A kind of defense that, in his eyes, was nothing short of foolishly passive.
What he needed was the source.
The bedrock of logic.
The deeper essence, buried beneath time and taboo.
The database of his Mind Palace, after cross-referencing Hogwarts: A History and every related text, finally pointed him to a single coordinate.
The library's Restricted Section.
That innermost zone, barred even from the authority of prefects.
A living librarian could be bound by rules—and by Dumbledore's decrees.
But a dead librarian?
A lingering obsession, one who regarded the library as her very life, and still wandered here even in death?
Agnes Scribner.
The ghost of Hogwarts' famously strict and unyielding former librarian.
The logical chains of the Mind Palace threaded through countless scraps of public record and rumor, until they converged on this translucent being as the sole breakthrough point.
Her spirit was not a guard.
She was a key.
Alan's figure drifted through the empty corridor, his footsteps echoing loudly in the silence, only to be swallowed again by the towering ceilings.
He pushed open the heavy oak doors of the library. A rush of scent struck him—aged paper, dust, and wax polish. It was the fragrance of knowledge distilled over a thousand years.
He did not search for the ghost who might be watching him from behind some shelf.
He didn't release even the faintest pulse of probing magic.
Any act of deliberate contact would be an affront to one who had given her entire life to the library, and even sealed her loyalty with death.
In the face of such obsession, words carried no weight.
What he needed was a more primal, more genuine form of communication.
Alan walked straight into the "Ancient Text Restoration" section deep within the library.
The light here was dimmer, and the air carried a faint tang of the acidic potions used for preservation. On the long worktables lay scattered, damaged books, each silently telling its tale of centuries endured.
His gaze swept across the shelves, and in an instant, the memory index of his Mind Palace locked onto the target.
The Poetic Interpretation of Ancient Runes.
A rare eighteenth-century volume.
According to fragments of the school's records, this was the book Mrs.Agnes had invested the most passion into during her lifetime—and the one she had read most often.
Alan lifted it down with care.
Its condition was worse than the archives suggested. The deep-red leather cover had hardened, its corners webbed with fine cracks. Several binding threads along the spine had snapped, leaving the text block on the verge of breaking apart entirely—as if the slightest pressure might make it collapse to dust.
He could easily imagine how Madam Agnes's ghost must have felt, each time she floated past and saw its decayed state—the silent, day after day ache of regret.
Alan did not open it.
For a book this close to ruin, every turning of a page was another wound, a push toward death.
He carried it to a quiet corner where no one would disturb him, laying it gently on a clean desk.
Then he drew out his wand.
The operation began.
For the next three hours, Alan slipped into a state of absolute focus.
In his world, there was nothing but this dying book before him.
And he did not begin with magic.
He first took out a set of tools he had transfigured himself—perfect replicas of the museum-grade instruments used in the Muggle world for restoring ancient books.
Delicate bamboo lifters thin as cicada wings, soft goat-hair brushes, and specially treated acid-free blotting paper.
Using the lifter with an incredibly gentle, precise force, he painstakingly separated the pages that had stuck together. This process required no magic—only sheer, inhuman patience. His hands did not tremble in the slightest, his breathing steady and deep.
Next, he used the goat-hair brush to sweep away the dust and mold that had accumulated over two centuries, stroke by careful stroke.
Only after all this did he finally raise his wand.
"—Restored as new."
He whispered the spell, but held his magical output to the faintest, most meticulous level.
A thread of pale golden light streamed from his wand tip. It did not wash over the whole book at once, but worked instead like the finest embroidery needle—mending the snapped binding threads one by one, pulling the loose pages back into cohesion.
Then, the paper itself.
Drawing on what he had learned from Muggle chemistry, Alan combined science and spellwork, carefully neutralizing the acidic compounds that caused the paper to yellow and grow brittle.
Before his eyes, the parchment that had looked ready to crumble at a touch slowly regained the ivory sheen and supple texture of living paper.
Finally—the cover.
He wove a complex nourishing charm, softening and enriching the cracked leather. The fine web of fissures melted away beneath his magic, leaving behind no trace of age.
By the time Alan lowered his wand, beads of sweat had gathered along his brow.
On the desk lay The Poetic Interpretation of Ancient Runes, utterly reborn. It rested there quietly, no longer a two-hundred-year-old relic, but a flawless work of art—fresh, as though it had just left the press.
But Alan did not return it to the "Ancient Text Restoration" section.
The database of his Mind Palace held precise records of Madam Agnes's ghostly routines and lingering times.
Every afternoon at precisely 3:15, she appeared at the third shelf in the west wing of the library's third floor, lingering there for seven minutes.
That was exactly where The Poetic Interpretation of Ancient Runes was supposed to sit.
Alan carried the perfectly restored book to that shelf. He found the empty slot left by its absence, and slipped it back in without a sound, fitting it seamlessly into place.
A silent offering.
A gesture of respect.
A wordless conversation, bridging the boundary between life and death.
He closed his eyes and, within the halls of his Mind Palace, replayed the entire plan one final time.
To deal with Agnes Scribner—the obsessive guardian who had bound herself to the library even in death—any spoken plea would be blasphemy against her faith.
Only action would suffice.
Only by expressing that same reverence, in the way she valued most, could he hope to reach her.
He wasn't trying to prove his worth, nor his talent.
He had to prove that he was the same as her.
A seeker who held knowledge itself in supreme reverence.
Not a thief, nor an opportunist, nor a plunderer.
That was the only key.
The one and only key to the deepest vault of the Restricted Section.