The person is at Hogwarts, but the system is in Middle-earth!

Chapter 83: Laptop Stolen, Time to Go to a Dungeon!

The Easter holiday ended in an eerie calm, like the sea before a storm, seemingly calm on the surface but with undercurrents surging beneath.

Sunday evening after the holiday, Gryffindor Tower.

"Good heavens!" Ron exclaimed.

The dormitory now resembled a disaster scene ravaged by an orc raiding party. Harry's trunk had been roughly pried open, the latches twisted and deformed, as if ripped off by some brute force. His robes were torn and thrown on the floor, the blankets were overturned at the corner of the bed, even the mattress was pulled askew, and feathers were flying everywhere. All the drawers had been pulled out, their contents scattered like trash—textbooks, parchment, and a quill pen still dripping ink.

Harry stood there, his face deathly pale. He stared intently at his pried-open trunk, his hands trembling violently, but he clenched his teeth so tightly that the veins on his neck bulged.

"It...it's gone," Harry's voice was hoarse. "I can feel it...leaving me."

"Harry?" Ron jumped in surprise, carefully stepping over a pile of messy socks. "What are you looking for? The Invisibility Cloak? Or the Nimbus 2000's maintenance tools?"

"No." Harry whirled around to Rowe, his eyes bloodshot and pupils dilated. "Rowe, the diary... Riddle... someone took it. That voice in my head... it's screaming. It's calling for its owner."

Luo Wei stood in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, watching everything unfold. In his vision, the system's red alert was flashing frantically, a deep crimson.

[WARNING: High-risk magical artifact stolen!]

[Item Tracking: Signal Lost]

[Harry Potter Status Update: Forced Withdrawal Symptoms]

[Willpower check: In progress... (Thanks to prior training, the ward is resisting madness, but sanity has dropped to a dangerous level)]

"Take a deep breath, Harry," Rowe said sharply. "Remember your training. Don't let it control your fear. That thing was never meant to be yours, and its departure might be a good thing—even if the way it's gone is terrible."

He stepped over the copy of "Sailing with Vampires" on the ground, squatted down in front of Harry's broken trunk, ran his finger along the broken lock, and then brought it to his nose to smell it.

[On-site analysis: Violent intrusion]

[Traces remain: anxiety, fear, and a familiar... Ginny Weasley's scent? No, it's the scent of someone being controlled.]

[System Simulation: The Infiltrator's Operation / Gulu's Counterattack]

“This is a search.” Rowe stood up, his eyes sharpening. “Not Ginny. She’s proven her courage; she won’t go back to that filthy thing. This is a new Gollum,” or a lurking shadow. The thing is summoning its servant.

"It came for the Demon King."

"The war has moved from the shadows to the open, Harry. The enemy is taking back their weapons. The Ring wants to return to Sauron's hands."

Harry closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and although his body was still trembling slightly, the madness in his eyes gradually subsided, replaced by a firm resolve: "I know... I can feel it calling something."

We must retrieve it; we cannot allow it to fall into the hands of worse people. If Riddle were to be resurrected...

"Then let's kill him again," Rowe interrupted him.

Ron looked at the two men in horror: "Dude, what are you talking about? It's just a diary, right? It is a bit eerie, but..."

“It was never a diary, Ron,” Rowe whispered. “It was the key to open the gates of hell.”

This uneasy premonition became a reality the next morning.

Just as Harry was bracing himself for the Quidditch match against Hufflepuff, and had even donned his bright red uniform, Professor McGonagall burst onto the pitch carrying a purple megaphone. She looked flustered, her hair disheveled—a sight unlike anything seen before.

"The match is canceled!" she shouted amidst the boos from the crowd, her voice echoing through the stadium and drowning out all the noise. "All students must immediately return to their respective college lounges! Prefects, lead your teams!"

"This isn't fair!" Wood was still trying to argue. "We want to win the trophy! We've trained for so long!"

But Professor McGonagall ignored him; her gaze cut through the crowd and locked onto Harry.

“Potter, I think you’d better come with me,” Professor McGonagall said, her voice trembling. Then her gaze shifted to Rowe, who stood behind Harry, her eyes complex. “And you, Rowe. Professor Dumbledore specifically instructed before he left that if anything happened, you must be taken along. He seemed to think you had unique insights into some strange things.”

Rowe didn't say anything, but silently followed. When they entered the castle and saw Professor McGonagall leading them to the school hospital instead of the principal's office, Rowe's heart sank.

Professor McGonagall pushed open the door to a hospital room.

"This will shock you," Professor McGonagall said, her voice trembling slightly. "The attack just happened...near the library. Just now."

Two stiff figures lay on the two beds. One was Penelope Crivart, a Ravenclaw prefect, holding a mirror in her hand. The other...

Lowe felt a sense of suffocation, as if the air had been sucked out.

Hermione Granger lay there, eyes wide open, her face frozen in a look of terror and confusion. Her body was stiff as stone, her skin cold. She was like a marble statue frozen in time, her once intelligent and vibrant brown eyes now only a deathly stillness.

[Teammate Status Update: Hermione Granger (Knowledge Keeper/Elf Princess)]

[Current Status: Petrified/Soul Sealed]

[Judgment: Medusa's Eye/Basilisk Gaze (Indirect Contact)]

[Vitality signs: Weak but stable (in a state of magical quiescence)]

Harry and Ron groaned in pain, and Ron even stumbled and nearly fell to his knees.

"No... Hermione..." Ron covered his mouth, tears welling up in his eyes.

Lowe stared intently at Hermione's lifeless eyes, the system's warning echoing sharply in his mind.

"She was attacked while researching," Lowe said softly, her voice low, but anyone could hear the suppressed storm beneath. "She was helping us find the enemy's weaknesses. She was always at the forefront, using knowledge as her weapon."

"Yes," Professor McGonagall said sadly, "she left a note with her...whatever she was investigating, she clearly found the answer. Professor Dumbledore was right, you were indeed involved."

"They've touched our guide." Rowe's fingers gripped his wand tightly. "They've broken the sword of wisdom of the expedition. This is a declaration of war."

"Love?" Harry looked at him with some fear. Love looked terrifying at that moment.

"Whether it's the Basilisk, Voldemort, or Sauron himself..." Rowe gritted his teeth, "they will all pay the price."

After leaving the school hospital, the initially hesitant trio quickly reached a consensus. Grief was transformed into motivation, and fear was consumed by the flames of revenge.

"We can't wait any longer," Harry said firmly, striding down the corridor. "The diary is lost, Hermione was attacked, Professor Dumbledore has been suspended by the Board of Trustees... Now it's just us. Rowe, the plan you mentioned before, the one about the spider."

"Yes." Rowe nodded, his gaze fixed on the eerie Forbidden Forest outside the window. The setting sun was painting the forest canopy a blood-red hue. On his system map, a massive red skull was marked deep within the Forbidden Forest.

"We don't need to wait for any more signs." Rowe adjusted his equipment as he walked. "The scene you saw in the Knowledge Sphere (the diary) that night, Hagrid's last words before he was taken away—'follow the spiders,' and those little spiders that usually tremble in the corners of the castle, lining up to escape to the Forbidden Forest... all the clues point to the same place."

"Misty Forest." Ron swallowed hard, his face pale, staring at the dark forest outside the window. "We're going to find that... that monster called Aragog? It sounds like something crawling out of a nightmare."

"That's the only clue." Rowe looked at his two companions, his eyes resolute. "Hagrid is innocent, but the creature he's protecting knows the truth. It's an ancient being; it witnessed the horrors of fifty years ago. Now that the enemy has made their move, we must fight back. We can't just sit here and wait to die."

"I have the Invisibility Cloak," Harry said, his hands clenched into fists. "For Hermione. For Penelope. For everyone."

As night fell, the castle fell into a deathly silence. All students were strictly forbidden from going out, and teachers patrolled the corridors.

But in the shadows of the Gryffindor Tower, three figures are moving stealthily.

"Are you ready?" Lowe asked in a low voice.

"Ready?" Harry put on the Invisibility Cloak, leaving only his head showing.

"Then let's go." Lovira opened the door and went out first. "Bring all your courage, hobbits. We're going to the spider's lair, even if it's the Shelob's webbed cave, even if we're facing the descendants of Ungolian."

[Instance Open: Forbidden Forest Depths/Spider's Nest]

[Recommended Level: Lv.30+]

[Current team average level: Lv.12 (But since you're going to your deaths, the system can't stop you)]

[Mission Objective: Survive and gather intelligence]