Hogwarts: You call this magic?

I, Alan, travel through the world of Harry Potter and load the “absolute rationality” mind palace at the beginning.

In my eyes, everything can be analyzed, and magic is just the underlying science of a higher dimension.

When my peers were still worrying about the levitation charm, I was already deducing the “automatic program” of spells; when Snape boasted about his exquisite art of potions, my chemical reaction equations left him speechless.

Dueling is about probability, Quidditch is about data analysis, and the so-called magical talent is nothing but a false proposition due to information asymmetry.

I developed “modular magic toys”, established the “Hogwarts Maker Workshop”, wrote the “Rune Firewall”, and set a logical trap in Riddle’s diary… I engraved science and rationality into the underlying code of this world.

When Dumbledore invited me to work together to optimize the defense system of Hogwarts, and when Snape got furious because he couldn’t understand my paper, I realized that the so-called magical world was just my next game that I was about to complete.

Hogwarts: You call this magic?
Chapter 1 Another Path to Genius
The evening light filtered through the cracks in the blinds, carving a crisscross pattern of piano keys on the study floor. The air was filled with the dust of old book pages and the crisp scent of dried ink. The silence was so complete that only the scraping of the pen tip across the draft paper could be heard.
Alan Scott was lost in his own world.
On his desk, an open notebook was covered with densely packed non-Euclidean geometry formulas and topological diagrams—the final step toward the National Mathematical Olympiad. The faint blue light cast by the computer screen illuminated his hyperfocused face. Strings of code and data streams danced silently, constructing a complex financial model that accurately predicted the surge and collapse of tech stocks over the next few years.
This is his real battlefield.
The Mathematical Olympiad was just a springboard for him to obtain his first “seed round” of financing.
“Alan!”
The door of the study was suddenly slammed open by a force.
A frantic little figure rushed in, instantly shattering the quiet. It was his sister, seven-year-old Lilia. She waved her chubby little fists, her face flushed with excitement.
“Brother, come down quickly!”
Her voice is clear and loud.
“Mom baked your favorite lemon pie, and Dad opened the champagne. They said they wanted to celebrate your victory in advance!”
Alan’s eyes slowly moved away from the screen.
The surging stream of data in the depths of his pupils disappeared in an instant, and his eyes returned to the clarity that an eleven-year-old boy should have. He smiled and nodded to his sister.
“Got it. I’ll be right there.”
Lilia received a response and let out a satisfied cheer. She turned around and ran out like a whirlwind, leaving the air in the room vibrating.
The study returned to silence.
Allen’s thoughts had been completely withdrawn from the real world, sinking into a magnificent spiritual building that belonged only to him.
The palace of “absolute rationality” thinking.
There were no gamified virtual panels here, nor were there simple, crude attribute points. What appeared in his mind was a boundless virtual library constructed from pure white logic nodes and translucent information flows.
Every piece of knowledge and every skill is ruthlessly deconstructed into its most basic logical units. Then, through ruthless analysis and deduction, they will be reassembled into a new set of theoretical systems that belong exclusively to Allen.
Every successful deduction will illuminate a new unknown area in the palace.
This is how he gains experience points, and it is also the real reason why he is hailed as a “mathematical genius” by the outside world.
His life plan had been cruelly replayed billions of times in this palace.
Using the prize money from the Mathematical Olympiad and the memories from his past life, he was able to accurately capture those unicorn companies that would grow into technology giants in the future before the Internet bubble completely burst.
Then, before the age of thirty, achieve absolute financial freedom that is not bound by anyone or anything.
This is a perfect plan based on absolute rationality.
Alan walked down the stairs and was greeted by the warm and solemn atmosphere of the restaurant.
Mother Carla carefully placed a large, golden lemon pie in the center of the dining table, its rich aroma instantly filling the air. Father Robert, beside her, opened a bottle of expensive champagne with an almost sacred gesture.
“Bang!”
With a crisp pop, the cork rushed to the ceiling, and the festive atmosphere was pushed to its climax.
“For the future mathematician in our family!”
Robert raised his glass of wine filled with bubbles high, his face almost overflowing with pride.
“No, it’s for our future big entrepreneurs!”
The atmosphere of the dinner was relaxed and pleasant.
When his father asked him what he planned to do with the upcoming bonus, Allen put down his knife and fork.
He wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin and explained his idea with a calmness that was very inconsistent with his age.
“I plan to invest most of my winnings into startups in the technology sector.”
His voice was not loud, but it instantly stopped the conversation at the table.
“According to my model analysis, personal computers and Internet technology will experience explosive growth in the next decade. I have selected three companies that possess core technological barriers that cannot be overcome in the short term. Their early investment returns are expected to exceed a thousand times.”
Every word he uttered – “model analysis”, “technical barriers”, “return on investment” – seemed like a language from another world, calmly hitting his parents’ hearts.
Kara and Robert exchanged a silent look.
In their eyes, besides surprise, there was also a hint of worry that they themselves were not even aware of.
Their son seemed to have matured a little too early.
At this moment, a sudden noise rudely broke the warm atmosphere.
The sound came from the study on the second floor.
It was not a crashing sound, but more like a heavy object slamming against the window glass with great force, so much so that even the floor downstairs felt a slight tremor.
The whole family stopped moving at this moment.
Robert immediately put down his glass and stood up from his chair.
“I’ll go up and take a look.”
“I’m going too!”
Lilia’s curiosity overcame everything and she immediately followed her father.
Alan frowned.
His mind palace started up instantly, and the architectural structure diagram and basic physical model of the house unfolded in his consciousness, and he began to analyze all possible situations at high speed.
Bird strike?
Analysis: Impossible. Birds in this season wouldn’t fly at such high speeds at night.
A man-made prank?
Analysis: Impossible. No alarms were triggered in the community’s security system.
When they returned to the study on the second floor, everyone was breathtakingly surprised by the scene before them.
A gray owl was lying dazed on the terrace outside the window, shaking its head as if it had just recovered from a violent collision.
And under the glass window next to it, a letter lay quietly.
It was a letter made of thick, yellowed parchment.
On the seal, a complex emblem consisting of four animals: a lion, an eagle, a snake, and a badger was imprinted with crimson wax.
However, the strangest thing was the address on the envelope.
That line of emerald green ink was written in crystal clear letters:
[The boy at the window in the second-floor study, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, to Mr. Alan Scott]The address was exactly where he was just now.
Accurate to the centimeter.
Alan’s pupils suddenly shrank into a point at that moment.
For the first time, his mind palace issued a shrill red alarm, indicating a system collapse.
All physical models, probability calculations, and logical deductions became invalid at this moment, turning into a pile of meaningless garbled codes.
The very existence of this letter is an event that completely violates the common sense of physics.
It was like a heavy hammer from an unknown dimension, smashing hard and mercilessly on the perfect world that Allen built with absolute rationality.
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“What’s this?”
Robert’s voice was low, his movements cautious as if he were handling something fragile. He leaned halfway out and removed the unusually textured parchment from the windowsill. The paper was heavy, dry and ancient to the touch, and the deep red wax seal on the seal exuded a solemnity that was incompatible with modern society.
Alan said nothing.
His gaze had already penetrated his father’s hand and was firmly fixed on the emblem composed of four animals entangled: a lion, an eagle, a snake, and a badger.
That’s it.
In an instant, the magnificent building called “Palace of Thought” deep in his consciousness, a forbidden area that had been blocked by thick fog for eleven years, suddenly opened up with a silent roar.
Countless fragments of information turned into a data torrent, sweeping across his entire cognitive system.
Ancient runes, spell models as precise as star tracks, memories of a boy named Harry Potter that did not belong to him… everything was analyzed, archived, and reorganized at an efficiency faster than the speed of light.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
A fictional world that he once firmly believed was a product of human imagination.
I see.
He was not simply reborn, but rather, with an inexplicable logic, he descended into a real story framework.
The shock of this realization caused him to briefly feel dizzy, with black spots appearing at the edges of his vision. But after just 0.3 seconds, an absolute rationality, emanating from the depths of his soul, took over, his heartbeat stabilized, and his overloaded senses were forced to cool.
[Hidden Mission Activated: Origin of Magic][Mission Description: Enter an unknown magical world, analyze the underlying logic of magic, and incorporate it into the theoretical system of the Mind Palace.]“A hoax! It must be some brilliant hoax!”
Mother Kara’s sharp voice broke the silence in the room. Her body tensed instantly and she pulled her little daughter Lilia behind her, as if the letter in front of her was a bomb about to explode.
“How did they know Alan was here? Robert, we have to call the police!”
She spoke very quickly, her voice trembling slightly with anxiety.
“Alan’s talent is amazing. He must have been targeted by some illegal organization a long time ago!”
Kara’s fear wasn’t groundless. Allen’s intelligence, which had transcended the realm of genius since childhood, was the pride of the entire family, yet also a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. They’d hired top security consultants and planned the safest path for his advancement, but they couldn’t prevent this letter from flying through the window.
However, father Robert’s reaction went to the other extreme.
He wasn’t angry, nor was he panicked. His expression shifted under the light, his eyes lost focus, and he fell into a state of detachment, as if searching for something in the vast river of time.
“No…” His Adam’s apple rolled as he murmured to himself in a dreamlike voice, “I’ve seen this badge before…”
His gaze suddenly shifted from the envelope to his son, and his voice was dry as if it had been sandpapered.
“I remember now.”
“When I was a child, my grandfather mentioned that there was a distant great-aunt in our family… Her name seemed to be Liliana.”
“My grandfather said she had some ‘weird abilities’ since she was a child. She could make cups on the table fly by themselves and talk to the cat all day long. Later, when she was a teenager, she was sent away by her family and never returned.”
With every word Robert spoke, Kara’s face turned paler.
“Grandfather’s exact words were that she was taken away to a ‘special’ school…”
This sentence, like a silent nail, nailed all of Kara’s materialistic cognition.
And Alan, at the center of this family storm, simply used his fingertips to cut the wax seal on the envelope with almost mechanical precision.
The content on the letter was exactly the same as the memories unlocked in his mind palace.
An admission notice to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, along with a long shopping list filled with strange items such as cauldrons, wands, dragon-skin gloves, etc.
“This is ridiculous!” Kara finally couldn’t control her emotions anymore. “Magic? Witches? This is the 20th century! Not the Dark Ages!”
The family atmosphere was torn into three completely different time and space at this moment.
A mother’s worries are the cold and hard reality.
The memories of my father are vague legends.
The letter in Allen’s hand is an undefinable surreal existence that lies between the two.
“Mom, your concerns are reasonable.”
Alan spoke up.
His voice was not loud, but it had a strange penetrating power, like a stone thrown into a chaotic pool of water, instantly calming the turbulent ripples.
“Dad, your memory may be the key clue to solving this mystery.”
He placed the letter neatly on the table in the living room, his every movement shone with undeniable composure. He glanced at his parents, who were in completely different moods, and his tone switched to a business negotiation-like mode.
“Right now, we’re dealing with two things. First, an event that can’t be explained by current scientific knowledge. Second, a family rumor that can’t be confirmed at this time.”
“Debate can’t solve any problems. What we need is verification.”
His gaze first fell on his mother, giving her a reassuring look. In his mind palace, several optimal solutions had already been listed and risk assessed.
“It’s very simple.”
Alan’s logic was clear and without a trace of emotion.
“The letter says that if you decide to enroll, you need to send an owl back before July 31st. We’ll follow its rules.”
He paused, making sure his parents’ minds were caught up with him.
“We wrote back. But the content of the letter was neither acceptance nor rejection.”
“In this letter, as an ordinary family, we will express our most direct confusion and deepest concerns about this unknown ‘magical world’. We will very politely request the school to send an official representative to visit us, answer all our questions, and prove to us the reality of ‘magic’.”
Alan’s gaze turned to his mother, and the last link in the logical chain was precisely connected.
“If they can prove it, then we need to re-evaluate the very fabric of the world. If they can’t, or simply don’t respond, then your suspicions are proven—this is a brilliant prank on gifted children.”
“At that time, we will contact the community police and ask them to investigate this serious fraud case. I think they will be very happy to handle it.”
This plan is impeccable.
It kicked the ball back hard, throwing all the uncertainty to the other party. Regardless of whether the other party was true or false, the Scott family firmly grasped the initiative and had a clear basis for advance and retreat.
The anxious lines on Kara’s face gradually relaxed. She looked at her eleven-year-old son, her eyes filled with admiration and an indescribable sense of strangeness.
Robert’s tense shoulders relaxed and he let out a long breath.
“Alan is right, this is the best solution at the moment.”
So Allen wrote it himself.
He did not use flowery words, but instead wrote a well-organized reply letter in the most rigorous and objective terms.
After finishing writing, he ignored the gray owl that was still leisurely preening its feathers on the terrace.
He went to the backyard, rolled up the letter, and tied it to the leg of a carrier pigeon he raised.
He picked up the carrier pigeon, watched it flap its wings and soon disappeared into the deep night.
If the other person truly possesses supernatural powers, then it shouldn’t matter how they reply.
This is a test.
It is also a declaration.
Three things to do when reading: read, collect, and reward!
Chapter 3 Dancing Teacup (Old Version)
The days of waiting are like a drop of water hanging on the tip of a leaf, shaky but reluctant to fall.
The air in the Scott family’s house was filled with a silence stretched to its limit.
Robert completely gave up on maintaining a semblance of calm. He turned the attic upside down, opening old wooden boxes one by one, letting dust dance in the slanting sunlight. He longed to find any tangible evidence of his distant great-aunt’s existence among the yellowed photos and blurred letters—a name, a date, anything to anchor his fantasy in reality.
The result was futile. It was as if that world had deliberately erased all paths to reality.
Kara’s defenses tightened even further. She stopped showing her anxiety and channeled it into calm, routine actions. She found an excuse to call the neighborhood police station. Her voice was steady, asking if there were any new scams targeting high-IQ children. Her words were measured and logical, as if she were discussing a hypothetical case involving a neighbor. The formulaic response from the other end of the line made her even more uneasy.
Alan was the family’s only anchor. He sat at his desk, his Olympiad problem set spread out, his pen scratching calmly across the paper. It was as if the letter from Hogwarts had never torn a dent in his life.
This is just appearance.
Deep within his consciousness, that magnificent palace of thought was undergoing a violent geological movement. In the region representing the “origin of magic,” countless logical nodes were flashing, connecting, and reorganizing at an astonishing rate. Theoretical models were rapidly constructed, then instantly overturned. He attempted to explain this latent, unknown force using known physics, biology, and information theory, but found that all theories were like trying to measure a three-dimensional object with a two-dimensional ruler; they were fundamentally flawed by dimensionality.
A week later, on an ordinary afternoon.
Ding Dong——
The doorbell rang crisply, like a stone dropped into stagnant water.
Kara’s body tensed instantly. She walked to the door, but instead of opening it immediately, she put her eyes to the peephole.
A man stood outside the door, a very short man. His image was comically distorted through the fish-eye lens. He was wearing a perfectly tailored tweed suit, the grain of the fabric clearly visible, meticulously crafted. A pair of small, round-framed glasses perched on his nose, and behind them lay a gentle smile.
This polite, even overly refined appearance, far from relaxing Kara, only set her inner alarm ringing at its highest point. Liars are always good at disguising themselves.
She took a breath and adjusted her facial muscles, making her expression polite and distant. The door hinge made a slight sound and was pulled open a crack.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Scott.”
The man’s voice was unexpected. It wasn’t shrill, unlike his size, but rather resonant and clear, with the kind of penetrating power one would find when lecturing from a podium.
“I’m Filius Flitwick, a teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I received your reply and came to visit.”
Robert and Alan, who were in the living room, heard the name.
Despite having rehearsed it countless times, when the name was actually spoken by a living person, the weight of reality still hit everyone’s heart hard.
Professor Flitwick was ushered into the living room.
He sat upright, his hands on his knees, and his manners were so perfect that Kara couldn’t find any loopholes to criticize. He began to introduce his school with elegant words and a calm tone.
“Hogwarts has a history of over a thousand years and is the most outstanding magical education institution in Europe and even the world…”
“Our graduates are spread across all areas of the wizarding world, from high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Magic to great inventors…”
To Kara, these words echoed the same admissions pitches she’d heard from the elite schools she’d visited. Outstanding reputation, long history, distinguished alumni. She even began to construct a more plausible theory: this was a mysterious, wealthy, elite school that, smitten by Allen’s talent at the Mathematical Olympiad, had devised such a fantastical “entrance test” to poach him.
Alan remained silent.
His senses were completely locked onto the professor before him. The central processing unit in his mind palace was spinning at high speed, a massive stream of data cascading through it.
[Target: Filius Flitwick]Heart rate: 72 beats per minute, stable.
【Respiratory rate: 16 breaths per minute, deep, long, and even.】
Micro-expression analysis: A constant upward movement of the corners of the mouth and a natural contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle indicate a genuine smile.
[Action Analysis: He holds up the teacup, his fingers steady and without any trembling, his pinky slightly raised, in keeping with his long-established elegant habits.]Conclusion: Subject appears confident and composed, showing no physical signs of malice or deception.
“Professor Flitwick.”
Kara finally couldn’t stand this carefully choreographed conversation any longer. There was an irrepressible challenge in her voice.
“With all due respect, everything you describe is too… incredible. Can you prove to us that the ‘magic’ you speak of actually exists?”
Professor Flitwick smiled and gently set down his teacup. The porcelain clattered against the saucer, making a pleasant, soft sound. He seemed completely unsurprised by the question, perhaps even having been waiting for it.
“Of course, ma’am. Seeing is believing, and that’s always the best way to dispel any doubts.”
He pulled something out from the inner pocket of his exquisite tuxedo.
It was a long, thin wooden stick.
The wood is warm and the surface has a soft luster, obviously it has been carefully maintained.
A magic wand.
He didn’t utter a single syllable, didn’t even move his lips. He simply lifted his wrist and tapped the air with his wand. The movement was graceful, precise, and had the rhythmic quality of a conductor before launching a cadenza.
Next second.
A miracle happened in this ordinary living room in an unreasonable way.
In the center of the table, the exquisite porcelain cup filled with black tea moved an inch to the left by itself, then shook slightly, as if stretching its muscles.
The living room was dead silent.
Then, the lid of the milk jug beside it automatically opened and tilted slightly towards the teacup, as if taking off its hat. The silver pot filled with sugar cubes jumped twice, and the sugar cubes inside collided with each other, making a rattling sound.
Even the heavy silver knives and forks stood up tremblingly like puppets lifted by invisible strings.
They are given life.
A silent music seemed to play in the air. The porcelain cup danced first, spinning lightly on the tablecloth in an elegant arc. The milk jug and sugar bowl followed closely behind, chasing each other, approaching, and then separating. The knife and fork crossed, tracing silver streaks in the air. The cup and saucer clinked, no longer making a noise, but a crisp, melodious, rhythmic clink.
They actually danced a lively and cheerful waltz on the table!
“ah!”
A short scream escaped Lilia’s throat, and she immediately covered her mouth tightly with both hands, but her wide-open eyes were filled with pure surprise and enthusiasm.
The muscles on Robert’s face froze, his eyes widened like bells. He subconsciously raised his hands and rubbed them hard. When he opened his eyes again, the absurd yet beautiful dance continued. He confirmed that he was not dizzy or crazy.
Even Kara, who had always armed herself with suspicion, was so shocked that she couldn’t utter a word. All her logic, common sense, and vigilance were crushed in the face of this impossible dance.
What was stirred up in Allen’s heart was not a huge wave, but a cosmic explosion.
In his mind palace, all the laws of classical physics—Newton’s three laws, universal gravitation, the second law of thermodynamics—were simultaneously labeled with bright red, glaring “exceptions.” System alarms blared sharply in his consciousness.
This is not magic.
He could clearly “see” an unprecedented energy field enveloping the entire tabletop. It wasn’t a chaotic radiation of energy, but rather a network of forces, meticulously structured and controlled to the micron level. Every movement of each piece of cutlery, every rotation, every impact, was precisely controlled by this field.
This magic, which was real, flawless, and even full of artistic beauty, completely conquered everyone present.
“I……”
Robert spoke, his voice as dry as sandpaper.
“I apologize for our earlier doubts, Professor.”
Professor Flitwick waved his wand gracefully.
All the jumping tableware stopped for a moment, and then slid back to their original positions silently, as if the grand dance just now was just a collective hallucination.
“No need to apologize, Mr. Scott. It is wise to be cautious about the unknown.”
Alan finally spoke.
His voice was calm, but within those black pupils burned an unprecedented light, the kind that appears when a scholar discovers a new world or a physicist glimpses the ultimate secrets of the universe.
“Professor, I accept the invitation to attend Hogwarts. May I ask what preparations we need to make?”
Kara looked at her son, and the last line of defense in her heart collapsed. She was still worried about Alan stepping into a world full of unknown dangers, but she knew that there was no power left to stop it from happening.
After informing Professor Flitwick in detail about how to enter Diagon Alley, the shopping list, and the agreed time, he stood up and prepared to leave.
He walked into the hallway and gave the family one last, smiling look.
“See you at Hogwarts, then.”
As soon as the words fell.
His figure remained in place, suddenly twisting like a wrung towel, causing the surrounding light and space to undergo a violent, unnatural deflection.
With a slight but oppressive explosion, he disappeared without a trace in an instant.
All that was left was empty air and a faint smell similar to ozone.
This last visual shock was like a heavy hammer, leaving the Scott family stunned for a long time, unable to calm down.
Turn on lazy reading mode
Chapter 4: First Experience in Diagon Alley (Old Version)
Following Professor Flitwick’s instructions, the Scotts drove their family car into the heart of London a few days later.
The street scene outside the car window is an all-too-familiar modern urban scene: red double-decker buses, hurried commuters, and the glass curtain wall reflecting the gray sky.
The atmosphere inside the car was completely different from the outside world.
Kara’s fingers twisted unconsciously around the seatbelt, her lips pursed. Robert’s knuckles turned slightly white as he gripped the steering wheel, and he glanced at the rearview mirror more frequently than usual, as if trying to confirm something.
Only Alan in the back seat was as calm as a deep pool.
He peered through the car window, the cold logic of his mind palace whirring away. The address Professor Flitwick had left pointed to Charing Cross Road, a perfectly ordinary place.
“Alan, are you sure this is the place?”
There was a tremor in Kara’s voice as she looked at the flashing red dot on the navigation map, surrounded by normal shops and office buildings.
“The coordinates are correct,” Alan replied, his gaze locked onto an extremely discordant blind spot. “The energy frequency matches, too. It’s right between the bookstore and the record store.”
Robert parked the car in a temporary parking space, and the family got out of the car and was immediately submerged in the crowds of London.
Their immediate target is a place called “The Leaky Cauldron”.
It was small and shabby, with a mottled black leather door and windows covered in thick dust that looked as if it hadn’t been wiped for centuries. The sign was crooked and the writing on it was blurred.
Strangely, no passerby even glanced at it. People’s eyes would naturally slide towards the bookstore window next to it, or be attracted by the music coming from the record store.
It’s there, yet it seems not to exist.
[Cognitive Confusion Spell. Low-level, wide-area memetic contamination. By disrupting the visual cortex and short-term memory of non-magical creatures, it forces them to perceive “unimportant information,” thereby achieving physical invisibility.]The Mind Palace gave an analysis instantly.
“Is this the place?” Kara’s voice was full of disbelief. She even took a step back, as if unwilling to get close to this building that exuded a decayed atmosphere.
Alan didn’t answer, just nodded.
He could sense a completely different energy field surging behind the shabby door. It was gentle, chaotic, yet full of vitality, and completely different from the world outside, which was made of steel, concrete, and electrical signals.
Without any hesitation, he pushed open the heavy wooden door.
“Squeak—”
A scent of old beer, sweet pipe tobacco, and some indescribable herbal air hit me in the face.
The bar was dimly lit inside, the few rays of light filtering through the grimy windows, illuminating countless flying dust particles in the air.
This is another world.
An old wizard in a purple top hat was blowing out ever-changing smoke rings from an extremely long pipe. Several cloaked witches sat around a table in the corner, whispering in hushed tones, occasionally revealing a piece of twisted wood or a gleaming scale from beneath their cloaks.
Allen’s sight was like the most sophisticated scanner, sweeping across the entire field in a fraction of a second.
【Target analysis completed.】
[Ordinary wizards: 17. Energy fluctuations are stable, no threat.]Suspicious individuals: 3. Dark magical residue is present in the energy field; please maintain your distance.
[Ministry of Magic Auror: 1. Disguised as a customer, in the corner, third table from the right. Heart rate steady, breathing even, full vision. Surveillance in progress.]The categories of the Mind Palace appeared clearly in his mind.
He calmly withdrew his gaze and moved aside to make room for his family behind him to enter safely.
“Follow me closely.”
His voice was quiet, but it carried an undeniable sense of stability. He led his family, skillfully avoiding those wizards behaving strangely, through the noisy crowd, and went straight to the bar.
Behind the bar, a bald, toothless old man was wiping a chipped wine glass with a gray rag. When he saw the Allens, he smiled a warm, toothless smile.
It’s Tom the bartender.
Alan briefly explained his purpose. Tom didn’t ask any more questions, just nodded, put down the rag, and led them through the bar to the backyard.
The backyard was a small courtyard surrounded by a high wall, with a few empty wine barrels and a trash can piled on the ground. Facing them was an ordinary red brick wall.
“Three bricks up and two across.” Tom pointed to the wall and said to Robert, “Use your umbrella and hit that brick three times.”
Robert looked at Alan hesitantly, and after receiving his son’s affirmative look, he raised the long-handled umbrella in his hand.
“Boom.”
After three dull knocks, a magical scene happened.
The brick that was hit began to tremble slightly.
Then, with it as the center, the surrounding bricks began to wriggle and shrink, as if possessing life. A tiny crack appeared, a hole was outlined, and it quickly expanded in all directions.
The sound of bricks moving wasn’t a harsh friction, but a smooth, rhythmic click. Finally, an archway, wide enough for an adult to pass through, appeared in the previously empty wall.
Outside the door is a whole new world.
The noise and colors rushed in instantly like a flood breaking through a dam.
The cobblestone streets meandered away into the distance, lined with shops of all kinds, their architectural styles twisted and bizarre, completely ignoring the laws of physics.
Flocks of owls circled in the sky, hooting loudly. Wizards in robes of all kinds hurried about, carrying wands, cauldrons, or packages that made strange noises.
The air was filled with the clink of cauldrons, the hum of spells being practiced, and the indescribable aroma of countless exotic goods.
Lilia’s little mouth opened into an “O” shape, her little face flushed red due to excessive excitement, and one hand subconsciously grabbed the corner of Alan’s clothes.
Kara and Robert were completely frozen in place. Their expressions were filled with shock, confusion, and dullness after their worldviews were completely overturned.
Even Alan, after conducting countless simulations and deductions in the Mind Palace, couldn’t help but feel his heartbeat quicken for a moment when this magical world that only existed in words was actually presented before his eyes.
“Okay, we have to hurry.”
Alan was the first to regain consciousness. He patted Lilia’s back gently, and the sound of his voice brought his family back to reality.
“As suggested by Professor Flitwick, our first stop is Gringotts.”
He pointed toward the end of the street.
There, a towering building made of pure white marble looks particularly solemn and dignified against the backdrop of the crooked shops around it.
Gringotts Wizarding Bank.
Guarded by goblins.
The moment they stepped into the bank lobby, they were completely isolated from the noise of the outside world.
A cold, solemn, almost oppressive atmosphere descended. Beneath the formidably high dome, a mirror-like marble floor shone. Hundreds of goblins sat behind tall counters, solemnly weighing gold coins and gems on delicate brass scales or rapidly recording in thick ledgers with sharp quills.
They ignored the wizards coming and going, as if those humans were just air.
Alan led his family to a temporarily vacant counter.
The goblin who was in charge of receiving them looked up.
It has a wrinkled, shrewd face, and a pair of black eyes flashing with a knowing light. It looks at the people in “Muggle” clothes in front of it, and there is a hint of contempt in its eyes.
“What’s up?”
Its sound was sharp and cold, like metal scraping against glass.
Robert straightened his back subconsciously and was about to speak when Alan gently pulled his wrist.
Alan stepped forward and placed a heavy suitcase that had been prepared long ago on the smooth marble counter with a “bang”.
This action attracted the goblin’s full attention.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Griphook.”
Alan spoke, his voice clear and calm, with a logic and composure beyond his years.
“We are the Scott family, entering the wizarding world for the first time. The purpose of this trip is to exchange Muggle currency for Galleons to purchase supplies for Hogwarts.”
He paused, looked directly into the goblin’s shrewd eyes, and continued:
“According to my understanding, Article 7, Detailed Rule 3 of the Gringotts Customer Regulations states that Muggle-born wizarding families exchanging currency for the first time can enjoy the best exchange rate published that day, and are exempt from handling fees.”
“Here’s our cash, totaling five thousand pounds. Based on today’s exchange rate of 1:50, we’d like to exchange it for two hundred and fifty gold Galleons. Furthermore, we need a legally binding official exchange certificate issued by Gringotts.”
The hall was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
For the first time, the goblin Griphook truly looked directly at the eleven-year-old boy, who was only half the height of the counter.
The deep-rooted contempt in its eyes was rapidly fading, replaced by a mixture of surprise, scrutiny, and a barely perceptible solemnity.
The boy not only knew its name, but also accurately quoted Gringotts’ internal regulations for that specific customer group.
This is not an ignorant Muggle.
Griphook said nothing more. He stretched out his long, powerful fingers, pulled out a few pounds from the suitcase, and examined them under a brass instrument that resembled a microscope.
The instrument emits a faint green light.
It nodded, opened the drawer, and with a small brass shovel began to count out a large pile of glittering gold coins.
The sound of gold coins colliding is crisp and pleasant.
This incredibly smooth exchange not only provided the Scott family with ammunition for their upcoming shopping trip, but more importantly, it completely put Robert and Kara’s minds at ease.
They looked at their son, who was calm, composed, and at ease in a strange world, with eyes filled with unspeakable peace of mind and pride.
Chapter 5 The Wand That Listens to Everything (Old Version)
The weight of gold galleons made the Scott family’s wallets heavier, and also made every step of this shopping trip solid and enjoyable.
Their first destination was Flourish and Blotts Bookstore.
The bookstore was filled with the unique scent of new ink and old parchment. As the Allens walked between the towering bookshelves, overhead, several heavy tomes fluttered their pages, slowly returning to their designated areas.
Lilia’s attention was quickly drawn to a unique book.
It was placed alone on a small exhibition stand, covered with a thick layer of brown fur. There was no title on the cover, only two green, lifelike eyes.
The Monster Book of Monsters.
Alan recognized it.
“Don’t touch!”
His reminder was a step too late.
Lilia’s curiosity drove her to stretch out her fingers and gently poke the soft fur.
The next second, the spine of the book suddenly split open and turned into a “mouth” full of sharp paper teeth, which bit down hard on her finger.
“Wow—!”
A scream shattered the quiet of the bookstore. Lilia jerked her hand away, leaving a distinct tooth mark on her fingertips. Tears welled up in her eyes as the book, “alive,” fluttered on the display stand, growling menacingly.
There were a few good-natured chuckles from the surrounding wizarding families, who were obviously accustomed to this scene.
“You need to stroke its spine, Lilia, in a gentle way.” Alan walked over and comforted his frightened sister while skillfully stroking the spine of the book with his fingertips.
The grumpy monster book immediately quieted down, purred contentedly, and automatically turned to the first page.
After purchasing all the textbooks, they came to Madam Malkin’s robe shop.
As soon as he entered the shop, a measuring tape flew over and began to circle Alan, accurately recording every measurement. In mid-air, several silver needles, dragging black silk threads, deftly shuttled back and forth without human control, sewing the cuffs of a half-finished robe.
Kara’s brows furrowed once more. She subconsciously pulled Lilia behind her, her eyes fixed on the flying needles and threads, her voice filled with suppressed nervousness.
“Alan, are these…are these things really safe? What if the needle gets out of control and pokes someone?”
“Mom, look over there.” Allen pointed to a soldering iron in the corner of the store that was automatically ironing clothes. “It’s essentially no different from the automated robotic arms in factories in our world.”
He patiently guided his mother’s gaze, his voice steady and persuasive.
“Behind them all is a fixed ‘procedure,’ which wizards call magic. The essence of magic is a form of energy-driven technology that we haven’t yet understood, a more efficient and convenient tool, just like electricity drives a machine. Any tool carries the risk of improper use. A knife can cut your hands, and electricity can knock you down. The key lies in the wizard who masters and designs it.”
Allen’s “dimensionality reduction explanation” worked again. Comparing the unknown magic to known industrial automation successfully dispelled the fear in Kara’s heart.
Finally, they arrived at the end of their journey, which was also the most important stop – Ollivander’s Wand Shop.
This shop was a stark contrast to the other glittering establishments in Diagon Alley. It was small, with a tattered, peeling gold sign above the door. The window displayed no dazzling merchandise; only a single wand sat alone on a faded purple cushion, like a forgotten exhibit.
Alan pushed the door open.
“jingle–“
A crisp ring broke the silence in the store.
A figure slid out from the shadows deep inside the shop. It was an old man, his long silver hair and beard gleaming in the dim light. His silver eyes, sharp enough to penetrate a person’s heart, scrutinized Alan from head to toe.
“Good afternoon.” Mr. Ollivander’s voice was soft, ethereal, and carried an ancient echo. “It’s Scott again. I remember your great-aunt, hawthorn wood, unicorn hair. A very nostalgic wand, perfect for making healing potions. Now, it’s your turn.”
The following process turned into a dramatic experiment.
Ollivander took a long box from a high shelf and opened it.
“Maple wood, phoenix feathers, ten inches, fairly flexible. Give it a try.”
Alan took the wand. A surge of hot energy instantly surged into his palm. Before he could even swing it, a string of dazzling sparks burst out from the tip of the wand, knocking all the wand boxes on a nearby shelf away, and they fell to the ground with a crackling sound.
“It seems not.” Ollivander retracted his wand without any surprise.
He took another one.
“Ebony, Dragon’s Nerve, twelve and a quarter inches, Power.”
Alan grasped it. This time, it was a cold, resisting force. He tried to channel his magic, but with a sudden jolt of his wand, the water in the vase on the table next to him instantly froze into ice, crackling with a shattering sound.
once.
twice.
More than a dozen times.
Each attempt resulted in a minor disaster: the shop was sometimes filled with strong winds and sometimes with flashes of lightning.
Allen’s mind palace, however, was operating at high speed with each failure, rapidly processing and analyzing massive streams of data.
[Reason for failure: The magic output frequency cannot form a stable resonance with the wand core material ‘Phoenix Feather’.][Reason for failure: The mental model and the conductive properties of the staff’s ‘ebony’ wood are severely repelled.]…
He did not passively accept failure, but actively collected data and built his own magic wand theory model.
Ollivander’s expression gradually changed from calm at first to serious, and finally, his eyes revealed a hint of excitement and confusion that he himself was not aware of.
He stopped taking the regular wands from the shelves and muttered to himself as he walked to a dusty corner at the back of the store. He bent down and took out a plain wooden box from under a pile of miscellaneous items.
There is no decoration on the box, and even the wood grain looks plain.
“Try this.” Ollie…Vander’s voice deepened. “Ash wood, unicorn tail hair, thirteen inches, very flexible. An extremely rare combination, perhaps even a one-of-a-kind piece.”
Alan reached out and took the wand.
No heat, no cold.
A warm, pure feeling spread from his palm, along his arm, and slowly flowed into his body. It felt like holding a beam of materialized, warm sunlight.
In his mind palace, all analytical models stopped working instantly.
Instead, he felt a clearer perception than ever before. He could “hear” the perfect, unimpeded resonance between his own magic and the wand. They were like two tuning forks at exactly the same frequency, vibrating in unison.
He waved lightly.
There was no explosion.
No frost.
A flower blossomed from the tip of the wand.
A flower of incomparably complex structure, composed of pure silver light. Each of its petals was woven from delicate threads of energy, and within its pistil, a soft halo pulsed through its veins.
It bloomed silently in the air, stayed for a few seconds, then turned into tiny points of light all over the sky and slowly dissipated.
The whole store fell silent.
Robert and Kara held their breath, and Lilia’s mouth opened slightly.
“Oh…” Ollivander sighed deeply, and his silver eyes shone with astonishing brilliance. He clapped his hands excitedly, breaking the silence.
“Great! Yes! That’s it! A wonderful combination!”
“An ash wand is loyal to its true master and never yields to others. Unicorn tail hair represents purity and wisdom. Child, this wand can ‘listen to the voice of all things’ and is especially suitable for wizards with pure hearts and extraordinary wisdom.”
“Listen to everything…”
Alan held his own wand, thinking deeply.
His mind palace has given a more rational interpretation: this magic wand is extremely sensitive to external magic fluctuations, material structure, and energy information. It is a top-level signal receiver and amplifier that can clearly feed back these extremely subtle information to the user.
This will greatly enhance his insight and analytical ability.
The so-called “listening” essentially comes from the user’s own wisdom and analytical ability.
He turned around and gave a confident smile to his surprised family.
After paying seven gold Galleons, Alan successfully purchased this unique wand.
At this point, he completed the most important step of preparation before entering school and truly embarked on the path of becoming a wizard.
Chapter 6 The Most Useful Spells (Old Edition)
Back home, the warmth of excitement was still flowing through everyone’s veins.
The living room carpet had become a display of wonders, with the family’s loot from Diagon Alley spread out across the floor. The air was filled with the unique scent of new parchment, exotic herbs, and dusty history.
Lilia knelt on the ground, her chin resting on her hands, completely mesmerized by the brass crucible. It needed no flame, no one to watch over it; the liquid inside swirled automatically, forming gentle spirals, as if an invisible pharmacist were at work.
Father Robert was completely immersed in a thick illustrated book titled “The Origins of Quidditch.” His fingers, rough and gnarled, he carefully ran over the pages, fearing to disturb the inhabitants. Wizards on broomsticks engaged in a silent chase across the yellowed pages, and the Golden Snitch, a faint golden streak, flashed from one page to the next.
The biggest source of commotion was the deliberately neglected “The Monster Book of Monsters”.
Alan took it out of the shopping bag and, instead of following Hagrid’s prompting to touch the spine, placed it face down gently on the oak floor.
There was a moment of dead silence.
The next second, the book jerked, its brown fur cover trembling violently. Using its thick pages as limbs, it clumsily but swiftly “stood” upright, its two metal buckles clicking like the fangs of a wild beast.
“It’s alive!” Lilia screamed with a mixture of fear and excitement.
The book locked onto its nearest target—Lilia’s ankle—and launched a sudden charge with its corner, slamming across the floor with the rustling of paper and the muffled thud of the spine opening and closing.
A family chase begins.
Lilia jumped onto the sofa with a smile, and Robert tried to stop her with his foot, but the book bit the tip of his shoe hard, causing him to swing his foot in pain. His mother, Kara, was a little nervous at first, but soon she was so amused by the funny scene that she leaned against the wall and bent over with laughter.
This farce severely refreshed the family’s understanding of the magical world. It was not always elegant and mysterious, but also full of primitive and somewhat dangerous humor.
“Alright, you little monster!”
Finally, Robert dug out an old belt from the toolbox, and when the time was right, he tied up the struggling book tightly. The book made an unwilling “whine” sound and was thrown into the corner.
The living room returned to silence, leaving only the family members’ rapid breathing and lingering smiles.
Robert wiped the sweat from his forehead, turned around, and looked at his son with burning eyes. In those eyes, expectation overwhelmed everything.
“Okay, Alan.”
His voice was a little hoarse with excitement.
“Now, let’s see some real magic. Can your wand open our eyes?”
With just one sentence, all the sounds in the living room disappeared.
Lilia stopped playing, Kara stood up, and everyone’s gaze turned into tangible weight and fell on Alan.
Alan didn’t move immediately. He felt his family’s gazes, which contained curiosity, anticipation, and even a subtle hint of nervousness.
His mind palace was running at high speed at this moment.
When performing magic in front of your family for the first time, your choice is crucial.
Spells with fancy light effects? Like fireworks? No, that would only make them think magic is just a fun toy, thus lowering their awe and fostering unnecessary experimentation.
Offensive spells? No way. They would sow fear and create an invisible wall around your home.
He needed practicality.
An irrefutable practicality that can be integrated into everyday life and demonstrates absolute control.
Only in this way can one establish the first impression in their minds that “magic is a rigorous science, not a casual trick”, and thus establish his or her authoritative position as the “only expert”.
Coincidentally, in the chaos just now, when Lilia jumped onto the sofa, she accidentally knocked a glass off the side table with her knee. The crisp shattering sound had been drowned out by laughter, but now, the glistening fragments were quietly scattered on the dark carpet, like a handful of shattered stars.
Perfect material.
“Watch.”
Alan spoke, his voice was not loud, but it was clearly heard by everyone.
He took out the eleven-inch ash wand from the inside pocket of his robe. The wand was smooth and had a hint of coldness, as if it contained some dormant power.
Everyone held their breath.
Alan raised his wand and pointed the tip at the small mess on the carpet.
He didn’t utter the spell immediately.
Deep in his consciousness, in the magnificent palace called “Absolute Reason”, everything about the mantra of “Reparo” is being deconstructed and reorganized.
The precise curve of magic power output, from the gentle injection at the beginning, to the peak bonding in the middle, to the smooth attenuation at the end, the power of each node is quantified.
The trajectory that the tip of the staff needs to follow, a tiny and complex three-dimensional rune, is traced over and over again in the virtual space, correcting the angular deviation every millisecond.
The mental force guidance model is like a sophisticated neural network diagram, ensuring that every strand of mental force can accurately wrap around the corresponding fragment to prevent any piece from being missed or misplaced.
[The virtual drill begins…][First rehearsal, success rate 73.4%, 0.1mm misalignment at the joint, 12% decrease in structural strength. Failure.][37th practice, success rate 91.2%. There are glitches in the magic output curve, causing tiny bubbles to form on the cup wall. Failed.][158th practice, 99.9% success rate… Model locked.]In just a moment in the outside world, the deductions in the palace of thought have been carried out hundreds of times.
It wasn’t until the cold system prompt sounded that Allen’s eyes completely focused.
He spoke, uttering a clear and steady syllable.
“Reparo!”
No explosions, no glare.
A soft, milky white light, seemingly possessing substance, streamed from the tip of the staff. Instead of dispersing, it precisely formed a light shield, silently enveloping all the glass fragments on the carpet.
The next moment, a miracle happened.
The fragments seemed to be gently lifted by an invisible hand and suspended in mid-air. Instead of frantically dancing, they began to spin rapidly, return to their original positions, and piece together with almost mechanical precision.
“Click… click…”
That is the subtle sound made when the material structure is reorganized at the molecular level. In this extreme silence, it is like the sound of nature.
The light converges and dissipates.
An intact glass cup was quietly suspended in the air, and then, supported by an invisible force, it fell lightly and silently back to the table where it was before.
The cup is crystal clear, without even the tiniest crack.
Accurate.
Efficient.
practical.
This eerily quiet scene brought a shock far greater than any dazzling flashes of light or resounding noise. It showcased not the destructive power of magic, but rather a near-miraculous power of creation and restoration.
And the unfathomable talent of the caster himself.
“Wow!”
Lilia’s mouth opened into a small “O” shape, and her eyes sparkled with the purest, unadulterated admiration. Countless little stars were shining in them.
“Brother, you are so awesome!”
She jumped off the sofa and fluttered towards Alan like a little butterfly.
“I want to try it too! Teach me!”
She stretched out her eager little hand and grabbed the ash wand in Alan’s hand with a clear goal.
Alan turned his wrist and gently but firmly retracted his wand, avoiding his sister’s hand.
“No, Lilia.”
His voice was still gentle, but something in it made Lilia, in her excitement, stop in her tracks. It was an unquestionable sense of authority based on an absolute barrier of knowledge.
“Magic requires extremely precise control.”
Allen looked into his sister’s eyes and explained each word, while also explaining a core principle to his parents.
“If my magic output had deviated by even 0.1% in that spell, those fragments wouldn’t have healed perfectly. Instead, they would have exploded at several times the speed of sound, transforming into a cloud of deadly glass dust.”
He paused and emphasized his tone.
“Or, if the mental energy’s guidance path becomes disrupted, they might merge into a dangerous mass covered in sharp spikes. Without a complete, absolutely safe, and quantifiable training process established, any random attempt could lead to irreversible consequences.”
This cold explanation full of “scientific rigor” was like a bucket of cold water, extinguishing Lilia’s impulsive thoughts.
Although she was a little disappointed and her lips pouted slightly, she nodded as if she understood. She didn’t quite understand the words her brother said, but she could feel the weight of words like “fatal”, “dangerous”, and “irreversible”.
Kara and Robert, who were standing by, were completely stunned by Alan’s words.
They exchanged glances, seeing both fear and relief in each other’s eyes. They had assumed magic was like in fairy tales, where chanting the right spell could make your wish come true. Only now, from Alan’s words, did they glimpse the abysmal technological gap and potential risks behind this miracle.
Through this perfect display, Allen not only proved his ability.
More importantly, in this family that had just come into contact with magic, he had initially established his absolute authority as the only “magic expert” and “safety regulations maker” in the family.
Chapter 7: The Palace of Thought in the Late Night (Old Version)
The night enveloped the house like a thick sheet of black velvet, and the clock in the living room ticked with a regular, almost hypnotic rhythm, the only audible beat in the silence.
In Alan’s room, moonlight passed over the windowsill and cut a cold, rectangular bright spot on the floor.
He lay flat on the bed, his chest rising and falling in a nearly perfect rhythm, his eyelids closed, as if he had already fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
However, this is only a physical appearance.
His consciousness, his core processor, had long since broken free from the constraints of this flesh and blood body.
Within a boundless spiritual space constructed of pure logic and light, a majestic and awe-inspiring palace quietly floats. This place lacks substance, yet possesses the world’s most rigorous structure. Every beam is an axiom, every floor tile engraved with a theorem.
This is his “absolute rationality” palace of thought.
All that was seen and heard during the day was now being deconstructed, replayed, and analyzed in the central processing core of this palace in the form of the most primitive and massive data stream.
When Professor Flitwick cast that little cleansing charm in the Leaky Cauldron, the frequency of the magic bursting from the tip of his wand was quantified into a graph accurate to the hertz.
Every sentence Mr. Ollivander said in the shop was broken down into syllables and intonations, and the unknown information hidden behind them was calculated as a specific “information entropy” value.
In Diagon Alley, the dazzling array of magical items are constantly emitting weak energies. The decay models of these energies are now being established and archived one by one, and cross-checked with the known laws of physics.
Here, all sensory, vague, and mysterious experiences are forcibly transformed into cold knowledge that can be understood and utilized.
His will is the sole ruler of this palace.
“Invest all experience points gained today into the two basic modules of ‘Magical Theory’ and ‘Mind Focus’.”
The order was issued.
There was no sound, no delay. Deep within the palace, two logic trees composed of light paths, representing basic skills, lit up simultaneously in an instant.
“Buzz—”
That is the roar of a rushing torrent of information that can only be heard on the spiritual level.
Countless new nodes appeared out of thin air on the light path tree, and more complex and efficient connection paths were instantly constructed, optimized, and solidified. The numbers representing the two skill levels clearly jumped from “1” to “2”.
Almost at the same time, in the real world, Alan’s body lying on the bed clearly received the feedback brought by this underlying protocol upgrade.
An unprecedented sense of sharpness spread from his cerebral cortex to his entire body.
If his perception of the free magic in the environment before was like observing a blurry point of light through a layer of frosted glass, now that layer of glass was completely wiped clean. He could “feel” the faint, cold magic particles mixed in with the moonlight and “distinguish” the inert natural energy deposited in the room’s wooden furniture.
His mental power was no longer a scattered mass, but was highly compressed and condensed into an invisible sharp cone that could be stabbed out at any time.
This is a leap that stems from the foundation of cognition.
He sat up silently, his movements so smooth that there was not a sound of rubbing fabric.
On the bedside table, the eleven-inch long wand made of holly wood with a phoenix feather core lay there quietly.
He picked it up.
The complete casting process of the “Restoration” spell that he had cast in Diagon Alley during the day was retrieved in his mind palace for a new round of deduction.
The upgraded “magic theory” model revealed dozens of details that he had not noticed before.
The curve of magic power output does not have to be a rigid straight line, but can be a smoother and more energy-saving “S” curve.
The path of magic guided by mental power is not static. It can be dynamically adjusted at the micron level according to the material and degree of damage of the repair object to achieve the best effect.
His eyes fell on the parchment on the desk that he had crumpled up due to a failed calculation.
He didn’t utter the spell.
Silent spellcasting requires higher levels of magic control and mental concentration.
He simply raised his wrist, a very slight flick, as if just to brush off the dust.
A wave of magical power invisible to the naked eye accurately covered the paper ball.
No light, no sound.
The crumpled piece of paper seemed to be smoothed out in an instant by an invisible hand with a gentleness and precision beyond the limits of physics.
It lay quietly on the table, smooth as new, without even the slightest crease to be found. The ink on it had also regained its original luster.
Flawless.
The effect is more than an order of magnitude stronger than the display in front of Ollivander during the day.
A line of light blue virtual characters flashed before his retina.
[“Recovery” spell proficiency increased to level 1]He was not at all surprised by this; it was just the inevitable result of logical deduction.
Then he flipped open the brand new volume of The Standard Book of Spells, Beginner’s Edition, his fingers skimming the table of contents until they landed on a new spell: Spongify.
According to the description in the book, this spell can temporarily reconstruct hard objects at the molecular level, making them as soft and elastic as a sponge.
A spell that is extremely worth studying.
His eyes turned to the solid oak at the foot of the bed.
He raised his wand, pointing the tip at his target.
In the palace of thought, the theoretical model of the “Soft Mantra” was quickly called out. Although it was just a basic theory from a book, it was enough for the first attempt.
He concentrated his mind, simulating the magic structure required by the spell and injecting it into the wand.
The tip of the staff lit up slightly, then dimmed.
Failed.
The oak wood at the foot of the bed still reflected a hard and steady luster in the moonlight, and its physical properties had not changed at all.
But in his palace of thought, this failed attempt was like a key inserted into a locked door.
The skill tree of “Soft Spell” was completely illuminated and unlocked by this failure containing practical data.
Countless formulas and alchemical models for the transformation of material structures and the temporary weakening of molecular bonds began to automatically generate and deduct at the root of the skill tree. Although the entire model was still incomplete and filled with huge information gaps, it had already pointed out an extremely clear learning path for Allen, the correct one that led to success.
Just then.
“Alan? What are you doing?”
A soft, sleepy child’s voice came from the crack in the door.
Allen’s movements froze instantly.
He turned around and saw his sister, Lilia, rubbing her sleepy eyes, her small figure standing in the crack of the half-open door. Her pajamas with a teddy bear print looked furry in the dim light coming in from the corridor.
She probably got up to drink some water at night and saw the fleeting light from the tip of his wand in his room.
Almost at the same moment the sound rang out, the wand in Alan’s hand disappeared, and he hid it under the pillow with an extremely fast movement. The concentration and coldness on his face instantly faded, replaced by a precisely calculated, gentle smile that could comfort any child.
“It’s nothing, Lilia.” His voice was very soft, with just the right amount of indulgence. “I’m researching some magical theories and need a completely quiet environment. Go back to sleep, you have to get up early tomorrow.”
“oh……”
Lilia nodded dazedly. Her brother’s words always had absolute persuasive power over her. She yawned obediently, turned around, and went back to her room, gently closing the door.
Alan didn’t return to bed immediately.
He walked to the door, put his ear to the cold door panel, and spread his mental power like mercury pouring out, listening carefully to the movements in the house.
He heard the faint sound of Lilia returning to the room and climbing into bed.
He heard his parents’ even and deep breathing in the master bedroom.
He also heard the soft hum of the refrigerator compressor downstairs shutting down.
After making sure that the whole house had returned to its original silence, he quietly closed the door of his room and bolted it.
He glanced at the cool, bright moon outside the window and decided to end his exploration tonight.
You can’t chew too much.
The most rational way to grow is to proceed step by step, steadily and steadily, and squeeze the value of every attempt to the limit.
Chapter 8: Grandma’s Regret (Old Version)
The country roads on weekends are quiet and long.
The Scott family’s car drove smoothly, the fields flowing out the window. Inside the car, the atmosphere was distinctly different, as Alan was about to enter a new world. Grandma’s hand was clenched tightly, just like his mother, Kara’s, her worry almost tangible.
My grandfather was completely different.
After listening to his son Robert’s entire story, he fell into a long silence, and something was ignited in his cloudy eyes.
He rubbed his rough palms on his knees repeatedly, and his breathing became rapid.
Suddenly, he slapped his thigh hard, his muscles tensed, and the movement was so big that the car body shook slightly.
“Wait!”
His voice was hoarse, but with an unquestionable power, he shouted upstairs.
The whole family was stunned.
A moment later, there was a sound of rummaging through drawers in the attic, followed by heavy and dragging footsteps. Each step on the wooden stairs creaked under the heavy weight.
My grandfather’s figure reappeared, his forehead covered with sweat, his chest heaving violently, and in his arms he held a wooden box covered with thick dust.
He slammed the box down on the dining table with a dull thud.
He leaned over, puffed out his cheeks, and blew out a deep breath.
The smell of old dust mixed with sawdust instantly filled the air, making people cough. The gray curtain on the lid of the box was peeled back, revealing the deep texture of the wood itself.
His fingers were trembling as he fumbled with the old copper buckle, his movements slow and solemn, as if he was opening up a period of time that had been forgotten.
“Click.”
The lid of the box was opened.
Everyone’s eyes were focused on the past.
Lying quietly in the box were some tarnished women’s jewelry, a few silver hairpins, a broken necklace. Next to it was a wooden stick, broken in the middle, the jagged edges betraying the violence it had endured.
At the bottom was a stack of letters, tightly bound with twine. The paper had turned yellow and brittle, with curled edges, and it seemed as if the slightest touch would crumble into powder.
“This is a relic of your distant great-aunt, Liliana.”
My grandfather’s voice is no longer loud, but hoarse and trembling with the passage of time.
“My father handed it to me personally before he died. He said that Liliana… was the pride of our family, but also the greatest regret of his life.”
A name forgotten in the long river of time, a relative who has never been mentioned, suddenly broke into Allen’s world.
It turns out that this Great Aunt Liliana is a witch with extraordinary talent.
In that era, for an ordinary Muggle family, the appearance of a wizard brought not glory, but fear and rejection. To protect her family from the influence of the magical world and to comply with the strict confidentiality laws of the Ministry of Magic at the time, she made a decisive choice after marrying a pure-blood wizard.
She has cut off almost all ties with her original family.
Grandfather carefully untied the fragile twine and picked up the top letter.
His fingertips brushed across the letter, as if touching a warm piece of history.
“This letter was sent back to me by her in her later years. At that time, my father was almost dying.”
He unfolded the letter. Under the dim light, every stroke of the beautiful handwriting was filled with unspeakable longing and a deep sense of powerlessness. She spoke of her longing for her family, and the painful regret of not being able to share the wonder and magnificence of the magical world with them.
“We all thought that our family’s connection with that world had been severed long ago, completely severed.”
Grandfather raised his head and stared at Alan with bloodshot eyes. Tears accumulated in his eye sockets and finally turned into a hot teardrop, sliding across his deep wrinkles.
“I didn’t expect it… I really didn’t expect it…”
His hand came down hard on Alan’s shoulder.
“In you, it has been reconnected. My child, you have made up for my father’s regrets and also made up for the regrets of my life.”
The atmosphere in the restaurant grew heavy, tinged with a touch of sadness. But beneath this sadness, a strange and solemn sense of inheritance quietly grew. Alan’s presence once again brought this ordinary Muggle family into a warm and authentic connection with the distant and mysterious world of wizarding magic.
To help his grandparents understand all this more intuitively, Allen decided to show them something.
He stood up, looked around, and his eyes fell on a plate that his grandmother had just accidentally broken.
“Recovered as before.”
He whispered.
The scattered porcelain fragments seemed to be pulled by an invisible hand, instantly jumping, spinning rapidly in mid-air, and splicing together. With subtle “clicks”, the cracks healed in mid-air. The next second, an intact plate landed steadily on the table.
Grandma covered her mouth and her eyes widened.
Then, Alan pointed to a baguette on the table that could be used as a weapon.
“Softening spell.”
The hard crust relaxed visibly, and the internal structure expanded rapidly. The volume of the bread did not change, but the texture changed drastically, eventually turning into a soft floc that sank with the slightest touch.
Finally, facing the restaurant which was slightly dim due to the drawn curtains, Alan stretched out his hand.
“Lumos.”
A soft ball of light appeared out of thin air in his palm. The light was warm but not dazzling, illuminating everyone’s face clearly and casting small, bright spots in their pupils.
Grandpa and grandmother’s breathing stopped, they looked at the ball of light as if they had seen a miracle.
“Brother! I want to learn too!”
Lilia couldn’t bear it any longer. She jumped off the chair and ran to Alan, her big eyes shining with desire and admiration.
This time, Allen did not refuse directly as usual.
He looked at his sister’s expectant face and was silent for a moment.
“It’s very dangerous.”
He emphasized first.
“Safety must be guaranteed.”
After repeatedly explaining the precautions and asking everyone to retreat to a safe distance, he handed over his wand.
The eleven-inch yew wand seemed a little too long in Lilia’s small hands.
“The spell is ‘Lumos’ and the hand gesture is this.”
Alan demonstrated it for her.
Lilia’s face was filled with unprecedented excitement. She gripped her wand tightly, imitated her brother’s every move, and shouted out loudly with all her strength.
“Lumos!”
However, nothing happened.
The tip of the wand was lifeless, without even the slightest reaction.
She tried again, louder and harder.
It’s still in vain.
She waved her wand in defiance, chanting spells again and again, her face flushed red with excitement and effort. But no matter how hard she tried, the wand that was omnipotent in her brother’s hands was just an ordinary stick in her hands.
The air quieted down.
Lilia looked at Allen blankly, then looked down at her empty hands.
The wand was still there, but the magic was gone.
For the first time, a huge, incomprehensible gap appeared so clearly between her and her brother. He was omnipotent, and she was nothing.
Her eyes turned red instantly, and tears of grievance welled up uncontrollably, falling down in big drops.
“Wow–“
She let out a loud cry, dropped her wand, and ran away.
“Lilia!”
The grandfather’s old figure immediately chased after her. He took the sad little granddaughter in his arms, gently patted her back with his broad palms, and whispered comfort in the most loving voice.
Alan stood there quietly, looking at the grandfather and grandson hugging each other in the distance.
His eyes were calm, without a trace of ripples in his heart.
His mind palace came to a clear conclusion: This was necessary. It was a lesson that his sister had to face and overcome alone in her growth.
Chapter 9: Turbulence in the Library (Old Version)
In the last week before Hogwarts started, Alan was almost stuck in the community library.
The quiet scent of old books mingling with the wooden bookshelves became his most familiar backdrop. He wasn’t obsessed with stories, but like a greedy miner, he mined the vast sea of ​​business journals and scientific literature of the past decade, digging for the “data ore” needed to construct the core model of his mind palace.
That afternoon, sunlight streamed obliquely through the high windows, carving bright paths through the air, through which dust swirled lazily. The reading area was deserted, and the silence was so quiet that one could hear their own heartbeats.
Today, his target is a long-out-of-print copy of “Frontier Technology Outlook”.
The gilded letters on the spines of the books gleamed faintly on the top shelf, a height that even a ladder couldn’t reach, as if mocking gravity.
He looked around to make sure the reading area was empty.
A bold node was instantly lit up on the logic tree of his mind palace: silent and wandless casting.
This is a perfect and absolutely safe experimental environment.
His mental energy was highly concentrated, and his magic power silently gathered at the fingertips of his right hand in accordance with his will. His eyes were fixed on the journal, and in his mind, the rune structure of the “Levitation Spell” was rapidly simulated and constructed with astonishing precision.
At the top of the bookshelf, the heavy journal trembled almost imperceptibly.
It shook.
After just a moment, it returned to silence.
The magic power dissipated.
fail.
But the corners of Allen’s mouth curled up slightly. The fluctuation had already occurred, this was a breakthrough from zero to one.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
The voice was crisp, yet carried an unquestionable severity, like a needle that instantly pierced the silence of the library.
Alan turned around.
A girl, half a head taller than him, stood not far away, her brow furrowed. She had thick, curly brown hair, a high nose bridge, and—he lowered his gaze—a badge on her chest engraved with a bronze raven.
Once the information is entered, the Mind Palace will instantly complete the matching and retrieval.
Ravenclaw.
At the same second that he made his judgment, something strange happened.
Bang!
The window closest to them was suddenly smashed open by an invisible force without warning, and the glass groaned in pain.
A gray owl rushed in like a small whirlwind. It circled rapidly in the air, the wind from its wings ruffling the girl’s curly hair, and then, a letter sealed with hard parchment was thrown down with precision.
The letter landed at the girl’s feet with a light sound.
The girl was so shocked by this sudden change that she took a step back. She lowered her head in astonishment and picked up the letter.
The moment she opened the sealing wax and pulled out the letter, Alan clearly saw that the blood color on her face faded at a speed visible to the naked eye and turned pale.
The next second, the paleness turned red again due to the surging anger.
“You idiot!”
Her voice became sharp, and she held up the thin piece of letter, her arms shaking slightly with anger.
“Look what you’ve done!”
She yelled at Alan, every word coming out from between her teeth.
“An official warning letter from the Ministry of Magic! Accusing me of misusing magic in a Muggle-inhabited area! I haven’t touched my wand all summer!”
Her brain had obviously done the deduction.
The failed spellcasting attempt had just now resulted in the escaping, almost negligible magical fluctuations being captured by the Ministry of Magic’s all-pervasive “Tracing Threads.” As the only adult wizard in the area, she naturally became the one to bear the blame.
The girl’s name was Penelope Clearwater. The Mind Palace quickly retrieved relevant information—a senior Ravenclaw student and prefect. Someone who valued honor and a perfect resume above all else.
A warning letter from the Ministry of Magic was not just a letter to her, but a huge, dirty stain on her glorious file.
Rage burned away her rationality. Penelope rushed forward and pushed Allen’s shoulder with her hand.
However, her palm only pushed into empty air.
Allen’s body seemed to have no inertia. The moment before she exerted force, she had already moved half a step to the left. Her movements were clean and neat, without a trace of redundancy.
Penelope used too much force and staggered, almost falling.
“I’m sorry.”
Alan spoke. His voice was not loud, but unusually steady. The calmness that went beyond his age was out of tune with the tense atmosphere around them.
“This incident was indeed caused by me. Although I did not successfully cast any spells, the magical fluctuations are real. I am willing to take full responsibility.”
His honesty, his calmness, and his unevasive gaze slightly dampened Pene-Lo’s surging anger.
“Responsible? How can you be responsible?”
Her voice was still filled with anger, but it had shifted from pure venting to questioning. She re-examined the boy in front of her, a freshman who looked much shorter and thinner than herself.
“Are you also a new student at Hogwarts?”
“Yes.”
Alan nodded, his expression unchanged. He continued in that analytical tone:
“I think the most rational thing to do now is for us to write to Headmaster Dumbledore immediately and explain the full situation.”
He paused and added logically:
“I will state the entire story and attach my Hogwarts admission letter as proof of identity. I believe the headmaster will make the most impartial judgment.”
Penelope was completely stunned.
She anticipated that the other party might deny it, be afraid, cry, or even run away in panic.
What she hadn’t expected was that the freshman who had caused such a disaster not only didn’t show any panic, but in just a few seconds, he came up with a clear, logical and impeccable solution.
Chapter 10 The Value of Rules (Old Edition)
Although Penelope accepted Allen’s proposal intellectually, her heart was still tightly gripped by an invisible hand, and every contraction pumped out cold anxiety.
An official warning letter from the Ministry of Magic.
These words echoed over and over in her mind, like a scar that would never heal, foreshadowing that an ugly stain would always remain on her flawless resume of an excellent student.
“Just explaining it to the principal might not be enough.”
Her voice trembled, a tremor she herself was unaware of. The library’s towering bookshelves cast long shadows, enveloping her. Like a caged animal, she paced anxiously between the rows. The sharp, rapid click of her heels on the floor was the embodiment of her inner rhythm.
“Those bureaucrats at the Ministry of Magic… they are like stone, like ice, and they rarely admit their mistakes.”
“So, we can’t just ‘explain’ it.”
Alan’s voice was quiet, but like a precise tuning fork, it instantly calmed all the chaotic vibrations in the room. He sat quietly at the heavy oak table, a piece of fine parchment spread out in front of him, the tip of the quill lightly dipped in the ink bottle, ready to write.
Deep in his palace of thought, in that magnificent building constructed of countless logical nodes and information flows, a sophisticated plan called “crisis public relations” is being assembled, perfected, and finalized at a speed beyond ordinary people’s comprehension.
“‘Explain’ is a passive attitude.” Allen raised his eyes, his gaze calm and without a trace of emotion. “It means we’ve handed the power of judgment over to the other party. What we need to do is take the initiative.”
The tone of his voice was peculiarly calm and authoritative, which was inconsistent with his age, as if he was not conducting a discussion among students, but presiding over a business negotiation that would determine the fate of a company.
“Senior Penelope, let’s review this. According to your statement just now, the Ministry of Magic’s accusation is based solely on the faulty Thread surveillance. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s definitely the case!” Penelope nodded immediately.
“Then, their actions legally constitute ‘administrative error.'” Allen spoke slowly, but every word was powerful. “For a Ravenclaw prefect who is both academically and morally excellent and about to graduate, this false accusation based on a mistake has caused obvious damage to your ‘personal reputation and mental state.'”
“Reputation and moral damage?”
Penelope paused, her thoughts cleaving like a bolt of lightning. She had never considered the situation from this perspective. She had only thought about how to clear her name, how to invalidate the warning letter, never considering that she was the true victim.
“Of course.” Alan’s eyes penetrated the afternoon dust in the library and got to the heart of the matter. “So, the core demand in our reply should not be to ask them to ‘remove the warning’. That’s too humble. Our request is that they issue a ‘formal written apology’ for the ‘serious consequences caused by their negligence in their work.'”
The quill in his hand moved.
The inky black handwriting flowed across the pale yellow parchment, constructing an impenetrable fortress of logic.
“First, clearly state the facts: when, where, and why you were wrongly accused. Write down the time, place, and events in the most objective and non-emotional language possible.”
“Second, emphasize the consequences: clearly point out the irreversible stain this administrative error will have on the academic record of an outstanding underage student, and the potential long-term negative impact on her mental health. Use strong language here, but be restrained.”
“Third, a clear demand: the Director of the Office for the Prohibition of the Misuse of Magic must personally sign an official letter of apology. This must be confirmed in writing in the form of an official document, ensuring that no negative record related to this matter remains in your personal file.”
After writing these three points, Allen paused for a moment and then added the fatal blow.
“Finally,” he looked up at Penelope, his eyes flashing with calculation, “I am enclosing my statement and a copy of my Hogwarts admission letter as evidence, directing all responsibility onto me, a ‘ignorant first-year student who is curious about magic and attempting to explore it.'”
This combination of punches is smooth and logically closed.
It escalated a passive student complaint into a serious accusation of administrative dereliction of duty. The ball was kicked back to the Ministry of Magic with the strongest possible force. What they were about to face was no longer an underage witch who could be dismissed or intimidated at will, but a well-founded case of malfeasance that could at any moment be fermented through the Daily Prophet and escalate into a public scandal.
Penelope stared at the draft paper in a daze.
The logically rigorous and strongly worded points on the paper seemed not to be words, but a set of exquisite spells. She had originally thought that the best outcome would be for the other party to show mercy and withdraw the damned warning letter.
She never imagined that the goal of this freshman who was several years younger than her was to make the high and mighty Ministry of Magic bow their arrogant heads and apologize in person.
Under Allen’s almost hands-on guidance, Penelope finally completed a letter with extremely professional and strong wording that she herself could not believe.
Allen himself also wrote a short letter to Headmaster Dumbledore. In the letter, he used the simplest language, without any emotional color, to objectively describe the entire incident, frankly admitted his “violations”, and finally attached his contact information, indicating that he was willing to accept inquiries at any time.
Two days later.
Alan saw Penelope again in the same place in the library.
The gloom and anxiety on her face had disappeared, replaced by a complex expression of gratitude, admiration, and an incredible feeling that was so strong that it could not be dissolved.
“Solved.”
She didn’t say much, but handed Alan a letter with the Ministry of Magic’s scarlet wax seal.
“They apologized.”
Alan took the letter and unfolded it. Its contents were almost identical to what he had rehearsed in his mind palace. The Director of the Office for the Prohibition of the Improper Use of Magic, in an official capacity, expressed their sincerest apologies to Miss Penelope Clearwater for their lapses in work and solemnly assured her that her file would be flawless, leaving no trace.
Later, Penelope learned the full story from her friend who was interning at the Ministry of Magic.
Headmaster Dumbledore sent an owl to the Ministry of Magic the same day he received the letter. After confirming the authenticity of the incident with Penelope and Alan via separate letters, the greatest wizard of our time personally contacted the Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
Faced with Dumbledore’s personal intervention, the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Magic, who were accustomed to doing things perfunctorily, had to elevate this “small matter” to the highest level of handling.
A stern Auror was assigned to investigate and he used the Flashback Charm on both Alan and Penelope’s wands.
The result of the spell, like the most impartial judge, gave the final verdict.
Penelope’s wand, no recent record of use.
The last recorded spell cast by Alan’s wand was an attempt at a “levitation spell” with weak energy and extremely incomplete structure.
Faced with the ironclad evidence, the Ministry of Magic finally admitted that their proud surveillance system had suffered a rare error.
Penelope’s crisis was perfectly resolved by Allen in a precise and ruthless manner that was almost surgical.
“Alan,” Penelope’s voice was filled with sincerity, “thank you. I…I really don’t know how to repay you.”
“It’s just a piece of cake.” Allen calmly folded the letter and handed it back to her. “I just made the most rational choice based on the information I had.”
For him, the greatest gain from this incident was not the friendship and gratitude from a Ravenclaw prefect; that was just added value.
The real gain is a new understanding.
In his mind palace, a brand new module, titled “Rules and Applications,” was officially established, gleaming with a faint blue light. He came to a conclusion that would influence his life: Rules themselves are neutral, dead. For most people, they are a constraint, a shackle.
But for those who truly understand and master it, it is not a constraint, but rather the most powerful tool that can be used to protect themselves or even attack opponents.
Understanding and utilizing the rules is a much higher level than breaking the rules themselves.
Chapter 11 An Automatically Written Letter of Repentance (Old Version)
The note paper was thin and of a rough texture, with even rough fibers around the edges.
The handwriting was sloppy and perfunctory, with the ink smudged in a small area, as if the writer didn’t even have the patience to wait for it to dry.
“The matter is settled. There is no need to discuss it further.”
It contained only eight words, lacking even an official seal or signature. It didn’t seem to come from the Ministry of Magic, the authority that represented the entire wizarding world. Instead, it looked more like a piece of discarded paper.
Penelope’s fingers pinched the corner of the paper, and her fingertips turned white from the pressure.
“I…I don’t know what to do.”
Her voice sounded broken and weak in the quiet corner of the Hogwarts library. The towering bookshelves cast long shadows, shrouding her as she huddled in the wide chair, her shoulders slumped slightly.
“They don’t care at all. Professor Dumbledore’s favor only earned this much.” She slammed the piece of paper on the table with a dull thud. “Maybe I should really… just let it go.”
Her eyes lost focus and looked at the gray sky outside the window.
“Why should we forget it?”
Alan’s voice was not loud, but it penetrated the depressed atmosphere that enveloped Penelope. His tone was steady, without the slightest ripple, and every word was exceptionally clear.
Penelope looked up and saw Alan looking at her calmly. There was no sympathy in his eyes, only a pure, probing calmness.
“The very fact that justice needs to be served,” Allen continued, “proves precisely that it won’t come automatically. Senior, you’re facing a clear injustice. If you choose to accept it, you’re tacitly allowing the next injustice to happen, whether to you or to others.”
“But what can I do?” Penelope’s voice was filled with tears, but more of it was anger wrapped in a sense of powerlessness. “I’m just a student! And he is an official from the Ministry of Magic!”
“Students have their own ways.”
Alan’s gaze fell on the note on the table, and a glimmer of light flickered deep in his pupils.
“Since the official rules have been wantonly trampled upon by them, we will use a… more magical method to help them review the meaning of the rules.”
He reached out and, with two fingers, gracefully and precisely picked up the note that said “No Further Discussion”.
The moment the paper touched his fingertips, his mind palace was completely activated.
Countless points of light lit up in the magnificent building in his mind, representing the psychological nodes of “bureaucratic psychology”, “path dependence”, and “cognitive bias”, and instantly pulled out thousands of brilliant logical threads between the spell application nodes of “confusion spell variants”, “suggestion spell nesting”, and “triggered magic matrix”.
A plan, like a sophisticated machine made up of data and logic, was quickly constructed, simulated, optimized, and finally took shape in his mind palace.
Bold, sophisticated, and filled with a certain mischievous revenge aesthetic.
“Senior, write a new letter.” Allen put the note aside, as if dealing with an insignificant piece of trash. “The wording must be strong and the attitude must be firm.”
Under his guidance, Penelope suppressed her doubts and unfolded a new sheet of parchment. As Allen dictated, she wrote furiously. The letter’s logic was impeccable, directly addressing the official’s three core failures in handling the case: procedural oversight, selective evidence, and an irrationally biased conclusion.
The letter ends with a request for the Director of the Office of Magic to provide a reasonable explanation for the three major dereliction of duty within 24 hours.
This letter itself is just a well-founded complaint letter.
The real key came after Penelope wrote the last word and put down the quill.
Alan took the parchment that still smelled of ink.
He drew out his wand, which shone with a warm luster in the dim light of the library.
He turned the letter over, revealing the blank back.
The tip of the wand gently slid across the surface of the parchment in a complex trajectory that was difficult for the naked eye to grasp. No trace was left, but it was as if something invisible was engraved on it.
Finally, the tip of the wand tapped three times at three specific locations in a unique rhythm.
Three imperceptible magical fluctuations, like drops of water falling into a quiet lake, quickly merged into the fibers of the parchment and disappeared.
“I added a small magic combination to it.” Alan retracted his wand, his tone as calm as if he was explaining a math problem.
“A delicate Confusion Charm, nested within a powerful Suggestion Charm.”
He paused, looked into Penelope’s confused eyes, and continued to explain: “This magic matrix is ​​dormant. But when the recipient – Mr. Bert Gray – has the thought of ‘discarding’, ‘ignoring’, ‘ridiculing’ or anything of that nature in his mind, the spell will be activated.”
“Once activated, it will briefly confuse his subjective will. At the same time, an irresistible thought will be implanted in his subconscious mind – he needs, and must, conduct a comprehensive and profound self-reflection of his actions from the depths of his soul.”
The next day, London, Ministry of Magic.
The atmosphere in the Abuse of Magic Office was as heavy as ever. Files flew back and forth between desks, and the sound of quills writing automatically filled the air.
Mr. Bert Grey yawned, opened a new Howler, and cast a spell to silence it. Then he saw the letter from Hogwarts.
He recognized Penelope’s name.
“Is it not over yet?”
He scoffed contemptuously, opened the envelope, and glanced at it quickly. His smile widened when he saw the letter’s logically rigorous accusations and the demand for a reply within twenty-four hours.
A student dares to threaten officials from the Ministry of Magic?
It’s ridiculously naive.
He didn’t even bother to read it a second time. He raised his arm and flicked his wrist, throwing the letter accurately into the wastebasket in the corner.
That’s the thought.
That’s the action.
The moment he had the intention to “discard”——
“Pah.”
A soft sound.
His favorite quill made of raven feathers jumped out of the pen holder on his desk and stood firmly on the desk.
Bert Gray was stunned.
He tried to grab the pen, but found his right arm frozen in mid-air, completely defying his brain’s control. An invisible force clamped him down, forcing him to watch helplessly.
Throughout the office, the attention of dozens of colleagues was drawn to this strange scene.
Under everyone’s astonished gaze, the feather pen floated in the air.
It turned deftly and automatically pulled a brand new, high-quality parchment from the shelf next to it and spread it neatly on the table.
Then, he dipped the tip of the pen into ink and began to write on the parchment in a wild and unrestrained handwriting.
The force was so strong that it almost cut through the paper.
The office fell silent for a moment, the only sound remaining was the frantic scraping of pens across the parchment.
A huge title took shape:
A Deep Reflection on My Negligence, Poor Attitude, and Poor Judgment
Everyone was stunned.
Bert Grey’s face turned liver-colored, and cold sweat rolled down his forehead. He wanted to shout and cast a spell, but he found that he could not even open his lips, and could only make a hoarse, bellows-like sound.
That pen is still writing.
The content is truly brilliant, its language ornate to the point of grandiosity. With the most sincere emotion and poignant brushstrokes, it vividly depicts Bert Gray’s arrogance and prejudice, his perfunctory and lax approach to work. Between the lines, he is filled with a deep abhorrence of his own bureaucratic practices and an indignation at the abuse of power.
It portrays him as a shining example of someone who has repented, come to his senses, and is determined to turn over a new leaf and become a new man.
Everyone in the office stared in amazement at this utterly absurd drama. Some wanted to laugh, but they covered their mouths tightly, their shoulders shaking violently.
Finally, after writing all over the parchment, the quill pen put down the last heavy stroke, as if it had used up all its strength.
The review letter is completed.
The next second, the parchment rolled up automatically into a tight scroll.
Like a well-trained bird, it fluttered gently, took off from Bert Gray’s desk, and flew straight towards the office door.
It ran through the corridor, ignoring all obstacles, heading towards the director’s office with a clear goal, moving forward.
This incident caused an unprecedented uproar within the Department of Misuse of Magic and quickly became the biggest laughing stock of the Ministry of Magic within a week.
The unfortunate Mr. Bert Gray was immediately suspended and subject to an internal investigation.
That afternoon, an official owl from the Ministry of Magic delivered a letter to Hogwarts.
The envelope was thick and had the official wax seal of the Ministry of Magic’s Misuse of Magic Department on it. Inside was a letter of apology signed by the Director himself, written with great sincerity.
At the same time, in the Hogwarts library, Alan had a clear message in his mind palace, like cold stars, quietly emerging:
[Side quest completed: The value of rules.][Gain experience points +200.]In the evening, Penelope’s owl letter landed on Alan’s windowsill.
There was only one sentence on the letter, and the handwriting was trembling with excitement.
“Alan,”
“You’re a…miracle.”
Alan folded the letter and a barely perceptible smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
His friendship with the Ravenclaw prefect became even stronger after this battle.
Also more reliable.
Chapter 12 Exploding Pudding (Old Version)
The stern warning letter from the Ministry of Magic eventually turned into a piece of waste paper.
After the storm subsided and with only a few days left before the start of school, Allen was finally able to immerse himself in the tranquility of family life, which he labeled a “scarce resource.”
Most of his activities were confined to his father Robert’s study.
The air was filled with the mixed scent of old book pages and leather, and the sunlight filtered through the window panes, casting slow-moving golden spots on the thick oak floor.
The hooting of an owl is the only background sound.
It would bring Penelope Clearwater’s reply letter on time at tea time, and the parchment always had a faint scent of ink and the girl’s unique, light handwriting.
“Professor Severus Snape is an absolute authority on Potions, but he seems to have some kind of stubborn prejudice against Gryffindor students. The essay must be long enough, Alan, the longer the better, as this is the key to scoring.”
“Professor McGonagall in the Transfiguration class is extremely rigorous. What she appreciates most is the practice of spells with clear logic and precise steps. This course is simply tailor-made for you!”
“The Ravenclaw common room needs to answer the puzzles given by the Eagle Ring. The questions change every day, but I found that the types of puzzles have some strange connection with the astrological cycles of the Astronomy Tower…”
Each piece of information was like a pure data stream, which was quickly captured and analyzed by Allen, and then injected into the huge building in his mind called the “Palace of Mind”.
In the core area of ​​the palace, a precise three-dimensional model of Hogwarts is slowly rotating.
When Penelope’s intelligence about Snape arrived, a red warning light indicating “risk” flashed on the path between “Slytherin House” and “Potions Classroom” in the model. And the variable “essay length” was directly added to the formula for the “Potions Class Optimal Grade Algorithm.”
At the end of the letter, Penelope would always take the trouble to recommend him to join Ravenclaw again, and she drew a cute smiley face with a quill.
“Our college common room is the quietest in the whole school and has the best library collection. I’m sure you’ll love it there, Alan!”
Alan tapped his fingers lightly on the table.
In his mind palace, the two options representing “Ravenclaw” and “Gryffindor” were undergoing final weighting assessment.
Ravenclaw: The academic atmosphere is strong, which suits personal preferences and allows for more pure knowledge. However, the downside is that it’s too far from the center of the main storyline, making it difficult to gather information and intervene at key points.
Gryffindor: Reckless, impulsive, and lacking in discipline. But their advantages are also fatal—this is the house of Harry Potter, the “child of destiny,” the area of ​​Dumbledore’s focus, and the source of all major events.
After a calculation of 0.01 seconds, the weighted score of the “Gryffindor” option finally won with an overwhelming advantage.
Alan circled the location of Gryffindor Tower on the plan with a red pen.
This is not a choice based on feelings, but a cold-blooded decision based on intelligence analysis and maximizing future benefits.
“Alan, come down for breakfast!”
His mother Kara’s voice came from downstairs, interrupting his thoughts.
The breakfast table is always the liveliest place in the house.
Since returning to Diagon Alley, Robert and Carla’s curiosity about the magical world has been completely ignited, like two children eager to explore the new world.
“Son, how do the interest rates at goblin banks compare to those in the Muggle world? Do they have any financial products?”
This is a question that Robert, the bank manager’s father, asks himself every day.
“Alan, can magic make clothes fit automatically? Or do your school robes have to be re-made every year?”
This is the question of Kara, a mother who pays attention to details in life.
As for my younger sister Lilia, there is always only one theme.
She asked in a low, expectant voice with her lips stained with milk foam.
“Brother, today… today can you perform another magic trick? Just a small one.”
Alan looked at his sister’s clear eyes that reflected his own shadow, and the module marked “family” in his mind palace fed back a warm stream of data.
“Alan, are we still going to the British Museum today?”
Mother Kara asked, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
“Perhaps, we can have a more interesting plan.”
Alan’s sight caught the instantaneous light that burst out in Lilia’s eyes.
He put down his knife and fork, leaned forward slightly, and spoke in a mysterious tone.
“I bought a copy of ‘Magical Home Baking’ in Diagon Alley and there’s a dessert in it that sounds interesting – ‘Surprise Exploding Pudding’.”
“explode?”
Robert’s eyes lit up.
“surprise?”
Lilia jumped up from her chair excitedly.
The proposal was passed unanimously.
The Harris family’s kitchen instantly transformed from an ordinary cooking place into a magical experimental base full of wonders and unknowns.
The whole family gathered around the central cooking table with great interest.
Allen became the commander-in-chief.
He opened the old magic book, the pages turned automatically, and read the recipe in a rhythmic tone.
“First, take three runespoor eggs, whose yolks give the pudding its dreamy golden color.”
“Next, add one pound of floating powdered sugar. Please note that you must stir in a counterclockwise direction, otherwise the sweetness will be lost.”
Ai…Alan was responsible for handling these key magical steps. His movements were precise and steady, as if he was performing a delicate surgical operation.
Robert, Kara and Lilia were responsible for preparing common baking ingredients that they could understand – flour, milk and fresh raspberry jam.
The kitchen was filled with laughter and slight chaos.
The problem lies with a magic ingredient called “jumping bean powder”.
The recipe description reads: “Adding it gives the pudding a lively, tongue-dancing texture.”
Alan used a small silver spoon to accurately measure the standard amount and poured it into the huge glass bowl.
The batter only bubbled slightly.
“that’s all?”
Robert leaned over to take a look, a hint of disappointment showing on his face.
“I thought it would jump up on its own. This isn’t ‘snappy’ enough.”
While Alan turned around to get his wand, the father, who felt it was not exciting enough, grabbed the bag of jumping bean powder and secretly added two large spoonfuls into the bowl.
He even winked at Lilia smugly.
Everything is ready.
Alan mixed all the ingredients thoroughly, and the bowl of batter turned into an attractive, flowing golden color.
He raised his eleven-inch cedar wand.
The family held their breath, gathered around and watched intently.
Alan tapped the tip of the stick into the center of the batter.
“Vivisco!”
He whispered the activation spell.
The moment the spell took effect, the vibration frequency from the bowl suddenly went out of control, and a magical fluctuation that was not part of a normal chemical reaction pierced his perception.
In the huge glass bowl, the golden batter no longer bubbled gently, but began to boil violently and madly, with huge bubbles bulging one after another on the surface, making a rapid “gurgling” sound.
“Back off!”
Allen’s pupils suddenly contracted, and he immediately pulled Lilia behind him.
His warning had not yet fully diffused through the kitchen.
There was a dull but loud bang.
The entire bowl of pudding mixture was no longer satisfied with just a small boil. It was like an awakened miniature volcano, erupting violently upwards, forming a sticky, hot dome that drew a parabola in the air and then exploded with a loud bang.
Fortunately, the “explosion” had no physical force at all.
Its only “weapon” is the sticky, fragrant cream, jam and pudding paste flying all over the sky.
The kitchen first fell into an eerie silence.
It was as if time had been slowed down.
Alan could clearly see a ball of strawberry jam slowly flying towards his father’s forehead, and a long strip of cream hung on his mother’s hair, like a trendy white hair accessory.
The next second, the silence was completely broken.
The deafening laughter almost blew the roof off the kitchen.
Robert wiped the cream off his face, looked at his sticky palms, his eyes dodging, and finally raised his hands like a soldier admitting his mistake.
“Okay, I admit, I might have put a little too much jumping bean powder.”
Lilia didn’t care that she had become a “cream man”. She stretched out her finger, scraped a piece of pudding paste off her cheek and put it into her mouth, her eyes narrowed into a line with happiness.
“tasty!”
She cried out, licking the jam from another finger.
Alan looked at the embarrassed yet extremely happy family in front of him. Their faces, hair, and clothes were all “evidence” of this sweet disaster.
His tense nerves completely relaxed.
A mixture of helplessness, amusement and warmth flowed slowly in his chest.
He shook his head, but the corners of his mouth rose uncontrollably.
He drew his wand again.
“Scourgify!”
A soft white light spread out with him as the center.
A miracle happened.
All the cream and jam that was stuck to their bodies, faces, and hair, as well as the pudding paste that was splattered all over the kitchen walls, ceiling, and floor, disappeared in an instant.
As if they had never appeared.
The kitchen returned to its original cleanliness, with only the sweet smell still lingering in the air.
Although this time was a failure, the fun baking experience was like a powerful “happy spell” that easily dispelled the sadness caused by the impending separation.
It was solemnly stored and archived in Allen’s mind palace, marked as a warm memory of the highest priority.
This became the warmest and sweetest prologue before bidding farewell to the family and welcoming the new life full of unknowns at Hogwarts.
Chapter 13 Rational Platform Crossing (Old Version)
September 1st.
The morning light is like a precise scalpel, cutting through the London mist, piercing through the window frames at a perfect angle, and casting spots of light on the ground.
The moment the light spot touched the foot of the bed, Alan’s eyelids opened on time.
There wasn’t a trace of the haziness of a newly awakened mind in his pupils; instead, there was a clarity like that of an icy lake. His mind, a second before he opened his eyes, had already completed its self-check and booted up, and all programs were functioning normally.
His mind palace, a magnificent structure built of logic as steel and memory as brick, was now brightly lit. On the holographic sandbox in the center of the palace, the action plan titled “Hogwarts First Day” was undergoing its final deduction at millisecond speed.
The timeline is stretched and enlarged, and each node is marked with execution instructions accurate to the second.
He stood up, and his body movements were as smooth as the operation of precision machinery without any unnecessary shaking.
Wash up and change clothes.
Then comes the luggage.
For most people, packing is a chaotic struggle with limited space. For him, it was an applied practice of spatial geometry and material mechanics.
His eyes swept over the clutter on the bed—thick textbooks, rolls of parchment, jars of ink and potion ingredients, neatly folded wizard robes.
To ordinary people, it is a chaotic mess.
In his mind palace, these objects are instantly transformed into three-dimensional models with precise size, mass, and material parameters.
The optimized storage algorithm starts running.
Countless combinations were generated, collided, screened, and eliminated in the virtual space. After 0.03 seconds, the final solution was locked.
He started to work.
The angle at which each book was inserted into the gap, the thickness of each piece of clothing folded, all strictly adhered to the blueprint in his mind. His hands were steady and efficient, inserting each item into the coordinates he had already planned. The huge suitcase gradually filled up, the items fitting seamlessly between each other, not a single micron of space was wasted. This wasn’t organization; this was construction.
When he closed the lid, the whole process took seven minutes and twenty-three seconds, exactly as planned.
10:30 am, King’s Cross Station.
Under the old dome, voices, the radio, and train whistles blended into a cacophony of noise, and the air was filled with the mixed smell of diesel, dust, and cheap hot dogs.
Alan’s father, Robert, was staring at the nondescript brick wall between platforms nine and ten with a mixture of absurdity and unease.
The walls were made of weathered red bricks, the gaps filled with black plaster, and looked strong enough to withstand the impact of a battering ram.
“Is this the place?”
Robert’s Adam’s apple rolled, and his voice was full of doubts about the real world.
Allen’s response was calm. He pushed the heavy luggage cart, his gaze as if examining a geometry problem. His mind was rapidly processing the information provided by Senior Penelope Clearwater, cross-checking it with the simple physics model he had constructed.
“Based on analysis of existing data, there are two threshold conditions for a successful crossing.”
His voice was clear and calm, as if he was giving an academic lecture.
“First, initial velocity. A constant impact velocity of no less than three meters per second must be maintained. Any deceleration or hesitation before impact will cause the laws of physics to reassert themselves, resulting in a collision with a wall.”
“Second, cognitive overlay. This is a key psychological variable. The traverser’s consciousness must precede the body, establishing an absolute belief model that ‘the wall is nothingness.’ Any degree of doubt, even subconscious, will cause the construction of the reality distortion field to fail.”
He paused, turning his gaze from the cold brick wall to his family—his father Robert, who looked confused, his mother Kara, whose fists were clenched nervously, and his sister Lilia, who was hiding behind her mother, her eyes flashing with curiosity and fear.
The tense lines on his face softened into a precisely calculated, soothing smile.
“Watch me.”
After he finished speaking, he said no more.
He bent his knees slightly and adjusted his breathing rate to allow more oxygen to enter his lungs and supply the muscles that were about to explode. This was a purely physical preparation.
The next second, his leg muscles tensed instantly, and a powerful explosive force was generated from his feet, passed through his waist and abdomen, and transferred to his arms.
As he pushed the heavy luggage cart from a standstill to high speed, the entire acceleration process was smooth without any jerk.
He and his vehicle formed a unified whole, a flying machine with a precisely calculated trajectory and locked onto its ultimate target.
His eyes were fixed on the front, and the wall rapidly enlarged in his vision. But in his perception, it was just a piece of air with a slightly higher density that could be easily penetrated.
There is no final cry.
No extra expressions.
He rushed straight towards the wall with an indomitable and resolute attitude.
There was no loud noise as expected.
There was no scream of broken bones.
There wasn’t even a hint of wind.
Alan, along with his packed luggage cart, was swallowed up silently by the solid wall and disappeared between platforms nine and ten.
As if he had never existed.
Robert, Kara, and Lilia’s breathing stopped. The scene before them completely shattered the common sense of physics they had built up over decades.
After a brief moment of dead silence, there was a courage that seemed to have survived a disaster. They looked at each other, followed Alan’s example, mustered up their courage, and rushed towards the wall one by one, disappearing on the spot.
Platform nine and three-quarters.
It’s completely different from the old, gray world outside.
This is a vibrant world wrapped in thick white steam.
The air was warm and humid, carrying the distinct aroma of burning coal. Like a sleeping giant, the scarlet steam train sat at the platform, emitting a steady, powerful roar. The platform was packed with people. Parents’ loud instructions, children’s excited screams, the hooting of owls, and the chugging of cart wheels intertwined into a bustling symphony.
Alan ignored the commotion.
His mind palace was rapidly collecting and analyzing data about the surrounding environment, but his expression did not change at all.
He expertly found the baggage car and handed his enormous suitcase to a uniformed steward.
Then he turned and said goodbye to his family.
A hug, simple and powerful.
“Take care of yourself.” Mother Kara’s eyes were red.
“Write a letter if you have anything to say.” Father Robert patted his shoulder, his tone stiff but unable to conceal his concern.
Alan nodded without saying too many sentimental words. Those words were unquantifiable and lacked efficiency.
He didn’t look back every three steps like other freshmen, waving goodbye to his family reluctantly, nor did he cast curious glances at everything around him. To him, those emotional fluctuations were a meaningless waste of energy.
He turned around and boarded the train directly.
He quickly passed through several noisy carriages and accurately found an empty compartment.
He placed his backpack on the luggage rack and sat down straight.
Not long after I sat down, a low and elegant chirp sounded outside the window.
A black shadow cut through the steam, flew in through the half-open car window with precision, folded its wings, and landed steadily on his shoulder.
It was a raven.
Its body is more elegant and slender than its peers, and its feathers are as black as ink, reflecting a cold and hard metallic luster in the dim light of the carriage.
This is his pet, Night Raven.
Chapter 14: Goblin Stock Market Prophet (Old Edition)
The carriage door was knocked without warning, the sound was urgent and full of impatient energy.
Before Alan could respond, the door was opened with a loud bang.
Two identical red-haired boys poked their heads in, their faces sporting identical smiles, as if they had succeeded in a prank. Behind them, a dark-skinned boy followed closely, carefully cradling a glass box in his arms. Inside, a large, furry spider was restlessly crawling.
Fred Weasley.
George Weasley.
And their best friend, Lee Jordan.
The intrusion of the three people instantly broke the quiet world in the compartment that belonged to Allen alone.
Their eyes did not fall on Alan at first, but were fixed on the raven standing still on his shoulder.
That was no ordinary bird.
Its feathers were a deep black, absorbing all the light within the carriage, without a trace of other colors. Its posture was calm, unlike the restlessness of ordinary birds. Most striking were its eyes. They were not a murky black, but gleamed with a cold light bordering on wisdom. It regarded the three uninvited guests with a scrutinizing, emotionless gaze.
“Wow!” Fred exclaimed from the bottom of his heart, and he even forgot the opening line he wanted to say, “What a cool bird!”
“It’s called Night Raven.”
Alan closed the hardcover book in his hand. There was no title on the cover, only a complex alchemical symbol embossed in gold. His voice was calm and concise, as if he had anticipated their arrival.
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan exchanged a glance, then unceremoniously squeezed in and took the seat opposite Allen. They had a natural affinity for getting along with everyone, as if the entire Hogwarts Express was their playground.
Alan showed no sign of being offended. He simply looked at them quietly, letting them examine him and the small cubicle.
“Freshman?” George spoke first, his eyes sweeping over Alan’s brand new robe without any logo on it.
Alan nodded.
“We’re Fred and George Weasley, and this is Lee Jordan,” Fred introduced enthusiastically. “We’re third year, Gryffindor. What about you? You don’t look like you’re from our house. You’re so quiet.”
Alan’s lips curled up slightly. He didn’t answer directly, but instead steered the conversation in a completely new direction.
“Let me ask you a question.”
His voice was not loud, but it had a power that could not be ignored, instantly attracting the attention of all three people.
“A bottle contains a special bacteria that divides once a minute, doubling its number. In one hour, or sixty minutes, the bottle will be completely filled with bacteria.”
Alan paused, his eyes calmly scanning the three curious faces.
“Excuse me, how long does it take for the bacteria to fill half the bottle?”
“Ha, that’s easy!” Fred replied quickly. “Half the amount, of course, half the time! Thirty minutes!”
“Yeah, thirty minutes!” Lee Jordan agreed, with a “that’s child’s play” look on his face.
George frowned. He felt that things were not that simple, but he couldn’t explain why.
Alan did not reveal the answer immediately, but just looked at them quietly, letting the confidence ferment on their faces, and then slowly turn into doubt.
Fred and Lee Jordan’s smiles faded. They began racking their brains, simulating the bottle and the bacteria in their minds. Dividing, doubling…
For a moment, the only sound in the carriage was the sound of the train running on the tracks.
“Fifty-nine minutes.”
Alan finally spoke and uttered a number that made their brains shut down instantly.
“What?” Fred almost jumped up.
“How is this possible!” Lee Jordan widened his eyes.
“Because,” Alan said, his voice filled with a unique calmness that explained axioms, “at the fifty-ninth minute, the bottle was exactly half full. One minute later, all the bacteria divided once, doubling their number, and the half-full bottle became a full bottle.”
The compartment fell into dead silence.
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan stared at Alan in amazement, as if he were looking at a monster. This logic puzzle was like a delicate key, instantly opening a new door to their cognition. They had never thought that the problem could be considered from this perspective.
The freshman in front of him looked a little aloof, even a little withdrawn, but his brain seemed to contain a completely different world full of wisdom and logic.
This feeling is novel and interesting.
“Hey, look at this!”
Lee Jordan was the first to recover from his shock. As if to break the strange atmosphere, he excitedly pulled a crumpled copy of the Daily Prophet from his backpack, spread it out on the table, and pointed to an inconspicuous column squeezed into the corner by advertisements and gossip.
“‘Gringotts Goblin Stock Market Index’ Annual Prize Guessing Contest!”
His finger pointed at the small words, and his voice rose an octave.
“The winner who guesses the sector with the biggest index drop by the end of the year will receive a massive reward of 100 Galleons!”
In that corner of the newspaper, there were more than a dozen strange section names listed: “Dragon Liver Trading”, “Wand Core Materials”, “Unicorn Hair Products”, “Fairy Armor Forging”, “Crucible and Potion Bottle Manufacturing”… Next to each section, there was a tangled mess of curve graphs, which was dazzling to look at.
“Come on, Lee.” George leaned over to take a look, then immediately leaned back in his chair with a lack of interest. “Who can understand this? The mind of a goblin is harder to guess than Merlin’s beard.”
“Yeah, it was pure luck,” Fred agreed, waving his hand. “One hundred Galleons? I’d rather be figuring out how to turn Filch’s cat yellow.”
Alan’s attention was drawn to the title.
His eyes quickly scanned the plate names, and deep within his pupils, countless invisible streams of data flashed rapidly. His mind palace was instantly activated, and a vast amount of information began to frantically intertwine, collide, and compare.
A key node buried deep in his past life’s memory was accurately triggered by this guess.
Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation.
A former technological giant in the Muggle world.
At the end of this year, this company will cause a catastrophic technological decision error, triggering a chain reaction in the entire industrial chain, and eventually collapse in a huge financial black hole and file for bankruptcy.
This is an absolute historical fact that has already happened and is irreversible.
Before Alan enrolled, he had spent considerable time researching various materials related to the goblins at Gringotts in order to better understand the magical world. In an ancient book describing the goblin business empire, he had discovered a very obscure entry: the goblins at Gringotts, through some unknown and extremely mysterious channels, had already extended their investment tentacles into the non-magical world.
They were one of the secret shareholders of Fairchild Semiconductor.
A bold, clear and logically rigorous inference instantly took shape in Allen’s mind palace.
The bankruptcy of Fairchild Semiconductor will directly result in the goblins losing all their huge investments in this company.
The goblins were a greedy and pragmatic race. To fill such a massive financial deficit, they would inevitably take action. They would sell off a large number of assets they held that were not essential but could be quickly liquidated.
What is not a basic need?
Dragon liver? A basic ingredient for potions, no.
The core of the wand? The foundation of the wizarding world’s power, no.
Goblin armor? That was their racial pride and strategic material, even more impossible.
His eyes quickly swept across the dozen or so options in the newspaper, and finally locked onto an extremely unpopular option that was almost ignored by everyone.
“Gemstones and Rare Metals”.
These items, aside from being luxury goods and materials for certain high-end alchemy techniques, were not the core of the magical world’s operations. Faced with immense financial pressure, they were the assets the goblins were most likely and willing to sell.
Once the goblins dump a large amount of inventory in order to recover funds, the market price of this sector will inevitably usher in an unprecedented avalanche.
“I choose this one.”
Alan’s voice sounded calmly, breaking the whispers of the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan.
“What?”
The three of them turned their heads at the same time, thinking they had misheard.
Fred pointed to the almost unnoticed section and confirmed, “You said… ‘Gemstones and Rare Metals’? Are you sure? The price of this stuff hasn’t changed much in decades.”
Alan didn’t explain.
Any explanation at this moment seems pale and powerless, and may even expose the abnormal source of his knowledge.
Action is the best proof.
From the inside pocket of his robes, he pulled out a heavy purse made of dragonhide, cast with a traceless extension charm.
He undid the drawstring and turned the purse upside down.
“Clatter—”
Golden Galleons flowed out of the bag like a stream, forming a dazzling mountain on the table. Each gold coin flashed with a dazzling light, making it difficult for the Weasley brothers and Lee Jordan to open their eyes.
Alan stretched out his fingers and counted the gold coins slowly and steadily.
One, two… ten… twenty…
Finally, he took out thirty gold Galleons and pushed them aside.
He picked up the quill pen, drew a clear tick behind the option of “Gemstones and Rare Metals” on the betting ticket, and then signed his name.
Alan handed the completed betting ticket and the thirty gold Galleons to Night Raven on his shoulder.
“Go ahead.”
His voice was very soft.
“Sent to the Daily Prophet.”
The night crow let out a loud and sharp cry, the sound piercing the noise of the carriage. It accurately grabbed the stack of heavy gold coins and thin parchment notes with its claws, and with a sudden flap of its wings, it rushed out through the half-open window, creating a gust of wind, and disappeared into the distant skyline in an instant.
The compartment fell into absolute silence.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan’s breathing hitched.
They looked at the empty table, then at the open car window, and finally, their eyes were fixed dully on Alan’s face, which was calm without a trace of emotion.
Cost thirty Galleons.
To guess a difficult question that they think is almost impossible to guess and depends purely on luck?
This lavish behavior that was almost like “burning money”, and the god-like firm confidence on his face as if he had already foreseen the future, created an extreme and suffocating impact.
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan were completely stunned.
Chapter 15 Data Collection and Sharing (Old Version)
“Thirty Galleons!”
Fred’s voice seemed to be strangled by an invisible hand, rising an octave. He pressed his chest exaggeratedly, leaning back, almost collapsing in his seat, his eyes wide open.
“Dude, do you guys own a gold mine?” he gasped, each word trembling dramatically. “Or do you think gold would burn a hole in your pocket?”
“That’s a lot of money.”
George’s style was completely different. He leaned forward, moved closer to Alan, and lowered his voice to the level of someone sharing a shocking secret, his warm breath blowing against Alan’s ears.
“You could buy an older Nimbus model now, it’s definitely fast enough!”
Faced with the two people’s completely different and exaggerated reactions, Allen’s calm smile did not waver in the slightest. He adjusted his sitting posture, shifting his center of gravity slightly backward. This subtle movement created a subtle sense of distance between him and the two people, a sense of control over the overall situation.
“I call it ‘rational guesswork based on probability.'”
His voice was not loud, but it was clearly heard by everyone, with a calmness that was inconsistent with his age.
“In my opinion, the success rate is much better than one in 50. So, it’s a worthwhile investment.”
This serious, academic-like speech completely stumped the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan. The three of them looked at each other, their eyes meeting in the air, silently conveying the same message: This guy is a complete weirdo.
The brief silence was broken by Lee Jordan’s curiosity.
“Come to think of it,” he scratched his head, trying to recall, “did you get into any trouble during the summer vacation? I seemed to hear Penelope Clearwater mention it in the prefect’s carriage, saying that a freshman helped her deal with the Ministry of Magic’s warning letter.”
The moment the words fell, in Alan’s spiritual world, that palace of thought composed of logic and data, a silent red alarm flashed.
Premature exposure increases the risk factor. Immediate information control and image reshaping are necessary.
In a fraction of a second, the calmness on his face was replaced by just the right amount of curiosity and innocence. His eyes widened slightly, and his eyebrows raised slightly, a typical, harmless expression of interest in a new topic.
“Oh, it was just a little misunderstanding.”
He spoke in a nonchalant tone, as if he was talking about a trivial matter, instantly removing the weight of the topic.
“Speaking of which, I still don’t know much about the magical world. After all, my family are all Muggles.” He leaned forward, his posture becoming humble, and his eyes swept over the three people sincerely. “There are many common sense things. I will need to ask you for advice in the future.”
This flawless performance successfully repositioned him from a “mystery solver” to a “Muggle freshman who needs help”, effectively dispelling the doubts of the three people.
Just then, a slight bump in the wheels and the sweet smell of food heralded the arrival of the snack cart.
A plump, smiling witch pulled up in front of their cubicle door, pushing a cart full of snacks.
“Kids, would you like something?” Her voice was as sweet as her smile.
“One Bibi Every Flavour Bean and three Chocolate Frogs.”
Fred expertly called out their usual selections.
Allen stood up.
This simple action once again drew everyone’s attention to him.
Instead of walking directly to the snack cart, he straightened his robes before walking to the door with steady steps and bowing slightly to the witch.
“Ma’am,” he said, his words so polite they were almost old-fashioned, “please give me one of every snack in your car that I don’t recognize.”
After saying this, he didn’t take out the gold Galleons, but instead pulled out a handful of heavy silver Sickles from his pocket. With his palm spread out, the silver coins gleamed charmingly under the light of the carriage, and he gently but without hesitation placed them on the witch’s counter.
The crisp sound of metal colliding echoed in the small compartment.
The professional smile on the witch’s face froze.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan’s jaws were nearly dislocated.
As everyone stared in astonishment, Alan began to carry a large pile of colorfully packaged snacks to their seats. Fizzy Bee Candy, Cauldron Cake, Blowing Super Bubble Gum, Licorice Wands… Soon, a small mountain of snacks had piled up on the seats.
“You…what are you doing?”
Lee Jordan’s voice broke with shock.
“Collecting data.”
Alan’s answer was calm and serious. He sat back down and slowly took out a shiny feather pen and a hardcover notebook from his backpack.
“I’m very interested in the chemical composition, physical form, and magical effects of magical snacks.” He tapped the cover of his notebook with his fingertips, making a crisp sound. “Since I want to conduct research, I need sufficient and diverse samples. Come on, everyone! I can’t handle so many samples by myself. Please help me ‘taste and evaluate’.”
His tone didn’t sound like he was inviting friends to share snacks, but more like a project manager assigning work tasks.
As he spoke, he had already unwrapped a chocolate frog.
His movements were precise and methodical.
First, he carefully took out the dynamic wizard picture. Without rushing to see who it was, he placed it flat next to the notebook and gently pressed it with the end of the quill to prevent it from jumping away.
Then he picked up the frog-shaped chocolate that was still trembling slightly.
He didn’t bite it directly.
He gently broke off a small piece with his fingertips, observed the cross-section of the chocolate, and even leaned in to smell it.
Finally, he put the small piece of chocolate into his mouth, closed his eyes, and seemed to be analyzing the ingredients with his tongue.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes, picked up the quill, and began to write quickly in the brand new notebook. His handwriting was clear and neat, full of logic.
Product Name: Chocolate Frog.
Taste: Soft and melts in your mouth. Highly sweet. Preliminary taste analysis suggests the cocoa content is around 40%, with a high milk fat content.
[Magic Effect: The core accessory is a dynamic wizard card with an independent, weak life magic circuit, allowing it to perform limited autonomous activities. It has collectible and social value.]Potential Improvements: 1. Taste grading, developing bittersweet lines with varying cocoa content to meet the needs of consumers of different age groups. 2. Launching rare card series with specific themes, such as “Legendary Duelist” or “Ancient Alchemist,” leveraging scarcity to increase product value and enhance purchase desire.
His strange behavior of treating snacking as a serious academic research did not make the Weasley twins think he was dull and boring. Instead, it made their eyes shine with an unprecedented light.
This is not a weirdo.
This is a rare “genius” in a century!
Interesting, so interesting!
Fred and George looked at each other at the same time, and saw the same burning flame called “excitement” in the depths of each other’s pupils.
Chapter 16 A Perfect Cleansing Spell (Old Version)
The train journey was already halfway through.
The air in the cubicle was a mixture of the sweetness of chocolate frogs and the uncertain smell of Bibi Bibi Every Flavour Beans, but the atmosphere continued to heat up.
Fred and George have completely made Alan their confidant.
In their view, Allen’s brain, which could always analyze everything with the simplest logic, was simply an untapped treasure trove full of endless fantastic ideas.
In order to prove that he was equally “talented”, Fred’s eyes became cunning, and he carefully took out a small wooden box from the depths of his suitcase.
The box was only the size of a palm, and was branded with some crooked, extremely unstable-looking magic runes.
“Look at this.”
He lowered his voice and leaned forward, his movements filled with mystery and pride, as if he were presenting a treasure.
“I call it the ‘portable swamp’!”
Fred’s eyes were shining as he showed off his masterpiece to Alan: “Just turn it on and you can instantly create a small, real swamp anywhere! It’s specially designed to deal with that old guy Filch. It’s a perfect work of art!”
As he spoke, he twisted the edge of the box lid with his fingers, ready to reveal the miracle.
However, magical creations, especially immature magical creations, are always full of variables.
Perhaps the Hogwarts Express happened to be passing a bumpy curve at that moment, or perhaps the magic runes created by Fred themselves contained fatal logical flaws.
The moment he opened the lid of the box, an uncontrolled torrent of magic power burst out from the gap.
“puff!”
There was a dull sound, like a huge object falling into the mud.
A stream of dark green mud, emitting a strong mixed smell of rotting plants and fishy silt, violently erupted from the small box.
That’s not a trickle, that’s a gusher.
The sticky liquid covered the entire compartment floor in 0.1 seconds, and then, as if it had life, it climbed up and eroded the walls of the carriage.
Dark green moss and foul-smelling, unknown aquatic plants grew wildly at a speed that defied natural laws. The slippery vines entangled the luggage racks, and a few pale fungi even grew out from the gaps between the seats.
“Oh, Merlin’s stockings!”
Lee Jordan let out a shrill scream and shot up from his seat as if launched by a spring. He used his hands and feet to shrink into the narrow space, fearing that he would be contaminated by even the slightest bit of filth.
Fred and George were completely dumbfounded.
The smugness that had graced his face just a moment before had now solidified into pure horror.
“Clean it up!”
“Quick! Clean it up!”
They frantically drew their wands and waved them at the expanding swamp, but their spells either fell on deaf ears, having no effect, or simply provoked a greater reaction, causing the mud to surge even more violently and the stench to fill their nostrils.
The entire compartment was transformed from a comfortable traveling carriage into a real, disgusting, smelly swamp in less than a minute.
Despair began to spread on the faces of the three people.
They even started to communicate with each other through eye contact, wondering whether they should smash the windows and jump out of the car to escape.
At this moment, Alan stood up calmly.
Amidst the chaos and panic, his movements were incredibly calm. There was no sign of panic, not even a frown, as if everything before him was just a long-expected, boring experimental demonstration.
He drew out the ash wand gracefully.
No spells were uttered.
He just waved forward lightly and casually.
One action, nothing more.
A soft, almost completely transparent magical halo, centered on the tip of his wand, spread out silently like ripples caused by a stone thrown into a quiet lake.
The halo has no color, no temperature, and not even the slightest magical fluctuation.
It just exists and passes by.
Wherever the halo passes, miracles happen.
Whether it was the sticky mud on the floor, the slippery moss on the walls, or the disgusting plants in the air, they were completely decomposed and annihilated the moment they came into contact with the aura. They were not washed away, but rather wiped away from this dimension in an instant as if by an invisible hand, disappearing without a trace, leaving no trace.
Less than three seconds.
The entire compartment was restored to its previous cleanliness.
The floor was mirror-clear, reflecting the vacant faces of the young men. The walls were spotless. Even the stubborn, pungent odor in the air had completely dissipated, replaced by a freshness like grass after rain.
It was as if the disaster just now was just an absurd collective hallucination.
A perfect, silent, incredibly effective “cleaning” spell.
Fred.
George.
Lee Jordan.
The three people were completely petrified.
They opened their mouths, maintaining their previous funny standing or squatting postures, staring blankly at Alan. It was as if they were no longer looking at a classmate, but at an incomprehensible monster in human skin.
A first-year student mastered silent spellcasting on the train to Hogwarts on the first day of school?
This is no longer the realm of genius.
This was an absurd fantasy! It was a terrifying fact that was enough to overturn the foundation of their understanding of magic over the past eleven years!
Facing his companions’ gazes that were a mixture of shock, awe and fear, Alan simply put the ash wand back into the pocket of his robe.
“Don’t be surprised.”
His voice was as steady as ever, as if he were stating a law of physics.
“I spent the entire summer studying the contents of the first-grade textbook as independent projects. The essence of the spell ‘clean up and make it new’ is not ‘clearing’, but the forced decomposition and benign reorganization of the material structure in a specific area.”
He paused, and continued in a tone explaining the principle of the experiment:
“As long as you can fully understand its underlying operating logic and conduct sufficient simulations in the Mind Palace to derive the optimal magic output model, then achieving it will not be difficult.”
“This is just a preliminary result of combining theory with practice.”
Every word of his words reached the ears of the Weasley twins clearly.
Treat the magical magic as “science” that can be disassembled.
Treat the knowledge in the textbooks as “topics” that can be mastered in advance.
Consider casting spells as the “result” of “combining theory with practice”.
This way of thinking creates an insurmountable and bottomless cognitive gap between them and their traditional wizarding concepts of “wait until the professor teaches us after school starts” and “magic is a feeling”.
Chapter 17 Warm Pebbles (Old Version)
With a whistle long enough to penetrate the entire valley, the Hogwarts Express breathed heavily, its metal frame uttering a series of tired groans before finally slowly stopping at Hogsmeade Station.
The moment the car door opened, a cool breeze carrying the scent of moist earth and pine wood poured into the car.
The night has already fallen, so thick that it cannot be dissolved.
“First-year students! First-year students, come over here!”
A gruff voice boomed over the din of the platform, easily drowning out all the noise. It was Hagrid, his massive frame casting a giant shadow in the dim lantern light.
Alan briefly exchanged a goodbye glance with Fred, George, and Lee Jordan, then left the noisy and vibrant area and joined the new team, a mix of confusion, nervousness, and excitement.
The path leading to Black Lake was bumpy and uneven. The sky was not generous, stingily taking away the stars and moon and instead sprinkling down cold autumn rain.
The raindrops were fine at first, then became thick, hitting the body and taking away the remaining body temperature.
“Oh, Merlin! It’s raining!”
“My new robe!”
Suppressed complaints rose and fell among the team. The mud quickly swallowed up the trail, and every step was accompanied by an unpleasant “puff” sound, and the soles of the shoes were inseparable from the mud.
Some of the new students from wizarding families began to show what they had learned. They clumsily drew their brand new wands and tried to cast a basic waterproofing charm on themselves.
Faint lights flickered on the tips of their wands, but most of them failed. One boy’s spell missed its mark, sending steam rising from the hair of the girl next to him.
Chaos is spreading.
Alan took no part in this ridiculous practice of the spell.
His mind palace, that mental fortress of cold logic and vast amounts of data, was operating with remarkable efficiency. A red warning message clearly appeared in his consciousness: [Ambient magic concentration unknown, abnormal frequency of fluctuations. Casting a biological effect spell on oneself, risk factor determined to be: High.]He chose another solution that was safer, more physical, and more elegant.
He reached into his pocket and his fingertips touched a smooth, cool pebble, a prop he had prepared at home.
The wand, hidden by the robe, pointed silently at the stone.
A continuous, extremely weak heating spell was applied to it. No light, no sound, just a precise transfer of energy.
The next second, a steady, dry warmth emanated from his palm, flowing down his arm and dispelling the chill brought by the autumn rain. The pebble became a perfect energy conversion core, a silent “heat pack.”
Next, comes the second action.
The tip of his wand moved slightly again, and an extremely delicate micro-levitation spell was precisely applied to the sole of his shoe.
The effects of spells are strictly controlled.
It produced no visible magical glow, merely creating and maintaining a half-inch-thick repulsive field between the soles of his shoes and the muddy ground.
Then, a strange picture appeared.
While all the freshmen were trudging along in a mess, one foot deep and one foot shallow, with mud stains on their trouser legs and shoes, Allen’s steps were unreasonably light.
The soles of his shoes remained suspended above the mud, and each step he took was silent, as if he were stepping on solid ground. The rain slid down the special material of his robe, leaving no trace of water.
He moved with such ease that it was as if he were strolling in his own well-manicured garden.
When the exhausted team finally arrived at the Black Lake, everyone was captivated by the sudden and bright scene before them.
The small boat they were about to take floated quietly on the inky lake like a black lily pad.
On the other side of the lake, the magnificent castle perched on the cliff is blooming with thousands of lights in the night.
Hogwarts.
It is glorious and magnificent, with the spire of the tower piercing the clouds and the light shining through the window panes warm and mysterious. It is a fairyland that only exists in fairy tales.
“Wow……”
Uncontrollable exclamations rose one after another, merging into a chorus of awe.
Allen is an exception.
He did not immerse himself in the pure visual shock like others did.
His gaze was so sharp that it seemed to penetrate the thick castle walls and reach the veins of magic flowing there.
The speed of his mind palace reached a new peak at this moment. Countless streams of data raced through his mental world, ruthlessly deconstructing the magnificent building before him.
“…Interesting energy circuit, stable power output, source pointing to the depths of the lake… Suspected of drawing energy from a high-density magical biome or natural magical source…”
“…The wall structure incorporates the superposition of anti-gravity spells, which is revolutionary in architecture. The load-bearing structure and the magical structure are highly coupled, and the laws of physics are completely rewritten…”
“…The defense system isn’t a single physical barrier, but rather a multi-layered magical field. High-frequency repulsion fields, low-frequency confusion fields, spatial distortion layers… This is a dynamic, self-healing ecosystem…”
He murmured some words that the freshmen on the same ship could not understand at all.
The students nearby looked at him in confusion, thinking he was just a frightened nerd who was talking nonsense, and ignored him.
When the majestic Hogwarts Castle appeared before everyone in its complete and majestic appearance, what surged in Alan’s heart was neither excitement nor awe.
That’s a completely different emotion.
When a chess player faces an ultimate chess game with a complex structure, exquisite rules and can be called a work of art, he or she can’t help but feel excited to completely disassemble it, analyze it, understand all its variations, and finally conquer it completely.
This is his playground.
Chapter 18 The Castle’s Underlying Logic (Old Version)
Alan’s soles touched the first stone step.
Hard and cold.
The next moment, a torrent erupted from beneath his feet, charging into his body. It wasn’t the thin, disordered, free energy of the outside world, but a pure, rich, magical power that seemed to have been refined a billion times.
Every dormant cell in his body was awakened and filled by this torrent. The dry, cracked riverbed welcomed a flood season not seen in a thousand years. Mental fatigue was swept away, replaced by an extreme excitement that accelerated his thinking.
At this moment, the core of his spiritual world, the palace of thought constructed by logical frameworks and data waterfalls, trembled violently.
On the dome of the palace, lines of golden words composed of pure spiritual power were imprinted on it with an unquestionable attitude.
[Ultimate Mission Triggered: Analyzing Hogwarts]Mission Description: Explore the underlying logic of ancient magic. Before graduation, through study, exploration, and deduction, draw a complete map of the magical operation of Hogwarts Castle and incorporate its core principles into the Mind Palace.
[Quest Reward: ???]Those three question marks at the end weren’t static symbols. In his mind’s perception, they appeared as a constantly distorting, indecipherable black hole of data that devoured all understanding.
For the first time, his mind palace encountered undefinable information.
As a result, Allen’s heart beat faster than normal for the first time.
He instantly understood the significance of this reward. It represented a qualitative change beyond his current cognitive system, an ultimate reward that would allow him to reconstruct and upgrade all his current logical frameworks.
The emergence of this task embedded a larger and more attractive core coordinate for the next seven years that he had already planned.
His mind palace immediately split into several processing modules and began parallel computing.
“Module One: Intelligence Acquisition. Target: The Restricted Section of the Library. There must be original documents concerning castle construction, ancient magic protocols, and magical contracts. The highest level of access is required.”
“Module 2: Skill Preparation. Objective: Advanced Scouting and Analysis Magic. The existing magical knowledge base is insufficient to support a structural scan of the castle. We must master the relevant high-level spells as quickly as possible.”
“Module Three: Field Survey. Divide the castle into three exploration zones: A, B, and C. Develop a phased infiltration and analysis plan based on risk and reward.”
Countless logical links intertwine and extend in the brain, forming a meticulous action network.
While they were thinking, they, a group of freshmen, had been taken to a separate waiting room.
A witch stood before them, her expression serious and her eyes behind her square glasses sharp enough to penetrate a person’s heart.
It was Professor Minerva McGonagall.
“Welcome to Hogwarts.”
Her voice was clear, stern, and carried an unquestionable authority that instantly silenced the suppressed buzz in the room.
“In a few minutes, you will go in for the Sorting Ceremony. The Sorting Ceremony is very important because during your time at Hogwarts, the house will be like your home…”
Professor McGonagall began to explain the significance and rules of the sorting.
Allen’s attention was no longer on her words. His eyes swept calmly over the young and nervous faces around him.
His mind palace now switched to the “Social Behavioral Analysis” module, where an invisible high-speed scanner was coldly analyzing each target.
A red-haired boy, his robe clearly worn, the cuffs showing signs of wear and tear. He unconsciously rubbed his hands together, his knuckles turning white with tension. His gaze drifted, always involuntarily glancing toward the auditorium door, where the faint clink of knives and forks and the aroma of food could be heard.
[Target: Ron Weasley.][Energy fluctuations: active, extroverted, unstable.][Personality model: impulsive, values ​​family and friendship, lacks deep thinking, and is easily influenced by external emotions.][Evaluation conclusion: Gryffindor, probability 81.2%.]His gaze shifted.
A blond boy was trying hard to keep his chin up. His robes were brand new, the fabric shimmering with a magical sheen, clearly a costly custom-made item. But the slightly trembling corners of his mouth and his overly stiff stance betrayed his inner unease.
[Target: Draco Malfoy.][Energy fluctuations: sharp and aggressive, but unstable at the core.]Personality Model: Elitism, desire for power and recognition, strong class consciousness, and the habit of using arrogance to cover up vulnerability.
[Evaluation conclusion: Slytherin, probability 94.7%.]His gaze shifted again.
A girl with disheveled hair was whispering, her lips moving quietly, oblivious to the surroundings. Her mind was intensely focused, completely absorbed in her own world. Alan could sense from the subtle fluctuations of her mental energy that she was repeatedly rehearsing the casting structure of several basic spells.
[Target: Hermione Granger. ][Energy fluctuations: stable, high-density, and structured.][Personality Model: Extremely curious, with an almost paranoid reliance on rules and knowledge, somewhat rigid and inflexible.][Evaluation conclusion: Ravenclaw, probability 88.5%.]Alan enjoyed this God’s perspective analysis process.
This wasn’t simply malicious prying, but rather a kind of intellectual pleasure. He viewed these freshmen as data packets waiting to be sorted, and the sorting ceremony was a public experiment to verify the accuracy of his algorithm.
He stood calmly among the crowd, like a shepherd blending into the flock, waiting for the moment when the fence would open.
Chapter 19: The Hat Convinced by Logic (Old Edition)
When Professor McGonagall’s clear and serious voice echoed in the auditorium, “Alan Scott”, the whole space seemed to freeze for a moment.
The whispering died away.
Hundreds of eyes, gathered into an invisible pressure, were all cast towards the figure walking out of the freshman team.
Alan’s steps were steady without a trace of disorder.
Each of his steps was precisely calculated, as if he were walking not on ancient stone slabs but on a gridded coordinate map. The candlelight cast flickering shadows on his calm face, yet failed to stir a single ripple in his dark eyes. There was no nervousness of a new beginning, no anticipation of the unknown, only a bottomless calm, a calmness that rapidly processed a vast amount of information.
He went up the steps and sat down on the four-legged stool.
Professor McGonagall gently placed the worn, patched and wrinkled Sorting Hat on his head.
The brim of his hat blocked his vision, isolating him from the noise and light of the entire auditorium.
The world fell into darkness and silence.
The next moment, a voice sounded directly from the depths of his consciousness.
It did not pass through the eardrum, but ran directly in his mind like a piece of code implanted out of thin air.
【oh……】
The voice is ancient, carrying the fatigue of thousands of years, and each syllable is drawn out, as if awakened from the dust of history.
[An interesting little guy…very interesting…]This foreign consciousness, with a rough and brutal detection ability, tried to break into Allen’s mind.
However, it wasn’t the chaotic, emotionally charged thoughts of a typical eleven-year-old that it collided with.
It hit a wall.
A cold, smooth wall constructed of pure logic.
【Um……?】
For the first time, a hint of confusion appeared in that ancient voice.
It went around the wall, found the entrance, and then, it was completely shocked.
What it sees is not a river of memories, nor a storm of emotions.
It saw a palace that was so magnificent that it was unimaginable.
A palace of thought made of logic and data.
Countless streams of information flowed silently through the crystal-clear corridors like cascading waterfalls. Every thought, every plan, was categorized and stored in a rigorously structured and clearly sequenced archive. Here, there was no ambiguity, no hesitation, only absolute rationality and order.
【Oh my god…what is this?】
The consciousness of the Sorting Hat, like an ancient ghost that has strayed into the future world, is “visiting” this palace of thought in a daze.
It had never seen such a mind.
It could sense the flood of knowledge, but it wasn’t the Ravenclaw-style joy that came from wisdom for its own sake. It was an almost greedy desire for deconstruction, a desire to completely dismantle, analyze, and then reconstruct the underlying code of everything.
[A thirst for knowledge… yes, a pure and terrifying thirst for knowledge. Ravenclaw will open its doors to you, and you will become the most outstanding scholar they have ever had.]Then it saw another palace.
Within that hall lay a vast, intricate, and interconnected plan. Its goal, set in the distant future, was as clear as the North Star. The path to that goal was marked with countless nodes, each representing a person to be exploited, a tool to be employed, and a goal to be achieved. The means justified the means; it was labeled the most efficient principle.
“I also see… your ambition. A clear, grand plan, no matter the cost. Slytherin… that’s the best stage for an ambitious person like you. You will get all the power you want.”
Ravenclaw? Slytherin?
The hat is caught in one of the most serious logical paradoxes in a thousand years.
This child possessed the best qualities of both schools, yet neither was pure. His pursuit of knowledge served his ambition, and his ambition was based on absolute knowledge.
It’s in trouble.
It felt that its sorting procedures were in unprecedented chaos.
Alan didn’t let it bother him for long.
He didn’t even “think” in words.
In his mind palace, an independent module activated. He intercepted a long-prepared analysis report, packaged it into a clear, concise, and indisputable data package, and sent it directly to the confused consciousness in his mind.
Dear Mr. Hat, thank you for your appreciation.
This message is cold and feels like a formal business proposal.
[But from my analysis of the optimal solution to my plan, joining Gryffindor is the most rational choice at this stage.]The consciousness of the Sorting Hat received this “report”.
The report unfolds in the form of a three-dimensional diorama of his palace.
Reason 1: Social aspect.
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan’s dynamic data appeared in the model.
[Target Personnel: Fred Weasley, George Weasley, Lee Jordan. A preliminary friendship has been established, with a trust rating of 67.3%. Upon joining Gryffindor, this social relationship can be transformed into a stable information channel and operational ally. It is expected that within three months, the trust rating will be increased to over 85%, allowing for rapid integration into Gryffindor’s inner circle and the establishment of a reliable information network to facilitate subsequent planning and information gathering.]Reason 2: Strategic level.
The model switched, and a diagram of the power structure of Hogwarts emerged, with a shining name at the top: Albus Dumbledore.
Core Objective: The secrets of Hogwarts Castle. The current highest authority within the castle is held by Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore’s origins in Gryffindor make his values ​​and emotional inclinations inherently skewed towards that house. Entering Gryffindor places me within their comfort zone, allowing me to gain their initial attention and potential trust with minimal effort and maximum efficiency. This is a crucial prerequisite for exploring the castle’s deeper secrets, and even gaining access to the core information held by Dumbledore himself.
[Reason three: Concealment.]Two contrasting personality profiles emerged from the model: Alan, the calm and rational one, and the Gryffindor group portrait, which represented bravery, impulsiveness, and informality.
Gryffindor’s overall behavioral pattern is characterized by high emotional drive and low logical rigor. My low emotional drive and high logical rigor would be the norm in a Ravenclaw or Slytherin, easily attracting vigilance and competition from my peers. Conversely, in Gryffindor, these traits would be seen as “eccentric” or “nerdy,” becoming a perfect disguise. They effectively conceal my true intentions and core abilities, providing optimal cover for all my covert actions.
The analysis is complete.
There is no emotional incitement, no passionate justification, only cold logical reasoning based on pros and cons.
Each argument is accompanied by detailed data support and success rate prediction.
The Sorting Hat was silent.
Its ancient consciousness completely stopped functioning in that cold palace of logic.
It has existed for nearly a thousand years and has touched the minds of thousands of wizards, some brave, some cunning, some clever, and some loyal.
It had never encountered anything like this.
A freshman who used a project feasibility report to “negotiate” with it for branching out.
This feels… ridiculous.
It even felt like it was not sorting an eleven-year-old child into a certain school, but rather receiving “on-the-job training” from an extremely shrewd politician or strategic analyst.
【……you……】
There was a deep sense of powerlessness in the hat’s tired voice.
You convinced me.
What else can it say?
Ravenclaw’s wisdom is to explore the truth.
Slytherin’s ambition is to seize power.
The wisdom and ambition of this child in front of him all serve something even more terrifying – logic.
An absolute logic that can quantify and calculate everything and ultimately lead to the optimal solution.
And his logic now clearly pointed to Gryffindor.
[Indeed, your logic… is impeccable.]The hat sighed helplessly, and that sigh seemed to have exhausted all the strength it had accumulated for a hundred years.
【Then, it will be as you wish.】
The next second, the tattered hat, using all its magic power, loudly announced the final decision that no one had expected:
“Gryffindor!”
The sound was like thunder, exploding in the silent auditorium.
After a brief moment of surprise, the long table on the far right side of the auditorium suddenly erupted into warm applause and cheers like a tsunami.
Alan calmly took off the Sorting Hat and handed it back to Professor McGonagall, who had a complicated expression.
He turned and walked towards the noisy ocean of red and gold.
He saw it.
Fred and George were standing on the bench, waving their arms at him dramatically, and Lee Jordan was clapping his hands vigorously, a huge smile on his face.
He walked over and reunited with his new friends.
Surrounded by deafening cheers and friendly applause from unfamiliar classmates.
He blended in, his expression remaining calm.
But in the deepest part of his mind palace, on a huge project flowchart, the first node was clearly marked in green.
The Hogwarts Project, step one.
Perfectly achieved.
Chapter 20: The Physical Properties of Ghosts (Old Edition)
After taking his seat amid thunderous applause, Alan was not attracted by the magical ceiling above his head that simulated the real night sky like the other freshmen, nor did he pay too much attention to the thousands of candles floating in the air.
His attention was focused purely and directly on the gleaming golden plate before him.
Roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops, lamb chops, sausages, bacon, steaks… Food appeared out of thin air, piled high. He picked up his knife and fork, and with precise and efficient movements, he began to systematically eliminate the source of calories in front of him.
Just then, Albus Dumbledore stood up.
The noise in the entire auditorium died down instantly.
The legendary principal’s opening remarks were as brief, odd, and even somewhat incomprehensible as always. But as he scanned the room with his eyes, gleaming behind his half-moon lenses, and delivered his final warning, Allen paused for a millisecond while cutting his steak.
“…By the way, I’d like to remind everyone that the corridor on the right hand side of the fourth floor is off-limits to all students this year.”
His voice was gentle, yet it had an undeniable penetrating power that reached everyone’s ears clearly.
“If anyone wants to die in pain, just go in…”
A hint of tension filled the air, and many freshmen subconsciously swallowed their saliva, fear written all over their faces.
However, in Allen’s spiritual world, this sentence was like a key that accurately inserted into a lock that had been prepared long ago.
His mind palace was instantly activated.
Countless streams of information converged and collided deep within his consciousness. A piece of intelligence marked “High Priority” was retrieved from his memory storage area. It was a news item he had read in an extremely inconspicuous corner of the Daily Prophet during summer vacation.
Important items from Gringotts Vault 713 were recently secretly transferred to Hogwarts for safekeeping.
Two seemingly unrelated information nodes are now brazenly connected by a ray of light that represents a strong logical connection.
[Input variable A: High-security items have been transferred to Hogwarts.][Input variable B: The principal uses the form of “death threats” to designate a specific restricted area.][Relevance Analysis: High-level security measures typically correspond to high-level threats or high-value items. The “death threat” in item B is not literal, but rather an unconventional, emphatic encryption method, its true purpose being to “highlight the importance of this location.”]A conclusion that eliminated all emotional interference emerged clearly in his mind.
The place Dumbledore warned about is where the Philosopher’s Stone is hidden.
This kind of warning, which is trying to cover up the truth, is not a warning at all.
It is an invitation.
An invitation full of bad taste, targeted at a specific group of people, and almost provocative.
He continued to cut into his steak, the slight scraping sound of the metal knife and fork against the porcelain plate the only outward manifestation of his inner thoughts. In his mind, he calmly labeled the legendary headmaster’s style: [High-level Troll].
The atmosphere of the banquet became lively again under the comfort of food. When the food on the plates was swept away and the dessert appeared out of thin air again, the ghosts of the college also arrived as promised.
They seeped out from the walls and dining tables, floating around the auditorium with a pearly luster and translucent texture.
The Gryffindor ghost is the famous Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, better known as Nearly Headless Nick, whose ornate ruff around his neck tries to hide the mortal wound that nearly tore his head off.
Many freshmen looked at him with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
“Sir, does it hurt when you die?”
“What’s it like to be a ghost? Can you still eat?”
Sir Nick clearly enjoyed being the center of attention, answering every childish question with grace and patience, even attempting to pull his own head off his neck to demonstrate just how “almost headless” he was.
Alan did not join in the commotion. He just waited quietly, like a predator waiting for the best time to hunt.
Only after the freshmen’s curiosity was temporarily satisfied and the crowd dispersed a little did he wipe his mouth with a napkin, stand up straight, and walk over.
His steps were steady, without the slightest hesitation.
“Good evening, Sir Nick.”
His voice was not loud, but clear enough to successfully attract the ghost’s attention.
“Oh? A new friend! Hello, young man.”
Nick, happy to interact with the new student, smiled and floated closer to Alan.
Alan nodded slightly, cutting straight to the point without any unnecessary pleasantries. His eyes were focused, like a scholar about to begin a rigorous interview.
“I am very interested in your form of existence and have a few questions about its basic physical properties.”
Sir Nick was stunned.
Physical properties?
This combination of words was too unfamiliar to him.
“Go ahead.” He maintained his aristocratic demeanor.
“First question,” Alan said steadily, “can you be stopped by a physical barrier, such as a wall or a closed door?”
This issue is still within Nick’s understanding.
“Of course, I can go through them.” Nick answered proudly, and even demonstrated by putting one of his hands through the stone pillar next to him.
“Then,” Allen’s logic continued smoothly, “Second question. Does your presence cause a measurable change in the local temperature of your location? If so, what is the approximate value of this change?”
“Well……”
This question, like an invisible arrow, accurately hit Nick’s blind spot. His translucent eyebrows twisted together in confusion.
“I… I do feel a little cold, but the specific amount…”
He never thought that the feeling of “cold” needed a “numerical value” to define it.
Alan didn’t wait for him to organize his words. His thoughts, like precise gears, had already engaged in the next link.
“Third question.”
He raised his eyes and looked directly into Nick’s equally translucent eyes.
“What’s the maximum force you can exert on a physical object, in Newtons? For example, can you pick up a piece of parchment, or push open an open book?”
Newton?
What’s that? Some Muggle’s name?
This series of unheard-of questions, filled with strange vocabulary, and as if from another world, almost made Sir Nick’s proud, translucent chin fall off his poor neck.
He looked at the freshman in front of him in amazement. In his ghost career, he had seen people who were afraid of him, admired him, and made fun of him, but Alan was the first one to look at him with such… such eyes as if he was dissecting and analyzing him.
This child is ten thousand times stranger than Peeves.
The clamor of the auditorium seemed to fade away at that moment. Sir Nick’s thoughts, in his brain, which had been dormant for hundreds of years, began to work at an unprecedented high speed.
After a brief moment of shock, confusion was replaced by a whole new emotion.
It’s interest. A strong, unprecedented interest.
“A… a very inquisitive question!”
Sir Nick’s voice was filled with excitement. His ethereal body seemed to have become more solid because of this novel experience.
“Honestly, I’ve never thought about this! Child, I’ve been a ghost for five hundred years, and you’re the first person to ask me this!”
He circled around Alan, looking at him with the eyes of a man examining a rare treasure.
“If you’re really interested, I’d be happy to work with you in your free time to conduct some… um…” He struggled to find a suitable word in his vocabulary, “‘experiments’!”
A trace of emotion finally appeared on Allen’s face.
It was a smile that came from the heart without any disguise.
“It would be a great honor, sir.”
This strange conversation with the ghost did not bring him any magical knowledge, nor did it reveal any secrets of the castle.
But it’s more important.
It opened a whole new research window for Alan to explore the nature of this magical world, one that he had never imagined before.
Chapter 21: Efficient Night Operations (Old Version)
The hustle and bustle of the opening ceremony was left far behind.
Prefect Percy Weasley held a lantern high, his bright red and gold school robes fluttering behind him, as he led a group of Gryffindor freshmen into the even larger crowd on the castle’s main avenue.
The aroma of food quickly faded from the air, replaced by a unique scent mixed with ancient stone, slightly damp moss, and aged magic.
Passing through archways and climbing spiral stairs, the castle’s interior slowly unfolds before the freshmen in a grandeur far beyond their imagination.
Muffled exclamations rose one after another, causing faint echoes in the empty corridor.
“Look at those portraits! They’re winking at us!”
“This armor just moved, I swear!”
The real visual impact came when they arrived at the main staircase hall.
Dozens of broad stone staircases crisscrossed the air, forming a bizarre, ever-shifting maze. Defying any physical logic, they moved slowly and majestically, sometimes connecting with a platform, sometimes sliding into another bottomless darkness.
Every successful docking would cause a small-scale panic and commotion among the freshmen.
“Oh my god, they keep moving!”
A timid girl clutched her companion’s sleeve tightly, her voice filled with tears.
“How are we supposed to get up there? What if it moves again halfway up?”
Alan was swept up in the crowd, the exclamations and discussions around him unable to stir the slightest ripple in his heart. His body moved with the flow of people, but his consciousness had long since left this body.
His eyes were calmly fixed on the magnificent staircases. There was no trace of curiosity in his deep pupils, only pure observation and analysis.
Deep within his mind’s palace, a module called “Pattern Recognition and Path Planning” had automatically activated. Countless streams of data flashed across his retina, coldly deconstructing the magical spectacle before him into strings of cold code.
This isn’t some magical creation.
This is a complex, multivariable transportation system with underlying scheduling logic.
[Staircase A, movement cycle approximately 120 seconds, docking platforms 3, 5, 7… The track is slightly offset, correction parameter -0.3%…]Stairs C and D are mutually exclusive. When C moves, D must remain stationary. The locking trigger mechanism is suspected to be the platform load sensor…
The movement of all the stairs isn’t completely random. Their scheduling instructions seem to follow a unified, unknown central algorithm. There’s predictability.
The short journey of more than ten minutes from leaving the hall to arriving at the Gryffindor common room was a journey full of novelty and anxiety for the other freshmen.
For Allen, it was just an efficient data collection exercise.
When Percy Weasley led them to a portrait of a fat lady, Alan had already constructed a preliminary logical model of the movement of the main staircase complex at Hogwarts.
“The password is ‘Pig Snout,'” Percy announced in a tone of self-importance, clearing his throat.
The portrait swung open to one side, revealing a circular hole.
Warm air, a mixture of the smell of woodsmoke and old parchment, hit me in the face.
The freshmen filed in and finally arrived at their “home” for the next seven years.
The Gryffindor common room was a cozy circular room, its walls draped in scarlet draperies. A fire roared in the fireplace, illuminating the entire space with warmth and brightness. The soft armchairs and thick carpets made everyone breathe a sigh of relief, their fatigue from the journey and their mental tension finally released.
Alan glanced around, his gaze lingering briefly on Fred, George, and Lee Jordan. The dorm supervisor had quickly completed the dormitory assignment, and the results were exactly as he had expected.
He was placed in the same room with the Weasley twins and their good friend Lee Jordan.
“That’s great, Alan! We’re together again!”
Fred rushed over excitedly and slapped him on the shoulder hard, hard enough to make a normal boy stagger.
The process of settling into the dormitory was filled with laughter and joy. The twins seemed to have endless energy, and while throwing their luggage everywhere, they discussed everything in the castle with great enthusiasm.
As the night deepened and everyone changed into their pajamas, ready for their first night at Hogwarts, excitement quietly brewed around the twins’ beds.
“Hey, Alan.”
George leaned over his bed, lowered his voice, and had a mysterious, conspiratorial look on his face.
“After a few days and we’re familiar with the surroundings, how about we explore the castle together? Those moving stairs look so cool!”
Lee Jordan came over, the same gleam in his eyes.
“You can explore, but you don’t have to wait a few days.”
Alan’s voice was not loud, but it clearly penetrated the eardrums of the other three people. He picked up a parchment sketch that he had just finished drawing with a quill pen from his bedside table.
Under the dim light, the paper was covered with complex lines, arrows and dense annotations.
The three of them leaned over curiously.
Just one look and the excitement on their faces froze.
The map was a simple map of the main staircase area. But unlike ordinary maps, it was marked with different colored ink, indicating the movement path of each staircase and its landing, as well as a series of numbers and symbols that they could not understand.
“This is……”
Lee Jordan’s mouth opened into an O shape and he couldn’t utter a complete word.
“This is my preliminary analysis of the movement patterns of the stairs.”
Allen spoke in a straightforward manner, without a hint of fanfare, as if a project manager were briefing his team on an upcoming action plan.
“According to my calculations, the magical tide of Hogwarts Castle will enter a low period between 4:15 and 4:45 every morning.”
His finger moved across the drawing, touching a time period marked by a red circle.
“During this thirty-minute ‘stable window’, the supply of magic power driving the staircase will become extremely regular, and there may even be periods of complete stillness lasting up to five minutes.”
His fingertips slid across the blueprint, connecting the platforms one by one, eventually forming an extremely clear red route that ran through several floors.
“If we act during this time, we can follow this preset ‘optimal exploration route’ and explore all the public areas on floors one to four with maximum efficiency without triggering any magical alarms or taking any unnecessary detours.”
He raised his head and glanced calmly at his three roommates who were completely stunned.
He calmly concluded the conversation.
“This is what we call ‘exploration’.”
“Wandering around aimlessly is called ‘getting lost’.”
The air was dead silent.
The expressions on Fred and George’s faces changed from initial excitement, to curiosity, and then to the current dullness. The whole process took less than a minute.
They looked at Alan’s calm face, then looked down at the “action plan map” that was full of cold logic and precise calculations.
An adventure that they thought was full of unknowns, excitement and improvisation was simply downplayed by the other party and turned into a “project” that could be precisely managed and even have its ROI (return on investment) calculated.
The Weasley twins, who are famous for their pranks and unconventional ways of doing things, truly felt for the first time what “dimensionality reduction strike” meant.
Chapter 22 Where Logic Ends is Magic (Old Edition)
Four o’clock in the morning.
Hogwarts was immersed in the deep silence unique to the English Highlands. The moonlight filtered through the high windows, casting a thin, almost liquid silver glow on the corridor.
The dreams of freshmen may also be intertwined with the song of the Sorting Hat, the hustle and bustle of the dinner party, and infinite longing for the future.
Allen’s consciousness was suddenly pulled out of his deep sleep by a silent alarm.
This is not a physiological awakening.
In his spiritual world, in the “palace of mind” constructed with memory and logic, a grand model representing the overall magical structure of Hogwarts is flashing dazzling red light at an unprecedented frequency.
It was a magic network covering the entire castle, precise and complex. Every fiber-like magic vein followed some ancient and harmonious law, flowing and breathing, giving life to this thousand-year-old castle.
However, at this moment, a terrifying “black hole” appeared on this perfect network.
Seventh floor, east wing, an inconspicuous corridor.
There, all the flow of magic was cut off. Not distorted, not attenuated, but completely and utterly vanished. The data flow came to an abrupt halt, forming an absolute, illogical blank area.
A vacuum.
A paradox.
In Allen’s cognitive system, this was even more absurd than creating matter out of thin air. It violated all the magical laws he had initially analyzed.
There is only one explanation.
There existed a hidden law of a level high enough to deceive the detection of his mind palace, an ultimate magic that could “logically delete” itself from the magical network of the entire world.
The meticulous plan he had made last night on how to use his spare time to conduct a thorough and efficient exploration of the castle was instantly forgotten.
Those step-by-step explorations seemed dull in the face of this huge mystery.
His curiosity, or rather, his desire to explore unknown laws, was completely ignited.
Alan slid down the bed silently, his movements so gentle that he didn’t disturb any sleeping soul in the dormitory.
The castle in the early morning is a silent maze.
The cold stone ground swallowed up the sound of his light footsteps. Only the hollow armor hanging on the wall would occasionally make a slight sound like joints rubbing against each other and teeth rubbing due to the faint fluctuations of magic power.
He reached the seventh floor.
On one side of the corridor hangs a huge tapestry depicting a troll beating the fool Barnabas with a club. The violence and stupidity solidified in the fabric exude an old-fashioned atmosphere.
On the other side, there is a bare white wall.
The walls are smooth, without any carvings or murals, and not even a single crack between the bricks can be seen. They are seamlessly integrated, as if they grew directly out of the mountain.
The coordinates of the “blank point” are here.
Alan stretched out his hand, and the skin on his fingertips felt the coldness and hardness of rock.
The computing core of the Mind Palace began to operate at a terrifying speed, with countless information streams intersecting and colliding.
He didn’t try any of those stupid methods.
Knocking on the wall, searching for a cavity? Chanting every known door-opening spell?
That is the thinking mode of ordinary people, the linear logic of only looking for the key when faced with a lock.
What he needs to do is to deconstruct the meaning of the existence of this “lock” from the root.
“Such a powerful hidden magic must have an astronomical energy consumption and maintenance cost.”
“Its purpose could never be simply to ‘hide’ an object or a room.”
“It itself is a manifestation of ‘function’.”
Deep in his pupils, it seemed as if countless codes were scrolling rapidly.
“Since it’s a function, the way to trigger it shouldn’t be a fixed ‘key’ but a dynamic ‘instruction’.”
A groundbreaking hypothesis took shape in his mind.
Hogwarts Castle itself may not be a dead object.
It is a magnificent magical creation with a basic intelligence, capable of understanding and responding to the specific “needs” of the wizard.
This is not a mechanical relationship of “key and lock”.
This is a logical relationship of “demand and supply”.
Alan closed his eyes.
He no longer thought about how to “open” the wall, but instead immersed all his mental energy into his own palace of thought.
He began to build an ultimate “demand model” in the clearest, most specific and most unambiguous way.
What he needs is not a warehouse full of gold, silver and treasures.
What he needed was not a lounge that provided temporary shelter.
What he needed was a——[perfect magic laboratory].
The model of this demand was rapidly refined and filled in his mind.
[Analysis Unit]: An instrument capable of ultra-precise magic spectrum analysis is required, with a resolution sufficient to analyze the energy frequency changes carried by each syllable in the spell.
[Alchemy Unit]: A crucible that can withstand ultra-high temperatures and strong magical impacts is required. The material must be obsidian tempered by dragon flame, or a more stable unknown alloy.
[Recording Unit]: We need a batch of blank scrolls that can automatically transcribe experimental processes and data, and can simultaneously record visual images, magical fluctuations, and environmental parameters.
[Environmental Unit]: Absolute sound insulation, absolute shielding from all external magic and physical detection. The internal magical environment must be pure, stable, and freely adjustable.
He packaged and compressed this complex and sophisticated “demand model”, then focused all his mental energy on it, like a searchlight, casting it on the cold wall in front of him.
He began to pace.
Walking back and forth in the corridor between the tapestry and the white wall.
The demand model in the mind is reinforced, repeated and affirmed.
He could feel that his mental power was faintly resonating with some ancient and powerful will deep in the castle.
three times.
When he walked across the smooth white wall for the third time, a miracle happened.
There were no signs.
On the hard stone wall, it seemed as if liquid silver was seeping out from the inside, and brilliant rays of light appeared on the wall.
They made no sound, but with a grand momentum of creation, they quickly intertwined, outlined and shaped.
Finally, a door without any door handle, shimmering with soft moonlight, took shape in the center of the wall.
The door slid open silently, as if melting into the air.
The scene behind the door made Alan’s heart beat violently and uncontrollably, even though he always acted according to logic and calmness.
This is not the Room of Requirement in the original book, which is filled with old furniture and broken items.
What appeared before his eyes was a perfect magic laboratory full of futuristic technology and classical alchemical aesthetics.
The silver-white walls gleamed with a cold metallic luster, yet felt warm to the touch. The lab bench, crafted from an unknown alloy, was a one-piece, streamlined design imbued with an industrial aesthetic.
On the lab table, various sophisticated magical instruments, both familiar and unfamiliar, were displayed: a spectrometer composed of crystal lenses, an alchemical crucible suspended in mid-air, and a blank scroll lying quietly on a shelf, emitting a faint glow.
In the air, there flowed a tremblingly pure and stable magical power, as if it had been filtered billions of times without a trace of impurities.
Here is the perfect embodiment of the “demand model” in his mind palace.
He walked into the laboratory.
The door behind him closed silently and disappeared, and the wall returned to its original smooth and seamless appearance.
Alan reached out and gently stroked a cold, smooth laboratory table.
The touch from his fingertips made every cell in his body begin to tremble slightly with extreme excitement.
A scorching light burst out from his eyes.
He found it.
What he found was more than just a secret room.
He found a secret base that could be used to verify all his crazy ideas and analyze the underlying logic of the entire magical world.
Chapter 23 Logical Traps and the Unlucky Administrator (Old Version)
After completing his initial exploration of the vast, ocean-like utility room of the Room of Requirement, Alan temporarily withdrew. Far from satisfying his interest in this thousand-year-old castle, it had instead aroused an unprecedented hunger.
Hogwarts is no longer just a school.
It was a vast, living system, each brick and stone, each relief, narrating a forgotten history in its own unique, magical language, or perhaps concealing a mystery waiting to be solved. Allen’s mind palace yearned to analyze, model, and ultimately master this entire system.
The afternoon sun streamed through the high windows, casting dappled shadows on the ancient stone pavement. On his way to the library, he chose a secluded corridor marked “low traffic” on the map. The air was thick with the dry scent of dust and old stone, and the sound of his footsteps was particularly clear.
At the end of the corridor, the light was dim.
A life-size statue stands quietly. It is a hunched, one-eyed witch with a strange, half-smile expression frozen on her stone face.
Almost the moment his sight reached the statue, Allen’s mind palace sounded an alarm. A faint but persistent wave of magic was seeping out from the wall behind the statue. Like a fine spider’s thread, it formed a stark, incongruous contrast with the seamless, silent magic field of the surrounding wall.
“An unrecorded secret passage.”
This judgment is almost instinctive.
He stepped forward, ready to touch the surface of the stone statue with his fingertips, analyzing the magical conductivity of its material and looking for possible mechanical structures.
At this moment, a sharp, high-pitched laugh full of gloating joy exploded without warning from the shadow of the ceiling above his head.
It’s Peeves.
The ghost that delighted in creating chaos was cradling a large, bulging ball filled with water. Its translucent body blended perfectly into the shadows of the ceiling, revealing only a pair of eyes gleaming with a sinister light, fixed intently on the seemingly lonely, weak, and defenseless first-year student below.
A perfect “surprise baptism” is about to take place.
Alan didn’t even look up.
His gray-blue eyes still stared calmly at the stone sculpture of the one-eyed witch, as if he was unaware of the threat above his head.
However, inside his palace of thought, three parallel data streams were rushing at the speed of light, and countless possibilities were being exhausted, deduced, and then screened.
Just as Peeves loosened his arms and the heavy water ball began to fall freely, the final calculation result was generated.
1. Target: Water ball. Initial velocity: 0. Due to gravity, its falling trajectory follows a standard parabola. Estimated time to impact: 3.1 seconds.
2. Environmental Variables: Caretaker Argus Filch. Based on his patrol route map and timeline analysis over the past 72 hours, combined with the current acoustic environment, there’s a 98.7% probability that Filch, attracted by Peeves’ laughter, will appear from the left corner. Estimated Arrival Time: 2.7 seconds.
Optimal Solution: Build a spell model. Requirements: Silent casting, negligible power, and repulsive force. Casting Time: When the water ball falls to a height of 1.5 meters above the ground. Point of Action: 3 o’clock to the left of the water ball. Force Vector: Left, with an angle offset of 0.8 degrees.
All of this is done in the heartbeats of the real world.
Alan’s right hand, hanging by his side, moved imperceptibly in the pocket of his wide wizard robe. The tip of the wand, facing the air diagonally above, completed a subtle flick, accurate to the millimeter.
A ripple of magical power that could not be captured by the mortal eye spread instantly.
In mid-air, the trajectory of the rapidly falling water ball produced an extremely slight deflection that could almost be regarded as a light error.
A face filled with bitterness and sarcasm peeked out from the left corner just in time. Argus Filch’s goldfish eyes were scanning the area warily. He had obviously heard Peeves’ laughter and was coming to catch the offending students.
There was a dull and loud cracking sound.
The large ball filled with ice-cold well water exploded precisely above his head. The icy water poured down on him, instantly turning him into a soaked, angry chicken.
The few sparse strands of hair that he was so proud of, which were combed meticulously, were now clinging to his scalp in a messy manner, with water droplets dripping down the tip of his hooked nose, making him look extremely funny.
“P-P-P-Ghost!”
A deafening roar erupted from Filch’s chest, and his already bulging eyes widened even further with rage, becoming bloodshot.
Peeves laughed so hard in mid-air, uttering a sharp jeer as he scurried through the wall and escaped.
Filled with rage and with nowhere to vent, Filch’s eyes, burning with anger, immediately locked onto the only “suspect” at the scene.
Allen.
“It’s you!” His voice was hoarse with anger, almost squeezed out from between his teeth. “It must be you, little brat, who colluded with Peeves!”
He rushed forward viciously, and the skinny cat at his feet, Mrs. Norris, also arched its back in cooperation, hissing threateningly in her throat, and her golden eyes flashed ominously in the dim light.
Facing the administrator’s wrath, Allen’s face showed no trace of panic or fear typical of a first-year student.
He seemed remarkably calm.
He simply took out the old-fashioned silver pocket watch his grandfather had given him from his pocket. With a crisp “click”, the cover popped open, and he showed the polished dial to Filch who had rushed over.
“Sir, please calm down.”
His voice was steady and clear, without a trace of ripples, as if he was giving an academic lecture.
“It is now 3:42 pm. According to Article 117 of the Hogwarts Student Conduct Code, students have the right to move freely in the castle’s public areas during non-curfew hours.”
He shifted his gaze from his pocket watch to the statue of the one-eyed witch, and his face even showed the perfect curiosity and concentration of a good student.
“I was just doing my pre-class preparation—observing and studying the ancient magical structures and rune carvings within the castle’s architecture.”
He paused, his gaze returning to Filch, a hint of appropriate confusion in his eyes, as if he was truly puzzled by the other’s logic.
“As for that water ball,” he said, “you heard it yourself, I suppose, just now. It was Peeves’s handiwork. To baselessly pin the blame for a ghostly prank on an innocent first-year student engaged in serious academic research…”
Alan tilted his head slightly, his tone sincere.
“That seems… to defy basic logic, don’t you think?”
This well-reasoned and airtight defense, which even accurately quoted the school rules, was like a basin of water colder than a water balloon, instantly extinguishing some of Filch’s burning anger.
He opened his mouth, but found himself at a loss for words.
Of course he knew it was Peeves who did it; he had been chasing that ghost for over a decade! But he wanted even more to catch a living student to punish him, to vent his anger.
But the freshman before him was terrifyingly calm. Every word he spoke seemed measured with a ruler, treading precisely within the boundaries of the rules, leaving him with no loopholes to exploit.
In the end, all the anger and frustration could only be squeezed out of Filch’s teeth into one sentence.
“You’re lucky!”
He glared at Alan fiercely, then turned around angrily, dripping with water all over his body, and left in embarrassment with the equally angry Mrs. Norris at his feet.
Alan quietly watched his wet figure disappear around the corner of the corridor, then calmly closed the cover of his pocket watch.
A crisp “click” sound echoed in the empty corridor.
Logic is sometimes a better weapon than magic.
Chapter 24: The Magical Nature of House-Elves (Old Edition)
Filch’s footsteps, filled with resentment, completely disappeared at the end of the corridor. The stone walls of the castle completely isolated him from any prying eyes and hostility.
Alan then reappeared from the shadows. He stood in front of the stone sculpture of the one-eyed witch. The air around him was cold and quiet.
In his palace of thought, countless possibilities lit up and extinguished like stars.
Since this is a secret passage leading to Hogsmeade, the designer must have considered the possibility of students using it. Therefore, the method of opening it cannot rely on overly advanced magic or complicated rituals.
Password. This is the most likely option.
“Open Sesame?”
He uttered the word in his lowest voice, the sound absorbed by the thick stone wall without causing any echo. The statue remained motionless, its single eye staring blankly into the void ahead.
“Alaho is open.”
The standard syllables of the unlocking spell, accompanied by a faint fluctuation of magical power, also fell on deaf ears.
invalid.
Alan began to examine the statue itself. His mind filtered out all irrelevant information, leaving only the most essential elements.
“One-eyed witch”.
Its most essential feature is visual “asymmetry”.
“Secret passage”.
Its core function is spatial “connection and separation”.
Asymmetry… separation…
An ancient word that he had seen in the etymology research of spells flashed through his mind like a flash of lightning.
He stretched out his fingers and tapped his knuckles twice on the cold and rough stone humpback, making a dull sound.
Then he pronounced the word in a tone as clear and emotionless as if stating a law of physics.
“Dissendium!”
The last syllable fell.
“Ka…Ka…”
A tooth-grinding sound of mechanical friction came from within the statue. The ugly hunchback actually slid slowly to the side, tearing a dark hole in the wall that was only wide enough for one person to pass through with a bent waist.
A stale smell mixed with earth and moisture hit me in the face.
But Alan didn’t go in immediately.
He had no interest in the butterbeer and Honeydukes candy store in Hogsmeade village for the time being.
At this moment, another completely different smell, as if it had life, floated in from deeper inside the castle, along the underground air flow.
It is a warm, rich aroma that can awaken the most primitive appetite of the human body.
The slightly burnt bread is mixed with the rich broth and has a hint of sweet jam aroma.
“kitchen.”
The Mind Palace instantly locked onto the source of the smell.
He abandoned the secret passage in front of him and turned to follow the fragrance, going deeper into the underground corridor. The walls here were more damp than those upstairs, and the light from the torches seemed much dimmer.
He soon found the legendary entrance in an inconspicuous corner.
A huge oil painting in a simple frame, with a basket piled high with fruit on the canvas: apples, bananas, grapes, and a verdant pear.
He remembered the description from the book.
He reached out his hand and gently and rhythmically scratched the smooth surface of the green pear with his fingertips.
An incredible scene happened.
The pear in the painting began to tremble slightly, emitting an inaudible giggle. Then, its shape began to twist and stretch, eventually transforming into a bronze, round doorknob.
Alan took hold of the door handle and pushed it gently.
The frame silently opened inward, and a warm, bright, and bustling world appeared before his eyes.
The scene before him caused his brain, which was always filled with data and logic, to go blank for a moment.
It was a vast space, almost as large as the magnificent Gryffindor Great Hall above, with piles of gleaming copper pots and blackened iron kettles piled high beneath a high stone ceiling.
Hundreds of house-elves, wearing tea towels with the Hogwarts emblem on them, were screaming, running, and bustling around, preparing dinner for all the teachers and students in the school.
The air was filled with the aroma of food and magical energy.
His intrusion immediately caused a small commotion.
Almost instantly, a dozen or so elves stopped what they were doing, stared at him curiously with their tennis ball-sized eyes, and then surrounded him enthusiastically.
“A guest!”
“Do you need anything, sir?”
“Have a little meat pie, sir! Fresh from the oven!”
“Try our pumpkin juice, it’s the freshest!”
They rushed to hand various foods to Alan, their eyes full of anticipation and flattery.
Alan took a half step back, bowed slightly to them politely, and declined the pies and drinks.
Unlike most wizards, he did not take their service for granted. His mind palace was working at an unprecedented speed, analyzing these strange little creatures before him.
Their magic.
This is what attracts him most.
There is no need for a wand to guide or spells to be used as a medium. You can create things out of thin air, move objects, and change the form of matter purely by relying on your thoughts.
This is a completely different magic system, a more basic and efficient system that bypasses the complex spellcasting process of human wizards.
He squatted down and made his calm eyes level with the oldest elf, who looked even whiter in the beard. This simple action made the elves around him quiet down.
“Excuse me,” he said, his tone devoid of any trace of condescension, only pure academic inquiry and respect, “may I ask you some questions about your magic?”
His attitude made the old elf’s eyes widen, and he looked flattered. He was so excited that his ears were trembling.
“Sir…you…please ask…Tina is happy to answer any questions you have, sir!”
“Very good.” Alan nodded. He pointed to a brass dinner plate next to him and asked the question directly. “When you cast a spell, for example, to make this plate hot, do you think of the command ‘make it hot’, or do you directly imagine the end result that it’s ‘already hot’?”
This question was clearly beyond the elf Tina’s everyday understanding. She tilted her head in confusion, thinking hard, and finally answered in an uncertain tone:
“Yes… I thought it was hot, sir. Yes, I thought it was hot.”
“I see.”
In Allen’s mind palace, a key piece of information was highlighted.
“It’s a ‘results-oriented’ mind-casting spell. It bypasses the process and directly defines the result.” He muttered to himself, then looked at Tina again. “So, is this powerful ability an innate talent of yours, or is it related to some ancient ‘contract’ you signed with Hogwarts Castle?”
He began to use the simplest and most logical language to ask these elves who had never received systematic education about the nature of “contract magic” and “mind casting”.
He even explained to them from the perspective of Muggle physics the process of “molecular acceleration to generate heat energy”, that is, the microscopic nature of the phenomenon of “heating”.
This novel, rigorous, and logical knowledge seemed to open a door to a whole new world for these elves. They had never imagined that the magic they used every day had such profound “truths” behind it.
They were so fascinated by what they heard that the whole kitchen fell silent, leaving only Alan’s clear and steady voice.
This strange “academic exchange” lasted nearly an hour.
In return, the elves not only prepared for Alan a most exquisite afternoon tea that far exceeded ordinary standards, but also excitedly promised him collectively that the door of the Hogwarts kitchen would always be open to him, the “wise and elf-respecting gentleman.” They were very happy to provide all possible help for any of his future “magical experiments.”
Alan returned to the Gryffindor common room with a box of snacks beautifully wrapped in a magic ribbon.
In front of the warm fireplace, Fred, George and Lee Jordan were sitting around a small table, playing wizard cards with great enthusiasm.
“Where have you been, Alan?” George asked without looking up. He was struggling over whether to play an “explosion card”.
“To conduct preliminary field research on the magical systems of house-elfs.”
Alan gently placed the box of snacks on the table and took out a new notebook from his backpack.
“I’ve come to the preliminary conclusion that their magic is likely a highly authorized, result-oriented, mind-casting spell based on a ‘contract.’ I’ve written a briefing on this. Are you interested in taking a look?”
He handed the parchment filled with analytical charts, logical deductions and professional terms to the Weasley twins.
Looking at the “research report” that was more complicated than a Potions textbook, Fred and George once again fell into a deep silence mixed with awe and confusion.
Chapter 25: The Mathematical Model of Quidditch (Old Edition)
“Hey, Alan, look at this!”
Fred’s voice was filled with suppressed excitement as he violently spread a crumpled piece of parchment across the common room table.
The ink had smudged a few times, and the lines were crooked. It was the map of the castle’s first floor that he and George had spent an entire evening drawing. There was plenty of enthusiasm, but the accuracy was questionable.
Alan’s gaze stayed on it for only 0.7 seconds.
He made no comment, but pulled out a completely different drawing from his thick notebook, the cover of which was labeled “Mind Palace External Database” in gold letters.
When the blueprint was handed to Fred and George, they both paused for a moment.
It is not drawn, but is the product of engineering drawing.
Every line on the stiff parchment was as straight as if cut with a knife, and the angles at the corners were clearly marked. This was a “Preliminary Route Map of the First Floor of Hogwarts,” meticulously drawn with a ruler and protractor. Even the precise scale and extremely detailed directions of magical flow were marked in different colors of ink.
“Your map is missing three key hidden passages.”
Alan’s tone was calm and without a trace of emotion, like an engineer conducting a project review.
“Furthermore, you completely failed to factor in the movement patterns of the main staircase complex, which has a fatal impact on route planning.”
He stretched out a finger and touched a corner of the drawing.
“Also, let me teach you a method. By observing the concentration of residual magic power in the dust in the corners of the walls, you can roughly determine whether a secret passage is frequently used. Passages that are frequently used will have more ‘fresh’ magic traces.”
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan clutched the map, which was as professional as an architectural blueprint, their minds blank. Their talent for mischief, which they were so proud of, seemed so primitive and crude in front of each other.
At this moment, a clear and cheerful voice interrupted the awkward silence.
“Hey, you guys, what secret plan are you working on?”
A girl from the senior grade came over. She had a high ponytail and walked briskly, exuding the energy that only comes from exercising in the sun.
It was Katie Bell, a Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
“Would you like to go watch the Quidditch team practice? Charlie and the others are having tactical drills this afternoon.”
Katie extended the invitation enthusiastically.
“Of course I’ll go!”
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan were instantly revived, the shock of the previous blow forgotten. They were Quidditch enthusiasts, and nothing excited them more than watching the team practice.
Alan’s first reaction was to refuse. In his opinion, this kind of group entertainment activity was an inefficient waste of time.
But his mind palace immediately issued a new instruction: [Quidditch, an aerial sport with unique rules, contains a complex dynamic game model. It is recommended to collect and analyze data.]“good.”
He nodded and went along.
Over the Quidditch pitch, the air was whistling with sharp cuts from the speeding brooms. The players, like red and gold falcons, circled, dived, and stopped in the air, drawing bursts of cheers from the few spectators in the stands.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were completely enraptured.
“Look at that sharp turn Charlie makes! So cool!”
“Angelina’s pass! Oh my god, she was born for the Chaser position!”
They waved their fists excitedly, cheered loudly for every wonderful move, and discussed heatedly the technical characteristics of each player and the team’s tactical intentions.
Allen seemed out of place.
He didn’t even glance up at the game in the sky.
He found a corner to sit down, took out a brand new notebook and a sharpened quill from his backpack, and began to write quickly on the paper.
Row after row, columns after columns, are not words, but numbers, variables and symbols that outsiders cannot understand.
“What are you doing, Alan?”
Lee Jordan finally diverted a little attention from the excitement of the game. He leaned over to take a look curiously, his face full of confusion.
“The competition is so exciting, why are you doing your Charms homework?”
“I’m not doing homework.”
Alan didn’t even raise his head, his eyes fixed on the paper, and the tip of the pen made a rustling sound on the parchment.
“I’m building a preliminary mathematical model for this sport.”
This answer silenced the surrounding noise for a moment.
As Fred, George, and Katie stared in bewilderment, Alan’s pen danced wildly across the paper. His mind raced, transforming the players’ flight speeds, the Quaffle’s delivery routes, the Bludger’s attack vectors, the Snitch’s random trajectory… all this dynamic information into cold, quantifiable data.
A series of complex formulas and probability symbols were born under his pen.
Σ(P_player*S_skill)/T_time=W_win_rate
P(Snitch|Seeker_ASeeker_B)≈0.85+
After about half an hour, he stopped writing.
He gazed at the results on his notebook, a page filled with densely packed computational models brimming with logical beauty. He nodded with satisfaction, as if he had completed a perfect work of art.
“How is it? What did you find?”
George couldn’t contain his curiosity and came over to ask.
“have.”
Alan’s expression was very serious. He raised his head, and there was no trace of joking in his eyes.
“I modeled and analyzed the rules of Quidditch from the perspective of probability and game theory. I concluded that this sport has serious structural flaws.”
Katie Bell, who had been standing nearby and had been tolerant of Allen’s strange behavior, froze her smile when she heard this. She couldn’t believe her ears.
Alan pointed his finger at the core formula in the notebook and began his argument in a calm and cold tone.
“The problem lies with the Golden Snitch. Catching it earns 150 points and immediately ends the game. This rule gives the position of ‘Seeker’ disproportionate, almost decisive weight.”
His voice was clear and steady, and every word he said was like a nail, hammering into the hearts of everyone present.
“According to my model, over 85% of a team’s final victory rate is determined by the difference in ability between the two Seekers. The combined efforts, skills, and tactical coordination of the other six players—the three Chasers, the two Beaters, and even the Goalkeeper—all contribute to the final outcome, but their impact is compressed to less than 15%.”
He paused and gave his final, most damning summary.
“This means that Quidditch, in the vast majority of cases, is not a true team sport. Its tactical diversity is greatly limited, and the viewing experience of the game is greatly reduced.”
“At its core, it’s just a personal duel between two Seekers. The other players, including you Chasers, exist only to delay the Seekers until the winner is determined, and to add a little insignificant background noise to the duel.”
Every word of this unique “Quidditch is useless theory” is full of unquestionable rationality.
It is calm and cruel, like a sharp scalpel, cruelly dissecting this sport that wizards regard as sacred, passionate and glorious, revealing the logical paleness and irrationality of its core.
All the future players present, including Katie Bell and the Weasley twins, stood there in amazement.
The excitement and thrill on their faces had long since faded, replaced by an expression mixed with shock, absurdity and a hint of offended anger.
It was the first time they heard someone evaluate the supreme sport in their hearts in this way.
They looked at Alan.
Looking at this companion with a calm expression, as if he was just stating an objective fact.
A thought suddenly came to all of their minds at the same time.
This guy is simply a freak from another planet.
Chapter 26: Unexpected “Voice Control” Mechanism (Old Version)
To the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan, Alan’s analysis of the nature of Quidditch was nothing short of a shocking heresy, which made them feel even more strongly that this Muggle-born freshman was of a completely different species than they were.
But it was precisely this peculiarity that gave them an almost awe-inspiring admiration for his brain that could always approach problems from tricky angles.
In order to completely get rid of Filch’s cat-like, alert eyes wandering in the night and his increasingly unpredictable patrol routes, the four men reached a consensus that they must open up a new and absolutely covert night travel route.
The command of the operation naturally fell to Allen.
Guided by his draft of the “Optimal Route Map of Hogwarts,” they passed through the familiar common room, avoided two whispering gargoyles, and finally arrived at the end of a secluded corridor on the third floor of the castle.
It’s cold and damp here.
Moonlight struggled to squeeze in through the cracks in the high windows, casting a few pale spots on the dusty stone tiles. The air was filled with the smell of decay, a smell that had been sealed by time.
The end of the corridor was completely blocked by a door.
It was an exceptionally thick oak door, not a single inch of it smooth, densely etched with intricate and twisted ancient magic runes. These runes intertwined and intertwined, forming a dizzying array of magic.
There was no handle to hold onto, no lock to insert a key into.
It stands there quietly, like a giant that has been silent for thousands of years, rejecting all worldly disturbances.
A faint wave of magical energy seeped out from the crack of the tightly closed door. The aura was ancient, majestic, and carried a kind of heart-pounding pressure.
“Wow.”
Fred lowered his voice, but it trembled slightly with excitement. He rubbed his hands vigorously, and the white breath he exhaled quickly dissipated in the cold air.
“I bet there’s a big, big secret behind this!”
Alan ignored his excitement.
He had already stepped forward, his azure eyes reflecting the complex runes on the door. His brain, the supercomputer known as the “Mind Palace,” was already operating at full speed.
Data streams flashed rapidly in the depths of his consciousness.
The arrangement and combination of these runes was extremely strange, completely inconsistent with any known spell grammar structure. He recognized most of the individual runes, but when combined together, they did not form any meaningful sentence.
It’s not like a spell.
It’s more like an encryption algorithm.
A program written in magical logic, waiting to be cracked.
Alan raised his wand and whispered the most basic unlocking spell.
A faint white light hit the door and was instantly extinguished, without even causing a ripple.
He tried several more complex unlocking runes, drawing precise trajectories in the air with the tip of his staff. However, the moment the shimmering magical symbols touched the oak door, they too vanished without a trace.
“It seems that conventional unlocking methods are ineffective against it.”
Alan’s brows furrowed slightly.
His mind palace immediately switched to a computational mode, abandoning the “spell cracking” task and entering the “logic analysis” module. He began deconstructing the syntax of the runes, attempting to find loopholes in this “encryption algorithm” at the most fundamental logical level.
Time passed by minute by second in absolute silence.
Alan was completely immersed in the pure pleasure of solving the puzzle, as if a top hacker was challenging an impenetrable system.
But the Weasley twins behind him obviously didn’t have that patience.
“I say, Alan, how much longer?”
There was obvious impatience in George’s voice. He paced back and forth anxiously like a lion trapped in a cage, the soles of his shoes scraping against the stone tiles, making a rustling sound.
“How about we just use that… ‘Shattered to pieces’ skill and blow it apart?”
“That’ll attract the whole castle, including Filch and his cat! You splendor-filled idiot!”
Fred retorted mercilessly.
George choked, his face flushed red, and the irritation in his heart instantly reached its peak.
He needs an outlet to vent.
He suddenly raised his foot and kicked the hopelessly solid door with all his strength.
A dull thud echoed in the corridor.
At the same time, a slang phrase that his mother, Mrs. Weasley, often used when scolding the two brothers also roared out from his throat:
“You bloody dirty sock!”
He just shouted it casually, purely to vent his anger, and didn’t expect it to have any effect.
However, just as the last syllable of his sentence, the “sock” with a long tail sound, just fell in the air –
Something strange happened suddenly.
Buzz!
The thousands of ancient runes across the oak door seemed to be instantly awakened. They all lit up, emitting a soft yet deep blue light, illuminating the shocked faces of the four people.
“There’s a reaction!”
Lee Jordan exclaimed in surprise, his eyes as big as bells.
But the door did not open inward or outward as they thought.
With a teeth-grinding, low sound of mechanical friction, the entire wall, including the glowing door, began to slowly retreat as a whole.
A pitch-black hole that seemed to swallow up all light appeared before them.
The cave entrance was bottomless and exuded a stale, cold smell.
Immediately afterwards, before they could see the situation inside clearly, an irresistible suction force suddenly came from the cave entrance!
The stone brick floor beneath the four people’s feet suddenly tilted downwards without any warning!
“ah–!”
The scream was instantly prolonged.
They didn’t even have time to grab anything before their bodies slid uncontrollably down the steep slope into the dark cave.
It felt like being on a high-speed, spiraling downward slide, deprived of all light and sense of direction.
The world was spinning.
The feeling of weightlessness and dizziness attacked their brains crazily.
After an unknown amount of time, this chaotic journey finally came to an end.
They fell heavily onto a pile of cold, hard objects, and the collision of their bodies with the metal produced a deafening “clang clang” sound.
Alan struggled to sit up from the pile of cold iron sheets, feeling his buttocks were broken into eight pieces. He rubbed it hard, and the pain made him grimace.
He looked around quickly.
They seemed to have fallen into a long-abandoned storage room.
The surrounding darkness was filled with piles of tilted, rusty armor, many of which were missing limbs, presenting hideous outlines in the dim light.
Alan looked up subconsciously.
The entrance to the slide they fell from had closed tightly and silently at the ceiling above their heads.
Chapter 27: Commendation from Professor Flitwick (Old Edition)
“Ouch, my bones…”
The loud bang of metal colliding still echoed in his ears. Fred groaned, supported his numb waist, and sat up amid the clanging metal parts.
Dust is flying.
A smell of rust and staleness penetrated my nostrils.
“Where are we?” He looked around blankly. Everywhere he looked, there were scattered helmets, arm guards and breastplates, like an abandoned knight’s cemetery.
“Looks like we triggered a… trap?” Lee Jordan’s voice trembled, clearly still recovering from the fall. He held onto the wall, brushing off the dust with lingering fear.
He just glanced around the dim room warily.
His mind palace was spinning at high speed, countless data streams cascading through it. The sudden fall was being broken down into frame after frame, every detail magnified and analyzed.
That phrase “dirty socks”…
Why?
Was it a specific combination of syllables that triggered some ancient voice-controlled magic rune? Or was it that the unconscious mix of emotions they felt as they shouted these words—a mixture of amusement, fatigue, and a hint of impatience—just happened to be the key to unlocking the mechanism?
Just when his analytical model was about to be completed, a sudden voice broke his meditation.
“hehe……”
The laughter was soft, but it was remarkably clear in the dead silence. It came from the corner of the room, behind the tallest pile of armor debris.
The four people’s nerves were instantly tense.
A short figure, with fluffy white hair and a kind smile on his face, walked out cheerfully from the shadows.
It was their Charms professor, Filius Flitwick.
“Good evening, gentlemen.”
Professor Flitwick’s eyes flickered in the dim light as he looked at the four embarrassed people. There was no surprise on his face, but instead a sense of satisfaction that came from having gotten what he wanted.
“It seems that a little puzzle I set when I was young has finally been solved today.”
“professor?”
Fred, George, Lee Jordan, and Alan, four voices rang out in unison, filled with disbelief and astonishment.
Professor Flitwick walked over with his hands behind his back, smiling, as if admiring his own masterpiece.
“Yes, it’s me,” he explained cheerfully. “This door, or rather, this trap, was a creation of mine during my student days. Back then, I was fascinated by the mystery of ‘sound magic.'”
He pointed to the ceiling portal through which they had fallen.
“Its unlocking mechanism isn’t a specific word. That’s too simple, and too easy to crack with brute force. What I designed is an extremely complex ‘sonic key.'”
There was a hint of the pride of a creator in his voice.
“It requires a specific tone, a specific frequency, and even… a specific emotional state. Only when these three combine perfectly at a certain moment can a unique sound wave be formed to activate the hidden rune.”
Professor Flitwick glanced at the four of them with a hint of emotion.
“My original intention in designing it was to test a wizard’s quick wit and creativity when faced with adversity, rather than simply their magical prowess. Over the years, countless brilliant students have tried to decipher it, using every possible spell and vocabulary, but all have failed.”
He paused, his tone becoming a little strange.
“I never imagined that today, it would be accidentally cracked by a sentence… um, ‘dirty socks’.”
Hearing this, Fred, George, and Lee Jordan’s cheeks flushed and they all lowered their heads at the same time.
It’s over.
He was caught wandering at night and triggered a trap left by the professor during his student days. This time, the punishment would probably be doubled.
After a brief moment of surprise, Allen quickly regained his composure.
In his mind palace, Professor Flitwick’s every word was quickly captured, deconstructed, and reassembled. Those key words about tone, frequency, and emotion perfectly matched his previous deductive model.
“Professor, I understand.”
He took a step forward, meeting Professor Flitwick’s gaze. His tone was less like that of a student who had made a mistake and more like that of a scholar participating in an academic seminar.
“So, the core of this magical puzzle utilizes the ‘resonance effect of a specific syllable combination in a specific environment,’ which in turn triggers the underlying logic of the magic rune. It has nothing to do with the semantics of the slang itself.”
Alan’s voice was clear and steady, echoing in the empty room.
“Its triggering is essentially an acoustic problem, not a linguistic problem. It’s a very sophisticated logical trap.”
Professor Flitwick’s smile froze.
The next second, an unprecedented light burst out from his eyes. That light was the surprise of discovering a rare treasure and the ecstasy of finding a soulmate.
“Exactly! Mr. Scott! You are absolutely right!”
He clapped his hands excitedly, and huge energy burst out from his small body, even his voice rose an octave.
“Oh, Merlin’s beard! Finally! Finally someone understands my design thinking back then!”
He almost circled around Alan, looking him up and down with a look full of appreciation and approval.
“Logic! Yes! The depths of magic are also filled with rigorous logic! Not that stale mysticism!”
The twins and Lee Jordan stared at the scene in amazement, their minds blank.
This plot development…isn’t it a bit wrong?
Professor Flitwick was excited for a while before he remembered the important matter. He cleared his throat and put on his professorial demeanor again.
“As for your night outing…”
The three of them were worried again.
“Although this violates school rules,” Professor Flitwick said, his tone changing. “However, considering that Mr. Scott has successfully solved a puzzle that has eluded me for years, and has demonstrated wisdom and insight that even Ravenclaw cannot match… I’ll give Gryffindor 20 points!”
“…”
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan couldn’t believe their ears.
From waiting for punishment to getting extra points from the academy, the reversal happened so quickly that it completely shut down their brains.
“Also, Mr. Scott,” Professor Flitwick said with a smile, formally inviting Alan, “if you are interested in topics like ‘Interesting Charms’ or ‘Acoustic Applications of Ancient Runes’, my office door is always open to you. We can discuss more interesting topics together.”
This unexpected night trip ended in a way no one could have predicted.
It did not bring any punishment, but instead earned Allen the favor of a knowledgeable professor and an honor that was enough to attract the attention of the entire college.
Chapter 28 Logical Offense (Old Edition)
In the Gryffindor common room, the fire flickered, illuminating the excited and young faces.
Because he accidentally solved Professor Flitwick’s spell puzzle and won the college valuable 20 points, the name Alan Scott, along with Fred, George and Lee Jordan, quickly spread among the first-year students.
They became heroes of a kind.
Naturally, this matter also reached the ears of the prefect Percy Weasley.
Percy found the four of them, his chest straightened, his silver prefect badge gleaming in the firelight.
“Well done, Scott, the Weasley brothers, Jordan.”
His opening remarks had a scripted stiffness, like reciting from a code of conduct manual.
“It is every student’s responsibility to bring honor to Gryffindor. You set a… well, positive example for the new students.”
After the formal praise, Percy’s face suddenly became stern, and his eyes behind the glasses became sharp.
“but!”
He emphasized his tone, as if a judge were reading a verdict.
“I must give you two stern warnings regarding two other matters. First, ‘night wandering’ is a serious violation of Article 39 of the school regulations. Second, ‘triggering an unknown dangerous mechanism’ is extremely irresponsible to your own safety!”
His speech was incessant, from the historical evolution of school rules to the sacred duties of class monitors, and lasted for a full ten minutes.
Fred and George were already immune to this.
The two of them were behind Percy, silently lip-syncing his words and exchanging faces that only they understood.
It goes in one ear and out the other.
Finally, the lecture was over.
On their way back to the common room, they had to pass through the corridor that housed the Potions classroom, which was located underground.
The further down we went, the dimmer the light became. The coldness of the stone walls seemed to penetrate our robes and seep into our bones. The air became cold and damp, with a hint of bitter herbal odor, similar to the smell of rotting plant roots, penetrating our nostrils and clinging to our throats.
Their footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, sounding particularly clear.
Just as they were walking quickly through a deep shadow, a voice emerged from the darkness without warning.
The voice was cold and greasy, and each syllable had a hissing sound like a venomous snake spitting out its tongue.
“Gryffindor’s new heroes, are you celebrating your ‘great achievements’?”
The four of them paused.
A black figure separated from the shadows, as if the darkness itself had substance.
Professor Severus Snape appeared before them silently. He made no sound of his footsteps, like a real ghost.
His pair of dark, emotionless eyes looked past the others and locked onto Alan, who was walking in front.
That look was without any warmth, just a pure scrutiny, an anatomical inquiry.
“Mr. Scott.”
Snape’s voice was filled with calculated, drawn-out sarcasm.
“I hear we have a new ‘know-it-all’. A Muggle-born genius, huh?”
The word “genius” becomes an insult when it comes out of his mouth.
The relief on Fred and George’s faces vanished instantly, their muscles tensing. They exchanged a tense glance, knowing that the most formidable troublemaker in all of Hogwarts had appeared, especially one targeting Gryffindor students.
Snape took a step forward, his black robes sliding silently across the floor.
“But I must warn you.”
The corner of his mouth curled up in a contemptuous arc, and that arc was as cold as a knife edge.
“No matter how clever a Muggle’s mind is, or how good they are at performing those little tricks, the true essence of magic – such as the exquisite art of Potions – is something you will never understand.”
His voice was low but full of penetrating power, and every word was like a poisoned needle, piercing Allen’s background.
“That requires talent, bloodline, and intuition that runs in your blood.”
These words are no longer just a challenge.
This was a naked contempt for Muggle-born wizards and witches, a mystification of the potions science he cherished, and the construction of a barrier of bloodline and talent that completely excluded people like Allen.
The air in the corridor seemed to become thick because of these words.
Fred and George’s breath hitched.
Li Jordan subconsciously took half a step back.
However, Allen, the core of the attack, did not respond at all.
There was no anger, no fear, not even the slightest emotional fluctuation. In his mind palace, all physiological data monitoring was stable as usual, without even a single red alarm being triggered.
He simply met Snape’s dark eyes calmly.
Then he spoke.
His voice was also emotionless, as if he was discussing an academic definition, objective, clear and calm.
“With all due respect, Professor.”
“According to the description on page 12, third paragraph of the first edition of Magical Potions and Liquids that I previewed, ‘The essence of potions is the process of stimulating and integrating the potential magical power of various magical ingredients through precise heating, stirring, and material proportioning, thereby producing a stable chemical reaction.'”
He spoke at a moderate pace, and his words were so clear that they could be heard from the other end of the corridor.
Snape’s eyebrows raised slightly, as if he was not expecting such a response.
Alan paused, giving everyone time to digest the thought, and then clearly stated his conclusion. Each word was like a precise weight, hitting the other end of the scale.
“By definition, this is closer to a precise chemical science that can be quantified and replicated, rather than the ethereal ‘art’ you describe, which relies on bloodline and intuition.”
The entire corridor fell into deathly silence in an instant.
Tick.
A drop of water fell from the damp dome and hit the floor with a surprisingly loud sound.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were petrified.
They opened their mouths, their eyes wide as copper bells, and stared at Alan’s profile in disbelief.
This is no longer just backtalk.
This is not a student questioning the professor.
This is a pure, logically and academically defined, most thorough “offense”.
It didn’t attack Snape himself, but it directly and brutally denied the entire theoretical system that Snape was so proud of and used as a weapon. It reduced Snape’s noble and mysterious “art” to a “science” that anyone in the Muggle world could learn.
Snape’s expression was changing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The originally pale skin first turned red, then turned blue, and finally settled into a black color deeper than the bottom of a pot.
For the first time, true, undisguised anger blazed from his dark eyes. It was no longer a condescending mockery, but a fury that came from having the foundation of his theory shaken and his authority challenged to its most fundamental level.
He found that any vicious language and any humiliation about bloodline seemed so pale and powerless in the face of such pure and cold rationality.
The other party was not on the same channel as him at all.
The other party directly demolished the stage under his feet.
“very good……”
Snape squeezed out two words from between his teeth, his voice hoarse, as if two pieces of ice were rubbing against each other.
The icy anger turned into a tangible pressure, almost freezing the air in the corridor. Fred even felt his teeth chattering.
“Then I will be very, very looking forward to… personally testing how accurate your ‘science’ is during my first Potions class.”
He emphasized the last word.
After saying this, he swung his black robe violently, bringing up a gust of cold wind.
He turned around like a giant enraged bat, without saying another word, and resolutely disappeared into the darkness at the end of the corridor.
The oppressive atmosphere slowly dissipated as he left.
At that moment, a new line of system prompts exuding a dangerous atmosphere clearly emerged in Allen’s mind palace.
[Long-term mission activated: Victory of logic.][Task requirements: In the theory and practice of potions, surpass Severus Snape in all aspects.]Chapter 29 Optimized Learning Path (Old Version)
The direct confrontation with Snape didn’t stir fear or anger in Allen. It was more like a calm, systematic assessment. Snape’s presence was like a foreshadowed, difficult hurdle, a hostile, unpredictable environmental variable. This encounter instantly marked the original model of the “Hogwarts Project” in Allen’s mind palace with a bright red “High Risk” warning.
The conclusion is unique.
Intellectual superiority and information asymmetry alone are not enough to build a secure barrier. He must possess real, overwhelming power.
The first week of school, Hogwarts is a maze of chaos and surprise for the freshmen. While his peers are still arguing over the location of the next class classroom, or even screaming in despair on the moving stairs, Allen’s pattern of action presents a completely different, almost cold regularity.
He wasn’t just wandering around; he was mapping.
His footsteps were a ruler measuring distance. His sight was a protractor recording angles. He recorded every detail of the castle’s first three floors, the length of every corridor, the blind spots around every corner, the movement patterns of the main staircase at different times, even the specific bricks that made a strange noise when stepped on. He converted them into pure data, feeding them into the invisible palace in his mind.
Is the hidden tapestry a shortcut or a storage room?
Which corridor does Peeves most often hover over, carrying out his indiscriminate attacks?
What is the probability interval between a fixed route and a random change in the nightly patrols of Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris?
These unexpected events, which other students thought were pure luck, became variables that could be calculated and avoided in Allen’s analysis model.
A week later, when all the data had been processed, a finished product was born. Allen named it the “Hogwarts Optimal Path Map.”
This was no simple, literal guide. On the parchment, a dense yet clearly organized pattern was drawn in several different colors of magical ink. Black represented the conventional route, red the shortest shortcut, and blue marked secret passages requiring specific commands or actions to open.
Even more impressive, the map is dotted with tiny, animated runes. A flickering face marks a Peeves hotspot, while a cat’s paw print marks Filch’s patrol hotspots. These runes move subtly and predictably, depending on the time of day.
This is no longer a map, it is a dynamic, interactive decision-making system.
It was lunchtime on Friday, and the magical sky above the auditorium dome simulated a clear afternoon cloud bank. The long table was overflowing with food, and the sound of students’ conversation formed a humming background.
Alan quietly cut the steak on the plate. His eating speed and rhythm were precisely calculated to ensure optimal nutrient intake and digestion efficiency.
Just then, a figure stumbled and stopped beside him.
It was a Gryffindor freshman, holding a rickety stack of books in his arms and a Muggle camera hanging from his chest that looked out of place. His hair was a mess and his face was filled with anxiety that looked like he was about to cry.
Colin Creevey.
Alan’s database instantly retrieved the name. Muggle-born, extremely enthusiastic, and filled with a fanatical curiosity about everything in the wizarding world.
“Hey, you’re Alan Scott, right?”
Colin’s voice was filled with uncertainty and great anticipation; he obviously recognized Alan.
“I heard about it! On the train, and in Charms class, Professor Flitwick gave you twenty extra points! My God, you’re simply our freshman idol!”
Alan put down his knife and fork, wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin, and looked up at him. Without any unnecessary courtesy, he just nodded calmly.
After a brief moment of excitement, Colin’s face immediately fell, as if he had found an outlet to confide in, and he began to pour out his grievances in rapid succession.
“But Hogwarts is so scary! It’s so huge! My next class is Potions, with Professor Snape! It’s in the dungeon, and I don’t even know which way the door opens! And why is the astronomy class built in the highest tower? Every time I climb up, my legs feel like they’re not mine! I feel like I spend half the day lost in this castle, running around like a headless chicken!”
His complaints accurately summarized the plight of almost all freshmen.
Alan looked at him, at his slightly reddened eyes from anxiety, and at the camera that symbolized his origins. A new command was triggered in his mind palace.
Share the map.
Cost: The minimal mana cost of a single copy spell.
Benefits: 1. Test the universality of the path model across different users. 2. Capture a potential, highly loyal information node. 3. Initially establish an “efficient” personal brand image.
Risk assessment: close to zero.
Decision made.
He took out the parchment map that had condensed his efforts for a week from his backpack.
“I thought this might help you.”
Alan’s voice was calm and emotionless. He drew out his wand and pointed the tip at the drawing.
“Geminio!”
A soft white light streamed from the tip of the staff, precisely covering the entire parchment. Within the light, every line, every symbol, every color of the original drawing began to be perfectly reproduced at a speed visible to the naked eye. Without the slightest blur or deviation, an identical drawing was smoothly separated from the side of the original.
A perfect copying spell.
He handed the copy to Colin.
Colin Creevey took the still warm parchment in a daze, and at first thought it was just an ordinary, relatively detailed map.
But the moment his eyes fell on the drawing, his breathing stopped.
What did he see?
The bright red route from the Gryffindor common room did not lead to the main staircase, but instead to a tapestry depicting Barnabas beating a troll at the end of the third-floor corridor. The route passed through the tapestry and connected directly to a spiral staircase he had never heard of, which led directly to the dungeon classroom area.
In the corner of the blueprint, there was a route planned specifically for him, from the Potions classroom to the Astronomy Tower. That route cleverly utilized the gap between two staircases and even marked an armored statue that could be fed a small cookie to help it take a shortcut.
This… this even has his own name on it! Between the dormitories and the classrooms, an optimized route combination has been preset.
“This…this is…”
Colin’s hands began to tremble. The huge amount of information hit his brain, making him so excited that he could hardly organize his words.
“A path optimization model.”
Alan explained calmly, his tone as if he was introducing an ordinary class assignment.
“Based on this map, you can design an optimized plan for your daily journey. Calculations show that on average, you can save at least fifteen minutes of travel time per day compared to others. At the same time, you can avoid more than 90% of unnecessary encounters with Peeves and Filch.”
Colin Creevey clutched the blueprint tightly, as if it were not just a piece of paper, but an oracle leading to a new world.
He raised his head and looked at Alan with an almost worshipful gaze, a mixture of fanaticism and gratitude.
“Alan, you…you are a genius!”
He finally found his voice, though it was a little cracked by excitement.
“This is simply… a freshman survival guide! It’s the bible of Hogwarts! Thank you so much! Thank you so much!”
Allen did not deliberately publicize this action.
But the value of knowledge and tools themselves has viral power.
Soon, a piece of parchment titled “Alan’s Optimal Route Map to Hogwarts” was quietly circulated among the first-year students in a semi-public secret form.
Like Colin Creevey, every freshman who got a copy of the map was shocked by its detailed content, rigorous logic and immediate effect.
During the first week of school, the name Alan Scott was imprinted in the minds of all freshmen in a way that was far more profound than “cursed genius.”
He had grafted the distant, Muggle-world concept of “efficiency first” into the ancient world of wizardry in an irrefutable and extremely practical way. This dimensionality-reduction-like thinking method not only amazed the other students around him, but also inspired a heartfelt, indescribable admiration.
Chapter 30: The “Backdoor” of Knowledge (Old Edition)
In order to be able to safely deal with any challenge that Professor Snape might launch in the first Potions class, Allen’s mind palace had already completed precise deductions.
The conclusion is clear and cold: merely reviewing the first-grade “Magic Pharmacy and Potions” is like walking into a duel with only a fruit knife.
The book’s content was too basic, a simple listing of phenomena rather than a deep analysis of the underlying principles. It taught students how to follow recipes but never explained why salt enhances flavor or fire cooks. Against a wizard like Snape, who pursued the essence of things, this level of preparation would be instantly thwarted.
He needs higher-level knowledge.
A kind of knowledge that allows him to stand above the root and overlook the entire system of potions.
So, he went straight to the Hogwarts library.
The castle library was a sanctuary of silence, its air thick with the scent of aged parchment and polished wood. Towering bookshelves cast crisscrossing shadows, dividing the space into countless quiet corners. The silence here was weighty, suppressing all unnecessary sounds and making every footstep seem especially abrupt.
The Guardian of the Library, Madam Irma Pince, is the absolute sovereign of this realm of silence.
Her slender figure, like a shadow moving between the bookshelves, always appears silently. At this moment, she sits behind the reading desk, leaning slightly forward, her sharp eyes through the lenses of her reading glasses, examining a thick tome, her posture like a bird of prey guarding its nest.
Alan walked to the lending desk, stepping very lightly so as not to disturb the order there.
“Good afternoon, Madam Pince.”
His voice was clear and steady, and the volume was controlled just right, allowing the other party to hear clearly without disturbing the tranquility of the library.
Madam Pince did not respond immediately. She slowly folded the corner of the page she was reading with a bony finger, then slowly raised her head.
His sight passed over the edge of his reading glasses and locked onto Allen’s face precisely.
It was a face that was still childish, but the eyes were so calm that it didn’t seem like that of a new student.
“I need to borrow a third-grade textbook, ‘Advanced Potion Making.'” Alan stated his purpose directly.
Madam Pince’s brows immediately furrowed, fine lines gathering on her forehead.
“no.”
Her voice was dry and cold, leaving no room for compromise.
“Library regulations state that students can only borrow books within their grade level.”
She returned her gaze to her book as if the conversation were over. It was an iron rule, an insurmountable barrier designed to protect ignorant and reckless young witches and wizards.
“This is to prevent you from being too ambitious and coming into contact with dangerous knowledge that you cannot understand and control.”
This is a perfectly reasonable and irrefutable reason. Any student who tries to argue will run into a wall before this rule.
But Allen didn’t show any disappointment or frustration.
He just stood there calmly, as if this result had been rehearsed countless times in his mind palace.
He took out another thing from his backpack.
It’s not a gold galleon, nor is it some kind of token of privilege.
It was a thick stack of parchment covered with words, the ink still not fully dry. He solemnly handed it to the lending desk with both hands.
“Ma’am, I understand your concerns and fully respect the library’s regulations.”
His tone was still respectful, but it contained a confidence that could not be ignored.
“So, I spent some time writing an ‘Analysis Report on the Limitations of First-Year Potions Theory’ and would like to ask you to review it.”
Madam Pince paused in turning the pages of her book.
She raised her head again, her eyes filled with scrutiny and impatience. She had seen too many “geniuses,” each one of them boasting too much, attempting to defy the rules with all sorts of childish tricks. To her, this was probably just another boring prank.
She took the report with a hint of perfunctoriness.
However, the moment her fingertips touched the warm parchment and her eyes fell on the first line of the title on the paper, the expression on her face froze.
That’s not a child’s graffiti.
The neat handwriting comparable to printed text, the rigorous title format, and the viewpoint quoted from the journal “Asian Potions Research” in the first sentence all made her heart tremble.
Her breathing stagnated for a moment.
She took off her reading glasses and began to read the report carefully with an unprecedented seriousness.
The report is three pages long.
It does not contain any nonsense or unnecessary words, and the entire article is composed of extremely calm academic logic.
The report develops its arguments step by step from seven completely different perspectives.
The first section examines the role of catalysts in potion reactions. The report accurately points out that the daisy root powder required in the “shrinking potion” in the first-grade textbook is not a medicinal ingredient, but rather a biological catalyst, designed to lower the energy barrier required for the subsequent fusion of dried figs and mouse spleen. Without understanding this, students will never grasp the true secret of heat control.
The second part analyzes the “law of conservation of energy in neutralization reactions.” Using a scabies potion as an example, the report notes that mixing dried nettles with snake fangs produces a violent exothermic reaction. However, the textbook only instructs students to add porcupine quills, never explaining that their inclusion absorbs and neutralizes excess magical energy, preventing the potion from boiling over and becoming ineffective.
Part 7 explores the “cross-influence of the magical properties of different materials.”
The report’s logical chain is so tight and linked that it’s breathtaking. Each argument is supported by two or three examples from the first-grade textbook.
Finally, the report includes a list.
The list clearly lists twelve cases that appear in “Magic Potions and Medications”, but their underlying principles must be explained using “Advanced Potion Making” or even higher-level theories.
Madam Pince’s hands began to tremble slightly.
She worked in the Hogwarts library for decades, reviewing countless professors’ manuscripts and countless graduates’ theses.
But she had never seen anything like it.
This doesn’t seem like something an eleven-year-old could write.
Its depth, rigor, and insight have completely transcended the scope of student “learning” and reached the level of “research.” It is more like a professional academic paper ready to be submitted to “Potions Today” or “Alchemist Weekly.”
She suddenly raised her head and stared at the boy in front of her.
He still stood there, his expression calm and his eyes clear, as if what he handed over was just an ordinary application to borrow a book.
Madame Pince’s heart was in turmoil.
She finally realized that the freshman in front of her was not seeking privileges or showing off his talents.
He was using the purest and most academic way to prove one thing to her: he was not “ambitious”, but the knowledge foundation he stood on could no longer support him to continue exploring upward.
He needed a ladder to a higher place.
After the shock, there is an indescribable appreciation.
Finally, she looked at Allen deeply. The expression in her eyes was extremely complicated, with shock, approval, and a hint of satisfaction as a guardian of knowledge.
A body that had hardly moved in decades stood up from behind the lending desk.
This action itself is a recognition of the highest standard.
Instead of letting Alan search for it on his own, she took him personally, walking into the depths of the library, towards areas that were usually only accessible to outstanding senior students and professors.
She took down a thick, ancient book from a high bookshelf.
The cover of the book was dark green dragon leather with the words “Advanced Potion Making” written on it in gold-plated fonts.
She solemnly handed the book to Allen.
“Child,” her tone softened for the first time, even taking on a hint of warmth, “rules are for the majority.”
“But the library’s door to knowledge is sometimes willing to open a ‘back door’ for those who truly seek knowledge.”
Alan took the heavy, long-desired book. The weight and touch of knowledge coming from his fingertips made him feel an unprecedented satisfaction.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
He thanked me sincerely.
In his mind palace, as the book’s data was scanned and entered, a brand new, massive knowledge module was constructed. At the same time, the system’s prompt sounded clearly in his mind.
[A breakthrough in the core knowledge system has been detected…][Long-term quest activated: Advanced Alchemist]Chapter 31 Risk Assessment and Basic Teaching (Old Edition)
“A secret passage to Hogsmeade!”
Fred’s voice echoed in the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory, with an excitement that almost ignited the air. He and George stood on either side of Allen’s bed, their bodies trembling slightly with excitement, like two goblins who had just discovered a huge treasure.
“Alan, how about we go this weekend?” George said, his eyes twinkling with the desire for illegal adventure. “Imagine, Butterbeer! Honeydukes! And Zonko’s Joke Shop!”
Lee Jordan poked his head out of his bed, pumped his fists vigorously, and his face was full of undisguised yearning. For the three lively first-year students, this discovery was like opening the door to a new world.
However, the resonance they expected did not appear.
Alan, at the center of the storm, sat calmly on his bed. He didn’t look up, his gaze seemingly piercing the wall before him, reaching out into some unknown dimension. Deep within his mind, a magnificent palace of thought was operating at high speed.
[Proposal: Weekend Raid on Hogsmeade.]Participants: Four.
[Core Ability Assessment: First-year student, spell mastery is below average, no practical experience.]Target Environment: Hogsmeade. A known wizarding village with no curfew and a complex population consisting of adult wizards, magical creatures, and potentially hostile forces. Security Level: Unknown.
Risk Variable A: Bullying by older students. Probability: Medium.
[Risk Variable B: Encounter with a teacher or school director. Probability: Low. Consequences: Confinement, deduction of school points.]Risk Variant C: Encounter with Filch. Probability: High.
[Risk Variant D: Encountering an uncontrollable magical event or a hostile wizard. Probability: Unknown, but the consequences could be fatal.]The data stream flashed by at a speed that could not be captured by the naked eye, and finally converged into a cold conclusion.
A few seconds later, the Mind Palace stopped operating. Alan raised his head, his eyes clear and calm, as if he had just finished an insignificant calculation.
“I refuse.”
His voice was not loud, but it was like a basin of ice water, instantly extinguishing all the enthusiasm in the dormitory.
The ecstatic smiles on Fred and George’s faces froze stiffly at the corners of their mouths.
Alan’s eyes swept over the three of them, his tone was flat and straightforward, without any emotion, but the content was like a risk assessment report from Gringotts.
“According to my assessment, Hogsmeade, as an open wizarding village, has a complex environment, personnel mobility, and potential uncontrollable factors that far exceed the internal defense system of Hogwarts Castle.”
He paused, making sure everyone heard his words clearly.
“The four of us, first-year students who have only been enrolled for two months, have left the castle’s safety radius without any effective self-protection capabilities and entered an unknown social environment where potentially hostile wizards may exist. This behavior cannot be defined as ‘exploration’.”
Alan raised a finger and tapped the edge of the bed.
“It should be defined as ‘inefficient risk-taking’. The potential risk is completely disproportionate to the expected return.”
He looked at his roommates who were all stunned, and gave his final summary in an unquestionable tone.
“Any successful action must be based on adequate preparation and careful risk control. Impulsiveness is the biggest enemy of efficiency.”
This coldly calm analysis completely silenced Fred, George, and Lee Jordan. Their mouths gaped, their brains unable to process this unfamiliar logic. How could a simple “outing” become an “inefficient adventure” and a “risk-reward ratio”?
The disappointment on the three faces was almost overflowing. That pure, childlike joy was abruptly interrupted, leaving only confusion and bewilderment.
Allen’s Mind Palace immediately gave new feedback: [Communication strategy failed. Pure logical preaching is ineffective for the current target group. We need to switch to ‘interest guidance’ mode.]He knew that he had to give them a way to understand and accept it.
“However,” he changed the subject, and the stagnant air in the dormitory seemed to begin to flow again, “I’m not completely denying this operation. I just think that our current ‘preparations’ are not sufficient.”
This turn of events brought a little light back into the eyes of the three people.
Alan stood up and smoothly pulled out the thick volume of “Standard Spells, Elementary” from the bookshelf. The pages turned in his hands, making a rustling sound.
“I have a condition.”
Alan’s gaze locked onto them, his deep eyes flashing with a light known as “wisdom,” a light that saw through everything and turned it into chess pieces.
“If you can master the ‘Basic Defensive Spell Combination’ I’m going to teach you within a week, then I’ll agree to take you to Hogsmeade next weekend.”
He added: “Also, I will be responsible for planning an absolutely safe route and ensuring that every aspect of the operation is under control.”
This proposal, like a stone thrown into stagnant water, instantly caused a thousand waves.
Learning cool-sounding new spells and getting to go to Hogsmeade with a legitimate reason is a steal!
“It’s a deal!”
Fred was the first to jump up, his disappointment replaced by a new enthusiasm.
So, in the following week, this boys’ dormitory in Gryffindor Tower was quietly transformed into a small, highly confidential magic teaching classroom.
Alan became their temporary teacher.
His teaching style was completely different from any other professor at Hogwarts. He did not require them to memorize the pronunciation of spells and the trajectory of the wand.
The first thing he did was to dismantle it.
“Iron Armor Charm, Protego.”
Alan used a quill pen, dipped it in ink, and drew a simple human outline on the clean parchment.
“Its essence isn’t about creating a wall. You have to understand that its core is to use its own magic power to instantly construct a small, extremely dense, temporary energy shield directly in front of you. Its function is to ‘deflect’ and ‘block’, not ‘hardly resist’. Therefore, the smaller its casting range, the more concentrated its defensive power.”
Then he drew a second picture, a line of energy shooting out from the tip of the wand.
“The disarming spell, Expelliarmus. The key isn’t strength, but ‘direction’ and ‘impact’. It’s a beam of highly compressed and directed magic power, designed to precisely target the object in the opponent’s hand, destroying their grip through an instantaneous energy shock. Therefore, aiming isn’t done with your eyes, but with your mental strength to lock onto the target.”
His explanations, which delved deeply into the underlying logic of magic, went far deeper and deeper than Professor Flitwick’s lectures on “a delicate flick of the wrist.” Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were captivated. For the first time, they realized that magic wasn’t some mysterious gift, but a science capable of understanding and analysis.
“You need to practice, not perform them individually. That’s classwork.”
Alan put down his pen and stood in the open space in the middle of the dormitory.
“What you need to do is quickly connect these two spells within 0.5 seconds to form a complete tactical closed loop.”
He gave a demonstration himself.
He just casually waved his left hand forward, and a layer of transparent ripples that were almost invisible to the naked eye flashed in front of him.
At the same moment that the invisible barrier appeared, the wand in his right hand was raised and pointed at the bedpost not far away.
A dazzling red light, like a red poisonous snake, suddenly shot out from the tip of the staff.
A thick book placed on top of the bedpost was hit accurately by the red light, bounced back violently, and hit the wall heavily.
The entire process was as smooth as flowing water, extremely fast. There was no pause between defense and attack, as if they were two parts of the same action.
“Defend first, then counterattack.”
Alan retracted his wand and calmly stated the most basic and cruel logic of battle.
“This is your first rule for survival.”
Under Alan’s patient, rigorous, and logical guidance, an unprecedented concentration appeared on the faces of the three boys. Even the Weasley twins, who were the most active by nature, put away all their joking thoughts and practiced the skills of swinging their canes and concentrating their minds over and over again.
Sweat soaked their foreheads, their arms ached from the repetitive movements, but their eyes became brighter and brighter.
They are making the most thorough and rational preparations for their first official off-campus adventure.
Chapter 32 The Value of Information Gap (Old Edition)
Alan’s aura, woven from his bizarre “Muggle theories,” seemed even more mysterious in the Gryffindor common room’s firelight. The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan exchanged glances, their heads still resonating with unheard-of terms like “information asymmetry” and “optimal solution.” They seemed to recognize every word Alan spoke, but when they were put together, they were more incomprehensible than the most profound ancient runes.
Allen’s “devil training” did bring immediate results.
Although silent spellcasting was still an unattainable mountain for first-year students, the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan had achieved an astonishing transformation in the speed of spell connection. The process of stumbling over two complete spells was now compressed into a nearly uninterrupted action.
Of course, this kind of leap forward is bound to be accompanied by some growing pains.
Wednesday’s Charms class was as relaxed and cheerful as ever. The short Professor Flitwick was standing on a pile of books, enthusiastically explaining the subtleties of the Levitation Charm in his shrill voice.
Fred sat at the back of the desk, but his mind was already elsewhere.
He felt the tingling sensation of magic surging through his fingertips, a thirst for power, a yearning for the world of “spell combinations” described by Allen. Unable to contain himself any longer, he hid his wand under his desk, and with a slight flick of his wrist, he began secretly practicing the spell sequence Allen had named “Basic Attack and Defense Conversion.”
Armor spell, disarming spell.
He concentrated all his energy on shortening the time between spells to the minimum possible.
However, between theory and practice, there is always a gap called “accident.” Just as he finished the second spell, perhaps because his wrist was slightly off, or perhaps because his mental focus wasn’t focused enough, a beam of scarlet light suddenly shot out from under the desk.
“Expelliarmus!”
The disarming spell drew a precise straight line, and its target was not the wall as he expected, but went straight to the front row.
A Hufflepuff student who was taking notes seriously felt a shake of his wrist, and his thick “Standard Book of Spells (First Year)” flew out of his hand and was lifted into the air by an invisible force.
At this point, it should have been just a small classroom disturbance.
But the script of fate always seems to prefer to add some dramatic coincidences.
The book drew an extremely beautiful parabola in the air, as if it had been carefully calculated, and hit the head of Peeves exactly as he had just emerged from the blackboard and was about to throw chalk at the students.
“Bang!”
A crisp muffled sound.
The air in the entire classroom froze for a moment.
The next second, Peeves’ iconic, eardrum-piercing scream detonated the entire space.
“Ahhh! My head! Someone is murdering the noble and handsome Peeeeeeeeeves!”
Absolute chaos ensued, with Peeves running around the classroom like a madman, knocking over bottles of ink and scattering students’ parchment scrolls everywhere.
Finally, after spending a lot of energy to persuade Peeves to leave, Professor Flitwick found the culprit with a helpless look on his face. Fred Weasley received his first detention at Hogwarts.
That evening, he joined Argus Filch, the castle caretaker, in sorting out his musty warehouse, which was filled with confiscated items.
It was not until the stroke of midnight that Fred, dragging his almost broken arm and exhausted, returned to the Gryffindor dormitory. He sat down on the armchair opposite Allen and sank into it.
“Merlin’s beard…”
His voice was weak and full of exhaustion from surviving a disaster.
“I swear, I never want to set foot in that damn place again!”
He began to pour out his grievances to Alan, and every word was soaked with bitterness.
“Filch is a sadist! A complete sadist! He actually made me sort hundreds of confiscated dung balls by color and size! You know? There were light brown ones, dark brown ones, and even a few that were a weird dark green! He also asked me to arrange them from largest to smallest by diameter!”
George and Lee Jordan came over at the noise, with a strange expression of sympathy and laughter on their faces.
Fred complained for a while, then suddenly changed the subject and leaned forward. The signature Weasley look of curiosity on his face overwhelmed his fatigue.
“But I found something interesting.”
His voice was much lower, with a hint of mystery.
“At the very back of the warehouse, hidden by a pile of rusted armor, there’s a huge cabinet. It’s pure black, the kind that absorbs all light. The cabinet door is engraved with runes I can’t understand at all, and it feels cold to the touch.”
He gestured to the size of the cabinet, his eyes sparkling.
“Filch locked everything he considered the ‘most interesting and dangerous’ in that cupboard. I saw him throw in a frisbee that kept biting people and a yo-yo that screamed. He kept muttering about it being ‘highly dangerous, do not touch’ as ​​he locked the door.”
Alan’s fingers, which were turning the pages of the book, paused slightly.
The movement was extremely subtle, but enough to show that his attention had been completely diverted.
A cabinet engraved with special runes, used to store dangerous confiscated items. Caretaker Filch.
In his mind palace, multiple streams of information instantly converged and collided. Keywords were quickly extracted: [Filch], [confiscated items], [danger], [rune cabinet]. The database began a high-speed search, comparing it with the core database in his mind, known as “Original Works.”
A vague fragment of memory was quickly locked onto, magnified, and made clear – a seemingly useless blank piece of parchment confiscated by Filch.
Marauder’s Map.
Alan’s breathing did not change at all, and his eyes were still calmly fixed on the book.
He just nodded calmly, as if what he heard was just an insignificant campus anecdote.
But inside his mind palace, a brand new project was created and marked as the highest priority.
Hogwarts Exploration Project – Side Quest: The Plunderer’s Legacy
[Target: Marauder’s Map]Current Location: Filch’s Office, Rune Cabinet
[Difficulty of Obtaining: Medium to High]Action Plan: To be determined
A new side quest to obtain high-value magical items begins.
At this moment, the glass near the window of the dormitory was gently pecked.
Tap, tap, tap.
A beautiful owl belonging to Ravenclaw College was knocking on the window with the tip of its beak. It folded its wings and threw a letter through the window, landing accurately on the head of Alan’s bed.
It was a reply from Penelope Clearwater.
The letter was written in beautiful handwriting. In addition to thanking Alan again for the study advice he provided during the summer vacation, there was also a small purse of considerable value tucked inside the envelope.
Alan undid the drawstring of his purse and poured the contents into his palm.
Twenty glittering gold Galleons reflected a dazzling light in the candlelight.
Lee Jordan came closer curiously, his eyes almost glancing at the pile of gold coins.
“Oh, I helped her with a small favor during the summer vacation, and this is her thank you gift.”
Alan’s tone was as calm as if he was saying “It’s a nice day today.” He put the purse into his pocket smoothly and naturally.
This action, however, set off a huge wave in the hearts of the other two people.
“A small favor?”
“Worth twenty Galleons?!”
Fred and George’s voices rose an octave at the same time, their eyes widening like two bells. They had worked hard to develop prank props and put a lot of effort into making pranks, but they had never had more than five Galleons in their pockets at the same time.
Twenty gold Galleons was an unimaginable fortune for them.
The way they looked at Alan changed completely. It was a mixture of shock, confusion, and an unprecedented, almost tangible curiosity.
Alan looked at their exaggerated expressions and gently closed the book in his hand with a light sound.
In a pretentiously profound tone, as if imparting the ultimate secret, he explained a sentence he had read in a business book in his previous life:
“It’s actually very simple.”
His voice echoed in the quiet dormitory.
“I simply took advantage of the ‘information asymmetry’ between us and provided her with an ‘optimal solution’ that she couldn’t obtain independently, thereby creating a negligible amount of value.”
This sentence, full of strange “Muggle theory”, struck the twins and Lee Jordan’s brains like a complicated spell.
They were completely confused. They knew every word, but the combination was completely incomprehensible to them.
In their eyes, Allen was shrouded in a mysterious and profound aura, becoming even more unfathomable.
Chapter 33: A Logical Journey into Hogsmeade (Old Edition)
A week passed by at my fingertips.
For the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan, it was seven days of hell. Every minute of their spare time was filled with the intense training schedule devised by Alan. From the precise syllables of the spells, to the trajectory of the wand tip, to the instantaneous burst of magical power, every detail was disassembled, analyzed, and then reassembled.
“Iron Armor Curse!”
“Disarming spell!”
The connection between the two spells was compressed from the initial stumbling five seconds to less than two seconds.
In Allen’s mind palace, the data stream of the evaluation module representing the three people’s collaborative combat capabilities was silently refreshed.
[Risk level assessment completed.]Downgraded from ‘High’ to ‘Manageable’.
The plan can be executed.
On Saturday morning, before the first ray of morning light penetrated the stained glass of Gryffindor Tower, four dark shadows, like ghosts, had already silently passed through the common room and arrived in front of the stone sculpture of the hunchback of the one-eyed witch.
Alan’s lips moved silently, and a clear word came out.
“Separate left and right!”
Crunch——
With a dull grinding sound, the stone camel opened, revealing a bottomless black hole. Inside, there was pure darkness, devouring all light. The retina could not capture any valid photon information, and even the air carried a musty, damp, and cold smell, a long-forgotten smell.
Fred and George raised their wands immediately.
The tips of their wands struggled to produce two balls of light. However, the unstable output of magic power caused the edges of the balls to twitch and shrink erratically. The light swelled and dimmed, distorting and stretching the three people’s shadows on the stone wall, casting ghostly figures with bared fangs and claws, adding a touch of eeriness to the already dark passage.
Alan’s brows frowned slightly.
He shook his head without commenting, but put his hand into the pocket of his wizard robe.
When he reached out his hand again, he held a thumb-sized transparent crystal between his fingers.
This was the product of his elementary alchemy studies during his summer vacation. He took a piece of ordinary natural crystal, put it through several complex purification processes, and removed all impurities. Then, using a delicately constructed encapsulation spell, he locked a microscopic energy source that continuously glowed into the crystal’s core.
A trace of magic was precisely injected into it.
The next second, the crystal was instantly lit up.
The light it emitted wasn’t the aggressive, energy-filled glow of a spell, but rather a steady, bright, gentle glow like daylight. It lacked the scorching heat of a spell’s light, instead carrying a gentle warmth that illuminated every corner of the passage, every slippery brick.
“Wow!”
Fred and George stopped outputting magic power to their wands almost at the same time, letting the two unstable balls of light go out.
Lee Jordan’s mouth opened into a rounded “O”.
Once again, their cognition was refreshed by Alan’s “high-tech” gadgets that were beyond the Hogwarts teaching system.
At the end of the secret passage, it led to the storage room of Honeydukes Candy Shop. Holding their breath, the four of them carefully pushed open the secret door of the cellar, weaving through the piles of candy boxes, and finally managed to sneak out and arrive in Hogsmeade Village.
The scene in the village instantly made the twins and Lee Jordan forget the tension in the secret passage.
It’s very lively.
The air was filled with the aroma of various foods and the sounds of laughter. Senior students gathered in groups of three or four, arm in arm, their faces filled with the relief and joy of being freed from the constraints of the castle.
The four of them followed the route planned by Alan in advance, and their first stop was the Three Broomsticks Bar, the most famous bar in the village.
The warm air was mixed with the sweet aroma of butterbeer, the charred aroma of barbecue, and the crackling of burning wood in the fireplace. The noisy voices were blocked by the thick wooden door, but they hit you in the face the moment you stepped in.
They were lucky enough to find a four-person seat near the window that had just been vacated.
Soon, a witch with a graceful figure and lingering charm came over. Her smile was skilled and warm, but when her eyes swept across the four obviously young faces, there was a hint of pure surprise in that smile.
It was the bar’s owner, Ms. Rosmerta.
“Merlin’s beard, how did you get it?”
There was a hint of curiosity in her voice.
“Hogsmeade weekend this year is not open to first years.”
“We were more interested in the castle’s structure and accidentally discovered a ventilation duct.”
Alan’s expression didn’t change, and his tone was as steady as if he was stating an established fact, while maintaining eye contact with Ms. Rosmerta.
Ms. Rosmerta clearly didn’t believe this. The inquiry in her eyes remained undimmed, but she didn’t press the issue further. She simply smiled and shook her head. Adult wisdom taught her that some secrets didn’t need to be delved into.
“Four butterbeers, please.”
Fred could no longer contain his excitement and shouted impatiently.
However, at this moment, Alan did something that instantly froze the atmosphere. His gaze passed over Fred and locked onto Ms. Rosmerta.
He spoke, in a serious tone as if discussing an academic issue.
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
“I’ve noticed that the creamy foam on top of your butter beer lasts a long time without collapsing.”
“I’d like to ask, is the stability of this foam achieved by adding magical additives like ‘frog egg stabilizer’ as mentioned in ‘Advanced Potion Making’?”
He paused, gave the other party a chance to think, and then put forward his second guess.
“Or is it achieved through some kind of high-frequency, physical magical stirring technique that changes the molecular structure of the cream?”
The noise in the entire bar seemed to be strangled by an invisible hand.
Time stopped for a second.
The color drained from Fred and George’s faces at a visible speed. A mixture of shame and fear gripped them. George even subconsciously shrank back, wishing he could squeeze into the gap between the chair and the wall.
Madame Rosmerta’s professional smile faltered.
Her eyebrows raised slightly, her lips parted, and she remained frozen for a full five seconds, her brain seemingly struggling to process this completely out-of-scope question.
Then, without any warning.
“Hahaha!”
She suddenly burst into a clear and hearty laugh, which penetrated the noise of the bar and attracted curious glances from the guests at several tables around.
“Hahaha! You little guy, you’re so funny!”
She laughed so hard that tears even welled up in the corners of her eyes, which she wiped away gently with a handkerchief.
“I’ve been selling Butterbeer here for decades, and you’re the first! The first student to care about how my foam is made!”
Her laughter gradually subsided, and the look in her eyes when she looked at Alan was full of admiration and love.
Instead of answering the question, she turned around and walked towards the bar, returning a moment later with a tray.
Four cups of steaming butterbeer were placed on the table, with the creamy foam on top piled high, so dense and flawless, exuding an enticing sweet aroma.
“Child, for your question,”
Ms. Rosmerta winked at Alan, her voice filled with laughter that she couldn’t hide.
“Today’s meal is on me!”
Chapter 34: The Magical Logic of Zonko’s Joke Shop (Old Version)
The cobblestone streets of Hogsmeade glowed warmly in the afternoon sun, the sweet aftertaste of butterbeer lingering on their lips and teeth. The four of them made their way through the bustling crowd until a crooked, bright red sign caught their eye. It was Zonko’s Joke Shop.
The sign itself was a practical joke; the letters would jump and swap places from time to time.
“arrive!”
Fred and George cheered almost simultaneously, followed closely by Lee Jordan. Like three arrows shot from a bow, the three of them instantly rushed into the creaking shop door.
Inside the store, there is a sea of ​​noise and color.
The pungent smell of sulfur, mixed with the cloying sweetness of cheap candy, fermented in the air. On the shelves, biting teacups clattered, and screaming yo-yos were tossed up and down by unseen hands, leaving a trail of mournful trails. In the corner, boxes of dung balls were piled high, their rich, sickening odor forming a practically insurmountable barrier.
Fred grabbed a fart pad and gave it a squeeze. A loud and realistic fart sound echoed throughout the store, causing everyone to burst into laughter. George, on the other hand, was fascinated by a pile of fake wands and picked up one, waving it and muttering something to himself.
They completely let their nature go, and in this paradise for pranksters, every cell in their body was jumping with joy.
Alan did not follow.
He stood at the doorway, calmly surveying the chaos. His gaze was unwavering, as calm as an engineer entering a noisy factory for a safety inspection. He took slow, leisurely steps between the shelves, avoiding the excited students running around.
His presence is out of tune with the fanatical atmosphere here.
He picked up a brightly wrapped “burp candy.”
The candy is bright green with a layer of glistening icing sugar on the surface.
He didn’t put it in his mouth.
He closed his eyes.
In an instant, the noise of the outside world was completely cut off. In his spiritual world, within this magnificent building called the “Palace of Mind,” an area dedicated to magic analysis was illuminated.
Under his mental perception, the small candy was infinitely magnified and deconstructed.
Light green magic threads intertwined inside the candy, forming a crude and simple circuit.
[Item: Burp Candy][Magic circuit structure: simple, one-way trigger.][Core spell model: Micro-unstable ‘Stomach Stimulation Spell’ variant.]【Trigger mechanism: Saliva dissolution, contact stimulation.】
Effect: Causes uncontrollable diaphragmatic spasms, also known as hiccups.
【Duration: About three minutes.】
【Side effect assessment: No long-term physiological damage. 】
After a few seconds, Alan opened his eyes.
This prop that made the young wizards laugh out loud has become a clear and simple magic engineering blueprint in his eyes.
He put the burp candies into the shopping basket and picked out several classic prank props.
A box of dung eggs.
Several fake wands of different styles.
There were also some insect specimens that had been cast under a micro-harassment charm, and they kept bumping around in the box, making an annoying buzzing sound.
He purchased these things for a completely different purpose than the twins.
Not for use.
It is for disassembly and research.
Alan’s voice was not loud, but it clearly penetrated the noise and reached the ears of the twins who were picking out stinky fart pads.
Fred and George turned their heads to see Alan holding a fake black wand.
Alan handed them his wand.
“This fake wand transforms into a clucking rubber chicken when the user attempts to cast a spell.”
He stated the facts in a calm tone.
“It’s a good idea, but the way it’s done is so cheesy.”
“So what do you say we should do?”
Fred’s eyebrows raised, he put down what he was holding, and crossed his arms over his chest, with a hint of unwillingness to be challenged.
Alan didn’t care about his attitude.
“The true art of mischief is not a simple transformation.”
His voice was quiet, with an undeniable sense of authority, like a mentor guiding a dull student.
“You should think about how to use the underlying logic of the spell to create a seemingly reasonable, but actually absurd, result.”
He paused, giving the words enough time to ferment in the minds of both of them.
“For example, design a compound spell that attaches to the door handle of Filch’s office. The effect isn’t to make him fall or get covered in boils, but to make his cat, Mrs. Norris, uncontrollably sing the Hogwarts school song in a meowing tone every time she sees him.”
The smiles faded from Fred and George’s faces.
They looked at each other, and for the first time, confusion appeared in their eyes.
Alan didn’t stop.
“Or, invent a brand new ink. Everything written with this ink is normal, but it contains a spell with a delayed effect and can identify specific magical fields. Have Professor Snape write on the classroom blackboard with this ink, and ten minutes after the class ends, it will automatically decompose and reconstruct into lines of sentences praising the Gryffindor Quidditch team.”
His gaze swept over the twins, and in those black eyes flashed a cold and bright light called “wisdom”.
“Your pranks lack imagination.”
Allen made the final judgment.
“You are just using existing props instead of creating rules.”
“True art is creating a brand new joke that completely conforms to the logic of the magical world. A joke that even professors can’t immediately decipher, and may even be baffled by the intricate magical structure within it.”
Every word of these words was like a heavy hammer, hitting the Weasley twins’ hearts hard.
The chaotic world in their minds, filled with all kinds of funny and confusing ideas, was split apart by a sharp bolt of lightning.
They looked down at the props in their hands that made strange noises and deformed, and for the first time felt that these things were so… superficial.
It turns out that pranks can be so “technically sophisticated”.
It turns out that the true pinnacle is not to make others look bad, but to use your own wisdom to play with the rules of this world itself.
An unprecedented, intense desire to create surged within them, like a flame fueled by accelerant, blazing fiercely. Their breathing quickened, their eyes filled with fanaticism.
Alan watched them fall into deep thought and said no more.
He turned around, his eyes falling on the dazzling array of magic props, but his mind had already drifted to another dimension.
A whole new area was lit up in his mind palace.
Project: Business Blueprint – First Draft
On the screen, the magic structure diagram of “Burp Candy” was retrieved.
Next to it, a schematic diagram of the industrial assembly line in the Muggle world emerged.
[Analysis: The magic item ‘Burp Candy’ is based on the ‘Stomach Stimulation Charm’. This spell is simple in structure, requires low energy, and can be solidified in a medium.][Feasibility Study: Utilize Muggle industrial production lines to produce candy bases, and use standardized enchanting processes to mass-brand simplified spell models.]Cost estimate: Very low.
Efficiency estimate: Very high.
He called up the structure of the “fake wand” again.
[Analysis: Built-in micro-transformation spell, triggered by sensing the user’s magical fluctuations.][Technology Integration Solution: This can be combined with basic electronic components. For example, adding voice control or light sensing modules can improve triggering accuracy and fun. Expand the transformation target from a single “rubber chicken” to a variety of random items within the database.]Use magical thinking to revolutionize the Muggle world.
Use Muggle technology to mass-produce magical creativity.
For the first time, a vague but extremely grand business blueprint was constructed into a clear and logically rigorous prototype in his mind palace.
The “magic product line” of his future technology company now has its first cornerstone.
Chapter 35 Honeydukes’ Recipe Trade (Old Version)
The last stop of the Hogsmeade journey is at the door of Honeydukes Candy Shop, which is always open to students.
The air was filled with a sweet aroma so rich it seemed almost solidified, the ultimate fermentation of boiling caramel, melted chocolate, and countless fruit essences. Light filtered through glass jars festooned with colorful candies, casting a dazzling array of iridescent spots on the ground.
“This way! Bibi Every Flavour Beans!”
“Chocolate Frog! I’m still missing Dumbledore’s card!”
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan cheered and were instantly drowned in the crowd. Their figures were like three swimming fish, rushing towards their respective target shelves with precision.
Alan didn’t move.
His gaze didn’t linger on the bustling area for even a second. Like the most sophisticated scanner, his eyes quickly filtered out the candy categories he knew and had complete data on, ultimately locking onto a specially left empty booth in the center of the counter.
There was a plate of crystal clear hard candies, each of which had spirals of colorful stripes embedded in it.
The product label reads in cursive: Rainbow Candy (New Product Experience).
The instructions on the label are simple: consume it and your hair will transform into a rainbow of colors within ten minutes.
Alan moved forward steadily, and the crowd automatically made way for his aura that kept strangers away.
He picked one up and felt a cool, hard touch on his fingertips.
[Target locked: Rainbow Candy.][Beginning analysis…]In the palace of thought, countless data streams flashed by like waterfalls.
[Ingredient Analysis: Sucrose base, with trace amounts of Transfiguration magic remaining, and a complex coloring spell at its core.][Spell structure scan: Seven independent color spell units detected, arranged in a linear sequence.][Energy model construction…construction failed. Warning: The energy output model is extremely unstable, with a random fluctuation threshold exceeding 15.7%.][Deduction Result: During the execution of the spell, the single source of magical power can easily lead to sequence disruption or energy overflow, resulting in color interference. Expected Performance: In addition to the standard seven-color cycle, non-preset colors such as brown, muddy gray, and mottled spots will randomly appear. Conclusion: A failed magic product.]The entire analysis process takes less than three seconds.
At this moment, Alan looked over the counter and saw the familiar, chubby face. It was the saleswoman who had been shocked by his “academic research” on the Hogwarts Express.
Her name tag read: Ambrosio Frum. Owner of Honeydukes.
Alan’s mouth curled up in an almost imperceptible arc. Everything connected.
He held the rainbow candy in his hand and walked towards the counter.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Froome. We meet again.”
His voice was clear and calm, reaching the other person’s ears accurately amidst the noise.
The shop owner, who was packing candy for students, looked up at the sound, and when she saw Allen, the professional smile on her face instantly became lively.
“Oh! It’s you, little genius!”
She was clearly impressed by this weird kid who used magic to analyze the ingredients of a cauldron cake on the train.
“What would you like? Cauldron Cake? Or Chocolate Frog?”
“I’m very interested in your ‘Rainbow Candy’.”
Alan put the candy in his hand on the counter and got straight to the point.
“This is a very innovative product.”
He first gave affirmation, and then changed the subject.
“However, if my analysis is correct, its color-changing effect should have serious stability defects.”
Alan spoke at a steady pace, and each word was like a precisely thrown stone.
“For example, users expect an orderly cycle of red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple. But in reality, occasionally, even frequently, the colors uncontrollably change into earthy browns, lifeless grays, or even… spots mixed with multiple colors?”
The smile on Ms. Froome’s face froze inch by inch.
Her eyes widened slightly, her mouth dropped open subconsciously, and her once enthusiastic expression was replaced by pure shock. She looked at Alan, as if she were looking at a ghost from her nightmare.
“You…you…this…how could you possibly know?”
Her voice was dry and lacked the loudness it had just now.
This problem, this damning technical difficulty, had been like an insurmountable barrier, hindering the development of this new product for three full months. It had consumed a vast amount of her Galleons and energy, yet the solution remained unresolved. Consequently, “Rainbow Candy” could only be sold on a small scale through trial sales, with no scope for widespread promotion.
And now, this secret has been revealed by a freshman.
Alan didn’t answer her question, but just gave her a confident, controlled smile.
He pulled out a roll of parchment he had prepared long ago from the inside pocket of his robe, his movements unhurried, as if this meeting had been part of his plan.
He pushed the parchment across the counter.
“Here’s an improved recipe I wrote.”
Ms. Froome’s eyes were drawn involuntarily to the parchment. Written in extremely neat handwriting, it contained complex diagrams and potion symbols she had never seen before.
“In your original recipe, the magic power supply path for the color spell was too simple,” Alan began to explain, his voice carrying an authority that didn’t belong to someone his age. “This resulted in extreme fluctuations in energy output, peaks and valleys, which caused the colors to go out of control. My solution draws on the theory of ‘magic neutralizers’ in ‘Advanced Potion Making’.”
“I added something very common, but something you’d never expect to see here: ground unicorn horn.”
“Unicorn horn?” Ms. Frum exclaimed. This is a precious material usually used in high-level antidotes.
“Yes.” Alan nodded. “Here, it doesn’t act as an antidote, but rather as a ‘magic stabilizing medium’. Its powder can perfectly wrap around the energy core of each color spell, forming a buffer layer. When the spell is triggered, it can precisely smooth the energy output curve, ensuring that each color spell energy is released stably according to the set order and intensity.”
“The final result,” Allen concluded, “is that the color-changing effect will be 100% stable, with absolutely no color variations beyond the preset settings. Furthermore, because the energy dissipation rate has been reduced from 15.7% to below 1.2%, the duration of the effect will be extended by at least five minutes.”
Ms. Froome’s hands were shaking.
She reached out her hand tremblingly and almost “grabbed” the parchment.
She only took a cursory glance, her gaze immediately fixed on the clear, engineering-like logic flow chart on the paper. Every step, every material ratio, every direction of the flow of magic power was shockingly clear.
It was a kind of Potions thinking that she had never encountered before, full of rigorous mathematical logic.
This formula is not an improvement, but a dimensionality reduction attack.
It is simply a genius, no, it is a genius idea!
It not only perfectly solved the problems she had been having for months, but also brought the overall quality of the product to a whole new level!
She suddenly raised her head and stared at Alan with the eyes as if she were looking at an unknown creature.
“Child…you…who are you?”
There was a hint of fear in her voice.
A first-year student easily solved a technical barrier that plagued professional potion masters? This was beyond the scope of “genius” and did not conform to the common sense of the wizarding world at all.
The final verification was carried out secretly in Honeydukes’ kitchen workshop.
When Ms. Froome saw with her own eyes that the rainbow candy made according to the new recipe showed a perfect, stable and silky seven-color gradient on the dwarf taster’s head, the look in her eyes when she looked at Allen had completely turned into fanatical admiration.
She made a decision that made Fred and George’s eyes turn red with jealousy.
Not only did she personally direct the store staff, she also packed a gigantic gift package for Alan with all kinds and flavors of candy in the store.
She also solemnly handed Alan a gold-plated permanent VIP card.
“Mr. Alan Scott,” she said, using the most respectful title. “I, Ambrosio Frum, on behalf of the founder of Honeydukes, promise you that for the next seven years, while you are a student at Hogwarts, all the goods in this shop will be completely free of charge to you personally.”
When the four returned with their load and were about to return to the castle through the secret passage leading to the statue of the one-eyed witch, a new problem arose.
The huge candy package in a burlap bag was almost half the height of Alan and extremely heavy. It was impossible to drag it into the narrow passage.
Fred and George were discussing with gloomy faces whether to move the goods in batches.
Allen, however, simply walked calmly to the open space, raised his head, and put two fingers into his mouth.
A clear, sharp whistle cut through the twilight of Hogsmeade.
A moment later, a black afterimage came rushing from the distant sky.
It was his raven, the Night Raven.
Like a condensed black lightning bolt, it landed silently before everyone. It was much larger than an ordinary raven, its feathers gleaming metallically in the sunset.
The night crow used its powerful claws that gleamed with cold light to accurately and firmly grasp the huge package.
With Alan’s simple gesture, it flapped its wings violently, creating a strong wind, easily lifting the heavy gift of thanks off the ground, and flew rapidly towards Hogwarts Castle.
The whole process was smooth and full of a sense of well-trained efficiency.
This scene happened to be seen entirely by Percy Weasley who had just walked out of the Three Broomsticks Pub.
He adjusted his prefect badge, his brows furrowed.
His brain couldn’t process the information in front of him.
Why would the owner of Honeydukes show such extraordinary enthusiasm and generosity to an unknown first-year student whom he had never even heard of?
The value of that package was almost equivalent to half a year’s income for an average wizard family.
And that well-trained raven…
Percy’s eyes were filled with confusion and scrutiny. There was definitely something wrong with this new student named Alan Scott.
Chapter 36 Logic and Prejudice (Old Edition)
The noise and commotion of the first week of school were like a stone thrown into a lake. The ripples were forcibly smoothed out by Alan Scott before they had even subsided.
The pace of life at Hogwarts failed to tame him.
On the contrary, the pulse of this thousand-year-old castle began to unconsciously follow his heartbeat.
on Monday.
Five o’clock in the morning.
The sky was a deep indigo, the stars still shimmering. In the Gryffindor common room, the flames in the fireplace licked the last of the oak logs, making a soft crackling sound, the only sound in the silence.
Alan had already sat upright in front of the fire, his back straight, his face free of the sleepy sluggishness of someone who had just woken up. The firelight cast a mosaic of light and dark on his focused profile, illuminating the thick tome open on his lap—Advanced Potion Making.
He borrowed this book from a little-known “back door” after analyzing the librarian’s patrol routes, shift changes, and several “unintentional” small helps to several senior students.
Everything is going as planned.
Suddenly, a burst of hurried and hurried footsteps came from the spiral staircase of the girls’ dormitory, breaking the tranquility of the early morning.
A blonde girl rushed down, her hair clinging to her forehead, which was sweating from nervousness. She clutched a crumpled schedule in her hand, the anxiety on her face almost condensing into substance.
Hannah Abbott, a new student at Hufflepuff House.
Her eyes darted around the empty common room, finally settling on the lone figure in front of the fireplace.
She was completely lost here.
“Excuse me……”
Hannah’s voice trembled slightly, and seeing Alan, she felt like a drowning person grabbing the only floating plank.
“Do you know… do you know how to get to the greenhouse for Herbology class? I… I’m going to be late!”
Alan’s eyes slowly lifted from the page, calm and without a ripple. He closed the book, his movements neither hurried nor slow, without answering immediately.
He took out a roll of parchment from the leather bag beside him.
It was a copy of a map, drawn with a special waterproof ink, with precise lines and clear markings.
He handed over the map.
“Don’t worry, you won’t be late.”
His voice was steady and clear, with a power that could instantly soothe people. He stretched out his finger and touched a red line on the map.
“From here, go straight up to the third floor and through the corridor where the Transfiguration classroom is. Behind the third armor stand, there’s a loose brick. It’s a hidden shortcut that leads directly to the outside of the greenhouse, saving you at least five minutes.”
His fingertips paused, then moved to Hannah’s chaotic schedule.
“Also, your course schedule has serious logical flaws.”
On the way to the auditorium, the corridor of the castle was still empty. The morning light shone through the high windows, casting beams of light, and fine dust floated in the air.
It only took Alan three minutes.
“Think of your brain as a building you are most familiar with, like your home.”
As he walked, he spoke in an almost teaching tone, his pace neither fast nor slow, always matching Hannah’s rhythm.
“Each course is a room. Think about its properties.”
“Charms class can be set in the living room. Because that’s where you’ll use it most frequently and where you need to interact with people the most.”
“Herbal medicine class is about gardens, it’s very intuitive.”
“Transfiguration, it’s your bedroom. It’s a private space where you need to let your imagination run wild and change its form as you wish.”
He glanced sideways at the girl beside him who was listening attentively.
“Then, transform the time and place of the class into specific objects in this room. For Tuesday morning’s Herbology class, imagine it as a golden apple with ‘9 o’clock’ written on it hanging from the apple tree in the garden. For Thursday afternoon’s Transfiguration class, imagine it as the pillow with the Transfiguration spell pattern of ‘2 o’clock’ printed on it on your bedroom bed.”
“That way, your brain isn’t busy memorizing lists of boring words.”
Alan paused at the door of the auditorium and concluded.
“It’s about taking a relaxing walk around your familiar ‘home’.”
This improved technique, which he named the “Elementary Memory Palace,” completely stunned Hannah Abbott. She stood there, stunned, as the tangled mess of course information in her mind suddenly became neatly organized, as if by an invisible hand. Living room, garden, bedroom… For the first time, those cold course names, times, and locations became vivid and orderly.
Her eyes changed from initial panic to surprise, and finally to pure admiration.
During the meal, Allen threw another subversive idea at her.
“Many people think magic is emotional, mysterious, and relies on talent and a flash of inspiration.”
He cut the sausages on the plate with surgical precision.
“But in my opinion, this perception is biased. The essence of learning magic is efficient ‘information processing.’ The faster you analyze, decode, and reconstruct information, and the clearer the logical connections, the faster you will master a new magic.”
For Hannah, this brief exchange opened the door to a new world.
For Allen, it was an important system upgrade in his mind palace.
A brand new planning module was quietly established with silent instructions.
Project Name: Hogwarts Interpersonal Relationship Database
His extraordinary analytical ability allowed him to instantly grasp a core fact: in this world hidden with countless secrets and dangers, it was far from enough for one person alone to successfully achieve his grand ultimate goal spanning decades.
He needs a network.
A large and reliable interpersonal network that transcends college barriers and grade barriers.
From this moment on, when his eyes swept across every leaping figure in the auditorium, it was no longer just observation.
He is analyzing.
He is evaluating.
Every student’s name, college, personality traits, potential abilities, family background, social circle… all the fragmented information was captured, screened, and marked by his brain at high speed, and then archived one by one and entered into the newly established database.
This is a huge project that will take at least seven years to fill and complete.
Allen has developed a clear phased strategy for himself.
In the lower grades, he will devote 90% of his energy to the two most core areas.
“Knowledge Acquisition”.
“Technology Research and Development”.
As for the rest, such as the noisy Quidditch matches, the boring house disputes, and the childish social interactions with peers…
In his evaluation system, these are labeled as “low-value distractions.”
Not considered at this time.
Chapter 37: Theoretical Physics in Spells (Old Edition)
On Tuesday morning, sunlight streamed through the towering Gothic windows of Hogwarts Castle, casting dappled shadows along the ancient stone corridors. The air was filled with the scent of old parchment, wood floor wax, and a faint, strangely sweet aroma of magic.
The first-year Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were walking together towards the Charms classroom.
Alan Scott walked beside Hannah Abbott, who was chirping with gratitude to him.
“Alan, your ‘Memory Palace’ method is simply miraculous!”
Hannah’s face lit up with excitement. She waved her hands and said happily, “I can now recite the entire semester’s schedule word for word, and even recite it backwards! If my mother knew, she would definitely think I was cast under some kind of magic that would increase my wisdom!”
Alan just smiled and nodded. His eyes had already passed Hannah and were cast towards the classroom in front of him where he was about to start his journey of exploring magic theory.
In the Charms classroom, the short Professor Flitwick was standing on a pile of thick books. His height was just enough to allow his pointed wizard hat to pass over the podium and be clearly seen by every student.
He announced the official start of the first class in his unique, shrill but extremely loud voice.
“Welcome everyone to the Charms class! Here, you will learn how to use wands and spells to make the world undergo wonderful changes according to your will!”
There was an irrepressible buzz of excitement in the classroom.
Today’s content is the first real spell that all freshmen will come into contact with – the levitation spell.
“WingardiumLeviosa!”
Professor Flitwick’s voice echoed throughout the classroom.
“…Everyone must remember that the most crucial parts of casting this spell are two: clear and accurate pronunciation, and an elegant, flick-and-flick wrist movement.”
Professor Flitwick explained, using his slender wand to perform a perfect demonstration. A tiny silver light flashed, and a feather on his podium floated lightly.
“But more importantly,” his voice turned serious, “when you cast a spell, your mind must be highly focused, focused on the ‘result’ you want to achieve – that is, ‘make it fly’!”
He explained in detail the pronunciation of the spell, the force and angle of the wrist movements, and the tricks of concentration. For most freshmen, this information was enough to make their brains work at high speed, trying hard to understand and remember.
After explaining all the basic principles, Professor Flitwick looked around at the young and focused faces in the audience and habitually asked:
“Okay, students, do you have any questions about the principles of the levitation spell?”
The whole classroom was silent.
The freshmen looked at each other in bewilderment. They were already quite good at remembering everything they’d just learned. Who else would have a question? What was the question? Is it edible?
However, in the silence, a hand was raised.
The hand was not hurried, nor did it show any hesitation. It was simply raised calmly and firmly, with five fingers together, and the posture was as standard as the illustration in the textbook.
It’s Alan Scott.
Professor Flitwick’s small body trembled slightly, and a hint of surprise flashed in his large eyes behind his glasses. It was rare for a freshman to dare to ask questions in the first Charms class of the first week of school.
But he immediately showed a happy expression and indicated that he could ask questions.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Scott! Go ahead.”
Alan stood up, his figure standing tall in the morning light. His voice was clear and steady, and every word was clearly heard by everyone present.
“Professor, I have a question.”
As soon as he opened his mouth, the students around him who were whispering suddenly quieted down.
“You just mentioned that we should focus our thoughts on the ‘result.’ So, I’d like to ask: when we cast a levitation spell on a feather, is the amount of magic power we output a constant minimum, sufficient to overcome its gravity, or does the spell itself have an ‘adaptive mechanism’?”
Alan’s speech was not fast, but his choice of words made the air in the classroom begin to become sticky.
“Will this ‘adaptive mechanism’ dynamically and optimally adjust the magic power output based on the target’s actual mass, volume, and the air resistance that needs to be overcome?”
This question is not a depth bomb.
It was a precision-guided tactical missile that struck directly at the core of this initiatory lesson and penetrated the surface to a depth no one cared about.
All the freshmen’s expressions froze.
Their eyes quickly changed from initial confusion to shock at being treated as an alien.
Everyone was still thinking about how to pronounce the word “Wingardium Leviosa” and how to “swing and flick” the wrist, and Alan Scott… he was actually discussing the “power output mode” and “adaptive algorithm” of this spell?
Is this really something a first-year student should be thinking about?
Even the experienced spell master at the podium, Professor Flitwick himself, was completely stunned.
His wand, which was about to swing, froze in mid-air, his mouth slightly open, and his eyes behind the lenses widened in shock.
He had been teaching for decades and had seen countless talented students, but none of them had been able to raise such a profound, such a physical, and such a direct question to the essence of the spell in the first class of the first grade!
After a brief, breathtaking moment of astonishment, Professor Flitwick’s eyes erupted with the ecstasy and admiration of a scholar discovering a new world. It was so brilliant that his entire being seemed to glow.
“A… a very profound question, Mr. Scott!”
He waved his wand excitedly, and his shrill voice rose an octave with excitement.
“Excellent! This is exactly the question I was hoping to hear! It touches upon the core area of ​​modern Charms – the intelligence and efficiency of spells! For this question, Gryffindor, I give you ten points!”
The sound of adding points finally woke the other students from their petrified state. The way they looked at Alan had changed from looking at an alien to looking at an incomprehensible monster.
During the following class practice time, a very dramatic contrasting scene took place in the classroom.
Most of the classroom was filled with repeated, slightly funny shouts.
“Wing-GAR-diumLevi-O-sa!”
The students practiced the “swing and flick” motion over and over again, their faces flushed, hoping to make the feather flutter even a little. Ron Weasley poked his wand too hard and nearly pierced the feather. Seamus Finnigan was so excited that a spark flew from the tip of his wand, almost setting the feather on fire.
In the other corner of the classroom, at Alan Scott’s desk, there was an eerie silence.
The feather that belonged to him had already been quietly and steadily suspended in the air.
Without a tremor or a shake, it remained counterintuitively a foot above the table, as if held precisely by an invisible hand.
But he didn’t stop there.
He didn’t even try to lift the feathers higher or do the fancy flying maneuvers freshmen dream of.
He did something that was incomprehensible to everyone, including Hermione Granger who had been secretly observing him.
Alan took out a brand new piece of parchment, spread it on the table, then picked up a quill and began to write something on the paper quickly.
And the floating feather in front of him began to move under his precise control.
That’s not flying, and it’s not hovering.
It was a random, irregular and extremely complex movement.
Sometimes the feather would shift rapidly to the left, sometimes it would plunge downward, only to bounce diagonally upward the next instant. Its trajectory was completely unpredictable, filled with chaotic randomness, yet it was firmly bound by invisible reins within a limited cubic space.
Brownian motion.
He was actually using a basic levitation spell to simulate a classical physics phenomenon from another discipline, and he was trying to use a quill to record its ridiculously complex motion trajectory data.
At this moment, Hermione Granger felt an unprecedented shock. She had always thought herself to be the most diligent and knowledgeable among her peers, having already finished preparing for the entire semester’s textbooks. But what Alan had done had completely transcended the textbooks, beyond the scope of “learning.”
He wasn’t learning magic.
He was dissecting magic.
This behavior of turning a lively and interesting spells class into a boring “theoretical physics experiment class” made all the students, including Hermione, silently but deeply feel the insurmountable gap between people.
Chapter 38: The Concept of Automated Magic (Old Version)
The bell for the end of get out of class echoed in the ancient stone classroom. The sound was like a pardon, instantly shattering the tense atmosphere that had lasted the entire class.
The harsh sounds of chair legs rubbing against the stone floor came one after another. The young wizards, as if they had been granted amnesty, stuffed their quills and parchment into their schoolbags, their faces filled with an eagerness to get to lunch.
Alan Scott was the only exception.
He remained seated, as if the ringing of the liberation bell had nothing to do with him. His gaze was fixed on the parchment before him. Drawings on it were no longer simple lines, but a complex three-dimensional coordinate system composed of countless data points. Every inch of displacement, every hovering, every rotation of the feather under varying magical parameters was translated into cold mathematical language with ruthless precision.
Alan didn’t raise his head until the last student disappeared through the doorway. He carefully rolled up the parchment filled with calculation results, his movements steady and without a trace of haste.
He stood up and walked over to Professor Filius Flitwick, who was tidying up the podium.
“Professor, can I have a few minutes of your time?”
Professor Flitwick turned around and saw that it was Alan. A bright smile immediately broke out on his short face. He was never stingy with his time and appreciation for this proud student who showed amazing understanding in Charms.
“Of course, Mr. Scott.”
His voice was full of anticipation.
Alan didn’t exchange any unnecessary pleasantries. He walked to the desk and unrolled the parchment with a swish. A dense mass of diagrams and formulas instantly filled Professor Flitwick’s vision. It was a strange beauty, brimming with rigorous mathematical logic, a stark contrast to traditional magical theory.
“According to my preliminary calculations,” Allen pointed his finger at an inflection point on the chart, his voice calm and emotionless, “the magical power output of the Levitation Spell does have a basic adaptive mechanism, but its efficiency is not high, with approximately 15% of the energy being lost.”
Professor Flitwick leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with intense interest behind his spectacles. While the concept of energy dissipation had occasionally been mentioned in advanced magical research, no one had ever been able to quantify it to such a precise degree.
“But,” Allen’s tone changed slightly, “if we combine it with other basic spells, perhaps we can achieve some more interesting functions.”
“Oh? For example?”
Professor Flitwick’s curiosity was piqued. He had a feeling that what he was about to hear was definitely not some ordinary student’s fantastical idea of ​​”turning feathers into birds.”
“For example,” Alan proposed a groundbreaking idea.
“Can we create a spell that will ‘auto-clean the blackboard’?”
“Spell…procedure?”
This brand new word, like a stone dropped into a calm lake, stirred up unprecedented ripples in Professor Flitwick’s heart. He chewed on the word, feeling the completely unfamiliar logical structure contained in it.
“Yes, the procedure.”
Alan’s eyes were calm and deep, and he began to use the knowledge system from another world to deconstruct the magic in front of him.
“Professor, you can think of it as a ‘computer program’ in the Muggle world. It’s not a single spell, but a logical combination of spells.”
This metaphor did not offend Professor Flitwick, but instead made him more focused.
Alan picked up a piece of chalk and turned to walk to a spare blackboard next to him.
The chalk makes a crisp “click” sound when it touches the blackboard.
He didn’t write any spells, but drew a box.
“The first step is to create a trigger.”
He wrote a note next to the box and then drew an arrow from the box to the next one.
“For example, when you say the word ‘get out of class dismissed,’ the program starts.”
His movements were smooth and precise, as if he were performing a delicate surgical operation.
“The second step is to activate a ‘cleansing spell’ to remove all chalk writing from the blackboard.”
Another box, another arrow.
“Step three, activate a ‘drying spell’ to ensure the blackboard surface is completely dry.”
“Step four, activate a ‘reset spell’ to automatically return the eraser and chalk to their original positions.”
“Finally, the program ends and waits for the next trigger instruction.”
When the last box was drawn, a clear, rigorous, and coldly logical flowchart was presented in front of Professor Flitwick.
Alan put down the chalk, turned around, looked at the Master of Charms who was completely dazed, and made a final summary.
“By setting clear logical sequences, triggering conditions, and ending instructions, we can make a series of basic, independent magics work together to achieve a complex, automated function.”
“This is what I envision as ‘magic automation’.”
The entire classroom was eerily quiet.
The sunlight shines through the high windows, casting a beam of light dust that slowly floats in the air.
Professor Flitwick stared blankly at the flowchart on the blackboard. His brain, the brain of a man steeped in Charms for decades and hailed as one of the greatest spell masters of our time, was experiencing a violent, subversive storm.
He had spent his entire life studying spells: how to make spells more powerful, how to cast them faster, how to create entirely new spell effects.
But he never thought about it.
He had never imagined that spells could be “programmed” like this!
This is no longer just a spell innovation.
This is a completely new and revolutionary way of thinking!
It elevates the spell from a “skill” that relies on inspiration and talent to the level of “engineering” that can be quantified, designed, and optimized!
Professor Flitwick’s body began to tremble slightly, not because of cold or fear, but a pure, intellectual shock that came from the depths of his soul.
“genius……”
His lips moved, and the words he spoke were dry and hoarse.
“This… this is simply a genius idea!”
His voice suddenly rose, filled with uncontrollable excitement, and his short body seemed to contain a volcano about to erupt.
“Mr. Scott, you… you may have pointed out a crucial, new direction for the future development of modern magic!”
At the same moment when Professor Flitwick was extremely excited, deep in Alan’s consciousness, in that magnificent palace of thought, a prompt sound far more magnificent and solemn than the professor’s praise rang out.
The sound seemed to be formed by the collision of countless logical runes and the symphony of the paths of stars in the universe.
[Epic Quest Trigger: Magic Programmer]A blue, translucent data stream unfolded in front of Allen’s retina, forming a task panel.
Mission Description: The value of theory lies in practice. Please successfully develop and demonstrate the world’s first stable “spell program,” no matter how simple its function.
[Quest Reward: Unlock a new skill tree – ‘Spell Programming’, experience +5000, and randomly gain a special talent related to logic.]Looking at the extremely generous reward, Alan’s eyes did not fluctuate at all, but deep in his heart, an extremely clear plan node was marked and locked.
His first core research project at Hogwarts has been officially established.