"You can rest assured, Professor," Alan said with a joyful smile.
In the time that followed, Alan borrowed a mountain of spellcraft theory from the Hogwarts library. As soon as he returned to the Forbidden Forest cabin, he dove into his studies and practiced his engraving techniques with obsessive focus.
Charles also began his special training under Alan's supervision. Every morning, he met Alan for a run. At first, Charles was utterly spent; Alan's training intensity was high, with a planned route of at least five kilometers. After a week of agonizing adaptation, Charles could finally maintain the pace without collapsing.
In the afternoons, Charles returned to the cabin for spell practice and endurance drills. Alan had set up several wooden dummies in the clearing for Charles to practice the Disarming Charm, the Stunning Spell, and other combat basics. Although it was only a few hours a day, Charles felt as if he were being hollowed out. However, the tangible feeling of his magic becoming more responsive made him obsessed with the progress.
One afternoon, while heading to the library to return a stack of books, Alan ran into Vivian in the Clock Tower Square. She was sitting on a stone bench, her expression grim.
"What's wrong, Vivian? I thought the Quidditch tryouts were today." Only yesterday, she had been vibrating with excitement about becoming a player. Alan knew her flying was solid; even if she didn't make the starting lineup, she was a shoo-in for a reserve spot.
Vivian looked up, her frustration boiling over. "Tryouts? What a joke! Those pureblood fanatics aren't just posturing in the common room anymore; they've taken control of the house team. Any Slytherin who hasn't explicitly sworn loyalty to their cause was barred from the pitch. They've even forced out the veterans who refused to fall in line."
Alan's brow furrowed. "Don't Senior Vanessa and Professor Slughorn have a say? They just let them take over?"
"You know our Head of House—he's a genial old man who hates conflict. As long as they aren't hexing people in the corridors, he looks the other way. And Vanessa is so buried in her NEWTs that she's barely around. Those guys don't respect her anyway. They mind their manners when she's watching, but the moment she leaves, the circus starts again," Vivian said indignantly.
Alan hadn't stepped foot in the Slytherin common room for weeks for his own safety. He hadn't realized the atmosphere had soured so quickly.
Vivian, unable to stop, continued, "They're openly proclaiming support for the Dark Lord now! William Higgs, the Seeker who won us the cup last year, was kicked off the team just for talking back to them. He's a fourth-year hero, and they treated him like trash."
Alan remembered Higgs—a polite, talented flyer. The situation was clearly worse than he had imagined.
"So the tryouts are over for you?" Alan asked.
"What else? Rory Yaxley is running the show now with his hand-picked squad. With a Prefect like him leading the team, I doubt Slytherin will win a single match this year," she said dejectedly.
Rory Yaxley. Alan remembered the name—a stubborn supremacist who had famously clashed with Vanessa. It seemed he had become the figurehead for the radicalized students.
Seeing Vivian so defeated, Alan offered what comfort he could. "It's alright, Vivian. If not this year, then next. I know how good you are; don't let them take your confidence."
"It's not that simple," she snapped, her frustration turning toward him. "With them in charge, I might not get a foot on the pitch for the rest of my seven years here."
"That's not necessarily true," Alan said, his voice dropping an octave. "You have confidence in yourself, and I have confidence in my own plans. They won't be smug for long."
"What does that mean?" Vivian asked, sensing a hidden edge in his tone.
"Only that I'll support you, and I hope you'll do the same for me when the time comes." He offered a final nod and turned to head toward the library.
"Support me? Support you?" Vivian repeated to herself, tilting her head in confusion as she watched him walk away.
Alan chose to put the political drama out of his mind. He was focused entirely on enhancing his own capabilities. His progress under Professor Bones was breathtaking; the man's explanations were intuitive, and Alan seemed to grasp the complex runic structures almost instantly.
His echolocation spell had finally cleared its major hurdles. After dozens of structural adjustments, the sequence could now emit a frequency high enough to produce true ultrasonic waves. The current challenge was the return signal. He and Bones had combined several receiving runes, and once the bench tests were successful, they would move on to engraving the final version into an alchemical tool.
---
"The fourth set of runes is significantly more effective than the previous three," Professor Bones noted, peering into a crystal ball used for testing. "The reflected waves are forming images now, though the resolution is low and the stability is questionable. Record the data. We'll test the last two sets, and if they don't outperform this one, we'll use the fourth as our prototype for fine-tuning."
Alan, who was providing the magical output nearby, nodded and quickly scribbled the results onto his parchment.
They had been at it for over an hour. Alan cast the ultrasonic pulse while Bones rotated through various receiver crystals embedded with different rune combinations. Of the four tested so far, only one had produced a visual result.
"Alright, let's move to the fifth set," Bones said, swapping the crystal.
"Ready, Professor." Alan concentrated, casting the silent pulse once more.
Thanks to his years of disciplined self-training, Alan's magical control was peerless. He could cast his newly developed sequences without a word, a level of efficiency that bypassed the need for spoken incantations and allowed them to iterate through experiments at a blistering pace.