Chapter 75: Flitwick is a Good Professor
When the bell rang, Professor Flitwick called out before Regulus could follow the others.
"Mr Black, would you stay for a moment, please?"
Students began packing their bags and filing out. Avery glanced back, caught Regulus's eye, and mouthed, I'll wait outside, before slipping into the corridor with Alex and the rest.
Soon, the classroom was quiet, with only Professor Flitwick and Regulus left among the scattered practice dummies and ink stained desks.
Flitwick hopped down from his stack of books and walked over. Up close, the professor's usual bright cheer had softened into something more serious, more intent, as if he were speaking to a colleague rather than a first year.
"Your question today," Flitwick said, "reminded me of the one you asked in your first lesson. The Levitation Charm. The way you spoke about distribution and lifting, as if you could see the spell's structure in your mind."
Regulus bowed slightly and listened.
"Back then, you were asking about principles. About why," Flitwick continued. "Today you asked why again, but from a different direction."
He tilted his head, spectacles catching the light.
"You were not asking how the spell works. You were asking what it does not work on. That is not a trivial shift, Mr Black. It is a deepening of thought. A step forward in understanding."
Flitwick's voice lowered, as if sharing something older than Hogwarts itself.
"Magic is there," he said. "It has always been there. Like air, like water, like earth."
He gestured lightly with his wand, not casting, only emphasising the idea.
"Everyone approaches it differently. In the same school, with the same professor and the same book, students will still walk in different directions. Some become brilliant in duelling. Some in healing. Some in transfiguration. Some in alchemy."
"There is no better or worse direction," he added, matter of fact. "Only choice."
Then Flitwick looked straight up at Regulus, eyes gleaming behind the lenses.
"But there is one common thread. You must believe."
"Believe in the existence of magic. Believe in your own understanding. Believe in the strength of the soul."
He paused, letting the words settle.
"Because magic sometimes answers when you least expect it. It blooms when you need it most. Not always neatly. Not always logically. But it answers."
Regulus stood very still. The lingering haze in his mind, the faint confusion that had followed him out of Charms class, began to thin.
Flitwick, with decades of teaching behind him, seemed to see the change as it happened. Not a dramatic revelation, not a sudden transformation, but the small shift of a mind loosening its grip on a single way of seeing.
Regulus had always leaned toward reason. He was used to looking for patterns, building frameworks, forcing the world to make sense in clean lines.
Even magic had not escaped that instinct. He had tried to fit it into something explainable, something that could be analysed and reduced to cause and effect.
Yet the more he encountered, the more he could not ignore what sat outside neat logic.
Transfiguration did not merely rearrange matter. Some branches of it brushed against essence.
Magic that touched the soul reached into mysteries that resisted simple conversion and measurement.
And the Patronus, the Starling he had summoned on the Irish cliffs, had not come from calculation at all. It had risen from something raw and genuine, a longing so direct it felt as if it had torn open a door inside him.
That had been the first time he truly felt the weight of the soul.
He had chosen, since then, not to discard reason but to let it stand beside feeling. Rationality to plan the path. Sensibility to live it. Calculation to control magic. The heart to understand it.
Now Flitwick's words slid into place like the last piece of a puzzle.
Magic was there.
It did not change to match his theories. It did not diminish because a spell could not be explained in a tidy way. It existed as naturally as the world itself.
He could study it with structure, test it with experience, and still accept that some parts of it answered to sincerity, desire, and belief.
These were not contradictions. They were different routes to the same summit.
Regulus took a slow breath, then bowed, deeper this time, with the gravity of real respect.
"Thank you, Professor," he said. His voice was steady, but sincere. "Those words matter."
Flitwick's serious expression melted back into his familiar brightness.
"It is my honour to be of help, Mr Black," he said cheerfully. "You are talented, and you think in ways most students do not. Keep thinking. Keep being curious. And keep your mind open."
He lifted a hand, as if indicating the whole castle, the whole world beyond it.
"The wizarding world is vast," Flitwick said. "There are many things waiting for you to discover."
Regulus thanked him again and left the classroom.
Avery and Alex were waiting in the corridor. The moment Regulus stepped out, Avery leaned in.
"What did he say to you?"
"Something about understanding magic," Regulus replied.
"Oh." Avery looked as if he understood half of it at best, but he did not press. The three of them walked toward their next lesson.
Regulus kept pace between them, steps even, expression calm, yet something inside him had shifted. The obsession that had always tugged at him, the need to force everything into pure rational shape, had loosened in a way that felt real.
He was grateful to Professor Flitwick.
Not only for the words, but for the attention behind them. The ability to notice what a student was struggling with, to understand confusion without mocking it, and to share wisdom without hoarding it.
Strength mattered. Skill mattered.
But a teacher who truly wanted to guide was valuable in a different way, and worthy of respect.
The next class was History of Magic.
Professor Binns drifted at the front of the room, reciting the Medieval Assembly of European Wizards in a tone so flat it could have been poured from a bottle.
Many students were already half asleep. A few, bolder or more desperate, read other books beneath their texts.
Regulus sat by the window, quill in hand, and found himself drawing idle lines on his parchment while Flitwick's words echoed again and again.
Magic is there.
Everyone's understanding is different.
Believe in the power of the soul.
Inspiring, yes, but not an instruction to abandon his own path. He would not rebuild himself on the basis of a professor's philosophy alone, no matter how wise the professor was.
He had to walk his own road.
Every wizard who reached true heights had their own understanding and their own method. Dumbledore. Grindelwald. Newt. Voldemort. McGonagall. Slughorn. Flitwick.
Their roads differed, sometimes clashed, yet each had carried its walker to power.
Greatness was not made by copying a textbook, or repeating what someone else had already done. It required thought, understanding, and eventually creation.
Other people's experience could be studied. Their methods could be borrowed.
But a path could not be stolen. It had to be earned, step by step, by the person walking it.
Flitwick's words had not pushed him into a new direction.
They had confirmed something he was already beginning to accept. That rationality and sensibility could coexist. That embracing the parts of magic that resisted logic was not retreat, but progress.
That made him steadier, not weaker.
When the bell rang, Regulus packed his books and stood.
Avery and the others spoke of lunch in the Great Hall, but Regulus declined with a polite excuse and headed instead for the library.
On the first day of term, the library was nearly empty. Most students were still living in the holiday afterglow, preferring corridors, common rooms, and excited conversations.
Regulus moved through the shelves until he reached Charms. He did not come with a single title in mind. He simply walked, fingertips brushing spines, eyes scanning names.
Common Spells and Their Variations.
Advanced Techniques in Magic Control.
A Study on the Correlation Between Ancient Runes and Modern Spells.
Then his hand paused. He pulled out a book titled On the Nature of Magic. The author's name meant nothing to him.
He opened it.
No matter what philosophy guided him, no matter what revelation struck him in a classroom, it all had to become something concrete.
Reading. Practice. Refinement. Strength.
Flitwick's words could point at the horizon, but the steps, the pace, and the obstacles would still belong to Regulus alone.
He sank into the pages, and time slipped by.
About half an hour later, the chair opposite him scraped softly against the floor, and someone sat down.