Late evening, Hogwarts Library—half an hour before curfew.
This was the last sliver of quiet before Madam Pince began her rounds.
Hermione Granger sat in her usual corner spot, surrounded by a fortress of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration and The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2.
Her quill scratched across parchment in short, frantic bursts.
"…Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, the third of the five major exceptions: inanimate objects cannot be transfigured into living creatures that possess independent souls…"
Hermione murmured under her breath, pressing the quill so hard that she underlined the phrase "insurmountable" twice.
"This is an ironclad rule of Transfiguration. Like gravity, it cannot be ignored. The inanimate can only ever imitate life—it can never become life."
"Page 312 of this edition has a misprinted word."
The voice came from directly above her.
Hermione's train of thought snapped like a taut string. She jerked her head up so fast she didn't even brush aside the curl that had fallen across her lips.
Lucian stood in the shadow of the nearest bookshelf, idly turning over the pocket watch she had once given him, regarding her—or rather, regarding the dogmatic pile in front of her—with the detached scrutiny of a jeweler examining a flawed gem.
"Lucian? You're here to revise too?" Hermione instinctively closed her notebook. Her eyes brightened for half a second, the corner of her mouth almost curving into their familiar conspiratorial smile—before confusion took over.
"A misprint? That's impossible. This is the fifty-second edition compiled by Miranda Goshawk, personally proofread by Professor McGonagall."
"The proofreading isn't wrong. It was written for students."
Lucian stepped out of the shadow, his palm gliding lightly along the spines of the ancient tomes as he passed.
"But recently in the Restricted Section I came across a manuscript titled Alchemy and the Remoulding of Origins, written by an anonymous dark wizard of the fifteenth century. He states quite clearly that Gamp's Laws are not immutable axioms—they are merely a buffer zone between conventional magic and true miracle."
Hermione bit down on the feather of her quill; her small tiger-like canines flashed briefly. Anyone who knew her recognized the prelude to a lengthy, impassioned rebuttal.
"We should trust authoritative textbooks, Lucian. Most books in the Restricted Section are sealed away precisely because their theories are either erroneous or dangerously unstable." Her voice was stern, words tumbling out at high speed. "If there were a flaw in Gamp's Laws, Professor Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall would have told us long ago. Magic has logic. It obeys equivalent exchange and must respect certain forbidden boundaries. There are no shortcuts that bypass the laws."
"That, right there, is why you are excellent… yet never transcendent, Granger."
Lucian reached the table, pulled out the chair opposite her—but did not sit. He simply stood, looking down. The subtle pressure of his presence made Hermione's spine instinctively straighten as she tried to reclaim some semblance of dominance in the exchange.
He placed the pocket watch on the table between them. The second hand ticked with quiet insistence.
"What do you mean by that?"
"You treat textbooks as scripture and Professor McGonagall's word as divine oracle." Lucian's voice dropped low, threaded with mockery and something almost like demonic temptation. "The 'logic' and 'laws' you cling to have already been gelded."
He tapped lightly on the thick spine of A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration.
"That manuscript records an ancient formula—one that exposes a clear paradox in the soul-imparting clause of Gamp's Laws. If your textbook is correct, the formula should be laughable nonsense. But if the formula works…"
Lucian paused, locking eyes with her.
"…then the entire foundation of modern Transfiguration scholarship is built crooked."
"That's impossible!" Hermione's voice rose sharply—enough to earn a venomous sideways glare from Madam Pince. She immediately dropped to a fierce whisper. "That is absolutely impossible. Unless I see the book myself—unless I see the actual derivation of that formula—no text can overturn Gamp's Laws!"
"You want to see it?" Lucian remained perfectly composed.
"Tell me the title. If I can get a signed note from a professor—"
"You won't be able to borrow it. The book has been on the high-security restricted list for decades. Even most upper-years can't access it." Lucian cut her off smoothly. "But I already have it."
Hermione's eyes widened to perfect circles. "You stole a book from the Restricted Section? Lucian, that is a serious breach of school rules! If you're caught—"
"Lower your voice, Miss Granger. Are you looking for an excuse to report me to Filch… or…" Lucian leaned forward just slightly, gazing straight into her brown eyes that burned with naked hunger for knowledge, "…do you actually want to know whether the textbook is lying—or whether I am?"
Every rational instinct screamed at her to gather her things and leave immediately, or at the very least demand that he return the book at once.
But this was knowledge. Unknown, paradigm-shattering knowledge.
For Hermione Granger, that temptation was more lethal than an entire box of Honeydukes' finest chocolates.
She bit her lower lip, wrestled internally for several long seconds, then forced the words out through a tight throat:
"Where… is the book?"
Lucian did not answer directly.
Instead he reached out and rapped—once, twice, three times—on the spine of her Beginner's Guide.
A heavy Galleon slid from his sleeve and landed on her parchment, pinning down the word "insurmountable" she had underlined so fiercely.
Hermione stared at it.
A single alchemical Galleon, stamped with a raven entwined by an ouroboros.
"What is this?" she asked, bewildered.
"Your ticket."
Lucian's tone reverted to its usual remote chill, as though the intense exchange of the last few minutes had never happened.
"Midnight. Eighth floor. Opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being clubbed by trolls."
He turned to leave, offering her only the black silhouette of his back and one final murmur heavy with unspoken riddles:
"If you truly value truth above rules, then bring your brain. I will show you what is written in that book—things you will never learn in Professor McGonagall's classroom."
Hermione Granger remained alone at the table.
One by one the library lamps began to extinguish as closing time approached. Shadows crept toward her from every direction.
She could still hear the three crisp knocks echoing in her ears.
This was insane. It broke curfew. It broke school rules. It might even brush against the Dark Arts.
Her hand trembled as she tried to push the coin away and return to revising her Transfiguration theorems.
But the moment her fingertips brushed the metal, she instead closed her palm around it—as though she were quite literally grasping the future.
Madam Pince's approaching footsteps finally jolted her out of her trance.
Hermione looked down at the coin in her hand.
In the dying lamplight the ouroboros seemed to come alive; its tiny, intricate scales slid over one another, reflecting a soft, fatally seductive gleam.
It felt like a heavy gravestone carved with heresy, silently entombing the careful, rule-bound order she had spent more than a decade building her entire sense of self upon.
Lucian's voice still lingered in her mind.
For a Muggle-born witch, rules had always been her Shield Charm.
Memorize every regulation. Earn every Outstanding. Prove to the magical world: I—a girl from a non-magical family—understand this place better than any of you.
But what if… the order itself was a lie?
Her gaze returned to A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration, the sacred text she had once revered. Now it looked pale and bloodless. The flawless, watertight logic inside it suddenly resembled a gentle, insidious deception—coaxing children into believing the world was no larger than a hearth.
"This isn't rational, Hermione," she whispered to the empty corridor.
"That's the Restricted Section… that's past curfew… that's Lucian. He's… he's like a devil. Professor McGonagall would be disappointed in him—and even more disappointed in you. Imagine if Gryffindor lost a hundred points because of you…"
She began stuffing books into her bag, tightening the ink bottle, cramming loose parchment into pockets any which way.
Yet each time her fingers grazed the coin again, a near-shivering thrill raced straight to her brain.
It was curiosity—
A purer, more deranged instinct than hunger, than fear, than vanity.
For someone like Hermione, the most unbearable pain in the world was not death, nor ostracism—but to know that truth waited just behind a thin veil, beckoning, while she stood frozen because she was afraid to step over a red line drawn on the floor.
That was the ultimate terror of mediocrity.
If Gamp's Laws were wrong—or worse, if they were nothing but a comforting fiction invented by those in power—then every ounce of effort she had poured into her perfect grades, every late night, every painstakingly organized notebook… had all been spent building pretty sandcastles on top of a crumbling academic ruin.
"What if… the truth really is there?"
Her breathing grew shallow and rapid.
Those three knocks had been Lucian smashing three deliberate cracks into the fortress of logic she had believed unbreakable. Through those fissures she no longer saw a warm, safe ceiling—she saw starlight, she saw abyss, she saw magic in its most primal, untamed, and pitch-black form.
The tip of the ouroboros seemed to prick her skin.
In that instant the model-student docility in her eyes shattered completely.
"Professor McGonagall always said magic requires precision… but it also requires the courage to cross the abyss."
Hermione drew a deep, steadying breath.
The very last oil lamp in the library guttered out under Madam Pince's wand.
In absolute darkness she shouldered her heavy bag.
She did not turn toward the torch-lit corridor that led back to the dormitories, safety, and approval.
Instead she rubbed the coin once more between thumb and forefinger, then lifted her eyes toward the shadowy, winding stone staircase that climbed to the upper floors.
She knew that once she took this step, she might never again return to the simple world where memorizing textbooks earned you badges and smiles.
Yet she still stepped forward—light and silent, like a ghost who belonged to no era at all.