A Trip to the Forbidden Forest

After dinner, the Hufflepuff common room was filled with badgers of different years passing their leisurely post-meal time in different ways.

What, you were asking why no one was doing homework? Did you think this was Ravenclaw? Everyone just copied from the students with good grades the day before assignments were due and muddled through.

At a coffee table in the corner of the common room, Roy sat on a soft sofa with a group of younger Hufflepuff students, chatting about all kinds of gossip from their house.

The students' conversations were nothing more than who was dating whom, who had fought whom in the corridor, or which professor had given which students detention in class.

Today's hottest topic was undoubtedly the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor—Elias Thorn. According to students who had attended his class today, Professor Thorn's lessons involved all kinds of practical combat training. To young wizards who had rarely, if ever, experienced such training, it was undoubtedly something very new.

"Have you heard? That little witch who just started her first year in Slytherin this year—her great-uncle was the first Dark Lord."

Roy had been lounging against the back of an armchair, casually flipping through an alchemy book he had borrowed that day. The moment he heard Aisling mentioned, he sat up at once and carefully listened to the gossip brought back by a second-year witch.

"I heard from upper-year students that her great-uncle once started wars across all of Europe. In the end, he was defeated by Dumbledore and has been locked in prison ever since."

Roy quietly listened to quite a few stories about Grindelwald, even hearing plenty of rumors about Grindelwald and Dumbledore being lovers.

Still, no one was particularly afraid of Aisling. Though she was a little cold by nature, she was quite friendly to others—aside from Roy. She was fundamentally different from those Slytherin students who looked down their noses at everyone. She had even helped quite a few Hufflepuff students in class today, and even most Gryffindor students did not dislike her that much.

More importantly, more than fifty years had passed since Grindelwald had been imprisoned in Nurmengard. Most of the Wizard Purist Party had already cleaned up their image, and Voldemort's emergence had further shifted people's fear away from Grindelwald.

After hearing so many rumors about Aisling's family, Roy finally understood why the people following Aisling had glared so fiercely at Dumbledore. Dumbledore had thrown their leader into prison.

After listening for a while longer without hearing anything new, Roy tossed his book onto the coffee table and drained the cup of tea before him, which had gone slightly cold. After greeting Cedric, who was doing homework nearby, he stood and headed out of the common room.

"Where are you going?"

All the students doing homework were gathered around one coffee table so they could discuss things with one another. Roy looked around and saw that only a few students in each year were in such a hurry to do homework.

"I'm going out to stretch my legs."

Roy did not tell Cedric that he was going to the Forbidden Forest. There was no need to make such a fuss over breaking school rules.

After leaving the common room, Roy checked the things on him. Once he confirmed everything was in order, he took out his wand and cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself.

He climbed the stairs and crossed the empty castle corridors. Without alerting anyone, Roy slipped out through a side door of the castle. Following the path down across the grass, he successfully reached the shore of the Black Lake.

From the lakeside, he could see the Forbidden Forest in the distance, a pitch-black expanse. Treading over the damp, soft grass by the lake, Roy slowly circled around Hagrid's lit-up hut. Beyond it lay the outer edge of the Forbidden Forest.

Once inside the Forbidden Forest, the trees around the edge were not yet too dense, and the path was not too difficult to traverse. Roy took out his wand and cast Lumos.

A faint light lit up at the tip of his wand, illuminating the path around him. Not knowing what might be in the forest, Roy cautiously felt his way farther in.

As he walked, Roy memorized the route he had taken. The main purpose of this expedition was to find a place to build his own secret base. That way, any private plans in the future could be carried out discreetly without interruption.

The deeper he went, the denser the woods became and the harder the path was to travel. After making a brief exploration of the outer area closest to Hogwarts, Roy picked out a clearing beside a stream as the construction site for the Special Operations Office.

"The environment's nice. It's fairly secluded, and there don't seem to be any wild animals around."

Roy tossed everything he had brought onto the ground, took out his wand, and began casting spells.

"Weed Removal."

Roy used a garden-maintenance spell he had learned earlier to clear the open ground beside the stream.

Magic really did make work fast. In only a few minutes, Roy had cleared away all the weeds in the entire clearing, exposing the bare earth beneath.

Anyone who had played Minecraft knew that placing down a crafting table, a furnace, and a bed meant you had a home. Roy planned to build a small cabin when he had time later. For now, he intended to make do with a tent.

He picked up several branches that were scattered all over the ground and used them to make a basic frame. Then he spread the canvas from his backpack over it.

"All right, there's the bed. Next is the workbench."

There was no shortage of trees in the Forbidden Forest, but cutting one down was a problem. Roy did not know any tree-cutting spells, so he could only scratch his head and try something at random with his wand.

"Let me think. I should channel my magic to cut it, or maybe I can just knock the tree over directly."

At that moment, Roy took out the Elder Wand that originally belonged to Aisling. He rarely used it himself. Though it was powerful, Roy always felt that the wand had an unpleasant temperament.

"Ha! Fall over!"

Roy thrust his wand forward with all his strength, firing a powerful spell at the relatively slender tree before him.

When the powerful spell struck the trunk, the immense impact forcefully knocked the entire tree out of the ground by its roots.

"Not bad. Next, I need to cut it. Let me think—"

The falling tree made a tremendous crash, startling the silent Forbidden Forest into bursts of birdsong. Roy raised his wand again, roughly imagined how to channel his magic, and cast another spell at the fallen tree.

This time, the commotion was much smaller. A thick beam of white light shot from his wand and struck the fallen trunk, slicing it cleanly in two.

"Damn, I definitely can't use this on people casually."

Roy looked at the smooth cut in the trunk and thought that if a human body took a hit like that, they would probably turn into Gojo Satoru on the spot.

After cutting the entire fallen tree into neat wooden planks, Roy used them to build a workbench and made several chairs as well.

With those things in place, the camp felt a little more like home.

This little bit of wood would not be enough to build a wooden cabin, but it did remind him that he needed to learn the Undetectable Extension Charm.

He gathered several stones and built a campfire. Sitting beside it, with the forest utterly still around him, the stream murmuring nearby and the flames twisting endlessly before him, Roy felt a rare sense of peace.

Finding a corner, Roy planted all the seeds he had taken from the greenhouse that day. After casually watering them with water from the stream, he extinguished the campfire and prepared to leave.

Before leaving, Roy looked at the base, which had begun to take shape, and silently planned its future upgrades.

It was September now, but Scotland's weather was already turning cold. He had to build at least a basic house before November.

Second, it would be best to cast a Concealment Charm around the base. Roy did not know that spell yet, so he would have to look it up in the library later.

Lastly, he could not forget to learn the Undetectable Extension Charm. Enlarging a wallet with it was easy, but expanding a house would not be so simple. The spell would definitely come in handy after he built the cabin.

By the time Roy returned to the common room, curfew had just begun. Cedric had been sitting on his bed chatting with Connor and the others. Seeing Roy return so late, he curiously asked where he had been.

Roy gave each of them a pinecone he had picked up in the Forbidden Forest. He merely smiled and did not answer.

"I'll take you there someday when I get the chance."

After saying that, Roy prepared to sleep. Lying in bed and recalling everything that had happened on his first day at school, Roy felt deeply fulfilled.