Time passed leisurely like this until mid-October, leaving only half a month until Halloween.
Kate and Hermione took advantage of their post-meal walks to tour the entire castle—excluding the corridor on the fourth floor.
They unanimously agreed that it was best not to go to the place Dumbledore had explicitly forbidden.
However, while Hermione wanted to follow the rules from the bottom of her heart, Kate simply didn't want to cause trouble for herself.
Currently, Harry hadn't yet found the name Nicolas Flamel. Even if she wanted to give a hint, she wouldn't know where to start.
So for now, she had to follow her own pace: find the Room of Requirement first.
"Professor Sprout asked me to help her harvest some herbs this afternoon, so after I walk you back to the Gryffindor Common Room today, I have to go."
Kate had already prepared her excuse. Her Herbology skills had always been good, on par with Gryffindor's Neville.
Therefore, as the Herbology professor, Professor Sprout would occasionally ask her or Neville to help out in the greenhouse.
It just happened to be her turn today. However, the time the professor appointed was two o'clock in the afternoon, so there was still an hour left.
Hermione didn't think much of it and walked with her to the entrance of the Gryffindor Common Room to say goodbye.
Over the past two months, the Gryffindor students had long become accustomed to seeing her and a Slytherin student sticking together every day.
Moreover, they had all witnessed the incident in Flying Class where Malfoy unilaterally humiliated Kate.
coupled with the fact that Kate always had a gentle attitude toward others, the Gryffindor students didn't have any objections to Hermione being with her every day. On the contrary, they seemed somewhat happy to see it happen.
"I'm going in then." Every time she stood at the entrance of her Academy's Common Room to say goodbye, Hermione felt an inexplicable sense of shyness.
It was just like the female half of those young campus couples, having been walked to the dormitory building and forced to bid farewell to her boyfriend in front of a crowd of passing students.
However, Kate's mind had long since flown to the Room of Requirement. She nodded with a cheerful smile and said, "I have to go."
"Mmh..." Hermione couldn't help but purse her lips before turning around to speak the password and enter the Common Room.
Kate breathed a sigh of relief, nodded politely to the Fat Lady in the portrait, and quickly left.
She walked to the corridor on the eighth floor, stopping before the huge tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy attempting to teach trolls to dance ballet. Opposite it was a stretch of blank wall.
To enter the Room of Requirement, one had to walk past this section of wall three times while concentrating on what one needed.
She walked back and forth three times, her mind constantly thinking, 'The room where the Mirror of Erised is placed.'
When she walked past for the third time, a door appeared on the wall.
Kate grabbed the brass handle on the door, took a deep breath, and pulled it open to reveal a spacious room inside.
Standing within was a very magnificent mirror, reaching all the way to the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame and two claw-shaped feet supporting it at the bottom.
Was this the Mirror of Erised?
She took a deep breath and raised her wand, casting several magical detection spells in succession.
Only after confirming that no monitoring spells had been set up inside did she cautiously enter.
Step by step, she approached the magic mirror. The mirror remained empty until Kate took a few more steps closer and stood directly in front of it—
Inside the mirror, her slightly pale face was revealed.
Far behind her, the old butler and Shafiq Manor were still there, waiting for her.
By her side, Hermione was smiling and linking arms with her.
As for herself...
She held a wand in her hand, her expression remaining calm, but a crowd of strangers was kneeling before her.
No, they weren't all strangers. At least within the crowd, that figure with pale blond hair was very eye-catching.
What did this mean? The pure-blood families were all submitting to her?
How could she have this kind of desire?
Kate took a half-step back in disbelief. During her nearly two months in Slytherin, she had indeed received quite a cold shoulder.
But no matter when, she had always handled it with indifference, feeling absolutely nothing about the isolation imposed by these half-grown children.
If she had to say something, she only felt that these children had been too deeply poisoned by their family environments, creating the foul atmosphere currently found in the Snake House.
Could it be that her pity for them, and a tiny bit of dissatisfaction with the families they belonged to, had left such a seed in the bottom of her heart?
But dominating the pure-blood families or whatever—she had never thought about that! She didn't want to be a Dark Lord.
Refusing to believe in this evil, Kate stepped forward again. The scene from before appeared once more, only this time, Dumbledore was also standing behind her.
Her heart gave a sudden start. She turned her head, only to find that there was no one behind her.
This was indeed the reflection of her heart's deepest desire.
There was the Shafiq family, the old butler, Hermione, and even Dumbledore.
A thin layer of sweat seeped out onto her forehead unknowingly as Kate stared blankly at the scene in the mirror.
It turned out the Sorting Hat hadn't been wrong. She indeed possessed ambition—an ambition even she herself hadn't detected.
All these years, she thought she had no desires and wanted nothing. But her identity had already destined her to come into conflict with those families who had once submitted to Voldemort.
She indeed hadn't thought about killing Voldemort, because she knew that with her current capabilities, she couldn't kill him at all.
But returning to the Shafiq family and seeing the decline of this once-glorious and massive family, she actually held unwillingness in her heart.
She was the last descendant of the Shafiq family; the only one left in the entire clan.
Before this, she could have chosen to be an ordinary person, or she could have chosen to enter the magical world. But the latter meant the burden of the family was tied solely to her.
To revitalize the family, aside from the necessity of getting rid of Voldemort, there was also...
She had to make those people who had once harmed her family settle the score.
Kate unconsciously clenched her fists tight, her gaze fixed dead on those pure-bloods in the mirror bowing their heads in submission to her.
Every single person in there, counting one by one—during the war, they had all been enemies of the Shafiq family.
After a long while, she finally curled her lips and laughed out loud.
During this past month or so, she had actually been confused—confused about why she had chosen such an Academy as Slytherin at the time.
Even if she wasn't that fragile, being isolated every day would inevitably affect her mood somewhat.
In comparison, even if she couldn't get into Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, Hufflepuff would have been a good place for refuge.
But at that time, within those short few seconds of the Sorting Ceremony, facing the choice given by the Sorting Hat, she had still chosen Slytherin.
In that time of less than half a minute, what had she been thinking?
Or rather, why had her instinct urged her to choose such a place that seemed unsuitable for her?
She had thought about it for over a month and hadn't figured it out, but seeing the reflection in the mirror today, she finally understood the thoughts in her subconscious.
"Slytherin, in a certain sense, is indeed a pretty good place."
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