The next morning, Will strolled out of his dormitory with a small satchel slung over one shoulder.
The lantern that had hung in the common room the night before was gone, someone must have taken it down at some point.
A few Slytherins shot him openly hostile looks as he passed.
Will didn’t bother acknowledging them.
He made his way up through the castle’s shifting, occasionally vanishing staircases toward the Great Hall, unbothered by the stares trailing him the whole way.
Left to himself, Will’s idea of breakfast was slightly overdone sausages and toast smeared thick with ketchup, partly because he liked it, mostly because it took almost no effort to make.
At Hogwarts, though, he didn’t have to cook at all.
Breakfast arrived already laid out, an enormous spread prepared by the house-elves.
Will was halfway through The Transfiguration Code: A Detailed Explanation of Gamp’s Basic Laws of Transfiguration, working through a roasted chicken leg at the same time, when someone dropped into the seat beside him.
He wasn’t so buried in the book that he missed Sylvia settling in next to him, giving her a slightly puzzled look.
“What do you want?”
“All of Slytherin’s talking about how you’re the one who strung up Selwyn and the others on the lamp,” Sylvia said quietly.
“That was me.
Something wrong with that?” Will answered without much interest.
“You’re painting a target on your back!” Sylvia’s tone sharpened.
“Behrens, I know you’re clever, but most of Slytherin comes from old wizarding families.
What you’re doing is making enemies for no reason, and you must have noticed people are already keeping their distance from you.”
There wasn’t a single other person sitting near Will besides Sylvia herself.
“Don’t really care,” Will said, about as invested as he might’ve been if she’d told him the earth was round.
And he genuinely didn’t.
Nothing serious would happen to him here, not really, not with Dumbledore running the place.
No family, however powerful, would be reckless enough to push things that far on Hogwarts grounds.
More importantly, he had his panel.
All he wanted out of his time here was to grind, level after level, until he reached the point where he could actually defend himself before Voldemort came back into the picture.
With the kind of power he was building toward, wasting time on petty games with Slytherin’s junior snakes held zero appeal.
Once he’d mastered enough, once he stood at the top of this realm, would any of these families still dare cross him?
Sorry.
He wasn’t nearly as patient as Dumbledore.
“You…” Sylvia’s face flushed.
How was anyone this stubborn?
“Let’s not burn the whole morning on this.
We’ve got Transfiguration right after breakfast, Miss Lestrange.
Wouldn’t want to be late on day one, would you?” Will had already lost interest in the conversation.
How many years did he actually have here?
Seven, in theory.
Subtract the year Voldemort would eventually take over the school, and that left six real years of study.
Strip out weekends and holidays from those six years, and even studying straight through Christmas breaks, he’d land at roughly fifteen hundred usable days.
Fifteen hundred days.
And how many spellbooks did Hogwarts hold?
Thousands, easily.
How much experience did he still need to grind through?
Thousands more.
Possibly without any real end point.
He needed every spare hour for magic.
He had none left over for Slytherin’s endless scheming and petty rivalries.
Sylvia stared at him, speechless, silently cursing that miserable hat.
Good grief, how did something this obviously Ravenclaw end up in Slytherin?
Will practically radiated Ravenclaw from head to toe.
Ten minutes later, “Ravenclaw’s honorary first-year” left the Great Hall with Sylvia in tow, heading for the Transfiguration classroom.
Hogwarts’s shifting, vanishing staircases gave Sylvia more trouble than she expected, she nearly went down hard when one step disappeared out from under her.
“I genuinely don’t understand what Hogwarts thinks it’s doing with these stairs.”
“I assumed you already knew.
They’re a leftover from the witch-hunting era, built to help wizards fight back if Muggle hunters ever made it inside the castle.
Of course, the hunts ended thanks to a Muggle-repelling charm, so the stairs became pointless almost immediately.
“Oi, Ravenclaw!
Bit of help?
We’re lost and about to be late for Transfiguration!” A red-haired boy called out to Will from further down the corridor.
The black-haired boy beside him, glasses slightly crooked, tugged at his sleeve.
“Ron, how do you even know he’s Ravenclaw?”
Harry and Ron, as it turned out, both hopelessly turned around thanks to the staircases.
“Harry, look at him, practically screams Ravenclaw.
Who else memorizes that much boring nonsense for fun?” Ron said it with total confidence, the kind that came from being right more often than wrong about this sort of thing.
“Sure, follow me.”
[Someone has grown curious about you.
Charm Experience +1]
[Someone has grown curious about you.
Charm Experience +1]
Will smiled easily and led the two of them toward the classroom.
“Thanks, seriously, thank you.
We’d have been late without you,” Harry said, sounding genuinely relieved.
[Someone feels grateful toward you.
Charm Experience +1]
“No trouble at all, we’re headed to the same class anyway,” Will said with a small wave.
Ron didn’t remember spotting the silver-eyed boy at the tables the night before, though admittedly he’d been fairly absorbed in dinner at the time.
“Wait, you’re Gryffindor too?
What’s your name, then—”
“Everyone, find your seats quickly, please.” Professor McGonagall’s voice cut through the corridor before Ron could finish, stern as ever from the front of the room.
Ron and Harry shuffled awkwardly toward seats near the back, while Sylvia followed Will up to the front row.
McGonagall glanced their way and gave a small, approving nod.
[Someone has grown curious about you.
Charm Experience +1]
“Blimey, the nerve, sitting right under McGonagall’s nose,” Ron muttered to Harry, pulling a pumpkin pasty from his pocket.
“Reckon the hat made a mistake somewhere.
That one belongs in Ravenclaw.”
“Maybe he just really likes studying,” Harry said, only half paying attention.
He’d spent six years in primary school around plenty of keen students already.
A moment later, a girl with wild hair and a round-faced boy settled into the seats beside them.
“Harry, that’s Longbottom.
My mum and his gran talked forever in Diagon Alley.” Ron, now thoroughly convinced Will had to be Gryffindor, filed the thought away and went back to his pasty.
Once everyone had filed in, Professor McGonagall began the lesson.
“Transfiguration is the most complex, and the most dangerous, subject you’ll study at Hogwarts.
Anyone caught messing around in my classroom will be removed and will not be allowed back.
Consider that your only warning.”
“Blimey, she’s terrifying,” Ron whispered.
The lingering smell of pumpkin pasty was making Harry hungry all over again.
“I’ll show you something first.”
McGonagall flicked her wand, and the lectern in front of her transformed into a pig.
Will, seated at the front, watched closely.
The pig grunted, trotted a small circle around where the lectern had stood, and looked, in every visible way, like a genuine pig.
Nothing about it seemed remotely artificial.
But then something shifted behind Will’s eyes.
He activated his Wizard’s Eye, and the illusion fell away entirely, revealing threads of magic wrapped tightly around the animal, tangled into patterns far more intricate than anything he’d seen before.
He already knew, without needing to test it, that turning a match into a needle wouldn’t come close to this in complexity.
He couldn’t wait to start working through Transfiguration properly.
The rest of the class stared in open fascination, already imagining themselves conjuring dragons with a flick of the wrist.
Reality set in fast: turning furniture into animals clearly wasn’t happening anytime soon.
“Before we begin, you should all have committed Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration to memory.
“What law of what now?” Ron muttered, looking faintly lost.
Hermione’s hand shot straight up.
Will and Sylvia raised theirs a beat later.
“Miss Granger.” McGonagall had clearly noticed Hermione was nearly out of her seat with enthusiasm.
“Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration is the foundational principle of Transfiguration, established by Transfiguration master and first Minister for Magic, Elfric Gamp.
It defines the fundamental limits of what Transfiguration can and cannot achieve, and provides the guiding framework wizards use when applying it.”
“Very good.
Clearly well prepared, Miss Granger.
Five points to Gryffindor.” A flicker of real approval crossed McGonagall’s face.
A promising student, without question.
“Brilliant!” a few Gryffindors cheered.
“And who can name the specific exceptions within Gamp’s Law?” McGonagall’s gaze swept back over the same delighted faces.
Every one of them immediately found something else to look at.
Hermione’s hand stayed up.
McGonagall glanced around the room once more.
“Mr.
Behrens, go ahead.”
She had no intention of favoring one house over another so openly.
That kind of thing was better left to Snape.
“The five principal exceptions are: food cannot be conjured from nothing, living beings cannot be permanently transfigured, magical objects resist true transformation, quantity remains absolutely fixed, and matter cannot be created out of nothing.
Those are the core principles behind Gamp’s Law.
The full academic detail behind each one runs into dozens of published papers, so I’ll admit my grasp of the finer points is limited.”
Harry felt genuinely dizzy.
He hadn’t heard of any of this before in his life.
If this counted as Will admitting ignorance, what did real expertise even look like?
“Blimey, this bloke’s something else.
I’m starting to think the Sorting Hat’s gone senile, putting a Ravenclaw brain in Gryffindor,” Ron muttered, elbowing Harry.
A moment later, both of them sat frozen in disbelief.
“Very good, Mr.
Behrens.
Your explanation was quite accurate, and the deeper detail is well beyond what’s expected at your level regardless.
Ten points to Slytherin.” McGonagall looked thoroughly pleased.
Will’s attitude toward the subject was exactly what she liked to see, and she made a point of never showing favoritism, fairness mattered more to her than house pride.
Then it happened again.
Harry and Ron’s jaws dropped nearly in unison.
McGonagall pressed on, tone as serious as ever.
“Very good.
Now that you understand Gamp’s Law, remember it carries real weight beyond theory.
Behind every one of these principles sits a long history of accidents best not repeated.
Now, try turning your match into a needle.”
The first real Transfiguration lesson came easily to Will, who’d already worked through the theory long before.
Turning a match into a needle amounted to little more than routine practice at this point.
“Excellent work, Mr.
Behrens.
Five points to Slytherin.”
With a little guidance from him, Sylvia and Hermione both managed the transformation by the end of class as well.
Even Neville got his match to thin out slightly.
“I did it!
I actually did it, thank you, Will!”
“Helping a fellow student.
Five points to Slytherin.” McGonagall nodded again, clearly satisfied.
Whatever else could be said about Will Behrens, he wasn’t like most of Slytherin.
By the end of the lesson, Will alone had earned Slytherin twenty points, while Hermione had brought Gryffindor ten.
“Blimey, that bloke’s got to be some kind of Slytherin secret weapon, getting close to you on purpose, Harry.
I’d keep an eye on him if I were you,” Ron muttered once class let out.