• Hogwarts, Great Hall •
• October 2nd, 7:15 AM •
[ Albus Dumbledore ]
My hands moved from one tray to another, wandering over the variety of food while my mouth worked on its own. My mind buzzed with a multitude of thoughts. My Archive screen hovered close within my field of vision, invisible to everyone but me, as I began to check something.
I had always known that people—and I mean the general populace—seldom questioned my actions, mostly out of trust and belief, or in rare cases out of fear. I often witnessed such interactions, where people would simply go, "Dumbledore must have a reason," or "It's Dumbledore."
I had thought it was nice, actually, once upon a time, and might have even felt honored to receive such faith in me and my abilities. Yes, it burdened me sometimes, but this was the first time since I—the new and improved Dumbledore—had actually stopped to think about it.
I used my Archive to search and analyze my current, ever-growing database, to see just how many people thought the same. I wanted to understand why, even though I already knew the reason.
I wanted to see why none of my staff had tried to access my general knowledge as opposed to my magical one. Why did the search results show that almost everyone with Archive access had, at some point, only tried to view how powerful I was or how many spells I knew? They didn't seem to care about my general knowledge, or what I consider common sense.
Again, I knew why. I just couldn't understand it.
....
'Okay, that's enough dramatics for a day.' I shook my head slightly and took a sip of tea to regain my default settings. There was no need for the ever-dramatic tone in my thoughts, because whether I wanted to believe it or not, the truth was simple.
People—be it my staff, students, their parents, or even those crooks in Knockturn Alley—almost everyone below sixty years old has grown up hearing stories about me being the most powerful wizard alive. Even those older, or of my own generation, know of me either as a powerful wizard or a prodigy of the magical arts.
So it was not really strange to see that result; in fact, it was almost a given that they are operating on a preconceived notion and image of me. Because whether I wanted to believe it or not, the magical world, while vast, is also very small. People talk, stories get passed around, and so my reputation as the world's most powerful wizard was practically something children grew up hearing and learning about.
'So yeah, pretty much everyone below the age of fifty believes that to be true. It's not that complicated.' I shrugged inwardly, noting that I was still using my thought acceleration to be dramatically introspective.
'I mean, what kind of stupid line of thought was that?' I asked myself, barely holding down the urge to facepalm. 'I mean, I already knew that I was pretty much the closest thing wizards have to a god in their minds…'
....
"Albus," Pomona called, pulling me out of my thoughts, prompting me to turn my head toward her. Minerva and Sinistra next to me doing the same. "It just occurred to me—you know, with the news of Amelia's pregnancy and everything—that this is the first time since this faculty has known each other where almost every one of us is single, capable of having children, and probably on the way to getting younger," Pomona continued, her smile growing wider the more she talked.
"So I thought, doesn't that mean we are actually getting a new chance to have families of our own? To raise children of our own and such, right? And then I thought, what about Albus? Does he actually intend on having children this time around?…" She leaned in, put her head on her hand, raised her left eyebrow at me playfully, and continued, "So, do you?"
"Haha, how very Hufflepuff," I chuckled, mostly amused by how abrupt the change had been. It seemed I was not the only one eating breakfast with thoughts going awry at this table. Still, I answered her honestly: "I don't know yet. Maybe. I don't really have plans, though it's definitely on the list of things that I need to do this time around."
"Ooooh, a mini Albus! How exciting!" Pomona squealed in a hushed voice and clapped lightly before turning to the rest and asking, "What about you? Minerva? Aurora? Horace? Filius? …" listing the rest of the staff at the table.
"Well, maybe. I still have too much work, so I haven't thought about it."
"I still need to find a husband first."
"Yeah, me too."
"Maybe after I go through the promotion ritual."
"Same here."
"…."
I put some beans on my toast before eating it, half paying attention as Pomona got her answers, though the term 'promotion ritual' caught my attention. That was probably one of the most apt names given to the process of ascension yet, and believe me, I have read things. Still, now was not the time to dwell on terminology.
"What about you, Pomona?" I turned my head and asked her as soon as I finished chewing, not letting her get away from the topic easily.
"Oh, of course I do, though I plan to get younger first, naturally, to regain that spark needed to handle a pregnancy. So yes, I plan to have a few of my own," she said, slightly stressing the word few as her eyes moved ever so slightly between Flitwick and Horace.
I don't know what she was planning, but I will act as if I haven't noticed. If she wants their children, I believe she can get them, especially after returning to her youth. I still remember how she looked back then, and I can guarantee that neither of those two would say no if she asked.
I smiled as I felt a warm, fuzzy, bubble-like feeling rest on my heart. I felt genuinely happy to see them discussing such mundane things. Most people around us tend to forget that these people right here have sacrificed more than is known for the future of magical Britain.
It felt genuinely pleasant to see Pomona talk about having children of her own, and far more delightful to know I had something to do with her renewed hope. That woman was denied such a thing by a cruel twist of fate—two stillbirths that had killed her hope and led her to stop trying.
I looked around and saw my staff had already jumped to another topic and were now engaged in a discussion about what to get Amelia as gifts, suggestions for baby names as if they had any say in the decision, and just sighed. I took another sip of my tea and leaned back, taking a slight break, as I had just finished eating breakfast.
"Haaaah, what a nice morning," I muttered after a small exhale, feeling a sense of rejuvenation. Now it was time to get back to what I needed to do: setting up the Room of Requirement and preparing it for action.
"Alright, if you'll excuse me, I have some things to get back to," I said as I slid the chair back, preparing to stand up.
"What things?" Minerva asked. "You are not avoiding paperwork again, are you? The replies for the new invitations we sent are about to arrive. So, if what you're doing isn't important, I will ask you to take care of them while I am in class."
"Hmm? Oh, no. What I am doing is important, as it will help us avoid the extra expense of hiring a new combat magic instructor. You'll see it later," I informed her as I stood hurriedly and power-walked out of there. I was not stupid enough to sit through and wait for her to tie me down with invitation-reply duty. The old me had relinquished that privilege to her for a reason.
"Albus!!"
I ignored her hushed cry for attention as I left the Great Hall in a hurry. My destination—the Room of Requirement… again.
I navigated my way back through secret passageways and shortcuts, more to lessen the chances of Minerva tailing me and finding me than anything else.
So here I was, standing in front of the dancing troll tapestry, the entrance to the room now behind me, but I allowed myself a few seconds to just stand and contemplate: what idiosyncrasy could push a wizard to think it was possible to teach trolls how to dance ballet?
I mean, I know that wizards and witches are slightly touched in the head—that was inevitable, seeing how our brains work slightly differently from normal—but some people are just different, I guess.
"Hahahah," I chuckled slightly at the thought. The image of six trolls in ballet skirts and shoes, clumsily imitating dance moves while occasionally clubbing Barnabas, was funny in a stupid sort of way.
I wasn't new to human stupidity. Merlin knows I have memories of people in the future doing stupid shit all the time for views, but this was somehow on another level.
'I guess that's what happens when wizard brain and stupidity cross paths,' I thought as I turned around and headed toward the entrance. I didn't need to do the three-time walk anymore, seeing as I'd linked myself as the primary owner of the room. The wall shifted as I walked closer, and the door appeared, opening on its own.
I walked inside, heading directly toward the car-sized runestone that was glowing golden now. It was time to try and actually work out something that wasn't dangerous for whoever used it. I didn't want a student or a teacher to die because they wanted to fight me or something above their level.
I sat down in front of the stone, touched it, and made an Archive screen appear. I went straight to the settings, reviewing the ones already there and contemplating what to add. It was genuinely interesting to witness how the intent-sensing wards and all the intent-translating enchantments meshed with the Archive.
"But that's also the problem, isn't it?" I sighed, resigned to how unnecessarily complicated the issue was. The room now received and translated intent through the Archive and on its own. I couldn't disable one or the other, as that would interfere with the process and create a much bigger problem, so the only solution left was to manually set everything up—which was proving to be a chore.
And so I started my work, dividing the intent-sensing into two: making the wards and enchantments responsible for the environment setting, while leaving the actual combat and magic-related stuff to the Archive.
Then I moved on to the combat modes, combat evaluation, rankings, etc. I wrote so many conditions to try and minimize the danger of grave injury and death. I made sure to include warnings against choosing opponents a full rank above you and more, while also making it near-impossible to choose someone like me or Grindelwald as an opponent while retaining our full power—or as close as the data-copy projection could get. They could still choose us, just with restrictions that made us fight only on the same level as the challenger.
Then came the most fun part: me abusing my Bright Lord essence like a pro. "I mean, I have the ability to bestow blessings and enchant stuff, right? There's no restriction or framework for the blessings and enchantments themselves…." I smiled evilly as I rubbed my hands together. This was going to be fun.
....
I am not proud to say—okay, that's a lie; I am totally proud to say this—I found a glitch in the matrix…
I really went so overboard with the blessings and enchantments that I might have temporarily forgotten I only meant to work on the Room of Requirement and not the whole castle and surrounding lands.
It started slow, you know? Me testing just how absurd the blessings I bestowed using my essence could be before they went poof and just didn't work—testing the limits and all that. But I didn't find any. At some point, the ability to bestow blessings and enchantments just blurred together as I continued to test it, making all my previous, more cautious attempts look laughable.
My slow start was me trying to bestow the runestone itself with the capacity to channel and store more magic, which then turned into me testing whether I could make it so that it could purify magic. That turned out to be a stupid idea, because the purer the magic, the heavier it became, and after a certain point, it turned more toxic and harmful to wizards than helpful.
Still, through trial and error, I found the multiple thresholds for this, which then made me return to point one, where I incorporated magic purity and density into the settings—another complicated process and, sadly, not the last time I did so.
"I really went crazy there for a second," I muttered as I remembered how absurd some of the new blessings and enchantments added to the room—and Hogwarts as a whole—were. "I mean, who else in this world can make it so that no death, accidental or otherwise, can happen inside the castle?"
I was really proud of that one, too, because it happened right after I finished adding all those support blessings and enchantments, like the Blessing of Comprehension, the Blessing of Rewarding Effort, the Blessing of Fast Recovery, the Blessing of Quick Thinking, the Blessing of Quick Adaptation, etc.… I pretty much made a blessing for everything I could think of—blessings that made the ones I'd already added before turn obsolete. It was only once I couldn't think of anything else to boost everyone's performance inside Hogwarts that I started adding the crazy enchantments.
Those enchantments, however, did not work exactly like the blessings. Sure, I can make them more absurd and insane, but I can't just enchant the room to be immune to death or anything; not that it didn't work—it did—it's just that they were much weaker and more all-encompassing for my taste. So I found a way around that by creating a multi-layered and interconnected web of enchantments that were far more powerful than the general ones.
Small enchantments that made fatal wounds become non-fatal, enchantments that made anyone inside the castle gain a temporary regeneration, enchantments that made Hogwarts a no-death domain. That didn't mean that people in Hogwarts can't get hurt—they still can—they just recover and get over such things quickly, and without lasting effects.
"I did a lot more than that, but I'll just keep those to myself," I smirked as I stood up. It was time to choose the classrooms that were going to be connected to the Room of Requirement.
X_
• Medical Wing, Hogwarts •
• October 2nd, 12:00 PM •
[ Poppy Pomfrey ]
"What the hell is this?" Poppy asked, her voice hushed and laced with disbelief. She was just reviewing the feedback from the scanning spells she had cast on the trio of teenagers sleeping in the medical beds before her.
She blinked and shook her head before casting the spell again—and received the same result. They were fine. They shouldn't be. They had come to her with broken bones and severed ligaments after a Quidditch-related incident, so by all means, they should not be this healthy this soon.
"I know I am good, but not that good…" she muttered, staring at the sleeping teenagers. Normally, they should be here until tomorrow afternoon under a strict regimen of three different potions to heal their injuries. Now they appeared hale and healthy…
"This stinks of Albus…" she said to herself as she walked back to her desk. "I don't know what kind of crazy thing he's been up to, but if it seems like something only Albus could do, and it feels like it has something Albus would do, then it's definitely Albus…"
So she sat down, summoned her Archive screen, and went straight for the scanning function. She tapped on the screen as soon as it appeared, quickly navigating to the recent data readings. A second, smaller screen appeared, showing everything recorded and categorized by date and time. She scrolled down until she found what she was looking for and started reading.
It took her a few seconds to process what she read. It was all written there—everything that had happened and changed since this morning. She took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes, and looked again. It still said the same thing.
"Okay, this is crazy… Blessings? Divine enchantments?…" she said, her voice barely above a whisper from the incredulity of what she was reading. She didn't want to believe it yet, so she swiped the screen to the left, suspending it there as she used her own privilege to access Albus's profile and his recent information.
She navigated through most of it until she found what she was looking for. Sure, some information was censored, as it required her to meet several requirements to access it, but what she needed to know was right there: Albus Dumbledore had found a way to become a god.
The process of how it happened was omitted, of course, but she didn't need to read about that right now. She was still wrestling with the incredulousness of the situation and what she had just read.
It took her some time—sitting there in quiet, staring at the ceiling as she mulled over what she'd found out, again and again. She didn't know how long it had taken her; it could have been minutes or hours. But after all of that… all she could say was, "It's about time…"
And she meant it. She had witnessed just how absurdly skewed the public perception—including her own—had been, and might still be, if all she could think was "it's about time." But truly, she didn't believe the average wizard or witch would be shocked for long if they found out. She could almost hear them go, "It's Dumbledore," or "As expected of Dumbledore," or something equally silly.
"Nevertheless, I like those new changes Dumbledore added," she nodded in approval. "It will be quite helpful for me, too. That Restoration Magic branch will not create itself…"
Poppy sighed and stood up. She needed to talk with the others first, and preferably Albus, too. There were still some questions left about the extent of the changes and other things to discuss…
X_
• Hogwarts Castle, Third-Floor Corridor •
• October 2nd, 12:00 PM •
[ Cassius White ]
Walking down the corridor, heading back to the common room, Cassius found himself accompanied by a few friends he had made recently.
"Hey, Cassius, did you start feeling like everything we studied and practiced today just got so much easier?" Terry asked, his voice conveying a certain level of uncertainty.
"Oh, thank God! I thought I was going mental earlier when everything suddenly started to make so much more sense," Seamus replied, exhaling loudly in relief.
"So you guys felt it too, huh? That feeling of being full of energy all of a sudden? It wasn't just my imagination, right?" Dean added, looking around the group for confirmation.
The group—a bunch of Gryffindors and Ravenclaws walking together with Cassius—nodded back. Their expressions and slowed pace showed their quiet relief at finding out they weren't actually going nuts or imagining things.
"So, what do you guys think? What happened?"
"I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd say Headmaster Dumbledore did something to the castle."
"Why would you think that?"
"Well, think about it. Who else in this castle is powerful enough to do something that makes people smarter all of a sudden?"
A beat of silence passed as the group thought about the question—and for some reason, the theory didn't sound all that crazy anymore.
Cassius, for his part, did what everyone should have done in the first place and opened his Archive to seek its counsel. He was very adept at using it and had been one of the few people to discover a lot of its hidden functions, which he'd shared with everyone. It was one of the things that had allowed him to quickly make friends across different houses and grades all over the castle. He'd even shared some of his discoveries in the Archive's public library.
It took him a few seconds of searching, but he found the answers he was looking for. It was an upgrade the Headmaster had made to the castle's wards, ensuring the safety of the students and their academic success. He couldn't get more information, as it was locked and required him to meet certain conditions to access it, but that wasn't really a problem. The conditions weren't harsh, and if he continued with his current pace and effort, he'd meet most of them by next year at the latest.
"Well, you're right. Apparently, Professor Dumbledore upgraded the wards again, elevating the protection of everyone inside Hogwarts to another level and ensuring that our studies will be easier and much more fruitful," Cassius shared with the group. "I don't know exactly what he's done to the castle, as I don't meet the access requirements yet, but it says here that we'll be notified about the changes later."
"See, I told you! Headmaster Dumbledore is just on another level. My mom once told me a story…" And so their walk continued, the atmosphere light as Seamus started regaling them with tales of Albus Dumbledore that his mom had told him.
'Still, Professor Dumbledore really is on another level, huh,' Cassius thought with a smile as he continued walking, listening to the story.
X_
(Bonus)
• October 2nd, 10:00 AM •
• Mahoutokoro Academy of Magic, Medical Arts Professor's Office •
[ Tsunade Senju ]
Tsunade sat surrounded by piles of papers, parchments, old books, and scrolls. Her appearance was slightly disheveled; her hair was tied into a messy bun, and her white lab coat showed creases and looked like it had been through a disaster or two.
The reason for this was research. She had been doing research the old-fashioned way for the past two days, thanks to a bet with that anti-social brat, Kaito. "Me and my damn mouth," she cursed under her breath as she took yet another book from the pile and opened it.
This whole mess started because she couldn't keep her mouth shut after repeatedly hearing the brat gush about Albus Dumbledore as if he were a kami reborn. Kaito had been talking the ears off anyone willing to listen about how Albus Dumbledore was the pinnacle of genius and how useful the Archive had been to his own research.
It had gotten to the point where her patience ran out and she blurted out that the Archive, while useful, was not all it was cracked up to be. The brat had looked at her like she was a heretic. And so the bet was born. He wagered that she couldn't last three days doing research on her chosen topic the old-fashioned way and that her pace would slow to less than 10% of what she could have accomplished with the Archive's help. If she could go over that 10% by even 0.1, she would win; if she couldn't, then she would have to admit she was wrong.
It was a simple, stupid bet she had agreed to in the heat of the moment. But "it really looks like I will be losing at this rate," she quietly admitted.
'If only the Archive didn't record when someone was using it,' she lamented. That would have been a super easy way to cheat her way to winning.
Still, she could admit—if only to herself—that this bet was a stupid idea. She knew she was losing the moment she agreed, but she was still the Senju princess and the number one medic in Japan, and she had her pride.
So what if she had taken a losing bet? She would try her best to win it either way. Sure, the Restoration Magic branch was an extensive and very much unexplored territory of magic, one she had felt drawn to the moment she read the theories proposed by Dumbledore. Incomplete and half-baked as they might have been, she had felt a pull when she read them.
'Like this was the path for me and every medical witch in the world,' she thought before shaking her head and returning to her research. She still had a long way to go if she wanted to win that stupid bet.
"It's just 0.1%, Tsunade. You can do it," she encouraged herself.
X_
A/N: for support you can join me on p@treon/hunter20.
.Thank you.