Professor Dumbledore's Transfiguration office.
Xiwen was holding a stack of notes he had made while reading, asking Dumbledore questions about alchemy.
"Look at this symbol. Are you sure it's Ancient Runes?" Dumbledore tapped a spot in Xiwen's notes with his long index finger, then frowned at him and asked.
Xiwen took a careful look. Amid the neat runic characters was a conspicuous seal-script character, and despite reading through it so many times, he had never noticed it!
"Mr. Rozier, I have to say, your recent condition has been rather worrying," Dumbledore said.
"I think perhaps you've put too much pressure on yourself. The reading list I gave you would be enough to occupy some upper-year students for an entire term, yet you finished it all in less than two months. That has probably placed an immense burden on your mind."
Xiwen nodded somewhat dejectedly.
This was already the third time he had made such a basic mistake lately. Yet he knew perfectly well that he was not under much mental pressure at all. The existence of his soul body—the ghost Xiwen—was practically a cheat ability, allowing him to read far more efficiently than others. And this cheat did not even need food or sleep.
But his poor condition during this period was obvious as well. His pride-worthy memory had made who knew how many mistakes in a single week.
One particularly memorable incident had happened in Herbology. Professor Isad had routinely called on him to give a demonstration, but he had somehow mixed up the simple method for handling Devil's Snare. A problem that Lumos could have solved, yet he had fiercely pulled out a knife and cut down, severing the vines in two.
Professor Isad had been furious, demanding to know whether he was deliberately causing trouble. When Xiwen