The stone corridor leading to Professor Prewett's second-floor office was always colder than the rest of the castle, a draft seemingly pulling straight from the black lake outside. Ron Weasley walked down it with his wand gripped tightly in his right hand, his fingers tracing the peeling tape that held the fractured ash wood together.
Ever since the Red Cap practical, a burning, quiet ambition had taken hold of him. He had seen what Fred and George could do when they tapped into that weird, inherited Prewett rhythm, and he was tired of his own wand sparking or emitting a dull, heavy smoke every time he tried to compress a simple levitation charm. If Uncle Richard was family—even a long-lost, terrifyingly intense version of it—surely he wouldn't turn his own nephew away for a bit of extra instruction.
Ron stopped outside the heavy oak door of Room 3B, squaring his shoulders, and reached out to knock.
Before his knuckles could graze the wood, the door swung open precisely three inches. It didn't creak; it moved with the smooth, silent friction of a well-oiled mechanism.
"If you are going to stand on the threshold breathing like a winded hippogriff, Mr. Weasley, you might as well come inside," Richard's voice drifted out, cool and perfectly level.
Ron blinked, clearing his throat as he pushed the door wide. "Er—sorry, Uncle—I mean, Professor. I was just wondering if..."
He froze. Sitting at one of the front-row desks, surrounded by three separate stacks of heavy parchment and an inkwell that was dangerously close to running dry, was Hermione Granger. She didn't even look up when Ron entered, her quill flying across a fresh sheet of foolscap with a frantic, scratching urgency.
"Ah," Richard said, standing behind his podium as he polished a small, silver runic measuring gauge. "It seems the library has temporarily migrated to my classroom. Sit, Ron."
"What's she doing here?" Ron blurted out, his face flushing a light pink that matched his hair. "This was supposed to be... I mean, I wanted to ask about the wrist mechanics from Wednesday."
"Miss Granger arrived forty-five minutes ago with a list of inquiries that spans three continents," Richard noted, his dark eyes shifting between the two first-years. He set the gauge down with a soft, metallic click. "She is currently attempting to map the logistical variance of magical education outside the British Ministry's jurisdiction. Since you are both here, you may as well listen. A wizard who only understands the magic of his own parish is half-blind."
Hermione finally paused, her eyes bright and entirely bloodshot from reading. "Professor Prewett was just explaining how different cultures approach the core flow of magic, Ron. It's fascinating! In Britain, we rely so heavily on standard incantations and precise, rigid geometry because our Ministry regulates the output to prevent accidental magical spikes."
"A defensive crutch," Richard corrected smoothly, walking down the center aisle. "In the continental duelling circuits—particularly the duelling guilds of Durmstrang—they don't teach you to hold a rigid stance. Their European duelling tactics are entirely kinetic. They treat the wand like a focal foil, using a technique called Schlag-Magie—strike-magic. You don't wait for the spell to form at the tip; you throw the spell from your shoulder, using short, rhythmic lunges to break an opponent's guard before they can finish a three-syllable incantation."
Ron dropped into the seat next to Hermione, his half-broken wand resting on his knee. Despite his annoyance at her presence, his ears perked up at the mention of dueling.
"But that's just standard combat," Hermione eagerly chimed in, turning a page of her notes. "What about the deeper foundational arts? Like what you saw during your travels?"
"If you want depth, you look where the Ministry's paperwork cannot reach," Richard said, his voice dropping into that smooth, dangerous cadence that always commanded absolute silence. "At Uagadou, the masters do not use wands for localized altering. A wand is a western construct designed to isolate the caster from the target. The scholars of the African transfiguration arts utilize self-transfiguration through breath-control and skin-contact. They don't just change a teacup into a gerbil; they shift their own cellular density to match the terrain, blending into the stone or the brush without a single drop of light showing. It makes our standard human-to-animal transfiguration look like a child's card trick."
He stepped toward the blackboard, his fingers tracing a faint, circular indentation in the wood where an old spell had left its mark.
"Go further west, across the Atlantic. The potionmasters trained at Castelobruxo don't rely on copper cauldrons and standard stirring cycles. They utilize volcanic glass containers and localized thermal charms to boil ingredients at pressures that would instantly shatter a standard European apothecary's kit. They isolate the volatile oils of the Calycophyllum bark to create drafts that can regenerate muscle tissue in seconds, bypassing the standard three-day recovery time of Skele-Gro entirely. But it requires an iron will; if your internal magic falters for a single heartbeat while stabilizing the heat, the mixture doesn't spoil—it detonates with the force of a compressed blasting hex."
Ron swallowed hard, looking down at his taped wand. "Can you... can you do any of that?"
Richard didn't answer the question directly. Instead, his gaze fixed on Hermione, who was writing so fast her knuckles were white.
"And what about the East, Professor?" she asked, her voice breathless. "The texts say the archives in Japan are entirely closed to outsiders."
"Mostly," Richard murmured. "But if you spend enough time near the volcanic peaks where Mahoutokoro stands, you learn that Asian mind magic makes our British Occlumency look incredibly crude. Here, the Ministry teaches you to build a wall in your mind to keep an intruder out. A barrier. But a barrier can be breached if the legilimens is strong enough—as Professor Snape so thoroughly demonstrates. The eastern masters do not build walls. They practice a form of cognitive dilution. They turn their minds into an ocean of white noise, an endless, shifting current of surface thoughts that buries the core secrets miles beneath the subconscious. An intruder doesn't hit a wall; they simply drown in the vastness of the target's everyday memories until they lose their own bearings."
"And the French?" Ron asked, trying to find a footing in the conversation. "Fred and George said you used a Parisian runic variant for your mail."
"The enchantments crafted at Beauxbatons are a matter of aesthetic precision," Richard said, a microscopic smirk touching the corner of his mouth. "They excel in the architecture of hidden spaces. They don't use heavy, iron-clad wards like the ancient British families. They use tapestry-weaving and silver-thread alignment to create pockets of reality that exist parallel to the room you are standing in. During my two years in Paris, I spent months studying the foundational journals of Nicolas Flamel."
The name dropped into the quiet classroom like a heavy stone. Hermione's quill stopped instantly, her eyes widening as she stared at the ink blot forming on her parchment.
"Nicolas Flamel?" she repeated, her brow furrowing. "The bibliophile? The one who collected the ancient text on..."
"The man who understood that magic is not an equation to be solved, but a resource to be refined," Richard said coldly, cutting her off before she could dig further into a topic that Dumbledore's tracking magic would undoubtedly flag. "His early work on runic containment loops is the only reason the modern French wizarding banks can secure their deeper vaults without relying on dark curses. If you ever wish to understand how to truly lock a door so that even a master thief cannot perceive its existence, you study Flamel."
Richard walked back to his podium, his dark dueling coat catching the dim light of the high windows. He looked down at Ron's broken wand, then back at Hermione's mountain of notes.
"That is enough theory for one afternoon, Miss Granger. Your parchment is saturated, and your fingers are cramping. Take your belongings and return to your tower. Mr. Weasley and I have a delayed session regarding his wrist alignment."
Hermione blinked, suddenly realizing how late it had gotten. The shadows across the stone floor had lengthened significantly, the orange hue of the late October sunset bleeding through the glass. "Oh! Right. Thank you, Professor Prewett! Thank you so much!"
She frantically began stuffing her rolls of parchment into her bag, her mind clearly spinning with the names, tactics, and references she had just recorded. She practically sprinted out the door, her bag slung awkwardly over her shoulder, completely oblivious to the dark, smoldering look Ron shot her as she passed.
Once the door clicked shut, Ron looked up at his uncle, his jaw set in a hard, resentful line. "She does that every time," he muttered, his voice thick with irritation. "Every single time. You can't even try to get some extra help without her showing up and turning it into a bloody library lecture."
Richard didn't offer sympathy. He simply pointed his wand at the chalkboard, erasing the faint diagrams with a non-verbal sweep. "Then you should have arrived forty-five minutes earlier, Ron. In combat, as in academics, the ground belongs to whoever claims it first. Draw your wand. Let us see if we can prevent it from exploding today."
The common room that evening was a den of noise and heat, the large fireplace roaring to keep the autumn chill at bay. Harry sat near the corner table, his Herbology essay laid out before him, though his eyes kept darting toward the portrait hole.
When Ron finally climbed through the opening, his face was pale, his hair a messy, windblown nest, and his robes smelled faintly of sulfur—a clear sign that his taped wand hadn't taken well to whatever compression drills Richard had forced him to practice.
"How did it go?" Harry asked as Ron dropped heavily into the armchair beside him, slamming his bag onto the floor.
"Horrible," Ron snapped, his voice loud enough to make a few nearby second-years look over. "Absolutely brilliant until she ruined it."
"Who?"
"Granger, who else?" Ron hissed, leaning forward, his eyes flashing with a raw, mounting fury. "I went down there to get some proper help from my own uncle—something special, right? A lecture on real wandwork that could actually fix this stupid piece of wood. And I walk in, and she's already taken over the whole room! Sitting there like she owns the place, asking all these stupid, show-off questions about African transfiguration and some French wizard named Flamel just to look clever."
"Did she really?" Harry asked, his curiosity piqued by the name Flamel—a name that felt strangely familiar, though he couldn't place why.
"Yes! She's a nightmare, Harry, I'm telling you," Ron said loudly, his voice carrying across the quiet corner of the room. "She doesn't even care about the practical side of it. She just wants to hoard all the answers so no one else can get a look in. It's no wonder no one can stand her. She's completely mental, and she completely ruined my special lecture with my uncle just so she could write another ten feet of notes she doesn't even need."
From the shadows behind the large armchair near the bookcase, a small, dark figure stiffened.
Hermione had been sitting there, a massive volume on The History of Dueling Guilds resting on her knees, waiting to share some of the notes she had taken with Harry. Her face went entirely white as Ron's words echoed through the stone corner. Her eyes welled with sudden, hot tears.
She didn't say a word. She slammed the book shut, the heavy thud drawing Harry's attention just in time to see her skirt past the table, her head down, her shoulders shaking as she bolted past the portrait hole and vanished into the dark corridors of the castle.
"Ron," Harry said quietly, a heavy sinking feeling settling in his stomach. "She was right there. She heard you."
"So what?" Ron muttered, though a faint hint of guilt flickered across his features before he hardened his expression again. "It's the truth, isn't it? She needs to learn that she can't just butt into everyone else's family business."
The argument simmered out, leaving an uncomfortable, prickling tension between the two boys.
By the time the Great Hall was decorated for the Halloween feast the following evening, the atmosphere should have been festive. Towering pumpkins carved with eerie grins floated beneath the enchanted ceiling, and the scent of roasted pumpkin and baking pies filled the air. But as Harry looked down the Gryffindor table, the empty seat where Hermione usually sat stuck out like a missing tooth.
"Has anyone seen Granger?" Harry asked Neville, who was busy helping himself to some potatoes.
"Parvati said she's been in the girls' bathroom on the second floor all afternoon," Neville whispered back, looking worried. "Said she won't come out. She's been crying non-stop since last night."
Harry shot a sharp, accusatory look across the table at Ron, who suddenly found his plate of sausages incredibly interesting.
Before Harry could say another word, the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall burst open with a resounding bang. Professor Quirrell came sprinting down the center aisle, his purple turban askew, his face a mask of absolute, white-hot terror. He didn't stop until he reached the staff table, gasping for breath as he clutched the edge of Dumbledore's podium.
"Troll!" Quirrell gasped, his voice echoing off the high stone walls. "In the dungeons! Thought you ought to know..."
He collapsed face-forward onto the stone floor, completely unconscious.
The Great Hall erupted into utter pandemonium. Students shrieked, chairs scraped against the floorboards, and the orderly lines of the houses shattered into a screaming mass of cloaked bodies.
At the staff table, Albus Dumbledore rose, his wand emitting a loud, cannon-like blast that silenced the room instantly. "Prefects! Lead your houses back to the dormitories immediately! Teachers, follow me to the dungeons."
Amidst the rush of moving students, Harry caught Ron's arm, his grip tight enough to bruise. "Ron! The second-floor bathroom! Hermione doesn't know about the troll!"
Ron's face went entirely pale, the reality of the situation finally slamming through his stubbornness. "Blimey... she's right in its path if it goes up the stairs."
Turning away from the moving crowd of Gryffindors being led toward the tower by Percy, the two first-years ducked into a side corridor, sprinting hard toward the second floor.
They didn't notice that at the staff table, Richard Prewett hadn't moved. He remained seated, his hands clasped calmly over his charcoal coat, his eyes fixed on the entrance doors. He didn't look toward the dungeons where Dumbledore was leading the staff. Instead, his hand drifted down to his primary wand, his fingers tapping the wood.
The security wards he had secretly anchored into the castle's secondary foundations three weeks ago hadn't triggered in the dungeons at all. The heavy, crude magical signature of the mountain troll was moving steadily toward the northern stairwell—straight toward Room 3B, and the girls' bathroom right beside it.
Richard smiled a cold, microscopic smile, stood up, and walked into the shadows of the side exit. The hunt had officially begun.