Star-Track Gears and the Shadow of a Probe
February at Hogwarts was like a piece of licorice candy coated in snow, crisply cold yet strangely sweet. Hailey and Eileen's days still followed a rhythm peculiar to Hufflepuff-sometimes they stole freshly baked Rock Cakes from the House-elves in the kitchen in the morning, then curled up in a corner of the library in the afternoon, reading an Illustrated Guide to Magical Plants with a Muggle geometry textbook underneath it. Yes, even their spell practice now had a sneaky, low-key quality to it. Eileen was always complaining that Hailey had turned her from a "Potions genius" into a "spice thief," but whenever she sprinkled cinnamon into a cauldron, her eyes shone brighter than Floo Powder.
1. The parchment code in the library
That afternoon, the Hogwarts Library was filled with the mingled scents of old ink and beeswax. Hailey nudged a quill with the tip of her wand, trying to make it float along a parabolic path—an experiment in "turning physics into magic" that she had devised after sneaking a look at her father's Illustrated Engineering Mechanics. Eileen was sprawled over the Guide to Balancing Potions Odors, her blond hair brushing the edge of the page. Suddenly, she lowered her voice. "Hailey, did you smell it? The Mandrakes in Herbology today smelled just like the ginger sauce in your kitchen."
"That's because the sound frequency of a Mandrake's scream is close to the frequency of the nerve impulses caused when ginger stimulates your taste buds." Hailey didn't look up, though an ink blot spread beside the formula "F=ma" under her quill. "Keep your voice down. If Professor Snape passes by and hears you treating a Potions ingredient from Herbology as a spice, he could melt our wands into cauldron tongs."
Before she had finished speaking, she reached for the Outline of the History of Magic beside her. Her fingertips had barely touched the spine when a page suddenly snapped open, and a folded piece of parchment fluttered down beside the ink bottle like a bird. Eileen gave a startled cry, nearly alarming the students beside them, and her elbow almost knocked over the magical power tester Hailey had hidden under the table. "Merlin's eyebrows! Does this paper have a navigation system?"
Hailey's heart stopped. The moment she unfolded the note, Dumbledore's ornate handwriting, flowing like star tracks, stood out starkly: "When the star-track gear resonates with the Prophecy gear, can Muggle calculus calculate a third path?" On the back was a pencil sketch—a spiral gear set in the center of a star chart, with unfinished runes carved around its edge.
"That's a complicated gear!" Eileen leaned over to look, her nautilus earrings jingling as they swayed. "It looks like the gear in the broken stirrer at my dad's Potions shop, only with some extra star patterns." She didn't recognize any connection to the Leicester family; she was simply curious about how the magic array was constructed.
Hailey quickly crumpled the note and stuffed it into her sleeve, the gear bracelet vibrating painfully against her wrist bone. She knew how absolutely secret the Leicester family kept its Prophecy model-Eileen only knew that her family traded in magical equipment and had never seen its core designs. The note sent a chill down her back: Dumbledore clearly knew about the family's connection to the Prophecy and was probing whether she could break it.
"Eileen, watch the stairs for three minutes." Hailey's voice was barely above a whisper as she traced an encryption spell over the crumpled paper with her wand. "I need to write a letter and send it with my family's owl. There's something a little off about this note." She deliberately kept the details vague to avoid revealing her family's secrets.
That night in the Owlery, Hailey tucked the encrypted note between the claws of a silver-spotted owl. Her letter said only: "Found something unusual in the library, involving resonance between gears and a star chart. Request a check of the family's old records." As the owl took wing, she tapped her gear bracelet three times in succession against the night sky—the "unusual information" signal she had agreed on with her parents. The metallic clicks were short and regular in the snowy night.
2. Two voices behind the broom cupboard door
Three days later, at dusk, Hailey went to the library alone to return a book. As she passed a corner of the third-floor corridor, muffled conversation reached her from the base of the wall. Another, hoarse voice mingled with Professor Quirrell's stammering: "... That girl from the Leicester family... fluctuations in her magic... similar to the Prophecy back then..."
She stopped dead, pressing her back against the stone wall. She took her wand from her necklace and gripped it, hot in her hand, the Improved Disillusionment Charm her father had taught her poised on the tip of her tongue. When she peeked around the corner, Quirrell was muttering to the wall. One corner of his turban had slipped, exposing a twisted scar behind his ear, its edges glowing an eerie red.
"... Must find that gear model from back then..." The hoarse voice suddenly rose, and Quirrell whipped his head around. Hailey's heart stopped. She rolled into a broom cupboard beside her, activating the "sound-wave jammer" in the hem of her skirt at the same time—it imitated Peeves's giggling.
"Who's there?" Quirrell's voice trembled, and his footsteps drew closer. Hailey knocked over a broom to make a noise. Just then, Peeves floated past, shouting, "The stinking professor's sneaking around casting spells again!" Quirrell hurriedly adjusted his turban, cursed "Peeves," and rushed away.
Hailey hid among the brooms, the ring on her hand seeming to grow slightly warm. She realized that Voldemort was possessing Quirrell and was actually looking for the gear model connected to the Leicester family-while Dumbledore's note seemed more like a hint that she should use her family's unfinished research. All the low-key concealment she thought she had done so well, the family's quiet, neutral existence, had been in vain. They had long since been targeted, and someone was looking for a chance to draw them into the game. At the thought, Hailey broke out in a cold sweat.
3. Energy deviation in Dark Magic class
The day after the scare in the broom cupboard, the Dark Magic Defence Class classroom smelled of parchment and pungent garlic. Professor Quirrell stood at the lectern, his turban wrapped tighter than usual. His wand spun constantly between his fingers, his knuckles white. Hailey sat in the front row near the door, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing the gear bracelet at her cuff-ever since she had glimpsed the scar behind Quirrell's ear that day, the bracelet had often given a faint resonance when she approached the Dark Magic Defence classroom. Fortunately, the ring had soothed it again.
"T-today we'll learn the Disarming Charm." Quirrell stammered more than usual as he aimed his wand at the practice target in the middle of the lectern. "M-mind the arc of your wrist, like this-"
His wrist jerked, but the spell that shot from his wand veered off course. The green beam flew straight at Hailey like a dragon breaking loose!
"Hailey!" Eileen screamed and tackled the startled Hailey to the floor. The panda hair clip on her head suddenly burst into iridescent light—it was an Emergency Refraction Charm improved by Hailey's father using ordinary dragon scales. It needed no incantation and activated automatically when it encountered powerful magic. The beam struck the wings of the hair clip and instantly refracted toward the ceiling, smashing the crystal chandelier above the aisle with a bang.
Shards of glass fell like rain, and the classroom erupted into chaos. The Gryffindor students took the opportunity to release toads on the Slytherin side, hoping to make a mess, while the Slytherins pulled out their wands and began casting cleaning charms. Quirrell's face turned as white as paper. He apologized hurriedly, then cast a spell to clean up. As he turned, he exposed a little of the scar beneath his turban, which still seemed to glow faintly red. "S-sorry, Miss Leicester! I-I overdid it adjusting my wand last night..."
Hailey pulled Eileen under a desk and heard Quirrell's rapid breathing. She knew his mistake was no accident—the hoarse voice she had heard from the broom cupboard and the Prophecy gear in Dumbledore's note both hinted at something abnormal hidden inside Quirrell. But she couldn't tell Eileen any of this. The Leicester family's principle of secrecy was as hard as Vibranium.
"The professor was way too careless!" Eileen patted her chest as she caught her breath, then took off her hair clip to check for damage. "Good thing your dad added a refracting layer to my hair clip, or we'd have been hexed into feather dusters!" She had no idea that the sudden incident was connected to deeper secrets and took it for a teaching mistake.
Hailey looked at the turmeric powder clinging to Eileen's hair clip after the magic array had activated and suppressed her doubts. "Maybe it's because it's winter. His wand might easily get damp." She deliberately steered the conversation toward magical equipment maintenance, but the fingertips of her left hand touched her bracelet—she could feel the pattern on it growing faintly hot.
After class, Hailey caught sight of Quirrell hurrying away down the corridor, one hand pressed to his head, his steps unsteady. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass, stretching his shadow into a twisted curve. From a distance, she saw one corner of his turban slip, and the red glow of the scar behind his ear flashed briefly in the dusk.
"Eileen," Hailey said, suddenly stopping, "do you think Professor Quirrell always wears that turban to cover a bald spot?" She deliberately used a light tone to shift the focus.
"Definitely!" Eileen replied at once. "Maybe he's hiding the evidence of a failed Hair-Thickening Charm under it!" The setting sun shone through the corridor windows, casting the two little witches' shadows across the stone floor.