Loren sat beside Hermione, watching the trio's adventure together with her.
He noticed the three had already passed Professor Sprout's obstacle and were heading toward Professor Flitwick's challenge.
So he turned to Hermione and asked, "How did they do on the last one?"
"Don't even mention it!"
The moment Hermione heard Loren's question, she huffed. "I feel like all the extra tutoring I gave them was for nothing. Do you know how they 'handled' the Devil's Snare Professor Sprout left there?"
"Don't tell me it was Neville ripping the Snare apart with his bare hands?"
After a moment's thought, Loren offered that answer.
"How did you know!"
Hermione was a little surprised that Loren could guess it.
"Since they didn't pass the proper way, then it had to be something unexpected. Neville's read through the White-Robed Wizard's Notes I wrote for him—solving a Snare like that should be easy for him."
As Loren explained to Hermione, he opened another screen to watch the playback.
In the replay, Neville was the first to drop down. Because of his body weight, the Devil's Snare net didn't stop him and he fell straight through.
Harry and Ron weren't so lucky; both were immediately caught by the Snare.
When Neville identified the plant and tried to tell Harry and Ron to get out quickly, their cries for help were already coming from above.
Only then did Neville realize the vines had seized both their legs. They were still dodging frantically and shouting for help—if not, the vines would already be wrapped around their necks.
Seeing the situation was turning bad, Neville didn't want to try to scare off the Snare head-on; he didn't know the Fire-Making Spell and didn't have a flame source on him.
Watching his friends about to be overwhelmed, Neville immediately switched off his auto-training suit and then leapt three meters up, using his own strength to drag the vines down to the floor by force.
Seeing this, Loren couldn't help feeling a little sentimental. Without Hermione, Harry and Ron had still "become the ones holding the team back"—only this time, the one they were holding back was Neville.
After the replay, Loren closed the screen and sat next to Hermione again to watch the live feed.
By now, the three had reached a brightly lit room with a high arched ceiling and a heavy wooden door on the far side.
Suspended in midair, countless little birds glittering like jewels beat their wings and wheeled to and fro.
"What do you think will happen if we run across?" Harry asked his companions anxiously.
Ron, shrugging off the Invisibility Cloak, answered Harry, "Could be trouble. Let's ditch this cumbersome cloak so we can run faster."
Hearing Ron, Harry and Neville also took off the cloak, then the three lined up and sprinted to the far side of the room.
They expected sharp beaks and claws to tear at them at any moment, but nothing happened—they were perfectly fine.
Harry stepped up and tugged the handle; the door was locked.
Seeing that, Neville came forward and attempted an "Alohomora (physical edition)" on the door—yanking and wrenching at it—but the door didn't budge. The wall beside it, however, did loosen a little under Neville's monstrous strength.
Having witnessed Neville tear through Devil's Snare earlier, Harry and Ron had great faith in his strength. When even Neville couldn't open it, they began searching the room for another way to unlock the door.
After a long look around, Harry suddenly said, "Keys… look at the—"
Following Harry's gaze, Ron looked up at the flock—at the mass of flying keys.
Harry started scanning the room and soon exclaimed in delight, "Look—there's a broom over there! We'll have to fly up and catch the key for this door!"
"But there are hundreds of keys—we'll need to search carefully for the right—"
Ron's words were cut off by a sudden noise.
He and Harry turned toward the sound to find Neville, wearing a pair of gloves, hammering the wall with all his might. Dust billowed so thickly they couldn't see what was happening inside it; only the repeated thuds kept echoing out.
With a thunderous crash, the banging stopped. Neville's voice floated out of the haze: "Harry, Ron—come here. I've got the door open."
Harry and Ron looked at each other and swallowed hard. Their estimation of Neville's strength had just gone up another notch.
When he noticed they weren't moving, Neville took off the specially made gloves his Gran had crafted for him and walked over. He clapped each of them on the shoulder—only to scare Harry and Ron so badly they collapsed on the floor.
Neville, baffled, helped the two up and asked, very puzzled, "What's wrong with you two?"
Harry swallowed again and asked cautiously, "Neville… h-how are you so strong?"
He had seen Neville rip through the Devil's Snare before and knew Neville was much stronger than he was, but tearing up a plant wasn't nearly as shocking as smashing through a stone wall bare-handed.
"My strength isn't that great—Hermione's stronger than me, let alone—"
Hearing Harry call him strong, Neville rushed to deny it. He still remembered how, back when he couldn't control his strength, Hermione had pinched his wrist single-handedly with effortless ease.
"Neville, are we good friends?" Ron cut in from the side, interrupting Neville.
"Of course we're good friends—otherwise I wouldn't—"
Neville got halfway through and Ron cut him off again. "Since we're good friends, could you make me as strong as you?"
Ron was busy imagining being as strong as Neville, so he could finally give those two who liked to bully him a proper lesson.
"That's easy. Just train with Loren every day. Loren's very approachable."
Neville didn't hide how he'd gotten stronger and told him straight out.
"Train every day? I've never seen you do that—you're not having me on, are you?"
Ron was skeptical. The three of them were basically together every day; he'd never seen Neville head off to train with Loren.
"I get up at five every morning and train for an hour by the Black Lake. Then I go back to the dorm to wash up, and only after everything's done do I come wake you both."
Neville hurried to explain his daily routine.
Ron thought for a moment and realized it was true—ever since term started, it was almost always Neville who came to wake him and Harry, and occasionally Loren.
"So all I have to do is get up at five and train every day?"
Ron asked, a little hopeful. If waking at five was all it took to become like Neville, he didn't mind getting up early.
Harry perked up his ears. He was thinking much the same thing as Ron.
"Of course not. Morning training is really tough—I often work myself until I pass out. And besides the morning session, I wear weights during the day."
As Neville spoke, he took off his auto-training suit and put it on Ron, then switched it to automatic training mode so Ron could experience it.
In the very next second, Ron's limbs began to twist; intense pain shot through his body—he fainted on the spot. The suit immediately switched to medical mode, and Ron's contorted limbs began to recover.
The real culprit here, of course, was Neville. The suit was loaded with Neville's training data. Putting it on Ron and firing it up made Ron instantly experience Neville's usual training intensity.
If Loren hadn't built a health-monitoring function into the suit back when he'd designed it, Ron's situation would've been far worse than some twisted limbs.
This sudden incident even startled Loren and Hermione as they watched the live feed from the Room of Requirement.
Just moments earlier, Loren had been praising Neville for refusing to follow Professor Flitwick's intended route and instead opening a new path by punching through the wall—showing flashes of a White-Robed Wizard's style and insight.
He hadn't expected Neville to do something like this the very next second. Clearly, Neville's IQ really did fluctuate—high one moment, low the next—impossible to predict.
Just as Loren was lamenting Neville's judgment, he saw Neville reaching to remove the suit from Ron. He stopped caring about staying hidden and spoke directly into Neville's mind.
Neville froze for a heartbeat, then realized it was Loren speaking to him.
He'd been startled by Ron's condition and had acted on instinct. Hearing Loren now, he understood what was going on and stopped trying to take the suit off Ron.
Instead, he pulled a vial from his robes and poured it down Ron's throat.
It was a restorative potion for muscle strength. As the saying goes, "a long-illness makes the doctor"—after wearing the auto-training suit for so long and getting injured more than a few times, Neville knew how to handle it.
Once Ron was treated, Neville looked over at Harry—the trio was temporarily down a man.
Harry was still gaping, not having processed what had happened. How had a thrilling, dangerous adventure suddenly turned into an accidental man-down?
Seeing Harry frozen, Neville levitated a stone with his wand and nudged Harry with it.
Without the suit to assist him, Neville was afraid he might lose control with a direct touch and hurt Harry; if that happened, the mission really would be over.
The stone's tap snapped Harry awake. He looked at Ron on the floor and frowned.
"How is he? Do we need to take him to the hospital wing?"
"It's just muscle strain and exhaustion from overtraining. Give the suit a little time and it'll fix him up."
Neville's answer made Harry decide at once. "Then let Ron recover here. We keep going—otherwise we won't get to the Stone before Snape."
With that, Harry didn't even look back. He ducked straight into the passage Neville had punched through.
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