Worse still, that wasn't the half of it, because right now there was some poor bloke stuck in a trick staircase. It looked exactly like a normal set of steps, but once you reached a certain tread, you had to step right over it; otherwise, if you put your foot in, it would sink straight down.
For any newcomer arriving here, it was nothing short of a disaster.
"You alright?" Albert reached out and hauled Lee Jordan out.
"Not really," Lee Jordan grumbled. "I nearly jumped out of my skin just now. I really don't get why the school has to set up so many weird and wacky things."
"I think it's brilliant, don't you, George?"
"Spot on."
"These are old defensive installations left over from the past, and now they've become one of Hogwarts' defining features," Albert explained. "Keep up, everyone. I don't fancy getting lost."
After walking for who knows how long—when Albert's legs were starting to feel a bit sore—they finally reached the eighth floor. They trudged down a long corridor and arrived at the very end, where a portrait hung of a rather plump woman. Without a doubt, this was the legendary Fat Lady, the guardian of the Gryffindor Tower.
"Password?" she asked.
"Pig snout," the Prefect said. The portrait swung forward like a door, revealing a circular hole behind it.
Instead of rushing right in, the Prefect turned back to the first-years. "You must remember the password. You can only enter the common room by telling it to the Fat Lady. The password right now is pig snout."
With that, the Prefect led everyone through the hole in the wall, which opened into the Gryffindor common room.
It was a cozy, round, somewhat worn room filled with squashy armchairs. In one corner, a roaring fire crackled in the fireplace, beside which sat great piles of firewood. A few people were sitting on the sofas chatting; when the newcomers walked in, they glanced over and gave a friendly wave.
"You lot are in luck. Tomorrow's Saturday, which means no classes. It's a rare chance, and I suggest you use these next two days to properly get your bearings. The castle is a lot more complicated than you think, so if you don't want to get lost, you'd better figure out where your classrooms are pronto," the Prefect said, pointing toward two doors. "Girls that way, boys with me."
After exchanging a few words with another female prefect, he led Albert and the others through the other door, heading down a narrow, winding spiral staircase. Along the way, they passed numerous doors as the Prefect introduced them to the dormitories, washrooms, and bathrooms.
Naturally, the washrooms and bathrooms were communal, though thankfully the baths had partitions—thank goodness for that.
As for their individual bedrooms, they had to find them on their own, with their names specially marked on the doors.
Albert, the twins, and Lee Jordan were assigned to the same room, which slept just four.
The room wasn't terribly large, holding four four-poster beds draped with heavy curtains, each with a trunk sitting at its foot.
Albert easily located his leather trunk, smothered a yawn, and pulled out his pyjamas to change.
"Looking forward to rooming with you all," Albert said with a smile, greeting the other three.
"Same here." The four of them looked at each other and couldn't help grinning.
"I'm planning to explore the castle tomorrow. Are you lot coming?" Albert took his camera out of the trunk, stepped back to the doorway, and snapped a photo of his dormitory.
"Count us in. Wake me up early," the twins said in unison, exchanging a glance.
"What about you?" All three turned to look at Lee Jordan.
"Of course, I'm coming too." The black lad clearly didn't want to be left behind.
"Night."
Lying in bed, despite feeling thoroughly exhausted, Albert found himself unable to drift off. Whenever he arrived in an unfamiliar place, he always struggled with insomnia.
The others clearly didn't share his affliction; fully fed and watered, they had barely laid their heads on their pillows before they fell fast asleep.
Albert turned over on his side and opened his task panel; his exploration progress had reached three percent.
He wondered how much it would increase if he walked the entire castle tomorrow. He flipped through his skill list, which spanned several pages.
Most of the magic was only at level one, while a handful remained unmastered.
Looking at those skills still sitting at level zero, Albert suddenly felt a strong urge to spend some experience points and upgrade them to level one.
It was just a bad habit left over from playing video games, where he'd always max out his skills out of sheer muscle memory.
Albert took a deep breath and closed the panel, lest he accidentally blow all his hard-earned experience. That experience was tied to his future life here.
Dozing off into a light slumber, Albert fell asleep and dreamed of his past life, flipping through the pages of a book. He still remembered it was the first time he had ever encountered the Harry Potter book.
"Is all of this just a dream?"
No, this wasn't a dream. Ever since he had opened his eyes anew after his death, he had confirmed it time and time again.
This wasn't a dream.
He sometimes felt more like the author of some fanfiction, crafting yet another Harry Potter fanfic of his own. Only this time, he couldn't indulge his every whim and paint whatever self-insert fantasies he wanted like an author could.
Ah, being a brooding literary type was quite an illness.
Chapter 22: The Room of Requirement
When Albert woke up, the dormitory was pitch black, and the sound of rain drifted faintly through the window—the storm from the night before still hadn't stopped.
Albert sat up in bed, stifling a yawn. Blame it on that strange dream last night; his body felt completely drained upon waking.
Besides, he was far too early—the other three lads in the room were still fast asleep.
Albert reached out toward his bedside table, picked up his wand from the corner, and whispered, "Lumos."
The tip of his wand emitted a pale light. He brought the glowing wand close to his mechanical pocket watch and checked the time: five-forty.
Sure enough, he'd woken up way too early.
Albert extinguished the light on his wand and lay back down, the pocket watch slipping from his hand onto the quilt.
This was the gift Luke had bought him to celebrate his acceptance letter to Hogwarts.
Since he was already awake, Albert had no intention of going back to sleep. He pushed himself back up into a sitting position, stretched lazily, threw back the duvet, and walked over to the window. He undid the latch, pulled open the wooden casement, and looked out at the tower grounds.
A cold gust of wind blew right into his face, making Albert shiver and instantly clearing his head.
The rain wasn't heavy, but the outside world was pitch black, the entire castle shrouded in a hazy curtain of rain.
"A grand adventure," Albert muttered quietly, giving his cheeks a light pat.
Closing the window, Albert returned to his bedside, pulled his robes from his trunk and put them on, then grabbed his pocket watch and wand from the bedside table and slipped them into his pockets. Before stepping out of the dormitory, he paused to toss his freshly changed clothes into the basket in the bathroom; the house-elves would use magic to wash them clean and leave them neatly back on his bed.
Come to think of it, Hogwarts students had it pretty good. They didn't have to worry about chores; they just needed to focus on learning magic in peace.
The common room was dead quiet, save for a female ghost sitting on a sofa reading a book. Hearing footsteps, she raised her head to glance at Albert, then lowered it again to turn the pages.
Albert didn't disturb the ghostly lady. Although he wouldn't mind having a chat with her, he ultimately decided against it—he absolutely hated being interrupted when he was reading.
Not lingering in the common room, Albert planned to wander around the various parts of the castle before everyone else woke up, and incidentally hunt for the legendary Room of Requirement.
Pushing open the common room door, Albert ducked through the circular hole. The Fat Lady was still wearing her nightgown, peering sleepily at the departing student.
"Where off to?" she asked.
"Just a walk." Albert looked down the dim corridor, raised his wand, and pressed on. This time, he had no intention of taking the route he'd used last night; instead, he wanted to explore somewhere new.
Perhaps because it was raining outside, the corridors carried a damp, chilly air, feeling very much like the spooky castle in a ghost film where a phantom might burst out from the walls at any moment and scare someone half to death.
In fact, ghosts really did inhabit Hogwarts Castle, and there were plenty of them. Even if a ghost popped out of the wall right now, it wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary.
Just around the corner, Albert spotted the stone staircase they'd taken the previous night. This time, he didn't head down; he kept going straight.
Rounding another corridor, Albert spotted a large vase sitting ahead. Turning his head to look left and right, he actually managed to find the tapestry of trolls dancing ballet.
"Looks like my luck's in."
Albert quickened his pace, walked up to the tapestry, raised his wand, and used its light to examine the bizarre artwork before him, which could only be described as an eyesore.
The tapestry showed a group of trolls wearing tutus, wielding clubs or bones, striking various coquettish poses. A ballet instructor was attempting to teach the trolls to dance, only to be beaten soundlessly over the head by a troll with a bone club.
While Albert was studying the tapestry, the troll in the picture actually stopped beating the ballet instructor, turned its head, and glared right at him, as if asking, "What are you staring at?"
If he'd had his camera, Albert would definitely have snapped this hilarious scene.
However, his main priority right now was the Room of Requirement, which was located right in the blank white wall opposite this tapestry.
Albert stepped aside, turned around to face the blank wall, then glanced back at the tapestry, raised his right hand, and mimicked a knocking motion toward the troll.
That buck-toothed troll actually copied him, raising its bone club and smacking the poor ballet instructor again.
The scene was enough to melt the heart and bring a tear to the eye.
Albert let out a cheerful laugh, walked over to the blank wall, and reached out to touch the stone surface. It was a very solid stone wall, with no sign of any Room of Requirement.
The condition for entering the Room of Requirement was to walk past this stretch of wall three times while concentrating hard on what you needed.
"Walk past?" Albert raised his wand, its pale light illuminating one end of the blank wall where a window stood. He turned and looked back toward the human-sized vase at the other end.
So, it meant pacing back and forth three times?
"A place to practice magic, a place to practice magic..." Albert concentrated intensely, walking from the window at one end of the blank wall, turning around at the vase at the other end, and walking back.
He muttered under his breath. On his third turn, the wall began to change.
Countless patterns materialized across the white stone, gradually forming a smooth, polished door.
Albert's spirits lifted because he knew he'd succeeded. He grasped the brass handle, pulled the door open, and stepped inside. It was a spacious room with torches burning along the walls, looking somewhat like a classroom.
Lining the walls were numerous wooden bookshelves holding hundreds of books; Albert suspected these volumes had been borrowed straight from the library. On the other side were several dummies used for practicing spellcasting.
"Brilliant," Albert whispered. With these books around, he wouldn't even need to make special trips to the library to look things up.
Still, whenever he used this place, he'd need to be careful not to get caught. After all, a door suddenly appearing on a blank wall was bound to attract attention.
Albert didn't linger. He turned and left the Room of Requirement, already starting to think about how he could use this place in secret.
If he didn't want anyone to know, he needed to make sure he met nobody on his way in and nobody on his way out—that was the only way to keep this place a secret.
What he needed was the Disillusionment Charm and the Marauder's Map.
The Disillusionment Charm should be findable in that pile of books he'd just seen, but the Marauder's Map was in Filch's possession, and getting his hands on that wouldn't be easy.
Make one himself?
He didn't have the capability for that right now.
Oh well, take it one step at a time! Besides, he had seven years here.
After Albert turned and walked away, the door to the Room of Requirement slowly faded from view once more, turning back into an ordinary stretch of white stone. Very few people in the school knew such a magical room even existed.
Chapter 23: Secret Passages and Filch
Come to think of it, was his system panel some kind of stripped-down version? It didn't even come with a map function. Albert still had the headspace to joke about his panel's capabilities; finding the Room of Requirement had put him in high spirits.
What could he do? In the web novels he used to read, the protagonists' personal systems were always ridiculously overpowered, complete with scan functions that left nothing hidden.
Now that he thought about it, his own panel's features were pitifully sparse.
Actually, just having a cheat-like panel at all made Albert pretty happy.
"I remember the Headmaster's Office is also on the eighth floor, I just don't know which eighth floor it's on," Albert muttered to himself.
Naturally, he had no intention of sneaking up to the Headmaster's Office. If that old codger Dumbledore took notice of him, life at school wouldn't be very fun afterward.
After all, portraits were everywhere in Hogwarts Castle; if Dumbledore wanted to know what a student was up to, it was easy enough to find out.
Albert turned a couple more corners and found a downward staircase.
Heading down the steps, he began wandering aimlessly through the castle, only to find himself helplessly lost.
Well, perhaps you couldn't call it getting lost—he'd simply never been here before.
Albert stopped in front of a stone wall, swiping his wand's beam across the carved reliefs on the masonry. He reached out and gave it a light knock—it was solid.
However, Albert suspected there was a secret passage here. There was no help for it; the gryphon carving on the wall was just too suspicious. Places like this usually hid secret doors and hidden routes.
"What are you doing here, young man?" Nick popped straight out of the adjacent wall, looking in surprise at Albert, who was inspecting the carving.
The sudden voice gave Albert a start; he felt like his heart was about to leap right out of his chest.
Albert hurriedly took a few deep breaths to steady his racing pulse, and couldn't help complaining to Nick: "Don't pop out like that out of nowhere, you'll scare someone to death."
"Apologies, I didn't mean to frighten you." Nick arched an eyebrow and asked again, "What are you doing here?"
"Going for a walk," Albert answered honestly.
"A walk? At this hour?" Nick looked down the corridor doubtfully; it was still terribly early.
"Yep, a walk. Sir Nicholas, I don't suppose you have a moment to show me around Hogwarts? This place is practically a maze, and I accidentally got lost on my stroll." Albert smiled at Nick; if the ghost was willing to help out, it would save him a lot of time.
"Ah, well, I believe exploring the castle is one of the great joys for a newcomer," Nick declined tactfully.
"You're right." Albert didn't mind Nick turning him down. With a cheerful goodbye, he went back to studying the gryphon carving in front of him.
Watching Albert's back, Nick shook his head with a parting tip: "If you want to open that door, the switch is in the gryphon's claw."
"Thanks." Hearing that, Albert reached out toward the gryphon's claw and gave it a few gentle taps. The stone door slowly slid open, revealing a narrow secret passage within.
"See you later, Sir Nicholas." Albert nodded slightly to the ghost in gratitude, raised his wand, and stepped into the passage.
It was very cramped, wide enough for only one person to pass at a time—definitely not a great spot for anyone with claustrophobia.
Albert could feel himself heading downward, and he had no idea where the passage led, but discovering its existence was good news either way.
Sure enough, the ghosts and portraits living in the castle knew a lot more about Hogwarts than anyone else.
The exit was hidden behind a painting. Once Albert pushed the portrait aside, an old man in a nightshirt glared at him unhappily, complaining that Albert had disturbed his rest.
"Sorry to bother you!" Albert apologized to the old man in the portrait and pressed on, figuring he was probably about to get lost again.
However, this time Albert stumbled upon a moving staircase.
No matter how many times he saw it, he found the spectacle of the moving staircases quite magnificent.
It was said that both the moving staircases and the Room of Requirement were the handiwork of Rowena Ravenclaw. He wondered if he'd ever reach that level of skill himself.
Wait, did Rowena Ravenclaw hide any secrets inside the Room of Requirement?
After all, didn't Slytherin keep a Basilisk in his own Chamber of Secrets?
When you thought about it, that made a lot of sense. Next time he went over there, he could definitely give it a try—he might actually unearth some secret.
It took Albert a full ten minutes to make his way down the stairs, interrupted once by a shifting staircase that forced him to stand still and wait for the steps to reset. Fortunately, he didn't have to wait too long—thank goodness for that... no, right now he should be thanking Merlin.
Just as he entered the Entrance Hall, Albert was drawn to a cat. It looked a bit scrawny with dark grey fur, completely incomparable to his own Tom.
He bent down intending to stroke it, but the cat darted off with lightning speed, vanishing in a flash.
Albert figured that must be the caretaker Filch's cat—what was her name again, Mrs. something. Although he'd read the Harry Potter books and watched the movies, the longer time went on, the harder it was to remember unimportant details, especially minor character names.
If he hadn't written fanfiction before and looked up a fair bit of research, he probably would have forgotten even faster.
The cat had run off, likely to go fetch someone, but Albert wasn't worried about Filch giving him a hard time.
After all, it was already past six o'clock; the sky still hadn't fully brightened simply because of the rain outside.
As Albert prepared to step into the Great Hall, a scuffling sound echoed out, and an elderly Filch approached carrying a lantern.
Albert noticed Filch was still in his nightshirt with just a cloak thrown over his shoulders, a gleeful smile playing at the corners of his mouth—the look of a hunter who had cornered his prey.
"Good morning, Mr. Filch," Albert greeted him, raising a hand as if encountering a familiar friend.
"Good morning?" Filch reached out to grab Albert, only for the boy to easily step back and dodge him.
"Of course, it's already six-fifteen, Mr. Filch." Albert pulled his pocket watch from his pocket, checked the time, and held it out right in front of Filch, asking, "When does the Great Hall start serving food?"
Filch froze as well, because Albert had deliberately moved his wand closer to the pocket watch so the caretaker could see the time clearly.
The expression of Filch—who had been fully expecting to catch a nocturnal wandering student—instantly collapsed, looking like a child who had just been told the Halloween feast was cancelled.
In fact, it was already morning now, even though the sky remained very dark and no other students had woken up yet.
"Seven o'clock."