The slip of paper was thin, coarse in texture, the edges frayed with rough fibers.
The handwriting on it was sloppy and careless, with a small blot where the ink had bled, as if the writer hadn't even had the patience to wait for it to dry.
"This matter is closed. No further discussion."
Just eight words. No official seal, no proper signature. It looked nothing like a document from the Ministry of Magic, the very institution meant to embody order for the entire wizarding world. It resembled more a scrap of discarded waste paper.
Penelope's fingers pinched the corner of the note so tightly that her fingertips turned white.
"I… I don't know what to do anymore."
Her voice sounded fractured and powerless in the quiet corner of the Library. The towering bookshelves cast long shadows that enveloped her, and she sat slumped in the wide chair, her shoulders drooping.
"They don't care at all. Even Professor Dumbledore's intervention only got me this." She slapped the scrap of paper onto the table with a dull thud. "Maybe I really should… just let it go."
Her gaze lost focus, drifting toward the grey, overcast sky outside the window.
"Why should you let it go?"
Alan's voice wasn't loud, but it cut cleanly through the heavy air of Penelope's despair. His tone was steady, without the slightest ripple, each word unnervingly clear.
Penelope lifted her head to find Alan calmly watching her. His eyes held no sympathy—only a pure, analytical coolness that probed straight into the problem.
"Justice requires someone to uphold it," Alan continued. "That alone proves it doesn't arrive on its own. You are facing a clear injustice. If you choose to accept it, you're silently permitting the next one—whether it happens to you, or to someone else."
"But what can I do?" Penelope's voice cracked, edged with tears but mostly weighed down by anger wrapped in helplessness. "I'm just a student! He's a Ministry official!"
"Students have their own methods."
Alan's gaze fell on the note upon the table. Deep within his pupils, a faint glimmer stirred.
"If the official rules can be trampled on so casually, then we'll remind them—through a method more in line with the nature of magic—what rules truly mean."
He reached out, pinching the slip of paper between two fingers, graceful and precise. The moment it touched his skin, his Mind Palace came fully alive.
Countless sparks of light flared within the grand structure of his mind, nodes representing bureaucratic psychology, path dependence, and cognitive bias connecting in an instant with the magical nodes of Confundus Charm variants, layered Suggestion Spells, and trigger-based magical matrices.
Tens of thousands of shining threads of logic stretched between them.
A plan assembled itself in moments, like an intricate mechanism wrought of data and reason, building, simulating, refining, until it took final shape.
Daring, precise, and touched with a mischievous sense of poetic revenge.
"Senior Penelope, write a new letter." Alan set aside the scrap as though it were worthless rubbish. "The tone must be firm, the stance unyielding."
Under his guidance, Penelope pushed aside her doubts, spread out a fresh sheet of parchment, and wrote furiously while Alan dictated. The letter's arguments were airtight, directly striking at three major failings of the official who had handled the case: procedural neglect, selective use of evidence, and a conclusion tainted by irrational bias.
The letter concluded with a demand that the Head of the Misuse of Magic Office, within twenty-four hours, provide reasonable explanations for these three failings.
By itself, the letter was simply a strongly reasoned complaint.
The true key came after Penelope set down her quill, the ink still fresh.
Alan took the parchment in hand. He drew his wand, its polished surface gleaming softly in the library's dim light.
He turned the letter over, revealing the blank reverse side.
The wand's tip traced a path too complex for the naked eye to follow across the parchment's surface. No marks remained, yet it was as though something unseen had been etched into its fibers.
Finally, with a unique rhythm, the wand tapped three precise points.
Tiny ripples of magic spread out like drops in a still pond, sinking into the parchment and vanishing without a trace.
"I've added a little enchantment," Alan explained calmly, as if working through a mathematics problem.
"A refined Confundus Charm, nested with a strong Suggestion Spell."
He paused, catching Penelope's puzzled look, then clarified:
"The matrix lies dormant. But the moment the recipient—Mr. Bert Grey—thinks of 'discarding,' 'ignoring,' 'mocking,' or anything similar, the spells will trigger."
"Once they do, his own willpower will be briefly scrambled, while a compulsion is driven deep into his subconscious—an irresistible urge to reflect fully, profoundly, from the very depths of his soul, on his own behavior."
The next day, London. The Ministry of Magic.
Inside the Office for the Prohibition of Misuse of Magic, the air was as stifling as ever. Files flitted back and forth between desks, and the steady scratching of quills writing automatically filled the room.
Mr. Bert Grey yawned as he opened a newly arrived Howler, lazily silencing it with a flick of his wand. Then his eyes fell upon another letter—this one from Hogwarts.
He recognized the name: Penelope Clearwater.
"Still not finished with this?"
He sneered, tearing the envelope open and skimming through it. The letter's rigorous accusations and its demand for a twenty-four-hour response only deepened his amusement.
A student, daring to threaten a Ministry official?
How laughably naïve.
He didn't even bother reading it twice. With a casual flick of his wrist, he prepared to toss the letter neatly into the wastebasket in the corner.
That thought.
That motion.
The instant he formed the intention to discard—
Clack.
A sharp sound broke the air.
The raven-feather quill he prized most sprang upright from its holder and landed firmly on the desk.
Bert Grey froze.
He tried to snatch the quill, but his right arm stiffened mid-air, refusing to obey. Some unseen force held him in place, leaving him helpless to do anything but watch.
All around the office, dozens of coworkers turned their eyes toward the bizarre scene.
Under their stunned gaze, the quill floated up into the air. It gave a graceful spin, then pulled a pristine, fine-quality sheet of parchment from a nearby rack, laying it perfectly flat on his desk.
The quill dipped itself in ink and began writing furiously, strokes bold and wild, as if the nib might tear straight through the parchment.
Silence fell over the office. Only the feverish scratching of the quill remained.
The first line appeared, a title large and damning:
"A Profound Reflection on My Professional Negligence, Poor Attitude, and Lapses in Judgment"
Every jaw dropped.
Bert Grey's face turned a deep, blotchy purple, sweat pouring down his temples. He tried to shout, to cast a spell, but even his lips would not part. Only ragged wheezing escaped him, like a broken bellows.
The quill wrote on.
Its words soared in absurd eloquence, dripping with pathos and grandeur. In vivid, heartfelt tones it laid bare Grey's arrogance and prejudice, his negligence and laziness at work. Line after line seethed with self-loathing for bureaucratic rot and bitter remorse for abusing authority.
By the end, the letter painted him as a shining paragon—repentant, awakened, determined to turn over a new leaf and reform himself utterly.
The entire office was transfixed by this surreal theatre. A few clerks nearly burst into laughter, but covered their mouths desperately, their shoulders shaking.
At last, when the parchment was filled margin to margin, the quill struck its final line with a flourish, as if exhausted from the effort.
The letter of reflection was complete.
In the next instant, the parchment rolled itself up into a neat scroll. Like a well-trained owl, it lifted from Grey's desk and flew straight toward the office doors.
It glided down the corridors unhindered, cutting a direct path toward the Head of Department's office.
The incident sparked an unprecedented uproar within the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement's Misuse of Magic Office, quickly becoming the Ministry's biggest laughingstock of the week.
Mr. Bert Grey, the unfortunate culprit, was immediately suspended and placed under internal investigation.
That very afternoon, an official Ministry owl delivered a thick envelope to Hogwarts.
It bore the Department's scarlet seal in wax, and inside was a formal letter of apology, personally signed by the Head of the Office, its wording uncommonly sincere.
Meanwhile, in the Library, Alan's Mind Palace displayed a new message, gleaming like a cold star in the vast halls of his mind:
[Side Quest Completed: The Value of Rules.]
[Experience +200.]
By evening, a letter arrived at Alan's windowsill, carried by Penelope's owl.
The parchment bore only a single line, the handwriting trembling with emotion:
"Alan,
You truly are… a miracle."
Alan folded the letter carefully, the faintest curve tugging at the corner of his lips.
His bond with the Ravenclaw prefect had not only survived this ordeal—
It had grown stronger.
And far more dependable.