Criminal Acts

There were plenty of empty classrooms on the Seventh Floor. Harry quickly found one and made sure Peeves wasn't inside before closing the door.

He spoke somewhat incoherently. "I just saw Snape arrange to meet Quirrell in secret in the Forbidden Forest, and he threatened Quirrell, too! He said things like, 'You don't want me as your enemy, do you?' It really was Snape! And they talked about the Philosopher's Stone, too!"

"So all our earlier deductions were right. That thing is the Philosopher's Stone, and Snape wants to force Quirrell to help him. He asked Quirrell if he knew how to deal with Fluffy, and about Quirrell's 'little trick.' I think there must be quite a few other defenses guarding the stone besides Fluffy. Quirrell's the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, so Snape needs his help!"

"You mean the Philosopher's Stone is only safe as long as Quirrell can stand up to Snape?" Hermione looked a little panicked.

"I bet the stone's gone by next Tuesday," Ron said.

Hermione and Harry instinctively turned to Aya, just in time to see her looking at Ron with shining eyes. After spending a few months with her, they could now make out a little emotion in those pitch-black eyes—a qualitative leap.

"I bet!" Aya raised her hand high. "The stone's already gone!"

"...Then you're bound to lose." Ron rolled his eyes speechlessly, not wanting to pay her any attention.

"Will you bet or not?" Aya planted her hands on her hips. She looked so certain that Harry and Hermione both gave her a doubtful glance.

But before Aya could say anything else, someone suddenly knocked on the classroom door.

"Sorry for the trouble, Miss Hawthorne, but I think I need your help with something?" Dumbledore pushed open the door and smiled at them.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione all went a little pale. Aya, meanwhile, asked with a fallen face, "What is it?" Hermione tugged on her sleeve, and she reluctantly squeezed out a few more words. "Headmaster Dumbledore."

"Oh, come along, child. I've prepared some desserts and sweets. Perhaps you can bring some back for your friends later," Dumbledore said with a smile. Aya's expression immediately returned to normal. She waved to her friends and followed Dumbledore out.

"...Did Headmaster Dumbledore hear what we just said?" Ron asked hesitantly.

"Probably not?" Hermione frowned. "If he'd heard, wouldn't he have asked us about it? It's such a precious thing."

"But Aya's reaction just now was a little strange," Harry said hesitantly, recalling how Aya had glowed with confidence.

"Doesn't she have a total communication disorder?" Ron said dismissively. "She just thinks betting is fun. Has anything ever come of it?"

"...The time with Malfoy?" Hermione said hesitantly.

"...That was Malfoy being unlucky. He deserved it," Ron declared. "We'd better think about how to stop Snape!"

Aya followed Dumbledore, drawn by the promise of delicious little cakes, only to arrive and find nothing but a cup of sweetened tea.

"Where's my cake?" Aya stared at the solitary teacup on the table. "And the sweets."

"Children shouldn't eat so many sweets." Smiling, Dumbledore sat back down in his seat.

"You eat lots, too." Looking at the sweet jar on his desk, Aya felt her paws itch to reach for it.

"I'm an adult." Dumbledore waved a hand, and a golden birdcage appeared over the sweet jar on his desk. "Now, this isn't the time to discuss that. As for the Philosopher's Stone, I hope you won't reveal anything more to Harry and the others, including the fact that it's no longer in the forbidden area on the fourth floor."

"Cake, Mr. Headmaster." Aya stared at him.

"..." Dumbledore waved his hand helplessly, and a delicate slice of blueberry cake appeared on the coffee table.

Only then did Aya sit down and dig into the cake without ceremony. "Why?"

"Well... I'm afraid word might get out?" Dumbledore replied.

Aya suddenly remembered the quest she'd forgotten all about:

[Find the person hiding in the shadows: School life is very pleasant, and you feel quite relaxed, but there is one thing you have always found very strange. You think the person involved may be unusual.]

"Is it Quirrell?" she asked curiously. "He looks like garlic that came to life, and you can't peel off his turban, layer after layer."

"?" Dumbledore glanced at her in surprise. He'd thought Aya wasn't interested in these things. "It is indeed him, but the time hasn't come yet. We can't arrest someone for preparing to commit a crime."

"Huh?" Aya tilted her head, but understood after giving it some thought. Casualties were so rare in the Wizarding World here that it had to be different from her old world—her old world had no such thing as laws.

As she was thinking, Aya's system sounded a notification that she'd completed the quest:

[Find the person hiding in the shadows, part two: You have discovered that there is something unusual about Professor Quirrell, but he seems to have another secret. You want to uncover his deeper secrets.]

"Huh?" Dumbledore watched as Aya suddenly went still for a moment, as if she were looking at something, or perhaps daydreaming. After a few seconds, she turned to ask him, "Does Quirrell have any other secrets?"

"...How did you learn that?" Dumbledore asked, pushing up his glasses.

"Um... All right, I'm not curious anymore." Aya felt that her system was definitely her greatest treasure. She could reveal her backpack and the source of those materials, but she didn't want to reveal that she had a system that gave her quests. She couldn't shake the feeling that someone would try to take it away. "Then can I still play with Harry and the others?"

Dumbledore's eyes flickered, but he set his thoughts aside for the moment. "Of course. You're friends, aren't you? You've gotten along very well these past few months."

Aya nodded, finished the little cake in a few bites, and wandered around the Headmaster's Office. After touching two glowing spots, she left.

Dumbledore paid her no mind. After watching her leave, he wrote another sentence on the parchment spread open before him: Mysterious source of information, very likely direct one-on-one communication, extremely well concealed.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, closed the parchment, and resumed his interrupted afternoon tea.

Over the following weeks, since Aya had already confirmed Quirrell as the suspect, she secretly watched him whenever Harry and the others encountered him.

Honestly, aside from his turban, Aya couldn't see anything else strange about him—the garlic smell all came from inside it.

So one night, Aya decided to investigate Professor Quirrell's office. If Quirrell wouldn't commit a crime, surely she could. In any case, her former world had no laws, and the only law here that applied to her was the International Statute of Secrecy.

Hehe.

Of course, she wasn't planning to attack a professor-Professor McGonagall would deduct points from her without hesitation for that. She mainly wanted to see what magic Professor Quirrell's turban held that made him wear it even when it made him stink so badly!

If something was wrong with Quirrell, confronting him directly would definitely be dangerous. Aya was still level fifteen, and because the quest she'd completed earlier was divided into parts one and two, she had to finish both to receive the experience reward. She had a fair understanding of her abilities: she definitely couldn't solo the boss, and what if she wasted her CD?

So-

She was going to steal Quirrell's turban!

Harry had already told his friends about his Invisibility Cloak. Aya had an invisibility skill too, but it triggered passively and didn't last long, so she planned to borrow Harry's treasure.

Harry readily lent her the Invisibility Cloak, though he was curious about what she planned to do. Someone who could openly accuse the headmaster of wandering around at night before he could accuse her shouldn't need an Invisibility Cloak, should she?

"I'm going to steal a turban," Aya said honestly, then took the Invisibility Cloak and left.

"A turban?" Harry took a moment to process the word "steal" before repeating her words blankly.

Ron was feeding nuts to his yellow-named rat. "Has she finally had enough of Professor Quirrell's garlic smell?" he remarked.

Unaware of their conversation, Aya put on the Invisibility Cloak and wandered over to Quirrell's office. Curfew had only just begun. Before committing her crime, Aya had already found out that Quirrell was on patrol tonight, so she boldly cast Alohomora on the professor's office door several times and successfully broke in.

"Mm... Smells like garlic." Aya wrinkled her nose, habitually pulled out some tissues to plug her nostrils, then drew her wand and waved it. "Lumos."

The office was perfectly normal. Apart from the garlic smell permeating the air, there was nothing unusual about it. Aya had been to three offices by now, after all, so she knew what a normal one looked like.

Aya made a circuit of the office but didn't see anything strange, not even a glowing spot. Professors' private rooms were usually connected to their offices, so she decided without hesitation to press on and opened the inner door in the corner of the room.

Uh...

Even with her nose plugged, Aya could smell garlic ten times stronger than in the office. It wasn't just the smell of garlic; Aya even thought she could smell rotting garlic. Her nose was going to break!

How much garlic did he have to stockpile and steep himself in to smell this strong?

Aya felt as though her eyes were stinging, as if some solid, stinking smoke were attacking them. She directed Xiaohua to carry away all the turbans, then fled in disarray, retching as she went. Thank goodness for Xiaohua, but she'd still have to rinse his mouth!

Aya paid the price for her crime—the garlic smell had clung to her.

She washed herself three times in the bathroom and still felt she smelled of it. She summoned Duoduo, whose spell finally removed it completely. By the time Aya went to bed, she'd spent an hour and a half in the bathroom and felt as though the hot water had scalded off a layer of her skin.

The next day, Harry was greeted by a listless version of Aya.

"Didn't your operation succeed yesterday?" Harry asked quietly.

"It succeeded." Aya felt as though she could still smell that terrible odor and answered numbly.

"Will Quirrell still smell like garlic today, then?" Ron leaned closer and asked cautiously.

Aya picked up Xiaohua and held him out to them. "Have a sniff."

Harry and Ron didn't understand. Ron refused close contact with a cat because he kept Scabbers, but Harry willingly leaned in for a sniff. "There's no strange smell?"

"That's today," Aya said. "After I came back yesterday, I washed four times and used magic before I got the garlic smell off me!"

"Merlin's beard, how bad must it have smelled!" Ron's eyes widened.

"Probably as bad as Merlin's smelly socks." Aya was listless. She still hadn't recovered from the mental attack she'd suffered yesterday—her nose was much more sensitive than a pure-blooded human's!

"To you, for fighting for all the students, I salute you." Ron held up a glass of orange juice and clinked it against Aya's cherry juice.

After that day, Quirrell grew suspicious of everything. His face became paler and he began to lose weight. Aya even wondered if the turban she'd stolen was his true form; otherwise, why had Quirrell become so distracted, like a ghost?

When Hermione found out, she scolded Aya. They'd always thought Quirrell was being bullied by Snape, and Aya had gone and made things worse for him.

As a result, Harry and Ron became friendlier to Quirrell. Sometimes, when Aya saw the two of them giving him kind smiles, she felt as though she were about to get goosebumps.

Hermione, however, didn't join their "care for the professor without a turban" group. Apart from going with them to check whether the three-headed dog was still in place, she was busy making a revision schedule.

"Can I use a Doubling Charm?" Aya pulled a long face, not wanting to copy any more notes. She was a Spirit Clan member who loved nature and adventure! Hermione had already kept her copying notes for four days.

Although Hermione's notes were detailed and every point was marked in a different color, making them very neat and pretty, that didn't change the fact that Aya's head swam at the sight of words. All she wanted now was to sleep.

"Can you cast it?" Hermione didn't pause in her work, organizing her History of Magic notes. It was the most complicated class, and practically all of it had to be learned on their own.

"Hermione, the exams are still hundreds of years away," Ron said, flipping through his textbook, which was both old and new—the cover was grubby, but there were hardly any notes inside.

"There are only ten weeks left," Hermione countered. "Not hundreds of years. For Nicolas Flamel and his wife, that's just the blink of an eye."

"But don't you know everything? Why do you still have to revise?" Ron said with little interest, signaling Harry with his eyes to quickly find an excuse for them to slip away together.

"I know everything? I certainly don't know everything! We have to pass these exams to get into second year. They're very important, and I even think there isn't enough time now. I should have started revising a month ago! I really don't know what I was doing back then..." Hermione muttered, complaining about herself.

"Do we have to pass the exams to move up a year?" Aya was startled and suddenly grew nervous.

"Don't listen to her nonsense." Ron made a face. "Unless your grades are absolutely dreadful, the school won't make you repeat a year!"

"But doesn't Slytherin have someone repeating a year?" Hermione retorted. "Even someone from a Pure-blood family like theirs has to repeat a year. I can't imagine what will happen if I don't work hard and my grades aren't good enough!"