Chapter 87 Speculations About Magic Portraits
Initially, the stairs in Hogwarts Castle would not move.
However, the wise Lady Rowena Ravenclaw believed that an unchanging learning environment would constrain people's minds and dull the curiosity of young wizards. Not long after, the other three founders were surprised to find that finding an unenchanted staircase in Hogwarts was even more difficult than making a mute bird sing all the time.
What's even more desperate is that after finishing the stairs, Ms. Rowena has begun to turn her attention to the door in the castle. Fortunately, the three founders who finally realized something was wrong joined forces to stop her behavior.
And since then, the common rooms of Slytherin House and Hufflepuff House have been moved to the first floor of the castle, so that at least the students will not miss breakfast because they can't find their way. As for the culprit who caused all this, Ravenclaw Academy, did not live in the main castle at all.
On the contrary, Godric Gryffindor, who is full of adventurous spirit, after personally trying the constantly changing castle stairs several times, simply blocked the entrance to the first floor of Gryffindor Tower, so that the students of Gryffindor House were not allowed to There is no access to the common room through the hole in the wall on the eighth floor of the castle.
After a long time, the little lions of Gryffindor finally became the group most familiar with the school's secret passages. Of course, there is a price. Whenever there is a meal, the absence rate at the Gryffindor long table is always the highest among the four houses. At the same time, Gryffindor is also the one with the most absenteeism and late arrivals.
Of course, these boring old events may only be recorded in the pile of historical documents in the library that no one has ever borrowed. But most of the young wizards at Hogwarts don't know or care about why the stairs in Hogwarts Castle move. To them, this seemed as normal as the sun rising in the east every day.
Why are you talking about this suddenly? That’s because——
"So where is this place? It should be the fifth floor... right?"
It's another three-way intersection that looks familiar.
Elena looked around uncertainly, stood on tiptoes on the edge of the corridor railing, and carefully counted the floors downstairs one by one.
Why hasn't a wise headmaster thought about adding floor markers and classroom name markers to Hogwarts Castle in all these years?
It turns out that most of the portraits and ghosts in Hogwarts are not that reliable.
Except for those characters with obvious self-awareness in the original work, most of the ghosts and dynamic portraits are not so much a continuation of life, but rather echoes of the traces of wizards who once lived in this world.
"Welcome to Hogwarts. I believe you will spend a very meaningful time here."
In the picture frame on the wall behind Elena, a middle-aged man dressed as a medieval nobleman put down the monocular in his right hand and nodded kindly. This was the third time he said this. In comparison, the portrait of the barbarian warrior who knew nothing but roaring was already very polite.
"Thank you, but I'm lost now. If you could tell me how to get to the stairs to the sixth floor, I would be very grateful."
The silver-haired little loli turned around and sighed helplessly, her eyes moving back and forth in the corridor. If she could become the headmaster of Hogwarts one day, the first thing she would do would be to introduce an "elevator" similar to the one in the Ministry of Magic in the school. Then on each floor, guide labels are placed at regular intervals.
"Stairs? Oh, yes, the moving stairs in Hogwarts are quite interesting." The aristocratic man in the painting raised his eyebrows, smiled gently, and whispered in a tone similar to reading a story. Said.
"Did you know that in this era, stairs that move by themselves have appeared in many buildings. According to their forms, they are divided into elevators, escalators, and moving walkways... Which one do you think is more suitable for Hogwarts? ?”
Instead of complaining about the wrong answers given by the characters in the portrait, Elena looked around, made sure that the direction she was about to go was not where she was when she came up, and continued to ask absentmindedly.
"Sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about."
The medieval nobleman frowned, with some confusion on his face, but there was still nothing inappropriate in his behavior.
"Then let's change the question," Elena tilted her head and suddenly talked about something unrelated to the previous topic, "The cat sits on the blanket because it is warm. What is warm?"
"I think it's because the blanket is warm, of course," the aristocratic man in the painting replied politely.
"Congratulations, you passed part of the Turing Test. Your intelligence has surpassed 30% of the portraits I have encountered." (Click here to see more about the [Turing Test])
Elena shrugged and praised a few words in a formatted tone - unlike artificial intelligence, many of the portraits that seem to be traces of a living person can pass through some of the original "human" memories. to answer logical questions.
but……
The silver-haired little witch blinked her beautiful lake-blue eyes slightly and continued casually.
"In addition to blankets made of animal fiber, there are also many blankets made of acrylic and viscose fibers. Acrylic is a fiber that is similar to wool in appearance, feel, elasticity, warmth and other aspects, and is processed by spinning. Viscose fiber It is a cellulose fiber obtained by using "wood" as a raw material, extracting and reshaping fiber molecules from natural wood cellulose."
"Excuse me, which one do you think is warmer, acrylic or viscose?"
Based on Elena's incomplete summary of experiments along the way and JKR's description in the original work, in her opinion, the magical portraits that have appeared in Hogwarts Castle can be roughly divided into four categories.
The simplest category is the animation that is common in later generations.
They just keep repeating a certain scene, such as the portrait of a goblin being repeatedly beheaded, or the photos saved through a magic camera.
The characters inside don't actually have much interaction with the outside world. As the "playback progress bar" is reset, some behaviors will start over again. The entire behavior is an independent closed-loop display window. No matter the noise, shaking, provocation, or even temptation nearby, it cannot affect the characters inside.
There are not too many of this type in the castle, but Elena guessed that the chocolate frog card may also use this kind of magic - after all, if the character on the chocolate frog card can answer the question, then it is estimated that all wizards When traveling around the world, it will be like in [Yu-Gi-Oh!] or [The Witcher 3 - Gwent], everyone carries hundreds of wizard cards with them.
The second type is much more common, just like a simple artificial intelligence.
You can ask them some simple questions, and according to some mysterious magical principles, they will respond with some simple responses: such as blinking, smiling, getting angry, and some answers stored in their question bank.
Elena estimates that this may be a bit similar to Siri, which has not yet come out. To be precise, in most cases, let alone Siri, even QQ Xiaobing or the magical [artificial] customer service of Goose Factory are far away. Not as good as.
Not to mention the Turing test, even slightly more difficult mathematical problems or brain teasers will cause them to report various errors.
The third type, and the most common type, is what Elena calls "memory echoes" such as the aristocratic man in the portrait in front of her.
In Elena's opinion, they are somewhat similar to the memories extracted by Professor Dumbledore when using the pensieve in the original book - to a certain extent, they retain the original character's personality, a small amount of memory, and perhaps a Diandian is a mysterious existence called "human nature" between soul and memory.
Among them, the part of the portrait that retains a relatively complete "human nature" can even pass part of the Turing test smoothly, and can at least provide correct answers to some questions that require common sense or moral values in human society.
Of course, it is quite common to answer questions like this.
After all, they don't really think like humans. If they are unlucky, a lost hybrid Veela often needs to ask several portraits to get guidance on the path to the upper level.
And the easiest way to distinguish this is...
"Sorry, I don't understand what you are talking about."
After hearing Elena's question using "acrylic fiber" and "viscous fiber" as keywords, the aristocratic man in the portrait once again repeated the sentence he just said a few minutes ago - even if it was just the previous sentence The girl has already explained the meanings of these two nouns.
"It doesn't matter, I'm just passing the boring time of searching for directions. Sorry, anyway, thank you for your help." Elena smiled and waved her hand, without explaining too much, relying on the knowledge of the women inherited from the Kaslana family Intuitively, choose a direction and move forward.
Yes, they are just an intercepted "memory echo" after all.
No matter how much time passes, no matter how new they come into contact with, they can no longer learn and understand, and integrate into the original "echoes of past memories" that are like encapsulated precision instruments.
For the entire world, from the moment they began to move in the painting, or even earlier, time has stood still forever and will never move forward even a microsecond.
This even applies to the portraits of the previous male and female principals in Dumbledore's office. What they leave behind are just the precious experiences and ways of thinking of each passing person, not the so-called eternal soul as originally imagined by Elena.
Of course, there is a fourth kind...
In the true sense, when it comes to the soul level, all the science of that past life has not yet touched it, and it is just a mysterious field through some incomplete unicorn inferences and conjectures.
The silver-haired little witch's eyes flickered. Thinking about it carefully, the treasures in Hogwarts are not necessarily hidden in secret rooms. However, more conjectures can only be verified one by one after the official start of magic learning.
The most important thing now is to find the way to the principal's office quickly.
If she accidentally let that spicy old carrot know about her fatal weakness, God knows what terrible tricks she would come up with.
While thinking about it, the little mixed-blood Veela raised her head, looked at the new portrait next to her and asked politely.
"Hello, I'm lost. Can you tell me how to get to the stairs to the sixth floor?"
————
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Ahhhh, I'm lost again. I was buying fruit next to my house and wanted to take a shortcut... I think it was mainly because I was typing while walking that I got lost.
Fortunately, there is mobile phone positioning. Thanks to technological progress and modern society.
In fact, in my opinion, according to the original description, there is actually a fifth form of magical portrait to be precise.
I didn’t split this 3,400-word chapter into two chapters. Come and praise me! Come and praise me!
At night, maybe there is... right? Gu Gu Gu~