Chapter 66: Expelliarmus
Gryffindor Tower. Saturday morning.
Harry and Ron skipped breakfast.
They were crouching on the floor of the boys' dormitory, facing each other, with two bedside tables pushed together between them. The tables were empty.
Ron held his wand in his hand. Unicorn hair core, Ashwood, a hand-me-down from his brother Charlie. There was a crack extending from the middle to the end of the wand, wrapped three times with Spellotape.
"You go first," Harry said.
Ron swallowed. Following the diagram he'd seen in a book yesterday, he raised his wand to chest level and flicked his wrist outward—
"Expelliarmus!"
A shower of red sparks shot from the tip of the wand. Not a beam. Sparks. The kind you get from static electricity.
The sparks flew about half a meter before dissipating.
They didn't even touch the wand in Harry's hand opposite him.
"..."
Ron stared at his wand for three seconds.
"The book says the wrist flick angle shouldn't exceed forty-five degrees." Harry pushed the page over.
"I know!" Ron's ears turned red. "I did flick it forty-five degrees!"
"You flicked it at least seventy."
"How do you know it was seventy? Did you measure it?"
Harry didn't respond. He stood up, took a step back, and raised his own wand.
Holly. Eleven inches. Phoenix tail feather.
"Expelliarmus."
A beam of dark red light shot from the tip. It wasn't fast, and the trajectory was off, but it was indeed a formed spell beam.
The beam hit the edge of the bedside table, missing Ron's wand by at least twenty centimeters. The table wobbled, but nothing else happened.
Ron glared at him.
"You missed."
"I know." Harry lowered his arm and flexed his wrist. "But at least I cast it."
Ron shut his mouth.
He wasn't unconvinced. He just didn't want to admit Harrywas right.
Again.
"Expelliarmus!"
Sparks.
"Expelliarmus!"
Still sparks. A few more than last time.
"Expelliarmus—"
This time, not even sparks came out. An ominous "creak" came from the crack at the end of the wand, and Ron let go in a fright.
The wand fell onto the carpet and rolled half a turn.
Ron crouched down to pick it up. The crack was half a centimeter longer than before.
He pressed his thumb against the split. His thumb felt the rough edges of the raised wood fibers.
"Your wand isn't working," Harry said.
"I know it's not working," Ron said muffledly. "But it's the only one I have."
The two were silent for a while.
Laughter and chatter drifted up from the Common Roomdownstairs. It was the weekend, and most people were playing cards, chess, or looking out towards Hogsmeade.
For the first time, Ron found the laughter jarring.
It wasn't jealousy. It was anxiety.
That image was still in his head. The Troll's head being smashed into the floor. The boy in the white shirt turning around, his grey-blue eyes devoid of expression.
Ron shook his head hard to disperse the image.
"Again," he said.
He gripped his wand tightly. The crack dug into his palm.
"Expelliarmus!"
—
An hour later.
On his thirty-seventh attempt, Ron finally produced a beam of light.
It was very faint. Very short. It dissipated before flying a meter, and the color was wrong—not red, but more orange.
But it was indeed a beam. Not sparks.
Ron stared at his wand, his mouth hanging open for a long time.
"You cast it," Harry said.
"I saw."
"Even if the color is a bit off."
"Shut up, Harry."
Ron looked down at his right hand. His wrist was incredibly sore, and the web of his hand had a red mark rubbed into it by the wand handle.
He switched the wand to his left hand, clenched his right fist, and then relaxed it.
Thirty-seven times. To only cast an orange light that he couldn't even control the direction of.
This pace was too slow.
If there were a person standing opposite him, a real enemy—in those thirty-seven times, he would have died thirty-six times already.
No. Thirty-seven times.
Because even if he cast that light, he wouldn't hit anything.
Ron tucked the wand back into his sleeve.
"Continue this afternoon," he said.
"Okay."
Harry hesitated. "Should we ask Hermione? She might know a better way to practice—"
"No need," Ron said quickly.
Harry glanced at him.
Ron turned his head away. His ears were red again, but this time not from embarrassment.
He wasn't ready yet.
Not unready to face Hermione. Unready to let Hermionesee his current level.
Thirty-seven times just to cast a wobbly orange light.
Hermione would probably cast a standard red light by her third try. Maybe even her first.
Ron didn't want to lose face in front of her.
At least—at least wait until he could cast a straight one.
"Let's go. Time for lunch."
The two packed up their things and walked down the spiral staircase.
—
The Great Hall. Lunchtime.
Hermione sat in the middle of the Gryffindor table. She had changed seats today. She was a few seats further up than usual.
The reason was simple—from this angle, she could discreetly see the end of the Slytherin table.
She wasn't looking at Cassius.
She was looking at Draco next to Cassius.
To be precise, she was looking at Draco's right hand.
Yesterday in the bathroom, amidst the broken bricks, standing water, and the Troll's roar, she had seen Dracoraise his wand.
His hand was shaking. Shaking violently.
But he had cast a spell.
Tarantallegra.
It had no effect on the Troll. It didn't even distract it for more than a few seconds.
But he had cast it.
Hermione couldn't ignore that fact.
A Malfoy. A platinum-haired boy who had exuded the arrogant aura of a pure-blood aristocrat since the first day of school. He hadn't run in front of an adult Mountain Troll.
When he turned and ran toward her, she thought he was coming to grab her and flee together.
But he hadn't.
He stood in front of her.
His back to her.
Facing that four-meter-tall monster.
Hermione looked down and cut a small piece of roast potato.
She chewed slowly. Her mind was on something else.
From a chemical perspective, a Troll's skin density was roughly equivalent to hardened granite. The instantaneous impact force required for Cassius's kick must have been at least—
No. Don't think about that yet.
This afternoon she planned to take a walk outside the Restricted Section. Not to sneak in. Just... to see if there were any missed references.
Regarding the conversion relationship between magic density and physical media, she needed more data.
She poked the peas on her plate with her fork.
She looked up and glanced toward Slytherin again.
Cassius was drinking pumpkin juice. His expression was the same as yesterday. Same as the day before. Same as the first day of school.
Nothing could be read from it.
It was as if killing a Troll was as ordinary as drinking a cup of pumpkin juice.
Hermione put down her fork.
Her appetite wasn't great.
—
Slytherin Dungeon.
After lunch, Cassius returned to the dormitory.
He pulled the old leather suitcase he'd borrowed from the library from under his bed—inside were copies of various reference materials he'd accumulated over the past month.
He flipped the "Encyclopedia of Magical Creature Attributes" to the chapter on species distribution in the Forbidden Forest.
The information in the book was too vague. It only noted that Acromantulas "inhabit the depths of the Forbidden Forest," without specific coordinates, nest sizes, or population numbers.
Detailed topographical data on the Forbidden Forest in the library was all classified as restricted. It required a permission slip signed by a Professor.
Cassius didn't intend to go through that process.
A signature meant a record. A record meant someone would know what he was looking for.
He needed another source of information.
In all of Hogwarts, there was only one person who knew the ecological distribution of the Forbidden Forest best.
Rubeus Hagrid.
Cassius closed the book and leaned back in his chair.
Hagrid was a good point of entry. Simple-minded, easily swayed by emotions, and had the most primitive awe response to direct displays of "power."
But there was no rush.
The matter of the Forbidden Forest could wait. There was something more immediate that required his attention.
Quidditch.
The first match between Gryffindor and Slytherin was on the second weekend of November. Less than two weeks from now.
In the original story, during that match, Quirrell would curse Harry's broom. Snape would perform a counter-curse. Hermione would set Snape's robes on fire.
A series of chaos.
Cassius had no interest in Quidditch itself. A group of people chasing balls on broomsticks had nothing to do with his firepower development.
But Quirrell would be exposed during that match.
Lord Voldemort's soul fragment had already shrunk back, frightened by the Troll incident. Judging by the fact that Quirrell had taken three days off, the soul fragment was currently in an extremely weak state.
The question was—were three days enough for it to recover to the point of daring to act in a public setting?
Cassius closed his eyes.
The Dual-Soul Furnace switched to low-consumption sensory mode.
He tried to extend his sensory range toward the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor's office—
Too far. There were too many walls and floors in between. He could only capture an extremely blurred outline.
Someone was in the office. But that decaying soul aura was at least thirty percent weaker than last time.
Cassius withdrew his perception.
Quirrell was still recovering. Lord Voldemort's soul fragment hadn't disappeared, but its activity intensity had clearly declined.
Chapter 67: Undercurrents
At this recovery rate, in two weeks—just in time for the Quidditch match—the remnant soul should return to about seventy percent of its previous level.
Seventy percent.
That's enough for it to cast Dark Arts on a broomstick from across half the pitch. But it's not enough for it to face any Professor head-on.
And it's certainly not enough to get within ten meters of Cassius.
So he didn't need to do anything.
Let it act. Let it expose itself. Let Snape and Dumbledorehandle the aftermath.
Cassius only needed to ensure one thing—that Draco was not present, or at least not within the spell's radius of effect.
He opened his eyes, picked up a pen, and jotted down a line on a piece of parchment:
"Second week of November. Quidditch. Confirm Draco's viewing position."
After writing, he folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket.
Draco's voice came from the next room. He was saying something to Crabbe. His voice was much steadier than it had been a week ago.
Cassius did not go over.
He pulled open a drawer and took out another book.
A handwritten excerpt from "Advanced Magic Deconstruction and Destructive Reshaping." It was the copy he had extracted in the library using the Resonance Reading Method.
He flipped to Chapter Four: "Heat Loss Model for Multi-Channel Synchronous Output."
He needed to solve the heat dissipation problem of the Four-Channel Shunt. Currently, the fire rate of ten rounds per second could be maintained for about thirty seconds. After thirty seconds, the temperature on the surface of his palm would rise to a point that affected accuracy.
Thirty seconds. More than enough to deal with a Troll. Enough to deal with a group of Death Eaters, too.
But not enough to deal with Lord Voldemort.
In his peak state, that man could maintain a shield and attack simultaneously. If the shield was tough enough and couldn't be pierced in thirty seconds, then starting from the thirty-first second, Cassius's fire density would begin to drop.
He would not allow that to happen.
Therefore, the heat dissipation problem had to be solved before Lord Voldemort's full resurrection.
Cassius lowered his head and began drawing circuit diagrams on the paper.
—
Gryffindor Tower. Afternoon.
Harry and Ron had moved to a corner of the common room.
This corner had a blank wall. Hanging on the wall was a portrait of a snoring knight. The portrait was covered in a layer of dust and looked like it hadn't been touched for at least ten years.
They chose this spot because it was remote enough. Not many people would see them.
Percy Weasley was reading by the fireplace. He looked up at his brother and Harry, pushed up his glasses, and said nothing.
"You first," Ron said. There was sweat on his forehead.
Harry nodded.
"Expelliarmus."
A red light shot from the tip of his wand. It was a bit steadier than it had been this morning. The arc had narrowed.
The beam hit the wall, and a few grains of brick dust crumbled down.
The knight in the portrait was startled awake. He mumbled a curse about "what madness is this," rolled over, and went back to sleep.
"Your aim is off," Ron said, staring at the shallow mark on the wall.
"Your turn."
Ron raised his wand.
The crack was a bit longer than it had been this morning. He gripped it tightly, feeling the wood bend slightly in his palm.
"Expelliarmus!"
Light.
A flash of light.
The color was still leaning towards orange, but it was brighter than this morning. The distance it traveled was also further—about two meters. Then it veered more than forty degrees to the left, hitting a nearby bookshelf.
A book was jolted off the shelf, hitting the floor with a thud.
Percy looked up from the fireplace and frowned.
"Be careful!" he said.
"Got it—" Ron answered, but he couldn't help a small smile from spreading across his face.
He had fired a second beam of light.
Stronger than the first.
Even though it was ridiculously off-target. It was stronger.
"Again," Ron said.
His voice was a bit louder than before.
—
They practiced for the entire afternoon.
By curfew, Harry's Disarming Charm could consistently produce a red light that traveled three meters. As for the direction—about two out of ten shots could hit a target within a one-meter range directly in front of him.
Ron's progress was slower. The problem with his wand was too significant. The crack was getting deeper, and every time he released magic, an ominous creak would come from inside the wood. Only three or four out of ten attempts successfully produced a beam; the rest were just sparks or direct misfires.
But Ron didn't complain.
He would just twirl the wand in his hand after every failure and then raise it again.
"Again."
He had said those two words no less than fifty times today.
At dinner, he ate two large bowls of stew and four pieces of bread. After finishing, he wiped his mouth, grabbed his wand, and prepared to leave.
"Ron," Harry called out to him.
"What?"
"The webbing of your thumb is bleeding."
Ron looked down. A small patch of skin on the webbing of his right hand had been rubbed raw by the wand handle. The seeping blood mixed with sweat, blurring into his palm lines.
He wiped it with his sleeve.
"It's nothing."
"Go see Madam Pomfrey—"
"I said it's nothing."
Ron put his hand behind his back.
"We continue tomorrow," he said, his voice a bit deeper than at noon. "Bring that book with you; I want to look at the page about the wrist angle again."
Harry watched him walk into the boys' dormitory stairwell.
The firelight danced twice on Ron's red hair. His back looked a bit narrower than on the day they started school—or perhaps he was just standing straighter.
Harry squeezed his own right hand. Red marks had also been rubbed into his palm.
The holly wand handle was very smooth. But after a whole day of practice, even a smooth surface could rub skin raw.
Harry didn't go to see Madam Pomfrey.
He returned to the dormitory and placed his wand under his pillow.
Lying in bed, he stared at the ceiling and thought for a while.
Malfoy—Cassius Malfoy—didn't even use a wand. With just a flick of his fingers, he could do things most Wizards couldn't achieve in a lifetime.
While he and Ron had practiced for an entire day just to barely manage to fire a Disarming Charm three meters.
The gap was too large.
But today was one step closer than yesterday.
Harry closed his eyes. The abrasions on his palm throbbed faintly in the darkness.
It wasn't an unbearable pain. It was the kind of pain that made one remember what they had done today.
He felt that this kind of pain wasn't a bad thing.
—
Monday.
Quirrell returned.
When he appeared at the breakfast table, his complexion was even worse than before his leave. His cheekbones protruded, his eye sockets were sunken, and he had lost a significant amount of weight. His turban was wrapped tighter than before, the edges almost pressing down over his eyebrows.
He held a glass of orange juice, sitting at the very edge of the staff table. As far away from Snape as possible. As far away from Dumbledore as possible.
He didn't dare look anywhere.
The hand holding the glass was constantly shaking. A small patch of orange juice spilled onto the tablecloth.
Snape sat at the other end of the staff table. He cut the sausages on his plate, his gaze fixed on Quirrell from three seats away.
He stared for ten seconds.
Quirrell didn't look back. But the hand holding his glass shook even more violently.
In the center of the staff table, Dumbledore was talking with Flitwick. His tone was very relaxed, the topic being last week's mid-term assessment in Charms Class.
But his right hand—the one not holding a utensil—rested on the table, the tip of his index finger inadvertently tapping twice in Quirrell's direction.
Flitwick saw it. His smile didn't change, but the transition of the topic became much more natural.
—
In the Great Hall, the sounds of students eating breakfast were a noisy clamor.
At the Slytherin table.
Cassius sensed Quirrell's return.
He didn't look specifically. The passive sensing range of the Dual-Soul Furnace covered the entire Great Hall. The decaying soul signal inside Quirrell was like an oil lamp about to go out—weak, flickering, but still burning.
Recovery level: about sixty percent.
Lower than the seventy percent he had estimated.
This indicated that the deterrent effect of the Troll incident on the remnant soul was more lasting than he had expected.
Cassius put a piece of bacon into his mouth.
A sixty-percent Voldemort remnant soul. Could it cast a spell on Harry's broom during the Quidditch match?
Yes. That was just a low-power remote interference spell. A sixty-percent state was more than enough.
But while casting, its attention would be completely tied up in maintaining the spell. In other words—
If someone approached while it was casting, it would have no strength left for defense.
Cassius put down his knife and fork.
He had no interest in this entry point.
Killing Quirrell—or rather, killing the remnant soul inside Quirrell—was something he could do at any time. But now was not the best moment.
Once the remnant soul died, Voldemort's main body would know. He would change his plans. Those Horcruxes would become much harder to find.
Cassius's goal was not to eliminate one remnant soul. It was to eliminate all the Horcruxes.
So he needed this remnant soul alive. Alive, continuing to execute the plan, continuing to expose information.
Let the bullet fly for a while.
"Cassius," Draco said beside him, holding a glass of pumpkin juice, "Flint has been looking at you."
Cassius didn't turn his head.
"How many times has he looked?"
"At least seven times since you sat down," Draco's tone carried a hint of disdain. "Like he's eyeing prey."
"He's just confirming I'm still here," Cassius took a sip of pumpkin juice. "It's called a conditioned reflex. A dog that's been beaten will instinctively check its master's position when the master sits down."
Draco almost choked on his pumpkin juice.
"You... compared Flint to a dog?"
"For him, that comparison is a compliment."
Draco suppressed a laugh. His mouth twitched a couple of times before he finally maintained a cold expression befitting a Malfoy.
But his eyes were much brighter than they had been a month ago.
Chapter 68
Morning. Charms Class.
Professor Flitwick was teaching the Locking Spell today. "Lock everything—Colloportus" and "Open everything—Alohomora."
The atmosphere in the classroom was normal. Students repeatedly cast spells on a row of brass locks used for practice, with varying levels of success.
Hermione opened the lock on her second attempt. The whole process was clean and efficient, with a precise wrist angle and clear incantation pronunciation.
Flitwick gave her five points.
Hermione put the lock back on the table. Her expression was calm, but as she sat down, her gaze crossed several heads and quickly swept over the Slytherin side.
Cassius didn't move a muscle.
He sat in his seat, hands resting on the table, and the brass lock in front of him had already been opened. No one saw when he did it. No one heard him cast a spell.
The brass lock had simply popped open quietly.
When Professor Flitwick walked over, he glanced at the lock. He opened his mouth slightly, intending to say something.
Then he looked at Cassius's face.
He said nothing. He marked an "O" on the register and left.
Hermione withdrew her gaze.
She opened her notebook and wrote a line under today's date:
"Cassius's Locking/Unlocking Spells—silent and wandless, with no observable casting movements. Has he even omitted the mental guidance? Directly imposing a 'definition' on matter?"
She drew a line under the word "definition."
This was a core concept Professor McGonagall had mentioned in Transfiguration Class. Hermione had been wondering if this concept could be applied across disciplines—not just for Transfiguration, but for all magic.
If the essence of magic isn't chanting and waving a wand, but using magical power to "impose definitions" on reality...
Then theoretically, a Wizard strong enough would only need to clearly state "this lock is open" in their mind, and the lock would obey.
No intermediate steps required.
At this thought, Hermione's pen stopped.
This wasn't a guess. This was what she had seen with her own eyes.
Cassius was doing exactly that.
She closed her notebook.
She would go to the library this afternoon. She had to find more ancient literature on "Thought-based casting."
—
Same day. Four o'clock in the afternoon.
Gryffindor Common Room.
Harry and Ron were practicing the Disarming Charm again.
This was their third consecutive day of practice.
They had moved from the dormitory to a corner of the common room—because the dormitory was too small, and Ron's stray spell had almost hit Neville's toad yesterday.
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry's red light shot out four meters. The direction was basically correct, hitting near a chalk-drawn circle on the wall—off by about fifteen centimeters.
Five centimeters closer than yesterday.
"Expelliarmus!"
Ron's orange light flew three meters. It went wide, hitting a bookshelf, and another book fell off.
Percy suddenly looked back from his seat by the fireplace.
"Could you two—"
"Sorry, Percy," Ron said, bending down to pick up the book and stuffing it back onto the shelf.
Percy wanted to say something, but when he saw the cloth wrapped around Ron's hand—the wound on the web of his hand hadn't fully healed, and he had wrapped it several times with a handkerchief—Percy closed his mouth again.
He pushed up his glasses and turned away.
"Keep it down," he said, his tone a bit softer than before.
Harry noticed something.
Three days ago, only the two of them were practicing spells in the common room. But starting this afternoon, two more people had joined them in the corner.
Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas.
They were also practicing the Disarming Charm against the wall.
A puff of smoke rose when Seamus's spell went out—he was always smoking—but there was indeed a beam of light. Dean's gestures were more standard, and his beam was more accurate than Ron's.
The four of them occupied two corners of the common room. There was no communication between them, but they occasionally glanced at each other.
Harry didn't ask Seamus and Dean why they had started practicing too.
He didn't need to ask.
Everyone knew why.
That boy sitting at the Slytherin table drinking pumpkin juice.
He could crush a Troll's knee with a kick. He could slap a Boggart into dust. He could jump twenty meters high from flat ground.
And they—Gryffindor first-years—couldn't even hit a target with a Disarming Charm.
It wasn't jealousy. It wasn't competition.
It was survival instinct.
There was a power in this Castle that you were completely unable to contend with. You didn't know when it would swing your way.
The only thing you could do was make yourself less weak.
Harry took a deep breath and raised his wand.
"Expelliarmus."
Red light. Four meters. Off by twelve centimeters.
Three centimeters closer.
—
Dinner time.
A new notice had appeared on the bulletin board in the Great Hall.
"The first match of this school year's Quidditch season—Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. This Saturday at 11:00 AM. All staff and students are to attend."
A crowd gathered in front of the notice.
A cheer erupted from the Gryffindor side. Fred and Georgethrew their arms around Harry's shoulders, shouting loudly, "We have a new Seeker!"
Harry was patted on the back a few times. He smiled, but it was a bit forced.
He turned his head, looking past the crowd toward the Slytherin table.
Cassius was there.
He was looking at the bulletin board.
No. That wasn't right. He just glanced in that direction and then lowered his head to continue eating.
That feeling was back.
That feeling of "you are in his field of vision, but you are outside of his world."
Harry withdrew his gaze.
He remembered that time in the Restricted Section. Hermione said Cassius could read magic books from a distance.
He remembered the Flying Class. Cassius had jumped from the ground and caught Neville so fast that even Madam Hooch hadn't reacted.
He remembered the Troll.
Three craters. Each deeper than the last.
Harry's right hand unconsciously reached into his robe pocket and touched his wand.
He gripped his wand tightly.
Saturday's match.
He knew he could never be as powerful as Cassius. This gap might never be closed in a lifetime.
But in another dimension—on a broomstick—he could at least prove he wasn't useless.
A first-year who couldn't even cast a proper Disarming Charm could at least have a place on the pitch.
Harry let go of his wand.
"Let's go," he said to Ron. "We'll practice for another half hour after dinner."
"Okay."
—
Slytherin Dungeon. Late night.
The sound of breathing rose and fell in the dormitory. Crabbe's snoring was the loudest.
Draco wasn't sleeping.
He sat on his bed, the curtains drawn, with that feather resting on his knee.
His right index finger pointed at the feather. The scar under his fingernail had already scabbed over.
He controlled his breathing, shutting out all the voices in his head.
Not thinking about Flint. Not thinking about the Troll. Not thinking about Cassius.
Thinking of only one thing.
Float.
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty seconds.
The feather moved.
It left his knee.
It was wobbly, with an instability that felt like it could fall back at any moment.
Three centimeters.
Four centimeters.
Five centimeters—
It stayed up for about a second.
Then it fell back down.
Draco's arm was aching, and his wrist throbbed in waves of pain.
But he didn't stop.
He put the feather back on his knee.
"Again."
—
In the next bed.
Cassius wasn't sleeping. He heard the change in Draco's breathing pattern.
Five centimeters. One second.
Two centimeters more and half a second longer than yesterday.
The pace of progress wasn't fast. In any standard talent evaluation system, this kind of progress wouldn't even be considered "promising."
But Cassius knew one thing.
Draco had never been a genius.
He was just an ordinary pure-blood Wizard. Average talent, mediocre foundation. Pampered since childhood, unable to endure much hardship.
This kind of person—without external stimulation—would spend their whole life as nothing more than a conventional child of a pure-blood noble family.
But he was changing.
Every night, after everyone else had fallen asleep, he drew his curtains alone and struggled with a single feather.
Not because of talent. Because he was unwilling to accept things as they were.
Cassius rolled over, resting the back of his head on his arms.
He faced the ceiling.
The green wall lamp cast a faint light on the stone walls.
"Not bad," he said to himself.
He didn't make a sound.
Chapter 69: Seeking Advice in the Library
Weekend morning.
The Hogwarts library was as quiet as a tomb.
Sunlight slanted in from the high windows, illuminating the dust motes suspended in the air. A few older Ravenclawstudents were hunched over their tables rushing their essays, the scratching of quills on parchment creating a fine, rhythmic sound.
Cassius sat in the most remote corner.
His seat was at the intersection of the last row of bookshelves and the wall. It offered a wide field of vision with no blind spots behind him. This was the position he chose in every public place.
A massive sheet of parchment was spread out on the table.
His quill moved rapidly across the paper. The ink dried quickly—because the body temperature constantly radiating from his fingertips was three degrees higher than a normal person's, the ink marks were almost dry as soon as they touched the paper.
An extremely complex magic diversion calculation was drawn on the parchment.
It wasn't a standard Charms formula. Nor was it one of the introductory magic conduction equations Professor Flitwick taught in class.
This was something he had derived himself.
A heat loss model for the Four-Channel Shunt.
The current problem was clear: in the four-channel synchronous output state, a rate of fire of ten rounds per second could only be maintained for thirty seconds. After thirty seconds, the surface temperature of his palms would climb to a critical point that would affect precision.
Thirty seconds. Not enough.
He needed to double that number. Ideally, triple it.
The tip of his pen paused on the paper. He stared at a set of Ancient Rune symbols regarding heat dissipation and corrected the heat dissipation coefficient of the third branch by another 0.2 percent.
Footsteps.
Coming from behind the fourth row of bookshelves on the right. The stride was small, and the sound of heels hitting the floor was light. But there was hesitation in the rhythm—two steps, a pause, then two more steps.
Cassius did not look up.
The footsteps stopped in front of the empty chair opposite him.
He could smell a faint scent of ink and the aroma of old book pages. It was a scent that only someone who spent long periods soaking in the library would carry.
Three seconds passed. The other person did not speak.
Five seconds.
Eight seconds.
"May I sit here?"
Hermione Granger's voice was much lower than usual. She was clearly speaking in a hushed tone.
Cassius's pen did not stop.
"If your mouth can remain as quiet as your brain, be my guest."
Hermione's breathing hitched for a moment.
She pulled out the chair. The wooden legs made a soft scraping sound on the stone floor. She sat down very slowly, as if afraid of making any unnecessary noise.
She was clutching two books in her arms.
One was "Foundations of Advanced Charms Theory." The other was "Research on Magic Conduction and Medium Interaction."
Both were extracurricular readings that one wouldn't normally encounter until the third year or above.
Hermione placed the books on the table in front of her and flipped to the bookmarked page of the first one. Her eyes were on the page, but her gaze kept drifting.
She was stealing glances.
Not at Cassius's face. At the spread-out parchment in front of him.
The intersecting lines and symbols were arranged extremely densely, like the blueprints for some kind of micro-circuit board. Hermione couldn't understand most of it. The symbolic system didn't belong to any branch of magic she currently mastered.
But she recognized a few things.
A set of Ancient Rune symbols in the bottom right corner—a variant combination of ᛁᛋ and ᚲᛖᚾ—had appeared in Chapter Eleven of "Advanced Ancient Runes." That chapter discussed the mapping relationship of thermodynamics within the magic system.
Her gaze lingered on that set of symbols for nearly half a minute.
Her fingers gripped the edge of the page tightly.
She held it in.
Another two minutes or so passed.
She couldn't hold it in.
"Are you calculating the overload limit for multi-channel output?"
Hermione's voice emerged from behind the book. It carried a tension from knowing she shouldn't speak but being unable to hold back.
Cassius's pen stopped.
He raised his eyes.
His gray-blue gaze crossed the upper edge of the parchment and landed on Hermione's face. Hermione's body stiffened for a moment under his gaze, but she didn't look away. Her eyes were filled with a thirst for knowledge. It had nothing to do with fear, nothing to do with currying favor. It was something only a scholar would have when facing an unsolved mystery.
"Your eye is a bit better than your peers."
Cassius leaned back against his chair.
This sentence struck Hermione's eardrums. Her face began to heat up.
It wasn't shyness. It was the excitement of being recognized by an expert.
From the start of the school year until now, the total number of words Cassius had spoken to her didn't exceed twenty. None of them had been a positive evaluation. His daily communication mode was either silence or using the fewest words possible to shut someone down.
This "bit better than your peers" was already the closest thing to a compliment she had heard from his mouth to date.
Hermione closed her book.
She hesitated for a moment, then pulled a palm-sized leather-covered notebook from her robe pocket. The corners of the pages were curled, clearly having been flipped through many times.
She pushed the notebook to the middle of the table.
"I tried to derive the magic model you used by the lake that day."
Hermione said.
Her voice was a bit steadier than before. But her fingers still tightly gripped the edge of the notebook, as if she were ready to pull it back at any moment.
"If the channeling of a wand is removed, magic will generate extreme physical heat when it gathers on the body's surface."
She flipped to one of the pages.
The page was covered in dense formula derivations. The handwriting was small and arranged extremely neatly. Every step of the calculation was marked with its source—which page of which book for which theorem. Her own notes and reflections followed.
This was typical Hermione work.
Rigorous to the point of obsession.
Cassius glanced at the contents of the notebook.
His reading speed was very fast. In less than five seconds, he had parsed the core logic of that page.
Hermione's starting point was well-chosen. She skipped the major premise in conventional textbooks that "a wand is necessary" and directly assumed an extreme model of wandless conduction. Then, starting from the First Law of Thermodynamics, she attempted to establish a heat generation equation for magic gathering on the body's surface.
The derivation process itself had no obvious logical errors.
But there was a fatal omission.
Cassius picked up his quill. The tip pointed to the third line of Hermione's formula, next to a second-order differential equation regarding "the propagation of magic beams in the air."
"You failed to account for the weakening of the magic beam by air resistance."
His tone was flat, as if stating that one plus one equals two.
"This calculation only holds true in a vacuum."
Hermione froze for a second.
Then her eyes suddenly lit up.
That kind of brightness—it wasn't anger at having a mistake pointed out, but because a problem that had long troubled her had finally found a breakthrough.
"Is that why you evacuated the air when you dealt with Flint?"
Her voice rose by half a pitch.
News of what happened in the Slytherin Common Room that day had long since spread throughout the school. Cassius's act of draining the air within a ten-meter radius had been recounted in countless versions. But none of those versions touched upon the "why."
Everyone was discussing how terrifying it was.
Only Hermione was thinking about the physical principles behind it.
If air resistance would weaken the conduction efficiency of magic beams—
If eliminating air could achieve zero loss during the propagation of magic—
Then, evacuating the air wasn't just an asphyxiation attack.
It was an optimization of the spellcasting environment.
Hermione's brain was working at high speed. Her fingertips flew across the notebook; she was already constructing a new correction equation.
Cassius did not answer her question.
He lowered his head again and continued drawing his circuit diagram.
"Think for yourself."
Two cold words.
Conversation over.
Hermione's mouth opened slightly, then closed again.
She had known Cassius Malfoy for nearly two months now. She knew very well that this person's patience threshold was extremely low. Being able to extract more than three complete sentences from him was already a blessing.
She took her notebook back.
Flipped to a new page.
Dipped her quill in ink.
She began to write.
She wrote quickly. Faster than usual.
Air resistance coefficient... magic beam cross-sectional area... theoretical limit under vacuum conditions...
The formulas grew longer. The branches multiplied.
Occasionally she would stop to flip through the two reference books beside her. She would find the corresponding theorem, verify the parameters, and then continue her derivation.
Cassius quietly drew his own things across from her.
There was no communication between the two.
Only the rustling sound of pen nibs on parchment.
The library's sunlight moved from the high windows to the low windows. Dust in the air swirled slowly in the shafts of light.
Half an hour passed.
Hermione had filled three whole pages.
She put down her pen and stretched her aching wrist. Her gaze inadvertently swept across the table and landed on Cassius's parchment.
The calculations on that paper had doubled again compared to half an hour ago.
The entire sheet was divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant represented an independent magic channel. The four channels converged in the center of the diagram, forming an extremely precise four-pointed star structure.
Hermione couldn't understand the specific meanings of those symbols.
But she could understand the structure.
It was a diversion system.
Splitting one large energy flow into four small ones, then releasing them at alternating frequencies. Just like... just like a multi-cylinder engine in the Muggle world. Each cylinder performs work alternately, and the total output power is far greater than that of a single cylinder.
Hermione couldn't help but look a few more times.
Then she discovered a problem.
Chapter 70: Shaffiq's Investment
The heat dissipation coefficients of the four quadrants were inconsistent.
The values for the first and third channels were almost identical, but there was a tiny deviation between the second and fourth—about zero point zero three percent.
This deviation could be ignored in a low-power state. But if the output frequency was high enough—high enough to exceed ten times per second—this deviation would be amplified. The heat accumulation speeds of the second and fourth channels would become unsynchronized, leading to an uneven overall temperature distribution.
Hermione bit her lower lip.
She wanted to speak.
She really wanted to speak.
But Cassius had just ended the previous round of conversation with "think for yourself." If she took the initiative to speak now, she would likely be driven away immediately.
Hermione stared at that deviation value for a full ten seconds.
Ultimately, she did not speak.
She withdrew her gaze.
Lowering her head again, she continued writing in her notebook.
But her handwriting was much slower than before. Her mind was clearly not on her own derivations.
Cassius didn't look up.
But he noticed that Hermione's gaze had lingered at the junction of the second and fourth quadrants for longer than a reasonable reading time.
She saw the deviation.
Cassius's pen tip paused for a moment.
With Hermione's current knowledge base, she shouldn't be able to understand the full working principles of the Four-Channel Shunt. But her mathematical intuition allowed her to capture the anomaly at the data level—the inconsistent heat dissipation coefficients of the two quadrants.
This power of observation already exceeded the scope of a first-year student.
Cassius made an assessment in his mind.
Granger's analytical ability was indeed top-tier. What she lacked wasn't brains. It was power. It was experience. It was the courage to destroy her own cognitive framework.
He continued writing.
Another ten minutes passed. Hermione closed her notebook.
When she stood up, the chair made almost no sound. She had learned Cassius's rhythm—in front of him, any redundant noise was an offense.
"Thank you."
Hermione said.
Her voice was very soft. She picked up two books, turned, and left.
Cassius's pen did not stop.
He heard the footsteps gradually distance themselves, disappearing at the other end of the bookshelves.
The library returned to complete silence.
Cassius put down his quill.
He glanced at the spot where Hermione had just been sitting. The chair had been pushed back perfectly straight. Nothing was left on the table. Clean and efficient.
The most surprising thing about this Gryffindor wasn't her intelligence.
It was her restraint.
She clearly saw that deviation, yet she chose to keep her mouth shut.
Anyone else—even a Ravenclaw upperclassman—upon discovering a possible error, would have the first reaction of eagerly pointing it out to prove their own level.
But Hermione held back.
Because she understood that in front of Cassius, the desire to show off was the lowest form of social behavior.
Cassius picked up the pen again.
Next to the heat dissipation coefficient of the second quadrant, he added a correction value.
Zero point zero three.
The deviation Hermione had seen.
He had intended to change it anyway. He just hadn't gotten around to it yet.
The pen tip glided across the parchment. The corrected value was entered into the equation. The synchronization rate of the four channels climbed from ninety-nine point six percent to ninety-nine point nine percent.
Still not enough.
He needed a physical heat dissipation solution.
It wasn't something that could be solved by formula corrections. It was a material problem.
The heat generated on his body surface during high-frequency output had to be absorbed and diffused by a material that was tough enough and heat-resistant enough. Ordinary clothing fibers couldn't withstand it. His tests in the basement had already proven this—a piece of ordinary cotton cloth would carbonize within zero point three seconds when contacting magic at five percent of his output power.
Cassius closed the parchment.
The information Ophelia Shafiq provided yesterday surfaced in his mind.
The core silk of an Acromantula.
Deep in the Forbidden Forest.
He needed to go there in person.
Afternoon.
The fireplace in the Slytherin Common Room was burning brightly. The flames cast flickering light and shadow on the serpent reliefs on the walls.
Today was the weekend. Most students had gone to the library, the pitch, or the banks of the Black Lake to wander. There were only a few scattered people in the common room.
Cassius leaned back in the single chair directly in front of the fireplace.
That silver serpent chair.
Since the Flint incident, this chair had become a de facto restricted zone. No one dared to approach within three meters. Crabbe and Goyle stood guard on the sofa below the steps. Draco was practicing wandless magic in the dormitory and hadn't come out for two consecutive hours.
Cassius didn't have a book in his hand.
He was thinking.
The heat dissipation problem of the Magic Gatling had progressed from the theoretical level to the material level. The formulas had been refined to their limit. A four-channel synchronization rate of ninety-nine point nine percent was mathematically near perfection. The bottleneck was not in the circuit design.
The bottleneck was on his skin.
The human skin was not designed to carry high-density magic output.
Even for meridians that had been tempered thousands upon thousands of times by the [Dual-Soul Furnace], in a state of continuous high-frequency discharge, the microcirculation system on the body surface would still experience efficiency decay due to heat accumulation.
He needed an "exoskeleton."
A thin layer of material that fit the skin. It couldn't be too thick—that would affect the flexibility of physical techniques. It couldn't be too heavy—that would add meaningless burden. It had to be heat-resistant. It had to be tough. Ideally, it should also be immune to magic, so it wouldn't rapidly degrade under the wash of his magic.
Dragon hide was an option.
But dragon hide was too thick. Even the belly leather of the youngest Swedish Short-Snout, when processed into armor plates, was at least three millimeters thick. Wearing it restricted movement, much like wearing a leather jacket.
What about Basilisk skin?
It had extremely high magic resistance, but the acquisition channel was almost non-existent. He didn't plan to touch the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets ahead of time for now. The timeline hadn't arrived.
The cocoon silk of a Horntail?
Not heat-resistant enough. It wouldn't reach the temperature range he needed.
The most suitable choice, theoretically—
Footsteps.
Coming from the right corridor. The stride was moderate, the rhythm steady. Not the kind that was deliberately lightened, but not ostentatious either.
A figure turned the corner of the corridor.
Long Black curly hair. Length below the shoulders. The ends curled slightly inward, meticulously maintained. The Slytherin silver-and-green tie was tied properly, and the school robes fit well.
A third-year.
Ophelia Shafiq.
The eldest daughter of the Shaffiq family.
One of the Sacred Twenty-Eight pure-blood families. Although not as prominent as the Malfoys, Blacks, or Lestranges, the Shaffiq family had their own network of connections in the underground trading market of Knockturn Alley. They didn't do legitimate business, specializing instead in information and material brokering in gray areas.
Ophelia was carrying a cup of hot tea.
The teacup was her own. White porcelain with a fine silver pattern traced around the edge. The liquid in the cup emitted a faint scent of jasmine.
She didn't stop three meters away like the others.
She walked all the way to the low table next to the silver serpent chair. She set the teacup down gently. The movement was fluid, without any redundant hesitation.
"Malfoy."
She spoke. Her voice was not loud. It contained a perfectly measured ritualistic detachment. Neither humble nor arrogant. Much more sophisticated than girls her age.
Cassius glanced at her.
His grayish-blue gaze moved from her hand holding the tea to her face, lingering for less than a second.
"I don't drink things poured by others."
A direct refusal.
There was no aggression in his tone. But the meaning was clear—don't bother trying to please me.
A few lower-year students in the corner of the common room heard this. Someone secretly gasped. Ophelia Shafiqwas famous in the Slytherin third-year girls' circle for being socially adept. She could switch effortlessly between the reserve of a young lady and the smoothness of a social veteran. The number of people she actively brought tea to in all of Slytherin could be counted on two hands.
She had been rejected to her face by a first-year.
But the expression on Ophelia's face didn't change at all.
She picked the teacup back up and held it in her own hands. Her fingertips rested on the rim of the cup, her nails trimmed clean.
"I noticed you are looking for a material with high-strength magic resistance."
She said.
Cassius's gaze locked onto her face.
Locked tight.
The pressure of that gaze was not a threat; it was scrutiny. Like a precision scanner assessing whether the object in front of it was worth the time to analyze.
"You peeked at my library list."
Cassius's tone turned cold.
Among the books he borrowed from the library, three involved advanced materials science. Although they were all books from the regular section, if someone deliberately paid attention to his borrowing records, they could deduce his research direction.
Library borrowing records were theoretically confidential. But Madam Pince's logbook was kept on the front desk. Anyone passing by while she was away could catch a glimpse.
Ophelia immediately took half a step back.
She raised both hands, palms forward, in a standard "harmless" gesture.
"It was the reading room logbook," she admitted frankly. "Last week, for three consecutive days, you consulted 'Advanced Magic-Resistant Materials Illustrated,' 'Industrial Applications of Fantastic Beast Derivative Materials,' and 'Introduction to Magic Barrier Substances in Nature.' The three books have one common intersection—natural fibers with high magic resistance."
She did not hide the fact that she had pried.
This frankness was more effective than a hypocritical denial.