The final week of term.
The air at Hogwarts was charged with feverish excitement—an almost boiling fervor that filled every corridor and courtyard.
Two very different "finals" pushed that fever to its peak.
One was held beneath the blazing sun.
The Quidditch pitch had become a sea of crimson and blue — the colors of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. It was the decisive match that would determine the winner of the House Cup. Apart from the sulking Slytherins, nearly every student in the castle had poured into the towering stands. The thunderous cheers rose so high it seemed they might tear through the clouds themselves.
The other final took place in silence.
In the nearly empty library, light filtered softly through the colored glass, scattering onto rows of bookshelves. Dust motes danced silently in the golden glow.
Alan and Penelope sat side by side at a long table deep within the library.
Their world was contained within a single massive sheet of parchment that covered the entire table — a vast rune array traced from the Logic Core of Ravenclaw.
A labyrinth of intricate lines and nodes, elegant and dizzying to behold.
This was the final layer of the "firewall."
The hardest puzzle of all.
Alan had not chosen to face it alone.
He knew that his own method — the cold, analytical "programmer's logic" from another world — had a natural blind spot when confronting ancient magic steeped in millennia of wisdom.
Penelope's mind, on the other hand — intuitive, artistic, and almost musical in its leaps — was the final piece he needed.
This was not merely a decoding session.
It was a joint operation between Logic and Inspiration.
Outside, the waves of sound from the Quidditch pitch kept crashing against the castle walls — like restless tides battering stone.
Lee Jordan's magically amplified voice carried faintly even through the thick library doors, rhythmic like the beating of a drum.
"Angelina Johnson scores again for Gryffindor! Brilliant feint! The score's 120 to 80 — Gryffindor leads!"
"The Golden Snitch! The Snitch has appeared!"
"Charlie Weasley and the Ravenclaw Seeker are diving—Merlin's beard! They're going to collide!"
Inside the library, Alan and Penelope paid no attention.
Their eyes reflected only the glowing maze of runic logic spread before them.
Every sound and color of the outside world seemed stripped away — leaving only pure black-and-white lines and streams of energy.
Minute by minute, time slipped by.
Beads of sweat gathered on Alan's forehead. His mind palace was operating at full overload, simulating tens of thousands of logical pathways.
Then—
"No, Alan," Penelope said softly, breaking the near-sacred silence.
Her slender, pale finger pointed to a small, inconspicuous node in the lower-left corner of the array.
"This node's energy flow shouldn't lead directly to the core."
Her brows furrowed lightly, her eyes shimmering with a rare, non-logical clarity.
"It's too direct—like a signpost. But look here, the auxiliary rune beside it. Its pattern—energy circles along the edges, but never connects to the core. It's rejecting the flow… reflecting it. Its function isn't conduction, it's mirroring. This node is a disguised trap."
Alan's mind palace shuddered violently.
Penelope's intuition struck him like lightning, tearing through the dense fog of his calculations.
[Warning: Logical trap detected.]
[Replanning decryption path…]
[Route updated.]
Alan's eyes suddenly blazed with light.
"You're right, Penelope!" he exclaimed, voice trembling with barely contained excitement.
"It's a honeypot trap! It uses a seemingly correct answer to lure us into a dead end! The real exit is perfectly hidden behind this mirrored rune!"
His thoughts cleared at once.
"The real exit is here!"
He snatched up his quill, the tip scraping against parchment with a soft but decisive hiss.
With swift, fluid strokes, he inscribed the final rune — the ancient symbol of Reverse Parsing, intricate and elegant as a fragment of living music.
At the instant the last stroke was completed—
The roar outside, which had lasted the entire match, froze for a heartbeat.
And then came an eruption so powerful it seemed to tear open the very sky.
"Charlie Weasley's caught the Golden Snitch! He's caught it!"
"GRYFFINDOR WINS! GRYFFINDOR TAKES THE HOUSE CUP!!!"
In the library—
At that exact moment, every rune upon the vast sheet of parchment lit up.
Not with a blinding glare, but with a soft, restrained radiance — a silvery glow as serene and magnificent as a river of stars.
The light flowed backward like a celestial tide, threading through each logical node, each rune's delicate pathway, until all the brilliance converged upon the center.
The "firewall" that had plagued Alan for weeks — the most complex of all barriers — was at last, completely broken.
Logic and glory had triumphed together.
That night, during the End-of-Term Feast, the Great Hall became an ocean of celebration.
Gryffindor's scarlet and gold banners hung down from the enchanted ceiling of stars, nearly obscuring every other house emblem.
When Dumbledore announced Gryffindor's victory in the House Cup, the hall erupted — a thunderous wave of cheers that seemed as if it would never end.
But unlike past years, when he would end his speech after the applause faded, Dumbledore did not sit down.
He raised his hand — a simple gesture, yet one that instantly restored silence to the hall.
"In addition to the Quidditch Cup," Dumbledore's voice rang clearly through every corner of the Great Hall, resonating with unusual solemnity, "this year, I must make an exception — to award a special distinction for academic contribution… to a first-year student."
A stunned hush fell across the hall.
The Gryffindor cheers died midair; confusion and disbelief filled every pair of eyes as students looked around the four house tables, trying to spot the lucky recipient.
Alan froze.
He sat at the far end of the Gryffindor table, detached from the noise around him, still half-lost in the quiet exhilaration of having broken through the firewall that afternoon.
And then—under the gaze of the entire school, teachers and students alike—Dumbledore's blue eyes glimmered with a smile.
He spoke the name clearly.
"Mr. Alan Scott of Gryffindor!"
His voice carried a warmth and weight that seemed to reach directly into the heart.
"For showing us — through a method none of us could have imagined — a new way to perceive and understand the ancient wisdom woven into the very foundations of our world."
Dumbledore's smile deepened.
"Let us give him a round of applause!"
The Great Hall burst once more into thunderous applause — this time, not for the victory of a House, but for the triumph of logic itself.
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