Chapter 48

1. Morning light and the sound of gears in the attic laboratory (back to our darling Hailey!)

Two scents always hung in the attic laboratory at Leicester Manor: the cold metallic smell unique to vibranium, mingled with the aroma of ginger tea her mother had brewed that morning. Hailey knelt on the assembled brass workbench, her fingertips hovering three centimeters above an array of starburst iron gears. Emerald magic flowed slowly along the grooves in the gears, as though infusing the precision machinery with living blood. Sunlight slanted through the diamond-shaped skylight, gilding the edges of the gears and dividing her intent profile into light and shadow. This was her second summer holiday since she had transmigrated to the magical world and started at Hogwarts, and the first time she had managed to make starburst iron powder dance obediently along its track without blowing up the workbench.

"Your wrist angle is off by 1.5 degrees." Her father's voice came from behind the microscope. He wore polished goggles, and his gold pocket watch chain swung beside the workbench. The gear pattern inside the watch cover was identical to the training array on the table. "Starburst iron is three times as sensitive to fluctuations in magic as vibranium. When you melted it last week, I reckon the monitoring instruments at the Ministry of Magic in London might have jumped three times."

Hailey took a deep breath and forced herself to recall the Lavender Tea Meditation her mother had taught her. She imagined her magic as lavender juice simmering over a low flame: it had to retain the vitality of a gentle boil without spilling out of the cauldron like water boiling out of control. The emerald magic gradually narrowed into a thin stream, forming translucent threads in the starburst iron grooves. The gear array clicked softly, like the precise meshing of an old mantel clock. Her vibranium bracelet suddenly grew hot, and its third gear popped out half a millimeter. It was a "magic calibrator" her father had specially installed, which sounded an alarm whenever the deviation exceeded two degrees.

"Much better." Her father pushed a Muggle resistance meter over and touched its metal probe to the edge of a gear. A wavy line immediately appeared on the screen. "See this spike? Does it look like the waveform your magic made when you shattered the crystal chandelier last year?" He drew a smooth curve on the diagram with a pencil. "We're not trying to eliminate the fluctuations. We're turning them into ripples we can control, like your mum making ginger milk curd. You need both the bite of the ginger juice and the mellow warmth of the milk."

The summer's Magic Gradient Training was a grueling program. Every morning, she first measured the strength of her magic output with a Muggle resistance meter and converted the data into a quantifiable "magic milliamp value." At noon, she practiced precise conduction along tracks laid out in starburst iron powder, with a maximum permitted error of 0.5 millimeters. In the evening, she used a vibranium polisher her father had specially made to grind the "spikes" in her magic fluctuations into gentle "curves," bit by bit. Three months ago, her unruly magic had still been making teacups leap up and tap-dance on their own. Now she could channel it precisely into her father's walnut wood wand. Although the unicorn hair in its core always trembled slightly when she cast a spell, as if protesting against "Muggle thinking," she could at least draw a spot of light three centimeters across on a practice target, with a smaller margin of error than the star charts in Eileen's Arithmancy notes.

"This move should be called the 'Precise Conduction Charm.'" Hailey noted it down in her parchment notebook. Her pen nib was coated in vibranium powder as she wrote "directed energy output" under the heading "corresponding Muggle principle." She suddenly remembered Professor Snape's Venomous Tentacula. Last week, she had practiced pruning it with starburst iron-lined gloves and managed to leave every leaf tilted at 45 degrees, making the old bat so angry that he had given her three extra looks in class.

Her mother came in carrying a tray, her moon-phase pendant glinting silver-blue as it swung in the morning light. "Take a ten-minute break." She set some ginger biscuits beside the gear array. A miniature magic array was printed around the edge of the porcelain plate, automatically keeping the biscuits warm. "Nini said Miss Eileen is coming at noon. She's bringing some Ceylon cinnamon her mum just dried."

The instant Hailey grabbed a biscuit, her magic suddenly went out of control, and the starburst iron gears hummed as they rose half an inch. Her mother swiftly swept the hem of her apron across the workbench. A silver-blue Calming Charm washed over the gears like flowing water, guiding the restless magic back on course. "Thinking about the Chamber of Secrets again?" She wiped the flour off the tip of her daughter's nose, her fingertips still cool from the Preservation Charm. "Your dad says a bowstring pulled too tight is liable to snap, just like you always boil ginger tea until it tastes burnt."

Hailey mumbled around her biscuit, "I just thought the resonance frequency of starburst iron was a little like the green light under Quirrell's turban that day." She suddenly lowered her voice. "Dad's old notes say the ribs of a Guizhou Red-Scaled Dragon from 1926 can absorb dark magic. Should we try..."

"Learn to walk before you fly." Her father tapped her notebook. "When you can keep starburst iron running smoothly on a vibranium track for thirty minutes, I'll take you to the family cellar. There are Red-Scaled Dragon scales your grandfather collected down there, more complete than anything Ollivander has in stock." He abruptly changed the subject, twirling his gold pocket watch chain around his finger. "By the way, Eileen's family spice shop got a new shipment. Apparently, there's magically modified ginger powder that can make protective charms glow warmly. You young people might come up with some interesting uses for it."

Hailey's eyes lit up like ignited turmeric powder. She grabbed the vibranium calibrator and stuffed it into her pocket, the gears on her bracelet clicking rapidly with excitement. Who would have thought that the magical training she had once dreaded would now be more interesting than summer homework in the Muggle world?

2. Spices and spells in the kitchen laboratory

At ten o'clock Wednesday morning, Eileen's nautilus suitcase burst through the Leicester family's kitchen door right on time. She wore an apron embroidered with cinnamon patterns and clutched a carved copper jar in her arms. The scent of nutmeg wafting from its opening nearly made Nini drop the silver tray she was holding. The House-elf's walnut-shaped face turned cherry red, and she hurriedly used Scourgify to wipe the spice powder splashed across the vibranium stove.

"Look at the 'warming defense' recipe my mum just invented!" Eileen plunked the copper jar down on the counter. Ginger powder and Dragon's Blood Grass juice churned in a cauldron, and the steam condensed overhead into a ginger-shaped shield with a warm orange glow around its edges. "We tried it on a snowman last week, and it didn't melt for three days! My dad calls it 'Magical Thermodynamics.' It's ten times stronger against the cold than an ordinary shield's cold-resistance charm. It just smells like the curry my brother messed up."

Hailey was scooping cinnamon powder with a small vibranium spoon, and she suddenly laughed. "Last time your brother used Mandrake juice instead of coconut milk, the whole pot of curry screamed, and your House-elf had to use three bottles of Memory Charm." She sprinkled a handful of vibranium shavings into the cauldron, and fine silver patterns instantly spread across the shield. "Try this. It makes the protective charm 40 percent tougher, like adding a shell of icing to gingerbread."

Using the cauldron as a wok, the two launched an ambitious project in the kitchen to develop a Magically Modified Spice Charm. Eileen's sensitivity to Potions ingredients was a genuine gift. She could tell where nutmeg came from by smell alone, saying that nutmeg from Ceylon had three parts more "pungent resonance" than the kind from India. Hailey, meanwhile, was skilled at breaking down magical principles using Muggle logic, imagining the path of a Tracking Charm, for example, as "the route spices take as they diffuse through hot soup."

"Mix cinnamon powder with vibranium powder, and it leaves a golden-red trace when you cast a spell." Hailey drew circles in the air with her wand, and the powder formed a glowing arc along the path of her magic, as if coloring an invisible magical thread. "It's like a Muggle highlighter. Last time I tested it in the chamber with the pipes, even when the silver-green feather Dobby had brought flew past, the trace turned into a snake shape. It's much more sensitive than the Trace."

Eileen suddenly pulled a small velvet pouch from her apron pocket. The Sichuan peppercorns inside were glowing faintly. "Try these! My mum says the numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorns can interfere with low-level Dark Magic." She stuffed a handful into the Sound Wave Interference Sachet Hailey had invented. "Add some crushed moonstone, and when it's triggered, it'll release a scent at a specific frequency. It can both disable the Malfoy family's 'Jinx Echo' and perk you up."

The most astonishing result came on a muggy afternoon. They sewed nutmeg, Sichuan peppercorns, and crushed moonstone into a Muggle cotton sachet, and Nini pinned it to her apron out of curiosity. As a result, she polished the silver seven times in a single day, and even the antique cauldrons Hailey's father collected were polished bright enough to see one's reflection in them. "House-elves are too sensitive to magical spices," Hailey noted in her experiment journal. "Muggle users are advised to limit daily use, or they may develop an 'excessive cleaning obsession,' like a wizard who's had ten cups of espresso."

"Speaking of which, could I borrow your dad's vibranium polisher?" Eileen asked, spinning the sachet with her wand. "I want to add a leakproof charm to the spice jar. Last time my brother took some without asking, he spilled half a jar, and every potion in the storeroom ended up smelling of Sichuan peppercorns."

When Hailey went up to the attic for the equipment, she found her father staring absentmindedly at the starburst iron diagram. His gold pocket watch lay open, and the gears in its mechanism formed a strange resonance with the magic array on the diagram, casting dancing spots of light across the desk. "This is..." She suddenly stopped in her tracks. The signature in the corner of the diagram clearly read "1945 · Leicester." That was her grandfather's name.

"Your grandfather made a wand from starburst iron when he was young." Her father closed the pocket watch, and the sound of its gears meshing startled the sparrows outside the window into flight. "Unfortunately, the wand was lost during the Grindelwald upheaval. This diagram is all that remains." He suddenly tapped the resonance frequency on the diagram. "It's only 0.3 hertz off the value you're adjusting now. What do you call that? The gears of fate?"

Hailey's heart skipped half a beat. She touched the vibranium bracelet on her wrist and suddenly understood the meaning of this summer holiday: those seemingly tedious exercises and the records Eileen had mocked as "like a Muggle doing chemistry experiments" were all part of rediscovering the magical code that belonged to the Lester family. As her mother always said, "Good ginger tea needs a full twelve hours to brew, and good magic takes patience to refine."