Resonance Beneath the Frosting and a Turmeric-Scented Probe
June at Hogwarts was like an overturned jar of honey, its thick heat carrying the scent of lavender through the library's third floor. Hailey lay over a carved wooden table, her quill drawing crooked diagrams of magical flow on parchment. Beside her ink bottle sat half a cracked Rock Cake-Eileen had swiped it from the kitchen that morning. Nutmeg powder still clung to its edges, the grains gleaming faintly gold in the sunlight.
"This example problem on 'magical fluid stabilization' is just meant to torture young wizards' logic!" Eileen slapped Elementary Charm Applications shut on the table, her blond hair brushing a butterfly drawn in fluorescent ink along the edge of a page.
Hailey poked the Rock Cake with the tip of her wand, sending crumbs pattering onto the open Outline of Muggle Physics, right over the derivation of "Bernoulli's equation." "Keep your voice down. If the Prefect hears you comparing Charms class like that, our Prefect could melt our practice wands into stirring spoons. Last week Cyril used a Transfiguration Spell to roast potatoes, and the Prefect confiscated his wand to poke out a chimney. There's still soot on its tip." Their Prefect, though a Hufflepuff, had been growing more and more high-strung as final exams approached.
Before she had finished speaking, the silver bracelet under her cuff gave an almost inaudible click, like the second hand of a pocket watch sweeping through dust. Its built-in magic sensor was vibrating faintly at a frequency of 0.5 hertz. This was the fourth abnormal fluctuation in three days.
"Ravenclaw's nearly snatched up all the Rock Cakes the kitchen just baked!" Eileen suddenly pushed her book aside. The turmeric powder on her butterfly hair clip glinted, and crystals still clung to its edge where Mandrake syrup had splashed onto it while she was secretly brewing some that morning. "I passed the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom just now and saw Professor Quirrell's owl fly in with an envelope sealed in dark green wax. From a distance, the seal looked a bit like what Dad said the Dark Mark looks like." She lowered her voice, her fingertips absently rubbing the bag of Sichuan peppercorns in the side pocket of her schoolbag—a Potions ingredient her mother had said in a letter "can interfere with the detection of low-level spells."
Hailey's heart sank. Her fingers tightened around her quill, dragging it across the parchment and leaving a blot of ink. The hoarse voice she had heard in the broom cupboard three days ago resurfaced, and she instinctively touched the bracelet on her wrist. The Leicester family crest on its metal surface was glowing a very faint blue. In his reply last week, her father had written, "I've ground the starburst iron into powder and sewn it into the lining of your undershirt collars according to the family's defensive magic array. It will glow with a cold light when it encounters dark magic." Now she could faintly feel a chill at her collar, like thin ice against her skin. "Don't scare yourself," she said, putting away her parchment with forced calm, her fingertips brushing the sketch of a "magic balance" in her father's letter. "It might be a reply about delivering honey cake to Dumbledore. Come on. If we don't get to the dining hall soon, the other students will have eaten the turmeric roast chicken the house-elves in the kitchen saved for us."
The two had just risen and stuffed their books into their schoolbags when a streak of purple suddenly swept through the shadows in the corridor. Professor Quirrell hurried past with his head lowered, wrapped in his cloak. His turban was askew, and the scar behind his ear flickered in and out of sight in the light filtering through the stained glass, like a streak of hardened dark brown frosting. He seemed not to notice the movement at the library entrance. As the hem of his robes brushed the doorframe, a faint scent of garlic mixed with rust drifted over. It was seventy percent fainter than usual, more like a smell deliberately restrained.
Hailey had barely taken half a step through the doorway when a chill suddenly swept across the space between her brows, as if someone had dipped a quill in ice water and lightly drawn it across her skin. The sensation vanished in an instant, so quickly it might have been an illusion, but the silver bracelet beneath her cuff suddenly vibrated three times in rapid succession, like "SOS" in Morse code. She stopped short and turned toward the corner where Quirrell had disappeared, catching a faint flash of silvery blue inside his sleeve. It was a spark of magic produced by the tip of his wand rubbing against the fabric, identical to the light she remembered from her father's demonstration of a "faint-glow Memory Charm."
"Hailey? Why did you stop?" Eileen tugged at her sleeve. The turmeric powder on her butterfly hair clip suddenly glimmered, like ripples spreading across water after a stone was tossed in. It was a "magic-sensing patch" Hailey's father had improved with butterfly wing powder and Phoenix Feather fragments. It was now flashing at intervals of 0.3 seconds, ten times more active than usual.
Hailey did not answer. She simply stared in the direction Quirrell had disappeared, her hand quietly clenching. That chill had been no illusion—it was a drastically weakened Memory Charm, only as strong as a second-year student's prank, but the caster had aimed precisely at the part of her mind where the "family gear designs" were stored. Her father had once drawn a sketch of a similar spell in a letter, with a note beside it: "An elementary Dark Magic probing spell, like spider silk winding around the brain. A starburst iron lining is needed to rebound it automatically."
Sure enough, the starburst iron spell array at her collar gave off a faint prickling sensation, as if tiny ice crystals were melting beneath her skin. Pretending to straighten her scarf, she quickly brushed her fingertips over her collar and felt the powder being consumed in an extremely faint blue glow. It was a sign that the defensive spell had been triggered, but the effect was so weak that even Madam Pomfrey might not detect it in a magic examination.
"Maybe my shoelace came loose." Hailey bent down to tie it and took the chance to retrieve the "vibranium voice-transmitting conch" her father had sent from inside her sock. It was a miniature communicator made from a conch shell and vibranium powder; tapping lightly against its opening with magic could transmit a ten-second message. She tapped rapidly in the family's secret code: "Quirrell probed me today with a weak Memory Charm. Target: family gears. Starburst iron rebounded it. Bracelet vibration frequency abnormal." When she was done, she tucked the conch back into her sock. Its metal surface still retained warmth from activation.
That evening, when the two walked into the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey was brewing an emerald-green potion, with several Potions ingredients floating above the pot.
"Miss Leicester, Miss Roniel," the old witch said without looking up, "you smell like your eyebrows have been singed by a wand's tail flame." She scooped up some potion with a silver spoon and handed it to Hailey. Several slices of ginger rested in the liquid. "Drink this. It's for headaches caused by magical imbalance."
Hailey took the cup. The potion slid down her throat with a strong taste of ginger, like the soup her mother made to ward off the cold at the winter solstice. She thought of Quirrell's barely perceptible Memory Charm and the subtle reaction of the starburst iron powder at her collar. Her father had never said the defensive spell would activate so discreetly, just as he never explained why he had sewn vibranium fibers into all her clothes. "Madam," Hailey said, putting down the empty cup and brushing her fingertips over the faint red lines that had appeared on her palm when the defensive spell activated, "my head suddenly hurt in the corridor just now. It felt like a needle drilling into my brain."
Madam Pomfrey lifted her eyelid with a finger, her gaze lingering between Hailey's brows for three seconds behind her lenses. "A little magical congestion, like failing to control the heat while brewing a potion." She pressed a piece of honey candy into Hailey's hand. Its wrapper was printed with Dumbledore's favorite moon pattern. "Get some sleep and you'll be fine. Don't touch your wand."
Just as they left the Hospital Wing, Dumbledore's voice suddenly came from behind them. "Oh my, our young Hufflepuff doesn't look very well." The old headmaster wore a crooked silver pointed hat and carried a carved tin box, its lid engraved with intertwining gears.
"Try some of the new orange hard candies," he said, opening the box. The candies inside were all coated in gold powder.
Eileen immediately grabbed one. The frosting melted on her tongue with a soft pop.
"Professor, Hailey suddenly got a headache in the corridor just now!" she said indistinctly, her butterfly hair clip turning orange-red in her excitement. "It was like someone poked her brain with a wand!"
Dumbledore's blue eyes narrowed into crescents, and his fingers gently tapped the gear pattern on the edge of the tin. "A headache? Let me think..."
He pulled a book from his pocket, its cover worn white. It was titled Cross-Dimensional Magical Ingredient Pairing, and a spatula and a wand were depicted dancing together on the cover. "I saw a special kind of turmeric root at a market in Egypt last year. When cut open, the patterns on the cross-section writhe like little snakes. Chew it up and apply it to the temples, and it can cure this kind of headache."
He opened the book. On the flyleaf, written in honey ink, were the words: "When star sand meets turmeric, the third flavor awakens at the bottom of the cauldron."
Hailey took the book, her fingertips touching a dried butterfly wing tucked between its pages. It was the "1926 commemorative butterfly" her father had mentioned in a letter, its wing pattern closely resembling the Leicester family's gear emblem.
Dumbledore had drawn a wavy line in the chapter on "magical resonance thresholds" and written a note beside it: "Phoenix Feather and turmeric powder in a 3:1 ratio can suppress abnormal activity."
"Professor, this book..." By the time Hailey looked up, Dumbledore had already reached the end of the corridor, his purple cloak casting a long shadow in the setting sun.
Back in the common room, Hailey immediately ran to the bathroom and pulled out the vibranium voice-transmitting conch. She activated it again, tapping lightly against its opening with magic: "Quirrell probed me with a weak spell. Target clear. Starburst iron rebounded it but was not exposed. Dumbledore gave me a book hinting at a ratio of turmeric to star sand. He seems to know about the defense mechanism."
As soon as she finished tapping, her father's reply came from inside the shell. After three magical relays, his voice had a metallic quality. "Stay hidden. Do not trigger the defense yourself. Get some rest."
When Hailey came out again, she saw Eileen lying on the sofa, flipping through the book Dumbledore had given her. Eileen suddenly pointed at a page. "Hailey! Look at this!" The page showed a diagram of the magical reaction produced by mixing turmeric powder and star sand, with a note beside it: "Can suppress abnormal activity in scars caused by reverse-growing dragon scales." Eileen remembered the scar behind Quirrell's ear and abruptly sat upright. "Doesn't Quirrell's scar look like a dragon scale?"
Hailey did not answer. She simply walked to the window and watched the lights come on in the towers of Hogwarts as dusk fell. She thought for a very, very long time. Quirrell's probing was as hidden as spider silk and worrying, while Dumbledore's hint was as cloyingly sweet as frosting, making her desperately want to escape it and clear the sweetness away... What should she do from now on?