily Evans had been personally recognized by Slughorn as a Potions genius. In the original story, it had long been established that her talent was on par with Severus Snape's.

The path ahead of him would inevitably require high-level Potions support. Some needs could be openly brought to Slughorn, but the more secretive matters clearly required a more reliable private collaborator.

Slughorn was good, but he was a shrewd information broker. Any request would become gossip in his club.

Snape could be motivated by profit, with knowledge and secrets traded in exchange, but that kind of relationship rested on a dangerous balance that would collapse the moment their interests conflicted.

Snape had never been a particularly decent person.

A friendship truly founded on mutual respect was the strongest framework.

Besides, Lily Evans herself was one of the key nodes in this magical world.

In the future storyline, she played something of a connecting role between what came before and what followed.

She was a successful example of a Muggle-born in the wizarding world, the mother of the future key figure Harry Potter, and the emotional core of many tragedies and turning points in the original story.

Building a friendship with her was equivalent to tying a thread of his own into the fabric of this world.

When the day came that he truly needed an unknown potion or an absolutely trustworthy helper, Regulus was almost certain that she would help.