The laughter and chatter filling the Great Hall sounded like some absurd silent farce.
After yet another round of Slytherin provocations and Gryffindor verbal jabs, Hermione Granger stood up, thoroughly fed up, and pushed away the bowl of oatmeal in front of her.
She ignored Harry's stunned look and Ron's mouthful of pumpkin juice, turned on her heel, and strode briskly out of the Great Hall.
She needed somewhere to calm down.
Almost on autopilot, she headed for the library.
The whole way there, her fingers kept rubbing the small test tube in her pocket—like it was the only anchor she had left in this ridiculous world.
Pushing open the library doors, Hermione wove through the shelves with practiced ease toward her favorite quiet corner deep in the back.
He was there today, too.
Lucian Ashford leaned against the Gothic tracery window, morning light spilling across his robes. He flipped through an ancient book with that familiar detached calm, as if the rest of the world simply didn't exist.
Hermione stopped short, instinctively softening her breathing so she wouldn't disturb the peace.
A complicated mix of awe, trembling admiration, and secret recognition fermented in her chest.
After successfully transfiguring sugar last night, she had expected panic or confusion. Strangely, seeing Lucian's unshakable composure right now settled her restless heart like magic.
She was starting to understand—and couldn't help feeling genuine admiration:
Compared to the kids in the Hall yelling over House Cup points, stupid pranks, or fake victories, this was what a true intellect looked like.
"Looks like you've finally realized you're not the same as your friends," Lucian said without looking up, his voice low.
Hermione took a deep breath, walked over, and pulled out the stool across from him.
With solemn care, she set the glass test tube from her pocket on the table.
Clink.
The soft sound carried the weight of something monumental.
Lucian finally lifted his gaze to the tube.
Inside was a small amount of white, sparkling powder.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Sugar," Hermione said, her voice tight with excitement. "Real sugar—in the Muggle sense."
She stared hard into his eyes. "I've been studying that book you gave me—Alchemy and the Reshaping of Origins."
"The theory works, but my grasp wasn't there at first. I kept failing the practical magic. But last night… I broke the first major exception in Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. Food cannot be conjured from nothing.
This sugar is what I managed yesterday."
Looking at the powder, the starry spirals deep in Lucian's eyes began spinning faster.
He was shocked.
On the surface, he remained casually indifferent.
The book Alchemy and the Reshaping of Origins did contain theories for bypassing Gamp's Law.
But back in the Room of Requirement on the eighth floor, when he had turned a scrap of parchment into a living blue morpho butterfly with warm body heat, it wasn't because the theory was some hidden authority.
It only worked because it lacked one nearly impossible prerequisite.
He had reverse-engineered it using the Philosopher's Stone fragment hidden in his cuff.
The hidden condition for that theory to function was the Stone's miraculous power—the kind that could turn lead to gold and reverse life and death.
Without the Stone, attempting it was a death sentence. Forcing it would trigger violent magical backlash, turning the target to toxic ash or blowing the caster's hands clean off.
And now a first-year witch with no Stone sat across from him, holding a tube of genuine conjured sugar, telling him she had succeeded.
"How did you do it?" Lucian leaned forward slightly, real curiosity slipping into his tone. "Using the third alchemical rune matrix from the book?"
"Yes." Hermione swallowed. "At first I failed over and over. I could only create glass-like illusions.
But last night, I completely gave up—stopped trying to copy the rigid diagrams from the book.
I suddenly realized it wasn't a flat schematic at all!"
Her eyes shone brightly, words tumbling faster. "That magical loop doesn't represent lines. It represents an image—a concept!
My understanding was to borrow free-floating magic from the surrounding environment, let nothingness devour itself to form a closed, self-sustaining cycle—
But I still got stuck on the final step. What I created was still hollow. Until—"
She took a deep breath, a flicker of lingering fear and wonder in her voice. "When my magic was nearly exhausted and the array was about to collapse, I looked at the flickering light at the tip of my wand and a thought hit me: Why am I obsessing over what it should look like?
I stopped trying to force white powder into existence. Instead, I remembered the feeling of sugar dissolving in hot tea during winter—the exact sensation.
I thought of sucrose molecules, how they break hydrogen bonds in water, how they trigger sweetness on the taste buds.
In that flash of insight, I seemed to grasp the true essence directly!
When my mind was under crushing pressure and I felt like my soul was about to shatter from the concepts, the incomplete loop… it came alive on its own and closed perfectly. It worked!"
"Excellent. You finally understood what I meant.
But a single success could be luck. If you can recreate the miracle right here in front of me, it proves you've truly grasped it.
Besides, don't you want to know where this path ultimately leads?"
Lucian still sounded casual as he pointed to a sheet of parchment on the table.
Hermione didn't hesitate. She had near-blind trust in the boy who had given her truth.
She closed her eyes and held her right hand over the parchment. She began constructing the complex alchemical array. Faint red-blue light glowed at her fingertips.
Hermione's magic flowed perfectly.
First layer of outer runes, second layer of conversion nodes—flawless talent.
But at the third layer, where the gap that should have been filled by the Philosopher's Stone's miraculous power sat, the entire magical structure inevitably began to collapse.
It's going to explode, Lucian judged internally. His wand was already out, ready with a silent Shield Charm to protect her.
Yet in that split second before the magical vortex collapsed into a lethal storm—
Something changed.
Instead, the free-floating ancient magic accumulated in Hogwarts Castle over a thousand years around the library stirred in a tiny, bizarre tide that defied all logic.
A ray of sunlight piercing the April English gray clouds happened to fall across Hermione's eyelashes, as if signaling something.
Her famously bushy brown hair lifted gently, stirred by the invisible surge of magic, floating softly.
A few curly strands clung to her forehead, damp with the sweat of intense concentration.
Hermione's tightly bitten lower lip suddenly relaxed. She seemed to sense something and opened her eyes.
In the sunlight, her clear brown eyes reflected pure, almost reverent awe.
Her right hand, which had been trembling violently under the magical strain, was now held steady as if gently supported by Hogwarts Castle itself. It hung motionless in the air with miraculous firmness.
All the coincidences, all the accidents, aligned perfectly in this moment—as though soaked in Felix Felicis.
Some force that replaced the "miracle" of the Philosopher's Stone forcibly pieced them together into a perfect puzzle, brutally sealing the gap in the array.
The parchment on the table vanished. In its place appeared a small pile of sparkling, translucent white sugar.
Hermione gasped for air, eyes wide, a flush on her face. "See! I did it again! Lucian, your theory was right!"
But Lucian across from her remained silent for a long time.
His gaze moved slowly from the pile of sugar to Hermione's excited face, flushed from touching truth.
Fate.
He had finally touched the spinning threads of this world's destiny.
Hermione Granger hadn't completed the array herself. The world had completed it for her.
Because she was Hermione Granger—one of the core anchors of this timeline, a destined child representing wisdom and knowledge.
When she deviated from the main plot to explore a flawed, potentially lethal forbidden magic, the World-Will didn't let her die to magical backlash. Instead, it twisted causality with countless coincidences, creating a miracle to fill the Stone's absence.
She didn't have the Philosopher's Stone.
But her own destiny was a living Philosopher's Stone.
"A very impressive casting, Miss Granger," Lucian finally said.
"I proved your theory!" Hermione reached excitedly toward the sugar.
"No. You proved something far greater."
Lucian reached out and gently pressed down on her hand before she could touch it. His cool fingers made the still-warm Hermione shiver slightly.
He leaned in closer to the young witch he had pulled into these depths. "You thought you succeeded through unparalleled intelligence and precise magical control? No. The rune matrix in that book originally requires an extremely rare catalyst capable of twisting life and death to function. You had nothing."
Hermione froze, her excitement stiffening on her face. "Then… how did I succeed?"
"Have you ever wondered why it was you? Why, every time you were on the verge of failure, some coincidence always saved you? Granger, you think it was your wisdom, but what you truly tapped into was a kind of innate privilege you never even noticed.
The world favors you."
"You're far luckier than those idiots in the Hall celebrating fake victories. Not only because you have a clear head, but because even if you were holding a flawed, body-shattering fragment of dark magic—"
Lucian spoke each word deliberately. "This unseen destiny would forcibly turn the lethal poison into sweet frosting and feed it straight to your mouth."
Hermione sat stunned, her breathing nearly stopped.
She didn't fully grasp the deeper meaning behind Lucian's words about "miracle catalysts" and "children of destiny," but she clearly sensed some vast future unfolding.
The boy in front of her had once slapped her awake with a living blue morpho butterfly, shattering her faith in rules.
Now, with a pile of sugar, he was telling her: Your proud pursuit of truth is nothing but the world's boundless, unconditional love for you.
Lucian simply returned to the window and reopened his book.
So that's how it is. The protagonist halo isn't some vague concept—it's an observable, guidable reality-altering power.
It could fill the gap left by the Philosopher's Stone. Did that mean that if he could trick or guide Hermione into believing in a certain theory, the World-Will would forcibly complete all the holes in that theory just to make her understanding "true"?
If he gave her a set of wrong alchemical formulas but convinced her they were the key to truth, would the world—for the sake of its fated daughter—turn those errors into correct reality?
Ha. This wasn't a chessboard anymore. This was the Creator's pen—and he had found a way to hold it.
Meanwhile, back in the noisy Great Hall.
The brief surprise caused by Hermione's sudden departure had already been swallowed again by the clatter of knives and forks and weekend laughter at the Gryffindor table.
"What's gotten into her this time?" Ron finally swallowed his mouthful of pumpkin juice. He still held half a slice of buttered toast, looking utterly confused toward the doors. "The Slytherins act like this every single day. Why's she throwing such a fit? Or is she mad we're not revising Potions over breakfast?"
Harry shook his head, his eyes on Hermione's nearly untouched bowl of oatmeal, brow slightly furrowed. "I don't know—but her eyes looked off. Like she hadn't slept all night… or like she was about to lose it."
"She probably found another unforgivable typesetting error in A History of Magic," Ron muttered, reaching for another sausage without a care.
Neville Longbottom, sitting across from them, nervously gripped his spoon. His hand slipped, and the spoon clattered into his plate, splashing gravy.
"D-do you think she's okay?" Neville stammered, his round face full of worry. "The way she ran out… it looked like she was going to fight a dragon by herself."
"That's Hermione, Neville," Ron said thickly through a full mouth. "The only things she'll fight solo are Madam Pince and the never-ending book list. Pass the orange marmalade, would you?"
In the sunlit, bustling Great Hall, neither Ron complaining while eating sausages, nor worried Neville, nor even the usually perceptive Harry noticed anything strange.
They couldn't possibly imagine that, in the castle's quietest corner, their best friend had just stepped through a forbidden door that could upend reality itself.