You're Just After the Unicorn's Body

The Magic Glasses had finally reacted, but Jon was far from happy.

Just from reading that message, he could tell this was no ordinary magical item. Jon did not think he could already master and use something left behind by a Legendary Wizard of Rowena's caliber.

Medieval grammar and the use of runes were both subjects he still needed to study.

Who would have thought that, after all these years, he would once again experience the struggle of learning a foreign language?

Jon slipped the glasses into his pocket and felt the Magical fluctuation on them gradually fade. He frowned.

He had a feeling these glasses were not something so simple.

He could buy some related books to study grammar after going home, but he could hardly learn runes just by buying books as well.

Jon did not want to trouble Aunt or his maternal grandmother. His mother knew Ancient Runes, but she was pregnant now, and he could not keep bothering her.

If only he could look through Ravenclaw House's notes.

"No, how could I forget this?"

Jon smacked his forehead and reached out to press his hand against the wall in front of him.

"I need to find a place to hide things."

A moment later, a door opened before Jon.

Beyond it was the place Jon had always known about but had never visited. There was even a Horcrux inside.

But Jon had not opened the door for Ravenclaw's Diadem. He was after the books and notes discarded here by students from years past.

With so many books, there had to be one that suited him.

Jon stepped over the threshold, and the door behind him automatically closed.

The place was as large as a cathedral. The surroundings looked like a city, and the towering walls were made up of things hidden away by countless students long gone from this world.

Jon wandered through the place. He passed a Troll specimen and saw a tall mirror standing in a corner, covered by dark red satin with only one corner exposed.

Jon was about to walk over, but then stopped.

The Mirror of Erised was a highly advanced magical item, but he did not particularly want to see his own desires.

Human desires were the ugliest things. Jon did not want to find out what his desires truly were.

Wasn't his goal already clear enough?

Jon headed in another direction. His footsteps echoed among the towering piles of junk: bottles, hats, chests, chairs, books, weapons, brooms, bats...

"In any case, this isn't easy to find," Jon muttered. "Not this one... not this one either..."

He went deeper and deeper into the maze formed by all that clutter. Only his breathing and footsteps sounded in his ears, making it seem as though someone were following him.

The notes on the bookshelves were all about Transfiguration and spells. Jon even found manuscripts detailing some evil Magic Experiments, yet he could not find any notes on runes.

Just how unpopular was this class among the students?!

After searching for ages, Jon found only two old rune textbooks with a few notes written in them. In his view, they were barely better than nothing.

"Forget it. I'm done looking."

After spending so long bent over searching, Jon's lower back was aching.

The two books should be enough for him to teach himself the basics of Ancient Runes. He would find other ways to learn later. By third year, he would be able to choose elective classes anyway.

Time always passed quickly when he was focused. By the time Jon returned to his dormitory, dawn was already beginning to break.

"It always feels like there isn't enough time..."

He had barely learned anything, yet a semester had passed in the blink of an eye.

After lying on his bed for a while, Jon climbed back up.

He was too alert to sleep.

Just as he had said before, time passed quickly.

In the blink of an eye, December arrived, and Jon's Night tours were no longer limited to the castle.

Hogwarts was so vast. There were patrols inside the castle but none outside, and with the Disillusionment Charm, it was comparatively much safer.

Besides, as long as he wrapped himself up tightly enough, the cold could not catch him.

Hagrid, the Keeper of Keys and Grounds, had been troubled lately. For some reason, several Unicorns from the Forbidden Forest kept leaving their herd and wandering out of the forest. He had been coming out to patrol every night during this period.

Only after watching Hagrid pass by him did Jon, hidden beneath the Disillusionment Charm, quietly creep in the opposite direction.

He was the culprit behind the recent cases of Unicorns leaving the Forbidden Forest... though not simply for fun.

The Magic array Helga had asked Jon to prepare needed a magical connection to Hogwarts, so it required several precious magical materials to stabilize it. The rest had been easy enough to acquire; only the final item, Unicorn Hair, had been difficult to obtain.

It was not as if Jon had not considered buying it, but the Unicorn Hair available on the market was all collected after Unicorns had died, and none of it could meet Jon's requirements.

Helga's list stated it clearly:

Two hairs from the forehead and two from the tail of each of three Unicorns, twelve hairs in total.

Hair from living Unicorns was not impossible to buy. However, after Jon followed a tip and wrote to an illegal shop in Knockturn Alley to inquire about it, he completely gave up on the idea.

Ten Galleons per hair—they might as well rob Gringotts!

In the end, the cash-strapped Jon could only set his sights on the Unicorn herd in the Forbidden Forest. Following Helga's description, he first dug up several tubers in an unnamed valley within the forest—medicinally useless, but greatly loved by Unicorns.

Helga was extremely familiar with the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. Jon barely had to make any effort before he found those tubers in the primeval woodland. They were buried beneath rocks, making them difficult for Unicorns to dig out.

Jon borrowed some small tools and dug up six fist-sized tubers. He added a tiny amount of hallucinogenic herbs to them, then used them to knock out two Unicorns over the past few days.

As though the Unicorns were playing a joke on him, those two Unicorns took turns being lured out by Jon every night, then ate the tubers he had carefully prepared.

Today, Jon did not intend to continue using the same method. He planned to take the initiative and head for the Unicorns' settlement.

He had discovered the settlement a few days ago while tracking Unicorns. Every night, he scattered the scent of tubers along the road leading there, but the Unicorns were not stupid. The only ones ever lured out were those same two.

There were not many tubers in winter to begin with. If this continued, he would run out of them.

"That's the one!"

Jon watched a Unicorn that had fallen behind and lightly flicked his wand.