"No! Failed again!"
A frustrated growl burst through the warm, musty air of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory, stirring the dust motes floating in the lamplight.
Fred Weasley slammed his wand down hard on the thick oak desk, producing a dull thud. His twin, George, slumped back into a chair, rubbing his stiff cheeks so hard his knuckles turned white.
Before them, the quill that should have been perfectly duplicated now lay beside a viscous pool of blackened sludge, still smoking faintly and reeking of acrid burnt ash. Its warped, collapsing form seemed like some failed life groaning in silent agony.
This was their fiftieth attempt.
The "Twin Charm" — so graceful and precise when Professor McGonagall had demonstrated it in class — had become nothing short of a cruel joke in their hands. Each attempt was either a mocking silence or a pitiful mess like this.
From a corner of the dormitory, Alan quietly closed the hefty tome of Ancient Runes he had been reading. The soft snap of its pages cut cleanly into the twins' cycle of frustration.
He had been watching for a while.
His calm gaze moved from the botched remains on the desk to the two nearly identical faces filled with defeat. Inside his mind — that precise instrument he called the Mind Palace — the data of every detail had already been gathered and analyzed.
"Your problem isn't the incantation, nor the wand movement."
Alan's voice wasn't loud, but it carried a piercing authority, nailing down the issue at its core.
Fred and George both looked up at him, their attention caught at once.
"The problem lies in your brains," Alan said with surgical sharpness. "Yes, you're twins, and your physiological and psychological link surpasses ordinary people. But in that split-second when you cast — deep within your consciousness — there's a microscopic desynchronization. A mismatch at the nanosecond level."
He paused, letting the concept sink in.
"For most spells, such a lag is harmless. But for the Twin Charm, which demands absolute resonance, that tiny gap is fatal. It destabilizes the structure before the spell can even form."
"So what do we do then?" George's voice was heavy with fatigue, the pride of their twin bond now revealed to be their biggest flaw.
"I suggest you try a method." Alan's tone remained utterly steady, like he was merely stating a scientific fact. "In Muggle psychology, it's called psychological anchoring."
"Psychological… what?"
The familiar look of bafflement — as if hearing another language — crossed the twins' faces again.
"It's simple." Alan stood and walked over to them. Even his presence seemed to generate a subtle field of persuasion.
He gestured with his eyes.
"Close your eyes."
His voice carried a commanding guidance, leaving no room for refusal.
"In your minds, recall one thing. A moment you both experienced together — the moment when your emotions were at their peak, when your spirits were most in sync. A moment that best defines you as the Weasley Twins."
Fred and George exchanged hesitant glances. In each other's eyes, they saw the same uncertainty, the same curiosity. Then, together, they obeyed, closing their eyes slowly.
"Don't think about the incantation. Don't think about the wand," Alan instructed, his voice steady in their ears. "Pour all your focus, all your senses, into that moment. Relive it. Amplify it. Let it fill your whole mind."
Darkness fell.
At first, their thoughts were scattered. But soon, from the depths of memory, one scene blazed to life — brilliant, glorious, and utterly consuming.
That moment!
Last week, in the Gryffindor common room.
Their long-planned operation. The target: their insufferably stiff and rule-obsessed older brother — Percy Weasley.
They had hidden behind the curtains, hearts pounding not with fear, but with shared exhilaration. They could feel each other's breaths, the sheen of sweat in each other's palms.
Then, they struck together.
The light that burst from their wand tips wasn't two separate spells — it fused into one.
Percy's glittering prefect badge twisted, swelled, and warped, until it became a giant, dung-yellow slug, lazily burping in satisfaction.
The look on Percy's face — a storm of shock, humiliation, and fury — had been the finest masterpiece in their eyes.
The roar of laughter that exploded from the common room had been their anthem of victory.
That moment!
Their joy, their mischief, their heartbeats, every spark of nerve impulse — all had synchronized into perfect unity. They weren't Fred and George. They were The Weasley Twins: one seamless, unstoppable whole.
That feeling — that absolute confidence in being "we," not "me and you" — now filled their minds, magnified to infinity.
"Now!"
Alan's deep command struck like the final execution order.
The twins' eyes flew open.
The same mischievous light burned in their pupils, like gods of pranks incarnate. Without even needing to glance at each other, they raised their wands in flawless unison.
The incantation rolled off their tongues — not two overlapping voices, but a single, seamless resonance with a strange harmonic quality.
A perfect, faultless white light burst forth from the tips of their wands, converging in midair and striking the quill on the desk with surgical precision.
When the radiance faded, beside the original quill lay another — identical.
From the wood grain of the shaft to the wear on the nib to the tiniest split at the tip of the feather, there was no difference. It wasn't a crude copy; it was a perfect clone that seemed to transcend the usual laws of matter.
A brief hush fell over the dormitory.
Then, within a second, the place erupted.
"We did it!"
The triumphant shout nearly shook the rafters. Fred and George grabbed each other, bouncing and whooping, thumping one another on the back as they unleashed the joy that had been building in their chests.
Mastering such a powerful charm awakened something deeper — ambition — and it swelled rapidly in their hearts.
Fred's eyes lit up. He dug under the bed and pulled out a battered, talking diary, rubbing at it like a conspirator.
"Alan," he said, voice low but overflowing with excitement, "the diary says Filch's going to sneak out to the Three Broomsticks tonight and won't be back until after midnight."
He opened the book; an intricate, shifting map of Hogwarts floated up from its pages.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime night-walking opportunity! The diary can point out all the secret passages! Let's go tonight — what do you say?"
Alan's gaze lingered on the diary for half a second; in his Mind Palace, a rapid threat assessment had already completed. He shook his head without hesitation.
"I refuse."
His reply was cold and decisive, like a bucket of ice poured on their fevered plans.
"First," he continued, enumerating with surgical clarity and no emotion, "the diary's provenance and intent are unknown. The intelligence it provides is unverified. At minimum, we need two independent sources to cross-check it — which we do not have.
"Second, your objective is undefined. 'A night stroll' is not an objective, merely an action. There's no clear, quantifiable return on investment. We would be risking being caught by Filch, penalized, or even confined for a purposeless walk."
He finished his assessment.
"In short: this is a classic high-risk, low-return operation. From a decision-model perspective, accepting it would be irrational."
The twins' faces collapsed in an instant. Alan shifted tone.
"However, before you undertake a large-scale, high-risk field exploration, I recommend beginning with small, controlled tests."
A faint smile tugged at his mouth; a barely perceptible twinkle of mischief flashed in his eyes.
"For example, use the diary first to map the girls' washroom on the second floor. The risk level is lower there, and the potential intelligence value… might actually be higher."
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