At Hogwarts, the story begins with deconstructing Avada Kedavra.

On Christmas morning, a rare blizzard completely sealed Hogwarts in a pale world.

The common room was deserted; most of the young wizards had fled the cold castle, and even the knights in the portraits had squeezed into other picture frames in search of mulled wine. Only the fire in the fireplace flickered and crackled, barely dispelling the chill that seeped into the cracks in the stone.

Lucian sat alone in a high-backed chair by the window, his notebook spread out on his lap.

His quill hovered over the parchment, the tip moving rapidly, the ink spreading out in a chaotic black blotch on the paper.

On this morning that should have been spent enjoying hot cocoa and unwrapping gifts, he was reflecting. Or more accurately, he was trying to decipher the fragmented dialogue that spanned a thousand years the previous night.

After obtaining the Star Eye, Rowena Ravenclaw's remaining divine consciousness did not grant him any other inheritance, leaving only a few illogical fragments of images and a few vague prophecies.

"You've left me with a good riddle."

"If you can't say it directly, it's because that 'being' is watching us, right?"

He took a deep breath, put down his pen, and began to sketch those fragmented images on the paper, trying to forcefully connect them with logical reasoning.

Lucian closed his eyes, and the first image that Reina had conveyed to him flashed through his mind:

It was an abstract oil painting. Beneath the vast starry sky, the once-brilliant magical lights were extinguishing one by one. On the ground, countless indistinct figures converged into a gray sea. They possessed no magic, but their upward gazes coalesced, forming an untouchable, suffocating iron curtain that was slowly and resolutely pressing towards the sky.

Rowena's voice sounded like it came from the deep sea, broken and painful:

"...It wasn't disappearance...it was rejection..."

"...billions of observers...an anchor point of reality..."

Lucian opened his eyes.

"The observer... a Muggle."

He wrote on the paper: [Procreation] + [Rationality] = [Iron Law]

"So that's how it is..." Lucien stared at the still-wet ink on the writing.

"We've always thought the International Law of Secrecy was to protect wizards from Muggle persecution, or to maintain some fragile peace. But that's wrong."

This is not a matter of legal constraints, but a struggle for living space.

Magic is essentially a miracle that distorts reality and defies common sense. But today, the outside world is filled with so-called believers in science and reason.

Billions of Muggles firmly believe in the rules of the mundane world, that cups cannot turn into mice, and that humans cannot fly. This massive and terrifying collective will is negating the very foundation of magic.

It's not about using swords, but about using "common sense".

"The so-called witch hunts, the practice of burning witches at the stake, were far too merciful. What we are facing now is a more desperate and thorough cleansing, a silent suffocation."

This is exile.

The tide of memories surged once more, and Rowena Ravenclaw's figure grew incredibly tall.

"For the past thousand years, I have witnessed all the prophecies..."

"I saw the end of the world, and I saw how the flame of magic was extinguished in mediocrity."

In order to prevent wizards and magic from becoming nothing more than legends, I had to make that choice.

It became the cornerstone of anchoring magic.

In the scene, Rowena begins to disintegrate, transforming into countless silver chains shimmering with starlight.

The chains roared and soared into the sky, merging into the gray canopy that pressed down overhead.

"I covered every brick of this castle with my will, and under the constraints of physics and materialism, I forcibly opened up a sanctuary called Hogwarts."

"...As long as I don't let go...as long as this castle stands, magic will never die..."

The image gradually faded, leaving only that lonely shadow struggling to stay afloat in the void.

Lucian turned to look at the dark Forbidden Forest outside the window, and the long-standing question in his heart was finally answered.

No wonder...

No wonder modern magic is far less powerful than the earth-shattering magic of ancient legends.

In the era of Celtic mythology, wizards like Merlin or Morgan le Fay could move mountains and fill seas—that was true power. But now? Even Dumbledore and Voldemort, hailed as the greatest of their time, have their duels confined more to the red and green beams of light emanating from the tips of their wands, like a dazzling yet rushed fireworks display.

The world has changed.

It has become too crowded, too rational, too noisy. This Muggle-dominated era is slowly squeezing the mystical side out of reality.

He turned the page, his fingers turning slightly white from the pressure.

Memory fragments flash back again,

This time, it was a dark, ancient Albanian forest. Towering, twisted trees stood tall, blocking out the sun and moon. In that endless shadow, he saw Helena Ravenclaw.

The legendary girl who stole treasures out of jealousy for her mother is now wearing that Ravenclaw crown.

Helena gazed desperately at the heavens, where only an invisible, suffocating force was gathering. Then, a silent lash descended from the void, a force meant to obliterate error.

The girl's spirit screamed in agony amidst the light, her soul being brutally torn apart.

From the shadows behind her, the man later known as Blood Man Barrow slowly emerged. His eyes were empty, devoid of even love or anger, and he mechanically raised his longsword.

Snapped.

A sharp crack shattered the silence of the common room. Lucien's quill pen had been snapped in two, ink splattering all over his hand.

"The so-called greedy daughter, the so-called jealous suitor... are all lies used to cover up the truth."

Even your own remnant soul believes your daughter is a greedy thief.

Lucien's voice was hoarse. He grabbed another pen, ignoring the ink stains on his hands, and recorded the chilling truth:

Rowena Ravenclaw, hailed as the wisest witch, attempted to cross mortal boundaries and challenge the will of the magical world. But this act provoked a backlash from the world. Helena stole the tiara not out of jealousy, but to escape to Albania carrying a curse powerful enough to destroy her mother.

As for Barrow... he was merely the executioner chosen by fate. The so-called "crime of passion" was just a tragedy that the world, in order to correct this mistake, forcibly used his hand to stage, a tragedy that conformed to the logic of mortals.

When history seems too bizarre, people always make up a vulgar story to explain it.

Lucian looked at the messy handwriting on the paper.

Even history can be arbitrarily erased, and even memories can be falsified.

This is the so-called destiny of this world. It does not allow anyone to substitute their own heart for the will of Heaven. Once you cross the line, it will turn you into a footnote in an absurd legend.

The fire in the fireplace had dimmed, leaving only a few embers that were slowly breathing in the ashes.

Lucien recalled the last words Rowena left behind, words that still send chills down his spine:

"...Muggles are thriving..."

If the world yearns to purify itself of uncontrollable magic and to return everything to the mundane laws of physics, then who is the agent it has chosen in this era?

"Harry Potter..."

Lucian murmured the name, his pen moving slowly across the paper. He drew a tilted scale next to the name.

"A perfect hybrid. A hinge connecting two worlds."

In Lucian's eyes, this bespectacled boy was a meticulously crafted artifact. Harry possessed wizarding blood, but he also possessed a thoroughly Muggle soul, nurtured in the cupboard.

He wrote a footnote next to it:

The funeral director of an old era. That boy who longed for family and warmth, perhaps never knew in his entire life that his true mission was to toll the death knell for the world he belonged to—how tragic.

The world's will doesn't need Harry to become a legend like Merlin. It only needs a knife, a knife stained with the rust of the mundane, yet capable of piercing the heart with precision. This knife's mission is to sever the cancerous growth that seeks immortality through Horcruxes, that clings to ancient dark magic and pure-blood honor.

Voldemort.

This is a most ironic and absurd drama: using a boy who yearns for the ordinary to strangle the most stubborn fanatic in the magical world. With Voldemort's fall, the proud and twisted backbone of dark magic is broken.

Immediately afterwards, the quill made a sharp screech on the parchment and wrote down the second name.

Hermione Granger.

Lucien pictured the girl with the messy brown hair. He remembered her raising her hand high during the Transfiguration class, and her tone of voice.

"It's Levi-Osa, not Levi-Osa."

"A clever, know-it-all lady?" Lucien shook his head.

Through the girl diligently memorizing her lessons, he seemed to see some enormous creature approaching.

He wrote heavily next to Hermione's name: Miracle Killer. Her thirst for knowledge was pure and sincere, yet she inadvertently became an accomplice in killing miracles. The world is always so cruel in exploiting the noblest qualities of mortals.

In this castle, besides herself, there was only her, and she had never truly revered "miracles" to her core.

Unconsciously, she acted as an agent of some grand will: emasculating those idealistic, wild, and indescribable magics into formulas that grovel beneath physics.

As the thought flashed through his mind, Lucien felt a chill. He examined his open notebook, which was filled with similar logical deductions.

When did he begin, like Hermione, to try to measure the mysterious outline with the yardstick of reason?

Could it be that he, too, had unknowingly become a tool in the hands of that grand will? This feeling of being manipulated by an invisible hand raised his vigilance against the world's will to its highest level.

In his memories of his past life, he was not so fanatical in pursuing the use of physics to define everything in the world; otherwise, he would not have practiced internal alchemy as well.

Since arriving in this world, his behavior has never been so fanatical, and he has not yet deeply regulated magic physically, which seems to be due to some kind of will.

But without him as a variable...

Lucian seemed to see Hermione Granger, the Minister of Magic, twenty years in the future. Every law she enacted turned wizards into nine-to-five clerks and wand-waving into a cramming exercise.

When the mysterious and unpredictable magic is completely incorporated into physics, and when incantations become written rules, magic itself dies.

Lucien tossed the quill pen aside, letting it roll to the floor. He leaned back wearily, letting his body sink into the velvet armchair, the back of which resembled a tombstone.

Rowena Ravenclaw left him with only a bunch of clueless puzzle pieces, but in this moment, he pieced together the breathtaking whole picture.

This simple battle between good and evil is a grand, silent "demystification movement"; or a wizarding version of "Journey to the West".

Voldemort was the gravedigger of the old magical era and the last symbol of pure-blood wizards, so he had to be executed.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, was an embalmer of the old era. He was both compassionate and cruel, slowly but surely helping the world to implement the irreversible euthanasia of magic, moving towards openness and democracy.

Harry and Hermione, on the other hand, are merely carefully cultivated scavengers for the new era. Their job is to clear away the remaining variables and then build a mundane, safe, and utterly devoid of miracles new order from the ruins.

Outside the window, the night wind of Hogwarts was still howling, but to Lucien, it sounded more like the last faint sigh of ancient magic in this world.

So... what am I then?

Lucien stood up, the velvet armchair making a dull thud on the stone floor. He walked to the tall, arched window and looked through the cold glass at the world buried under the snow.

The clouds, thick as lead, weighed heavily on the treetops of the Forbidden Forest. Above those clouds, Lucien seemed to sense some grand and cold will overlooking the world. Indifferently, it awaited all the actors in place, awaited the plot to slide flawlessly into its predetermined course.

He casually turned the broken quill into a match.

laugh.

A cluster of orange-red flames suddenly lit up in the dimly lit dormitory. He brought the faint spark close to the corner of the parchment.

The flames greedily licked the ink, causing the paper to curl and turn black. Those shocking deductions, those cruel truths about divinity and mortality, those last words that even Rowena couldn't finish, all turned into fragile ashes in the firelight.

"What a pity..."

Lucian watched as the ashes fell like snowflakes into the embers of the fireplace, his voice as soft as a sigh.

"I never intended to be a savior."

His blurry shadow was reflected in the glass window.

"I'm not here to play along with your act," he said softly to the empty space outside the window. "I'm here to overturn this game and witness the spectacle."

If there really is an iron curtain slowly pressing down overhead, if so-called reality is destined to stifle miracles, then what is the point of mastering magic? If we cannot tear a hole in this damned fate, then all of this is nothing more than the struggle of a prisoner.

Rowena's methods were destined to fail... but he was different from Rowena. Deep within his soul lay not only the coordinates of this world. Those memories from another world were themselves a kind of 'variable' that transcended the laws of this world. If Muggle 'common sense' could stifle magic, then could the 'truth' of another system also pry open this iron curtain?

He might find a new era of magic, or rather, a niche for this miracle, in countless possibilities.

That Christmas, the entire Hogwarts Castle was filled with the aroma of roast turkey and the joyful sounds of colorful firecrackers.

No one knows, and no one would believe, that behind a window at Hogwarts covered in frost, an eleven-year-old Ravenclaw freshman has just taken the wand that Rowena Ravenclaw was forced to put down a thousand years ago.