Reality slowly snapped back into place in Alan's perception, as if a stretched film was rewinding.
His field of view was no longer limited to optical signals captured by his eyes. Alongside retinal images, countless new "data streams" flowed into his consciousness. He could see the free-floating motes of magical dust in the air, like suspended, faintly glowing lines of code. He could hear the ancient protective runes humming at a constant frequency from inside the castle's stonework. He could feel the warm, lively life-energy of Fred and George beside him, and their heartbeats spiking with shock.
The world was clearer than ever. It was as if a low-resolution, noisy analogue signal had been upgraded to a pristine, unlimited-bandwidth digital reality. This was the most direct "hardware upgrade" that came from Tom Riddle's psychic force being parsed, absorbed, and reorganized. Alan's soul , or the cognitive substrate that carried his consciousness , had undergone an exponential increase in "bandwidth" and computational capacity.
"Alan? You… are you okay?" Fred's voice sounded distant and uncertain.
George poked Alan's shoulder with a finger as if checking whether he was a statue come to life. "Your eyes… they're glowing?"
Alan blinked. The flash of light that had coalesced the instant he opened his eyes quickly subsided and the depth returned. He didn't answer immediately; he stared at the diary in his hands.
Blank. Every page was pristine white. The sixteen years Tom Riddle had written in ink and soul , all his malice and pride , had evaporated. The diary was now nothing more than an ordinary, well-crafted cream-colored notebook, without a trace of magical residue.
"What happened to what was inside it?" Fred leaned close, his face nearly touching the pages; he flipped through them searching for any ink left.
"Processed," Alan said calmly. If one listened closely, his voice had acquired a slightly peculiar timbre, a mix of metal and silk; every syllable was unnaturally crisp.
"Processed?" George snatched the diary and held it up to the light repeatedly. "How processed? With potions? With some advanced 'Scourgify'? Teach us , this trick would be perfect for Filch's record book!"
Alan's social-behavior simulation module in his mind-palace produced an optimal reply strategy. He could not explain that he had "formatted" a soul fragment using the Barber paradox and a Goldbach-like reconstruction; that would far exceed their conceptual frameworks and only create confusion.
"You can think of it as me finding a logical vulnerability," Alan simplified. "The consciousness in that diary depended on a self-contradictory self-conception. I amplified that contradiction until it collapsed."
Fred and George exchanged a look that said, "We understood every word separately but none of it together."
"A logical… vulnerability?" Fred scratched his head. "So you reasoned with a dark magic diary… and then talked it to death?"
"That summary," Alan allowed the faintest of smiles, "is basically accurate."
George inhaled sharply and stared at Alan as if he were a monster. "Merlin's beard! We thought wands were the greatest weapon , turns out it's your tongue! From now on, if someone annoys you, you just mutter these 'logical vulnerabilities' at them and their brains will liquefy?"
That random idea exhilarated the twins.
"Brilliant! We can productize it!" Fred's eyes lit up. "We'll make the 'Weasley Logic Bomb' , perfect for teaching pompous Slytherins a lesson!"
"When you lie by saying 'I'm lying,' are you lying or not?" George added. "Bet five Galleons Malfoy goes full meltdown in ten seconds!"
Alan ignored their commercial fantasies. His attention focused on the new "knowledge materials" he'd just absorbed. They hung in his mind-palace like a vast, unorganized compressed archive: Tom Riddle (age 16) , complete data backup.
Tentatively, he reached out a mental tendril and opened a subfolder labeled "Core Skills."
Inside was a single file: Parseltongue: Language Structure and Application Protocol.
The instant he "read" that file, his body instinctively grasped a new way of phonation , a high-frequency hissing produced by tongue and airflow friction, utterly unlike human vocal fold vibration.
Unconsciously, he emitted a faint, nearly inaudible hiss toward the bookshelves.
"Sss, "
It was not a word so much as a command: a compressed, magic-laden syllable issued as an instruction.
On the top shelf, a heavy tome on ancient magical scripts, its cover ornamented with serpentine clasps, reacted. The two small metal snakes carved into the clasp lit up with two pinpoints of red. They twisted on the cover with a faint click; the clasps popped open.
"Hiss, ss sss, "
A weak but clear response came from the direction of the books.
The twins' merchandising plans were instantly interrupted. They turned in unison toward the now-open book.
", It opened by itself?" Fred stammered.
"And… did you hear that?" George had gone pale. "I thought I heard a snake."
Both slowly turned their heads toward Alan with eyes full of incredulous suspicion and a touch of fear.
Alan's expression remained impassive. He'd only meant to test the effect and hadn't expected such an immediate response. Parseltongue was more than a mere language. From the information he'd parsed moments ago, it functioned as a form of low-level permission instruction affecting certain magical constructs. It could directly interact with objects imbued with serpent-magic or items tied to Slytherin heritage.
"Alan…" Fred's voice went dry, "you didn't just… learn snakes, did you?"
There was no point hiding it. Parseltongue, while rare and notorious, is merely an ability in itself. How one defines and uses it matters.
"Not learned in the ordinary sense," Alan corrected. "By parsing the diary's information I grasped its phonetics and grammar. From an information-theory perspective, it's an efficient encrypted language based on frequency and specific magical oscillations."
George groped for an analogy. "So you didn't just silence the diary , you also learned its language? Like reading a French cookbook and suddenly speaking French?"
"You could say that," Alan replied. "More precisely, I decomposed the recipe to the molecular level and then reconstructed the whole language system from those building blocks."
The twins fell silent, feeling as if their heads had been struck with a giant mallet. Today's events well exceeded anything they'd imagined in the magical world. They had seen great wizards and astonishing magic, but never anyone parsing dark magic like a field of study, absorbing a soul-fragment as if it were experience points, and acquiring a legendary tongue as a side effect.
Alan didn't explain further; too much detail would only bewilder them. He pocketed the blank diary , harmless now, but still a valuable research sample.
"All right. Problem solved," he told them. "That diary won't hurt anyone again. Go back to bed."
"Wait!" Fred called out, suddenly serious. "Alan, are you okay? I mean you , after ingesting that thing, you don't feel weird? Like suddenly wanting to rule the world, or insisting everyone's nose should be surgically improved?"
George nodded vigorously; their jokes aside, they were genuinely worried.
Alan felt their care. Indeed, the absorbed Riddle database contained impulses for domination and an intense hunger for power. But the firewall's decomposition had converted those into pure "desire data" stripped of any directive. They were like code snippets recording a strong motivational force, but the specific targets had been removed.
To Alan, those desire-data were a resource. He could graft the raw motivational energy onto his own supreme objective , the pursuit of the initial formula.
"I'm fine. Better than ever," he answered seriously. "My goals haven't changed. As for my nose," he paused and, with his trademarkly clinical, purely rational tone, added, "from an aerodynamic and facial-structural stability perspective, the current configuration is optimal; no modification needed."
That ultra-Alan reply deflated the twins' tension.
"All right," George exhaled. "As long as you still care about your initial formula rather than ruling Muggles, we'll sleep better."
"Although honestly," Fred winked, "if you ever research how to turn boogers into Galleons, we'll be the first investors."
Alan ignored the frivolous offer. He sensed a powerful, familiar magical signature approaching , clear thought, unwavering will, like a lighthouse.
Albus Dumbledore.
He had been alerted. A purification of a soul-object inside Hogwarts was not something that could stay hidden from the greatest white wizard of the age.
"You two need to go," Alan said to the twins, voice absolute. "Now. Return to your dorm and pretend tonight never happened."
Fred and George immediately understood. They were pranksters but not fools; they read the change in atmosphere.
"And you?" Fred asked.
"I need to speak with the Headmaster." Alan's gaze fixed on the corridor's end.
There, a tall, slender figure moved slowly toward them.
~~----------------------
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