The Great Hall was unusually lively that evening. The autumn chill had finally begun creeping into the castle, and most students seemed content to stay indoors where it was warm. The smell of roasted chicken and fresh bread filled the air as hundreds of students talked over one another.
Adam was halfway through his dinner when Ron suddenly dropped a thick book onto the table with a groan, "I give up."
The book landed with a loud thump.
Hermione looked horrified, "You can't just give up."
"I can and I am," Ron declared. "We've been looking for nearly two weeks."
Harry rubbed his forehead. "Honestly, I'm starting to think Hagrid made the name up."
"He didn't," Hermione said immediately.
"How do you know?" Harry asked.
"Because Hagrid isn't clever enough to invent a fake wizard," Ron replied instantly.
Adam nearly choked on his pumpkin juice. Hermione pointed a fork at Ron.
"You know I'm right," Ron said, raising both hands in surrender.
"See?" Harry said. "This is exactly what I mean. We have one name and absolutely nothing else."
Neville, who had been quietly eating mashed potatoes beside them, looked up. "Who are we talking about again?"
"Nicholas Flamel," Harry said.
Neville blinked, "Oh."
A pause.
"Who's Nicholas Flamel?"
Ron let out a miserable groan and dropped his head onto the table, "Exactly."
Adam couldn't help smiling. It wasn't a big smile. Just a tiny one, but unfortunately for him, Hermione Granger saw everything. Her eyes narrowed immediately.
Adam froze. Hermione pointed at him, "See."
Ron looked up, "What?"
Hermione didn't take her eyes off Adam, "That."
Adam looked around innocently, "That what?"
"That smile."
"What smile?"
"The one you just made."
"I smiled because Ron looked ridiculous."
"I did not," Ron protested.
"You absolutely did."
Hermione ignored them both, "You know who Nicholas Flamel is."
The table went silent. Harry looked at Adam. Neville looked at Adam. Ron looked at Adam. Even Dean Thomas at the other end of the table looked at Adam despite having no idea what was happening.
Adam slowly lowered his fork and shook his head. "No."
Hermione crossed her arms, "No?"
"No."
"You know."
"I don't."
"You do."
"I don't."
"You absolutely do."
Adam sighed, "Hermione, that's a very serious accusation."
"It's not an accusation."
"Then what is it?"
"It's an observation."
Ron nodded immediately, "Yeah, you've got that face."
Adam stared at him, "You too?"
Harry frowned thoughtfully, "You kind of do have a face."
"I have one face. This is just how it looks." Adam pointed at his face.
"You have a knowing face." Hermione repeated.
"I don't have a knowing face."
"You do," Neville said unexpectedly. Adam looked betrayed, "Neville."
Neville immediately returned to his potatoes. Adam sighed heavily. The entire table was against him.
Hermione leaned forward, "So?"
"So what?" Adam calmly looked down at his plate for a moment.
"So who is Nicholas Flamel?" Hermione asked again.
Adam took a slow sip of pumpkin juice and replied nonchalantly, "I have absolutely no idea."
That wasn't technically a lie. Not anymore. His knowledge came from another life. As far as Adam Taylor was concerned, he had never personally met Nicholas Flamel.
Hermione narrowed her eyes. Clearly she wasn't convinced. But after a few moments she huffed and returned to her food.
The conversation eventually shifted elsewhere. Ron started complaining about Potions. Harry complained about Snape. Neville complained about Snape. Even Hermione joined in and complained about Snape.
The topic quickly became much more popular while Adam quietly continued eating his dinner. But every now and then, he could feel Hermione's eyes on him.
Watching.
Waiting.
And somehow that was far more unsettling than Dumbledore.
Later that evening, the Gryffindor common room was quieter than usual. Several students had already gone upstairs, while others sat near the fireplace finishing homework.
Adam was halfway through a chapter on magical signatures when a shadow fell across his book.
He looked up.
Hermione.
Of course.
She folded her arms, "We need to talk."
Adam closed the book and looked up at her stubborn face, "I was wondering how long that would take."
Hermione sat down opposite him. For a moment she simply stared.
Then she said, "You know something."
Adam sighed, "Hermione—"
"No." She pointed at him, "Don't do that thing where you answer a completely different question."
Adam blinked, surprised, "I do that?"
"All the time."
"That's unfair."
"It's accurate."
Adam leaned back in his chair. Hermione leaned forward. Neither spoke.
Finally Adam cracked first, "What exactly are you accusing me of?"
Hermione narrowed her eyes, "I think you know more than you're telling us."
Adam was quiet for a moment, then he smiled faintly, "Maybe."
Hermione immediately sat straighter, "I knew it."
"But that's not the same thing as knowing who Nicholas Flamel is."
Hermione opened her mouth.
Paused.
Then frowned.
That sounded suspiciously like something Adam would say when he was technically telling the truth.
Which was incredibly annoying.
"You've changed." The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Adam blinked. For the first time, genuine surprise appeared on his face, "Changed?"
Hermione nodded, "A little."
Adam looked into the fire. The flames danced quietly in the hearth. After a long moment he smiled, "Maybe."
This time the smile looked different.
Smaller.
Softer.
And for some reason, Hermione couldn't think of a response. The silence stretched between them. Eventually Adam closed his book and said, "Come on."
Hermione frowned, "What?"
"You have a History of Magic essay due tomorrow."
Hermione's eyes widened. Then she grabbed her bag. The mystery of Adam Taylor would have to wait.
For now.
Even today, the Room of Requirement was brightly lit despite the late hour. The training room looked even more battered than it had a few weeks ago. Several practice dummies stood missing arms, scorch marks covered parts of the floor, and dozens of wooden targets floated lazily around the room.
Adam stood in the center of it all with his wand raised, sweat trickling down his temples.
A red flash crossed the room.
The dummy's wand flew from its hand and landed several feet away.
Adam frowned.
The spell had worked perfectly. At least, by ordinary standards.
A month ago he would have been delighted with that result. Now all he saw were flaws.
The wand had flown too far, which was not exactly a bad thing but it meant that he used excess force. The spell had consumed slightly more magic than necessary. Most importantly, too much of the force had dispersed after striking the target.
Professor Flitwick's Expelliarmus had never done that.
The tiny Charms Professor could casually disarm people without making a spectacle of it. There was no dramatic explosion of force. No brilliant flash that lit up the room. Yet somehow it always felt more dangerous.
Adam spent several minutes repeating the spell.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Each attempt looked weaker than the previous one.
The red light grew thinner. The visible force decreased. The spell became less impressive to look at.
Yet the results improved.
Instead of throwing the dummy's wand across the room, the disarming charm now removed it cleanly and predictably. Adam could almost choose where it landed by controlling the amount of magic he used.
That alone told him he was moving in the right direction.
Magic wasn't just about power.
It was about efficiency.
A first-year could empty his magical reserves by throwing around large, unstable spells. A professor could achieve ten times more while using less magic simply because they understood exactly where every bit of power needed to go.
Adam lowered his wand and turned his attention toward several wooden spheres floating nearby.
Levitation had become another favourite training exercise.
Lifting one object was easy.
Lifting three was not.
The spheres immediately began drifting apart the moment he expanded the spell.
One rose too high.
Another tilted sideways.
A third started slowly descending.
Adam spent nearly a minute correcting the mistakes.
The exercise reminded him of juggling while blindfolded.
The magic itself wasn't difficult.
Maintaining control over multiple targets simultaneously was.
For a while he simply stood there, experimenting.
Whenever he treated each object as an independent target, his concentration suffered. The moment his attention shifted toward one sphere, another would begin drifting away.
The moment he stopped treating them as three separate targets and instead imagined them as a single constellation, his control improved.
Not dramatically, but just enough to notice. The spheres still drifted. They still required corrections, but the strain became more manageable.
Not easier.
Just less wasteful.
Perhaps that was how professors cast large-scale magic. Not by controlling hundreds of individual effects, but by understanding the larger pattern behind them.
The realization stayed in the back of his mind as he continued practicing.
Eventually he moved on to elemental magic, letting the levitation spell fade as the wooden spheres settled gently onto the floor.
A tiny flame appeared above his palm.
Small.
Quiet.
Barely larger than a candle flame.
Anyone watching might have mistaken it for a beginner's attempt.
Adam knew better.
The room around the flame shimmered faintly from the heat.
Weeks earlier he would have instinctively tried making the fire larger. Brighter. More dramatic.
Now he focused on the opposite.
Compression.
Control.
Density.
Adam tried compressing the flame further. The fire immediately destabilized and exploded into sparks. One landed on his sleeve, another set a practice dummy's arm on fire.
For several seconds Adam stared at the burning dummy.
Then he sighed and extinguished the spell.
Failure.
Strangely enough, the more he trained, the less impressive his magic appeared.
And yet he had never felt stronger.
His legs finally gave out. Adam dropped onto the floor with a soft thud and leaned back against one of the surviving practice dummies.
Sweat soaked the back of his robes.
His magical reserves were not completely empty, but several hours of constant concentration had left him mentally exhausted.
After catching his breath, Adam opened the status window.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Adam Taylor
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 12
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Status
• Affected by "Name Magic"
• Affected by a "Homonculous Charm" (Current Resistance: 45 min/day)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Level
Level: 11
Magic Status: Active
Wand: Unknown (Cursed)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Special Abilities
Slot 1: Empty
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Resources
SP (Special Points): 241,250
Gold: 29,481
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Active Tasks
• Learn different types of magic (Permanent)
• Read books about magical mysteries (Permanent)
• Help Daphne Greengrass with her mission
• Obtain the Blood Magic Book Reward: 20,000 Gold
• Complete the Trial left behind by Rowena Ravenclaw Reward: 45,000 Gold
• Complete the Trial of Wands Reward: Based on difficulty
• Explore Hogwarts Progress: 29%
Reward: 500 Gold / 1% 5,000 SP / 1%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Map
Long-distance secret space search: Enabled
Current Range: 10 km
Detected Secret Spaces: 7
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Shop
Unlocked Categories:
• Spells (Apparition, Sectumsempra, Snake-summoning spell, etc.)
• Potion Ingredients
• Special Abilities (empty)
• Custom Purchases
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Adam's eyes immediately stopped at one line.
Level 11.
He had not completed a major quest. He had not discovered a secret chamber. He had not stumbled into some ancient trial, and yet he had still leveled up.
Adam stared at the number for a few moments. So training mattered more than he had originally thought. His gaze shifted lower.
Current Resistance: 45 min/day.
That made him pause. Last time it had been thirty minutes. Now it was forty-five. A fifteen-minute increase from a single level.
Not bad.
Not good enough to solve his problem either.
But forty-five minutes was more than enough to explore most hidden spaces without immediately revealing his location.
It could also be used to lose someone's trail if needed someday.
'Progress was progress.'
His eyes drifted further down the window. Nearly thirty thousand gold!
More than two hundred thousand special points!!
The numbers were absurd. A few months ago, those numbers would have seemed impossible. Unfortunately, the system shop had an annoying habit of making him feel poor anyway. Most ordinary spells weren't worth buying.
Hogwarts already provided access to books, professors, and practice opportunities. Given enough time, Adam could learn them naturally.
The spells he actually wanted were a different story.
Apparition, which he wanted.
Advanced curses like Sectumsempra, which were interesting but not particularly useful right now.
Rare special abilities, which were not even in the list.
The truly interesting things all seemed to cost absurd amounts of gold or were completely unavailable.
Adam still remembered seeing Apparition listed for fifty-five thousand gold for the first time.
That single spell alone cost almost twice his current savings, which was honestly offensive. Adam briefly considered accusing the system of robbery. Then he remembered that arguing with a magical status window would probably be a sign of deeper problems.
He decided against it.
Most ingredients could be obtained through patience. And as for ancient ingredients that were rare or extinct? He was still not skilled enough to use those. And blindly purchasing easy-to-learn spells sounded like a fantastic way to regret a decision later. He didn't need them right now.
Eventually his attention moved toward the map section.
Seven secret spaces.
Most of them remained frustratingly out of reach. The Forbidden Forest alone contained several locations marked by the system. Every single one remained unavailable to him because of high level requirements.
Except one.
The Fairy Grove.
Adam rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The fairies seemed to like food. And the elemental stones they carried were still one of the strangest magical resources he had encountered so far. Perhaps it was finally time to pay them another visit. At the very least, experimenting with a few elemental stones sounded more productive than setting another dummy on fire.
Adam glanced at the still-smoking practice dummy.
"...Again?" he asked tiredly, as if asking the dummy.
The dummy remained silent.
That was probably for the best.
---
Eventually Adam left the Room of Requirement behind. The hidden door vanished into the wall a few moments later as though it had never existed.
The corridor beyond was quiet.
Not the ordinary kind of quiet.
The castle felt different this late at night.
Older.
The torches burned lower than they did during the day, their flames crackling softly against the ancient stone walls. Long shadows stretched across the corridor floor, shifting whenever a draft passed through the castle. Somewhere far away, Adam could hear the groan of moving staircases.
The air felt cooler too.
Not too cold.
Just enough to remind him that autumn had fully arrived.
Adam slowly walked through the corridor, enjoying the silence.
The training had left his muscles sore and his mind pleasantly exhausted. There was something strangely satisfying about it.
For once, he wasn't chasing some mystery. He wasn't worrying about Dumbledore.
Or Name Magic.
Or blood magic books.
Or hidden trials.
He was simply walking through Hogwarts at night. A small smile appeared on his face.
This was nice.
A month ago, when he arrived at the Hogwarts, he would have immediately started searching every corridor for secrets.
Now he found himself appreciating the castle itself. The flickering torches. The distant portraits quietly snoring inside their frames. The faint smell of old parchment and dust that seemed permanently woven into Hogwarts itself.
It felt...
Peaceful.
Then, a movement ahead caught his attention. Adam's footsteps slowed. At the far end of the corridor, where two hallways intersected, someone walked past.
Only for a moment.
A dark figure crossed the opening and disappeared. Adam blinked.
His first thought was immediate: Professor.
His second thought followed shortly after: Leave.
Being caught out after curfew sounded like an excellent way to explain himself to Professor McGonagall. And Adam had absolutely no desire to experience that conversation. He took a few steps in the opposite direction.
Then stopped.
Something felt strange.
Adam frowned slightly.
The figure had only appeared for a second. He hadn't seen a face. Hadn't heard a voice. Hadn't even seen enough to determine whether it was a man or a woman. Yet a strange feeling lingered in the back of his mind.
Not danger.
Not fear.
Just...
Wrong.
The sensation made no sense, like reading a sentence that looked perfectly normal while somehow feeling incorrect.
Adam stood still for a few moments.
Listening.
The corridor remained silent.
No footsteps.
No voices.
Nothing.
Eventually curiosity won. With a quiet sigh, Adam turned around and headed toward the intersection. His footsteps echoed softly against the stone floor. The sound seemed unusually loud in the otherwise silent corridor.
A few moments later he reached the corner.
And stopped.
Nobody.
The corridor beyond stretched into the distance completely empty. Adam frowned, 'That's not right.'
The figure should still have been visible. The nearest staircase was farther ahead. The nearest intersection even farther. Unless whoever it was had entered a classroom.
Or knew a shortcut.
Or—
Adam stopped himself, that way of thinking led directly toward trouble.
It always did.
After another moment, he shook his head.
Probably a professor.
There were enough hidden passages inside Hogwarts to hide an army. The teachers likely knew every one of them. Satisfied with that explanation, Adam turned away.
As he resumed walking toward Gryffindor Tower, the strange feeling gradually faded. By the time the Fat Lady's portrait came into view, he had almost forgotten about it entirely.
Almost, but not entirely.