"Why are you here? Should I ask why I can't be here?" Harry said calmly.
"Ha, quibbling! You Slytherin! Why would you come here for no reason? Want to see the good deed you did yesterday, do you?"
"Filch, do you know what you're saying?"
As he spoke, Harry walked forward and soon saw the writing on the wall, the water stains below it, and the original color of the wall around the writing where it had been scrubbed.
"You tried to clean it, but couldn't?" Harry looked at Filch in surprise.
"Don't look at me like that!!" Filch roared.
Harry was a bit overwhelmed by people who yelled and screamed without reason; this state was like a combination of Vernon and Petunia.
"Cleanse it—" Harry slightly raised his hand, but the writing on the wall remained unchanged.
He frowned, looking seriously at the wall, his wrist quickly crossing at his thigh, and another, real wand appeared, a change Filch couldn't observe at all.
This wasn't magic, but it was magic.
"Cleanse it—"
The writing seemed to be harshly rubbed by an invisible eraser, gradually becoming mottled.
He cast the cleaning Curse twice more before finally cleaning the writing completely.
Then, he glanced at Filch and walked away silently.
If he were tall enough, he would have liked to pat Filch's shoulder and leave with a dashing back.
Unfortunately... he was a bit short...
At the same time, his heart also grew much heavier.
The Cleaning Charm, his most proficient Curse, was actually unable to effectively clean this writing.
One must know that his Cleaning Charm, even without a wand, could easily remove years of grime from Moonlight Fortress, but here...
Moreover, Madam Norris was indeed no longer accompanying Filch, otherwise he wouldn't be staying here like a madman...
Arriving on the third floor, Harry turned towards Howl's office.
At this moment, Howl had just come out of Dumbledore's office, and in the corridor, he saw Harry.
"Professor Jones," Harry quickly called out.
"Is something wrong?" Howl nodded in response, opened his office door, and led Harry inside.
"You're not here to ask about the Chamber of Secrets, are you?" Howl sat on the sofa, smiling.
"Uh... actually, I don't really care about that, after all, you and Mr. Dumbledore are here, but I did get some related news, so I wanted to tell you."
Howl nodded, somewhat surprised, "That fast? It seems Slytherin has some inside information."
"I just heard a little from the older students, about a murder case fifty years ago at Hogwarts. The victim was the ghost 'Myrtle' across from the classroom downstairs.
And you should already know that the Chamber of Secrets was built by Slytherin."
Howl nodded; he did know this information. They had just discussed it briefly in Dumbledore's office.
Dumbledore was very surprised; neither the tracking charm nor the portraits could find any trace of what happened on the second floor at the time.
This couldn't help but make him think of Riddle.
Having served at Hogwarts for so many years, only Riddle could maintain that disguise under his nose.
But the illogical part was... Riddle shouldn't have resurrected so quickly.
According to documented references, after the main soul completely perishes, it takes at least several years to return to the present world.
This left Dumbledore somewhat puzzled. He had already written to an old friend, an old friend whose home had dozens, even hundreds, of Sneakoscopes.
The Sneakoscopes obtained would be given to the House-elves to conduct a thorough search throughout the school.
"Myrtle... alright, I'll investigate it," Howl nodded. This time, he didn't intend to stay out of it.
If this incident was caused by a Curse pulling on so-called "fate" and targeting him, he couldn't stand idly by.
He wasn't worried about anything happening to himself.
Instead, he was worried about these Hogwarts children being implicated by "misfortune."
Dumbledore obviously hadn't expected Howl to take this matter to heart. When he first saw Howl, the expression on his face was quite something.
"Is there anything else? Have you hit a bottleneck in magic?" Howl looked at him.
"Yes," Harry nodded repeatedly, then said, quite puzzled, "Uncle Howl, I don't know why, but I always fail to successfully cast advanced spells... This is very frustrating."
After observing Professor Flitwick's and Professor Snape's duel last time, Harry had thought he was only a step away from the advanced spells derived from the Fiendfyre Curse.
But even now, he still couldn't successfully cast spells like Fiendfyre Opening or Fiendfyre Shield.
As for other advanced spells, they always gave him a sense of powerlessness, seemingly out of reach.
His casting efficiency for the spells he had already mastered had also shown no improvement.
This greatly troubled him.
As he spoke, Harry was a bit nervous, "I... I don't know if I've gone down the wrong path or hit a bottleneck.
It's just... this state feels to me not like encountering a big mountain, but like the difference between heaven and earth... I can't even find a point to exert force..."
Howl looked at him in surprise, sweeping his palm across the table, and instantly the entire tabletop turned into fine black sand.
"So this is the problem. To be honest, you encountered this problem earlier than I expected. I thought you would start to feel lost about this in your fourth or fifth year."
As he spoke, Howl's gaze lingered slightly on Harry's scar.
No, not just that.
The effort behind it was the real reason he could ask this question today!
"But precisely because of this, it's normal for you to feel more lost than others."
As he spoke, Howl flipped his hand, and several small wooden sticks appeared in his hand, his gaze also falling onto the sand table.
"This is the deepest thought of each of us."
As he spoke, he inserted each wooden stick into it.
"These are the spells cast from our thoughts, guided by desire."
Harry's gaze fell on the sand table. Howl's way of explaining was simple and easy to understand, with no comprehension bottleneck.
As he spoke, Howl took out a wooden stick two or three times longer than the others. He inserted it into the sand table, but the sand table was just a sand table. As soon as it was inserted, the wooden stick fell down.
"And some spells cannot be supported by these thin and shallow desires alone!"
"And the way to solve it, the choice of most people is..."
As he spoke, Howl picked up the long wooden stick again and inserted it deeply into the sand table.
"You need to show a deeper desire."
However, Harry quickly discovered the drawback: when these wooden sticks were too deeply embedded in the sand table, although they were stable enough and wouldn't fall over with a touch, their height was almost the same as ordinary wooden sticks.
"This is..."
"Deeper desires represent limitation and singularity. Applied to spells, it means only being able to cast them, not being able to use them flexibly, and being no different from ordinary spells!!"
As he spoke, Harry looked up at Howl.
"Correct answer!" Howl's finger tapped lightly on the tabletop, "True powerhouses always have the most unwavering hearts."
As he spoke, the sand gradually solidified.
"Do you believe in the power of [Enlightenment]?"
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