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Led by Richie, the three first-years arrived in front of a peculiar portrait on the third floor.
It depicted an odd, blue vase with a downward-curving rim that looked exactly like a frowning face.
Under Neville and Hermione's curious gazes, Richie turned to Neville.
"Neville, play along with me here."
"Huh?" Neville looked at Richie, completely confused.
Richie just faced the portrait and stated, "I only know twenty-five letters of the alphabet."
Neville: ?
Hermione instantly caught on. "Why?"
"I don't know Y."
A second later, the vase in the painting began to shake violently up and down. The downward-curved rim rapidly flipped upward into a massive smile.
The portrait swung open, revealing a solid wooden door behind it.
"So the password is just a dad joke?" Hermione asked, trailing her fingers curiously across the wood.
Richie nodded and pushed the door open. Hermione and Neville quickly followed him inside.
As the three of them stepped over the threshold, the torches in the abandoned classroom instantly flared to life.
Creak—
The door swung shut behind them on its own.
The room was similar to the Weasley twins' makeshift workshop, just much larger and entirely empty. Dust-covered desks were pushed to the perimeter, leaving a massive open space in the center. Three training dummies—made of some unidentifiable material—stood off to the side.
It looked exactly like an abandoned Charms classroom.
"Wow, Richie, how did you even know this place existed?" Neville asked, looking around in awe.
"I asked around," Richie explained.
He had run into the Weasley twins around lunch and asked if they knew any good, empty spots to practice spells. They had immediately pointed him to this room on the third floor and even gave him the password.
"It's mentioned in Hogwarts: A History," Hermione chimed in, her eyes shining with the thrill of discovery. "During the medieval era, the castle underwent a massive expansion. But as the wizarding population slowly declined over the centuries, the student body shrank along with it. As a result, Hogwarts is full of abandoned classrooms like this..."
While she lectured, Richie quickly arranged three desks and chairs in the center of the room, dusting them off before dropping his books down.
"Alright, Neville. Wands out. Let's see your Levitation Charm." Richie pulled a quill from his robes, placed it in the center of the desk, and looked at Neville.
"O-oh, o-okay." Hearing the command, Neville nervously drew his wand.
Hermione set her books down and watched Neville intently.
Neville took a deep breath. "Wingardium... Leviosa!"
Absolutely nothing happened.
"Your stress is in the wrong place!" Before Richie could even speak, Hermione immediately jumped in. "It's Levi-o-sa, not Levio-sa."
"And remember the wand movement: swish and flick. Like this." Hermione raised her wand and demonstrated the exact motion. "Don't force it!"
Neville looked over at Richie.
Richie just nodded. "Hermione is right. The entire spell is built on the wand movement and the incantation. If you get those two things right, the spell will cast. Don't stress about it; we have plenty of time."
Encouraged by Richie's calm demeanor, Neville let out a heavy sigh and tried again.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Still nothing.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
After several back-to-back failures, Neville completely deflated. He dropped his arm to his side in total defeat.
"This is hopeless. Why is this happening?"
"Am I actually just a Squib? Just like when I was a kid..." He choked back a sob.
Richie frowned, genuinely confused.
Logically speaking, as long as the incantation and wand movement were correct, the spell should be incredibly easy to cast.
To test the theory, Richie raised his own wand and executed a textbook cast. "Wingardium Leviosa."
Under the watchful eyes of the other two, the quill smoothly floated off the desk.
"Oh..." Seeing the flawless execution only made Neville more depressed. He collapsed into his chair, his eyes instantly turning red. "Why is this happening?"
Hermione started pacing the room, looking incredibly frustrated. "His wand movement and pronunciation were absolutely perfect on those last few attempts! I guarantee it!"
"So why isn't it working... could it be..." Hermione stopped pacing. "Is it your wand?"
Acting on the theory, Hermione reached over and snatched the wand right out of Neville's hand. She pointed it at the quill and gave it a flick.
Unsurprisingly, the quill levitated into the air. It was violently shuddering and vibrating—a clear sign that the wand wasn't a match for her—but the magic still activated.
Seeing Neville's eyes widen in sheer despair, Hermione helplessly spread her hands. "This is just bizarre..."
Just like when I was a kid...
Richie replayed Neville's earlier comment in his head. After a moment of thought, a realization hit him.
"If the wand, the incantation, and the physical movements are all fine... then the problem has to be... his mind."
Richie suddenly recalled a specific chapter from a book he had been reading recently, The Crucible of the Mind. The chapter had detailed a psychological condition known as Confidence Atrophy.
It was an incredibly easy-to-miss psychological disorder.
The book used a Muggle analogy: Imagine you are a human being, and you fundamentally believe you are human. However, if your mind isn't fully developed, or if you suffer a massive psychological trauma, you might slowly stop believing you are human. This cognitive dissonance triggers functional regression—you might forget how to write, or even how to speak.
When applied to a wizard, it meant that if a wizard subconsciously stopped believing they were magical, they would actively lose the ability to cast spells.
It didn't matter how perfectly Neville swished and flicked his wand, or how flawlessly he pronounced the incantation. If his core belief in his own magic was fractured, the spell would never fire.
Combined with his completely defeated posture...
This was textbook Confidence Atrophy.
The Crucible of the Mind had also detailed the absolute worst-case scenario of this condition: Obscurials.
That wasn't just a loss of confidence; that was confidence atrophy mutating into absolute, localized self-hatred.
An Obscurus was a dark, parasitic magical force born from a young wizard. It was created when a child was subjected to long-term abuse or persecution, forcing them to actively suppress their innate magical instincts. The sheer, internalized agony of suffocating their own magic birthed the parasite.
A child infected by an Obscurus was called an Obscurial. They were prone to violent, mindless outbursts of terrifying destructive power, and they rarely survived past the age of ten.
When Richie had read that section, he had been genuinely shocked that something so dark existed in the magical world.
And now, he was sitting right next to a kid suffering from the exact precursor condition.
Richie realized with absolute clarity: If he didn't intervene right now, if he just let Neville continue spiraling, the absolute best-case scenario was that Neville permanently lost his magic. The worst-case scenario was literal self-destruction.
"Oh, this is an absolute disaster!" Neville aggressively wiped his eyes, fully spiraling into self-pity. "I should just drop out. There's no point wasting my family's Galleons if I'm basically a Squib."
"Hey, hey, Neville, look at me."
Richie walked over and sat down on the desk right next to him, putting a reassuring hand on Neville's shoulder.