Understanding the school's supply system wasn't hard—at least not if you just needed a rough idea. Within the club, that kind of information was easy to get, and Andrew thought the idea had a lot of potential.
But the next monthly meeting was still a ways off. (If this were any ordinary club, that schedule would've basically meant disbandment, but thanks to their shared convictions, it ran very stably.) So he could only wait—for now, he calmly practiced Transfiguration while beginning to study Arithmancy.
But just as he was waiting for the right moment, the Magical Legends magazine office erupted into chaos again.
"Extra prints, extra prints! This one's way juicier than the last!"
"It's such a blessing not needing to revise the draft! Just double-check there's nothing that could get us reported by other schools—if not, send it out immediately!"
+++
"A little to the left… no, more…"
In Dumbledore's office—where Dumbledore was nowhere in sight—a pitiful Fawkes was being ordered about by the Sorting Hat, who was bossily instructing the phoenix to place its energized self on top of a book.
"Stories in books lack emotion. Compared to those, I far prefer tales written by young wizards. But this one… this one is different."
The Hat began laboriously extracting the story from the book—thanks to the magic cast upon it by the four founders, such a task was only slightly difficult for it.
"Mmm, just as I thought, there's a clever and handsome hat in this one! I knew it!"
It happily wiggled its pointy tip.
"Oh, this part too—excellent, excellent. They really are the essence of magic!"
Satisfied, the Hat ended the reading session and had Fawkes return it to its original place.
———
"Bloody hell! How could you do this?!"
Lockhart had gotten his hands on the latest issue almost immediately—but he was not in a good mood. Adventure novels were a competitive field, and the fiercest enemies were always your peers.
He'd already strived for authenticity—every story he told was really real. To collect these wonderful and truthful tales, he had traveled to the most remote and obscure corners of the world.
But how could this happen?!
The main character had shamelessly been made into Dumbledore. The adventures were completely fabricated—yet everyone loved them?! Why?
The last issue had practically dug up every secret in Hogwarts, so Lockhart figured they'd run out of ideas this time. But somehow they pulled out "A journey back to the founding of ancient Hogwarts"?
Use your brain! Time Turners are only for minors, aren't they?! Why are people so excited about Dumbledore meeting Gryffindor?!
———
"Albus."
Professor McGonagall stood by a stack of files, her gaze sharp as a blade.
"I'll have the paperwork done shortly, Minerva."
Dumbledore pushed the magazine slightly forward. "Would you care for a sweet?"
"Oh, alright…"
She hesitated, then gave in. After all, many professors were reading this magazine too.
"Fine. I must admit, these stories are wonderfully imaginative. But Albus, I need you to call a student assembly. They need to know the school's treasures have basically been fully excavated by you. Filch has been completely overwhelmed these past few days."
The combination of those tempting stories and Hogwarts' own geography had led to a rising number of students not returning to their dorms at night.
It felt a bit cruel to shatter their fantasies, but it was time to remind them to follow the rules—at least a little. Adults could distinguish reality from fiction, but the younger students were taking things way too seriously.
"Maybe it'll motivate them to improve their grades," Dumbledore said. "After all, it takes time to apply for a Time Turner—and didn't Madam Pince say students are spending more and more time in the library?"
"Yes, because Dumbledore said: 'Knowledge is the ladder to magical advancement.'"
"Dumbledore also said: 'Only by mastering the most basic spells and combining them can one turn magic into miracles.'"
"Dumbledore said: 'There are no spells you can't master—only lazy wizards.'"
…
McGonagall rattled off five or six of Dumbledore's motivational quotes.
"It's precisely because of these inspiring words that you didn't bother correcting them when they started spouting nonsense."
"Not entirely," Dumbledore replied.
Suddenly, the Sorting Hat spoke up.
"Gryffindor did have a fight with Slytherin. And Slytherin did leave the school afterward."
"They truly were the epitome of magic. Otherwise, how could I exist?"
As a hat that had to compose a new song every year, once the Sorting Hat saw the Magical Legends story featuring Gryffindor and discovered a long segment devoted to a "magnificent, magical hat," it became convinced the stories were mostly true—especially the part about the four founders being the pinnacle of magic. That part had made the Hat particularly happy.
"I'll definitely sing about that next year!"
Though good-natured, the Hat was a little vain. After reading the magazine, it realized that if it confirmed some parts were true, no one would dare dispute it.
And now, it was Dumbledore who had lost composure.
"Really?"
He'd skimmed the story before—enough to know that, to preserve the perfect illusion of this fictional adventure, he'd made sure Gryffindor hadn't heard anything from him about Hogwarts' future. He had also used his wand to permanently extract the relevant memories from himself.
[Still, at midnight, in dreams, those supposedly forgotten memories sometimes resurfaced—making Dumbledore feel closer to the essence of magic.]
"Not entirely true—I didn't see you back then," the Sorting Hat concluded bluntly.
It didn't know anything about the rest of the story, so there was no way it could've made it up.
Somewhere out of Andrew's awareness, he had narrowly avoided being strung up on the Astronomy Tower by a talking hat.
++++
"Perfect—now I've got enough money to buy an astrolabe. And I'm halfway to affording a broomstick for second year. If I skip the Nimbus series, I can pay in full."
Clueless and content, Andrew finally found time to read his readers' feedback.
Everyone loved the time-travel plot—no pressure at all to top it next issue. Meanwhile, Hufflepuffs had started recreating the foods Andrew had made up in the story, and Gryffindors had gotten into a few righteous two-on-one shouting matches with Slytherins in the Great Hall.
The school still hadn't cracked down on any of it. Ravenclaws, on the other hand, showed barely any reaction—though their readership rate was still decent.
"First-years are so easy to fool… all still struggling with the Levitation Charm…"
He mused while tugging at a wooden strip in his left hand with his wand. A rose bloomed from it.
"Maybe don't practice at the dinner table?"
His dormmates were unfazed. "You've been doing this for two days straight…"
"Sorry, habit…"
He examined the rose's realism, then reverted it back into a wood strip.
Yep. Just another day of Transfiguration practice.
T/N: For twenty chapters ahead on all my fics become a P@tron at [email protected]/LordHipposApostle