Morris had his own private thoughts about what Harry and his friends had just explained.
Based on everything he had observed since arriving at Hogwarts, Morris was considerably more inclined to believe that Quirrell was the one trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone.
But whether the true culprit was Quirrell or Snape or some third party entirely, it really had nothing to do with Morris himself.
For Morris, what captured his attention and sparked his curiosity at this particular moment was not the identity of the thief but rather the object itself—the legendary Philosopher's Stone.
"What exactly can the Philosopher's Stone do?" Morris asked, leaning forward slightly with interest.
Hermione responded immediately. "It can create the Elixir of Life which grants immortality, and it can transmute any metal into pure gold of the. There might be additional uses beyond these two primary functions, but that's all the books in the library mention."
Immortality?
Morris felt something click into place in his mind. He suddenly remembered that encounter months ago when he had been shopping in Knockturn Alley's shadowy establishments. Quirrell had been there too trying to discreetly purchase venom from a Nix banded snake.
Ezra had mentioned during that transaction that Nix banded snake venom is rumored to be used to extend one's lifespan.
Now, viewed through the lens of this new information about the Philosopher's Stone, the pattern became clear. The person who wanted to obtain the Philosopher's Stone was Quirrell.
"Being able to create unlimited gold, that's absolutely wonderful, isn't it?" Ron interjected enthusiastically. "Just think about it for a moment—if you could somehow get your hands on something like that! You'd never have to worry about money for the rest of your entire life! You could buy anything, go anywhere, do anything!"
"Indeed," Morris agreed. "No rational person could refuse the appeal of gold. Who wouldn't want to possess a stone with such capabilities?"
It was a simple statement of human nature.
Hermione glanced meaningfully at Harry. "Snape thinks the same way."
Harry nodded in agreement with Hermione's assessment. "If the Philosopher's Stone were to fall into the wrong hands, the consequences would be unthinkable. Someone like Snape would definitely want to use its power for evil purposes."
"Such as?" Morris asked with curiosity, wanting to hear Harry say exactly what evil purposes he imagined.
"Evil purposes, dark magic, terrible things... in any case," Harry replied somewhat vaguely, his certainty apparently not extending to specific scenarios. He waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed various undefined malicious possibilities.
The conversation concluded shortly thereafter.
After parting ways with Harry and his concerned friends in the corridor, Morris returned to Ravenclaw Tower and made his way to his dormitory.
He settled onto his bed, leaning back against the headboard absently stroking Tin-Tin who had appeared from whatever dark corner the undead cat spent its days lurking in.
For him, the Philosopher's Stone undoubtedly held tremendous appeal.
Whether it was the ability to transmute base metals into gold, solving all financial concerns permanently and providing unlimited resources for magical research and experimentation, or the possibility of achieving true immortality, both capabilities were intensely tempting.
Just as he had told the others with honesty, no one could genuinely refuse gold and the power it represented. Anyone who claimed otherwise was either lying or lacked imagination.
Getting possession of the Philosopher's Stone certainly wouldn't be easy.
But how would Morris know the true difficulty without at least attempting to investigate?
Even if he ultimately couldn't take the stone in the end, he should at least see what this legendary artifact looked like with his own eyes.
Such a profoundly magical object, one of the greatest alchemical achievements in human history, was currently hidden somewhere within the very castle he lived in, probably just a few floors away from his bed. He had absolutely no good reason not to explore the situation.
Once this thought took root in Morris's mind, it proved extremely difficult to suppress or dismiss through rational argument.
Morris had always been a person of strong initiative and decisive action. And he immediately decided that he would go investigate that forbidden room and whatever lay beyond it.
However, attempting such an expedition during daytime hours definitely wouldn't work for multiple obvious reasons.
During the day, the corridors were filled with students and professors. More critically, there was no way to freely use his Shadow Concealment spell when sunlight poured through every window and lit every corner.
As long as he had access to Shadow Concealment and maintained the darkness necessary for its operation, Morris was supremely confident that no one would discover his presence.
Unless someone cast a Lumos spell with an enormous range, dispelling all the darkness in an entire corridor or room simultaneously and forcing him to emerge into the light, they simply couldn't force him out of the shadows.
If his observers didn't use that specific counter-strategy, Morris believed that even Dumbledore himself wouldn't be able to detect Morris hidden within the darkness.
For the next period of time, Morris spent his day as usual.
Late at night, when the castle had long since fallen into its midnight quiet and even the most dedicated students had abandoned the library for their beds, Morris sat on his dormitory floor in his nightly meditation.
His meditation routine ended naturally as he opened his eyes and looked up at the clock on the dormitory wall.
Eleven fifty-three at night.
The time was about right for his purpose.
Morris rose silently from his meditation position. He changed from his sleeping clothes into a dark hooded robe and pushed open his dormitory door.
As Morris descended the spiral stairs toward the Ravenclaw common room, moving on the balls of his feet to minimize sound, he was surprised to find the usually deserted late-night space wasn't entirely empty tonight.
Besides himself, there was another furtive figure present.
It was Perfect Robert Hilliard, a fellow Ravenclaw student several years older than Morris.
Robert had cast what appeared to be a Disillusionment Charm on himself, creating that characteristic chameleon-like blending effect that made him difficult to see against the background. He was quietly making his way toward the exit of the common room.
Morris watched from the shadows of the stairwell for a moment, waiting for Robert to leave first before following at a safe distance.
It seemed tonight at Hogwarts would not be particularly peaceful, with multiple students breaking curfew for various purposes.
In fact, during Morris's previous late-night visits to the library for access to Restricted Section materials, he had occasionally encountered other students wandering the corridors at forbidden hours.
The castle at night had its own group of rule-breakers.
Fortunately, Morris himself had never been discovered or identified by anyone during these expeditions.
The journey from Ravenclaw Tower to the forbidden fourth-floor corridor was dull and proceeded smoothly.
Morris arrived without incident at the door of the room where Fluffy, the massive three-headed dog was stationed as guardian.
He reached out and turned the handle experimentally—it was locked, as expected. The mechanism didn't budge under his hand.
To avoid drawing any attention through magical detection that might alert Dumbledore or other staff to unauthorized spell use in this forbidden area, Morris decided against using the Alohomora Unlocking Charm.
Instead, he would use his considerably more subtle approach.
"Shadow Concealment," Morris chanted silently.
His physical body transformed fluidly into living darkness.
He slipped easily through the narrow crack under the door, his shadow-form was compressing and sliding through the gap like water flowing through a crack in stone.
Inside the room, as Morris's perception mapped the space around him through the unique senses his shadow form possessed, the scene matched what he'd encountered during his previous visit to this location.
A massive three-headed dog was chained to the floor by a thick iron chain attached to a collar around one of its necks.
Two of Fluffy's heads had their eyes tightly closed in what appeared to be genuine sleep, tongues lolling and breathing producing rumbling snores. The remaining head had its eyes technically open, revealing bloodshot yellow irises, but judging by its extremely drowsy movements and constant jaw-cracking yawns, it wasn't particularly alert either.
What an incompetent guard dog, Morris thought with some amusement.
Morris carefully extended his senses through the entire room. He finally discovered what he'd been searching for—a rather small trapdoor concealed beneath the three-headed dog's massive body.
The wooden trapdoor, probably three feet square, was currently being stepped on by one of Fluffy's enormous paws.
Of course, for Morris in his current state, this obstacle was as good as nonexistent.
Without hesitation or concern about the guardian literally standing on his destination, Morris traveled smoothly through the shadows cast by Fluffy's bulk, merged with the darkness beneath the creature's body, and slipped through the gaps around the trapdoor's edges.
Downhill he went, falling through empty space in the darkness of a vertical shaft.
In the pitch blackness of the descent, Morris's senses detected some elongated objects filling the space below him, probably some kind of vine-like plant based on the organic texture.
He landed on an unexpectedly soft surface rather than hard stone, and immediately emerged from his shadow form back into solid flesh, curious to examine his surroundings properly.
In that precise instant when his body became physical, the vines he'd detected surged toward him as if possessing intelligence. Thick tendrils whipped through the air with startling speed, reaching for his arms, legs, torso, clearly attempting to entangle and restrain him.
Morris was genuinely startled by the aggressive response and immediately dove back into shadow form with reflexive speed.
The questing vines lost their target as he became incorporeal darkness once more. They wriggled blindly through the space where he'd been standing just moments before, searching for the warm body that had briefly been present.
After several seconds of fruitless seeking, the plant slowly drooped down in apparent disappointment, returning to its dormant state of merely looking like ordinary if unusually thick vines.
It was Devil's Snare—Morris recognized the plant from his Herbology studies, though he'd never encountered a living specimen of this size and aggression.
Clever defense, actually. Anyone falling through the trapdoor without knowledge of the plant's weakness would be trapped and possibly killed.
Morris didn't linger to study the Devil's Snare further and instead proceeded deeper into the protection sequence along a stone corridor that led away from the plant chamber.
Subsequently, as he advanced through the underground complex that had been constructed beneath Hogwarts specifically to protect the Philosopher's Stone, he reached in succession several distinct chambers, each presenting a different type of challenge.
The room was filled with hundreds of flying enchanted keys, all with wings, fluttering around a locked door like a swarm of metallic birds. One key among the many presumably fit the lock, requiring a seeker to catch the correct one while flying on the provided broomsticks.
The room containing a giant, life-sized wizard's chessboard with pieces as tall as a person, clearly requiring actual chess skill to cross safely.
The room where a fully grown mountain troll existed in captivity, unconscious currently but positioned to block passage when awakened.
The room with seven differently colored bottles and vials arranged on a stone table, accompanied by a riddle written on parchment that presumably explained which potions allowed safe passage forward and which were poison or sent you backwards.
These rooms had obviously been carefully designed with specific intended methods to pass through them legitimately—flying skills, chess strategy, combat prowess or stealth, logical deduction. Each protection tested a different ability, ensuring that only someone with diverse talents or a skilled team could reach the final chamber.
But Morris used exactly the same utterly unfair method for all of them without exception: simply passing through the cracks under each consecutive door as incorporeal shadow, completely bypassing the clever challenges that had probably taken months to design and implement.
What a pity. Such elaborate, creative challenges that must have required significant effort from multiple professors to construct, and they'd encountered a player basically using cheat codes to skip all the content.
When he finally arrived at what appeared to be the final room in the sequence, Morris was about to emerge from the shadows to catch his breath.
But in this ultimate chamber, he suddenly detected two unusual outlines that made him freeze instantly in his incorporeal state.
One object appeared to be a large mirror based on its size and reflective properties—judging by its distinctive frame and dimensions, it might very well be the Mirror of Erised that Morris had encountered some time ago.
The other outline was a tall, clearly living person with a very long beard that read as distinctly familiar in its dimensions, standing with his back to Morris's position, completely motionless before the mirror as if transfixed by whatever he was seeing in its depths.
Without any doubt, this was Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
Morris hesitated for a moment in the shadows, weighing his options.
He now had two choices available to him.
The first option was to leave immediately, retreating back through all the protection chambers before Dumbledore somehow became aware of his presence and returning to the safety of his dormitory.
The second option was to stay here hidden in the shadows and wait patiently for Dumbledore to eventually leave before taking further action and investigating.
Based on Morris's previous experiences and testing of his Shadow Concealment spell's capabilities, he was reasonably confident that Dumbledore should not be able to detect him while he remained hidden merged with the darkness.
Therefore, after several seconds of consideration, Morris chose the latter option, deciding that the potential intelligence gain was worth the risk.
He would wait and observe.
Dumbledore just stood there in front of the mirror with complete stillness, not moving at all except for the slight rise and fall of his breathing beneath his robes.
For a full five long minutes, aside from reaching up once to adjust his half-moon spectacles that had slipped down his nose, Dumbledore had absolutely no other movement at all. He simply stared into the mirror's depths with total absorption.
Morris was gradually losing patience as the minutes stretched on with no change, no useful information gained from this observation.
What exactly was Dumbledore seeing in the Mirror of Erised that could fascinate him so completely?
Just as Morris was seriously about to abandon this night trip and leave the way he'd come, having decided the wait was producing no useful intelligence, Dumbledore suddenly shook his head with what looked like regret or resignation.
He turned around, and for one heart-stopping brief moment, Morris thought that he'd been discovered.
But Dumbledore's gaze swept past the shadows where Morris lurked without pausing or showing any sign of awareness. He merely adjusted his spectacles once more and then actually sat down cross-legged on the stone floor directly in front of the mirror.
He reached into the deep pockets of his purple robes with one hand and pulled out a small cloth bag.
From this bag, Dumbledore extracted an oval-shaped item that gleamed faintly in the dim magical lighting of the chamber. He examined it for a moment, then placed it in his mouth.
'Medicine for some ailment? Or simply candy?'
Morris breathed a sigh of relief while simultaneously feeling deeply puzzled by this inexplicable behavior.
What possible reason would cause the Headmaster of Hogwarts, one of the most important and powerful men in the magical world, to sit alone in the dead of night before the Mirror of Erised, in a heavily protected underground chamber, eating sweets or taking medicine?
This behavior was truly quite strange.