A certain broken Hogwarts

Chapter 10 Schrödinger's Muse Rabbit

"Yes, that's right... I encountered a vampire in Romania to get rid of it... It kept haunting me... Vampires are averse to the smell of garlic."

Professor Quirrell looked timid and stammered as he answered the young wizard's questions, appearing meek and submissive, which drew bursts of laughter.

"Ah, Harry Potter!" He suddenly stopped beside Harry, rubbing his hands excitedly, "I think you know...you know why, right?"

"Because the smell of garlic is like feces to vampires..." Harry said calmly. "Garlic can indeed repel vampires, or rather, make them run away from disgust, but don't expect a vampire blinded by rage to let you go because of it."

"Perfect...absolutely correct!" Professor Quirrell exclaimed, his face beaming with excitement. "A perfect...perfect answer! Slytherin, +10! I told you, you absolutely didn't need to take this class again..."

"That's what the textbook says, Professor. I just did a quick preview before class..." Harry said.

"Great...great!" Quirrell exclaimed, as if Harry had done something truly remarkable.

Harry looked a little uncomfortable, but when he thought about what had happened that morning... he instantly calmed down.

"Harry Potter truly lives up to his reputation; at least he's very composed and has the demeanor of a great general," Daphne murmured.

"Hmm, it seems his reputation isn't entirely unfounded," Blaise nodded in agreement.

Owen glanced at Harry with some surprise. Had he really changed so much on just his first day in Slytherin? Not only was he starting to study in advance, but his personality had changed too? Wasn't it said that it's easier to change mountains and rivers than to change one's nature? This change was too fast.

Somewhat amused, Owen shook his head and continued flipping through his Defense Against the Dark Arts study notes, pondering how to cast a few spells, ignoring the whispers around him.

Before they knew it, the comical Defense Against the Dark Arts class was over, and it was also their last class of the day.

When the bell rang, the young wizards rushed out of the classroom and headed towards the Great Hall, eager to appease their hungry stomachs with food.

Owen washed his hands carefully before going to the Great Hall to have dinner with a large group of young wizards. Harry came over, grabbed some food, and left in a hurry, his back looking rather dejected, completely ignoring Malfoy's loud calls of his name from behind.

"What's he doing?" Malfoy asked, shrugging his shoulders in bewilderment. He glanced at Crabbe and Goyle, who were frantically stuffing food into their mouths. The two big men shook their heads, each looking more confused than the other.

"We're hiding from you. This morning you were parading around with Potter, you're not ashamed, but we are," Theodore Nott muttered behind him, then floated away like a ghost.

"Impossible! Harry was so happy he turned red in the face," Malfoy shouted to Theodore.

"That's pungent," Blaise added from the side, and Daphne nodded like a chick pecking at rice.

"Really? I think it's fine." Malfoy turned to look at Owen suspiciously, as if he wanted to get some support from him.

"Well, there are always people who don't like to parade around in public, they think it's like a bully taking to the streets, or crabs scurrying about..." Owen said with a laugh, then offered a more subtle piece of advice in more palatable terms, "I think Harry should prefer to be more low-key, otherwise he'll seem like a nouveau riche who gets carried away by his fame."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it." Only Pansy's thought process matched Malfoy's.

Malfoy, however, was seriously considering Owen's words, and after a long while, he nodded thoughtfully: "I understand."

Irving tilted his head and glanced at him, not quite sure what he understood.

After stuffing the last bite of pie into his mouth, he returned to the common room with Blaise and Daphne, where several students were already sitting in twos and threes on the carved chairs.

Irving tossed his backpack onto the chair closest to the fireplace and went back to his dorm room first; he hadn't forgotten to feed the rabbits.

As soon as I entered the dormitory, I saw Harry sitting on the four-poster bed, looking down at a book. His thin figure looked lonely and pitiful.

"Oh, hi, Owen, you're back." Hearing Owen's footsteps, Harry looked up, put down his textbook, and rubbed his eyes.

"Why don't you go to the common room?" Irving nodded to him, walked to his desk, and asked casually.

"Uh, um... I think it's quieter here," Harry muttered softly.

"Actually, you don't need to accommodate Malfoy. If he's really causing you trouble, then you should speak up. Some things aren't a big problem if you talk them out," Owen said with a smile. "Simply keeping it bottled up inside won't make your dissatisfaction disappear; it will only become a knot in your heart that will eventually explode, hurting both yourself and others."

Harry sighed like a little adult and said, "He was too enthusiastic, I didn't know..."

Irving said nothing more. He glanced at the rabbit lying in its burrow, his gaze momentarily blank. He reached out and touched Muse's head, feeling only coldness and stiffness in his hand.

The Muse is dead.

She was just an ordinary rabbit, not a magical creature with a longer lifespan. Perhaps because she had a large part of Polish rabbit blood, Muse was very small, only the size of a palm, and small rabbits tend to have shorter lifespans.

When Owen was a child, he met her by chance in the woods near the manor. The little creature just stared blankly at him as he walked by, like a silly roe deer. Seeing her boldness, Owen took her home and raised her.

To be honest, Muse is really easy to take care of. She's not picky about food, rarely gets sick, and isn't afraid of people like a normal rabbit. Owen uses her to perform magic tricks; she won't cooperate, but she won't run around either, like a stationary magic prop, which is quite to Owen's liking.

However, as Irving grew older, Muse also became an old rabbit.

"Sigh, it's about time." Owen found a box and put Muse inside. "At least you're a rabbit who's been to Hogwarts now."

"What's wrong with your rabbit?" Harry asked cautiously.

"Dead." Owen held the box in his hands.

"Sorry..." Harry said, only then noticing that Owen's expression was perfectly calm.

"I was prepared for this; she died of old age," Owen said calmly. In both his past and present lives, he had kept many animals, mostly magic pigeons, and had witnessed their passing many times.

"oh oh."

Owen left the castle, dug a hole in the grass at the edge of the Forbidden Forest and buried himself there, then returned to the common room and curled up in a chair in front of the fireplace to warm himself.

"Oh, right, there's also a copy of Muse in the Wallfacer Space." Owen went into the Wallfacer Space to deal with it.

As soon as he entered the misty space, Owen saw a white, fluffy ball pounce on him, squatting at his feet, tilting its head and looking at him with very bright red eyes.

"Huh? Muse?" Owen paused, bent down to pick up the rabbit, and looked it up and down with a strange look in his eyes.

The rabbit's nose twitched as it settled comfortably in Owen's hand, its mouth constantly chewing air, as if hinting at something.

Little did he know, a storm was brewing in Irving's heart: "She really is my muse, her personality and habits are exactly the same!"

"I created this replica while Muse was still alive; back then, it was just a lifeless shell. So, after Muse died, she lived in this space?"

"So, the Wall-Facing Space can bring the dead back to life? Although it's just a resurrection within this space, if we study it further, could we achieve true resurrection?"

Irving excitedly considered all the possibilities, his mind sparking with brilliant ideas. After a long while, he calmed down and began to analyze other things.

"Wait, Muse is just a not-so-bright rabbit; she can't speak or express herself. Whether her thoughts came here after her death, or are simply spatial copies of her thoughts, or perhaps a completely different mindset was generated, none of this can be proven..."

"But no matter what, this wall-facing space is more mysterious and interesting than I imagined," Owen exclaimed, stroking the rabbit's soft fur before placing her on the ground.

After returning to reality, Irving first finished his homework for the day before returning to the Wallfacer's Space to continue practicing his spells.

Before training began, Irving glanced in Muse's direction and his expression suddenly froze.

The little rabbit lay silently on the ground, its belly not rising or falling at all.

Irving leaned over and touched it. Although its body was still soft, it had already lost all signs of life.

"Dead again?" Owen was utterly bewildered, tugging at his short hair, seemingly determined to murder his receding hairline. This rabbit died and came back to life, came back to life and died again—was it toying with his feelings?

Forget about practicing his spells, Owen immediately left the wall-facing space; he needed to calm down.

"What exactly happened? Because the Muse replica in the space was also very old, it died of old age just now?" Owen looked deeply troubled, which made Daphne, who was standing next to him, somewhat worried.

"Owen?" Daphne's eyes shone a deep turquoise under the light, like a calm, gentle lake. "Are you grieving for Muse?"

Owen shook his head, said a few words to her, sent the girl back to do her homework, and then returned to the meditation space. His expression was somewhat stiff as he saw the rabbit, which should have died there, suddenly come back to life.

"This is weird," he groaned.

After going back and forth in the wall-facing space more than twenty times, Irving finally determined the state of the rabbit muse.

Each time he returns to the walled space, the probability of Muse being dead or alive is random, roughly one in two.

"This is... Schrödinger's Rabbit?" After an initial moment of existential skepticism, Owen quickly became intrigued. "The entire wall-facing space is like a giant black box. When I wasn't inside, was the Muse perhaps in a superposition of life and death?"

"So, does this mean that wall-facing space might be related to the microscopic realm?"

"Every time I enter the space, the state of the Muse collapses into one of two forms: alive or dead... Is this the observer effect?"

"That's interesting."

(End of this chapter)