Four o'clock in the morning.
Hogwarts lay steeped in the profound stillness unique to the Scottish Highlands. Moonlight filtered through high windows, casting a thin, liquid-like silver glow across the corridors.
In the dreams of the new students, perhaps there still lingered the Sorting Hat's song, the clamor of the feast, and boundless anticipation for the future.
But Alan's consciousness was yanked out of deep sleep by a soundless alarm.
It wasn't a physical awakening.
Within his mental world—the "mind palace" built of memory and logic—a vast model representing the magical structure of Hogwarts itself blazed with scarlet light, flickering at an unprecedented frequency.
It was a network that spanned the entire castle: intricate, precise, every fiber-like thread of magic following some ancient and harmonious rhythm, flowing, breathing, granting life to this millennia-old fortress.
Yet now, on that perfect network, a terrifying "black hole" had appeared.
Seventh floor, east wing.
An unremarkable corridor.
There, all magical currents had been cut off. Not distorted, not weakened—utterly gone, as if erased. The data stream ended abruptly, leaving behind an absolute, illogical void.
A vacuum.
A paradox.
In Alan's system of understanding, this was more absurd than conjuring matter from nothing. It violated every magical principle he had so far deciphered.
There was only one explanation.
Some rule of such a high order existed there—so advanced it could deceive even his mind palace's probing. A magic capable of "logically deleting" itself from the world's entire magical network.
The detailed plan he had devised the previous night—how to systematically explore the castle during free time with maximum efficiency—was abandoned in an instant.
Compared to this colossal enigma, those orderly explorations seemed utterly dull.
His curiosity—or more precisely, his hunger to uncover unknown laws—was fully ignited.
Alan slid out of bed without a sound, his movements delicate enough not to disturb a single sleeping soul in the dormitory.
At dawn, the castle was a silent labyrinth.
The cold stone floors devoured his light footsteps, broken only now and then by the faint, grating creak of an empty suit of armor, stirred by a weak magical fluctuation.
He arrived at the seventh floor.
On one side of the corridor hung a massive tapestry depicting a troll clubbing foolish Barnabas—its woven violence and stupidity radiating an air of age.
On the other side was a bare wall.
Smooth, unadorned—no carvings, no murals, not even a visible seam between bricks. Whole, seamless, as if it had grown directly from the mountain itself.
The coordinates of the "blank spot" lay here.
Alan reached out. The chill and hardness of stone pressed against his fingertips.
The core of his mind palace began to operate at terrifying speed, countless streams of information crossing and colliding.
He didn't try foolish methods.
Tapping on the wall to find a hollow? Reciting every unlocking spell he knew?
That was the thinking of ordinary people—linear logic, like searching for a key when faced with a lock.
But what he intended was to dismantle the very meaning of this "lock's" existence.
"For a concealment of this magnitude, the cost of energy and upkeep must be astronomical."
"Its purpose cannot possibly be just to 'hide' some object or room."
"It is, in itself, the embodiment of a function."
Deep within his pupils, it was as though countless streams of code were racing by.
"If it is a function, then the way to trigger it should not be a fixed 'key,' but a dynamic 'command.'"
A groundbreaking hypothesis took shape in his mind.
Perhaps the castle of Hogwarts was not a dead thing at all.
It was a vast magical construct, one with a rudimentary intelligence of its own. It could understand—and respond—to a wizard's specific "needs."
This was not the mechanical relationship of "key and lock."
This was the logical relationship of "demand and supply."
Alan closed his eyes.
He no longer thought about how to "open" this wall. Instead, he poured his entire mental focus into his mind palace.
There, he began to construct—in the clearest, sharpest, least ambiguous way possible—a model of pure "need."
What he needed was not a vault overflowing with gold and silver treasures.
What he needed was not a resting chamber that provided only temporary shelter.
What he needed was—a Perfect Magical Laboratory.
The model of this demand was rapidly refined and filled out within his consciousness.
[Analysis Unit]: Required an instrument capable of ultra-precise magical spectrum analysis, with resolution fine enough to parse the frequency variations of energy carried by every syllable of a spell.
[Alchemy Unit]: Required a cauldron able to withstand extreme heat and violent magical impacts, forged either from dragonfire-tempered obsidian or an even more stable unknown alloy.
[Recording Unit]: Required a supply of blank scrolls able to automatically transcribe experimental processes and data, synchronously recording visual images, magical fluctuations, and environmental parameters.
[Environment Unit]: Absolute soundproofing, absolute shielding against all external magical and physical probing, with an internal magical environment that must remain pure, stable, and freely adjustable.
…
He packaged this complex and intricate "demand model," compressed it, then focused his entire mental power upon it—like a searchlight—casting it onto the cold wall before him.
He began to pace.
Back and forth along the corridor between tapestry and white wall.
Once.
The demand model in his mind was reinforced, repeated, affirmed.
Twice.
He could feel his mental power resonating faintly with some ancient and mighty will deep within the castle.
Thrice.
When he walked past that smooth white wall for the third time, the miracle happened.
There was no forewarning.
On the hard stone wall, it was as if liquid silver seeped outward from within. Brilliant lines of light surfaced across the wall.
They made no sound, yet carried the grandeur of creation itself, swiftly weaving, outlining, and shaping.
At last, at the very center of the wall, a door took form—softly glowing with moonlight, with no handle at all.
The door slid inward without a sound, melting away into the air.
And the scene beyond made even Alan—who always acted with logic and composure as his guiding principles—feel his heart convulse in one violent, uncontrollable beat.
This was not the Room of Requirement described in the original story, piled high with broken furniture and discarded items.
What unfolded before his eyes was a perfect magical laboratory, infused with the aesthetics of both futuristic technology and classical alchemy.
Silver-white walls gleamed with a metallic coldness, yet felt warm to the touch. The workbenches, forged from unknown alloys, were molded in a seamless whole, their streamlined design exuding industrial beauty.
Upon the benches rested an array of precise magical instruments—some he recognized, others not.
A spectroscope formed from crystal lens assemblies, an alchemy cauldron hovering in midair, and blank scrolls lying quietly on the shelves, glowing faintly.
The air was filled with a current of magic so pure it made one shudder—filtered a billion times over, free of even the slightest impurity.
Here, standing before him, was the flawless materialization of that "demand model" in his mind palace.
He stepped into the laboratory.
Behind him, the door shut soundlessly and vanished, the wall returning to its original smooth and seamless form.
Alan stretched out his hand, gently brushing the surface of a cold, polished workbench.
The touch at his fingertips made every cell within his body tremble with the thrill of ultimate excitement.
In his eyes burst forth a brilliance bordering on incandescent.
He had found it.
What he had found was not merely a secret room.
He had found a place where he could test every one of his mad theories, where he could unravel the underlying logic of the entire magical world—
his secret base.
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