The basic principles of photographs

The day before the results were to be released, Huginn knocked on Lily's window.

"What?! Oh, wait a minute..."

Lily, her face flushed, turned the novel upside down on the table, tidied her hair, and ran to the window to open it for Huginn.

"What's the matter? Did Manus send you to deliver a message?"

Lily glanced around and noticed that Huginn's paws weren't holding any letters or notes.

When Huginn opened his mouth, a voice from Manus came out:

"Come find me at the Astronomy Tower."

"Oh?"

One of the students in the dormitory couldn't help but look over curiously:

"Who is this? Lily, are you in love?"

"Hey~ Don't say such scary things!"

Lily shook her head reflexively:

"It's Manus... Strange, what could he want with me at this time?"

If it's a school matter, it wouldn't have dragged on until now; if it's a personal matter, there's no need to be in such a hurry...

"Could it be that they found out you've been slacking off lately?"

As Lily's closest confidante in Gryffindor, the kind of friend she'd take to parties, Mary had a better understanding of Manus's role and her words were clearly more pointed.

!!!

However, this more suggestive statement is clearly more alarming than the previous impossible one, because it could actually happen!

However, Lily quickly adjusted her mindset:

"No, no, it can't be considered slacking off when I'm preparing for the exam. At most, it's just a balance between work and rest."

Nevertheless, Lily felt uneasy on her way to the top of the Astronomy Tower.

Taking a break from studying and adjusting your mindset before the exam to face it in a better state is probably reasonable, right?

Although I've been a bit lax these past few days after the exams, it's still not the holiday season yet...

Even if my grades have always been stable, not taking a break won't have a significant impact...

Forehead...

However, I've also been teaching myself Ritual Magic!

Potter and his friends had already completed their Animagus Transformation on their own, and, cluelessly, they didn't even try to hide it. They acted as if no one would notice their slurred speech, and on the full moon, they swaggered out of the common room before curfew...

Although the deal with Potter was destined to fall through, he still diligently studied Ritual Magic, though his progress might be a little slow.

When Lily finally reached the Astronomy Tower, she had completely lost the confidence she had shown when she first stepped onto the first step. Her first words were, "I know I was wrong."

Manus:???

After thinking for a moment, Manus roughly understood what Lily meant, and shook his head:

"I believe you are capable of taking responsibility for your own life; that's not what I meant."

Lily felt a pang of conscience but also a sense of relief, then asked curiously:

"What's the reason for that? Why are you in such a hurry to tell me?"

"It's about you and Petunia, the thing we talked about before."

Manus handed over a letter.

Lily took it and, before even reading the contents, her heart skipped a beat—it was an acceptance letter from a university!

"Am I... going to have to attend an extra university during my vacation at home? Or am I going to a Muggle school after graduating from Hogwarts?"

Lily suddenly felt it was a huge loss to take on such a big problem just because she was being a little lazy... even though there was no necessary causal relationship between the two things.

"No, this is just an identity, an identity that your parents can use to explain things to others, not an identity like Hogwarts, where you can't even say the school's name, and you have to be vague about your school life."

Lily paused for a moment.

"Take this apart. Inside are your identification documents and some other settings. You need to write them down so you don't give yourself away later—but you don't need to remember them too clearly or be too deliberate."

Human memory, especially when done unconsciously, often relies on specific memory points. The past is like a fog, and clear memory points are like candles, illuminating the area within the fog.

But the concept of a "memorable point" is difficult to define precisely.

If you go through the whole thing without forcing yourself to memorize it perfectly, you'll basically only remember the parts that are easy to recall. However, this approach will still leave some room for error...

But there's no better solution for the time being.

Moreover, as Manus said, being too deliberate is itself a flaw; it is normal for abnormal situations to occasionally occur in reality that do not conform to impressions or exceed expectations.

Lily silently opened the envelope. It had been enchanted with Undetectable Extension Charm, so what appeared to be just a letter actually contained many things: documents of various sizes... and even photos?!

How were these things filmed?

Looking at those photos of herself that she had never taken before, and even those in color, Lily felt a sense of bewilderment:

"... Is it Polyjuice Potion? Transfiguration?"

Lily was actually more concerned about who the person in the photo was... cough.

"It doesn't have to be that complicated. As long as you understand the principles of photographic imaging and development, and have sufficient operational precision, drawing a photograph isn't a difficult task."

The principle of a photograph is simply that a colorant forms an image, and a developer displays the image. It is a machine-made painting. Of course, there are also negative printing and other operations to make the photograph suitable for viewing, but the principle is just that.

It's easy to create a photograph simply by mimicking the machine's style, precision, and residual features.

"... But why does this sound like it's even more complicated than Polyjuice Potion or Transfiguration?"

Lily for a moment. The most troublesome thing mentally was learning the basic principles of photography, while the most troublesome thing practically was drawing a palm-sized photograph with incredible detail yet maintaining a sense of blurriness.

"Because you only considered people, whether it was the environment in a portrait photo, a landscape photo, or even a landscape that doesn't exist in this world..."

Manus conjured a stack of photographic paper using Paper-Making Spell, and then used Image-Printing Spell to transfer the contents of a photograph onto it.

That's the beauty of a systematic approach to magic; the most troublesome part is always in the development phase. Once completed, many things can be pre-planned for use cases with low requirements and high reusability.

For example, the style of the photo, the color scheme...

Lily took the photos and saw that they were photos taken from the air above Hogwarts, overlooking the castle, as well as photos of Quidditch Match taken from the stands and photos of the Great Lake from the covered bridge...

When did you see all this? Was it purely from your imagination?

Lily was puzzled. Even if it was drawn instead of photographed, one would still need to have seen it before drawing it, right?