"I'll show you how far I can go." — Sung Jin-Woo, Solo Leveling
Harriet did not rush.
Before she even considered using the Room of Requirement, she made sure she wasn't being followed. A couple of overeager Slytherins had tried their luck earlier—curiosity mixed with the usual misplaced confidence—but they had already lost interest after a few carefully timed detours. A Disillusionment Charm here, a Muffliato there, and a slight distortion of her magical presence were usually enough. Nothing dramatic. Just efficiency.
Only when the corridor finally felt empty did she stop in front of the seventh-floor wall.
She walked past it once.
Then again.
And a third time, slower, her thoughts narrowing to what she needed: a place to train, somewhere quiet, somewhere that wouldn't ask questions.
On her third pass, she let her magic settle—not shaped into a spell, not quite deliberate enough to be called formal casting, just a quiet push of intent into the air.
The wall responded.
A door appeared.
She exhaled softly and stepped inside.
For a brief moment, she simply stood still, letting the silence of the space settle around her.
The room greeted her exactly as she needed it to.
The air felt different here—denser, as if the space itself had weight.
A vast training hall unfolded before her, reinforced stone walls etched with faint runes, the floor marked by countless impact scars that spoke of past battles and past students. To one side stood a sprawling library, shelves filled with grimoires, scrolls, and tomes that smelled of dust, ink, and old magic. Training dummies occupied the far end of the room, adjustable and clearly enchanted to withstand absurd levels of punishment.
Harriet stood still for a long moment, simply observing.
Honestly… this was incredible.
The more she examined the Room of Requirement, the more certain she became that none of the Founders came close to Rowena Ravenclaw in sheer conceptual brilliance. This was not merely advanced transfiguration or spatial expansion—it felt like a pocket world, shaped by thought and sustained by accumulated magical memory. There were limits, of course. She doubted the room could create true life, or manifest objects entirely outside its experiential database. But to assemble matter, space, and function so seamlessly from stored patterns?
That bordered on the divine.
For a moment, she considered simply observing it without doing anything else.
Harriet summoned her grimoire, letting it float open before her. There was no visual change, no dramatic glow, yet she felt it—an internal shift, a quiet evolution. The book was adapting alongside her, refining itself as her understanding deepened.
She decided then that this place would become her foundation.
Regular training here would allow her to clear her magical circuits, reinforcing control and efficiency. While the grimoire provided unparalleled guidance, raw practice was irreplaceable. The more she trained, the more natural magic became, no longer something external she shaped, but something intrinsic she expressed.
If she were honest with herself, she had underestimated her own growth.
At her current pace, she suspected that within six months she could face Voldemort directly—and win. But that had never been the true objective. She did not intend to dedicate her existence to chasing a single dark wizard.
No, she had priorities.
One of them lingered in her thoughts now.
Voodoo magic.
She remembered that in many wizarding books and popular magical treatises, voodoo was portrayed as crude or primitive—a doll, a needle, a lock of hair. But reality was far more sophisticated. True voodoo was about resonance, about linking symbolic anchors to spiritual signatures. The clever protected themselves against it, as Harriet now did, layering wards and soul-filters to prevent external interference. Some species were naturally resistant.
But Voldemort?
Voldemort was careless.
She possessed the locket of Salazar Slytherin, and within it rested a fragment of his soul, fresh and intact. Could one truly defend against an attack that did not target the body, nor even the mind—but resonated directly with the soul itself? Make one shard of a soul vibrate in sympathy with another?
Harriet smiled faintly.
She had no intention of spending her life locked in conflict with Voldemort. As Mutsuko had unknowingly put it earlier, the world was far larger than she had once believed. Voldemort and Dumbledore were, in the end, nothing more than starter-area bosses.
And starter areas were full of resources.
The Room of Requirement hummed softly around her, ready to give her whatever she asked for.
Harriet stepped forward, already planning her next move.
She took her grimoire into her hands and turned to the page describing her own biology, focusing in particular on her magical circuits. She did not know whether all witches were built the same way, or if each body developed its own internal configuration, but she had no intention of stopping what she had begun.
The circuit inside her body was slowly beginning to irrigate itself, like a withered network coming back to life. Opening it was extremely difficult. She had only started ten days ago, and so far she had not managed to unlock more than half a percent of the total pathways. Most of that progress was concentrated near her heart, where the initial spark of magic resided, but even so, she could already feel the difference. Spells responded more cleanly, her control was steadier, and the sensation of magic no longer felt foreign or external—it felt closer, more intimate.
As she had already concluded, she had no intention of comparing herself to others for now. Capturing a Death Eater for study would, in theory, be a good way to gather data, but it would also impose an artificial limit on her thinking. She had seen this kind of mistake countless times in fiction: characters capable of absurd feats, yet completely oblivious to how extraordinary they were, staring at others in confusion and asking, "What? Isn't that normal?" Believe it or not, this phenomenon existed in reality as well—and it was a form of advantage.
For now, she only had the data of her own body, her own sensations, and her own theories. And until she reached the true limits of what she herself could achieve, she intended to take her time. Comparing herself to others, whether consciously or unconsciously, would only restrict her growth.
It was like realizing you had an assignment due the next day, half-finished, and pushing yourself to complete it—only for the person next to you to casually admit they had done nothing at all. Instantly, the pressure eased. Halfway done isn't so bad, you tell yourself. And just like that, your standards drop.
Harriet refused to let that happen to her.
To her, it felt less like spellcasting theory and more like cultivation—the kind she remembered from Chinese fantasy novels. Power wasn't something you grabbed; it was something you grew into.
Her first stage was simple in concept and brutal in execution: reopening every dormant circuit, restoring the internal flow until mana could circulate through her body as naturally and efficiently as blood. Only then would this initial phase truly be complete.
Right now, she had barely begun—scratching the surface, laying foundations, cultivating patience before strength.
It was obvious there was still a ridiculous amount left to do. Her magical development had begun to overshadow everything else, to the point where even the idea of maneuvering Voldemort and Dumbledore into killing each other felt like a side project. It would be convenient, really. Unfortunately, one was a psychopath and the other a smiling sociopath, and both had chosen the same strategy: stay clean, stay distant, and send loyal idiots to die in their place. Cowardice wrapped in ideology.
Soon enough, though, Voldemort's life would quite literally be in her hands. And at that point… why not use him? A living training dummy. A so-called final boss that conveniently dropped experience. The thought made her snort. Mutsuko was rubbing off on her more than she cared to admit. Still, with her past-life memories restored, it was hard not to indulge her inner chuunibyou. Magic was real. Other dimensions were real. Devils, angels, gods—apparently all real. At some point, a little dramatic thinking was not only forgivable, it was almost mandatory.
What truly bothered her, however, was how embarrassingly theatrical wizarding combat remained. Everyone shouted spell names like they were stage cues. Silent casting existed. It wasn't forbidden, it wasn't rare, it just required discipline. Yet even Voldemort couldn't resist screaming Avada Kedavra every single time. If magic was intent and will, then why announce it to the world? For all their power, wizards really were terrible at shutting up.
Enough thinking.
Harriet reshaped the room with a single, precise intention. The air shifted, the floor groaned softly, and the space expanded—not wildly, not chaotically, but with the controlled efficiency of a place that understood discipline.
What emerged was a combat training course, the kind designed to grind soldiers down until only focus remained.
Long corridors of uneven ground forced balance and footwork. Low ceilings demanded constant crouching. Walls shifted slowly, not to crush, but to deny comfort. Ropes, bars, and elevated platforms required strength and coordination rather than raw magic.
She rolled her shoulders once, grounding herself.
She began immediately.
The first ten minutes were deceptively manageable. Crawling under weighted beams, sprinting short distances, climbing vertical surfaces with limited handholds. The room tracked her performance silently. When her breathing stabilized too quickly, the incline of the ground subtly increased. When her movements became predictable, obstacles shifted position by a few inches, forcing adaptation.
By the thirty-minute mark, sweat clung to her skin and her muscles burned—not injured, not damaged, just pushed far beyond comfort. The room denied her rest without ever fully stopping her. Every pause lasted just long enough for her heart rate to spike again.
It was about endurance under pressure.
After an hour, she stopped—not because the course defeated her, but because she decided it had done its job. Her body trembled faintly, circuits humming under the strain, magic flowing unevenly but persistently through pathways that were still narrow, still developing.
Her breathing gradually slowed back to control.
Only then did she shift focus.
Targets manifested across the room—static at first, then moving. Some were small, some distant, some partially obscured. Harriet raised her wand and began firing spells in rapid succession. Not powerful spells. Controlled ones. Precision over brute force.
Each cast forced her magic to circulate while her body remained fatigued, simulating real combat conditions. Dexterity, timing, magical flow—all trained simultaneously. When her aim slipped, the room adjusted distances. When she relied too much on instinct, targets changed patterns.
Satisfied, she finally stopped.
She retrieved a book next—An Introduction to Voodoo Practices, its spine worn, pages heavy with intent. The book almost certainly no longer existed in the public library, if it ever had. Possibly restricted. Possibly confiscated centuries ago.
It didn't matter.
The Room of Requirement remembered.
Every book that had ever passed through Hogwarts existed here, preserved not as copies, but as echoes—perfect, untouched by time. Old families hoarded knowledge, hiding grimoires from the world, but even they could not erase memory itself. And magic had always been very good at remembering.
And that was precisely why noble families never brought family or personal tomes to school; they were well aware that, somewhere within Hogwarts, a system existed that could reproduce them. That, combined with the simple risk of losing them by accident, made the practice far too reckless to consider.
She skimmed several sections, then closed the book. Today was not for deep study. Today was for rhythm.
Food came next.
She allowed the room to dissolve and made her way to the Great Hall, posture relaxed, expression neutral. It was there she noticed Mutsuko.
The girl was laughing about something, animated as always. As she gestured, her sleeve slipped—just for a moment. Something metallic slid out, unfolded with a soft click, then retracted instantly as she froze, eyes darting.
"…Still needs refinement," Mutsuko muttered under her breath.
Harriet said nothing. She simply filed the observation away.
Interesting.
Was that a concealed blade she had just slipped out of her sleeve? Harriet wondered. She couldn't help but question what was going on inside that girl's head—and whether she should feel impressed or slightly concerned.
The rest of the meal passed uneventfully, but her awareness remained sharp. She had already noticed it earlier—Slytherins lingering too long after class, footsteps that stopped when she turned, gazes that lingered a second too long.
Draco Malfoy included.
They had tried to follow her once that morning, with all the subtlety of amateurs and all the coordination of chaos. That was why she had been forced to shake them off; for now, at least, they were not being overly aggressive.
They were observing patterns, looking for weaknesses, preparing something. And that was fine. Let them try.
This year's rhythm was clear now: training, recovery, observation.
Effort balanced with rest.
Hogwarts was the starting village—and she intended to take everything useful from it before moving on.