Chapter 458 - 9: The Diadem

Chapter 458: Chapter 9: The Diadem

"Meow meow, meow meow meow meow, mrow mew nya."

"Hoo-hoo—"

"Eee! Eee! Eee!"

In the owlery atop the West Tower, Yimi had taken to spending a little time here every day over the past two days.

It was not because she kept reminiscing about the days when she used to play around with the neighborhood animals. Seeing owls again had finally made Yimi start thinking about a question: why did cats with wings always go hoo-hoo and squeak? Couldn’t they meow?

Harry’s snowy owl, Hedwig, had developed a twitching eyelid. For the last two days, Yimi had been lying beside her ear whenever she had nothing else to do, meowing into it as a form of instruction. The only reason she had singled out Hedwig was that her white feathers made her stand out.

Today’s lesson—harassment—finished, Yimi left the owlery, descended the West Tower, and crossed a long corridor.

With McGonagall vouching for her, Yimi had successfully borrowed the English dictionary. Unfortunately, nobody had taught her how to use it. Even though she often visited worlds set in Japan, she barely knew how to use a Japanese dictionary either.

Still, it helped quite a bit when she read Lockhart’s books. With EX-rank Luck, whenever Yimi ran into a word she did not know, she could casually flip through the dictionary and somehow stop on exactly the page she needed. Yimi needed to learn how books in English were written.

The more troublesome problem was that Lockhart never had time to help her look for the snake. The moment class ended, Lockhart had to answer fan mail. Sometimes he even called Harry over to help write the replies.

That was another reason Harry disliked Lockhart. Lockhart seemed to assume Harry was someone who, like himself, loved attracting attention, and he even tried to teach Harry how to do it while adopting the posture of an experienced senior. This gave Slytherin a new way to mock Harry, with remarks like, "Has our Harry not signed any autographs for anyone today?"

"You coward! Have you the courage to face me in mortal combat?" A portrait hanging on a seventh-floor wall depicted Sir Cadogan, who routinely rode around on his fat horse challenging every passerby. Students who were used to his presence had learned to ignore him.

"Okay." But Yimi was not used to him.

"Wait! Put down what you’re holding! If you’ve got any courage, fight me fair and square!"

Under Sir Cadogan’s furious gaze, Yimi pulled out the Colored Marker Junko had bought for her. She rose onto her tiptoes, realized she still could not reach, and simply floated into the air to begin decorating his portrait. Sir Cadogan fled into another frame immediately, but his fat horse was a step too slow and ended up with an ugly mustache drawn across its face.

For the moment, the portrait was left empty. Sir Cadogan had fled into other frames for refuge.

The staircases at Hogwarts were rather difficult to navigate because they constantly changed. Every Friday they even connected to strange places. First-years could receive a guide explaining which staircase to use at what time.

So far, the staircases hadn’t managed to get Yimi lost, but no matter how good her luck was, that could not remain true forever. She had just left the seventh floor, yet as she walked, the staircase began climbing. Before she knew it, she was back on the eighth floor.

"Mmm..."

She did not realize it at first, because after taking out the Colored Marker, Yimi had been forced to confront a troublesome problem: her Storage Space was finally getting a little full.

Many souvenirs had been piled into the corners. There were textbooks from Gensokyo and even the schoolbag from the hero world that she had forgotten to take out. Marisa’s Mini-Hakkero did not occupy much room, but that cooking pot was extremely awkward to store. Nearly every world gave her new clothes, and whenever she found some distinctive food, she always saved half for Mama and Grandma...

The wizarding world’s specialty snacks were no worse than those of any other world. There were Chocolate Frogs that jumped away when their boxes were opened. McGonagall had picked some up for Yimi when she visited Hogsmeade over the weekend. As far as Yimi was concerned, no snack she had encountered so far could compare with something that actually moved.

McGonagall had brought her quite a few other things as well. Together with all the odds and ends from previous worlds, they had packed her two-by-two Storage Space completely full.

In reality, the space seemed to allow objects to be stacked higher, but anyone who had played a game with an inventory-expansion mod knew that the more things you had, the harder it became to find what you wanted.

And Yimi did not have a neat inventory grid. Objects of every shape were crammed together, and anything squeezed into a corner became especially difficult to retrieve. The Colored Marker, for example, had been trapped beneath the lid of her cooking pot.

Grandma Cat had only just confiscated Yimi’s last piece of catnip, and Yimi did not want to leave things in her room. If only there were somewhere else she could store her belongings where nobody would find them. Aincrad might work, but slowly flying all the way down from there would be too troublesome.

"Mm?"

While thinking about that, Yimi finally noticed she had reached the wrong floor and turned around to go back. But after taking only two steps, she vaguely sensed something. She returned and stared at a section of wall.

A smooth door appeared on the wall right in front of Yimi. She really had not noticed it during her earlier wanderings through the castle.

This was the Room of Requirement, another little-known secret of Hogwarts. Only when a person genuinely needed it, walked past that stretch of wall three times, and focused on what they required would a smooth door appear. Behind it would be a room suited to the seeker’s needs.

Dumbledore had once taken a wrong turn while badly needing a toilet and found this place. Inside had been a room filled with all kinds of magnificent chamber pots.

Yimi pushed the door open and entered an enormous room filled with hidden objects. What she had vaguely sensed earlier did not seem to be the room itself.

She followed a scent similar to the diary’s and eventually discovered an object she did not recognize. It looked like something worn on the head: a silver, eagle-shaped diadem with a gemstone set in the center.

Remembering that the diary had belonged to Voldemort, Yimi copied what she had done before and bit directly into the center of the gemstone, cracking it with her teeth.

"Congratulations, Host, on successfully advancing a Side Quest. Reward: +1 gacha draw."

"Meow?" Yimi checked her two Side Quests. Neither was marked complete, but the quest to kill Voldemort now displayed "Progress +1."

She shook her head, took off the hat she was wearing, and placed the diadem on her head. Then she admired herself in a reflective pane of glass and decided it did not look as good as leopard print.

She had absolutely no idea what had happened, but that did not mean she would really put the contents of her Storage Space here. If things were already hidden in this place, then somebody obviously knew about it.

And so Yimi ran out while still wearing the diadem on her head.

...

Hogwarts only had anything resembling physical education for first-years—or did it count as physical education if the lesson consisted of riding flying broomsticks?

Madam Hooch taught flying. In addition to broomstick lessons, she served as referee for Quidditch matches, a sport in which people rode broomsticks and played ball. Compared with Muggle sports such as basketball or football, Quidditch had several different types of balls to keep track of. Harry was Gryffindor’s principal Seeker.

"Very good! I dare say many of you must have ridden at home before." Madam Hooch looked with satisfaction at the first-years before her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a white-haired little girl furtively hiding behind a flowerbed and watching. She could not help paying some attention to her.

Yimi was hiding because people always chased her out whenever she visited someone else’s class. Other than Marisa, this was the first time she had seen anyone flying on a broom, so curiosity had brought her here to take a look.

When Yimi realized Madam Hooch had noticed her but had not chased her away, she finally came out boldly and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Teaching people to fly on broomsticks. You don’t look old enough to attend Hogwarts yet," Madam Hooch answered.

Yimi looked puzzled. "You use brooms, to fly too? Aren’t brooms, for sweeping?"

"Only Muggles think brooms are useful only for sweeping, and not every broom can fly. Are you some professor’s child? I assume you did not simply sneak into the school." This year’s students were doing well enough that Hooch could safely spare a few words for Yimi.

But then a sharp-eyed Ravenclaw student suddenly exclaimed, "Ravenclaw’s Diadem!"

He was pointing at Yimi’s head. The Ravenclaw common room contained a statue of the House’s founder, Ravenclaw, and upon it was a lifelike carving of the legendary treasure said to grant wisdom. The distinctive object was recognizable at a glance.

Madam Hooch looked up at the boy. Yimi looked up at him too—or more precisely, at the broom he was riding.

Brooms could fly. Brooms could sweep floors.

Yimi remembered Tomohisa saying that Xiaobai belonged to a species called robot vacuums. Then why couldn’t Xiaobai fly?

...

"Ravenclaw’s Diadem? Are you certain? How did something like that end up in Yimi’s hands?" Professor McGonagall immediately stopped her lesson, told the students to study on their own, and hurried out of the castle.

Madam Hooch clearly did not know Yimi, but some of the students did. With Madam Hooch’s permission, one of them had volunteered to find Professor McGonagall.

"Professor, I’m afraid she isn’t there anymore. I saw her take out a round disc just now, and then she ran away," the student explained.

"Ran? Where could she possibly go? She does not know the password to a single House common room. Never mind. You return to class." McGonagall sent the student away, then changed direction and headed for the second floor.

She would probably have to tell Dumbledore about this. That was Ravenclaw’s Diadem, a treasure just as precious as the Sword of Gryffindor, and it had been missing for an unknown number of years.

Reaching the hidden door in the study, McGonagall entered her rooms. Sure enough, Yimi had returned here.

She was sitting on the floor, sprawled over the bed with her little body shaking in sobs. Only when McGonagall approached did she realize that the round disc the student had described was lying beneath Yimi, while the object on her head was indeed Ravenclaw’s Diadem.

"I believe someone has to explain herself again. How many times does this make?" McGonagall caught Yimi by the collar and lifted her up.

Only then did she notice Yimi’s reddened eyes and wet little face. The child had clearly been crying.

"What happened?" McGonagall immediately crouched down, wrapped one arm around her, and used the other hand to wipe her face.

"X-Xiaobai died." Yimi pointed at the robot vacuum on the bed. She was choking so badly she could hardly speak, and she covered her eyes with one arm as she continued to sob.