Meeting Nicolas Flamel had been like a stone dropped into the deep sea of Alan's mind; the ripples it caused were still spreading, reshaping the coastline of his understanding of the world.
The door unlocked by a key no longer revealed mere magical wonders. Behind it lay a vast, intricate system built from countless underlying rules.
Alan began to observe everything around him with an almost obsessive precision. The Floating Charm was no longer a simple trick to make a feather rise; it was a temporary adjustment of local gravitational parameters. The Patronus Charm was no longer merely the summoning of happy memories; it was a high-level command capable of interfering with or even formatting negative mental constructs.
If spells were "applications," then what was the "operating system" driving the entire magical world at its core?
This question lodged itself like an unremovable thorn in Alan's consciousness, compelling him to make a choice that bewildered every first-year student: he voluntarily signed up for Professor Binns' elective lecture.
"Class 583: The 15th-Century Faerie Rebellions and the History of Wizarding Contracts."
Even hearing the title made most students' eyelids droop.
At the front, Professor Binns' translucent ghostly form hovered midair. His dry, monotonous voice, devoid of any tonal variation, echoed through the ancient classroom like a century-worn recording on an old phonograph.
"…The faeries unilaterally tore up the Grindelwald Treaty, refusing to return property entrusted to them by wizards. In response, the Wizarding Council passed Decree 73, authorizing Aurors to employ the Enforcement Charm to reclaim the assets directly from the faerie treasury…"
The words drifted through the air like a fine dust, settling evenly on every student's eyelids.
Most students had already entered a shallow sleep, heads nodding forward or mindlessly doodling with quills on parchment, ink smudging into unreadable stains.
Alan was the only exception.
He sat perfectly straight, his back rigid like a spear. His eyes were not on Professor Binns but on the slanted beam of light slicing through the classroom.
Countless tiny particles danced and floated within the light, forming a miniature, chaotic universe that obeyed some unknown law.
His brain, his mind palace, was running at an alarming speed.
Every word spoken by Professor Binns — "contract," "agreement," "enforcement," "binding power" — was captured, deconstructed, and integrated into thousands of analytical models of magical logic in Alan's mind.
History, to Alan, was nothing more than the execution logs of massive amounts of "code."
When Binns' eternal monotone finally dragged toward its exhausted tail, signaling the end of this hypnotic session, a hand rose.
That hand was steady and powerful.
Professor Binns' voice stopped abruptly. His translucent head rotated mechanically, scanning the classroom before finally locking on Alan. A mixture of surprise and confusion flickered across his ghostly grey-white eyes.
In his hundreds of years of dull teaching, he had never witnessed this scene. His lectures existed to pass the time or earn credit, not to invite questions.
"Please… speak, uh… sir."
Binns strained to recall the student's name from his long-stagnant memory, coming up empty.
Alan stood.
He rose not with haste, but with a presence that could not be ignored. The lethargic atmosphere of the classroom seemed to tear apart in an instant.
Almost simultaneously, every drowsy student jolted upright.
Their eyes fixed on Alan.
"Professor, I have a question."
Alan's voice was clear and calm, without the slightest trace of nervousness or excitement. Each word struck the silence like a perfectly cut shard of ice.
"You just mentioned that magical contracts carry an unbreakable binding force."
He first repeated Binns' point, as if calibrating the trajectory for the real strike.
"Then, what is the essence of this binding force?"
The question hung in the air.
"Does it arise from an external, supreme power that overrides all wizards, like a 'law of the world'?"
"Or…" Alan paused slightly, giving everyone a moment to breathe before delivering his true core question:
"Is it merely the will and magical energy of the contracting parties, woven together into a 'locked' system that can be quantified and executed… a kind of magical program?"
The term magical program carried a cold precision, utterly incongruous with this ancient world.
For the first time, Binns' semi-transparent face showed pure, complete bewilderment. His ghostly form flickered slightly, as if his signal was failing. This question had transcended the instructions he could process, leaving the centuries-old teaching mechanism of his mind unable to respond.
There were no answers in any textbook.
Even in his hundreds of years of memories, Professor Binns had never encountered a question like this.
Alan didn't wait. He didn't need Binns' answer. His question wasn't aimed at eliciting a response; it was a chain in the logic of his own thought process, a calculation that had already begun in his mind. Now, he needed to continue the deduction.
"If the essence of a contract is the latter, that it is a kind of 'program'—"
His voice rose slightly, each word sharper, piercing the eardrums of everyone in the room and striking straight at their minds.
"Then can we infer that the Trace the Ministry of Magic imposes on every underage wizard is, in essence, the broadest-coverage, one-sidedly written, non-equitable magical contract?"
Subversion.
Complete, utter subversion.
A daring, audacious idea, stated in the calmest possible tone.
The air in the classroom froze. Breathing ceased. Even the dust dancing in the shaft of light moved with unbearable slowness and weight.
Alan's eyes swept across the room, noting the shock etched into every face.
But he was not finished. He needed to push this deduction to its logical extreme.
"Since it is a kind of program…"
His voice echoed in the dead-silent classroom, carrying a sense almost like a verdict being delivered.
"Then all contracts must necessarily have elements that can be read, analyzed, and even decompiled…
underlying code!"
"As long as we can locate and crack this underlying code, in theory…"
He paused. His sharp gaze fixed straight ahead, as if he could already see the truth hidden behind the fog of rules.
"Could we bypass or even modify any magical contracts we do not wish to abide by?"
When the words fell, the entire world seemed to enter absolute silence. Time itself seemed to be sucked away.
Professor Binns floated dazedly in midair. He felt as if his brain, which had been inactive for centuries, was being repeatedly struck and crushed by an incomprehensible force, nearly shattering into its most primitive informational fragments.
The students were completely frozen.
Shock, confusion, and bewilderment merged on their faces into a raw, primal reaction—the instinctive awe of facing the unknown and the forbidden.
Alan Scott, a first-year student, had, with his own words, ripped open a fissure leading straight to the abyss.
And at the very center of this vortex of stunned gazes, Alan calmly sat down.
His heartbeat was steady and strong.
He knew exactly what he had just said—and what it meant.
It was not merely a bold academic conjecture.
It was a declaration.
A declaration, a direct and dangerous challenge to the entire existing order of the magical world.
He may have just touched one of the most core—and most lethal—secrets of this world.
Rules were never sacred.
Rules were made to be broken.
~~----------------------
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