"Hey, Alan, look at this!"
Fred's voice was brimming with irrepressible excitement as he slammed a crumpled piece of parchment onto the table in the common room.
Ink had smudged across it, the lines crooked and shaky. It was the result of a night's effort by him and George—an attempted map of the castle's first floor. Brimming with enthusiasm, but woefully lacking in accuracy.
Alan's gaze lingered on it for precisely 0.7 seconds.
He said nothing. Instead, he pulled a sheet of parchment from his thick notebook—the one embossed with golden letters on the cover: "External Database of the Mind Palace."
He handed it to Fred and George. The twins froze mid-breath.
It wasn't a sketch. It was an engineering drawing.
On the stiff parchment, every line was as sharp and straight as if cut with a blade, every corner precisely marked with angles. It was a strictly measured "Preliminary Floor Plan of Hogwarts' First Level"—complete with a color-coded scale and annotations of even the faintest magical currents.
"You're missing three critical hidden passageways."
Alan's tone was calm, unruffled, like an engineer giving a project review.
"And you haven't accounted for the moving patterns of the main staircase cluster. That omission is fatal for route planning."
He tapped a corner of the drawing with one finger.
"Also, here's a method for you—by observing the magical residue concentration in the dust at the corners, you can roughly determine how often a passage is used. Frequently used passages leave fresher magical traces."
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan held the blueprint-level map with blank minds. Their much-prized gift for mischief suddenly seemed crude and primitive in comparison.
Just then, a clear, lively voice broke the awkward silence.
"Hey, what are you lot scheming over there?"
A higher-year girl approached with a high ponytail, a spring in her step, and the radiance of someone fresh from the sun and exercise.
It was Katie Bell, Chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
"Want to come watch the team's training? Charlie and the others are running tactical drills this afternoon."
Katie's invitation was warm and cheerful.
"Of course we're going!"
The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan sprang back to life instantly, their earlier dismay forgotten. They were Quidditch fanatics—nothing excited them more than watching the team train.
Alan's first instinct was to refuse. To him, such group entertainment was an inefficient waste of time.
But his mind palace issued a new directive:
[Quidditch – a rule-bound aerial sport containing complex dynamic game-theory models. Data collection and analysis recommended.]
"…Alright."
He nodded, joining them.
Up above the Quidditch pitch, brooms sliced the air with sharp whistles. Players streaked through the sky like red-and-gold falcons—soaring, diving, braking on a dime—drawing cheers from the few spectators on the stands.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were completely enraptured.
"Look at that turn from Charlie! Brilliant!"
"Angelina's pass—Merlin, she was born to be a Chaser!"
They pumped their fists, shouting praise for every dazzling maneuver, passionately dissecting each player's skills and the team's tactical choices.
Alan, however, seemed entirely out of place.
He didn't even look up at the match.
Instead, he settled in a corner, pulled out a fresh notebook and a razor-sharp quill, and began writing furiously.
Not words. But numbers, variables, and symbols incomprehensible to outsiders.
"What are you doing, Alan?"
Lee Jordan finally tore his eyes away from the match long enough to peek at Alan's parchment, only to be met with utter confusion.
"The game's amazing—why are you doing Charms homework?"
"I'm not doing homework."
Alan didn't lift his head. His eyes were locked on the parchment, quill scratching rapidly.
"I'm constructing a preliminary mathematical model for this sport."
The answer stilled the noise around them for a moment.
As Fred, George, and Katie watched in bafflement, Alan's quill flew across the page. His mind raced, converting every dynamic detail into quantifiable data—
The players' flight speeds.
The Quaffle's passing routes.
The Bludgers' attack vectors.
The Snitch's random flight patterns.
All of it, transcribed into cold, measurable numbers.
A web of complex formulas and probability symbols emerged beneath his hand:
Σ(P_player × S_skill) / T_time = W_win_rate
P(Snitch | Seeker_A, Seeker_B) ≈ 0.85 + …
About half an hour later, he finally set down his quill.
He gazed at the results on his notebook—an entire page crammed with dense calculations, each line imbued with a sense of logical beauty. Alan nodded in satisfaction, as though he had just completed a flawless work of art.
"So? Any discoveries?"
George couldn't hold back his curiosity and leaned over to ask.
"Yes."
Alan's expression was deadly serious. He lifted his head, eyes utterly devoid of even the faintest trace of jest.
"From the perspective of probability theory and game theory, I constructed a model of Quidditch's rules. The conclusion is this: the sport contains a severe structural flaw."
"What?"
Katie Bell—who had so far tolerated Alan's odd behavior with an indulgent smile—froze instantly at his words. The disbelief on her face made it clear she could hardly trust her own ears.
Alan tapped his finger on the central formula in his notebook, and in a voice so calm it was almost cruel, he began his argument.
"The problem lies with the Golden Snitch. Catching it awards 150 points and ends the game immediately. This rule grants the Seeker a disproportionate, almost decisive level of influence."
His voice was steady and precise, every word sinking into the hearts of those present like a nail driven into wood.
"According to my model, over 85% of a team's final win rate is determined by the relative skill difference between the two Seekers. The combined efforts of the other six players—three Chasers, two Beaters, even the Keeper—contribute less than 15% to the outcome of the match."
He paused, then delivered his final, most devastating conclusion.
"This means that Quidditch, in the vast majority of cases, is not truly a team sport. Its tactical diversity is severely limited, and its entertainment value is drastically reduced as a result."
"In essence, it is nothing more than a duel between two Seekers. Every other player—including you Chasers—exist merely to delay the inevitable until the Seekers settle the match, adding little more than irrelevant background noise to the duel."
This ruthless "theory of Quidditch's uselessness" was brimming with the kind of irrefutable logic that tolerated no denial.
It was cold. Clinical. Like a surgeon's scalpel, slicing open the sport that wizards revered as sacred, glorious, and brimming with passion—exposing at its core nothing but logical fragility and absurdity.
Every aspiring player present—including Katie Bell and the Weasley twins—stood frozen, staring blankly.
The excitement and fervor that had animated their faces moments ago were gone, replaced instead by a mix of shock, disbelief, and even a faint trace of offended anger.
It was the first time any of them had ever heard someone evaluate their most beloved sport in this way.
They looked at Alan.
At this calm-faced boy who spoke as though merely stating an objective fact.
And at that moment, a single thought struck them all in unison:
This guy is nothing short of a complete alien.
~~----------------------
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