At Hogwarts, the story begins with deconstructing Avada Kedavra.

The small boat finally reached the shore, and the new students climbed onto the gravel-strewn ground amidst the commotion.

Hagrid, holding up the enormous lantern, counted the number of people and then knocked heavily on the castle's oak doors, which immediately swung open.

Standing at the door was a tall female sorceress dressed in a long emerald green robe. Her expression was solemn, and her hair was neatly combed.

In Lucian's eyes, this professor was completely different from the carefree young wizards around her. If Hagrid's magic was a wildfire burning wildly, then the flow of magic within Professor McGonagall was a finely woven net.

"This is the most meticulous wizard I have ever seen in this world," Lucian thought to himself, giving him a high evaluation.

Professor McGonagall looked at the crowd, pausing briefly as she passed Lucian.

It was hard not to notice him. Among a group of freshmen who were either soaking wet or had their robes askew, this boy, whose shoes weren't even stained with a speck of mud, stood out remarkably neatly.

The neatness carried a sense of detachment, as if he had just stepped out of his own study, rather than having just crossed a dark lake.

Welcome to Hogwarts.

Professor McGonagall gave a brief speech.

Just as the freshmen were nervously discussing the test content, the wall behind Lucian suddenly became blurry.

More than twenty milky white, semi-transparent figures passed through the wall and entered.

"ah--!"

Several terrified screams rang out from around them. Ron, even more frightened, shrank back behind Harry.

Lucien didn't move, not even blink. He simply pushed up his glasses, his gaze fixed on the ghostly figure floating past him, its clothes stained with silver blood—the Blood Man, Barrow.

In his mental vision, there were no terrifying spirits.

These so-called ghosts are merely remnants of souls, weak projections of consciousness onto the real world. They can think and speak, but they cannot cast magic. Magic requires life force as fuel, and ghosts have extinguished the flame of life. They are the loneliest observers in the magical world.

Lucian realized that without an end to death, life would lose its drive to move forward.

The blood-soaked Barrow, who was passing right in front of him, suddenly stopped abruptly.

As a Slytherin ghost, Barrow was known for his gloomy and terrifying nature; even Peeves was afraid of him. But at this moment, he sensed a gaze that sent chills down his spine.

The boy with glasses looked at him with eyes that were neither fearful nor curious.

It's deconstruction.

Barrow's already sinister face stiffened for a moment, then he silently and quickly drifted to the other side, avoiding this eerie newborn.

"Now, line up in a single file," Professor McGonagall returned. "Follow me." The doors to the Great Hall opened.

Thousands of candles floating in mid-air illuminated four long tables, which were laden with golden plates and goblets. Above them, the ceiling was enchanted, reflecting the starry sky outside.

"It's been enchanted; it looks like the sky outside. I read about it in 'Hogwarts: A History of the School,'" Hermione whispered, reciting beside Harry. Lucian glanced up.

It is indeed an extremely sophisticated weather simulation spell, with a wide coverage and real-time联动 (interconnection/coordination). However...

His sharp gaze caught sight of a section of the northwest corner of the ceiling. Several stars there were mechanically twitching at an almost imperceptible frequency, clearly due to the aging of the magic array nodes, causing data transmission to lag and creating a "dead pixel" that could not be refreshed.

"Another item to be fixed," he noted in his mind.

Professor McGonagall placed a four-cornered stool in front of the faculty seating area, on which sat the famous Sorting Hat.

The hat twisted and turned, a crack appeared, and it began to sing.

Lucian waited patiently.

"Hannah Abbott!" "Hufflepuff!"

……

As the list progresses, the pool of new recruits gets shorter and shorter.

Lucian Ashford.

As Professor McGonagall's voice faded, a brief buzz filled the Great Hall. Ashford, an ancient surname that had disappeared from the wizarding world for thirty years, had clearly attracted the attention of many pure-blood descendants.

At the Slytherin table, Malfoy was deathly pale. He stared intently at the figure walking onto the stage, hoping the chair would suddenly break.

Lucian slowly walked up to the platform.

He looked at the pointed wizard's hat placed on the four-cornered stool.

The hat brim was worn, the fabric was stained, and there was dust that had accumulated for who knows how many years.

As a cleanliness-obsessed art restorer, Lucien's brow furrowed slightly.

"They didn't even do any anti-mold or anti-insect treatment..."

He stretched out his finger and lifted the tip of his hat, his movements as gentle as if he were picking up a dead rat he had just retrieved from a garbage dump. If he could, he really wanted to cast a "hair-soaking spell" on himself first.

Under the watchful eyes of everyone, he first conjured up a clean white handkerchief with remarkable ease and placed it on his hair before reluctantly putting the hat on.

The entire audience: "..."

His vision was blocked, and darkness descended. Then, a faint voice echoed deep within Lucian's mind.

"Hmm... very interesting. Very... difficult to get in."

The voice carried a hint of confusion, trying to find a crack in Lucian's mental palace, "I want to see your desires, your fears... but why is there a... wall before me?"

"That's a firewall," Lucian responded in his mind. "Don't move, your probe is rude."

"Hey! I'm the Sorting Hat! I have the right to see—"

"You have serious logical redundancy," Lucian interrupted directly. "You've accumulated thousands of years' worth of student emotional fragments, your memory is almost full of garbage. Your thought processes are full of noise. If you don't undergo a deep formatting cleanup, your self-awareness will collapse within fifty years."

The hat fell silent. After two seconds, its shrill voice trembled slightly:

"What...what do you want to do?"

"If you'd like, I can help you tidy up those messy lines of thought. Just cut away about 30% of the useless memories..."

"No! Don't touch me!" the hat screamed in his mind. It had never seen such a new life. Everyone else awaited judgment with trepidation, but this person wanted to perform brain surgery on it!

"Slytherin? You have ambitions!" The hat tried to change the subject, feeling an invisible scalpel approaching its core magic circle.

"It's too filthy. The Slytherins of today are merely appendages of power, not true seekers of truth," Lucian rejected.

"Gryffindor? You have some nerve, threatening a hat!"

"It's too noisy. I hate noise."

"Alright, alright! I know where a freak like you should go!" The hat sensed that will was trying to dismantle its magic rune structure, and it had to get rid of this plague god immediately.

"Since you enjoy studying those damn truths and structures so much, then go—" "Ravenclaw!!!"

The last word, "hat," was almost shouted out loud, sounding like a roar of liberation.

Lucian took off his hat and, very casually, just casually, patted off a greasy stain on the brim.

He felt the hat in his hand tremble violently.

A polite but enthusiastic round of applause erupted at the Ravenclaw table.

Lucian took off his hat and walked toward the Ravenclaw table.

As he sat down, several senior prefects tried to strike up a conversation, but were deterred by Lucian's aloof demeanor.

This suited him perfectly.

However, just as he was preparing to enjoy this tranquility,

A girl with long, curly hair and a "P" badge pinned to her chest reached out her hand to him.

"Welcome to Ravenclaw. I'm Prefect Penelope Crivart." She looked at Lucien with curiosity in her eyes. "The Sorting Hat took a long time to use. It usually makes quick decisions for Ravenclaw students."

"Perhaps it's because my brain circuits are a bit... convoluted." Lucien shook her hand and then let go.

The banquet began.

The golden plate was instantly piled high with food.

The students around them began to eat heartily, discussing their families and magic.

And Lucian?

He was very satisfied with the result.

After all, only from the tower of truth can one see the direction of every crack in this castle.

……

Food bounced onto the plate.

Lucien picked up his knife and fork, but his gaze went past the gold plate and landed on the old man in the center of the main table.

It was almost a cocoon of light.

An extremely terrifying aggregate of magical energy, yet, like the sun beginning to set, at the edge of Dumbledore's powerful radiance, lingered a trace of decaying blackness, seemingly some kind of curse, or an old wound left by some powerful backlash.

Shifting my gaze to the right, I saw Professor Quirrell, whose face was filled with tension.

In Lucian's eyes, Quirrell was like a shoddy vessel forcibly crammed with two souls. Beneath the purple scarf, another distorted face emanated a viscous darkness, slowly eroding the host's life force.

Harry covered his forehead, his expression pained.

Severus Snape, standing nearby, was staring at Lucien with his dark eyes.

During the sorting process, he noticed the Ashford boy...

Snape's gaze shifted downwards, landing on Lucian's long, slender hands as he elegantly cut the steak.

"Ashford..." Snape muttered to himself, "I hope you don't end up like your father, a fool."

Lucian seemed to sense that gaze.

He looked up and met Snape's gaze across half the hall.

He slightly raised his wine glass to pay homage to the potion master.

"The principal is getting old, the professor is possessed, the foundation is a mountain of shit, the ceiling is leaking..."

He put the steak in his mouth.

"This is really interesting."

The tableware disappeared, and the school song was sung haphazardly by everyone.

Only Fred and George sang the entire piece in a slow funeral march style.

……

After the dinner.

The prefect led the new students to the Ravenclaw Tower.

Unlike other houses, Ravenclaw's common room has no password, only a bronze door knocker shaped like an eagle.

When they reached the door, the door knocker opened:

"Where did the things that disappeared go?" The freshmen looked at each other in bewilderment.

Penelope was preparing to give the new students a lesson when a calm voice came from behind her.

"It has gone into nothingness. Or rather, it has turned into dust that constitutes new things. Matter is indestructible; it is merely a transformation of form."

Lucian stood at the back of the crowd, still holding the handwritten notebook in his hand.

The door knocker remained silent for two seconds.

That makes sense.

The door opened with a click.

Penelope turned around in surprise to look at the first-year student.

"That's... a very philosophical answer. We would usually say 'entering into non-existence'."

"That's what poets say." Lucien walked into the lounge, a spacious, round room filled with the atmosphere of stars and books. "But I'm a craftsman."

The spiral stone steps leading to the dormitory are narrow and steep.

Pushing open the heavy oak door of the dormitory, a dry, musty smell, a mixture of parchment's stale scent and the cool air from high above, hit me. Unlike Gryffindor, which was filled with vibrant red and gold, or Slytherin, which felt so oppressive and gloomy at the bottom of the lake, Ravenclaw's dormitories were purely, rationally, and coolly colored.

Five canopied beds, each with four intricate bronze pillars, were arranged in a fan shape. Sky-blue silk curtains cascaded from the top, shimmering with a cool, silvery light like a still waterfall in the night breeze. The floor was covered with a midnight-blue carpet, embroidered with intricate star patterns in bronze thread, making it feel as if one were walking on stars. Several arched niches were carved into the walls, filled with hardcover books and strange alchemical models left by previous generations of students, casting dappled geometric shadows in the moonlight.

Lucien walked to his bedside, his fingers brushing against the cold windowpane.

This is one of the highest points in Hogwarts.

Through that huge arched window, the entire ancient magic castle, like a deconstructed skeleton of a giant beast, was laid bare before the craftsman's eyes.

Beneath my feet lies a massive, unpolished obsidian rock, its surface serene and almost deathly still. Only the occasional ripple in the lake's center is the mark of a giant squid turning over in the moonlight, its shimmering surface reflecting a chilling depth. In the distance, only the silhouettes of a few lonely towers remain of the Quidditch pitch.

Further into the distance lies the forbidden forest.

At this altitude, the endless black forest is a dark abyss, lurking and breathing. The canopy undulates in the night wind like a surging tide, enveloping the castle. There lie centaurs, unicorns, and even more ancient secrets—unpolished, primal magic, wild, dangerous, yet utterly alluring.

The wind howled outside the window, like countless dead ghosts swirling and whispering at the top of the tower.

If one were a poet, one would be reciting solitude and the night at this moment.

Lucian Ashford stood by the window, looking out at the magic school.

The first night is over.

His wizarding journey has only just begun.