Chapter 400: Seeing the Mirror Again

"Someone is using the Room of Requirement, who could it be?" Luo En said with some expectation. "Shall we knock on the door and try?"

"No, if it's McLaggen who opens the door, that would be awkward." Harry said calmly. "We just knew he and Marietta left the common room to be intimate elsewhere, but the nearest empty classrooms have no movement, so let's forget it for now."

Luo En didn't refute. He walked over, leaned on the railing, and said gloomily: "Alright, then where are we going next?"

"Go to the library?" Harry also leaned on the railing, right beside him, and then, he easily saw from Luo En's eyes that he didn't really want to go to the library.

"Yes, that's not a good idea either." Harry denied his own proposal. "Perhaps Hermione really doesn't like Quidditch."

"She might not like Kamen Riders either." Luo En's tone carried a trace of frustration. "Everything I care about is what she doesn't like, I think this is very obvious."

"But, saying let me forget her, I can't do it either—really, clearly she is an arrogant and self-righteous bookworm, always saying a pile of Muggle words, and just looks average." Luo En said while pulling a thread on his sleeve. "Not as good as that white hair."

"Do you still have feelings for Elena?" Harry asked curiously.

"Putting other things aside, I admit she is indeed quite beautiful." Luo En threw the thread he pulled off down the stairs. "But beauty is just one of the things, isn't it? Besides... besides I don't like her white hair either."

"Actually, she doesn't have white hair, it's pale gold, very pale gold, it looks like white in brighter light." Harry said for the sake of talking. "Like Lu Na, that's the most standard pale gold, it must have a bit of golden yellow to look good."

"Lu Na, sigh." Luo En looked at the ceiling. "She lives very happily, I really feel envious, why do we have so many pressures, and these children in the lower grades are so relaxed and happy?"

"The pressure we bear is so that they don't have to have pressure." Harry said calmly.

Luo En seemed to be a bit more cheered up. He asked seriously: "Do you think so? If I want to become a hero, are these all necessary?"

"No." Harry said immediately, but he paused and added somewhat uncertainly: "In the usual sense, there is no such necessity—but if you are talking about the kind of 'hero' in Zhang Qiu's mouth, the kind that is linked to the concept of 'Kamen Rider', perhaps it really is."

"Yes, she said exactly that," Luo En said with unfocused eyes, "heroes are always lonely..."

A slight, close-at-hand sound of footsteps interrupted Luo En's emotion. They turned their heads and looked immediately, and just happened to see another person with pale golden hair walking out of the Room of Requirement.

"Draco?" Harry showed a fake smile. "Were you using the Room of Requirement just now?"

"Uh, yes," he muttered, his expression a bit unnatural. "Nice to see you, Harry."

"Are you here alone?" Luo En narrowed his eyes and said.

"Sorry, I have to go back." He ran away quickly, without saying another word.

"I don't think this is normal, Harry, he must not have done anything good." Luo En said with dissatisfaction.

"Yes, very suspicious." Harry echoed him. Actually, he felt Draco couldn't do anything too outrageous, because he had neither the motivation nor much courage, and most importantly, he didn't have that ability.

"I want to enter the room Draco just entered." Luo En muttered while wandering in the corridor. It seemed that the Room of Requirement had no privacy awareness, and it soon revealed a large door.

However, when Harry and Luo En walked in, they found the scene in front of them was a bit familiar: this was the place where things were hidden. A faint sense of unease lingered in Harry's heart, intuition told him this seemed not to be a good thing.

They walked slowly forward along the road, passed various piled tables, chairs, and cabinets, passed piles of dusty books and broken furniture, and then, saw the statue from afar, with the diadem made into a Horcrux still wearing it well on its head.

"The diadem is very safe, Snape also cast protective spells." Harry thought with some amusement. "I don't even know what I was panicking about just now."

"Wow wow wow..." Luo En made an exclamation of surprise. "I guess Malfoy was looking at this thing."

Harry looked back. Between the old cabinets piled up like a mountain, there was a huge glass covered with some dirt, and the glass was surrounded by dark golden frames. It took Harry about five seconds to recognize what this was.

"Mirror of Erised?" He felt a kind of joy of reunion, and reached out to touch the gray mirror surface. "Was it placed here? We didn't notice it several times when we came and went before."

"This is the room where Hogwarts hides things, of course it doesn't say only students can hide things here, right?" Luo En stared at the mirror surface without blinking. "Perhaps it was Deng Buliduo who hid the mirror here."

"It's not impossible." Harry thought of Ariana. He knew Deng Buliduo also had the need to look at the mirror.

"By the way, Luo En, what did you see?"

"I saw I became an Auror, um..." his face was a bit red, stammering, "That's it."

Harry guessed he also saw some things that made his heart move in the mirror, but he didn't expose it, and turned to say: "Zhang Qiu demonstrated another usage of the magic mirror to me before. You can see anything you want to see through it. For example, I want to know how we should defeat Kiva now."

When Harry concentrated, the picture in the mirror began to change. He saw Luo En using some kind of exquisite flame swordsmanship, easily beating the enemy back again and again.

"Big help." Harry took a deep breath. "Luo En, you also look carefully. If you can learn the swordsmanship demonstrated in the mirror, I believe you can definitely do it."

"But what I see is still, uh, Auror." Luo En said with a guilty conscience.

"Concentrate, Luo En, you must keep telling yourself that what you desire most now is to defeat Kiva." Harry prompted.

"Yes, yes, but—" Luo En's expression looked very awkward. "What I see is Professor Shouichi."

"What?"

"I see him standing in front of us with a calm expression, yes, he is still smiling," Luo En swallowed a mouthful of saliva, "but this is his last transformation."

"No, I don't want to look anymore." Luo En took two steps back, turned around, and leaned his head against the wall on one side. "Why? Isn't this saying that my heart is looking forward to others stepping forward, and I can't win against Kiva?"

"The mirror won't show things you don't know. Since I can see you using some kind of swordsmanship to defeat Kiva, it shows that this swordsmanship should be something you have practiced." Harry persuaded. "You brew it, look at it again."

"I think this is unlikely, that might just be your fantasy." Luo En was still a bit resistant. "I was originally just learning swordsmanship as an amateur. Even if I use all I have learned, how can I fight against a vampire who is naturally cruel..."

"Don't be afraid of him, do you still remember what Zhang Qiu said? Kiva is also a novice on the road." Harry felt a bit of a headache. He knew Luo En would occasionally fall into some kind of lack of confidence. He had to think of a way to liberate Luo En from this lack of confidence.

"Right, the Mirror of Erised is originally a place to show fantasies." Harry changed his train of thought. "You don't care about whether it's possible or not first. Think about it, if it were you who defeated Kiva with your own hands, you would become a hero, then everything you saw in the mirror before, whether it's Auror or something else, would come true."

"Try again, Luo En, try again, you will definitely find the method to defeat him..." After much persuasion, Luo En finally adjusted his mentality and looked at the Mirror of Erised again. Then, his expression began to become unnatural.

"So Zhang Qiu was right, Harry?" Luo En had no joy on his face, only a bitter smile. "The transformation that is suppressed to the extreme is the strongest?"

"What did you see?" Harry was a bit puzzled. He didn't understand why the same thing was so optimistic and beautiful in his magic mirror, but appeared in such a suppressed and sad way in Luo En's.

"Yes, perhaps this is the core principle of the Rider system." Luo En had already completely fallen into that kind of emotion. His hand that was gently stroking the mirror surface let go, and then he turned around decisively, clenched his fists and said, "Risking everything to protect the people you want to protect, only in this way, only this kind of determination to risk one's life can stimulate his power to the greatest extent."

"The so-called Kamen Rider is to burst out power in sadness, anger, and loneliness, and fight to the death to protect a world where no one loves me," Luo En suddenly showed a big smile, "So I knew it from the beginning, Felix Felicis had already reminded me, the true role of the mask is to hide the tears under the mask."

Harry echoed vaguely. Although he felt that Luo En's understanding might have some kind of deviation, at least he found confidence by relying on this deviation, and might even have obtained the power to defeat Kiva from it. Then there was no need to correct it. After all, from a practical point of view, with himself there, it was unlikely that Luo En would really fall into some kind of lonely and suppressed situation.

However, when Harry was lying on the bed, he couldn't help but think again, the Mirror of Erised shows the desires of the heart. Luo En saw someone solving Kiva for the first time, which was still ordinary, but he saw some kind of suppressed scene the second time... Could it be that his heart was looking forward to this?

Could it be that Luo En was looking forward to being able to "fight to the death to protect a world where no one loves me"? Even if he thought Kiva was too strong in his heart and his chances of winning were slim, assuming that the so-called risking one's life was because of this point, how could he look forward to a world where no one loves him? Taking a step back, even if he ignored his good buddy, he should know that his father and mother loved him, right?

Harry turned his head and looked at Luo En's tightly closed bed curtain. He began to be a bit unsure again. Either he had gone into a dead end on some problem, or he was still hiding something... ===== CHAPTER 401 =====