"Let me see who it is... so it's Mr. Bulstrode."
Looking at the smiling Dumbledore, Sean nodded slightly in acknowledgment, then greeted: "Professor Dumbledore, Professor Lupin, good morning. I received notice yesterday to come see Professor Snape this morning."
Hearing this, Dumbledore's face showed an expression that was somewhat surprised yet also seemed natural, saying approvingly: "Knowledge is always so fascinating, but on the path of pursuing knowledge, I still hope you can balance the time allocation between study and life. Besides studying, life is also very important, isn't it?"
Sean clearly understood that Dumbledore was referring to the five elective courses and the Time-Turner issue, but he still put on a somewhat bewildered expression, slowly nodded, and then said to Snape: "Professor, if you have other matters, I can come back later."
"No need, your matter cannot be delayed." Having said this, Snape turned to look at Dumbledore, not even glancing at Lupin. "Dumbledore, you know that I need to resolve this child's matter immediately, otherwise he might miss all of today's classes. As for what you mentioned, let's discuss it later."
Hearing this, Dumbledore couldn't possibly delay a child's classes for Lupin's matter, so he nodded slightly and said to Snape: "Severus, please consider it carefully. I can only trouble you with this matter."
Snape looked at Dumbledore, nodded almost imperceptibly, and then said nothing more.
Seeing this, Dumbledore and Lupin prepared to leave.
Just then, Lupin turned to look at Snape and said: "Severus, I think..."
"Remus!" Snape growled, then glanced at him sideways, saying word by word: "This child has class soon. I think the most important issue right now is him, not you!"
Lupin opened his mouth, finally nodded, said nothing more, and left with Dumbledore.
Watching Lupin leave, Snape waved his hand, and the door slammed shut. Then he looked at Sean, directly opened his desk drawer, took out a golden pendant, and stuffed it into Sean's hands.
"Time-Turner. One turn can go back one hour.
This thing's power comes from Hogwarts itself, so it's only effective within the Hogwarts vicinity, no further than Hogsmeade at most. So don't think about taking it outside to use.
Also, it can only return to the past within twenty-four hours. After twenty-four hours, you cannot return. Finally, different timeline versions of you cannot meet. Remember that."
Sean listened to Snape's words, looking down at the Time-Turner in his hands. He vaguely remembered that in the novels and movies from his previous life, there didn't seem to be these limitations Snape mentioned. Had he misremembered?
However, considering that this world already had quite a few differences from the world in his previous life's memories, it was reasonable that the Time-Turner would be different from what he remembered.
"Professor, this thing must be very precious, right?"
Glancing at Sean, Snape said mercilessly: "There aren't many of these left now. Lose one, and there's one less. The method of making them has also been lost, so I advise you not to harbor thoughts of taking it apart to study."
Hearing Snape's words, Sean immediately smiled somewhat awkwardly. It had to be said that after two years, Snape had probably seen through what kind of person he was. With just one sentence from Sean, Snape could guess what he was thinking.
"Alright then, Professor, I'll go to class."
"Mm."
Taking the Time-Turner, Sean left Snape's office.
Standing in the corridor, Sean carefully examined the Time-Turner in his hands. This thing was entirely golden, with a rotatable disc in the middle. The center of the disc was an hourglass made of two spheres. Each complete turn represented one hour.
When he got up this morning, Sean had received his class schedule.
At nine o'clock this morning, there were three classes simultaneously: Muggle Studies, Divination, and Arithmancy, three elective courses. Thanks to the Time-Turner, otherwise Sean would have had to split himself into three parts.
Of course, each course had two classes per week with identical content, designed to allow schedule adjustments. For those who signed up for all five courses, no matter how they adjusted, they couldn't attend all classes, which was why they were given Time-Turners.
For example, Blaise had signed up for Muggle Studies and Divination, both of which had classes at nine this morning. Blaise could choose one to attend, then go to the second class of the week for the other course.
At Blaise's strong request, Sean chose to take Muggle Studies and Divination with him. Blaise chose to attend Divination this morning and would take Muggle Studies during the second class of the week, so Sean was now with Blaise heading to the Divination classroom.
Meanwhile, in the Arithmancy classroom, another Sean also walked into the classroom and began attending Arithmancy.
After half a class, Sean finally understood what Arithmancy was about.
Simply put, this course used numerical calculations to interpret people's personalities and fates, then predict the future. In Sean's view, Arithmancy was more similar to probability and big data, using magic and numbers for deduction and prediction.
Sean was very interested in this course and studied seriously, unlike most other students. In the classroom, Professor Septima Vector, who taught this course, gave a problem in the latter half of class, asking everyone to use Arithmancy methods to deduce and predict the answer.
While others were scratching their heads, Sean quickly calculated his answer on scratch paper.
Although the answer had some deviation, this was Sean's first time after all. In Professor Vector's words, being able to initially use Arithmancy methods to derive an answer on the first try, though with some deviation, showed the direction was correct, which was already quite remarkable.
You must know that even Professor Vector could only achieve four or five correct answers out of ten in Arithmancy, and only for unimportant and trivial matters. Once things became too important or complex, even Professor Vector would find it difficult to get correct answers.
Because of this, Professor Vector marveled at Sean's talent for this course and planned to cultivate him as the star third-year student of her class.
On Sean's side, he was also surprised by his talent in Arithmancy, but he was even more surprised that when using Arithmancy, he could feel his Spiritual Vision ability seemed to have some subtle stirring. Could there be a connection between Spiritual Vision and Arithmancy?