Colin Creevey's so-called "lucky charm" had dropped like a pebble into the Gryffindor Tower. The ripples were tiny, quickly swallowed by the noise of daily life and the burden of schoolwork.
But for certain people, it was not a pebble—it was a meteorite. It had crashed through the surface of a calm lake and stirred up waves that could topple mountains.
Late at night.
The fire in the Gryffindor common room had already gone out, leaving behind only a handful of crimson embers, stubbornly breathing in the dark. The dormitory lay in deathly silence, broken only by the steady rhythm of a few breaths, proof of life still within.
The curtains around Alan's bed were quietly parted by a hand from the outside.
Through the slit slipped a shaft of pale moonlight falling from the corridor window.
Fred and George's faces appeared, one on the left, one on the right, squeezed into the narrow opening. The darkness had erased the outlines of their features, leaving only two pairs of eyes. In the ember's faint glow, their eyes burned with a feverish light.
"Alan."
Fred's voice was low, air rasping in his throat, carrying an uncontrollable tremor.
"Wake up."
Alan's eyelashes flickered once before his eyes opened. His gaze was crystal clear, without the slightest hint of sleep, calmly watching the two faces outside his curtain—as though he had never been asleep at all, only waiting for their arrival.
He sat up. The bed made not the slightest sound.
"We saw it!" Fred pushed inside, half-kneeling by Alan's bed, his fists shaking with excitement. "Colin's wooden token! That was your work, wasn't it?"
"It blocked Peeves' water balloon!" George scrambled in after him, his voice filled with awe. "An Ironclad Charm that runs on its own! By Merlin's beard, that thing is a miracle!"
Alan raised a finger to his lips, his eyes flicking toward Percy's bed not far away.
"Keep it down. Do you want the Prefect to notice?"
The reminder froze the twins in place. They immediately softened their breaths.
"We couldn't wait any longer." Fred leaned in closer, his hot breath nearly spilling across Alan's face. "You've got to tell us—how did you make that thing? And that 'talking diary' you mentioned before—we'd bet our lives there's a bigger secret behind it!"
A nearly invisible smile tugged at the corner of Alan's lips.
The fish had taken the bait.
He didn't rush to answer. Instead, he let silence ferment in the cramped space. The twins' anxious breathing clashed against Percy's steady snores in sharp contrast.
Finally, when Fred was on the verge of speaking again, Alan broke the silence. His expression turned solemn, his eyes carrying a gravity far beyond his years.
"Before I answer, I need your help."
He paused, ensuring he had their full attention.
"I must enter the Restricted Section of the library."
"The Restricted Section?"
The words slipped from the twins' mouths in unison. They exchanged a glance of uncertainty and alarm.
"Yes." Alan's voice was steady and precise, every syllable like a nail driven into the darkness. "Snape. I suspect he may try, at some point, to read my mind. I need to find a certain book on ancient 'mental defense' magic, in order to build my own mind's defenses. That book exists only in the Restricted Section."
Snape.
The name fell like a basin of ice water, dousing the feverish fire in the twins' eyes. It was as though the last ember in the common room had also been extinguished—the air itself turned heavy and cold. Their excitement and curiosity drained away, replaced with a bone-deep dread.
They could tease Filch. They could provoke Peeves. They could even ignore Percy's authority. But at Hogwarts, there were ten names one simply did not trifle with. And Snape was among the deadliest.
A long silence stretched. Fred's Adam's apple bobbed. He seemed to wrestle with himself in a fierce inner struggle. At last, his hunger for forbidden knowledge outweighed his fear of the Head of Slytherin.
He made his decision.
From the inner pocket of his robe, Fred carefully drew out a hard-covered diary. The book looked extremely old. Its cover was blank parchment, devoid of title or decoration.
"All right, Alan…" Fred's voice carried a note of reckless resolve. "We've decided to show you our biggest secret."
He placed the diary on Alan's quilt, then drew his wand. Gently, he tapped the blank cover.
"I request guidance."
He whispered the words.
A miracle occurred.
Ink-like lines surfaced on the cover, drawn from nothing. They slithered and interwove quickly, forming a line of elegant script tinged with mischief.
The words began to scrawl across the diary's cover:
"Weasley troublemakers—out so late? Where exactly are you sneaking off to?"
"…It talks!"
Alan reacted with just the right amount of shock befitting a first-year. He leaned back slightly, his gaze locked on the living script as though transfixed.
"Not only that." George's face regained its prideful glow. "It knows most of the castle's secret passages and passwords. We call it the Know-It-All."
He pointed at the diary, his eyes gleaming with shrewd delight.
"We're offering you a trade: with the Know-It-All's information, we'll find you a perfectly safe route into the Restricted Section. In return, you'll provide the technical support that makes this midnight adventure flawless."
Alan's gaze lingered on the diary. Inside his mind palace, everything he had gathered about the Marauder's Map surfaced at once. So it was this. The opportunity he had long awaited had landed in his hands in the most perfect way.
"Deal."
His answer came clean and sharp, without a trace of hesitation.
To show good faith—and to further cement his control of the situation—Alan flipped his hand and revealed his "Guardian 1.0" wooden token. He didn't hand it over, only toyed with it between his fingers. The faint glow of magic pulsing along its surface flared and dimmed in the darkness.
His tone carried a deliberate, almost hypnotic allure.
"And besides… I have a way to detect certain 'magical program' loopholes hidden in the castle."
"Magical program loopholes?"
The strange phrase hit the twins like a bolt of lightning.
"In other words," Alan explained slowly, "we can find back doors that even this diary doesn't know about—routes that are safer still."
Fred and George's eyes lit up instantly, brighter than a pile of Galleons. They exchanged a look, and in each other's pupils they saw the same irrepressible joy.
They knew one thing for certain: with Alan, they would always stumble upon wonders that shattered their imagination—and made them fall in love with the chaos of it.
Thus, their night's expedition, built on secret exchange, was sealed.
Moonlight filtered through Hogwarts' tall windows, laying fractured, twisting shadows upon the ancient stone floors.
The corridors were silent, broken only by the faint metallic groans of armor shifting under the strain of the cold.
A peculiar sensation—like being submerged in cold water, weightless—wrapped around the three boys. The invisibility cloak "borrowed" from Filch's office was icy to the touch, smooth as liquid, swallowing their forms completely. Even the softest sound of breath was erased along with them.
Fred Weasley clutched the old diary tightly in his hand.
The cover of the Know-It-All gleamed faintly in the dark. Lines of black ink scrolled across its pages, letters morphing, rearranging, then vanishing again—like a tireless guide whispering directions.
[Turn left. Bypass the one-eyed witch statue on the third floor. Peeves is very interested in her wig tonight.]
[Straight ahead. The caretaker's cat is dozing at the staircase landing. Stick close to the wall and walk in the shadows.]
Following the diary's precise instructions, they slipped past every possible danger. Ghosts, patrolling prefects—even Filch's keen-nosed cat, Mrs. Norris—none of them caught a trace of the invisible intruders.
At last, the directions brought them to a deserted corridor on the seventh floor, so forgotten it seemed erased from memory.
No soul lingered there. The air smelled of dust and old wool. On the wall hung a massive tapestry, stretching from end to end. It depicted a tense goblin chess match: several sharp-eared, sly-faced goblins hunched over a stone table, their gazes fixed on an impossibly complex board.