Roger's thoughts were actually quite simple. He just believed the world was wonderful, and as both a "spectator" and a "participant," he didn't want to leave the stage before he had seen enough and experienced enough.
A person's life is limited, and the years with the most creativity, learning ability, and energy are few. Many brilliant scientists made their most important research breakthroughs in their youth.
Roger absolutely would not waste those precious seven years at Hogwarts.
Therefore, he chose to speak his mind.
Roger didn't believe he was taking any particular risks by doing so.
The pursuit of immortality was an idea most people had entertained.
It wasn't exactly a taboo in the wizarding world.
Perhaps there weren't many like Nicolas Flamel who had lived for over 600 years and were still alive.
But there were plenty who used their powerful magical abilities to extend their lives by a century or two.
For example, the former Headmaster of Hogwarts, Armando Dippet, took office around the age of 200.
What was truly taboo was achieving immortality through dark magic.
For instance, Horcruxes, which required cruel methods to create.
And reality was just as Roger expected. Professor McGonagall didn't have a particularly strong opinion about Roger's pursuit of immortality. Her concern was focused on something else.
"...Roger, the continuation of life has a traceable path, but resurrection is an absolute, untouchable taboo," Professor McGonagall said seriously to Roger, her face etched with solemnity and a hint of sadness.
If wizards were given infinite time and magic, perhaps... wizards could gain the ability to reverse everything, erase all regrets, and obtain all desires.
This statement touched Professor McGonagall.
It also made her worry if Roger was about to touch upon the true taboo of the wizarding world—bringing the dead back to life! It was normal for Professor McGonagall to think this way.
Because she knew Roger had lost too much on the battlefields of the Middle East and witnessed too much death.
Professor McGonagall had even helped organize the funerals for Roger's parents.
Seeing Professor McGonagall's expression, Roger knew she had misunderstood.
But he didn't refute it. Instead, he went along with her thought, saying, "Resurrection is impossible, I understand that very well. But, what truly constitutes death?"
"In ancient times, the cessation of a heartbeat was considered death. With modern medicine, brain death is considered true death. And for wizards, the dissipation of the soul is death."
"The definition of death changes with the advancement of people's technology, their understanding of the world, and their ability to interfere with it."
"Perhaps one day, as long as a trace of a person remains in history, as long as someone remembers them, they will not be considered dead. Perhaps wizards will be able to retrieve those they wish to save from the river of time."
If Professor McGonagall had been merely touched a moment ago, she was now truly aghast, her steps faltering.
Because Roger's topic touched upon something even more taboo than resurrection.
Reversing time!
Roger noticed Professor McGonagall's gaze becoming sharper and let out a light laugh.
"Professor, don't look at me like that. I'm a very life-preserving person and won't do anything that risky."
"What I mean is, as long as a person lives long enough, they can slowly wait for civilization to develop continuously. In the future, there will always be one or many people who will stop at nothing to save their regrets. I just need to plant trees and flowers, then quietly watch them bloom and wither, and when the peaches and plums naturally shade the ground, I'll just pick up a couple of fallen fruits."
It was like a modern person who didn't know how to make a phone returning to ancient times with the ability to gain immortality. By spreading the concept of a phone and some modern scientific ideas, perhaps they could be playing with a phone in three to five hundred years. If a few hundred years wasn't enough, a thousand years certainly would be.
This process wouldn't even require him to actively do much. There would always be intelligent people to do it.
Roger would plant some ideas upstream in the timeline and then harvest them downstream, naturally. This way, there would be no need for too many flashy things.
He just needed to preserve the results of each technological advancement, preventing them from being lost to history so that people wouldn't constantly reinvent the wheel.
People always say, "A thousand years is too long, don't waste your youth, seize the day," because ordinary people can only seize the day. But for those who are immortal, time is something else entirely.
...Of course, these are all things for the distant future. Roger didn't know if he would ever achieve true longevity.
From the fact that most Hogwarts graduates don't pursue careers deeply related to magic, at most learning some spells to become 'magic technicians' or 'magic personnel' who wave wands, with only a very few continuing on the path of magical research, one could see that learning magic is not easy.
The conversation with Professor McGonagall was just a casual chat that stemmed from the topic of life planning.
For him now, the most important thing was to learn magic first.
Unfortunately, after leaving the Middle East and being a prisoner in Britain for a while, Roger forgot one thing.
Roger thought he was just like teenagers chatting about politics after lights out in the dorms. Walking on the road with nothing else to do, a bit of idle chatter was harmless.
But in Minerva McGonagall's eyes, it was completely different!
Minerva McGonagall never forgot that Roger was a prophet.
And unlike Sybill Trelawney, the riddle-speaking professor of Divination at Hogwarts, Roger was more like that man who almost changed the wizarding world, Gellert Grindelwald—a powerful prophet capable of accurately predicting the future! A joke? Idle chatter? Minerva McGonagall leaned more towards whether this young prophet had truly foreseen something!
Would the future truly be born? Magic that could save people from the river of time? Minerva McGonagall, who had her own regrets and had just wanted to warn Roger about the taboos and dangers of reversing time, lost herself in thought.
It wasn't surprising that Minerva McGonagall would think this way. Both the soul and time were advanced fields in magic, certainly not something a young wizard who couldn't even cast a single spell could touch upon.
Having a soul meant not being dead, which vaguely touched upon the dark magic secret of Horcruxes.
Why would Roger know these things? Besides being a prophet, were there any other answers? Time quietly slipped away during their chat.
When Professor McGonagall came back to her senses, they were already standing at the entrance of The Leaky Cauldron.
Roger stood beside her, his eyes full of longing for the magical world.
A wand, spellbooks, all the knowledge of the wizarding world—the things he had dreamed of were just behind The Leaky Cauldron.
That was Diagon Alley, the largest trade center for British wizards.
And as their footsteps crossed the threshold of the pub, the bustling bar, which had been filled with many patrons, fell into absolute silence!
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