"Phew..." Lying on her bed, Lyla felt a profound sense of relief.
The Ministry of Magic affair was completely over. She no longer had to worry about Dumbledore breaking into her room because of it.
This meant she could finally rest... or rather, truly begin preparing to revive Lord Grindelwald's cause.
'But where to start preparing?' Lyla was just about to ponder the future of her cause when she accidentally thought about what the impending end of summer vacation meant.
She was about to go to Hogwarts as a joint Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. This meant... she would be just as busy every single day.
Lyla didn't think teaching students would be enjoyable at all. Facing dozens of children as unpredictable as Miss Lovegood... she definitely couldn't do it!
But she had already agreed to Dumbledore's terms. If she backed out now, he would definitely be angry...
'He might even send that giant Hagrid to eat me, or turn me into a teacup with his wand!'
Lyla looked at the ceiling with severe worry. Being prepared for danger in times of peace was a good quality, but as a catastrophic overthinker, Miss Hamilton was far more accustomed to expecting the absolute worst.
'Forget it... Thinking doesn't seem to solve the problem... There are still thirty days until school starts.'
'Let the Lyla of thirty days from now worry about the things thirty days from now... For now, Miss Hamilton needs to relax.'
After silently comforting herself, Lyla slowly got up and took out her Spatial Storage Book.
For her, the absolute best relaxation was diving into Magic Array Studies. Although the Ministry of Magic work hadn't led her to any valuable array tools, Dumbledore wasn't even as good of a guide as Miss Lovegood.
At least Miss Lovegood had taken her to Newt Scamander's house.
'Wait... What's this?'
Lyla took out a small, black notebook from the storage page filled with miscellaneous items.
'Is this mine? It looks dirty and worn... Who put an account book in here?'
Lyla carefully held the notebook and placed it on the table.
'It wouldn't be some kind of prank, would it?'
Lyla frowned slightly, her blue eyes filled with confusion. She gently opened the notebook and saw a name neatly written on the flyleaf.
'Tom Marvolo Riddle... Who is this?'
Lyla had never heard of this person, neither now nor during her active years fifty years ago. Why was his possession in her book?
'Should I hand it over to the Ministry of Magic...?'
Lyla had no intention of collecting such a grubby diary, especially since it seemed completely empty. But wait a minute...
Lyla suddenly realized something. Her eyes widened, her pale face full of pure disbelief.
'This isn't an ordinary diary!'
'This is a notebook intricately inscribed with an entire book full of Magic Arrays!'
That's right, a whole book! Lyla was astonished to find that every single page of this notebook was inscribed with complex layers of magic.
'This is an Energy Storage Array, this is a Spatial Teleportation Array... What is this array?'
'And this one!'
Lyla's hands trembled slightly as she held the notebook. Beneath her hood, her pointed Veela ears swayed wildly with academic excitement.
This actually contained arrays far beyond the ones she knew. There were core runes she didn't recognize and auxiliary support spells she had never seen before!
Alright, Lyla officially declared that she now had a brand-new hobby of collecting broken, empty diaries.
As for returning it to the Ministry of Magic... please. Those Aurors wouldn't understand the immense value of this artifact.
'Besides, Mr. Riddle didn't even write anything in it, did he... It wouldn't be too late to return it to him after I finish fully studying it.'
With this greedy thought, Lyla rubbed her hands together and eagerly took out her elegant ebony wand.
She gently waved her wand, making all the hidden magic in the entire diary light up. Following the glowing blue lines, she began to search for the Ancient Runes at the core of these brand-new arrays.
If she recognized those Ancient Runes, she might be able to easily guess their purpose.
With this thought, Lyla meticulously examined the extremely complex layers on each page. The result delighted her; these were all runic types she had never seen before in her life.
This indicated one undeniable thing: the academic value of this diary was absolutely soaring!
Lyla was so thrilled she almost wanted to hug Dumbledore and kiss him!
'Of course, I will still defeat Dumbledore afterward! But no matter what, thank you, Mr. Albus Dumbledore... your forced Ministry consultant work allowed me to obtain this masterpiece.'
She didn't actually know exactly how Lucius Malfoy had slipped it into her possession. But Lyla didn't care to figure it out at all; she just wanted to throw herself entirely into the diary and study it.
And she was happily doing exactly that.
As her observation deepened, she began to discover some truly interesting mechanics. Two distinct Magic Arrays appeared on every single page.
This meant that every piece of paper had two simultaneous array effects.
'So what exactly are these effects?'
Lyla was silent for a few seconds before suddenly slapping her own forehead.
'Miss Hamilton, you're such a fool... This is a diary! Wouldn't you find out if you just wrote something in it?'
Lyla waved her wand to summon a quill. She lightly dipped it in standard ink and wrote a sentence on the very first page of the diary.
"For the Greater Good."
Her handwriting was never very good. Because she usually wrote her array calculations at high speeds, her script was particularly messy and almost childlike.
But even with such messy writing, the ink gradually faded into the paper, and then... completely disappeared.
'Oh no... This wouldn't be some evil contract, would it...' Lyla suddenly realized that she might have been a bit too academically eager.
'Have I perhaps just signed a binding contract with some dark creature... and now my life force is being violently extracted to serve it?'
She distinctly remembered seeing such a terrifying plot in one of Gilderoy Lockhart's bestselling novels.
'How did Mr. Lockhart resist it then? Was it with his brilliant smile, or with a bottle of Occamy Egg Yolk Shampoo?'
'I'm definitely not very good at smiling... But Occamy Egg Yolk Shampoo is far too expensive...'
While Lyla's catastrophic overthinking drifted to very strange places, the diary quietly changed.
Who are you?
Faint, elegant words physically appeared on the blank page. Lyla stared at the text with a huge spike of surprise.
'Is this... the diary itself talking? Or am I talking to someone else far away?'
Lyla excitedly pursed her lips and quickly picked up her quill again.
Don't misunderstand, she wasn't in a hurry to actually reply to the entity in the diary. She merely lightly copied the exact Ancient Runes she had just triggered onto a spare piece of parchment.
'Could the core function of this specific rune be related to communication?'
She had heard that over in MACUSA, there was a classified magic tool that could achieve long-distance communication. It required only two pieces of parchment linked through composite arrays.
'Could this rune symbolize long-distance communication...'
Looking closely, the rune on the secondary array was extremely similar to the first one. It was almost as if... these two runes were mutually corresponding transmitters.
In just a few minutes, Lyla had already discovered two brand-new Ancient Runes and easily deduced their meanings. And there were quite a few more of these runic sequences hidden in the diary.
This was simply a massive academic treasure. Just as Lyla was obsessively studying the Ancient Runes, several more sentences successively bled onto the page.
Are you still there?
Hello?
I am Tom Marvolo Riddle.
Who are you?
"Ah..." Lyla couldn't help but feel her severe social anxiety flare up looking at these rapid, consecutive messages.
But thinking about it carefully... the other party might literally just be a sentient notebook. Realizing she wasn't actually making eye contact with a real human stranger, she immediately relaxed a lot.