An Excellent Research Subject

Ron's exclamation echoed through the small compartment, carrying that unguarded, exaggerated quality unique to a youth.

Harry clearly wasn't used to being the center of attention. He fidgeted, scratching his head, and quickly brushed that strand of hair back, trying to cover the famous scar again.

"Is the legend... is it true?" Ron lowered his voice, leaning forward as if sharing some earth-shattering secret. "Were you really attacked by... you know, That Person, with the Killing Curse, and survived?"

"I... I don't know," Harry's voice sounded a bit lost. "I only remember a very bright green light. Nothing else."

"Wow!" Ron's eyes went wide as saucers. He turned to Lin Yuan, seeking validation. "Hey, Ryan, it's Harry Potter! The real one!"

Lin Yuan just gave Harry a calm glance.

His focus wasn't on any "Chosen One" title, but on that scar.

His divine soul could clearly sense a chilling, malevolent residual energy coiled within that scar, like an unhealable curse, entwined with Harry's soul.

"An excellent research specimen," Lin Yuan defined it in his mind.

Harry, clearly uncomfortable being gawked at like a rare animal, quickly changed the subject. "You're Ryan Lin, right? Nice to meet you."

"Hello." Lin Yuan nodded.

Just then, a pleasant jingling sound came from the corridor. A plump witch pushed a trolley past. "Anything from the trolley, dears? Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans? Chocolate Frogs?"

Harry had never seen so many magical snacks. His eyes lit up, and he generously pulled out a handful of Gold Galleons and Silver Sickles. "Let's get some of everything!"

Ron stared dumbfounded as Harry bought piles of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, Chocolate Frogs, Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Fizzing Whizbees, Drooble's Best Blowing Gum... almost everything. Soon, the empty seat between them was piled with a sweet, fragrant little mountain of treats.

He silently, discreetly, tucked his wax-paper-wrapped, dry-looking Corned Beef Sandwich further behind him.

Lin Yuan had no appetite for the snacks, but he was interested in the magic within them.

He pulled out a few silver coins and bought just one Chocolate Frog.

Tearing open the wrapper, he took out the card with Dumbledore's portrait. His divine soul probed in, and he instantly "saw" the simple spell structure attached to the card, maintaining the moving illusion.

"I see. Using solidified magic to drive a looping 'GIF'? Not a bad idea, but the technique is too crude," Lin Yuan understood inwardly.

"Hey, Ryan, aren't you eating?" Harry was sharing a mountain of snacks with Ron.

"I'll try this." Lin Yuan pointed at a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans Ron offered, casually picked a normal-looking beige bean, and tossed it into his mouth.

The next second, his expression froze.

An indescribable taste, a mix of dust and mold, shot straight to his skull.

It was Earwax Flavor.

Ron and Harry saw his "old man staring at a phone" expression and couldn't help laughing.

"Looks like you're unlucky!" Ron laughed heartily. "Mine was chocolate flavor!"

Lin Yuan expressionlessly downed half a bottle of water to suppress the disgusting taste.

"Hey, look, I can do a bit of magic too!" Ron, unaware that he was sitting next to a transmigrator with "soul dissection" on his mind, pulled out a wand from his faded, worn-out robes. It looked old, with a few scuffed marks on the shaft.

"It's my brother Charlie's old wand," Ron explained sheepishly, then cleared his throat, aiming at the sleeping rat, Scabbers, on his lap. "Listen up! Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!"

He gave the wand a hard wave.

The wand tip... emitted a faint spark, and then nothing.

The rat, Scabbers, didn't even bother lifting an eyelid. It rolled over and continued sleeping sprawled out.

The scene was painfully awkward.

Harry gave a polite "wow," though he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be wowing at.

Lin Yuan, however, saw it clearly.

The moment Ron chanted, a weak stream of mental energy flowed through his arm into the wand, trying to pry at the surrounding magical energy. But his mental energy was unfocused, and the incantation was a mess, more like a wishful blessing than a precise command. In the end, that pitiful bit of energy took a detour in the air and dissipated completely.

"A failed spellcasting case. Logging it," Lin Yuan noted silently in his mind.

Swish--

Just then, the compartment door was yanked open again.

This time, a girl with a bushy mass of brown curls and two slightly prominent front teeth poked her head in.

She wore a crisp, new school uniform, with a shiny badge pinned to her chest, radiating an "I'm a good student" aura.

"Has anyone seen a toad? A boy named Neville has lost his toad."

It was Hermione Granger.

Her powerful, task-driven brain quickly shifted focus to the current main target: Ron, who was red-faced and about to show Harry his unreliable, inherited spell.

"...Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!" Ron waved his second-hand wand and chanted loudly.

Pop!

The wand tip only emitted a wisp of gray smoke, weaker than a fart, and then nothing.

The fat rat named Scabbers on the seat just twitched its whiskers impatiently, rolled over, and continued sleeping sprawled out. It hadn't turned yellow; if anything, it looked grayer.

Hermione immediately wore that classic expression of a top student seeing a slacker mess up a basic problem—a mix of "frustrated at your failure" and "can't resist showing off."

She cleared her throat, like an experienced little teacher, and began an impromptu lesson and commentary:

"Are you sure that was a real spell? It doesn't sound right, and it didn't seem to work very well, did it? I've only seen them in books, and I've tried a few simple ones on my own, but every single one worked."

As she spoke, she naturally sat down in the empty seat across from Harry, as if the compartment had always had a place for her.

She spotted Harry's glasses, held together with transparent tape, and immediately found an opportunity to showcase her abilities.

"Watch me. For example—Oculus Reparo!"

She drew her brand-new wand, which gave off a faint scent of grapevine wood, and flicked it crisply.

A faint light flashed, and the glasses on Harry's nose were instantly restored to new condition, even the fingerprints on the lenses vanishing.

This successful spell earned her a gasp of amazement and an admiring look from Harry, along with... a big eye roll from Ron.

Lin Yuan's eyes lit up too.

Here it was! A successful casting example!

In his Spiritual Sense, the girl's casting process was practically a textbook.

A concentrated, precise, and goal-oriented mental force, like a sharp scalpel, leveraged the wand as an "amplifier" to precisely pry open a strand of external magical energy, then, following the "repair" command, reconstructed the physical form of the glasses.

The entire process was clean and efficient, with no waste of energy.

"Perfect match for my specialty," Lin Yuan praised inwardly. "It seems the wand's role is 'focusing' and 'amplifying,' while the incantation is a 'shortcut' for solidifying mental commands. The core is still the caster's mental strength and will."

This discovery lifted his spirits.

"I'm Hermione Granger," the girl said, putting away her wand and puffing out her chest proudly. "And you?"

"Ron Weasley," Ron replied glumly.

"Harry Potter," Harry answered.

"Is it really you?!" Hermione's reaction was just like Ron's, but her focus was different. "Of course I know about you—I bought several reference books. Your name appears in Modern Magical History, The Rise and Fall of Dark Magic, and Important Magical Events of the Twentieth Century."

"I... in books?" Harry was dumbfounded.

"My goodness, you didn't know?" She looked at him like he was a prehistoric creature. "If it were me, I'd read every book I could find on the subject. By the way, which house do you want to be in? I've already asked around. I hope it's Gryffindor—I heard Dumbledore graduated from there—but Ravenclaw sounds nice too..."

Hermione, like a chatterbox whose switch had been flipped, began rattling off everything she'd learned from books.

Ron and Harry were overwhelmed by her barrage of knowledge, exchanging bewildered glances.

Finally, Hermione's gaze landed on Lin Yuan, who had been unusually quiet the whole time.

"And you?" She studied him curiously. This boy seemed different from Harry and Ron—too quiet, with a calmness beyond his years on his face.

"Ryan Lin," Lin Yuan said, closing the Standard Book of Spells in his hand and offering a smile as he gave his name.

Hermione paused, clearly unfamiliar with the surname. She glanced again at the book in his hand, her brow furrowing deeper.

Lin Yuan gave her a sense of danger that only a fellow top student could feel.