A Web Of Magic

In the end, it took Magnus 2 hours just to divine a way out of the hall he found himself in. After a lot of walking and climbing winding stairs, he came out of a secret passage in one of the abandoned broom cupboards near the Slytherin common rooms. 'Of course, it's close to the Slytherin house,' Magnus snorted in his head. It was almost time for dinner and he was very hungry. 'At least I got some points out of it,' he thought as he looked at his interface.

[Magnus Webb

Title: Seer Descendant

Traits: Beast Blood (Magic), Blood Curse (inactive), Beast Blood (Deformation)

Body: 3

Mind: 20

Magic: 33

Impact Points: 1416

School: Divination Lv4 (80%), Healing Lv4 (90%), Charms Lv4 (40%), Transfiguration Lv4 (50%), DADA Lv4 (60%), Potions Lv4 (80%), Herbology Lv4 (10%), Astronomy Lv4 (10%), Magical Theory Lv5 (90%), Mind Arts Lv4 (60%), Care of Magical Creatures Lv3(20%), Runes Lv4(60%), Arithmancy Lv4(50%), Ritual Magic Lv1(80%)

Skills: Wand Magic Lv4 (90%), Wandless Magic Lv4 (50%)]

'Hmm, and there's also Ritual Magic. I hope all the rituals aren't as bad as that one,' he shook his head as he went to the Great hall for dinner.

The next week was spent divining for the location of Slytherin's laboratory. It kept leading him to random locations each time he tried. But this didn't disappoint him and on the contrary, excited him. He's sure by now that Slytherin knew how to shield against or at least throw off divination attempts towards his laboratory. That must mean, one- that it was very valuable and two- he can potentially find the method to shield himself against divination too. He didn't forget how the Blood-curse was being tracked. Despite his accomplishments in Divination, he's yet to find a way to protect against it. He felt it was a very important skill to have given that his unknown opponents are potentially better than him at Divination for now.

But eventually, his attempts paid off and his last three Divinations consistently led him to the same location. On the weekend, after completing his duties in the medical wing, he made sure that the coast was clear and entered his destination. It was an abandoned girls' bathroom on the second floor. He had to be extra careful here, it wouldn't do well to get caught here. He even borrowed the Marauders map from the twins to make sure he wasn't followed. He locked the door using magic. A simple Alohamora wouldn't open this one, so most of the students cannot open it. He even divined for the best time to enter and it was now.

His focus crystal led him towards the sinks in the middle of the bathroom. The bathroom was very depressing with damp floor, cracked mirrors and chipped sinks. He checked for danger, there was none in the bathroom. 'No wonder this is abandoned,' Magnus shook his head.

"What are you doing here?" a squeaky voice interrupted his thinking. Magnus was startled at the voice. He had made sure through divination that no one else was there here. He quickly looked through the Marauders map and found one Myrtle Warren had suddenly appeared in the bathroom. 'Right, a ghost,' he realized. Hogwarts had plenty of those. But this was the first time he met this one.

A figure of a girl dressed in Hogwarts robes floated out of one of the bathroom stalls. She was somewhat squat with glasses and barely visible pimples. "Hello, I'm Magnus," he introduced himself to her. Maybe the ghost knew something about the laboratory? Even if she doesn't, he has to make sure that she doesn't leak the happenings of today to anyone else.

"Ooh, a polite one. And a Ravenclaw? I like that. I'm Myrtle Warren. What's a cute boy like you doing in my bathroom?" Myrtle asked with a small flush.

'Alright, this one is a little weird,' Magnus decided. No one called him cute till now. "Nice to meet you Myrtle. I lost something of mine you see, and my search led me here. Do you know any secret places around here where something might be lost?" he enquired. It wouldn't do to directly point towards the sink. It's better to let her lead the way.

"Oh, I do know plenty of secrets," Myrtle said with a giggle. Magnus later regretted not asking her directly. For the next few minutes, he had to listen to her rant and talk about some girls he had never heard about. 'Alright, this isn't working. I didn't want to use this, but there's no choice,' Magnus decided. He looked towards her eyes and cast the new mind spell he got when Mind Arts increased to Lv4, "Confuse". If there was one advantage to mind spells learned by him over the typical ones is that they cannot be detected easily. You only need eye contact and can even be cast on non-humans and ghosts. It'd take someone with a higher-level in Mind arts than him to detect even the slightest hint.

Immediately Myrtle went silent for a moment. "Hmm, what was I saying?" she wondered out loud.

"You were telling me about the secret near the sinks?" Magnus offered.

"Oh, was I? There's something horrible under the sink. That's where- that's- the horrible giant eyes- ahhhh," Myrtle went screaming in fright and dived into an open toilet causing the water to splash all over. 'Ugh, she didn't even finish. What's got her scared that much? Is there something really terrible under the sink?' Magnus wondered as he subconsciously used a cleaning spell on himself just to make sure there wasn't any toilet water on him, courtesy of Myrtle.

He walked back to the sink and divined once to check for danger. The focus crystal went from milky white to mild grey meaning there was slight danger, but it was within manageable limits. He divined the directions once more for better accuracy and it led him to one of the few intact sinks. He observed the sink carefully to make out what made this one special. He finally saw it- a small symbol of a snake on the tap. 'Of course, it's a snake,' Magnus thought wryly. 'I should have figured Slytherin will use a snake symbol. That'd have made divining much easier. But it couldn't possibly be Slytherin or even Merlin who made this, right? While there was plumbing long ago, modern taps were likely added to Hogwarts much later on. So, there must be someone else who had access to this place. Hmm, now how do I open this? Is there a password?' Magnus mused. The Marauders map didn't show any secret passage here so that direction was useless. 'Then brunt force divination it is,' he decided.

He took out a chart with the English alphabet on it, cleaned the ground and laid the chart down. 'So, it's very likely that whoever used this place before is an English native. Most who attend Hogwarts are. I hope the password is just in English and not some weird runic language. And please let it be a small password.' He knelt down as he divined for the password one letter at a time. It took him over an hour to finally find the last letter. He was annoyed by the end as how nonsensical it all looked.

"AyaeehAaahSsssSeyythaa."

'What in Merlin's name is this nonsense? Who keeps something like this as a password? How can anyone remember it? Or better yet, pronounce it?' his annoyance only increased the more he thought. It looked like a prank, but who'd do something like that in a girls' bathroom? Even Fred and George weren't that brainless.

He looked at it again as he calmed his mind quickly. 'Hmm, maybe it's coded? Or a different language? Wait, a language! What language is Slytherin known for? It's in Parseltongue! So, whoever made this was a Parselmouth? Must be a famous one then. It's a rare gift.'

'Now how do I crack this? Parseltongue can't be learned. It's not in written form for me to use [Instant Read] and [Comprehension Mode] to learn,' he went into deep thought as he paced around. He got several solutions as he used his new [Inspiration mode]. From brewing exotic potions to making enchanted sound boxes, but all were either too c.u.mbersome to make or impractical. He finally decided on the simplest of solutions. 'I'll get a snake to do it for me.'