Well, of all the people to run into in the Hogwarts Library, Albert spotted an acquaintance he hadn't expected.
As he turned his head, attempting to discreetly unwrap a hard chocolate candy—a necessary fuel source for academic grind—he spotted Miss Field, the talented third-year he knew from the Transfiguration Club. She was sitting a few tables away, equally engrossed in her studies.
Their eyes met. Field immediately noticed the delicate crinkle of the candy wrapper in his hand and, though confined by the oppressive silence of Madam Pince's domain, a mischievous glint appeared in her eyes. She gave him a silent, knowing wink, a shared acknowledgment of their minor transgression.
Albert slipped the candy into his mouth, savoring the slow melt, and decided to seize the opportunity. He gathered his Charms paper—the one that detailed his Magic Lamp concept—and quietly walked over to her table. He gently slid into the chair opposite her.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," Albert greeted her in a low, conspiratorial whisper.
"Be careful," Field mouthed back, her eyes flicking toward Madam Pince, who was currently rearranging the Restricted Section with terrifying efficiency. "One wrong noise, and she'll kick you straight out, quill and all."
"But she won't notice a couple of silent, studious juniors," Albert countered, pulling a few more hard candies from his pocket and pushing them across the table. "They're hard candies, they require no chewing, and hence, produce no audible evidence of wrongdoing. Consider it a study aid. Do you want one?"
Field eyed the candy, then the elaborate paper he'd brought over, and immediately saw through his polite facade. She popped a candy into her mouth, the minimal movement barely disturbing the air. "Alright, Anderson. Cut the pleasantries. Tell me, what great, world-changing service do you require of me that necessitates the bribery of imported sweets?"
"You are, as always, too sharp," Albert admitted with a genuine smile. He slid the parchment toward her, pointing to a small section where he'd transcribed a lengthy paragraph. He then quietly explained his true, subversive goal: the invention of a Textual Replication Charm—essentially, magical copy-and-paste.
He described how tedious it was to manually transcribe lengthy quotes for essays, lamenting the wasted hours that could be spent on genuine theoretical work. "I need a spell to replicate blocks of text from one parchment to another, flawlessly and instantly. The current methods are too time-consuming."
Albert waited for her response, but Field simply stared at him, her expression a mixture of fascination and horrified amusement.
"My word," she finally whispered, shaking her head. "How truly, utterly lazy must a wizard be to dedicate their considerable intellect to inventing a spell solely to avoid handwriting? That's... inspiringly Gryffindor."
"Laziness drives innovation, Miss Field," Albert stated with unwavering sincerity. "The entire purpose of inventing charms is to save time, save effort, and improve efficiency. Every spell we learn is simply an invention born out of a profound desire to avoid a laborious task."
"You actually managed to defend extreme sloth with academic rigor," Field said, genuinely impressed. "You really are something else."
"However," she continued, her tone shifting to a more serious, technical one, "I can't help you with replication. That involves complex mass duplication and preservation of the ink's magical signature—it's far closer to advanced Conjuration than Transfiguration. But your paper has a small typo here." She pointed to a slightly misspelled word in his handwritten summary. "And I can help you with your original problem: textual editing."
She raised her wand, a slim piece of dark wood, and tapped the erroneous letter on the parchment's surface. With a smooth, subtle ripple of magic, the incorrect letter vanished, and the correct letter reformed itself in the space, completing the word flawlessly.
"That," Field explained, her voice lowered to the pitch of a teacher, "is a basic application of the Transfiguration Spell. It's how we correct minor errors without resorting to messy erasure charms or starting a whole new sheet. Professor McGonagall taught us the simplified version last semester—the one for quick ink correction."
Albert's mind immediately raced. The Transfiguration Spell—Transfiguro—was the pinnacle of non-human Transfiguration, a known NEWT-level piece of magic. To achieve the full spell, one needed complete mastery over the target object's elemental structure. What Field had demonstrated was merely a simplified application, yet the underlying principle was the same: reshaping the very structure of the ink.
"That's fantastic," Albert murmured, already dissecting the spell's components in his head. "I'll definitely be practicing that as soon as I feel confident with the Summoning Charm."
"You'll get a crack at it eventually," Field noted. "Professor McGonagall usually introduces the simplified Simple Textual Alteration charm—the one I just used—to second and third years when the essays start getting seriously long. It's an indispensable trick." She then skimmed his paper, stopping at the lengthy section on the Magic Lamp. Her eyebrows lifted higher and higher as she read his theoretical framework.
"Wait a moment," she said, tapping the section on Volatile Light Storage. "This is phenomenal. You're not just writing a paper; you've conceptualized a way to completely bypass the need for oil lamps! This is far beyond the level of a first-year. Professor Flitwick will be absolutely thrilled that you conceptualized this Magic Lamp idea."
She looked at him with an intense expression. "Seriously, why aren't you in Ravenclaw? That kind of logical, systematic thought process belongs with us."
"Perhaps the Sorting Hat valued my potential for audacious risk more than my thirst for dusty books," Albert shrugged, defending his house. "Besides, learning is learning, regardless of which tower I sleep in."
"True enough," Field conceded, though she still seemed slightly disappointed. She handed the parchment back. "One last thought on the Magic Lamp. The biggest problem with that concept isn't Transfiguration—it's sustaining the charm without draining the caster, and containing the magical volatility in the 'vessel.' To achieve true permanence, you may need to look outside Charms theory entirely."
"And where would that lead me?" Albert asked, intrigued.
Field's face cracked into a truly wicked, anticipatory smile. "To Alchemy, Albert. To the deepest, darkest, most secretive art of all. If you want to create a permanent, self-sustaining magical object—a philosopher's light source—you are stepping into Flamel's territory. You need to look into transmutation, elemental bonding, and the concept of a self-sustaining reactive core."
Albert felt a jolt of excitement, followed by a wave of cautious pragmatism. Alchemy. The word evoked images of impossible goals, ancient symbols, and the only known creator of the Philosopher's Stone: Nicolas Flamel.
Alchemy, Albert mused internally, gathering his papers. The ancient discipline. In the Muggle world, it was the precursor to chemistry—the often-misguided search for the transmutation of base metals into gold, and the ultimate panacea.
But here, in the wizarding world... it's clearly something far more complex. Is it truly just magical chemistry? A system for forcing the elemental change of magical objects? If I want a permanently glowing, contained light source, I need an object that continually transmutes latent magical energy into light—a perpetual charm, which is inherently against the fundamental laws of charm-work.
It's a huge, time-consuming field. I haven't even finished reading the Selected Nineteenth-Century Spells yet. I need to take things one step at a time.
"I'll save that for my summer holiday reading," Albert said, rising from the table. "I appreciate the insight, Field. If I ever do invent a working, production-model Magic Lamp, you will be the recipient of the very first prototype, regardless of the cost."
"I'll hold you to that, Anderson," Field promised, already turning back to her thick textbook. "Now, off you go. Your distracting genius is disturbing my focused mediocrity."
Albert returned to Shanna's table, packed his bag, and together they made their way out of the library, the great silence giving way to the low, humming sounds of the castle corridors.
"Who was that you were talking to?" Shanna asked, clutching her copy of Albert's essay structure. "She seemed incredibly knowledgeable, and a little terrifying."
"That was Field. She's in the Transfiguration Club—a third-year, and excellent at it." Albert briefly summarized the conversation. "I just asked her for a way to correct typos on parchment without needing an Erasure Charm. She showed me the principle behind the Transfiguration Spell."
"The Transfiguration Spell?" Shanna repeated, her face going pale. She stopped mid-step. "But Albert, you mentioned that's the toughest spell for seventh years! That's NEWT level!"
Albert stopped, realizing he had casually thrown out a term that meant nothing to her, yet somehow sounded intimidating.
"Do you even know what NEWT is?" he asked gently.
Shanna's face was utterly blank. "No. I just know it sounds hard. Like... harder than an O.W.L.?"
"It is," Albert sighed, leaning against a stone wall. "O.W.L. stands for Ordinary Wizarding Level—that's the required pass-out exam at the end of the fifth year. NEWT stands for Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test. It's the final wizarding examination, the one you take at the end of seventh year to determine your career path."
Shanna's jaw dropped slightly. The reality of the magical education system, and the vast amount of knowledge she was expected to acquire, suddenly became terrifyingly clear.
"A seventh-year final exam spell," she whispered, looking back toward the library. "And you asked a third-year about it, who casually demonstrated a piece of it, and is now encouraging you to study Alchemy." She looked down at the parchment in her hand, the detailed structure of the essay suddenly looking less like a gift and more like an impossible benchmark.
"The distance is just... too far," she concluded with genuine distress. "I haven't even mastered the basic Vanishing Spell in Transfiguration, and I'm supposed to be thinking about a final exam spell? I can barely squeeze out three inches of original thought for this Charms paper, and you're planning a Magic Lamp!"
Albert felt a twinge of guilt. He had inadvertently highlighted the gulf between his accelerated learning curve and the pace of the standard Hogwarts curriculum.
"Hey. It's a journey, not a sprint," Albert reassured her, softening his tone. "Every wizard starts somewhere. The fact that you realize this now—that you see the need to push yourself—is the most important part. Everyone has goals, no matter how ridiculous. Mine is a Magic Lamp. Yours might be something simpler, like earning an Outstanding on that Charms paper. You can achieve both."
"But I don't want to just muddle through until the O.W.L.s," Shanna insisted, turning to face him fully, her expression determined. "I want to be able to do all the things I read about in the books. I want to be like you and Field—to understand the magic."
She paused, taking a deep breath, and made a request that was a clear sign of her renewed motivation. "Albert, when are you free next? Can you help me? Not with homework, but with the actual magic. Can you tutor me in Transfiguration? I need to stop just learning the hand movements and start understanding the theory behind the spells."
Albert looked at the raw determination in her eyes. It was a refreshing change from the comfortable apathy of his other roommates. He had been planning to dedicate his free time to the advanced book he'd borrowed, but he recognized the importance of this request. Tutoring would also force him to articulate his understanding, which was a powerful way to solidify his own knowledge.
"I can certainly fit that in, Shanna," Albert agreed, pulling out a small notebook to check his schedule. "But you have to promise me one thing: this is about systematic study. No cheating, no shortcuts. Just two Muggle-borns trying to master the magic that everyone else takes for granted."
"Deal," Shanna said, a look of focused relief washing over her face. "When and where?"
"How about the Charms classroom—it's usually empty after dinner—three times a week? And let's start by figuring out why the most basic match-to-needle Transfiguration keeps turning my pencil into a rusty fork instead."
They began walking again, the weighty issues of NEWTs, Alchemy, and magical innovation temporarily replaced by the simple, immediate challenge of Transfiguration. The journey to master magic had just gained an unexpected but very determined companion.