Chapter 57 — The Silver Screen of Magic
The frost of February was thinning, giving way to softer winds, but inside Hogwarts, something else was stirring — something that was no longer just academic curiosity or gossip about the Weasley family's strange genius. It had become movement. A quiet revolution wrapped in ink and quills, ideas and letters. The staff had stopped underestimating the name "Ronald Bilius Weasley." The moment Professor Sinistra confirmed that Ron's celestial recalibrations had rewritten the base of magical astronomy itself, the faculty began to prepare for his Astrology: Celestial Patterns of the Magical and Non-Magical Worlds to be added to the official curriculum starting the next academic year.
That very morning, the contract arrived at Bishop Bones' manor — sealed in Hogwarts blue, bearing the crest of the school and signed by Albus Dumbledore himself.
Bishop found Ron in the study, half-absorbed in sketches and diagrams again — this time not about stars or potions, but about camera parts, reels, and strange inscriptions of lens curvature.
"Letter from Hogwarts," Bishop said, handing it over.
Ron looked up, brushed the graphite from his fingers, and broke the seal. The parchment inside was crisp, the words elegant:
"Mr. Ronald Bilius Weasley,
Your Astrology manuscript has been formally reviewed and approved for inclusion in the Hogwarts curriculum, effective the 1990–1991 academic year.
The Board of Governors extends their commendation. Attached are contractual documents regarding publication, royalties, and future rights of revision.
Signed,
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Ron read it silently for a long time, the candlelight flickering against his calm face. Then, without hesitation, he picked up a quill and signed the parchment. "Done," he murmured, but his tone wasn't triumphant — more contemplative, as if he were already three steps ahead.
Bishop peered at him. "You're not even smiling. That's your third book officially under Hogwarts, lad. Potions, Herbology, and now Astrology."
Ron nodded slowly. "Knowledge should keep spreading, sir. Not stop with me."
He sealed the signed parchment, then paused — eyes distant, thoughtful. "But before I send this back," he added, "I'll ask for something else."
He sat down again and began another letter, this one far shorter but far stranger.
"Professor Dumbledore,
I have been thinking about the roots of Hogwarts, its founders, and what they truly envisioned when they built it. I'd like to study them — deeply — not from myth, but from what records still exist.
Please send me every detail available — journals, sketches, early architectural blueprints, relic descriptions, and their known magical philosophies. I think there's still something we've all missed.
Also… if possible, I'd like to ask about the feasibility of crafting a camera that can record magic without interference. I believe such a tool could change how history remembers us — how stories are told.
I will enclose the signed contract with this letter.
Respectfully,
Ronald Bilius Weasley."
When the letter was done, Mr. Stark gave a soft trill from the windowsill, as though sensing the importance of his next flight. Ron tied the two parchments — the signed contract and the letter — to the eagle owl's leg and whispered, "To Dumbledore." Mr. Stark glowed faintly gold and vanished into the sky like a comet.
As soon as the owl was gone, Ron turned to Bishop. "I'll need books. A lot of them. Acting, screenwriting, direction, lighting, lens studies, editing, composition — everything about how muggles make films."
Bishop blinked. "All of them? That's months of reading."
Ron only smiled. "Then I'll need a lot of time."
By the next day, a whole stack of new muggle books appeared on Bishop's table — thick encyclopedias on filmmaking, manuals on stage direction, and even a few magazines featuring Hollywood directors. Ginny peeked over the pile, frowning. "That looks boring."
"It's storytelling," Ron said softly. "But done with light."
That night, when the manor fell quiet and Bishop had long gone to sleep, Ron sat cross-legged on the floor, the books around him like a fortress of knowledge. He took a deep breath.
"System," he whispered. "Upgrade my practical skills — direction, story-writing, screenplay writing, cinematography, editing, and acting. A thousand years ahead."
The air shimmered faintly, and the room filled with the low hum of unseen energy.
The moment he spoke, the world folded inward.
It was not pain in the normal sense — it was pressure.
Thousands of years of knowledge — languages of light, theories of emotion, physics of illusion, the mathematics of storytelling — poured into his mind all at once. His consciousness felt as if it were being stretched between centuries. Every muscle tensed. He saw flashes of cameras spinning, scripts being rewritten, lights burning in front of moving actors — all from perspectives that were not his.
Then came the noise.
It wasn't a sound. It was thought colliding with thought, a storm of cognition, an orchestra of memory from no single origin. His body convulsed, and he slammed back against the floor. The books around him rustled as though alive.
"Ron!" Bishop shouted, rushing in.
The boy's nose was bleeding, his eyes wide and unfocused. His mouth moved, but the words were nonsense — fragments of dialogue, directions, camera terms, all tangled together.
"Focus! Hey—Ron, look at me!" Bishop's voice was a mixture of fear and helplessness. The boy's skin was clammy; his body twitched like an overcharged wire.
It took hours before the spasms subsided. And even then, for the next two weeks, Ron drifted between feverish consciousness and quiet muttering. Bishop barely slept — he'd never seen something like this. Sometimes, when he entered the room, Ron's hand would be tracing invisible shapes in the air, as though directing unseen actors.
At other times, he was utterly still — eyes closed, sweat-soaked, breathing shallow.
When it ended, it did so without ceremony. Ron simply opened his eyes one morning, looked at Bishop, and asked softly, "What day is it?"
"Two weeks," Bishop replied, exhausted but relieved. "You've been out for two bloody weeks."
"I heard that you break into spasms from time to time. Ginny is habituated by this and nobody is as concerned about you", Bishop mused out aloud.
Ron blinked. His voice was calm. "Then I must have survived the feedback."
Bishop stared at him. "Feedback? Ron, that wasn't feedback, that was—whatever that was—it wasn't normal! What did you do?"
Ron smiled faintly, but his face was pale. "Let's just say... I took in too much at once."
The next few days passed in a strange rhythm. Ron's movements were slow at first — his coordination off, his sentences clipped. But gradually, he returned to himself, sharper, more precise than before.
When Bishop watched him, he noticed a strange new grace in how Ron held things — as if every gesture had purpose. The boy no longer hesitated when writing; his hand moved smoothly, like he already knew what came next.
He spoke softly about light, color, rhythm — things Bishop associated with film schools, not with children.
Once, Bishop found him sitting by the window, notebook open, sketching what looked like lens diagrams.
"What's that?" he asked.
Ron didn't look up. "Lens behavior when interacting with ambient magic. I think the angle of magical reflection can be adjusted if I compensate with certain crystals… maybe fluorite."
Bishop rubbed his temples. "You sound like a man who's seen a thousand films no one's ever made."
Ron gave a thin smile. "Maybe they just haven't been remembered yet."
When Mr. Stark swooped in through the open window one afternoon, parchment in talons, Ron felt the faint ache behind his eyes return — a ghost of the migraine that had nearly broken him. But he ignored it. The owl landed on his arm and cooed softly, sensing his fatigue.
It was Dumbledore's reply.
Hogwarts Seal — Office of the Headmaster
Mr. Ronald Bilius Weasley,
Your signed agreement has been received, and Hogwarts expresses its gratitude for your continued academic contributions. Your Astronomy text will be implemented beginning the next academic cycle.
Regarding your inquiries about magical-cinematic capture devices and access to historical documents about the Founders — I find your requests both… curious and promising.
Such an endeavor, while unconventional, may open new pathways for knowledge and understanding between the magical and non-magical communities. However, I must warn that the task of merging two fundamentally opposed systems — magic and electricity — has perplexed the greatest minds of our age.
Still, I have contacted a mutual acquaintance, one whose experience with alchemical harmonization may yield insights into your proposal. His reply, I suspect, will take some time.
As for the Founders' archives — I shall grant you access to transcribed material copies through official channels. The originals are under high preservation, but their summaries may suffice for your study.
Yours sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore
Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Ron read it twice before setting it aside. He didn't need the System to recognize who Dumbledore's "mutual acquaintance" was.
Flamel.
He thought of the Philosopher's Stone and of how a camera built to resist such energy would need not gears, but runes — the merging of optics and enchantment.
It was a beginning.
Meanwhile, Dumbledore's end of things was far from calm.
The old wizard sat in his circular office, a single candle burning low, illuminating stacks of correspondence. Ministry owls had come and gone all day — some carrying questions, others concerns.
The word had spread:
"The Weasley boy intends to make films?"
Some called it absurd.
Others, dangerous.
The more forward-minded witches whispered that it could be revolutionary.
Dumbledore simply smiled.
"Imagination," he murmured, "is not bound by blood or magic."
He leaned back as Fawkes ruffled his feathers, letting out a low trill. "Yes, my friend," Dumbledore said softly. "He will need allies. And patience."
He wrote a short letter that night — one sealed with ancient wax, bearing no crest.
"Dear Nicholas,
I find myself in need of your expertise once again.
A young prodigy — one whose ideas seem to arrive from a future that does not yet exist — seeks to capture magic through lenses. I wonder, my old friend, if we might revisit our theories on crystallized perception and magical vibration harmonics. It may be time to see if magic itself can be filmed."
He sent it with a flick of his wand. The phoenix song faded into the night.
Back in Bishop's house, Ron's recovery had turned into obsession.
He spent hours sorting through the fragmented documents Dumbledore had sent. The "records" were more myth than fact — differing accounts, half-legends, scribbles about the Four Founders that contradicted each other at every turn.
Helga Hufflepuff's kindness was exaggerated, Salazar Slytherin's motives blurred between ambition and fear. Even Godric's heroism had shades of arrogance that history had scrubbed clean.
Bishop once entered the study and found Ron surrounded by these fragments — pacing, muttering quietly.
"Everything's incomplete," Ron said, tapping the parchment. "Nothing lines up. It's like the pieces of four different worlds."
"So? You'll figure it out. You always do."
Ron stopped pacing. "Maybe I shouldn't try to piece it together exactly as it was. Maybe… it should be told as it could have been."
He stared at the flickering light of the table lamp. "Sometimes truth is too small for the shape of memory."
Bishop frowned but didn't argue. He'd learned that Ron's mind worked in layers — always five steps ahead, always turning ordinary concepts into something transformative.
By the end of March, Ron's physical recovery was complete. His mental state, however, was something else entirely.
He could now recall every lesson, every page, every theoretical note he had ever read — but it came with a price.
Dreams.
He saw flashes of people, dialogues, emotions that didn't belong to him — echoes of knowledge he'd absorbed too quickly.
The System's faint interface appeared sometimes in the corner of his vision, almost sympathetic.
[System Status — Ronald Bilius Weasley]
Age: 10
Magic Capacity: Intermediate-Advanced
Skills (Tier-Based):
— Direction: Tier 5 – Grandmaster
— Screenwriting: Tier 5 – Grandmaster
— Cinematography: Tier 5 – Grandmaster
— Editing: Tier 5 – Grandmaster
— Acting: Tier 5 – Grandmaster
— Herbology: Tier 4 – Master
— Potions: Tier 4 – Master
— Astrology: Tier 4 – Master
— Runic Theory: Tier 2 – Intermediate
Ron closed the interface and exhaled. "That's close," he murmured. "Too close."
Mr. Stark hooted softly in agreement, tilting his golden eyes.
Ron reached for a quill and wrote another short note for Hogwarts — a polite acknowledgment of Dumbledore's reply, and a secondary request for more detailed rune interaction charts related to visual enchantments.
Then, quietly, he sat back and looked out the window.
Bishop was outside in the garden, arguing with the landlord about the strange noises that sometimes came from Ron's study.
The boy smiled faintly.
"The world's not ready," he whispered. "But it will be."
At Hogwarts, Professor Sinistra was among the first to receive shipment crates of the new Astronomy textbooks. She flipped through them curiously, her eyes widening at the concise explanations and annotated star maps. The diagrams shimmered faintly when touched — layered with simple enchantments for night-time observation.
"The Weasley boy," she murmured. "He's rewritten the heavens."
In the staff room, the gossip was relentless. McGonagall maintained her composure, though her tone was clipped.
"The twins' brother, apparently," she told Sprout dryly.
"Brilliant, if somewhat… unnerving."
Sprout laughed. "Unnerving? You're saying that now? Just wait until the next letter arrives."
And indeed, by the next morning, another owl soared through the Great Hall, dropping a sealed envelope marked with both magical and Muggle insignias.
Dumbledore opened it at breakfast, scanning the parchment silently. His expression shifted — amusement first, then calculation.
"He's not stopping," he said quietly to McGonagall.
"Should he?" she asked.
Dumbledore smiled faintly. "No. The world changes only when someone refuses to wait for permission."
He set the letter aside and looked out through the enchanted windows of the Great Hall — toward the rising sun.
That evening, far from Hogwarts, Ron sat beneath a flickering lamp, exhausted but content. His desk was littered with diagrams of lenses, half-broken camera shots, pages of notes.
For the first time since his arrival in this world, he felt as though his knowledge, his two lives, and his impossible System were all beginning to align.
He whispered to himself, "To build a bridge, you start with the first stone."
And Mr. Stark hooted softly, as if agreeing with him — the low melodic sound echoing like the first note of a symphony yet to be written.