Hogwarts' Magic Open Class

We'd put aside how Hogwarts students of every year felt about the school's plan to add a Magic Open Class. Let's go back half a month, when Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had yet to open for the term. Apart from essential staff and the ghosts who were too afraid to move on, the grounds and main castle were rather quiet. But the Headmaster's Office was lively!

It was an important little occasion! The wrinkly pet phoenix Annie had given Hermione could finally leave the care of Fawkes, the adult phoenix. It was now able to survive on its own! So Dumbledore had sent Hermione a message, telling her to come to Hogwarts when she had time and pick up her little phoenix. Of course, if possible, she was to bring little Annie along as well. Dumbledore had some ideas he wanted to discuss with Annie, and it would also be a good chance to improve their rapport.

The featherless little phoenix that had looked so wrinkled and ugly to Annie was now fully grown, with bright red feathers all over and a golden, flame-shaped marking on its chest. It looked beautiful! Hermione was playing with her new pet. After a simple bonding ritual, the little phoenix had accepted her as its master. Inspired by Fawkes's name, Hermione had given it a new one: Jinx!

But to Annie, Jinx was just a smaller version of Fawkes! It looked like a little red turkey! Thank goodness she hadn't decided to keep it, or she'd regret it now! She might as well have roasted it!

At the thought of food, Annie glanced over, and Jinx darted back to Hermione's shoulder in fright. It was clearly terrified of Annie! Fawkes must have said plenty of bad things about Annie in front of it. After all that, it probably saw Annie as some kind of big bad wolf!

Tch! Seeing that the little bird was too afraid to come near her, Annie couldn't be bothered with it. She turned back to chat with old Dumbledore, though the conversation wandered all over the place. She had nothing better to do, and since this old man named Dumbledore was willing to talk magic with her, Annie wasn't going to hold back!

In her opinion, although the old headmaster Dumbledore wasn't particularly strong, he had plenty of insight into the magic of their wizarding world. His knowledge was exceptionally extensive. If Annie wanted to learn from the strengths of some of this world's spells, talking with him was the perfect opportunity!

And so the three of them—one old and two young—spent the whole morning happily chatting in the little office. Most of the time, Annie and Dumbledore discussed various spells and their insights, while Hermione did her best to listen in.

Old fox Dumbledore cleverly used the conversation to learn everything about Annie, including where she came from and the customs of the Valoran Continent! Annie, meanwhile, learned quite a bit about the principles behind some of this world's spells. It was a worthwhile exchange!

Hermione was probably the one who gained the most. She had silently listened from the side. Although she couldn't understand much of what the two were saying, that didn't stop her from recording it all with a shorthand spell! These were insights and experiences she couldn't find in books. This was an exchange between two of the world's finest mages, and the value of what she wrote down was far beyond what Hermione could imagine. In the future, these notes would help her enormously!

Once their discussion of spells had come to an end, Dumbledore couldn't stop sighing. The world of magic truly held far too many unknowns! Though he was astonished that Annie had crossed through space and time from another plane, he hadn't probed too deeply. He couldn't understand it for now, but since it had happened, there had to be a reason for it, no matter how incredible it seemed!

Perhaps it was like that saying he'd heard in the East during his travels in his youth: "There's always a sky beyond the sky, and someone greater than yourself." If that was true, then countless worlds lay beyond their own. The world wizards lived in might be no more than a grain of sand among them. Could the universe really be so vast?

So the wizarding world had been shutting itself away all this time! Magic at its furthest reaches could cross the boundaries between planes and reach another world? And according to little Annie, the magic she knew was nowhere near its limits. The exploration of magic was endless! Magic wasn't merely a means of destruction; it could also unravel the nature of all things and the laws of the universe! What kind of power would someone possess if they truly reached that level?

Someone at that height could be called a true creator god without exaggeration, couldn't they? Yet Annie, who already seemed to Dumbledore to stand at the peak of the wizarding world, was only at what she called the Demigod level. On Valoran, there were countless Demigods, true gods, and transcendent beings. As a Demigod, she could only make use of the laws within certain domains. What were domains? Dumbledore didn't understand! He hadn't even touched the edges of the laws. He couldn't begin to imagine what it meant to be a Demigod!

For the first time, Dumbledore felt that he was merely a frog at the bottom of a well! He'd always thought the sky he could see was all there was. Once, he'd even been proud of his achievements. Little had he known that the world beyond was unimaginably vast! He truly wanted to go out and see that wider sky before he died!

But Dumbledore knew that this old frog at the bottom of the well was far too old! He might not have many years left. He certainly wasn't going to leap out of there, and he no longer had the desire to try. Perhaps little Annie had been right when she said that wizards were just a bunch of oddballs who waved sticks and flung spells around!

Even if this old frog couldn't leap out, that didn't mean no one else could! Besides, Hogwarts still had plenty of young seedlings, and they were highly impressionable! Looking at Hermione Granger, who was diligently taking notes nearby, Dumbledore lowered his head and pondered for a while, as if making some kind of decision. Perhaps, once their conversation was over, he could try to persuade her.

"By the way, Annie, there's something I've been meaning to ask. It seems you don't need a wand at all when you cast spells?" Dumbledore was puzzled by this. Even someone as powerful as he was could only manage Wandless Magic with some minor tricks that required very little magic.

When it came to combat spells, he couldn't manage them without a wand. The magic surging out of him needed a wand to channel and direct it. Without one, his spells would hurt him before they ever reached an enemy!

As far as Dumbledore knew, no one in the wizarding world besides Annie could cast spells without a wand at all. Wizards needed wands to channel the magic inside them. A wand was made from parts of magical creatures that were good at conducting magic. Those magical materials were essential for casting spells! They could channel magic with great efficiency!

Dumbledore, who had read many old texts, remembered that in ancient times, there had been no wizards at first. Humans had no magic in their bodies and couldn't cast spells. It wasn't until the age of King Arthur that the first true human wizard appeared. He was Merlin!

According to legend, Merlin was born from the union of a Nightmare, a magical creature with extraordinary powers, and a mortal woman. It was the Nightmare's bloodline that gave Merlin supernatural powers. And so the first ancestor of human wizards came into being! As more generations followed, and more curious human women mated with magical creatures—or human men with female magical creatures—the wizarding population gradually grew.

Although humans had gained magic in their bodies through their bloodlines, their fragile bodies lacked the natural ability of magical creatures to conduct it. As a result, spellcasting was still unreliable for wizards of that era. Only a small number of exceptionally gifted ones could manage it easily!

Then one day, a wizard made the first simple wand. Casting spells became much easier, and the human wizarding population could finally begin to flourish in earnest! From that time onward, it seemed that human wizards had never again gone without wands!

Back at Gringotts, Dumbledore hadn't fought Annie, so he hadn't given it much thought. But after seeing the battle footage in the newspaper, he realized something astonishing: little Annie could cast spells without a wand at all! And she hadn't suffered any magical backlash!

That had raised his opinion of Annie even further! It was downright terrifying! If Dumbledore himself tried to cast a Fireball without a wand, the spell would probably treat his arm as one. If he forced it, either he wouldn't be able to release it and would suffer magical backlash, or it would burn his arm off first. After all, human arms weren't as sturdy as magical creature materials, nor were they as good at conducting magic!

"Right, Annie! How do you do it?" Hermione asked, having finished her notes and turned to tease the little phoenix on her shoulder.

She was just as curious. Wandless Magic was far beyond her at the moment! Without her wand, even if she gathered all the magic inside her, she probably couldn't cast even the simplest Lumos. At most, she might trigger a burst of chaotic magical energy.

"Huh?" Annie looked at them in surprise. "Wandless Magic? What's so strange about that? Who told you that you had to use a wand to cast magic? Was it that nasty old wandmaker?" At the thought of that stubborn old man named Ollivander, Annie was furious!

She'd never heard that casting magic required a wand on the Valoran Continent! As Annie saw it, a wand was, at most, an extra tool that increased a spell's strength. It was optional! Of course, having one was better than not, since a good wand could increase a spell's power!

But Annie didn't like wands mainly because they were a pain to carry around! Using them was even more of a nuisance! They got in the way and never felt right in her hand! Most wands were too tall for her, after all! The Frozen Scepter, for instance, or Loki's Scepter, which she'd swiped from New York earlier! Both were taller than Annie in their usual form! What was little Annie supposed to look like carrying one?

Annie had heard of some evil little mage on the Valoran Continent who had a pretty good artifact hat! What was it called again? Deathcap? The Deathcap of the Devourer? They said it increased spell power and boosted the strength of spells by thirty-five percent! If it were something convenient like that, Annie could accept it! But a wand? No thanks!

"Magic has to be cast with a wand!" Hermione exclaimed, staring at Annie in shock. She'd always been taught that spellcasting required a wand! Every wizard needed a wand of their own! A wizard without one was practically a Squib!

That was why one of the Ministry of Magic's punishments for wizards who committed serious crimes was to snap their wands—and then forbid them from buying new ones! In their eyes, a wizard without a wand wasn't a proper wizard at all. Without one, a wizard posed no threat! Take You-Know-Who, for example. So what if he was powerful? Would he dare go out without his wand and see what happened?

"Wands are required? That's complete nonsense! Hmph! Just watch!" Annie glared at the old man and the little girl, huffed, and stood up. Then she pointed a finger, and a basin-sized Fireball radiating searing heat appeared just above it! As she saw it, the two of them had definitely been fooled by that nasty old wandmaker! That old man would be happiest if everyone were dependent on those rotten sticks he made!

"This! How! How did you do that?" Hermione asked. She'd known Annie could use Wandless Magic ever since their trip to Gringotts, but she'd been too dazed by the situation then to notice the details!

She'd only learned more from the newspapers later! She'd been prepared for it in her heart, but this was still the first time she'd clearly seen and sensed it up close with her own eyes! The sight before her was hard to accept. It felt as if everything she'd learned at school had been turned upside down. Or had she been taught some wrong information? She'd wanted to ask Annie about it at home, but she'd worried that this might be one of Annie's secret techniques, so she'd never dared to bring it up!

"Mm~! This really is enlightening." Dumbledore pondered for a moment. As one of the most powerful wizards in the world, he'd seen and sensed much more than Hermione had!

Most wizards cast spells using their own magic, expending a portion of it to create the desired effect. A wizard's magic grew as they did, so the older the wizard, the more powerful their magic became. Of course, each wizard's talent mattered too. The greater their talent, the greater their potential. Yet just now, Dumbledore had sensed almost no fluctuation in Annie's magic. It was as if the spell hadn't drawn on any of her magic at all. Could it be that she had so much magic that he couldn't detect the change?

"Annie, never mind that you cast this Fireball without a wand, but it also seems you didn't use any of your own magic?" Dumbledore asked uncertainly. His own conclusion had left him rather confused. Wandless Magic was one thing. Casting without an incantation was another. But not using any of her own magic at all? That seemed a little too unmagical!

"Evocation spells! You just build a Spell Model and guide the surrounding energy into resonance. Why waste your own magic?" Annie was just as surprised by the old man's thinking! If every spell required your own magic, she could drain herself dry and still not cast some of the enormous domain-wide forbidden spells! Only apprentices relied on their own magic for every spell, didn't they?

This was a fire spell from the Evocation school! Fireball was only the most basic spell in that school. In a world with a Ley Line, a mage could cast spells just by connecting to it. In a world without a Ley Line, like Valoran, they had to connect to the energy drifting through nature or the void, then build a Spell Model.

There was so much energy in nature that could be used. Why be foolish and waste your own magic? A less skilled mage might need to expend quite a bit of their own magic to create resonance, but for Annie, it was only a matter of creating resonance. The tiny amount of magic she wasted was less than what she recovered on her own! There was no need to worry about it at all!

"Evocation? Spell Models?" Dumbledore had never heard of those terms before. Could magic really work that way? Wasn't magic simply divided into Dark Magic, White Magic, attack and defense spells, and other supporting spells? When they needed a spell, they chanted an incantation, waved their wands, and—whoosh!—the spell flew out. That was how the wizarding world had always done things!

"Huh? You don't even know about that? Then how do you cast spells?" Annie suddenly grew curious. Did the wizards here have some trick she didn't know about?

"Er... well..." Dumbledore suddenly found it difficult to explain.

"Isn't magic just chanting an incantation, following the instructions and the proper movements, channeling your magic, then waving your wand a few times?" Hermione said meekly from the side. That was how she'd always learned magic! She'd learned quickly, too, and had always been quite proud of it!

"Ha! So that's how it is! You don't know the principles or Spell Models! You only cast spells with incantations, gestures, and your own magic? No wonder you're so dependent on those lousy sticks!" Annie was shocked!

At last, she understood why the wizards at Gringotts had meekly let her tie them to the pillars after she took their wands away! She'd only used Magic Rope to bind them, so she'd wondered why they hadn't tried to fight back with spells. Now she knew! That explained it! It seemed they really did need those wooden wands!

Annie might have been rather playful in the Voodoo Lands, but at least she'd read almost all the books in the Gray Order's Mage Tower libraries, as well as the books at home! Even if a lot of them were forced on her by her mother, Amoline, or memorized through magic, it was only after she'd learned the principles and Spell Models, and then relied on her exceptional talent, that casting spells had become second nature to her! That was how Annie had reached the level she was at now! Did they really think she'd been born this way?

And these people? They only learned incantations and gestures? On Valoran, they'd probably be apprentices for life! By the time they finished chanting, someone would have already hurled several spells into their faces! Or perhaps that person wouldn't even need Counterspell or to disarm them. They could simply cast a silencing spell! What would they do then? How could they chant? Would they have to run up and poke someone with their wands, trying to fight hand to hand?

"Heh-heh! That is indeed a problem." Dumbledore chuckled awkwardly. Then he finally made up his mind and carefully asked Annie, "So, Annie, would you like to come to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?"

"Huh? School? Go to school?! No way!" Annie thought back to her time at school in New York. It hadn't been fun at all! She'd had to do homework and get up early to go to school! That would have been bad enough, but people were always reporting on her! She was sick of it! She didn't want to go to school again! Absolutely not! And once her Space Stone finished charging, she'd be leaving! She didn't want to stay in this world any longer than necessary!

"No, no! Annie, you've got it wrong. I'm not asking you to attend Hogwarts. Besides, I doubt there's anything we could teach you. What I mean is, would you be interested in teaching an open class at the school? One specifically about your... special knowledge of magic?" Dumbledore wiped his brow, adjusted his spectacles, and looked at Annie with shining eyes!

He'd already thought of this earlier! It was better to share the joy than to keep it to himself! How could he pass up the chance to make use of such a powerful little Demigod? Her knowledge would be incredibly useful! It could greatly advance the transformation of the wizarding world! And the key was, how much could he learn from listening on his own? Only by sowing the seeds of change could the wizarding world escape its stagnant well and stop being a frog at the bottom!

"Oh? Teach a class? You want me to be a professor? You're not joking?" Annie perked up, as if she'd heard something interesting! This sounded much more fun than going to school as a student!

"Of course not! And you can decide for yourself when and how often you want to teach!" Seeing Annie's reaction, Dumbledore knew the little girl had accepted his suggestion! Hoho! The lost little lamb had fallen right into his hands again! Wandless Magic, Spell Models, Evocation—he wanted to learn those too!

Dumbledore had also realized that he couldn't keep inviting the little girl to his office to chat about magic and exchange experiences. And how much could they discuss here, anyway? She might get bored one day and stop coming altogether! That would be a terrible loss!

So he might as well let the little girl teach a class of her own! Then he could attend, too, couldn't he? And to set a good example, Dumbledore had decided he would make time to sit in on every one of Annie's classes! The headmaster himself would lead by example and set a good one for the students!

"Sure! Let's do it!" Annie had spent her time in New York going to school, but here she was suddenly being told she could teach her own class and be a professor! Of course she couldn't pass up an opportunity like this! She'd be a teacher! That sounded like fun! If anyone didn't listen, could she smack their hands with a ruler? Hehe!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, everyone!

Don't forget to vote for the story!