The return trip was completely unobstructed.
There were no longer any Prefects patrolling the Entrance Hall, so Ethan made it from the Entrance Hall to the corridor leading to the Marble Staircase without the slightest effort.
He turned to look out the window and could see the faint pale glow of dawn rising along the eastern horizon.
He had been out the entire night.
Ethan returned to the eighth-floor corridor of Gryffindor Tower.
At this location, the various portraits that had been acting as temporary surveillance were no longer around.
So he dispelled the Disillusionment Charm on himself, turned the corner, and swaggered toward the portrait of the Fat Lady.
“Where have you been?”
The Fat Lady had already returned to her frame.
She stood in the middle of it and asked.
“I went out for morning exercise.
I was still half-asleep this morning, and look, I even put on the wrong robe.
I just came back to change.”
Ethan spread his arms and showed the Fat Lady the robe he was wearing, spouting nonsense with a perfectly straight face.
The Fat Lady carefully studied Ethan, who looked harmless to humans and animals alike, for a while.
Then she sighed and said, “Password?”
“Pig Snout.”
The Fat Lady nodded.
“Come in.”
The frame opened automatically to one side, and Ethan ducked through the hole in the wall behind it into the Gryffindor common room.
The common room was still empty.
The fire in the fireplace was burning brightly, so it seemed the Hogwarts House-elves had already added fresh wood and lit it again.
The other four boys in the dormitory were still sleeping soundly in their beds.
Ethan quietly opened the door and tiptoed to the foot of his bed, then stuffed the ancient magic textbook into the very bottom of his trunk.
This book had to be hidden well.
Harry and the others absolutely could not see it.
Leaking secrets was secondary.
The real problem would be if Harry and the others tried to learn blindly from the book and caused some kind of accident.
He casually took out his sportswear, sat on the bed, quietly changed, then closed the door behind him and left.
The Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch was an oval grass field about one hundred and fifty meters long and fifty meters wide, surrounded by a high wall.
The spectator stands sat along the top of the wall.
After all, Quidditch was a sport played in the air, and it was more convenient for spectators to watch the full state of the match from above.
But none of that mattered to Ethan.
At this stage, the Quidditch Pitch’s greatest use to him was that the outer ring of the high wall happened to be four hundred meters, and the surface was solid enough to be perfect for running laps.
Ethan arrived at the gate of the pitch, stretching while clearing his mind.
The things he had seen in the Pensieve were still a little too tangled to sort out at once.
If he kept fixating on them, he would only trap himself in his own thoughts.
He might as well not think too much for now and do something else to change gears, like running five kilometers first.
That was what he told himself, but as Ethan ran around the Quidditch Pitch, his mind still kept turning over matters related to Percival and the others.
Percival and the others were all Hogwarts professors.
Isidora was their student… and then there was the Ashwinders.
For some reason, the name Ashwinders felt very familiar…
Wait, Hogwarts!
Ethan slammed to a stop where he stood.
A flash of insight cut through his mind, and the next step immediately became clear.
He started running again, picked up speed, finished the remaining three kilometers in one breath, and charged back toward Gryffindor Tower.
Back in the dormitory, Ethan opened the trunk where he kept his textbooks and pulled out the copy of Hogwarts: A History that had never once been opened from the very bottom.
Ethan sat down heavily on the bed, placed the thick and heavy book on his lap, opened it, and began flipping through it carefully in search of what he wanted.
“Hmm, Hogwarts timeline… Headmasters… Niamh Fitzgerald.
Found it!”
“Mm…”
Harry, who was still asleep beside him, was startled half-awake by Ethan’s shout.
Dazed, he rolled over and mumbled indistinctly.
“Ethan… class hasn’t started yet.
Let me sleep a little longer…”
Ethan: …
Poor kid.
He should probably stop scaring him like this in the future and use a different way to wake him up.
For example, opening the window and then yanking off his blanket so he could fully experience the morning air.
Ethan pulled his thoughts back and continued quietly reading the entry in the book.
“Niamh Fitzgerald served as Headmaster of Hogwarts from 1304 to 1374 by the common calendar.
During her tenure, she carried out broad reforms of the school’s teaching methods, establishing for the first time a timetable system centered on required and elective courses… and, together with Professor Percival Rackham, Professor Charles Rookwood, and Professor San Bakar, defeated the Dark Wizard organization known as the Ashwinders, which had repeatedly harassed the area surrounding Hogwarts…”
The Ashwinders.
Again, the Ashwinders.
At least now he knew the period when this Dark Wizard organization was active.
As for the rest…
Ethan flipped a few more pages forward and found the section on school staff, searching through it in chronological order.
“Percival Rackham, Professor of Charms… Charles Rookwood, Professor of Potions… San Bakar, Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts… Isidora Morgana, Professor of Charms?”
All right, Isidora becoming a Hogwarts professor as a user of ancient magic was not unreasonable.
But after Ethan read Isidora’s entry over and over several times, he quickly noticed something out of place.
Normally, a professor’s introduction should run from appointment to departure.
For example, Percival’s entry read, “Appointed Professor of Charms in 1285… transferred to Professor of Transfiguration in 1321… retired in 1360.”
But the oddity in Isidora’s entry was that it only said she became Professor of Charms in 1321.
Yet less than ten years later, the Professor of Charms position had returned to Percival, while Isidora’s entry simply listed her as having “died in the line of duty.”
“Died in the line of duty.” Now that was interesting.
Leaving aside Isidora’s strength as a user of ancient magic, Percival had still been alive.
There should have been no reason for him not to save her, right?
Or did Percival not know about it?
What level of ability would it take to silently kill a Hogwarts professor?
Or was it internal conflict?
Did Percival and Isidora clash over the use of ancient magic, and then he accidentally blasted her to death?
What kind of clichéd plot was that?
Even domestic TV dramas did not write like that anymore.
Surely it could not have been death from overwork?
One new theory after another flooded Ethan’s mind.
Ethan silently closed the book and stopped his brain cells from running wild.
There was no point sitting here making blind guesses on his own.
He should wait until Professor Fig returned and tell him everything first.
Maybe the professor would know something.
Ethan put the book back into his trunk, looked around at the four little fellows sleeping soundly, and revealed a harmless smile.
“Time~ to~ get~ up~”