[ Skill - Non-Magic: Beginner(79.86%)
•Concentration: Intermediate(11.67%)
•General Knowledge: Intermediate(12.8%)
•Manual precision: Intermediate(12.8%)
•Meditation: Intermediate(12.8%)
•Physical Conditioning: Intermediate(12.8%)
•Photographic memory: Intermediate(13.9%)
Skill- Magic: Beginner(8.23%)
•Mana sense: Beginner(33.85%)
Skill- Spellcasting: Beginner(11.05%)
Verbal casting: Beginner(25.05%)
Non-verbal Casting: Beginner(11.20%)
Wandless Casting: Beginner(0 .001%)
• Basic tranfiguration: Beginner(41.83%)
• Magic theory: Beginner(59.01%)
• Barrier magic: Beginner(28.67%)
• Mana Sense: Beginner(45.19%)
• Lumos: Beginner(49%)
• Wingardium Leviosa: Beginner(39.07%)
• Alohamora: Beginner (41.56%)
• Reparo: Beginner(38.62%)
• Spongify: Beginner(39.75%)
• Diffindo: Beginner(21%)
• Disillusionment charm: Beginner(17.09%)
• Imperturbable charm: Beginner(24.07%) ]
The screen hovering at the edge of Arthur's sight was totally still, its pale blue light showing the spells and theories he learned in last few days.
It was already 11:42 at night, and the curfew had been over for hours. The castle's stone hallways, usually bustling with students, were now quiet and dark, filled with the heavy silence of the sleeping dorms. The only sound was the soft hum of magic in the air, a gentle reminder that even in the stillness of the night, the castle was always alive.
Arthur sat on the floor, his legs crossed, in a room that was almost completely dark.
'Tonight they'll move,' he thought.Arthur let out a slow breath, careful to keep his heart rate down.
He'd been watching them for a year, studying how they made decisions based on emotions and impulses, like a messy mix of Gryffindor boldness and teenage hormones. It was crazy, but tonight, their predictable recklessness was going to work in their favor. All that chaos and impulsivity, normally a weakness, would finally be useful.
Arthur got to his feet, his dark robes falling silently around him. He wasn't bothered about the teachers' plan, and he cared even less about a thief roaming in the school. What he wanted was something much more important. His goal was clear and simple, but it meant everything to him.
The Philosopher's Stone.
To the rest of the Wizarding World, it was a myth of immortality and endless gold. To Arthur, it was the apex of alchemy—the final, theoretical sequence in the Great Work.
Nicolas Flamel had managed to synthesize a physical catalyst capable of permanently altering molecular structures without the continuous drain of a caster's mana-core.
Arthur had no intention of obtaining it, as that would set off Dumbledore's complex security system and add too many unpredictable elements to his first year of magical education. All he wanted was a quick glance, a brief scan using his mana sense to chart the object's energy pattern.
With this single mental map, he could skip over six centuries of theoretical experimentation and guesswork, getting a huge head start in the process. He just needed to be careful and precise, as the security web was designed to detect even the slightest tampering. By getting a glimpse of the energy patterns, Arthur could gain a deep understanding of the object's inner workings, allowing him to bypass years of trial and error and make rapid progress in his studies.
'Alright, it's time to get this thing started,' Arthur said quietly to himself, the only one around to hear him.He grabbed his wand, closed his eyes, and focused on picturing the mana pathways that made up his own body.
A regular Disillusionment Charm just wasn't going to cut it—it only curved light around the person using it, which was pretty much useless against things that could see heat, smell really well, or detect magic. Arthur needed something way more powerful, something that could completely cancel out any detection, no matter what senses were being used.
He activated the silencing ward, a small but complex barrier he had spent the last three months thinking of.
First, he compressed his mana core, pulling the ambient energy tightly against his skin until it formed a suffocating, frictionless barrier. Second, he intentionally slowed his pulse, dropping his surface body temperature by two degrees Celsius. A mild, icy ache spread through his limbs, but he categorized the pain as irrelevant. Finally, he warped the disillusionment charm around his body.He didn't just disappear from sight; he actually became a complete blank space.
He sneaked out of his room, his footsteps muffled by the barrier, which helped him move quietly. The castle's protective spells, the paintings hanging on the walls, and even the restless spirits wandering the halls all seemed to forget Arthur was ever there, as if he had never existed at all.
He glided through the dark corridors of Hogwarts, like a silent observer, unnoticed and unseen.
As he made his way to the third-floor corridor, he caught up with the Golden Trio, who were already gathered at the locked door.
Arthur froze, standing completely still in the darkness, about fifteen feet away from them. He watched them with a calm and detached interest, kind of like a researcher studying mice in a lab, his eyes taking in every detail without getting emotionally involved. The darkness seemed to fade into the background as he focused on the trio, his attention fixed on their every move.
Granger took a step forward, her wand held up high. "Alohomora," she said softly, and the big lock snapped open with a click.
Arthur's face showed a tiny bit of disgust. A simple spell that first-year students learn to unlock doors. Not a strong spell, but it worked on a vault that was supposed to keep an important artifact. If a basic spell like that could open it, then the vault wasn't as safe as everyone thought. You see, if an eleven-year-old kid can get in with just a basic charm, that's not really 'secure' at all.
'Hypothesis confirmed,' Arthur logged in his mind. Dumbledore has not designed a vault. He has designed a well thought-out obstacle course.
The three kids sneaked into the room, and Arthur counted to ten in his head before he went in too, slipping through the door just before it closed.
The room was shrouded in darkness, and it was like Cerberus was the only thing that mattered. This huge creature's three heads were all moving, their jaws open, showing off the acidic saliva that was dripping from them. The sound of their low growls was like a vibration that could be felt on the floor. But what really weird was that there was a harp just sitting there at their feet, and it was completely still, like it was waiting for someone to play it. The thief, though, was already gone; he had passed through the room before anyone else.
Arthur watched as Harry frantically raised a wooden flute to his lips and began to play a ragged, off-key melody.Arthur remained calm when he saw the creature. He turned on his mana sense to look at the beast again; his eyes glowed softly from within. With this sight, he studied the dog with three heads, ignoring its fur and teeth to focus on the complex mana network inside the beast.
Arthur couldn't help but notice how fascinating, yet really inefficient, the whole system was. The beast had one circulatory system that was supporting not one, not two, but three separate neural networks. That's a lot of work for one system. The amount of calories it must take to keep all of that running is just staggering. And the magic that's holding it all together? It's thick, but it's also kind of clumsy.
As Harry's flute played, the Cerberus's eyes began to droop. The growling faded into heavy, shuddering snores.The three of them yanked the trapdoor open, and then, in a flash of frantic conversation, they took the plunge into the darkness, each one disappearing from view in turn.
Arthur waited. He counted the seconds.One. Two. Three...As soon as Harry's flute fell into the hole, the Cerberus's ears perked up. With the sound-muffling effect gone, the creature's attention shifted to the intruders.
The middle head slowly opened its bloodshot eye, blurry at first, and fixed its gaze on the open trapdoor.
Arthur moved ahead, knowing he couldn't use his wand to solve the problem. If he cast a musical charm, it would leave behind a magical trail that Dumbledore could easily follow later on. So, he had to come up with a different plan, one that didn't involve magic at all. He needed to find a physical way to get things done.
He raised his right hand, pointing his index and middle fingers at the space directly around the Cerberus's three heads. He didn't use a spell, he used raw mana to create a high-frequency vibration—exactly 120 hertz—and projected it directly into the fluid of the beast's carotid arteries.
He was simulating a massive blood pressure spike through the veins of the beast's veins.
As soon as it happened, everything changed. Arthur could see it with his mana sense; the beast's three brains got a message that something was amiss. The sensors inside the creature were sending out warnings that the blood pressure in its necks was getting too high and could burst the vessels at any moment.
The creature was caught off guard. It's three hearts skipped a beat, then slowed to a crawl. The blood pressure in the brains plummeted. Arthur watched the three neural signatures "flicker" and then go dark, one by one, like a row of streetlamps being extinguished.
The Cerberus just stood there, frozen. It didn't even let out a growl. Instead, its legs gave out from under it, turning into a useless, wobbly mess. The huge creature's massive body then collapsed to the ground, hitting the floor with a dull, heavy thud that seemed to shake everything around it.
"Living things are pretty easy to manipulate," Arthur said, dropping his hand. "What's the point of using music to control people when you can just trick their brain into thinking they're already dying?"
He walked past the unconscious heads. The Cerberus wasn't "asleep"—it was in a state of medical syncope. It wouldn't wake up until its internal workings rebalanced, which would take hours.
Arthur looked down the trapdoor. The Golden Trio was likely struggling with the Devil's Snare.
"Efficiency is the only true magic," he murmured.
Without a glance back at the defeated guardian, he stepped into the void.