33: Chapter 33 The Forbidden Night in the Library

After dinner, the Slytherin Common Room was still talking about Quidditch.

Flint's temper hadn't cooled after losing the match; you could hear him berating people from halfway across the Dungeon.

Draco sat by the fireplace, a book in his hand, not having turned a single page.

"How much longer is he going to keep yelling?" Pansy frowned.

Zabini closed his book. "Until he remembers he still has detention to serve."

Crabbe asked, "Can you bring food to detention?"

Goyle replied earnestly, "Even if you did, you'd have to share it with the slugs, right?"

Draco held back for a moment, but couldn't help it. "Can you two please not discuss slugs next to me?"

Allen sat in the corner, putting away his handwritten notes on a brief history of spatial magic.

He didn't plan on sleeping tonight.

On the Quidditch pitch, the spell-casting trajectories of Quirrell and Snape had already been confirmed.

The events involving Harry would continue to unfold; the Philosopher's Stone, the Cerberus, the restricted area, the remnants of Lord Voldemort's soul—he didn't need to push this plotline.

But his own trump cards weren't enough yet.

Spatial Displacement could block spells, Portable Space could store items, and the soul interlayer could block Legilimency and Dark Arts surveillance.

The problem was, he knew too little about the "soul" itself.

If a person doesn't know how thick their armor is, they can't truly be safe.

Draco saw him stand up. "Where are you going?"

"The Library."

Draco glanced at the sky outside. "At this hour?"

"Reading before bed helps me sleep."

Crabbe nodded. "I get sleepy when I read too."

Goyle added, "I get sleepy even when I don't."

Draco couldn't be bothered with them and lowered his voice. "Madam Pince closed up ages ago."

Allen shoved his book into his bag. "That's why I'm not using the main entrance."

Draco paused.

He wanted to ask, but swallowed the words back.

Since that incident with Flint, he had learned one thing: if there was something Allen didn't want to talk about, prying would only make him look brainless.

"Don't get caught," Draco said.

Allen glanced at him. "You should be more worried about Crabbe hiding midnight snacks under his pillow than about me."

Crabbe was startled. "How did you..."

Goyle turned his head. "You actually hid some?"

Draco's expression was weary.

When Allen left the dormitory, the green light of the Dungeon pressed against the walls.

The stone corridor was empty, save for the occasional movement of portraits in the distance.

The spatial structure of Hogwarts was more active at night than during the day; cracks in the walls, staircases, and corners were all making subtle adjustments.

For the average student, it was a maze.

For Allen, it was a spatial textbook he hadn't finished reading.

He didn't use a Lumos spell.

Light would expose one's position.

He held his blackthorn wand in his sleeve, with Spatial Displacement unfurled half an inch from his body.

It wasn't invisibility, just a slight displacement of his standing position from the normal line of sight.

If someone looked his way, they would subconsciously miss him.

In the Muggle world, this is called a blind spot.

In the Wizarding world, it's called a little trick.

But it was useful.

When passing a corner on the first floor, Filch's footsteps came from the other side.

"Who's there?"

Allen stopped, pressing his body against the shadows by the wall, even suppressing his breathing.

Madam Norris appeared first, the thin cat's tail held high, her nose sniffing the air.

Cats were more troublesome than people; they didn't rely on their eyes to hunt.

Inside his Portable Space, Void raised its head and tapped its tail against the stone slab.

Allen flicked his fingertips, and a knut slid out from a spatial rift, landing at the other end of the corridor.

"Clink."

Madam Norris turned her head.

Filch chased after it, carrying his lamp. "Which little brat dropped money again? Come out!"

Allen walked past in the opposite direction, his footsteps silent.

Worth a knut.

Not a bad deal.

The Library door was locked properly.

Hogwarts locks had traces of magic; forcing them open would leave a record.

Allen didn't touch the lock; instead, he stood beside the door, his wand pressed against a wooden seam in the wall.

Space is not a wall.

Walls are just a habit to block people.

He pushed the half-foot of space behind the seam aside, slipped through, and let the wooden board return to its place.

The whole process took less than three seconds.

Inside the Library, it was dark, and the bookshelves were densely packed.

During the day, it was full of the scent of parchment, ink, and students whispering and arguing.

At night, only the smell of old books remained.

Allen didn't stop in the general section.

He followed the path along the wall toward the Restricted Section.

Chains blocked the way ahead, with alert spells cast by Madam Pince.

Allen crouched down to watch for a while, not rushing to act.

Such spells weren't complex, but they were annoying.

Touch the chain, it rings; cross the area, it leaves a mark; take the wrong book, the book screams.

The Wizarding world was more serious about "preventing students from snooping" than about preventing Dark Wizards.

Allen raised his hand and opened a spatial rift narrow enough for only a hand to reach through.

He didn't step over the chains.

Instead, he briefly swapped a small segment of space inside the chains with the position in front of him.

Half a step.

He stood inside the Restricted Section.

The alert spell didn't trigger.

The rules prevented "crossing over," not "being swapped."

That was the advantage of Spatial Magic.

The bookshelves in the Restricted Section were older than those outside.

Many books were bound with leather straps, some had tooth marks on their spines, and one was gently bumping against the wooden board on the shelf.

Allen didn't touch the rowdy ones.

His goal was clear.

Soul magic.

Spatial Folding.

Medieval Wizard manuscripts.

He first found Soul Trauma and Curse Residue, flipped through the table of contents, and put it back.

The content was focused on healing, offering him limited help.

The Historical Misconceptions of Legilimency, this one was useful.

He noted down a few pages regarding the paragraph "Occlumency cannot conceal soul anomalies."

But this still wasn't the core he was looking for.

Until he saw a book with a gray cover on the third row in the innermost layer.

The title was very short.

void walking.

It had no author listed.

The edges of the cover were severely worn, the clasp was rusty, and there was a line of ancient runes on the spine.

Allen read slowly, but could recognize a few words: anchor point, interlayer, folding, return.

Before he reached out, Void curled into a circle inside the Portable Space, its silver slit pupils fixed on the location of that book.

It wasn't danger.

It was resonance.

Allen pointed his wand next to the clasp; he didn't use Alohomora, but instead shifted a tiny copper pin inside the lock cylinder.

"Click."

The book opened.

The first page wasn't the main text, but a warning.

"Do not entrust your body to an unnamed path. A Wizard without an anchor point will only become a relic in the void."

Allen read it twice.

The person who wrote this book didn't seem like a scholar, but rather a survivor who had crawled out of an accident.

He continued flipping through.

The book didn't record Apparition in the modern sense, but earlier experiments in Spatial Folding.

Medieval Wizards called fixed locations "anchors," temporary passages created by folding "seams," and the state of briefly leaving one's real position "interlayer walking."

This method was crude, costly, and highly dangerous.

But the line of thought was very clean.

This was exactly what Allen needed.

Modern Wizards relied too much on ready-made spells; chant a line, wave a wand, as long as it works.

Few people bothered to deconstruct the underlying structures.

But Spatial Magic couldn't be piled up by rote memorization; get one detail wrong, and your hand stays behind while your body goes elsewhere—you wouldn't even need the Hospital Wing.

He flipped to Chapter 7.

"Soul Anchor Points and Physical Displacement."

These pages made him pause for a long time.

The book mentioned that when a Wizard performed high-level spatial movement, the body could be displaced, the magic could be displaced, but the soul must have a stable anchor point.

If the soul was captured by an external force, the movement would be interrupted; if the soul was in an independent interlayer, external probing could not lock onto it.

Allen's finger stopped next to that line of text.

Independent interlayer.

This wasn't the answer, but it was very close to it.

He had never actively cultivated soul defense.

That layer had existed since he transmigrated, hidden between the Portable Space and the periphery of his soul, like a wall without a blueprint.

Now, he finally had material to compare it with.

Footsteps came from outside the corridor.

Not light.

Madam Pince?

No, the steps were dragging, and a lamp chain was scraping against the floor.

Filch had come back.

Allen closed the book, pressed his left hand on the cover, drew his wand with his right, and cast a Copying Spell on the key pages.

Text rapidly generated on the parchment in his palm, and he tucked it into his Portable Space.

Outside the bookshelf, the door was pushed open.

Filch's voice came in: "I smell the scent of a student out after hours."

Allen silently glanced at the book in his hand.

Flip one more page.

Once the last page was copied, Madam Norris had already jumped onto a nearby table, staring toward the Restricted Section.

Allen put void walking back in its original place, reset the clasp, and pushed the copper pin back.

Filch's lamp light swept outside the chains.

"Come out, kid. If I catch you, I'll give you at least a month of detention."

Madam Norris arched her back.

Allen stood in the shadows of the bookshelf, pushing Spatial Displacement to its limit.

Any half-inch more, and the alert spell would touch the edge of his magic.

What a pain.

He took out a second knut, thought about it, and put it back.

He had already spent money tonight.

So he moved a small piece of pumpkin pasty that Crabbe had dropped during the day out of his space and sent it directly to the Library entrance.

Madam Norris's nose twitched, and she jumped off the table.

Filch turned around. "What did you find?"

The cat ran out.

Filch chased after it with his lamp. "Don't touch it! That thing might be poisoned!"

Allen waited until the footsteps were far away before re-displacing the space inside the Restricted Section and returning to the outside of the chains.

When leaving the Library, he didn't go through the door the way he came, but slipped out through a wooden seam on the side of the bookshelf.

The corridor was quiet; Madam Norris was in the distance sniffing the pasty, and Filch was bending over, cursing.

"Who threw food here? Students, it's always students!"

Allen passed the corner without looking back.

Crabbe's pasty had saved him once.

He could choose not to tell Crabbe tomorrow.

Returning to the Slytherin dormitory, a little light was still glowing inside Draco's bed curtains.

"You're back?" Draco asked in a low voice.

"Yeah."

"Does the Library really help you sleep?"

Allen took off his shoes. "It's more useful than your chatting."

Draco was silent for two seconds. "Are you insulting me?"

"You're improving."

There was no sound from inside the bed curtains.

Allen pulled his own bed curtains shut and opened his Portable Space.

The copied parchment landed neatly on the pile of books; Void swam over, its tail pressing down on the copied pages of Chapter 7 of void walking.

The cracked pocket watch glowed briefly inside the ebony box.

Allen didn't touch it.

He only picked up the parchment that read "Soul Anchor Points and Physical Displacement" and read to the last line.

"If the soul is outside the interlayer, the Killing Curse first seeks an anchor point; if there is no anchor point, the spell misses."

Allen stared at it for a long time.

So, he hadn't just been blocking surveillance.

Some spells couldn't even find a target.