It was a very strange feeling, one Harry couldn't quite put into words, as if his body's instincts were quietly telling him he was about to travel again.
He was a little excited. His knowledge still didn't measure up to that of the Sorcerer Supreme—at least not yet.
If he brought all this wizarding magic back and handed it over to her, it would surely bloom into something even more brilliant in her hands.
Harry had no intention of hiding his travelling from the Sorcerer Supreme. Crossing between worlds was nothing new to her; countless beings in the myriad dimensions had accidentally slipped across and ended up in other realities.
Perhaps this wizarding world was just one more such dimension, but Harry's instincts told him that travelling from the wizarding world to the other world was far from simple.
The distance between the wizarding world and that other world was unimaginably vast—so great that it might not even fall within the range of the "ordinary" multiverse at all.
Harry soon found his dormitory—a room containing five four-poster beds, each hung with deep red velvet curtains.
It was classic Gryffindor colouring; most of the decorations in the common room had been a mix of deep red and gold as well.
His roommates were all familiar faces: Ron Weasley, Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, and Neville Longbottom.
The four boys were overjoyed. They were actually going to share a dorm with the Boy Who Lived.
Each of them found his own bed; their luggage had already been brought up and placed beside them by the house-elves.
Ron sat down on his bed and called through the curtains to Harry:
"The food today was amazing. Looks like we're going to be eating pretty well from now on.
Oi, get off, Scabbers, stop chewing my sheets."
Harry shook his head, opened his trunk, and took out a large assortment of magical materials. Ron noticed and stared curiously.
"Harry, why did you buy so many potion ingredients? I don't think even Potions class will use all that."
Harry was open about it. "I'm learning wand-making. I want to craft more powerful wands—and I need a lot of magical materials to make the contract scrolls for my lending magic."
"You can really lend people magic?" Ron sounded dubious. "I thought you were joking before."
Harry's lending magic would be exposed sooner or later, so he might as well start laying the groundwork.
In a book titled "Born Noble: The Legacy of Bloodline Wizards", he'd read that some witches and wizards were born able to draw on their bloodline to perform extraordinary kinds of magic.
The Potters were a very old wizarding family. No one really knew whether there might be some hidden bloodline power in them.
Combine the idea of a bloodline wizard with the title of "saviour", and he had more than enough justification for this so-called lending magic.
"Of course," Harry said. "I know quite a few bloodline spells already. For example—this one."
He reached into mid-air in front of him. His hand seemed to sink into a swirling vortex, and he pulled out a pile of snacks from the Muggle world.
Handing the snacks around to the other four boys, he answered their wide-eyed looks:
"It's a pocket space that can store items. It can hold a lot of things. The space inside is still small right now, but it can grow."
In truth, it was a pocket dimension. The space inside could expand without limit, at the cost of Harry's own magical power.
But wizards in this world clearly had no concept of "dimensions", so all he could do was call it "space".
And if he ended up lending this pocket-dimension spell to lots of borrowers, and each of their inner spaces were as vast as his, even he would struggle to maintain them all.
So he made sure to describe the interior as small; that way, when he lent pocket-space magic out, he'd only need to keep a tiny space going for each borrower.
Harry felt he really was a genius.
"This is brilliant!" Seamus squeezed in beside him, eyes shining as he gazed at the swirling vortex floating in the air. He tried to touch it, but without Harry's permission his hand met nothing at all.
"If you really can lend magic, could you let me borrow some first?"
The others chimed in eagerly. "And us—we want pocket spaces as well!"
On the very first night, Harry became the undisputed leader of the dorm, thanks to Muggle snacks and the promise of lending magic.
...
On the eighth floor of Hogwarts, in the Headmaster's office.
The walls of the office were covered in portraits of former headmasters and headmistresses. Some of them snored away in their frames, some read books, and a few were chatting idly with the current Headmaster.
In one frame that had been empty a moment before, the figure of a kindly-faced witch suddenly appeared. She spoke to Dumbledore, who sat in his chair, idly teasing his phoenix Fawkes.
"It seems our little Mr Saviour has a few rather remarkable abilities.
Dumbledore, I've heard from the other portraits that Harry appears to have the power to touch souls directly—and that he can share that ability with others.
What was the word he used to describe it? 'Lending'! Yes, that was it."
"Lending—what a vile word."
Another portrait—this one showing a bearded wizard in a gentleman's suit from the Middle Ages—snapped angrily. He looked impeccably refined at first glance, but there was a permanent sharpness about him as he warned:
"Dumbledore, you should lock him up until you understand what this 'lending' really is. I recall that word mostly being used by Muggle leech-like bankers and devils in old tales."
"Oh, shut up, Black," the kindly witch said with open disdain. "You're just sulking because the saviour isn't in Slytherin. If Harry had been sorted into Slytherin, you'd be saying something completely different."
"Detestable Dilys, you—"
Seeing the two former headteachers on the verge of a shouting match, Dumbledore hastily changed the subject.
"I've been watching Harry for a very long time," he said. "I saw him growing up. He's a kind and friendly boy—very much like Lily once was.
Maybe this 'lending' is simply his gift, a sort of bloodline magic, as much a part of him as his destiny to become the saviour.
He will not become a dark wizard. I believe we should observe him for a while, and then I'll look for an opportunity to speak with him."
Many of the portraits agreed with Dumbledore. The witch called Dilys went so far as to voice her support outright; she, too, believed Harry was a good child at heart.
Black was unhappy, but even he had to agree in the end. After all, they were only portraits. The current Headmaster was Dumbledore.
Once Dumbledore had made his decision, they could not overturn it.
...
The next day, Harry and Ron left their dorm room together and headed for class.
From today on, their lessons would officially begin.
Perhaps because Harry was simply too famous, wherever the two of them went they inevitably drew a crowd of onlooking students, as if Harry were some marvellous new exhibit on display.
"He's over there—look!"
"Where?"
"That tall dark-haired boy—he's really handsome."
"Oh my God, I see him— is that Harry Potter?"
"Such a pity we can't see the lightning scar…"
Harry smiled at the cluster of chattering girls staring at him. As they let out a chorus of hushed squeals, he carried on toward their classroom.