The Harry Potter World.
In the dungeons beneath Hogwarts Castle, Bernadette turned her hand over gently, and a metal suit of armour across the room was instantly rendered as though made of overlapping layers of colour — a shimmering lattice of information.
She gave her wand — Vincent's wand — a sharp flick. A bolt of white light streaked out, struck the "lattice"—
And the solid armour exploded apart, collapsing into a shower of fragments across the floor.
Clap, clap, clap.
Bathsheda Babbling walked over, applauding. "Impressive. It really is true — every person's Ancient Magic takes a different form. Yours seems to lean toward the destructive."
Bernadette pocketed the wand, making no comment on Professor Babbling's assessment. In truth, her Ancient Magic wasn't pure destruction — it was conversion. She converted her targets into an "information flow" state.
And by "information flow," she meant something very specific: the Hermit Pathway's Sequence 2 ability, the domain of the Sage — the capacity to perceive and interact with the world as streams of encoded information. But where the Sage's ability involved becoming information oneself (granting something like incorporeality and the ability to shift between information and substance at will), her Ancient Magic worked differently. It converted external targets into information — and then attacked the information directly, bypassing all physical substance. To destroy: delete the information. To alter: rewrite it.
For now, she could only delete. Rewriting remained beyond her.
The precise relationship between the two forms of "information flow" was something she had yet to fully understand.
Bernadette said her farewells to Professor Babbling and to the portrait-professors in their paintings. "Thank you all for your guidance these past weeks."
"Nonsense, Charles. Don't be so formal."
"We only hope Ancient Magic continues to be passed down. When you meet a new inheritor someday, we hope you'll share this knowledge with them in turn."
"Of course."
Professor Babbling patted Bernadette on the shoulder. "Charles, you are the most gifted witch I have ever encountered. The future belongs to you." Then her expression shifted into something faintly irritable. "Ugh. I used to hear that from people, once upon a time. Saying it myself, I feel like... the age has left me behind."
"You were not left behind by the age, Olivia," sighed Professor Rackham from his portrait. "You left the age behind."
"It's Bathsheda Babbling."
She corrected him firmly, then added with a rueful shrug, "And as for leaving the age behind — you give me too much credit. Let's just say it was the price I paid for stealing some time."
"?"
Bernadette's brow lifted slightly. Stealing time?
Was that a particular turn of phrase — or the literal meaning?
Noticing the curiosity in Bernadette's eyes, Professor Babbling laughed. "Well. I genuinely thought there was nothing in this world that could make you curious."
Bernadette said evenly, "You may have the wrong impression. There are a great many things in this world that interest me — Ancient Magic, Ancient Runes, and all manner of rare and peculiar magical knowledge." A pause. "That includes the mysteries of what might be called 'Time Magic.'"
"But as far as I know, Time Magic has long since been lost. The only traces of it still found are the Time-Turners that carry its echoes."
Professor Babbling smiled coyly. "It's not Time Magic — it's a curse. A curse involving time."
She left it there, didn't continue the topic, stifled a yawn, and turned to walk away. "Right. Time to get some rest. Staying up too late is dreadful for the complexion~"
"Goodnight, everyone."
Back in her bedroom, the idiotic cat lay sprawled across a stick, snoring contentedly, drool pooling on its fur, jaw working faintly as though it were eating something delicious in its dream.
Since planting itself in the room, the cat had been getting increasingly brazen. It ate until it was full, then inhaled catnip until it was high, then slept it off — and with whatever waking time was left, it watched the young wizards play games. The definition of a certified homebody.
As for the various strange abilities it apparently possessed, Bernadette had asked it about them before, and it had stared at her with completely blank, uncomprehending eyes — exactly like a student dragged out of a nap in class and asked to answer a question. Which was, of course, also possible that it understood perfectly well but simply had no way to express itself.
In which case — learning to write was the obvious solution.
If you can't talk, you can at least learn to read and write.
And you will.
Bernadette walked over, hoisted the cat (currently a white cat again) by the scruff of its neck, dropped it on the desk, then flipped open a dictionary. "Time for today's lesson. Stupid cat."
"???"
The "stupid cat" blinked its gummy sleep-eyes, stared blearily at the open dictionary directly in front of its nose, and bolted without hesitation — only to be caught mid-escape when Bernadette closed her hand firmly around its tail.
"If you refuse to sit down and learn to read and write, you're never touching that stick again."
"..."
The cat went rigid. It turned its head slowly to look at her with the most pitiful expression it could muster, let out a slow, defeated sigh, and then settled itself in front of the enormous dictionary — roughly its own size — and proceeded to sit and listen, with admirable if thoroughly reluctant obedience, as Bernadette went through the characters one by one. They stayed at it well into the night.
In the Nation of Disorder, Bernadette "dialled" through to Vincent. It wasn't long before she saw his familiar shape appear in the swirling golden mist, looking down at her.
"My study of the Ancient Magic and Ancient Runes has reached the stage where the foundational work is essentially complete. What remains, I'll have to pursue through deeper independent research."
She covered the progress on her end first, then described the specific form her Ancient Magic had taken.
"Converting the target into an information flow state? That sounds extraordinary."
What was an "information flow"?
Put simply: a state composed entirely of information. In the modern world, the most common examples were video and audio — both products of information flows. In a certain sense, you could think of information flow as a "lower-dimensional" form of existence.
What Bernadette's Ancient Magic accomplished was taking a three-dimensional target and converting it into a lower-dimensional information flow — which might, in a sense, be understood as a form of dimensional reduction. Especially striking was her ability to then directly attack the target while it was in the information-flow state.
It was something like deleting or rewriting lines of code in a programme: deletion caused the target to cease to exist; rewriting would let her reshape it into whatever she chose.
After Bernadette heard Vincent's explanation, she raised a question: "So 'rewriting the target' would be a kind of enhanced Transfiguration?"
"I don't think it's quite that simple. Transfiguration only changes form — and when the target has magical power of its own, transformed or not, the internal nature is unchanged. But if you can truly rewrite from the base layer — that's something else entirely."
Vincent considered how to put it. "Take an example you'll understand. To advance from Sequence 1 to Sequence 0, you need the Uniqueness. And the Uniqueness might be held by someone you could never match in a direct fight — say, the Hidden Sage. In that case, you're stuck."
"But — if you could rewrite the nature of things from the base layer, perhaps you could simply create a Uniqueness for yourself to advance with."
Bernadette's tone went complex. "Your thinking... exceeds my imagination."
"Ahem — take it as a compliment. Though I'll admit, what I just described was a simplified illustration to make the concept intuitive. Actually creating a Uniqueness from scratch would be, frankly, absurd."
What Vincent was really describing was a worldview in which all of reality was made of code — and Bernadette's ability was that of a programmer who could write, delete, and modify that code. In gaming terms: game master powers. A god-mode cheat. The whole arsenal.
Adding or modifying items for herself would be trivial.
"I also have some intelligence to pass along from this side."
Vincent went on to relay the events and the conclusions drawn from various threads over the past couple of days. "All of this is still theoretical at this stage, but my instincts tell me it's likely true."
His instincts, of course, were informed by the source material.
"So — to protect Father, we have to stop the Loen king from ascending to the Black Emperor, is that right?"
"Yes."
Bernadette thought it over, then shook her head. "I'm sorry. I can't offer any help at all from where I am."
"You two are the same person — there's no need to draw such a clear line between your side and theirs."
She didn't continue that thread. Instead she said, "I plan to test Quirrell."
"I thought you said—"
"The Ancient Magic and Ancient Runes are at a workable level now. A probe only — the risk should be manageable."
Vincent scratched the back of his head. "And after the probe?"
"If I confirm there's something wrong with him, and the conditions allow — I'll deal with him directly. He was the one who made trouble for me first. I'm only returning the favour in kind."
"..."
Of course.
Though honestly, it was probably better this way. Taking the initiative against Voldemort was preferable to being caught off guard by him.
With the Words of Order in hand, handling a Quirrell being manipulated by Voldemort shouldn't be too great a challenge.
To be continued…
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