The dormitory was quite comfortable.
The four-poster beds were crafted from dark oak, fitted with thick, soft bedding, and complete with brass lamps and bed-warmers.
The only slight disappointment was that the room housed four students, making it feel a bit more cramped and lacking in privacy than he had anticipated.
Just as the sky began to show the pale grey of dawn, Harry stirred from his sleep, his internal clock punctual as ever.
Casting a quick glance at the other three boys sleeping haphazardly in their beds, he quietly threw back his covers.
Placing his feet onto the wool carpet, he dressed soundlessly, grabbed his wand along with the textbooks required for his morning classes, and slipped out of the dormitory.
Harry had turned in very early the night before.
For young children, going to bed early wasn’t easy—especially on their very first night, brimming with excitement as they stayed up chatting and playing magical parlor games like Wizard’s Chess and Gobstones (which were really just variations of chess and marbles).
Quidditch shared that same quality; all of them had equivalents in the Muggle world.
Harry possessed no interest in such pastimes.
Still, his roommates hadn’t disturbed him, intentionally lowering their voices so he could sleep undisturbed—they were good-natured kids at heart.
He intended to operate alone.
Cedric had advised that during the first few days of term, it was best to stick with one’s roommates to build friendships and look out for each other should anyone lose their way.
Yet Harry felt certain he wouldn’t get lost.
After all, many of the Hufflepuff upperclassmen had handed down old, hand-drawn maps of their Hogwarts explorations to the first-years.
Supposedly, this was a tradition unique to Hufflepuff.
Reading a map was hardly a challenge for Captain Potter.
Naturally, the first order of business upon waking was breakfast.
As for the location of the kitchens, Cedric had specifically pointed it out to him the previous evening—even bringing him along for a quick visit.
Just outside the Hufflepuff common room, it lay hidden behind a painting in the corridor.
The trick to entering was simply tickling the pear in the painting, which would prompt a door to appear.
What a wondrous place Hogwarts Castle was!
“It’s all prepared for you, Mr. Potter.”
The moment he stepped inside, a female house-elf wearing an apron emerged from among the elves prepping breakfast, bearing a tray.
Upon it rested the exact breakfast Harry had pre-ordered the night before: a bottle of milk, a thick slice of golden-brown toasted bread, several slices of fried ham, a serving of beef, a small jar of meat spread, and a dish of scrambled eggs.
“Looks good.”
Harry took the tray, turned, and exited the kitchen, pulling the door shut behind him.
The portraits throughout the castle were beginning to come alive.
As he walked along the corridor toward the southern side of the castle, the figures of ancestors framed on either side woke up one after another.
Some rubbed their eyes, others stretched, while a few sat up straight, crossing their legs as they watched him hurry past below.
An old man in purple robes, rocking in a chair, called out to Harry’s retreating back: “Running about so early, little first-year? Mind you don’t cry your eyes out if you lose your way!”
A lady wearing a bonnet in an adjacent frame admonished him: “Don’t go scaring the child—perhaps he’s just off to find a quiet spot to read!”
He had far more important matters to attend to.
Arriving at the lawn outside the southern side of the castle, he sat down directly on the grass, placing his breakfast tray beside him before drawing his wand from the folds of his robes.
In truth, when Draco had issued his challenge aboard the boat the previous night, Harry had genuinely felt tempted to respond and attempt the Wand-Lighting Charm himself.
However, he had never tried casting it before, and so he had abandoned the idea of attempting it in front of a crowd.
If he failed, Captain Potter’s reputation would suffer a devastating blow.
‘The Great Savior, and he can’t even manage a basic Wand-Lighting Charm…’ Harry could already imagine how the newspapers would slander him.
Had he shown such a “weak and useless” display aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, there was no doubt his crewmates would have strung him up and tossed him overboard to drown!
The supremacy of the strong was the iron law of the Pirate Code.
He would never display a fragile side to outsiders lightly.
Harry gripped his wand tightly.
He was intimately familiar with this thirteen-inch, unyielding wand made of elder wood with a dragon heartstring core.
Even though, up until now, he had yet to use this wand to cast a proper spell.
Well—to cast a spell using incantations, that was.
Under Professor Snape’s guidance, however, he had already accomplished a great deal through it, attempting to sense the magic latent within various substances.
By now, Harry had committed numerous spells to memory.
After more than a month of intensive reading, he had no need for The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, nor did he need to consult a book while practicing—every detail was burned into his mind.
Finally, he murmured softly: “Lumos.”
Harry had chosen the Wand-Lighting Charm.
The magic within his body flowed smoothly through the wand, guided by the incantation, illuminating the tip with a beam of light.
It was a brilliantly dazzling radiance.
It burned even brighter than the light cast by Granger—the brown-haired girl on the boat.
‘Brighter, make it brighter!’
‘This is the power of a wizard!’
‘Without relying on any tools—no torches, no lamps—a single wand and the power within my own body are all I need to bring forth light.’
Beneath the glowing tip, a look of greed and raw desire surfaced in Harry’s eyes.
It was a marvelous feeling!
He hungered desperately to acquire more knowledge.
At the same time, fueled by his surging emotions, the light at his wand tip grew increasingly brilliant, the glow threatening to burst free from the wood and soar upward to challenge the pale moon above for dominance over the night sky!
A sudden pang of hunger hit him, as if he hadn’t merely cast a Wand-Lighting Charm, but had just finished a full hour of intense jogging!
Magic operated much like physical stamina, or perhaps mental focus.
He felt fatigue creeping in, accompanied by an ever-growing hunger.
‘No, this isn’t right!’
He abruptly halted the flow of magic.
Draco’s display from the night before had served as a vivid lesson.
Harry reined in his surging emotions, attempting to exert control over his magic—or rather, to control his wand and communicate with it!
‘I don’t need a light this blinding.
I only need to illuminate what lies before me; what I need is a stable light source.’
The glow emanating from the tightly gripped wand began to dim, growing fainter and fainter.
Until finally, just as Draco had managed on the boat the previous night, it offered just enough light to illuminate his immediate surroundings.
At this level, Harry could barely feel any drain on his magic.
Or rather, he had successfully constrained the magic consumption to a negligible trickle.
‘Cool!
The great Captain Potter truly is a genius!’
Ever since enduring the massacres dealt by the Genos Pirates and the Blackbeard Pirates, Harry rarely felt grand surges of excitement.
Yet upon making contact with this wizarding world, the emotions coiled within his heart spilled forth uncontrollably.
He grabbed a portion of beef from the tray, chewing ravenously before washing it down with a large gulp of milk, his eyes sparkling with exhilaration.
The mysteries he had risked his life to pursue in his dreams were everywhere in this world!
“Next up, the Levitation Charm.”
After wolfing down a few more bites, Harry picked up his wand and recited the incantation: “Wingardium Leviosa!”
Following the method he had learned from his textbooks, he swished his wand.
In the distance, a boulder larger than a grown man launched into the air, hurtling straight toward the Black Lake.
Just as it neared the surface, nearly plunging into the water, it ground to a sudden halt.
With a flick of Harry’s wand, the boulder shot back up toward the sky.
Under his precise manipulation, the massive stone swooped up and down repeatedly like a bird in flight.
He could cast the Levitation Charm without speaking the incantation aloud.
Unknowingly, he had already attempted nonverbal casting in the past.
Now, combining the wand with the spoken incantation, he clearly perceived how much more effortless and responsive it felt to manipulate the boulder.
It was almost completely effortless—guided purely by his will!
There was no difficulty to it whatsoever!