Silas left the Headmaster's Office in high spirits, the Levitating Cloak wrapped tightly around his shoulders like an overly enthusiastic dog, even trying to nuzzle his face with its collar.
"Hey, you," Silas said, feeling slightly strangled as he reached up to pull the cloak off. "You're really heavy! You look like cloth, but you feel ridiculously weighty! Can't you just float by yourself? Or make yourself lighter?"
The cloak's collar perked up indignantly and quivered in the air as if protesting. (If it could talk, it would probably be yelling, "Bro! My consciousness came from Agamotto, the first great mage! My status is incredibly lofty! And I'm just a piece of cloth—how heavy could I possibly be? You're just too out of shape, you little runt!")
Silas rolled his eyes and gave up trying to reason with a piece of clothing. Then inspiration struck, and he remembered the cloak's actual purpose.
"Forget it. You're useless. Let's fly instead. That way, I won't have to walk."
With a thought, the Levitating Cloak immediately understood. Powerful buoyancy lifted him several inches off the ground, carrying him silently down the empty castle corridors. The night wind blew through the stone windows, bringing Hogwarts's distinctive scent of ancient stone mixed with potion ingredients. Moonlight filtered through the stained-glass windows, casting mottled shadows, while the moving staircases slowly shifted in the distance. The wonderful experience temporarily made him forget his exhaustion and earlier irritation.
But flying consumed mental energy after all. After an unknown amount of time, a powerful wave of drowsiness hit him. Silas glanced at an ancient clock face on the corridor wall. Its hands pointed to nine at night. Today, he had experienced magical awakening, memory fusion, a flying accident, an Auror pursuit, a meeting with the headmaster, and half a day of magical practice. His seven-year-old body and recently fused soul both desperately needed some... quality sleep.
"I need to find somewhere to sleep." He let out a huge yawn and guided the cloak down at an intersection. First objective: the common room. There had to be dormitories connected to it!
He first tried the nearest entrance, behind which stood a warm and cozy-looking spiral staircase—Gryffindor Tower. But the Fat Lady's portrait was tightly shut. No matter how nicely he spoke to it or randomly guessed things like "Sherbet Lemon" and "Cockroach Cluster," the portrait gave no response and even turned away impatiently.
"This is tragic," Silas lamented. "Why didn't Old Bee tell me the password?"
He could only head in another direction and find a bare, damp stone wall—Slytherin's dungeon entrance. He tried every Slytherin keyword he could think of at the empty wall: "pure-blood," "ambition," "glory." The stone wall remained silent, as if mocking his futile efforts.
"Fine, the snake house really is exclusionary." He shrugged without losing heart, then followed his hazy memories to the Hufflepuff common room entrance—a pile of large wooden barrels resting on a shadowy stone trough.
"I have to knock in rhythm..." He recalled the knowledge, but he had been terrible at rhythm games in his previous life, and apparently that had not improved in this one. Bracing himself, he knocked on the bottom of the designated barrel according to the rhythm of "Helga Hufflepuff."
"Thump... thump-thump... thump... thump..." The rhythm was completely wrong.
With a pop, the barrel lid sprang open. Instead of revealing a passage, it sprayed him head to toe with transparent liquid!
A sharp, acidic smell spread through the air.
Silas coughed repeatedly from the fumes, wiped his face, and licked his lips... vinegar! Strong rice vinegar, at that!
"Ptooey, ptooey! What rotten luck!" He looked miserable. His robes clung wetly to his body, sour and sticky and incredibly uncomfortable. Even the loyal Levitating Cloak seemed disgusted by the smell and floated a little farther away.
Now, only one option remained—Ravenclaw Tower.
Dragging his soaked, vinegar-reeking body, he climbed the long spiral staircase and finally arrived before an oak door marked by a Bronze Eagle knocker. The eagle on the knocker looked lifelike as it asked in a calm, clear voice:
"What grows larger and smaller with a person's emotions?"
Silas was so tired that his eyelids were drooping, and his whole body smelled of vinegar. His mind had practically stopped working. Hearing the question, he instinctively and groggily thought of certain unspeakable things meant for adults... but he immediately shuddered and shook his head hard, banishing those unhealthy thoughts.
"Pupils! It's pupils!" he quickly shouted the correct answer, afraid that being even a second late would trigger some bizarre punishment mechanism, like getting sprayed with ink all over again.
The Bronze Eagle seemed satisfied, and the oak door slid open without a sound.
Beyond it was a spacious circular room, with elegant arched windows along the walls draped in blue and bronze silk curtains. The starry ceiling was beautiful and tranquil. Tables, chairs, and bookshelves filled the room, giving it an atmosphere of quiet wisdom. Most importantly, it was empty, and there was no vinegar smell!
"Finally..." Silas was almost moved to tears. He could not even be bothered to choose a dormitory with a better view. He found an empty one that looked clean and tidy, then stumbled inside.
He did not even have the strength to take off his sour robes. He merely tore off the heavy Levitating Cloak and tossed it onto a chair, then collapsed onto the soft four-poster bed like a puddle of mud.
The moment his head touched the pillow, overwhelming sleepiness completely swallowed him. Today's adventures, magic, snark, and public humiliation... all of it faded away. He curled up and unconsciously mumbled:
"System... tomorrow... remember to remind me... to take a bath..."
Then he fell into a deep sleep. Moonlight streamed gently through the windows of Ravenclaw Tower, falling over this seven-year-old child with a complicated past, strange powers, and a talent for stirring Hogwarts into undercurrents of chaos.
Two Hours Later
Silas was immersed in deep sleep. In his dream, he sat in Kamar-Taj's library, gnawing on fragrant roast duck while reading the Book of the Vishanti, with a glass of iced cola beside him... nothing in the world could make him trade this life away!
Suddenly, an emotionless electronic voice exploded in his mind like an alarm clock:
[Ding! Good morning, Host! A new day has begun! All right, stop sleeping in and go take a bath.]
Silas jolted awake and sat up groggily. Outside the window was pitch-black, with only the moonlight providing barely enough illumination. He fumbled for a small, antique hourglass on the bedside table that he had not noticed before—probably left behind by some Ravenclaw upperclassman—and looked at it in the moonlight. The sand had only just begun to fall from the top.
"It's fucking midnight!" Silas roared at the air—actually, at the system in his mind. His morning temper instantly exploded. "Midnight! I've slept less than three hours! You call this the next day?! Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about time?!"
[From the perspective of Greenwich Mean Time, it really is the next day, dear~ Staying up late is bad for your health. Take a bath early and get some rest early~]
"Rest my ass!" Silas angrily grabbed his pillow and smashed it against the floor, though he could not actually hit the system. His extreme anger made the magic within him stir restlessly. He unconsciously raised a hand toward the blank stone wall of the dormitory and poured all that nameless fury into it.
This time, it was no longer that soft, bubble-like spark!
With a sharp whoosh, an energy bolt the size of a fist shot out. Solid and dazzling, trailing a golden tail of flame, it slammed squarely into the wall!
Boom!
A muffled blast rang out as stone chips flew everywhere! A basin-sized crater, scorched black and smoking, was blasted into the wall!
Silas stared at the crater, then at his own hand. The fury in his heart was instantly replaced by astonishment. "Wait? What was that?" Its power was worlds apart from what he had produced during the day!
[Detected intense emotional fluctuations in the Host! Friendly reminder: powerful emotions, especially anger, fear, joy, and so on, can significantly increase the instantaneous power of magic~ Of course, control will decrease accordingly, so please use with caution~]
Before Silas could process this "anger bonus" setting, he blankly stared at the massive, conspicuous hole in the wall. If someone found it tomorrow, how was he supposed to explain it? Say he had smashed it while sleepwalking?
"Reparo!" he instinctively shouted the most practical repair spell in the Harry Potter world while reaching for a wand that did not exist.
His hand grasped nothing.
"Fuck..." Only then did he remember that he was an aberration capable of Wandless magic, and he did not know any magic from the Harry Potter system at all! "It's over, it's over. I'm in trouble now..."
He anxiously paced in circles, then suddenly stopped. His eyes lit up. "Right! A portal! I can open one to Diagon Alley, buy a wand for now, sneak back, and fix the wall without anyone noticing!"
[...Host, did your anger fry your brain? It's midnight! Are you planning to drag Mr. Ollivander out of bed just to buy a wand and patch a wall? And how would you explain a seven-year-old child appearing alone in Diagon Alley in the middle of the night?]
Silas looked as though someone had poured a bucket of cold water over him, and he wilted. The system was right. The idea was incredibly stupid.
He sniffed himself. After several hours, the vinegar smell on his robes had not faded at all. Instead, it had mixed with sweat, creating an even stranger and more unpleasant stench. His intense cleanliness obsession—did medical students all have cleanliness obsessions?—and discomfort finally won out.
"At this point..." He sighed and resignedly said, "I should take a bath first. I really can't stand this smell anymore."
[Nighttime wandering for a bath? Interesting. A reminder: Ravenclaw Tower's bathroom is at the end of the corridor~]
The thought of carrying a change of clothes—which he did not have—through a dark corridor where he might encounter Peeves or Filch sounded endlessly troublesome. Besides, how could an ordinary bathroom suit his current mood, when he was depressed and desperately in need of relaxation?
A bold thought—or rather, a reckless idea provoked by his temper after waking up and the system's taunts—emerged. He forcibly suppressed the remnants of his anger, and a hint of mischief and rebellion appeared on his face.
"I don't believe Filch and his cat can catch someone who can open portals..." He snorted, raising both hands again. He focused his mind. This time, the destination in his head was unusually clear and specific—
"If I'm going, I'm going to the best one! The Prefect's bathroom on the seventh floor!"
He remembered that it had luxurious bathtubs, bubble bath, and even mermaid stained-glass windows! It was practically sacred ground for washing away bad luck!
Golden sparks burst forth again, and a portal more stable and rounded than any he had opened before appeared before him. On the other side, he could vaguely see a spacious area with white marble floors and warm, damp mist hanging in the air...
Without hesitation, Silas grabbed the Levitating Cloak from the chair—the cloak immediately excitedly wrapped around him—and stepped through.
The portal closed behind him, leaving only the scorched crater in the dormitory wall, silently telling the story of everything that had just happened. Silas Kirill, Hogwarts's youngest-ever "resident," was about to illegally break into the Prefect's bathroom at midnight and begin a bathing session that was destined to be anything but peaceful.
As for Filch? Mrs. Norris? Hogwarts's school rules? To Silas, who sought comfort and cleanliness, they were all nothing but passing clouds. After all, for a "prospective Sorcerer Supreme" who could open portals with a wave of his hand, what the hell was nighttime wandering?
Before you continue