Evening had fallen; long before the sun and the moon traded places in the sky, White Stone Manor blazed with light.
Servants and attendants hurried back and forth across the estate, frantically busy with preparations for tonight's grand banquet.
On the manor's left stood a white-walled, red-roofed building veiled in thick green ivy. This was Lady Alsha's everyday office and personal study.
Inside, books lay in messy, towering piles across a long wooden desk. A beautiful chestnut-haired woman sat in the center of the chaos, deeply absorbed in the heavy volume she held.
A maid entered, curtsied respectfully, and said, "Lady Alsha, the banquet begins in two hours. Please come to the Dressing Room; everything is ready".
The chestnut-haired woman closed the book, a flash of exasperation flickering in her jade-green eyes.
This wasn't Lady Alsha at all. It was Damian, perfectly disguised as her via Polyjuice Potion.
Damian's grand plan had met a tiny, billion-to-one snag.
He had originally meant to control Alsha with Imperio, turning her into a compliant puppet so he could passively harvest her resources.
Repairing his hidden Wizard Tower was going to require mountains of materials, and her status offered the perfect shortcut.
But heaven refused to cooperate.
Alsha was, after all, a Formal Wizard; her sea of spirit had undergone a qualitative change.
Damian simply couldn't overcome her mental resistance; his Imperio had failed to take hold.
That left Damian in a serious bind.
Alsha couldn't just vanish for months. An official investigation would inevitably follow, rendering her identity and resources completely useless.
Furthermore, she hadn't yet returned to the Court Wizard headquarters in the capital to purchase the restricted High-level Meditation Technique.
To maximize his profit, Damian had to step in and play the part himself.
Fortunately, since Alsha had just been publicly promoted, her magic power was expected to be fluctuating.
After taking her place, Damian simply declined nearly all social events under the guise of stabilizing his sea of spirit.
A newly promoted official refusing casual gatherings raised zero suspicion.
However, tonight's banquet had been arranged weeks in advance to celebrate her breakthrough.
Refusing it now, especially with so many gifts arriving from high-ranking guests, was impossible.
Damian shelved the book he was reading. Alsha's personal library absolutely dwarfed the collections of Chris's family and Jack White.
Lacking a systematic magical schooling in this world, Damian finally had access to complete knowledge systems here, including foundational alchemical crafting.
For days, he had been drowning happily in a Sea of Knowledge.
After taking another bitter swig of Polyjuice Potion from his flask to reset the transformation timer, he followed the maid to the Dressing Room.
Inside stood a half-mannequin wearing a lavish, goose-yellow Gala Gown laden with ornate lace trim. Two maids were meticulously inspecting every hem and ruffle.
At the sight of it, Damian's delicate brows knitted together. "I'm wearing that tonight?"
The maid looked up, clearly puzzled. "But this is the gown you chose earlier this week, miss".
Damian forced a stiff, practiced smile. "I meant... I'd like to change the style. I'm in the mood for something much simpler today".
"One moment, miss." The maids thought nothing of it; Alsha was known for swapping gowns on a whim.
They wheeled out a massive rack filled with different gowns from the wardrobe. The dizzying array made Damian's head ache.
Not a single one of Alsha's gowns could be considered 'plain'; the goose-yellow one had actually been the least extravagant option.
While he stood there agonizing over the frills, a knock sounded at the door.
A properly dressed, white-haired Steward entered after the maid opened the door. He bowed deeply and handed Damian a long parchment scroll. "Lady Alsha, tonight's Gift Register".
Damian glanced at the list and found he physically couldn't look away. Extravagant gifts were pouring in not only from White Stone Town's elite but from the capital as well.
Calming his racing heart, he handed the scroll back. "Leave a copy in the study. Store all the gifts in the Underground Warehouse".
Once the Steward left, Damian turned back to the maids with a resigned sigh. "No need to change. We'll use the first one".
To protect this identity... to secure that absolute mountain of loot... a sacrifice was bearable. No one from his actual life would ever know—Hogwarts World.
In Hogwarts' Forbidden Forest, birds sang sweetly and spring blossomed.
Spring had officially arrived at Hogwarts Castle.
Inside the hidden sanctuary of the Room of Requirement, Damian sat at a desk, reading intently.
Three months had passed since he had ambushed Alsha, but he had actually spent very little of that time over in the secondary Wizarding World.
Every visit meant continuously chugging Polyjuice Potion to maintain Alsha's disguise.
It wasn't that he minded the skirts—he just deeply despised the paranoia of impersonating someone else.
Instead, he had moved some of Alsha's rarest books here, deepening his grasp of the other world's magical system.
It was like erecting a skyscraper: lay the foundation deep, and the tower can rise higher.
His sea of spirit was rapidly approaching the absolute limit of a Third-Level Wizard Apprentice. He was currently contemplating inscribing an Innate Spell within it.
That was the mandatory prerequisite for advancing to a Formal Wizard.
He wondered whether he could inscribe Hogwarts World magic instead.
Thanks to Alsha's complete breakthrough notes, he already knew the inscription method.
Yet, inscribing an Innate Spell strictly required the use of Runic Scripts.
To engrave a standard Hogwarts spell, he would first have to completely translate its wand-waving mechanics into his unique Runic Magic system.
The Hogwarts library held painfully scant research on this topic—only scattered, vague mentions hidden in decaying tomes on ancient magic.
But as his knowledge grew, he finally glimpsed a viable path and began conducting magical translation experiments.
Damian closed his book and pondered. He slowly raised his right hand, focusing on his palm, sensing the familiar flow of mana within.
"Lumos."
A bright light flared to life. He frowned, clenched his fist, and the magical glow instantly dispersed.
He tried again: "Lumos." The light bloomed brightly, then vanished the second he closed his fingers.
After several repetitions, his eyes suddenly brightened—an idea sparked.
Dispelling the light once more, he opened his palm without speaking. Instead, he forced his raw mana to physically shape into glowing Ancient Runes.
He carefully guided the floating runes, linking them together to form a stable Spell Model.
A blinding brilliance burst forth from his hand—he'd cast the Lumos Charm through Ancient Runes!
It was his very first successfully translated Runic Magic. The first step was always the hardest; now, he finally had a working template to translate the rest.
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