The "locking" conjecture regarding the Room of Requirement was easily verifiable.

At Erina's request, Dumbledore first followed them out of the Room of Requirement's "magic door"—as expected, he reappeared in the corridor on the eighth floor of the castle—then he returned to the headmaster's office as usual.

The shining oak door seemed to be held shut from the inside, firmly welded into the stone walls.

Initially, Erina had considered testing the effects of various unlocking spells.

However, after explanations and persuasion from the Headmaster of Hogwarts, she ultimately abandoned this somewhat arrogant idea.

It turned out that when the "Anywhere Door" function of the Room of Requirement was activated, Hogwarts Castle would automatically lock the corresponding entrance and exit of that area as the entrance and exit of the Room of Requirement, but this spatial blockade was only internal, not external.

For example, using the headmaster's office as an example, although the door of the office "loading" in the Room of Requirement was replaced, they could still choose to jump out of the window, but they could not fly in from the outside—which was the original defense measure—unlike Ravenclaw and Gryffindor's undefended towers, the windows of the headmaster's office could not be entered from the outside, and they were equipped with very profound magical protections.

The subsequent verification process was uneventful.

The only noteworthy point was that after everyone left through the "exit" of the Room of Requirement together, the locking of the headmaster's office did not unlock as smoothly as planned—because Erina "accidentally" left a baby phoenix in the office.

And when they returned to the headmaster's office, the baby phoenix was still lying in its little nest, without any change.

"Oh, this is a multiple test, it can illustrate two points..."

Amidst Dumbledore's confused gaze, Erina reached out and pocketed the baby phoenix while explaining.

"Apart from humans, if creatures like phoenixes and pixies exist, the Room of Requirement will not automatically reset or close—and this behavior is harmless to the creatures, otherwise, what we would be seeing now would be a big pile of ashes."

"Well, Professor Dumbledore, you shouldn't blame me, right? After all, phoenixes can be reborn from the ashes—"

Glancing at the old wizard with a complex expression, Erina affectionately stroked the baby phoenix's head, teasing the unknowing little chick.

Just as Grindelwald had secretly told her, phoenixes never hold grudges.

Each of their lives is equivalent to a brand new life. Apart from the inheritance of power, life, and contracts, there are no remnants of memories from the previous life. The phoenix's wisdom, personality, and spirituality depend largely on her environment in each life.

Undoubtedly, as one of the most intelligent magical creatures in the magical world, the education of the baby phoenix cannot be neglected.

In Erina's plan, when the baby phoenix grew a little bigger, she would try to have it learn to read and write with the emergency rations.

Although she didn't know the limit of the phoenix's intelligence, according to Erina's preliminary estimate, it could at least reach the intelligence of a fourteen or fifteen-year-old child, so judging from this, setting the initial upper limit to the fourth-year Hogwarts curriculum shouldn't be too much.

Of course, this was still a very rough plan.

After all, Erina hadn't yet decided how to maximize the potential of the baby phoenix.

Infinite rebirth and the magical characteristics of adulthood were both very tempting.

Perhaps later she would have to secretly ask the other Major Arcana to see if they had any good suggestions.

Of course, this had to be kept from Newt and Dumbledore.

Spare the rod and spoil the child is a principle that applies not only to human education.

…………

By the time they left the office and headed to the off-campus research institute, it was already three in the afternoon.

The "Hogwarts-Academy City Research Institute" was located outside the gates of Hogwarts School.

After half an hour, Erina and the others passed through the castle bridge and the forest clearing, arriving at this newly built area.

With a wave of wands from the two top wizards, Dumbledore and Grindelwald, the messy forest clearing was restored to its original flatness and cleanliness in less than ten seconds, without slowing down Erina's pace. They were becoming more and more proficient in these matters now.

When Erina's group arrived at the research institute, the researchers were already immersed in their respective work.

This was not surprising, as the Christmas holidays at Hogwarts were only for wizards.

For those Muggle researchers from the former Soviet Union, December 25th was nothing to celebrate—the Russian Christmas was not at this time, this day was only a Western holiday, and their Christmas would have to wait another half a month.

Moreover, the more crucial point was...

At the same time last winter, the hammer and sickle flag above the Kremlin was permanently lowered.

Looking around, almost all of the researchers in the huge research institute were wearing pure white work uniforms. The "chicken farm" employees who had just been stationed here a few days ago were nowhere to be seen. It seemed that they were still enjoying their Christmas vacations...

Except for the large work area in the center of the research institute, where a wizard in a forget-me-not purple robe was standing.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows in surprise and walked through the crowd, curiously looking at the wizard.

"Professor Lockhart? I didn't expect you to be here on Christmas."

Gilderoy Lockhart glanced at Dumbledore, nodded, but did not answer immediately.

Dumbledore then noticed that in front of the young wizard, a complex Muggle instrument was repeatedly sparking, deforming, and then returning to its original state, while on the other side, a machine was constantly drawing irregular curves.

Obviously, they were conducting some kind of magic-science fusion experiment.

Hogwarts Castle would conduct "indiscriminate attacks" on the surrounding Muggle electronic equipment, or rather "fixed-point super electromagnetic interference."

Therefore, if directly exposed to the "Hogwarts magical field," most non-magical electronic equipment would be completely broken in no more than half a minute, but wizards had a completely unreasonable magical countermeasure—the Repairing Charm.

Under the deliberate adjustments of Erina and others, the research institute specially ordered a batch of extremely fragile electronic equipment.

When they were directly exposed to the "Hogwarts magical field," there was a high probability that many observable damages would occur directly.

And at this time, as long as a wizard kept casting the Repairing Charm on the damaged object, a very peculiar cyclic phenomenon would occasionally be triggered—the device might keep running in a cycle of collapsing, repairing, collapsing, and repairing.

Unless the wizard actively disconnected the spellcasting, or there were flaws in the magical manipulation, this cycle would be broken.

For example...

"Concentrate, Mr. Lockhart... Ah, never mind—"

A few seconds later, Erina and the others heard a helpless sigh.

Then, a female researcher with messy hair stood up and tore off the last section of waveform diagram spit out by the scrapped machine.

"It's almost your limit, seven minutes and twenty-three seconds, you can take a break for now."

"As for you..."

Al'khipovna turned her head and looked at the culprits who had distracted Lockhart, her eyes obviously a little angry.

However, as a senior researcher at the Landau Institute, she was well aware of another rule of the scientific world:

Never be completely immersed in academics, thus forgetting what reality is.

Not to mention that the few wizards in front of her each represented the strongest existence in "that world," just the small witch alone was enough to support half a bridge connecting mystery and science, not to mention that she was also the "mommy" of the entire research institute.

In fact, the combined use of the Repairing Charm was an idea first proposed by Erina.

Although the results did not fully meet her expectations, it also moved the progress of the research institute forward a big step.

Undoubtedly, the Repairing Charm was indeed a powerful spell.

But it was not omnipotent, its "repair" was still a subjective, idealistic magical product.

Perhaps it could repair the electronic equipment destroyed by the "Hogwarts magical field," but it could not restore data, and the most important point was that when facing some complex and cumbersome instruments, even with the Repairing Charm, they had to check the problems bit by bit.

However, this was pretty much a good progress for most researchers.

After all, at the beginning, it was impossible to use any electronic equipment in the Hogwarts area at all.

Even after adopting a "Faraday field-magical version" barrier, it only solved the basic usage problem.

Moreover, the usage time each time was also very limited, because they had to sneak in while "Hogwarts was not paying attention" and could not stay inside for too long, otherwise the "Hogwarts magical field" might directly attack the entire barrier.

More importantly, if they wanted to measure and collect special wavelength data from the magical world, they had to leave the barrier.

"I heard you're having problems? Hmm... with the final presentation?"

Before the other party could speak, Erina asked first.

She wouldn't be foolish like before and let this Al'khipovna lady speak first.

Just like Al'khipovna's nickname among the researchers, the title of "Landau's female madman" was not just for show.

If she couldn't keep the topic firmly in her hands, Al'khipovna could come up with a lot of tangled and headache-inducing scientific research material needs in less than a few minutes. In terms of requesting resources and establishing new projects, the intelligence of these geniuses should never be underestimated.

As a little witch with a strong sense of self-esteem, Erina did not intend to be abused twice in the same field.

"You must have heard the fairy tales of Snow White and Aladdin's lamp, right? We just found something a bit similar..."

She opened her collar, groped around inside, and finally took out a mirror.

"Here, freshly baked, top-notch magical item—the Mirror of Erised."

"But it has very high requirements for the user. Only ideal seekers with pure minds and no personal desires have the opportunity to cross the illusory image of the magic mirror and see the wishes hidden deep in your heart that can be reflected in reality..."

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Yay!