Having completed his initial exploration in that vast, ocean-like junk room of the Room of Requirement, Alan withdrew for the time being. His interest in this thousand-year-old castle was not satisfied in the least—rather, it had been stirred into an unprecedented hunger.
Hogwarts was no longer merely a school.
It was a colossal, living system. Every brick, every carving, spoke in its own magical language, narrating a forgotten piece of history—or concealing a riddle waiting to be solved. Alan's mind palace burned with the desire to analyze, model, and ultimately take control of the entire system.
The afternoon sunlight streamed through the tall windows, casting mottled shadows across the ancient stone path. On his way to the library, he chose a corridor marked on the map as "low traffic." The air carried a dry scent of dust mingled with old stone, and every footstep echoed with sharp clarity.
At the end of the corridor, the light grew dim.
A statue as tall as a human stood silently there—a hunchbacked, one-eyed witch. The stone face was frozen in an eerie expression, something between a smile and a sneer.
The moment Alan's gaze touched the statue, his mind palace sounded an alarm. A faint but steady magical fluctuation was seeping from behind the wall. It was like a gossamer thread of spider silk, standing in stark, discordant contrast to the otherwise seamless, silent magical field of the surrounding walls.
"An unrecorded secret passage."
The judgment came almost instinctively.
He stepped forward, ready to touch the surface of the statue with his fingertips, to analyze the magical conductivity of its material and search for possible mechanism structures.
Just then, a sharp, high-pitched laugh—dripping with schadenfreude—erupted without warning from the shadows of the ceiling above.
It was Peeves.
The poltergeist who thrived on chaos was hugging a bulging leather ball sloshing with water. His half-transparent body melted perfectly into the shadows of the ceiling, leaving only a pair of eyes gleaming with mischief, locked firmly on the lone, defenseless first-year student below.
A perfect "surprise baptism" was about to unfold.
Alan didn't even raise his head.
His gray-blue eyes remained calmly fixed on the stone carving of the one-eyed witch, as though he were utterly oblivious to the threat above.
Yet within his mind palace, three parallel data streams surged at the speed of light. Countless possibilities were exhausted, simulated, and filtered.
By the time Peeves let go, and the heavy water balloon began its free fall, the final calculation had already been completed.
Target Object: Water balloon. Initial velocity: 0. Under gravitational acceleration, its falling path forms a standard parabola. Predicted time to impact: 3.1 seconds.
Environmental Variable: Caretaker Argus Filch. Based on analysis of his patrol routes and time nodes in the past seventy-two hours, combined with the acoustic environment of this location, the probability of Filch being drawn by Peeves's laughter and appearing from the left corner: 98.7%. Predicted arrival time: 2.7 seconds.
Optimal Solution: Construct spell model. Requirements: silent casting, negligible power, effect = repulsion force. Casting moment: when the balloon descends to 1.5 meters above the ground. Target point: left side of the balloon, at the three o'clock direction. Force vector: leftward, offset angle 0.8 degrees.
All of this was completed in the space between heartbeats in the real world.
Alan's right hand, hanging at his side, shifted subtly within the pocket of his wide wizard's robe. The tip of his wand made an imperceptible flick—precise down to the millimeter—toward the slanted air above.
An invisible ripple of magic spread in an instant.
Midair, the rapidly falling water balloon's trajectory shifted by the tiniest margin—so slight it could easily be mistaken for a trick of the light.
The next second—
A face full of sourness and spite poked out right on cue from the corner. Argus Filch's bulging fish-like eyes swept the corridor warily; clearly, he had heard Peeves's laughter and had come to catch misbehaving students.
Pop!
A loud, wet explosion.
The ball stuffed with icy well water burst directly above his head, soaking him from crown to heel in one merciless torrent. In an instant, he was transformed into a drenched, furious chicken.
The few strands of hair he always took such pride in combing meticulously now plastered limply against his scalp in pathetic tufts. Droplets streamed down the hooked tip of his nose, his appearance ridiculous beyond measure.
"PEE—VES!"
A thunderous roar tore from Filch's chest. His already protruding eyes bulged even further with rage, bloodshot and wild.
In midair, Peeves doubled over with laughter, his shrill cackling echoing as he zipped through the wall and vanished.
With no target left for his fury, Filch's blazing glare instantly locked onto the only "suspect" still present—
Alan.
"You!" His voice was hoarse with rage, spat through clenched teeth. "It's you, you little brat—you and Peeves must've plotted this together!"
He lunged forward viciously. At his feet, the gaunt cat Mrs. Norris arched her back in unison, hissing threateningly, golden eyes gleaming ominously in the dim corridor.
Yet in the face of the caretaker's storm of wrath, Alan showed not the faintest trace of a first-year's panic or fear.
He was unnervingly composed.
Slowly, unhurriedly, he withdrew from his pocket the old silver pocket watch his grandfather had gifted him. With a crisp click, the lid sprang open, and he presented the shining dial right before Filch's furious face.
"Sir, please calm yourself."
His voice was steady and clear, without the slightest ripple—like he were delivering an academic lecture.
"It is now precisely 3:42 in the afternoon. According to Article 117 of the Hogwarts Student Conduct Code, it is clearly stipulated: students, outside of curfew hours, possess the right to move freely within the castle's public areas."
His eyes left the watch and shifted deliberately toward the statue of the one-eyed witch, his face adopting a look of earnest concentration, the kind only a diligent student would wear.
"I was merely doing some pre-class preparation—observing and studying the ancient magical structures and runic artistry embedded in the castle's architecture."
He paused, gaze returning to Filch, now tinged with a carefully measured confusion, as if genuinely puzzled by the man's reasoning.
"As for the water balloon," Alan continued, "I believe you heard it with your own ears just now—that was Peeves's handiwork. To assign the responsibility of a ghost's prank, without evidence, onto an innocent first-year who is conducting serious academic research…"
Alan tilted his head slightly, his tone sincere.
"That doesn't quite fit basic logic, does it?"
The flawless reasoning—airtight, precise, even backed by direct citation of the school code—splashed over Filch like a basin of water colder than the one from the balloon. Much of his burning fury was doused in an instant.
He opened his mouth but found himself speechless.
Of course he knew it was Peeves. He had been chasing that ghost for over a decade! But he had wanted a real, living student to punish, someone on whom he could vent his endless frustration.
Yet this first-year… was terrifyingly calm. Every word out of his mouth was measured like with a ruler, falling exactly within the lines of the rules. Filch could find no gap, no flaw to strike at.
In the end, all the anger and grievance could only grind out from between his teeth as one bitter phrase:
"Lucky this time!"
He shot Alan a venomous glare, then turned away, dripping water with every step, Mrs. Norris stalking angrily at his heels.
Alan quietly watched the caretaker's soggy back vanish around the corner. Only then did he close the lid of his pocket watch with a crisp click.
The sound echoed through the empty corridor.
Sometimes, logic was a weapon sharper than magic.
~~----------------------
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