Ignis liked Wizard's Chess himself, so he hadn't bought this set solely to train for the tournament.
But after the Inter-School Wizard's Chess Championship, Ignis thought it would be quite a while before he touched Wizard's Chess again...
Resting his head on one hand, Ignis closed his eyes and frowned as if he had a headache.
Manus shook his head and poured himself a cup of hot milk:
"Would you like some?"
"Mm, do you have chilled Butterbeer?"
"I do."
Manus rubbed his thumb against the handle of the enamel teapot, took out another cup, and poured Butterbeer into it.
"Huh?!"
Ignis sat up straight. Even after taking the cup, he kept staring at the teapot:
"How did you do that?"
"It's just a little toy with a permanent Filling Charm. You have to prepare the drinks it'll summon in advance. Making it switch between different drinks takes a bit of work, though."
Manus raised the teapot to show him.
Wizards had performed plenty of similar tricks in front of Muggles throughout history—cups that never ran out of wine, and the like. There were two ways to achieve the same result: with a charm, or with modern alchemy.
The latter used magical runes and similar methods to give objects lasting magical effects. Modern wizards considered it alchemy, though classical alchemists like Nick did not.
Both methods were well established. As Manus had said, the only tricky part was switching between different drinks.
But that was no small problem. As a branch of the Summoning Charm, two Filling Charms couldn't be placed on the same object at once. A cup that poured endless wine in a legend couldn't pour clear water.
So multiple Filling Charms had to be layered together, with the parts that would conflict appearing only once, while preserving