[Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Yewen,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Enclosed you will find a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September the first. We await your owl by no later than July the thirty-first.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress]
James was lying asleep on the cold floor, and from the look of it, he was sleeping quite peacefully.
Arno, meanwhile, sat on the edge of his bed, opened the parchment envelope in his hands, and read through the letter from Hogwarts by the orange glow of the lamp.
"Hm... Hogwarts." He let out a soft sigh and muttered to himself, "Unexpected, sure, but I suppose it does make sense as a plot development."
The moment he saw that letter, he accepted the truth of it. He did not believe this was some kind of prank. No one was going to forge an acceptance letter from a magic school and train an owl to deliver it just to mess with an underage orphan.
So this meant he had been reincarnated into the magical world of Harry Potter?
Well, if that was the case, then his cheat ability finally made sense.
That said, it was 1991 now... if he remembered correctly, that meant he ought to be starting school the same year as Harry Potter, didn't it?
For some reason, an image of a noseless bald man appeared in his mind, grinning at him.
And honestly, he had to admit it: Voldemort's laugh really was weirdly unforgettable. Even after eleven years in a new life, he still remembered it clearly.
Arno had not exactly been a die-hard Harry Potter fan in his previous life, but he had at least watched all the films once. Even after being reincarnated for so many years, he still remembered quite a lot of the broad plot.
Which meant he was about to spend the most thrilling and perilous seven years of his life at the safest magical school in the world.
It was not danger itself that bothered him. He was more worried about what kind of learning environment the next seven years were going to be.
Still, all that aside, going to Hogwarts to study magic really was the best choice available to him right now.
"Ugh... my head..."
The noise from the floor broke his train of thought. James sat up clutching his head, rubbing his face as he muttered groggily, "I remember... I think some flying cat-faced monster knocked me out... Huh? Arno, any idea what that was...?"
"...Thud!"
Arno lowered the baseball bat and looked at James, who had woken up for all of two seconds before dropping back to sleep, wearing an expression of perfectly measured apology.
"Sorry about that. This really wasn't the right time for you to wake up. Get some more sleep."
Better not let his big-mouthed friend know about this sort of thing.
He snapped his fingers, and the baseball bat in his hand broke apart into tiny specks of light and vanished. At the same time, a wave of weak dizziness washed over him, and his temples began to throb.
"Just as I thought. Projecting a baseball bat still takes quite a lot out of me."
That was another ability granted to him by the Arcane Handbook: [Arcane Projection Magic].
So long as his mental strength was sufficient, as long as he understood an object's basic material and function, he could project it into existence using magic.
The larger, more complex, and more intricate the object, the greater the drain on both his mental strength and magical power.
At present, the things he could reliably project were small items like stones and sheets of paper. The most complicated thing he had managed so far was that smooth baseball bat from just now.
A low hooting sound came from the windowsill.
Arno turned his head. The owl was staring at him with its head tilted, its yellow eyes radiating a very clear sort of impatience, as if to say, Well? Are you writing back or not?
He nodded apologetically to it. There was nothing for it. He genuinely had not prepared any little snack to tip the feathery postman.
With another thought, he projected a fresh sheet of parchment and a quill, copying the material of the Hogwarts letter.
Then, by the moonlight coming through the window and using the hard bedboard as his desk, he began writing his reply.
The tip of the quill scratched softly across the parchment, leaving behind lines of emerald-green ink.
Once he finished, he hesitated for a second. How exactly was he supposed to attach the letter? Tie it to the owl's leg? Hm... if he annoyed it, surely it wouldn't claw his face off, would it?
The owl seemed to understand his problem and simply leaned forward to take the reply in its beak.
Then it gave Arno an almost insultingly human glare before beating its wings and vanishing into the night.
...
July 28th, 1991. Morning.
A full night had passed since Arno received his Hogwarts letter.
The orphanage bell rang on schedule. Arno sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes, and looked over at the next bed. James was still fast asleep, drool hanging from the corner of his mouth, apparently in the middle of a pleasant dream.
That hit from yesterday... probably hadn't actually damaged the kid, had it?
Arno felt a little guilty.
After thinking it over, he decided to shake James awake anyway. Then he dragged the half-asleep boy to the communal washroom. Once they had washed up, he joined the rest of the orphanage children and lined up with them to head into the church hall next door.
Today was Sunday.
According to the arrangement between the orphanage and the church, every Sunday the children had to attend prayers with the clergy and listen to the priest's sermon.
No one in the line was talking. Their steps dragged, their eyes were dull, and their faces were blank. Being hauled out of bed at the crack of dawn on a weekend to listen to what sounded like incomprehensible scripture was genuinely miserable for children their age.
The church was old, its stained-glass windows casting brilliant patterns of color in the morning light. The low hum of the organ echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling.
The priest stood before the altar in white vestments, Bible in hand, his lips moving as he recited those prayers the children had heard countless times and never once understood.
Arno sat on the last pew, rising, sitting, bowing his head, and making the sign of the cross along with everyone else.
He did not believe in God. Most of the children here did not.
But once Mass was over, the church served a generous breakfast.
Hot milk, fresh-baked bread with a little butter, and three fruit sweets for each child.
That breakfast was enough to get every one of them through the long ceremony in perfect silence.
Like the others, Arno kept his eyes lowered. Though his ears listened to the rise and fall of the priest's voice, his mind was leafing through the Arcane Handbook. Before school started, he had decided to sort through his current condition and all the magic he had learned so far.
At that moment, a blue panel only he could see appeared before his eyes:
[Rank: Apprentice Arcanist (Tier One)]
[Mental Strength: 19]
—Your mind is sharper than that of most children your age. You are not quite at photographic memory, but memorizing books is definitely easier for you than for others.
[Magic Power: 40/40]
—The average adult wizard stands at 100. You are still far from that, but this is enough for now.
[Known Spells:
Mage Hand | Cost: 1 magic power/minute (sustained casting) | An invisible, intangible hand of force
Arcane Missile | Cost: 3 magic power/shot | A magically guided projectile that tracks its target
Mana Sense | Cost: 1 magic power/minute | Detects the flow of magic and traces of magical activity
Arcane Shield | Cost: 5 magic power (activation) + 2 magic power/minute | An energy barrier that blocks physical and magical attacks
Analysis Vision | Cost: 4 magic power/use | Sees through magical structures and the composition of objects
Arcane Mark | Cost: 2 magic power | Places a magical marker that only you can sense
Fine Mana Control (Passive) | Increases ordinary spell accuracy by 10%
—Ordinary spell power +10%, failure rate -10%]**
[Projection Magic Rank: D]
[Currently Projectable Materials: wooden clubs, bricks, common tools (hammers, crowbars, etc.), simple obstacles]
[Advancement Requirement: Reach Mental Strength 20 and construct one second-tier spell.]
The spells shown on the panel were all the abilities Arno currently possessed.
Honestly, it was a little ridiculous. He had complained to himself more than once about the irony of a transmigrator arriving with a magical grimoire, only to end up in a world where magic did not even seem to exist.
As recently as the day before yesterday, he had thought these abilities would be good for little more than cheating lazily through daily life or pulling cheap parlor tricks. He had not expected them to make any real difference to his future.
And yet he had never stopped studying and experimenting with magic.
Probably because he could not quite let it go. If he had this kind of power, then he had to see what he could make of it.
The trouble was that the process was much more complicated than he had imagined.
Take the most basic spell, [Mage Hand], for example.
According to the Arcane Handbook, the core of arcane magic lay in construction. A caster had to use mental strength to build an extraordinarily complex energy structure inside the mind: a spell model.
Only after successfully constructing that model could the caster use an incantation or a hand gesture as a sort of switch, guiding magical power along the model's pathways with mental force until the spell was finally released.
It sounded very cool.
In practice... the first time Arno tried it, the headache lasted three full days.
The good news was that the Arcane Handbook spared him the hardest step. As long as his mental strength met the requirement, the handbook would automatically complete the initial construction of the spell model. All he had to do was use his own mind to copy that ready-made model into his head.
It was like the difference between building a house from the ground up and furnishing one from an architect's plans.
But the bad news was this:
Ever since one day a year ago, his mental strength had stopped increasing entirely.
He had even tried studying dense and obscure religious texts, but that number remained nailed in place, utterly unmoving.
Nineteen.
For a whole year now, it had still been nineteen.
He could vaguely feel it, as if he had run into an invisible wall. There was something waiting for him on the other side, but no matter what he did, he could not get over it.
Maybe... the knowledge currently available to him was simply too basic?
If that was the case, then going to Hogwarts to study really was the best option he could reach at present.
"Dong, dong."
The church bell rang right on time, and the priest ended the day's prayer exactly on cue.
Arno snapped out of his thoughts. Just as he was about to follow the other children to the back hall to collect the Sunday breakfast, Sister Anna called out to him.
"Mr. Yewen."
Arno turned his head and looked toward the plump middle-aged nun standing not far away. She was a devout Catholic who handled the day-to-day affairs of the orphanage.
Though she was rather strict with them in everyday life, Sister Anna never made things difficult for any of the children as long as they behaved themselves.
"Mr. Yewen, come here for a moment," Sister Anna called again.
"Yes, Sister Anna," Arno replied at once, jogging over to her.
By then, he had already noticed that her expression did not look very good.
"Did I do something wrong, Sister Anna?" Arno asked obediently with his head lowered, while inwardly trying to guess why she had singled him out.
She did not look pleased, so no matter what the reason was, looking humble and ready to admit fault was the safest approach.
Sister Anna frowned and gave the boy in front of her a long, careful look before speaking.
"Get yourself ready and come with me. Someone wants to adopt you."
"Huh?" Arno froze at the news. He glanced up at Sister Anna's thoroughly unhappy face and asked weakly, "Sister Anna... isn't that supposed to be a good thing?"
For the orphanage, after all, even though finances were not especially dire, having an orphan adopted was still good news.
One less mouth to feed meant more food for everyone else.
"Yes, it is a good thing," Sister Anna said, frowning more deeply, clearly unimpressed by the prospective guardian. "But the man who wants to adopt you is a lunatic."
If he had not been willing to take in an orphan, she would probably have thrown him out already.
"Why do you say that?" Arno asked, puzzled.
"Lord preserve us." Anna made the sign of the cross over her chest, let out a long breath, and said as calmly as she could, "That white-bearded old man claims he's a wizard."
"..."