Chapter 26
Late June sunlight at Hogwarts was as thick as honey, casting patches of color through the stained glass onto the long oak table in the Hufflepuff Common Room. Hailey rubbed the edge of her final exam results parchment with her fingertips. The gold-embossed seal marking her outstanding results glimmered in the twilight, but the silver bracelet on her wrist trembled gently at that moment. Professor Quirrell's faint probe with dark magic power while invigilating still clung to her memory like a strand of spider silk.
"Outstanding in everything! We actually did it!" Eileen kept her voice low, but she could hardly contain her excitement. She rolled her results into a narrow tube and held it to her eye, sending turmeric powder from her butterfly hairpin sprinkling onto the tablecloth. "I told you, using Sichuan pepper powder to mark the important parts for Potions Class was a stroke of genius."
Hailey caught her friend's raised wrist and felt the velvet spice pouch hidden in her cuff, made in imitation of an Eastern scented sachet. It held cardamom powder Eileen's mother had sent her, supposedly to stabilize fluctuations in magic power. "Keep it down," she said, tapping the back of Eileen's hand with the end of her quill. "Last time, you accidentally spilled cinnamon powder from another sachet on Professor Flitwick's lectern. He still looks at us like we're cauldrons about to explode."
The two slipped back to their dormitory without a word, and Hailey hauled a wooden box engraved with gear patterns from the depths of the [refrigerator] cabinet. The moment she lifted the lid, the rich aroma of ginger milk curd mixed with the sugary sweetness of double-skin milk wafted toward them. The skins that had formed on the milk in the two porcelain bowls shone like pearls in the moonlight. She gently parted the milk skin with a silver spoon, revealing amber syrup beneath. Eileen scooped up a piece of double-skin milk, and as the delicate gear pattern on its skin melted on her tongue, she suddenly looked up at Hailey. "Your bracelet always went off around Quirrell this term, didn't it?" She leaned closer to Hailey, her fingertips brushing the gear joint on the silver bracelet, and the clink of metal sounded especially clear in the quiet dormitory. "During the last Dark Magic Defence Class written exam, I saw him staring at your paper for ages. He looked exactly like my dad does when he checks expired potions."
Hailey paused. Moonlight from the window fell directly on the ring in her palm, revealing a dark spiral pattern. The "dark magic power spectrum chart" enclosed in her father's letter came to mind. The frequency of Quirrell's magic power fluctuations closely matched the Death Eaters' Concealment Charm recorded in the family archives. "Maybe his wand core resonated with the Vibranium," she said, scooping up some ginger milk curd and letting the heat of the ginger juice mask the pensiveness in her voice. "My father said Vibranium is especially sensitive to abnormal magic fields, like a Muggle electroscope reacting to static electricity."
She paused and drew a tiny magic array on the rim of the porcelain bowl with her wand to chill the dessert remaining inside. "But Eileen, have you noticed that Quirrell always wears a high-collared cloak? Some old notes at my house mentioned that Death Eaters are in the habit of covering the Dark Mark with fabric." The lie was half true: the surviving pages of the Leicester family's Prophecy book did record ways of concealing the Dark Mark, but she had omitted her family's deeper connection to the Prophecy.
The edge of Eileen's butterfly hairpin glimmered as its built-in magic-detection rune reacted. "No wonder he always smells of garlic! My mother says garlic can neutralize the foul smell left by Dark Magic." She suddenly grasped Hailey's wrist, her fingertips touching a Vibranium solder joint on the silver bracelet. "Did your father foresee trouble when he gave you all this jewelry?"
Hailey gazed into her friend's clear eyes and suddenly remembered the time they had heated Butterbeer with their wands in their secret hideout. Eileen had always gotten the temperature spell wrong, making the foam spill three feet above their mugs. "The Leicester family business needs a few special 'safety valves,'" she said, ruffling Eileen's hair and changing the subject. Eileen did not mind. As she listened to Hailey speak as though her words held a deeper meaning, she pushed the double-skin milk toward her. "Like this milk skin. It looks thin and delicate, but it can keep the scalding milk underneath apart."
Two: Wind speed on the pitch and a Hufflepuff senior
By the time Eileen rushed to the kitchen with the empty bowls, Hailey had slipped off toward the Quidditch Pitch with a canvas bag on her back. The grass gleamed like silver frost in the dusk. She crouched in the shadow of the stands and pulled a small, gear-shaped metal instrument from her bag. The blades of the Vibranium anemometer turned gently in the evening breeze, and the fluorescent markings on its dial reflected the fine beads of sweat on the tip of her nose. It was a third-generation prototype her father had made from pocket-watch parts. During its last test, the needle had swept wildly across the "dangerous fluctuations" zone when Quirrell passed by.
"Need help calibrating it?"
A deep voice came from behind her. Hailey spun around, and the Vibranium instrument nearly landed on her toes. Cedric Diggory stood three paces away, his blond hair gilded honey-gold by the setting sun, his Quidditch captain's badge gleaming copper in the twilight. He bent to pick up the anemometer that had rolled onto the ground, and when his fingertips brushed the Vibranium blades, the instrument suddenly gave a faint hum.
"Can this thing measure a broom's wake?" Cedric's gaze fell on the Muggle-style markings on the dial, his eyelashes casting fan-shaped shadows beneath his eyes. "Last time we played Slytherin, my balance charm almost failed when the wind changed suddenly. The airflow around the broom's tail was as chaotic as one of Peeves's pranks." As he spoke, the fresh scent of mint mingled with the smell of Quidditch leather and drifted over to Hailey, reminding her of the precision instruments in her father's laboratory.
Hailey took the anemometer, deliberately making its gears click in her palm. "In theory," she said, pointing to the layer of Starburst Iron on its side. "The Leicester family's shock-absorbing stickers use the same principle. Once the testing is done, you stick them in specific spots, and they break magic turbulence down into a smooth airflow." The "fluid dynamics magic conversion diagram" her father had drawn in his letter suddenly had a concrete subject to which it could be applied. The senior before her was like a perfect testing ground.
Cedric's blue eyes lit up like a Chaser who had caught the Golden Snitch. "So the Vibranium powder in the stickers actually converts the impact of spells into mechanical energy?" He pulled a worn leather wrist guard from his pocket, with residue from a Leicester family sticker still on it. "I always thought it was just an ordinary magical decoration."
As the two crouched on the grass adjusting the instrument, Hailey's silver bracelet suddenly gave a slight tremor. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the Muggle watch showing at Cedric's cuff. Its hands pointed to seven in the evening, matching the magical clock at Hogwarts to the second. The detail reminded her of her father's "cross-dimensional time management." Hufflepuff's practicality had taken a concrete form in that moment.
"Look! The blade speed's holding steady at 120 revolutions per minute." Cedric tapped the fluorescent screen of the Vibranium instrument. "That's almost identical to the wind speed data from my last match." He suddenly looked up, the last rays of sunset falling on the smiling corners of his eyes. "Miss Leicester, would you be interested in making a version of this specifically for Quidditch? I'd wager it could make a broom at least five percent faster."
Hailey's heart skipped half a beat, not because of her senior's suggestion, but because the anemometer's needle had suddenly shifted slightly to the right. The change in angle was identical to the fluctuation when Quirrell had probed her. She quickly closed the instrument's casing and drew a Silencing Charm on its surface with the tip of her wand. "Let's talk about it after I improve the interference protection module," she said, deliberately sounding as if she were discussing classwork. "During the last test, this thing kept mistaking Peeves's pranks for magic storms."
Three: Owls and the mystery of the pocket watches
When the first owl's hoot of the morning broke the silence at Hogwarts, Hailey was dreaming that she was stirring the surviving pages of the Prophecy book in a pot with a Vibranium spoon. Claws thumped against the windowpane, startling her awake. She rubbed her eyes and drew back the curtains. A silver-spotted owl had a message tube wrapped in laurel leaves tied to its leg. The Leicester family's "emergency signal" stood out in the morning light.
"Leo! Quick, get some owl food!" As she untied the tube, the laurel leaves crumbled onto her pajamas, revealing a note written in Vibranium ink. Her mother's handwriting, mixed with stardust powder, was slightly warm on the parchment. "The Muggle antiques dealer in the bowler hat came again. This time he bought three Vibranium pocket watches."
Hailey's heart sank. Her father had once enclosed a structural diagram of that type of pocket watch in a letter. A layer in the watch cover contained a sheet of Starburst Iron 0.5 millimeters thick, capable of withstanding only one low-level Dark curse. "But three days later, he came back making a fuss with a warped watch case," her mother's handwriting suddenly grew hurried. "He said the case 'ate magic' and shattered on its own before it had even encountered Dark Magic."
She rushed to the desk and unfolded the letter. On the back was a cross-section of the corroded Starburst Iron, drawn in fluorescent ink. Her father's annotation was as sharp as a Vibranium engraving knife: "Dark magic power concentration 200% above the limit. Death Eaters are testing resistance to Vibranium." Half a scorched laurel leaf was still stuck to the edge of the parchment, the symbol her mother used to mark "extreme danger."
"Hailey? You look worse than the ginger milk curd I burned." Eileen walked in rubbing her eyes, her panda hairpin askew. "The House-elf in the kitchen said there are strawberry magic muffins today..." She suddenly stopped, looking at the letter in Hailey's hand. "Did something happen?"
Hailey stuffed the letter into a drawer, her fingertips touching the "Vibranium voice-transmitting conch" her father had sent her. "Remember the pocket watches my dad sells?" She lowered her voice, imitating her father's tone when he explained business strategy. "A wizard dressed as an antiques dealer said the watch case shattered on its own, but really he just didn't know how to wind it." The lie was even more outlandish than the previous night's speculation about Death Eaters, but it succeeded in making Eileen frown. "A lot of pure-blood wizards can't make sense of magical products. Could they..." Eileen trailed off, but looked at Hailey's bracelet, alluding to what they had discussed earlier.
The Leicester family's response was written in code at the end of the letter in Vibranium ink, appearing only when Hailey ran the tip of her wand over it: "The 'Vibranium Resistance to Dark Magic Power Test Report' has been submitted to the Ministry of Magic, with control group data from the combined Muggle and wizard laboratory attached." Beside a bar chart her father had drawn was a joke: "When the bigwigs at the Ministry of Magic see the report, their expressions will be even more entertaining than if they'd seen a talking Mandrake."
She patiently explained it to Eileen, then saw the small print on the attached page that alarmed her most: "All orders are to be signed using Vibranium ink. When a Death Eater signs, the ink will change color because of the Dark Mark." A small blot of deep purple ink clung to the edge of the letter. It had been left by an anonymous buyer's signature, and its color matched the spectrum of the magic power fluctuations from Quirrell's probe exactly.
"So your dad caught a fraud by improving on the Muggle registration method?" Eileen's panda hairpin turned an admiring bright green. "Like using an Arithmetic Spell to calculate a candy inventory?" She suddenly grabbed Hailey's wrist.
Hailey looked into her friend's shining eyes and nodded. Then she heard someone passing outside the door and gave Eileen's hand a tug, bringing their conversation to an end, all the more afraid that walls had ears.