By the ti Transfiguration class ended, it was already noon.
"Rowan, want to go to the Great Hall together?"
A Slytherin girl from his year smiled as she made the invitation.
Rowan returned the smile and declined without hesitation.
"Not today. I’m going to ask Professor Snape about a few spells."
At this point, invitations like this had beco routine.
Teenagers were like that. Feelings arrived suddenly and intensely, and courage often outran caution. Rowan rembered being the sa at that age, only far less bold. Because of that, he never dragged things out or left room for misunderstanding.
If he knew he didn’t feel the sa, the cleanest answer was a firm refusal. Lingering out of misplaced kindness only caused deeper disappointnt later. Given ti, they would move on.
Of course, there were always a few who refused to take no for an answer.
When that happened, Professor Snape beca the perfect deterrent.
Just ntioning his na usually ended the conversation imdiately.
Sure enough, the girl’s expression stiffened.
"O–oh... then never mind."
She had been torn apart in Potions class just the day before for adding the wrong ingredient. The re thought of Snape still made her shiver.
Nearby students who had been working up the courage to approach Rowan abruptly changed direction.
Mission accomplished.
Rowan packed away his book, left the classroom, and found a secluded corner. Once he was certain no one was nearby, he raised his hand and turned the Ti-Turner.
Using it required care. Appearing suddenly in front of soone, or worse, encountering his past self, could cause serious temporal backlash.
Five turns.
The world blurred, racing backward like an accelerated reel of film. In the blink of an eye, he was standing in the sa spot five hours earlier.
"Ti magic really is sothing else," Rowan murmured.
No matter how many tis he used it, the sensation never lost its impact.
Unfortunately, ti magic itself remained frustratingly elusive. Even after consulting Dumbledore, real progress had been slow. The discipline lacked structure. There were too few references, too few surviving theories. Even Dumbledore approached it cautiously, relying more on intuition than thod.
Rowan had considered studying ti magic from other worlds.
Marvel ca to mind. The Ti Stone. The Ancient One.
And that was precisely the problem.
He had too many secrets. Until he could stand on equal footing, involving soone like the Ancient One was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. Behind her stood forces far beyond his current reach.
Other worlds weren’t much help either. rlin’s legacy offered nothing concrete. The Fairy Tail world ntioned ti magic only as a lost art. Academy City held no answers yet. Middle-earth didn’t appear to touch ti at all.
So, for now, ti magic would wait.
Alchemy, on the other hand, was a different matter.
Hogwarts didn’t offer a dedicated alchemy course, but it didn’t need one. There was a master already on campus.
Albus Dumbledore.
Second only to Nicolas Flal, Dumbledore’s achievents in alchemy were exceptional. Beyond Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts, he had quietly mastered disciplines most wizards barely understood.
The Deluminator alone was proof.
It didn’t break electric lights. It removed light itself. Power still flowed, switches still worked, but illumination simply ceased to exist until the light was returned.
That wasn’t destruction. It was manipulation of rules.
Scale that principle up, and it could extinguish any light. Even the sun.
That level of craftsmanship placed Dumbledore firmly among the greatest alchemists alive.
Today, Rowan intended to learn how to create Portkeys.
For his purposes, they were among the most practical magical tools imaginable.
Apparition required familiarity with a destination and had distance limits. Flying was slow. Carrying people made things worse. His spatial container solved so problems, but it wasn’t sothing he wanted widely known.
Portkeys were different.
They allowed long-distance transport, mass movent, and didn’t require his presence. Two people could share paired Portkeys and reunite instantly, no matter where one of them went.
In the modern world, he could scatter them across cities and cross continents in seconds. In Middle-earth, they could move armies, enable ambushes, and reinforce battlefields before enemies even realized what was happening.
If magic was a toolset, then Portkeys were leverage.
And Rowan was finally ready to learn how to make them.
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