The mood in the compartment had turned oddly heavy.
Will ignored all of it and kept reading.
Opinions on the true nature of curses vary widely across the magical world.
In Egypt, though, the mainstream view centers on what’s called the “legitimacy” of curses, the idea that curses carry a kind of sanctioned magical weight, granted by the gods themselves.
That belief is likely why Egyptian curses tend to last for millennia, while curses cast elsewhere fade far sooner.
Personally, I remain skeptical of “divine bestowal” as an explanation.
Most of the European magical community now treats curses as simply a variant of ordinary magic, closer in practice to small-scale ritual work than anything supernatural in origin.
And in my years unraveling curses professionally, nearly every skilled curse-breaker or curse-caster I’ve met has had a deep grounding in ritual magic.
Some are practically ritualists in their own right.
My own work leans on ritual technique constantly.
Will nodded slightly to himself as he read.
Ritual magic was one of the oldest branches of the craft, with roots stretching across the entire magical world.
Rain-summoning rites and sacrificial rituals in Asia and Africa were classic examples.
He thought back to a few cases he’d read about in A Brief History of Ancient Magic and Mysterious Tribal Magic.
A shaman supposedly summoning the wind stood out as one of the more famous large-scale rituals on record.
His stomach growled loudly enough to interrupt his own thoughts, and he finally closed the book.
For Will, food mattered just as much as knowledge did.
The mind needed feeding too, but it couldn’t survive on books alone.
He pulled several metal lunchboxes out of his trunk.
When he opened them, steam curled up immediately: curry beef, stir-fried snow peas, and a small serving of Chicken, alongside a box of plain white rice.
The portions were modest, but the smell alone filled the whole compartment.
The other three stared, wide-eyed.
Sylvia and Hermione both gasped.
“You brought food?”
“It’s still hot!
Is that magic?”
Sylvia and Neville were mostly stunned that he’d thought to pack food at all.
Hermione, on the other hand, was fixated on the more interesting detail: ordinary metal tins, no charms visible on the outside, and the food still steaming after an entire morning.
That had to be enchanted somehow.
Will’s stomach wasn’t willing to wait for explanations.
He took a bite of curry beef before answering.
“We’re not due at Hogwarts until this evening, so I figured hot food made more sense than cold.
There’s a warming charm on the containers.
You can find it in Conjure a Feast or The Magic of Cooking, if you’re curious.”
Hermione’s patience thinned the moment she heard the titles.
She’d never even heard of either book, and it was becoming clear Will had read more than she’d realized.
The gap between them felt like it was widening again.
Will glanced at the three of them, flicked his wand, and turned the toothpicks resting beside the food into spoons.
“Want some?”
[Someone has developed feelings for you.
Charm Experience +1] x3
The corner of his mouth twitched upward slightly.
Even a mosquito bite counted as a bite.
“Wait, Transfiguration?
You already know Transfiguration?
I’ve tried the exercises in A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration over and over and nothing’s worked.
How did you just do that?” Hermione’s focus snapped straight to the spell, as it always did.
Will already understood the anxiety behind the question.
She was worried about falling behind students from wizarding families, worried they’d already know far more than her before term even started.
In truth, the fear was mostly unfounded.
There were no magical primary schools.
Nearly every young witch or wizard came into Hogwarts having been taught entirely at home.
Half-blood families often sent their children through ordinary Muggle schools first.
Pure-blood families without much money usually handled magical education themselves, while wealthier ones brought in private tutors.
“It’s not that hard, honestly.
Are you sure none of you want any?” When none of them reached for a spoon, Will didn’t push it, and simply ate another bite of chicken.
Neville’s face crumpled.
“Of course it’s hard!
I haven’t managed a single spell yet, I’ve barely even opened the textbooks.
Merlin’s beard, am I going to get expelled?
I knew I had no talent for this.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Longbottom.
I’ve never heard of anyone from your family getting expelled, and honestly, I’ve never heard of anyone getting expelled just for being untalented.
People get expelled for other reasons, like that magizoologist, Newt Scamander.” Sylvia’s tone stayed cool, but Neville seemed to take some comfort from it anyway.
As a Lestrange, she’d looked into Scamander’s history out of personal curiosity.
“Wait, the man who wrote our textbook got expelled from Hogwarts?” Hermione looked genuinely thrown.
In her mind, expelled students were failures, troublemakers, practically a category of their own.
But Newt Scamander was a celebrated British magizoologist, traveler, and the author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Which, she realized, happened to be the exact textbook assigned for Care of Magical Creatures.
“Exactly.
Hogwarts isn’t the be-all and end-all,” Will said, swallowing another bite.
“There are wizards these days who skip formal schooling entirely and train under a master instead, apprenticeship-style.
It has its downsides, but it works for some people.”
“How do you know all this?
Is your family in the wizarding world too?” Hermione finally asked the question that had clearly been building.
Will carried himself more like a pure-blood than Neville did, and yet she knew for a fact they’d gone to the same ordinary primary school.
“No, everyone I’m related to by blood is a Muggle.
I’ve just read a lot.”
The pressure Hermione felt only grew.
She was being outpaced again, and by someone with no magical background at all.
She quietly promised herself she’d work harder.
She wasn’t going to let him stay ahead of her.
“Blimey, Behrens, you’re basically a Ravenclaw already,” Neville said, sounding genuinely impressed.
“Guess I’ll be stuck in Hufflepuff, then.”
“Hufflepuff’s not bad at all.
Newt Scamander was a Hufflepuff, you know, and plenty of well-known wizards came out of that house.
Grogan Stump was Minister for Magic from 1811 to 1819.
Professor Silvanus Kettleburn taught Care of Magical Creatures for years.
And Hengist of Woodcroft, the one on the Chocolate Frog card, founded Hogsmeade itself.
They were all remarkably talented people.
There’s nothing wrong with Hufflepuff.
They’re loyal, straightforward, and honestly some of the best people you could ask to have around.”
Will genuinely weighed the idea of Hufflepuff for a moment.
The badgers wouldn’t disturb his routine much, he’d be closer to the kitchens, he could study and eat at the same time, and his Charm stat might climb faster surrounded by people that friendly.
Neville seemed to brighten at Will’s explanation.
“Maybe Hufflepuff’s not so bad after all.”
“I still think Gryffindor’s the best house, Hufflepuff’s fine, but Dumbledore came out of Gryffindor,” Hermione said, unconvinced.
“What about you, Sylvia?
Which house are you hoping for?”
“Most of my family’s been Slytherin,” Sylvia said evenly, as if the outcome had never really been in question.
“So we’ve got all four houses sitting in one compartment?”
Will picked at his rice without weighing in either way, still turning over the question privately.
Ravenclaw, or Hufflepuff?
He had no interest in ending up with the reckless types in Gryffindor.
Ostracizing anyone who valued brains over bravado never made much sense to him.
And Slytherin didn’t appeal much either.
He doubted he’d get along well with a house full of arrogant pure-blood elitists who looked down on Muggle-born wizards as a matter of principle.