It wasn't until J'zargo's phone call that Skyl realised just how busy the last two months had been. Then again, "busy" might not be the right word—his life had simply been very full.
He'd been tinkering with a magical version of artificial intelligence, working on automated farms, designing slaughterhouses and soul-gem charging assembly lines, building steam engines with enchanting techniques and great steamships with Transfiguration. At Hogwarts he ate and drank with a bunch of students; in Winterhold he drank with old friends. In the Tower of Tomes, he played Famicom games or went out to sea to fish. Sometimes he discussed arcane theory with College mages, sometimes he talked politics with the Jarl of Winterhold.
Time flew by in research, fun, and socialising. For an immortal, having hobbies of your own was already a kind of happiness. For short-lived mortals, having something you love was, perhaps, even more precious than happiness itself.
(Skyl: Never lose your passion, my friend.)
It was already December in World I. Christmas was almost there, and Hogwarts Castle was steeped in the joy of the coming holiday; even the air seemed to turn into honey water, sweet and fragrant.
The work in Winterhold had reached a temporary stopping point, and Skyl had returned to Hogwarts, planning to take a short break until the New Year.
"How did you find the Tower of Tomes?" Skyl was genuinely curious. He hadn't been paying much attention to Hogwarts these last two months, but clearly, for Harry and the others, it had been a period of fun adventures.
They were itching to share it with him—just as Skyl had told them stories on the Hogwarts Express back then. Now the four of them had stories of their own. Feeling that their life experience had thickened just a little, all of them were visibly brimming with pride.
Hermione and Ron started talking over each other, trying to explain how they had found the door to the Tower of Tomes step by step.
Kids' ability to organise their thoughts was terrible; their accounts were illogical, jumping from one point to another. After listening for a while, Skyl felt like his head had swelled to twice its size.
In the end, it was actually Harry who stepped in and managed to straighten things out.
"Ron found a clue in the Trophy Room. That's when we started looking for hints about the Genie Legend…"
Back then, Hermione had suggested they split up and comb the castle.
They would search for anything related to lamps—objects, books, even paintings or recordings.
Hermione went to the Hogwarts library. There she found a copy of One Thousand and One Nights, but when she opened it, she discovered that the passage about Aladdin's lamp had been replaced by a short poem:
The words on paper are hidden,
Truth is only in mind.
The fool find flame of secret,
Return to lamp for genie.
Ron and Neville were responsible for searching the castle. Those two muddle-headed boys spent a month getting nowhere at all, until one day, by chance, they noticed an oil painting called "Woman Drinking in the Afternoon" on the second floor of the Astronomy Tower. On the table in the painting stood a silver oil lamp.
"It was me who spotted it!" Ron cut in excitedly.
Harry nodded. "Ron wiped the lamp in the painting."
"The lamp spat out a ball of fire!"
The silvery flame coiled like a spiralling arrow and struck the back of Ron's hand, leaving behind a small ring-shaped mark.
At the time, no one knew what the mark was for, or whether it would hurt Ron. Cursed objects had always been part of wizarding folklore, and Ron had nightmares for several nights straight because of it.
"Did you dream anything? Did you invent any spells in your dreams?" Skyl asked curiously.
Ron shook his head. Inventing spells was something so far out of his reach it might as well be on another planet.
Harry's expression shifted. He very much wanted to use this chance to bring up his own recent strange dreams. But the story was moving on.
With the clues they'd gathered so far, Hermione concluded that the next step was obvious: they had to find a hidden magic lamp somewhere, and have Ron return the "secret flame" to it to solve the puzzle.
And so it went—right up until the end of November, the four of them were still stuck on that step.
"The lamp wouldn't be hidden in some totally random place. There must be a clue we're missing," Hermione had said, racking her brains. "I keep wondering what the first two lines of the poem mean—the words on the page are silent, and the truth is only in the mind."
Ron muttered quietly, "Her expression was terrifying. I was half afraid she'd rip someone's skull open just to look for the answer."
Harry had said, "What if those two lines mean we should go look for people who know the Genie Legend and ask them?"
"Professors who study Muggles might know," Hermione suggested.
"And who studies Muggles?" Harry asked.
"Professor Charity Burbage, and Professor Quirrell," Hermione answered—and that last name was unexpected. "Before he started teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts, the Muggle Studies course used to be taught by Professor Quirrell."
So Hermione went to see Professor Charity Burbage, while Harry went to see Professor Quirrell.
From their teachers, they both learned in detail the wizarding version of the story of Aladdin's lamp.
The wizarding version was very different from the Muggle one.
In the Muggle folk tale Aladdin's Lamp, the story goes that a boy named Aladdin is betrayed by an evil wizard, but eventually finds happiness in life thanks to the lamp's genie.
In the wizarding world, that was no story—it was actual history. The "evil wizard" was based on a male wizard who lived in the Arab region in the thirteenth century. He was a magical-creature enthusiast who, in his youth, travelled the world searching for traces of magical beings.
One year, he sailed alone to the Americas and discovered an island near the equator rich in gold. This golden land was called Chryse, and it had already been recorded in the mid-first century by a Greek wizard named Dionysus.
On that island, the wizard sealed a strange magical fiend inside an oil lamp and brought it back to Asia.
Many years later, the lamp was stolen by the wizard's Muggle servant.
The servant's nephew accidentally released the fiend. In its rage, the creature cursed the land, conjuring endless sandstorms that buried forests and cities and turned the region into what is now the Rub' al Khali Desert on the Arabian Peninsula. The oil lamp disappeared afterwards.
After learning the truth behind the tale, the four young wizards were at a loss. The lamp's last known location was on the other side of the world. What were they supposed to do—skip class and run off to the Arabian Peninsula on an expedition?
Now, sitting in front of Skyl, they poured out their complaints, insisting he'd done it on purpose to make things difficult.
"All right, all right. At least you did manage it in the end, didn't you? So tell me—how did you finally figure it out?" Skyl asked.
This time, the breakthrough had come from Neville Longbottom. He had always been trying his best to help, but he was clumsy and timid and tended to fade into the background. Just when his three friends were completely out of ideas, Neville had suddenly said, "Hogwarts should have a desert too."
"Huh? Where?" they'd asked.
"In Greenhouse Two… In Herbology, Professor Sprout mentioned she uses a 'weather rug' to create different environments. Some plants can only grow in specific climates." Neville had noticed Hermione's eyes growing brighter and brighter, and he'd ducked his head, mumbling, "One time after class, I stayed behind to ask Professor Sprout a question. In the corner of Greenhouse Two there's a wooden chest. That's where she put the weather rug for desert climates away."
"That's brilliant, Neville!" Harry and Ron had both cheered for him.
And sure enough, they found the rug that simulated desert weather in Greenhouse Two.
When they spread the rug out, a miniature desert appeared. The mark on the back of Ron's hand began to burn. He reached down to touch the yellow sand and pulled a silver oil lamp out of a little dune.
"Then the mark on Ron's hand turned into a flame and flew into the lamp," Harry said quietly. "And smoke started pouring out of it."
Hermione picked up the story. "The smoke condensed and formed a door."
Ron spread his hands. "And then we walked through it."
When the four of them stepped through, they found themselves in a warm, golden desert. This was Mage J'zargo's Classroom.
In the middle of the not-so-vast desert, oasis like scattered pearls glimmered under the sun, and at the heart of one such oasis rose a towering temple. Two-legged great cats, dressed in impeccably proper priestly robes, stood before the temple gates to welcome them in.