Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

In early May, the Scottish Highlands finally showed signs of spring.

The grass was a vibrant green, a warm breeze swept across the Black Lake, and the afternoon sun made the lake surface shine.

Several giant squid floated to the surface of the water to bask in the sun, their tentacles lazily outstretched, occasionally slapping the water's surface, the splashes of water being dispersed by the wind.

The young wizards changed into thinner robes and sat in twos and threes on the lawn outside the castle. Some were reading, some were chatting, and some were just lying around doing nothing.

The Quidditch pitch is crowded from morning till night. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are vying for the right to use the pitch, with the two captains standing in the middle of the field gesturing with brooms at each other, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.

The Hufflepuff wizards spread blankets on the lawn, covered with food they had brought from the kitchen, while most of the Slytherin members stayed in the common room.

There was a wall separating the situation outside from the laughter inside the castle.

The Death Eaters caused two more incidents in northern England, which the Daily Prophet reported on for three consecutive days, changing its wording from "serious concern" to "under investigation," and then to "warlocks beware."

Personnel changes at the Ministry of Magic are becoming more and more frequent, and the patrol areas of the Dementors continue to expand, but these young wizards don't care.

They were more concerned about how many weeks until the final exams, who would be playing the next Quidditch match, and whether Honeydukes' new Spicy Bee Candy was as sweet as the previous one.

Dumbledore appeared once last week at dinner, sitting in the middle of the professors' table. He ate only a few bites, exchanged a few words with Professor McGonagall, stood up and left in a hurry, glancing in Regulus's direction as he passed the Slytherin table.

Regulus gestured with his cup of pumpkin juice, and the old man's blue eyes curved slightly behind his half-moon glasses. Apart from that, there was no further communication between the two.

The principal's chair was empty again the next day.

Regulus has been back at Hogwarts for over a week now. His life has been quite ordinary: attending classes, eating meals, sitting in the common room, and going to the library as usual.

Life was very quiet, so quiet that he became a little lazy and found himself lacking energy.

From the moment he stepped out of Hogwarts as Geralt, he was constantly moving.

I followed Dumbledore across the moors of northern England and the Scottish border, clashed with Aberforth at the Hog's Head pub, blew up the walls outside Skipton Castle, and watched the ruins left by Voldemort after he massacred the village from Durham Cliffs.

Then came France, where he clashed with smuggling gangs, set fire to the sky, negotiated with the French Ministry of Magic, and watched his cousin's growing belly in a small café on the Left Bank of Paris.

For more than a month, everything was within his control, but the rhythm was not his.

Dumbledore's course of action kept changing, and he had to keep up; Voldemort's observations fell from the sky, and he had to receive them; when smuggling gangs came, he had to fight them.

Now that he's back at Hogwarts and the rhythm is back in his hands, he doesn't want to do anything anymore.

Campus life is too slow. Nothing is in a rush or a hurry. The class schedule is fixed, the meal times are fixed, and even the ghosts that pass by are the same few people.

There's nothing I'm having trouble adjusting to, it's just that I can't seem to muster the energy.

He hadn't cared how his friends were doing in their training. He hadn't forgotten his promise to teach them a lesson before he left, but he was too lazy to do it.

Those guys tacitly pretended that sentence never existed, and none of them came over to say what they had practiced, how they had improved, or whether they could do it.

Avery is such a chatterbox. Every day at mealtime, he sits next to me and chatters on and on, talking about everything from Quidditch scores to whoever's finger was pricked by Professor Sprout's poisonous tentacles. But he never mentions this one thing.

Hermes avoided his gaze, wishing he could hide himself from his sight.

Alex remained calm, greeting people politely and discussing academic matters, but never mentioning the test.

Lena and Samuel are another story altogether. Lena is always around Alex, while Samuel stays by himself and doesn't let anyone get close to him.

He didn't say anything, so everyone pretended nothing had happened.

It's like elementary school students discovering that the teacher forgot to assign homework, they exchange knowing glances, but no one reminds them. If you don't say anything, I won't say anything either, and all is well.

Regulus didn't bother to explain. He himself rarely went to the Room of Requirement. After class, he would rush to the library, occupy his usual window seat, and flip through alchemical texts, read the extended theories of transmutation, and occasionally take out a few pieces of parchment to draw loop diagrams.

Life was relaxed and slow-paced, like being on vacation.

More than a week has passed just like that.

......

Thursday afternoon, Transfiguration class.

Professor McGonagall stood on the podium, her emerald green robe impeccably tailored, her gaze sweeping over everyone in the classroom from behind her square-framed glasses.

The afternoon sun was shining brightly, casting a clear parallelogram on the blackboard.

This lesson covers the reverse transformation of objects into animals, specifically how a turtle becomes a teacup.

McGonagall tapped the teapot on the lectern with her wand. In a burst of silvery-gray light, the teapot shrank, flattened, grew limbs and a shell, and transformed into a palm-sized hawksbill turtle, which slowly crawled across the lectern.

"The key to transforming animals into objects lies in the correspondence of materials," McGonagall's voice was clear and her tone serious. "The keratin of a tortoise shell corresponds to the glaze of ceramic, and the skin tissue corresponds to the density of the porcelain body. If the material correspondence is wrong, such as matching a tortoise shell to metal, the transformation will fail. Don't assume anything, observe first, and then start."

Each student had a turtle in front of them, and there were several spare turtles stacked together in a cage against the wall at the back of the classroom, basking in the sun.

Regulus looked down at his own creature, a grayish-green shell with its limbs half-retracted, revealing sharp nails. Its head was facing his fingers, and its black bean-sized eyes were unblinking.

He picked up his wand, pressing the tip against the edge of the tortoise shell, and silvery-gray light seeped in.

The turtle began to flatten in front of him, the curvature of its shell slowly smoothing out, and the luster of its keratin layer gradually transforming into the texture of a glaze.

The limbs retract and shrink into the body, then the body begins to stretch, the deck unfolds into the bottom of the cup, and the sides extend upwards into the cup wall. The patterns on the shell are left on the ceramic surface, turning into a light dark green pattern.

In less than two breaths, a turtle turned into a teacup.

The cup has a rounded rim, a smooth glaze, and clear edges of the patterns on the cup wall without any smudging.

Professor McGonagall walked over, picked up the teacup, turned it over, looked at the bottom, and then at the pattern on the inside of the cup.

"Not bad." She nodded, put it back, and walked away to check on the next student.

There were no bonus points, and Regulus didn't care.

He tapped the teacup with his wand again, making the patterns on it three-dimensional. Using transfiguration to create an embossed effect was purely out of boredom.

The pattern spread outwards from the center, with fine lines intertwining into a chaotic design. He hadn't decided what it would become, so the magic just ran on its own.

The school bell rang, and the young wizards stood up one after another.

Avery put the half-transformed turtle back into the cage, its shell still attached to half a teacup handle, and it was scratching at the cage with its claws in dissatisfaction.

Alex carefully put away his wand and gently placed the turtle back in its original position.

Hermes had already finished. The turtle turned into a teacup, and the teacup turned into a turtle. Both forms were perfect. He shoved the turtle into Samuel's arms, picked up his schoolbag, and walked out.

McGonagall's voice came from the direction of the podium: "Mr. Black, please stay for a moment."

Avery looked back, and Regulus waved him over, signaling them to go ahead.

The door closed, and the classroom fell silent, leaving only Regulus and Professor McGonagall.

He vaguely sensed something was wrong, and a thought flashed through his mind, as if he had forgotten something.

What was it again?

McGonagall sat behind the lectern, her gaze stern behind her square-framed glasses. Her hands were folded on the table, and an open notebook lay open in front of her.

"Where's the homework, Mr. Blake?"

Regulus opened his mouth, but his expression froze.

I remember now, the professor did remind me before I left that I had to do my homework on time even while I was away, and that I had to hand it in when I got back.

He agreed at the time, and then never thought about it again.

"Professor," Regulus quickly composed himself, his tone very respectful, "the outfit you made for me before, the permanent transformation, was extremely effective. It was completely undamaged after intense combat, and its stability was exceptional. The fabric's self-healing function was a great help in actual combat."

Professor McGonagall looked at him, her expression unchanged.

"I encountered some new problems with the application of Transfiguration outside, especially at the intersection of Transfiguration and Alchemy," Regulus continued, his expression unchanged. "The circuit drawing in Alchemy is essentially the precise manipulation of the magical patterns inside a material, which overlaps with the underlying logic of Transfiguration in changing the form of matter. One guides the reorganization of patterns, while the other forces a change in form. Ultimately, both allow matter to present a new structure under the influence of magic."

His attitude was impeccably sincere, and his eyes were full of thirst for knowledge: "I've flipped through a few alchemy textbooks in France and have some ideas about this intersection. I'd like to ask the professor for advice."

McGonagall remained silent for a moment, unsure whether he had thought about the question beforehand or had made it up on the spot to avoid his homework.

If he had thought about it beforehand, it means he was indeed busy outside of school, flipping through textbooks, thinking about theories, exploring different disciplines, and making comparisons.

If it were something that came to mind on the spot, one could rattle off a few words in the few seconds it takes to be rushed into an assignment, stringing together the underlying principles of Transfiguration and Alchemy in a logically consistent way, making it sound like a serious research topic.

In either case, it's quite rare, and it's something he's capable of doing.

But she is a professor after all, and this question is indeed profound and worth answering: "Alchemy and Transfiguration do share some underlying logic, but their boundaries are also very clear."

Transfiguration deals with the form of an existing object, changing it while maintaining its inherent continuity. Alchemy, on the other hand, directly rewrites the essential structure of a material without going through the intermediate step of form transformation.

The direction of considering both together is correct, but be careful not to confuse their operational boundaries.

She looked at Regulus and said earnestly, "If we can continue down this path, we can indeed find something new."

Regulus's eyes flashed with gratitude, and he bowed slightly: "Thank you, Professor."

Mad's expression softened slightly, though his eyes remained stern, but his brow no longer furrowed, and he gripped the window.

"Professor, there is an objective fact," he said very sincerely, "during my time away from school, I have been following Professor Dumbledore around and have never stayed in one place for more than a day."

There was no table, no books, no inkwell. One night I slept on a rock by the sea, and when I woke up the next day, my robe was covered in salt. These conditions—

He spread his hands, looking embarrassed: "I really have no way to write the paper."

McGonagall's gaze behind his glasses shifted from stern to sharp, and Reguluston sensed something was wrong.

"That sounds reasonable, but Mr. Black, this is the first time I've ever heard the saying that there are no conditions for doing homework in the magical world."

Her tone was calm, yet extremely authoritative: "Can't Transfiguration give you what you need?"

Regulus shut his mouth, adopted a posture of giving up on arguing, and stood obediently.

The professor's statement is absolutely flawless.

He used the wrong excuse.

Professor McGonagall pulled a piece of parchment from her drawer and slapped it onto the table. The paper shimmered faintly, revealing neat, orderly lines of writing.

"Submit them to my office before the weekend, each one no less than thirty inches long."

Regulus readily accepted, took the parchment, folded it, and put it in the inner pocket of his robe: "Very well, Professor."

Then he bowed slightly, respectfully said goodbye, and turned to walk towards the door.

As they reached the door, the professor's voice came from behind again: "Mr. Black."

Regulus turned around.

Welcome back.

Regulus smiled. "Thank you, Professor."

......

Dinner at the Slytherin long table.

Regulus sat in his seat, having eaten half of the food on his plate.

Opposite him are Hermes and Alex, next to him is Avery, and diagonally opposite him are Lena and Samuel.

He raised his head, his gaze slowly shifting, his eyes filled with hostility.

The five people slowed down at the same time.

"At 8 PM tonight, the House of Response will be there."

After finishing speaking, he put down his napkin, stood up, and left for the library, leaving the five people behind him looking at each other in bewilderment.

Professor McGonagall's urging for homework is perfectly reasonable, but the need to catch up on homework is annoying.

If he's unhappy, then nobody else should have a good time either.

None of these guys are innocent.

Why is no one helping him with his homework?

Does this kind of thing need to be taught?