Chapter 46

The gear code in the rusty pipe

The secret hideout inside the water pipe in the alley behind Privet Drive smelled of damp rust. Hailey sat cross-legged on a faded wool blanket, gently turning a plane-tree leaf between her fingertips. The notches along its edge cast tiny shadows in the warm yellow glow of a little magic lamp, like a code someone had carefully carved with a fingernail. The homemade lamp hung from a rusty iron pipe. She had modified it last year using scraps from her father's laboratory—a Muggle light bulb wrapped in a Vibranium coil that gave off a warm glow and shielded against magical fluctuations. Now it edged the floating dust with soft gold.

"Staring at a leaf again?" Eileen stuffed half a Rock Cake into her mouth. The turmeric-colored hair clip in her hair bobbed gently as she chewed, and crumbs fell onto her newly made spice labels, forming a crooked spot beside the words "Dragon's Blood Grass powder." "Dobby nearly knocked over your canvas bag when he appeared just now. He shoved a piece of moldy gingerbread in there and ran off, saying something about 'fangs hidden in sweet things.'" She prodded the green-molded pastry with the tip of her wand. Tiny snake-shaped patterns suddenly appeared on the icing, wriggled like living things, and vanished.

Hailey's fingertip paused where the notches were most closely packed. "Look at the spacing." She held the leaf between them. Light from the little magic lamp passed through its veins, casting a web of shadows on the blanket. "House-elves' fingernails are three times sharper than ordinary wizards'. The edges of the marks they carve have magical scorch marks-like the ones you leave when you poke a spice packet with a red-hot silver skewer."

Eileen suddenly leaned closer, her nautilus earring almost brushing the leaf. "These patterns... they look just like the scales on the snake in the Slytherin crest. Last year on the Hogwarts Express, I saw that Malfoy's school robe buttons had the same design. I thought they were solid gold and nearly asked to borrow one to see if I could use it as a weight for measuring Potions ingredients."

Hailey said nothing and took a palm-sized copper box from her canvas bag. It was a "magical residue detector" her father had helped her modify, with the gear pattern of the Leicester family crest engraved on its surface. When she opened it, the click of its turning gears sounded particularly clear in the hideout. With tweezers, she picked up a bit of debris from the edge of the leaf and put it into a groove on top of the instrument. A jagged green line immediately appeared on the screen, rising into a sharp peak at a certain frequency, like a balloon pricked by a needle.

"It's an exact match for the fluctuation Nini helped detect outside the wall of Malfoy Manor last week." She pointed at the green line, tracing the scale along the edge of the screen. "Especially this peak at 315 hertz. My dad said it's a magical reaction unique to powdered malachite, which is usually used to mix high-grade ink. Did you know? This formula was also recorded in medieval Muggle manuscripts, except they used verdigris."

Three days earlier, something unusual had happened for the first time in this secret base converted from an abandoned water pipe. Hailey had found half a torn piece of parchment in a crack between the bricks at the entrance. The dried ink stains on it had glimmered silver-green under the magic lamp. At the time, she had merely found it strange. Only when she saw the gingerbread Dobby had slipped her did she suddenly remember the bits of Dragon's Blood Grass mixed into the ink stains. Her father's purchasing ledger clearly stated that Malfoy Manor was the only place in the whole United Kingdom to have ordered this serrated-leaf variety of Dragon's Blood Grass that year, supposedly to improve the damp-proofing charm in their cellar.

"Couldn't it be a coincidence?" Eileen licked the crumbs off her fingers, then suddenly sneezed. "It's not like the Malfoy family's ink has a gold border that nobody else is allowed to touch. Maybe some student learning Parseltongue accidentally brushed against it."

"But Moonstone Powder was added to this ink." Hailey rummaged through a wooden crate and produced a small glass bottle containing a few translucent chips that refracted rainbow-colored spots of light under the lamp. "My dad said writing made with this formula only appears at the vibration frequency of Parseltongue." She suddenly remembered what Dobby had said that day: "Damp places hide darkness that blinks." She had assumed he meant the Chamber of Secrets. At that moment, a drop of condensation fell from the iron pipe and splashed on the floor. "Damp places... like the castle's pipes?"

Eileen was about to poke the clumps of moss with her wand when Hailey suddenly caught her wrist. The magic lamp happened to shine on the gingerbread's icing, and the snake patterns reappeared. This time, they saw them clearly: two tiny grains of gold powder were set where the snake's eyes should have been, reflecting a soft glow in the light and giving off a faint scent of roses.

"This is..." Eileen suddenly lowered her voice, her eyes as wide as two round pumpkin seeds. "The same gold powder on Ginny Weasley's hair tie! Last year, Ron asked me to tie a spice packet to it for her. It gives off a rose scent when it gets hot. My mum said it's a kind of Indian Potions spice called 'moonlight rose seed.'"

Hailey's heart gave a sudden leap, and her fingertips unconsciously rubbed the Vibranium bracelet around her wrist. The bracelet had once been broken into several pieces during a magical duel. Her father had spent three whole nights not only restoring it completely, but also setting it with a piece of ancient jade from China—a secret treasure he was said to have obtained during his travels in the East in his younger days. The jade's smooth warmth reached her through the metal. Her father had said it could not only ward off one deadly curse, but also help her channel the magic inside her more effectively. Now the bracelet suddenly grew slightly hot, and its gears began turning faster, as though warning her of something.

She remembered how, during the summer holidays in Diagon Alley, Lucius Malfoy had deliberately bumped into Ginny, and gold powder scattered from her hair tie had stuck to the cuff of his black robe. She had thought it an accident at the time, but looking back, the movement had been far too deliberate, as precise as someone deliberately spreading jam on bread.

"Didn't Ginny say during the summer holidays that she found something old in Knockturn Alley?" Hailey spoke very softly, her gaze resting on the green line flickering across the detector's screen. "I remember her mentioning it vaguely, saying that 'writing appeared in it on its own.' I thought she'd seen it wrong."

Eileen unfolded Hermione's latest letter, her frown deepening as she read. "Ron said in the letter that when Fred tried to snatch the notebook from under Ginny's pillow, she went white and nearly used the wrong Transfiguration Spell to turn Fred into a teapot." She murmured the contents of the letter, then suddenly rapped her fingertips hard against the table. "Hermione also mentioned that Ron saw Mr. Malfoy touch Ginny's schoolbag with the tip of his wand at Flourish and Blotts. Everyone thought it was an accident at the time, but now that I think about it, that move was more precise than my dad sealing a Potions bottle!"

Just then, the stone slab at the entrance to the secret base was pushed gently aside, and Harry crawled in, bits of grass caught in the hair over his forehead. He carried several magic books in his arms. A silver-green feather lay on the cover of A History of Magic, its edges slightly scorched, as though burned by some kind of magic.

"Dobby flew past my window just now. He dropped this and disappeared." He handed the feather to Hailey, his fingertips trembling slightly with nervousness. "He said, 'The feather can find the hidden snake.' I didn't understand. I thought he meant the grass snake in the garden."

The moment Hailey took the feather, her Vibranium bracelet suddenly began to hum. Without thinking, she laid the feather over the plane-tree leaf. The light from the little magic lamp passed through both objects and cast a strange shadow on the wall of the pipe opposite them. The feather's markings fit perfectly into the notches on the leaf, forming the blurred shape of a book, with tiny snake shadows winding around its edges as though they might start slithering at any moment.

"The detector!" Eileen suddenly cried, a barely perceptible hint of excitement in her voice.

Hailey immediately put a fragment of the feather into the copper box. When the green line on the screen overlapped with the earlier data from the plane-tree leaf, a line of small, flashing text suddenly appeared: "The writer in the damp." The letters were in an ancient handwritten script, with snakelike curls at the ends of the strokes that made one's scalp prickle.

"The writer..." Harry stared at the line, and suddenly it dawned on him. "Dobby said before that there was 'darkness that can write' in Hogwarts's pipes. I thought he meant the monster in the Chamber of Secrets."

Hailey tapped lightly on the screen, tracing the data back to the record of the parchment test from three days earlier. "Dragon's Blood Grass ink, powdered malachite, Moonstone Powder... those are all materials used to make a vessel for memories." She suddenly remembered her father saying that certain Dark Magic objects absorbed their users' emotions through writing, like a sponge soaking up water. "If there's something that can absorb emotions and move around in a damp environment..."

"Like writing running on damp paper?" Eileen broke in. She suddenly grabbed the moldy gingerbread and picked up a speck of gold powder with the tip of her wand. "The gold powder on this glows when it gets hot-Ginny's hair tie does that too! I have the exact same hair tie! I bought it in Diagon Alley! And the last time I was practicing brewing Wit-Sharpening Potion at home, it fell into the cauldron, and the whole pot of potion glowed rose-colored."

Hailey said nothing, placing the plane-tree leaf, the silver-green feather, and the gold powder from the gingerbread under the detector one by one. When the magical curves of the three samples overlapped on the screen, a complete snake-shaped pattern appeared. The gold powder had gathered where the snake's eyes were, like two cold golden pupils.

"We need to find that 'writer.'" She closed the copper box, and the sound of its turning gears gradually died away. "The clues Dobby left all point in the same direction—it has something to do with Malfoy, it's hidden somewhere damp, and it has something of Ginny's on it." She deliberately avoided the word "diary," using her wand to draw the shape of a book on the floor instead. "We'll have to find a way to confirm it once school starts, but we need to be careful. We can't let it find out we're investigating."

Eileen suddenly grabbed her wrist, her panda hair clip glowing faintly with her excitement, the gemstones on it refracting tiny spots of light. "You mean... someone secretly slipped Ginny something bad? Like my grandma always mixing Mandrake juice into cough syrup and saying, 'Good medicine tastes bitter'?"

"It's possible." Hailey gave a vague answer, her gaze falling on the shadow of the snake on the pipe wall. It swayed with the light, as though silently flicking its tongue. "But Dobby is helping us." She remembered the tiny gear the House-elf had carved with his fingernail on the back of the plane-tree leaf. It was the pattern on the protective charm she had given Harry. She had chosen it simply because she thought it looked nice, but only now did she understand that Dobby was saying, "We're on the same side." "He's saying we can jam this thing's workings, like putting a brake on a gear that's spinning out of control."

Harry suddenly pricked up his ears, his fingers clutching A History of Magic nervously against his chest. "There are footsteps outside!"

The three of them fell silent at once. Hailey quickly tucked the plane-tree leaf and feather into a hidden compartment beneath the wool blanket. She had reinforced the hiding place with thin sheets of Vibranium, making it capable of blocking all magical detection. A glowing blue ball of magic formed at her fingertip, and with a gentle flick, she reduced the moldy gingerbread to blue smoke in a ghostly flame, leaving only a faint scent of cinnamon. The magic lamp's glow abruptly dimmed. Only the Vibranium bracelet still gave off a faint clicking sound, as though counting the time flowing through the hideout.

The snake's shadow on the pipe wall swayed with the light. Hailey watched it twist and suddenly understood Dobby's seemingly disconnected warnings: some dangers did not need to be spelled out. All one had to do was put the pieces together and let those who saw them find the answer for themselves. What she had to do was take these fragments back to Hogwarts and find a way to jam the "writer's" gears before it truly woke up. After all, no matter how intricate Dark Magic was, it was no match for a combination of Muggle logic and magical knowledge—that was the Lester family's way of survival.