"We're here. This is the hidden room we found!"
After spending quite a long time on the moving staircases,
the section connecting the second and third floor finally swung around and latched onto a staircase it hardly ever linked to.
Just ahead, Justin rapped his knuckles lightly on a stretch of wall and said excitedly.
After three crisp knocks, the bit of wall—almost untouched by torchlight—shimmered and revealed a painting.
"It was an accident the first time," Justin explained.
"But once we answered the question on this painting, we were suddenly brought into that room.
"There are lanterns inside, but—Lumos."
The tip of Justin's wand glowed with a faint light. Hermione followed; her wandlight was noticeably brighter.
Then Sean stepped closer, his wand shining like a small glass bulb.
"Oh, Sean…"
Justin whispered in awe, but all three quickly focused on the painting.
The canvas was yellowed and cracked with age.
It did not depict a stern wizard or a wandering knight, but a snow-white owl in a velvet waistcoat,
a tiny pair of pince-nez clamped precariously on its beak.
One claw clutched the glasses as if they might slip at any second;
the other gripped an old roll of parchment.
"What are you staring at! Owls are hawks too, mind you!"
Its shrill voice made Hermione laugh first.
Justin followed, and even Sean couldn't help the smile tugging at his lips.
"You again! What are you laughing at?!"
The owl flapped so hard Sean could almost feel the gust of air.
"I—I just remembered something happy," Hermione said, face flushing.
That time Sean really lost it.
"You're laughing too!" squawked the owl. "What about you?!"
"I also remembered something happy," Sean said quietly.
He'd never expected to see something here that reminded him so much of a scene from a film in his previous life—
and on an owl of all things.
"You're clearly laughing at me! None of you have stopped!"
The owl flapped madly, parchment in its claws fluttering so violently it was a wonder it didn't tear.
"Sorry."
"Sorry."
"I'm sorry."
Before it snapped completely and barred their way, all three choked down their laughter and apologised as sincerely as they could.
"Annoying little wizards! If you want to go in, answer my question!"
It unfurled the old parchment. Whether it could actually read as an owl was debatable,
but after a bit of theatrical "searching," it finally chose one and read aloud:
"Hogwarts… tranquil Hogwarts… Tell me, why was Hogwarts built here?"
Its head turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, then back again, as it asked this with great pomp.
Justin and Hermione froze.
"That's different! It asked something else last time," Justin muttered, stunned.
"Didn't it use to ask about Rowena Ravenclaw's full name?"
He turned hopefully to Hermione.
Brown curls quivered as she furrowed her brow in thought… then slowly shook her head.
"Little wizards. Thick-headed little wizards!"
The owl looked smug, chattering away.
"Because of Ravenclaw's dream."
A soft voice broke the rhythm. Sean had spoken.
The owl's wings froze mid-flap. It nearly toppled off its perch.
"How do you kno—"
It squawked, then shut its beak with a snap. Stiffly, it dipped into a shallow bow.
With a beat of its wings, the stone wall split down the middle,
revealing a sky-blue door. Sean studied the eagle-shaped doorknob for a moment,
then turned it thoughtfully.
The door opened onto a wide space.
A few desks stood scattered in the middle, all of them thick with dust.
In one corner, a massive bookshelf leaned dangerously to one side; most of its contents had spilled to the floor, the pages brittle and yellow.
In another corner, a heap of odd-shaped apparatuses:
a complicated cluster of crystal lenses,
a few glass cabinets with half-torn labels still clinging to them.
Apart from that, the room was almost bare.
"Sean… Ravenclaw's dream—what does that mean, exactly?" Justin couldn't hold back his question any longer.
"It's said Hogwarts' location was decided by Lady Ravenclaw herself…
"Rowena of the Lake once dreamed of a wart-covered hog that led her to a cliff edge.
So that was where she decided a school should be built…"
Sean's voice dropped into the soft cadence of a storyteller,
weaving distant, wind-worn fragments of a millennium-old tale.
Justin unconsciously moved a little closer, face full of wonder and longing.
Hermione lowered her wand; her eyes shimmered in the wandlight.
The three of them, lit only by Sean's bright Lumos, leaned in together in the darkness.
"Hogwarts, wart hog—sounds similar, doesn't it?" Sean added.
"Legend has it that's where the name came from."
"Wow—"
Justin blurted, before Hermione hastily clapped a hand over her own mouth.
"What a strange story," Justin said, blinking. "It's like something out of Peter—err, Peter what's-his-name again…"
"It's The Tales of Beedle the Bard," Hermione snapped, glaring at him for spoiling the mood.
"Oh. Right."
Justin scratched his head and quietly lit the lantern.
With the story over, the three of them had to face something else:
the real magic.
The Levitation Charm—simple and practical—
was one of the easiest first spells for young wizards to grasp.
And yet even such a simple charm was a daunting challenge for brand-new first-years.
"Again…"
Justin watched his feather drift back down.
It had floated for a grand total of three seconds—nowhere near the minimum ten required.
[You practised the Levitation Charm to beginner standard. Proficiency +3]
Sean shut out the surrounding noise without effort. He was always good at focusing.
"Failed again…"
Justin's feather fluttered, trembled, managed a heroic four seconds in mid-air, then sagged back onto the desk.
[You practised the Levitation Charm to beginner standard. Proficiency +3]
[You practised the Levitation Charm to beginner standard. Proficiency +3]
"Dropped again…"
[You practised the Levitation Charm to beginner standard. Proficiency +3]
[You practised the Levitation Charm to beginner standard. Proficiency +3]
[You practised the Levitation Charm to beginner standard. Proficiency +3]
As Sean repeated the spell successfully over and over, his proficiency climbed by another thirty points—
and with it, his magic felt like it had been wrung dry. His wand arm ached, his breathing turned shallow.
Magic—or "mana," if one insisted on calling it that—was a strange thing.
Unlike in fantasy games where it existed as a blue bar on some imaginary HUD,
here it manifested directly in the wizard's body—
as fatigue, mental fuzziness, and a heavy, dragging sense of exhaustion.
It wasn't some vague, untouchable "spiritual energy,"
but something intimately tied to flesh and bone.
The good news was, it could be restored, and you could feel the difference—
after all, anyone could tell the gap between "full of energy" and "half-dead inside."
While resting his own arm, Sean finally turned his attention to Justin's plight.
Justin had begun trying every wand motion he could think of to keep the feather afloat.
Unfortunately, the poor quill either sprang up suddenly only to crash back down at once,
or trembled in the air like it had stage fright, then dropped with even more determination than before.
Advance Chapters available on Patreon
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