A single flame flickered in the small room.
Slughorn, moving with the practiced precision of a lifelong potioneer, set a cauldron over the fire.
Lips pressed tight, he stared at the three bowls before him: one filled with sweat, one with tears, and one containing wispy strands of memory like drifting silver fluff.
Then he began desperately turning the gears of his well-trained mind.
After a moment of tortured contemplation, he gritted his teeth.
He poured the tears into the cauldron first and stirred vigorously with his wand. When the mixture warmed, he added the bowl of sweat and stirred again.
Finally, he tipped in the memories.
Seven or eight minutes later, he removed the cauldron and poured the resulting liquid into a crystal vial. He sealed it and set it carefully on the table.
Beside it sat two other vials—failures from earlier attempts.
After the newest batch cooled, Slughorn let out a long, strained breath, braced himself, tipped a small sample onto his tongue—
And collapsed to his knees.
"No… no, I can't do it!"
Clutching at his thinning hair, he looked ready to tear it out.
From the moment he had woken up, this infuriating fugitive had forced him—again and again—to try brewing a potion out of sweat, tears, and memories.
Such a ridiculous fantasy! How could anyone expect this to work?!
While Slughorn flailed on the floor, Dawn sat calmly on the opposite side of the table, idly flipping through The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Without looking up, he said:
"Keep trying, Professor Slughorn. Be patient. Every success comes after countless failures. Giving up after only three attempts is disgraceful."
Easy for him to say.
Slughorn nearly snapped. Try again? With what—your bodily fluids or mine?!
He squeezed his wand in frustration and glared at the fiery mark on his wrist—the Unbreakable Vow that prevented any thought of escape. He had cursed that wretched spell hundreds of times already.
Had it not been for that vow, he would have Apparated away the moment he regained his wand.
Despairing, he pleaded:
"Then… can I at least use a charm to make myself cry?"
"No."
Dawn rejected the idea instantly.
"I need tears shed in real despair. And sweat earned naturally. Magic interference would destroy the quality."
He sighed in a tone that felt like a scolding.
"You're a potions master, aren't you? Naturally grown herbs and magically forced herbs—do they produce the same results?"
Slughorn wilted.
Of course he knew that. But he had already wept out three full bowls of tears—he had nothing left. Sweat could be forced with exertion. Memories could be extracted. But true despair…
You could not force despair.
Perhaps sensing the man's desperation, Dawn finally lowered the book.
"Why do you think it's impossible?" he asked. "In your view, what prevents these three components from forming a potion?"
"Because sweat and tears contain no magic at all!" Slughorn burst out.
"There is nothing for them to interact with! Even memories only carry traces of magic because they were extracted with magic—not because they contain any themselves!"
He rubbed his face miserably.
"With only one magical component in the mixture, the reaction cannot occur. It's impossible for new properties to form."
He spoke with the full frustration of a potioneer pushed past reason.
But Dawn paused, considering.
In Slughorn's paradigm, potion-making occurred through magical interactions between ingredients.
But Dawn disagreed.
In his mind—magic was simply magic.
Whether in beasts, plants, wizards, or nature, the essence was the same.
If that was true… then why did magical creatures only wield magic in specific fixed ways?
A contradiction. One of the many mysteries of magic.
"Well… more questions to answer later," Dawn muttered, almost amused.
For now, he returned his attention to the cauldron.
He believed potion-making was not merely magical interaction but the rearrangement of the intrinsic patterns within ingredients under the influence of magic.
Therefore—even if only one ingredient carried magic, it should still be possible for all three components to be reshaped into something new.
Besides—
"Tears may not contain magic normally," Dawn said firmly, "but tears shed in despair might be different."
He believed despair itself was a ritual.
Tears produced in such a moment could easily be saturated with natural magic.
After learning in Egypt about the link between natural magic and collective belief, Dawn finally understood rituals more deeply.
Why could rituals summon natural magic?
Because if society collectively believes a certain action produces a certain result—performing that action invites natural magic to fulfill the expectation.
Applied to the Fountain of Fair Fortune—
If he reenacted what the world believed was required to find it, natural magic would respond and bring the Fountain into his path.
Slughorn blinked.
"You—you're not trying to brew a potion at all," he stammered. "You're designing a ritual!"
Dawn blinked, amused.
He hadn't expected Slughorn to catch on, but considering the man's age, knowledge of ritual magic wasn't surprising.
"Yes. Something akin to the Animagus transformation," Slughorn realized, tugging at what remained of his hair. "A potion tied to ritual conditions!"
"Exactly," Dawn said. "So—can you brew a potion based on the ritual embedded in this tale?"
"No," Slughorn said instantly.
He had read this story since childhood and had never once sensed any magical structure within it. How could this dangerous boy believe children's tales held genuine power?
He swallowed his complaints silently.
Dawn sighed—not surprised.
He had known from the start that brewing a potion from tears, sweat, and memory alone was unlikely to work.
But making a potions master attempt it a few times cost nothing. One never knew when innovation might stumble into progress.
Still—it was clear now that this path was a dead end.
Yet Dawn remained absolutely certain of one truth.
The tale in The Tales of Beedle the Bard was the most widely circulated, deeply ingrained version of the Fountain's legend in the modern wizarding world.
The method to find the Fountain must be hidden within it.
If these three ingredients alone were insufficient…
And considering the long-standing rumor linking Felix Felicis to the Fountain— A new idea sparked.
He uncorked a fresh Felix Felicis bottle, then poured in the remaining sweat, tears, and the wispy memory strand.
The golden potion dulled from dilution, while the memory settled at the bottom—unchanged.
Dawn shook it gently. Still no reaction.
He frowned at the floating memory.
"Are you sure this is your most precious memory?"
"Of course!" Slughorn said immediately. "It's the moment I first successfully brewed Felix Felicis at seventeen—the moment I began my path toward becoming a potions master!"
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
He poured a small sample into a bowl and held it out.
Slughorn's eye twitched. "I… I'm drinking this?"
It contained his own sweat and tears. The thought alone made him queasy.
But he took the bowl, sipped—
A wave of exhilaration washed over him, cool and bright.
Because the added materials had not reacted with the potion, Felix Felicis remained intact.
Confidence surged through him. His mind cleared.
He turned to Dawn solemnly.
"No change. It's still ordinary Felix Felicis, only weaker because of dilution."
"I see."
Dawn's eyes narrowed as he stared at the memory fragment.
Then he remembered something.
"I recall that you value a certain memory involving Tom Riddle far more."
Slughorn froze.
How did this boy know that?
During Voldemort's school years, Slughorn had been his professor. It was Slughorn who had—foolishly—spoken of Horcruxes.
When Voldemort's terror spread, Slughorn had hidden that memory out of guilt and fear.
Now Dawn's words struck him like a blade.
Should he reveal it?
Fortunately, Dawn waved him off.
"Forget it. Memory isn't the problem right now."
Dawn wasn't interested—he already knew everything from the original timeline.
And without a complete ritual framework, even the correct memory would change nothing.
After rereading the tale several times, still without insight, he decided to shift his approach and test Derwent's ancestor's method.
He set a fresh cauldron on the fire and poured in a new bottle of Felix Felicis.
Soon, golden vapor curled upward.
Dawn stepped back.
"Try breathing it in," he told Slughorn.
After confirming Slughorn showed no negative reaction, he moved forward himself.
The vapor should have been hot—but as he inhaled, a strangely cool sensation slid into his chest, tingling and almost addictive.
This was his first time experiencing Felix Felicis.
Different from intoxication, yet similarly unmooring.
But nothing else happened.
No dreamlike trance.
No strange transformations.
No instinctive sense of the Fountain.
When the cool sensation faded, Dawn shook his head. Derwent's ancestor's method didn't work.
Which, when he thought about it, was hardly surprising.
The Fountain legend was at least a thousand years old. Beedle the Bard had only existed for a few centuries.
Before the book became the dominant version, collective belief might have aligned with the older method.
But as the legend evolved, so too would the ritual required to reach it.
In theory… the easiest way to find the Fountain would be to spread a new legend—one that enough people believed.
If enough people sincerely believed that Dawn Richter was born with the Fountain, natural magic might make it true.
Unfortunately, Dawn didn't have years to build a global myth.
And besides— Judging from how Egypt had failed to resurrect mummies despite thousands of years of belief, the stranger the legend, the more time and collective power it required.
Speaking of Egypt…
He suddenly realized he hadn't seen Anubis's phantom in some time. Was his curse-spreading still functioning somewhere?
His thoughts drifted for a moment.
Then he refocused on the book in his hands.
If tears, sweat, and memories alone didn't work… He could incorporate the other elements of the story.
"The white worm… the obstacle path… the river," he murmured.
Should he find real-world equivalents and toss them into a cauldron?
No.
Too shallow.
It wasn't the objects that mattered—but what they symbolized. And the rituals they represented.
"Professor Slughorn," Dawn asked suddenly, "in the wizarding world, what does a white worm represent?"
"A white worm?" Slughorn glanced at the picture book.
He had already realized that Dawn meant to replicate the tale's trial sequence.
He would rather bite off his tongue than admit how little he believed in this—but the mark on his wrist kept him honest.
"I don't know. There's no specific magical meaning attached to white worms. But worms in general suggest things like hiddenness, diligence, and resilience."
Hiddenness.
Diligence.
Survival.
Dawn nodded thoughtfully, fingertips brushing the rough edges of the storybook.
The second trial—the endless path—clearly symbolized repetition.
The final trial—the encircling river—symbolized cycle.
But the first, the white worm… its meaning was elusive.
He stared at the remaining Felix Felicis. Then, trusting his heightened intuition under the potion's influence, he lifted the bottle—
And drank a sip.
___________
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