“I don’t have any money!” Isaac blurted, clutching his wallet like it was the last life raft on the Titanic.
Dumbledore’s “want to get stronger?” line had hit way too hard with that classic pay-to-win energy.
Dumbledore stared at him for a long moment, mouth twitching.
He’d run through a dozen possible reactions in his head—Isaac might act like Grindelwald, like himself, even like Tom.
The one thing he never expected was the kid treating him like some shady mobile-game gacha scammer.
This was the generational gap in action.
Dumbledore had never downloaded one of those anti-fraud apps everyone carried these days.
He had no idea how paranoid modern kids were about free power-ups and sudden offers that sounded too good to be true.
Isaac noticed the old man’s twitching mouth and realized he’d overreacted.
Hard to blame him though—caution was baked into his bones, and right now he was still just a broke eleven-year-old with very limited income streams.
Besides, if Dumbledore was going to scam anyone, he’d be going after the old pure-blood fortunes, not some penniless orphan.
Isaac had maybe a few galleons to his name.
He slowly lowered his hands from his wallet and cleared his throat.
“Ahem.
I still trust you, Professor.
So… what do I actually have to do to get stronger?” “We’ll skip the usual methods,” Dumbledore said.
“You already know those.” Isaac nodded silently.
The standard path was obvious: study hard, read books, learn from the best teachers, grind through research papers and cutting-edge magical theory until knowledge itself became power.
Hogwarts’ four houses basically represented the four big pillars—Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, and Herbology.
Master any one of them and your combat ability would never be weak.
Isaac was already cheating the system hard with his prophecy gift.
He could sit in on master-level classes whenever he wanted and cherry-pick answers to whatever problems he was stuck on.
But clearly Dumbledore wasn’t offering the normal route today.
“Isaac, since you’re a seer… do you know what I, Gellert, and Tom all have in common?” Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Voldemort’s common point?
They were all Dark Lords?
What, the White Dark Lord didn’t count?
The words almost left Isaac’s mouth.
He swallowed them at the last second.
He already knew Dumbledore wasn’t some harmless old grandfather.
The man had basically declared himself the White Dark Lord of Hogwarts.
When he was being gentle it was smart to stay polite.
If Isaac actually pushed the old man into full Dark Lord mode, one high-powered spell would probably drop half the British wizarding world.
Even the current broken version of Voldemort stayed hidden and didn’t dare poke that bear.
Why would Isaac be stupid enough to yank on that thread?
But what else did the three of them have in common besides being ridiculously powerful?
If it was just Dumbledore and Grindelwald, Isaac could’ve said “they both like men.” But throw Tom Riddle into the mix… the guy might be noseless now, but his preferences probably hadn’t changed, right?
Right?
Isaac racked his brain and finally landed on it.
“Professor… you three were all prodigies who became famous while you were still teenagers?” Exactly.
All three had been undeniable geniuses in their era.
Dumbledore had been called the greatest student Hogwarts had ever seen.
He collected every award, served as prefect and head boy, and was already exchanging letters with Nicolas Flamel and Bathilda Bagshot while still in school.
It was like some random high-school kid back in China regularly emailing multiple academicians for academic discussions.
Grindelwald’s talent was just as monstrous.
Born into an old European magical family, he showed terrifying ability from a young age and was called a once-in-a-century genius.
At sixteen he got expelled from Durmstrang for dangerous black-magic experiments that seriously injured other students.
And Durmstrang didn’t even ban dark magic.
That told you everything about how far Grindelwald had already gone in that field.
Then there was Tom Riddle—Voldemort.
If Dumbledore hadn’t been there to suppress him, Tom would have been the greatest student in Hogwarts history.
Even with Dumbledore around, his record was still insane.
Top-tier magical talent, top-tier dueling skill, Slytherin bloodline, Parseltongue, and he loudly positioned himself as the pure-blood champion.
All the pure-blood heirs flocked to him like he was their savior.
Too bad he later fried his own brain with dark magic.
Strip away the later insanity and Tom, like Dumbledore and Grindelwald, had been a young prodigy who started the game on easy mode.
“Yes, Isaac.
You’re exactly right.
All three of us displayed excellence far beyond our peers when we were young—excellence that set us miles ahead of everyone else right from the start.” “That early advantage became the foundation of everything we built afterward.” Isaac turned the words over in his head.
If he’d been a normal first-year he probably wouldn’t have caught the deeper meaning.
But Dumbledore was the king of riddles—he never said anything straight.
Isaac, with two lifetimes of random knowledge crammed into his skull, felt a massive wave of déjà vu crashing over him.
Dumbledore.
Grindelwald.
Voldemort.
Their “young genius → instant dominance” path was literally the exact same “invincible route” every overpowered protagonist took in those xianxia novels.
The classic “start broken, stay broken, never lose” template.
Dumbledore smiled faintly, clearly pleased Isaac had connected the dots so fast.
“That early excellence is what made us who we are.
And it’s also the path I’m offering you.”