Having just finished dinner and not waiting for Terry and Hermione, Sterling eagerly rushed back to Ravenclaw Tower alone.
"How does one escape death?"
The door knocker posed a particularly difficult question today. Most of the upperclassmen were still in the Great Hall enjoying their dinner, leaving only Sterling standing before the common room entrance.
"Supreme magic?" he ventured hopefully.
The door knocker remained stubbornly silent, clearly not accepting this answer.
Immortality... if not through magic, could it be through miracles? Or perhaps divine grace?
Whether gods truly existed or not, all these potential answers were rejected by the door knocker. Sterling stubbornly pulled out a cluster of magical flames, attempting to threaten the knocker into opening the door.
"How many goals do you think you'll score today?"
"Let's hurry, they're all waiting for us... scoring goals now is meaningless. Other teams won't be as relaxed as when we practice. Merlin's beard!"
Just as Sterling was bringing the flame dangerously close to the eagle's bronze beak on the knocker, the common room door suddenly opened from inside. A tall, burly upperclassman holding a broomstick and chatting casually with Robert cried out in alarm, quickly backing away from the flame that nearly singed his nose.
"Ahaha... hello there, senior."
Sterling laughed awkwardly, extinguished the flame immediately, and ducked into the common room, leaving the senior who'd nearly suffered disaster stomping his feet while Robert attempted to comfort him.
"Don't bother with first-years. When you were a first-year and couldn't open the door, you also wanted to..."
The senior turned red as if he'd been pulled from boiling water, covered Robert's mouth firmly, and hurried away from the common room entrance.
Sterling tossed his bag carelessly onto his dormitory bed and immediately headed toward the common room library area. Few people occupied the library space now, making it remarkably quiet.
The notes section... he could skip that entirely. This area was cleared every time the curriculum changed. Finding something from eight hundred years ago here would be pure fantasy.
The biography section? This contained works left by famous Ravenclaws, but nobody seemed interested in Beedle the Bard's life story, so naturally there were no relevant biographies.
Finally, the donation section represented the largest area. This was where Ravenclaw graduates' gifts to their alma mater were carefully preserved. Since they were all students' heartfelt contributions, there were no restrictions on book types or subjects.
Novels, magical research frontiers, political treatises, recipe collections, painting techniques... everything imaginable was there, including quite a few advanced magic books that should theoretically be housed in Hogwarts' Restricted Section.
However, though they didn't need to be placed in the Restricted Section due to being specifically donated to the common room library, for student safety they had magical restrictions set by Professor Flitwick. Reading them required his explicit authorisation.
This represented the most likely location to find Beedle the Bard's remnants.
Out of respect for heartfelt gifts, books weren't eliminated from this collection. Only when they became completely unreadable would they be properly disposed of.
The area even had an Extension Charm cast upon it. Though it appeared to be just a few modest bookshelves, walking inside revealed seemingly endless volumes.
Sterling purposefully skipped the frequently browsed areas, feeling confident that no one would care about Beedle the Bard's personal remnants.
Because the magical world generally ignored Beedle the Bard as a person.
They seemed to treat him like... a machine that spontaneously produced fairy tales. No one researched his surname, where he originated, or where he eventually went. They only knew he had written the wizarding world's most classic fairy tales.
People's knowledge of him was limited to one single fact: author of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard". They didn't even know if Beedle was his real name or a pen name like "Andersen" was for Sterling.
Those who cared about his stories far outnumbered those who cared about him personally. Sterling had seen someone in a miscellaneous book searching for the Fountain of Fair Fortune but never encountered anyone exploring his homeland or origins.
Sterling even suspected Beedle had cast some kind of Notice-Me-Not charm on himself. How could someone who had accompanied every young wizard's childhood have so little personal information available?
Thinking this way, searching for his remnants was truly a hellishly difficult task.
Fortunately, Sterling and Beedle the Bard shared something significant in common.
The dream world.
Through this mysterious connection, Sterling felt he could locate Beedle's remnants. If Beedle had truly left something behind, then under fate's guidance, they would surely meet.
Sterling wandered among the towering bookshelves, occasionally taking down a volume to glance at its contents. Unfortunately, none triggered his intuitive recognition.
Just as he decided to return another time to continue searching, a book suddenly fell from the shelf above, striking his head before dropping at his feet.
No, calling it a "book" was rather generous. It contained just about ten pages, with one edge sewn together with simple string to roughly resemble a book.
On the side facing Sterling, blue ink outlined a small soaring eagle.
Sterling didn't experience that blessed feeling of destiny, but he picked it up anyway, planning to flip through it casually. It was so thin that a few minutes would finish it completely.
After opening the first page, he immediately changed his mind entirely.
"Three months after parting with Hufflepuff, I found Avalon."
That familiar handwriting reminded him of the motto carved on the wall directly facing the common room door: "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure."
Combined with the phrase "parting with Hufflepuff"...
Could this actually be Ravenclaw's personal diary?
Sterling swallowed hard and continued reading with growing excitement.
"Avalon's protection is stronger than I anticipated. Perhaps I should reevaluate Merlin's magical achievements. He went farther than I, farther than any of us ever imagined."
"Perhaps this is what Gryffindor studied so intensely. So-called divine mandate?"
"Merlin's mandate was to seal Avalon permanently, so his magic reached levels that past and future successors cannot possibly match... Our mandate is to protect the remaining wizards, which is why we came together originally."
"In other words, if we truly want to enter Avalon, perhaps all four of us together could use this era's mandate to shake the previous era's mandate?"
"But it can no longer be accomplished."
"Slytherin has abandoned hope entirely. He won't return and has likely already sided with..."
Here a crucial word was blurred into an illegible ink blot.
"Perhaps I can find another way... Perhaps Hogwarts can protect for one millennium, but in the second millennium, will that era's mandate still stand with wizards?"
"In Cassandra's remaining prophecies, humans have conquered the seas and begun exploring the stars..."
"I must enter Avalon... If Helena hadn't taken my diadem, perhaps I would have more methods available... But my time is running dangerously short. Death has set its sights on me."
"Helena..."
"I hope Barrow can bring you back safely, and I must go fulfil my mandate."
The handwriting became increasingly sloppy and desperate. By the final paragraphs, there were many splattered ink drops accompanied by dried red stains that looked disturbingly like blood.
Avalon, Ravenclaw, Mandate, Merlin, Helena... these names spun endlessly in Sterling's overwhelmed mind.
Avalon, the legendary Promised Land. Did it truly exist in reality?
Did Ravenclaw's desperate attempt succeed? Unknown. Magical history only recorded that Ravenclaw ultimately died of illness at Hogwarts.
From this diary, her journey to find Avalon should have occurred in the brief period before her death from illness.
But... the diadem, Ravenclaw's legendary lost diadem. Was it originally taken by someone called Helena?
And Cassandra's prophecy spanning an entire millennium. Sterling knew it was absolutely true. Naval fleets had entered the oceans, satellites floated in space... Could prophecy really reach this incredible level of accuracy?
Also... HISS!
Sudden, stabbing pain made Sterling's head throb violently. Only then did he realise he had unknowingly activated his magical vision when picking up the diary.
Looking at Ravenclaw's diary again with enhanced sight, it was clearly composed entirely of magical threads. Once he closed his magical vision, it would appear as nothing but blank pages.
But when he carefully observed with magical vision active, a single line of text appeared on the diary's final page.
The handwriting was completely different from Ravenclaw's elegant script, emanating a carefree, worldly attitude.
"To whoever may or may not exist in the future, I hope someone does. Go look for Ravenclaw's Chamber."
Sterling's finger traced carefully over that mysterious line, and a wonderful feeling of recognition welled up in his heart.
This was text left by Beedle the Bard himself.