In the temporary dormitory arranged by Beauxbatons for the competitors, the air hung heavy with the bitter-sweet scent of potion ingredients.
Two cauldrons sat on the workbench in front of Lucien, steady blue flames licking at their bases.
He had just precisely added the prepared Aconite to the cauldron on his left, glancing at a notebook floating nearby where a self-writing quill was diligently recording every step and reaction.
Fresh off a perfect score in the written exam, Lucien had returned to his room and immediately set to work brewing Wolfsbane Potion. He was eager to test some of the sudden inspirations that had struck him during the test.
One cauldron contained the standard Wolfsbane Potion, brewed strictly according to the textbook.
The other contained Lucien's modified version, with slight adjustments to the ingredients and ratios.
The potions bubbled rhythmically—sometimes loud, sometimes soft. As both mixtures reached a stable boil, they began to show distinct differences in color and texture.
Just as Lucien was monitoring the changes, waiting for the final sedimentation phase—
Ding!
A crisp chime rang out.
It wasn't a system notification, though.
Lucien pulled a notebook, slightly larger than his palm, from his pocket.
It had a soft, navy blue cover with a translucent crystal embedded in the center. Right now, a faint green light was pulsing rhythmically inside the crystal.
"Got a message," Lucien muttered, tapping the crystal with his fingertip.
He flipped the notebook open. Despite appearing thin, it made a heavy ruffling sound as if it contained far more pages than its physical size should allow—clearly the work of an Undetectable Extension Charm.
It stopped automatically at a specific page. The blank parchment rippled like water disturbed by a stone.
A second or two later, a face struggled to surface from the ripples: messy black hair, round glasses, and bright green almond-shaped eyes.
It was Harry.
But the image froze for three or four seconds. Then, a blurry hand suddenly blocked the view, accompanied by the jarring visual of the device being smacked a few times.
Another seven or eight seconds passed before a broken, static-filled voice drifted weakly from the page:
"Hello... Lucien... can you... hear..."
Lucien shook his head. The signal issues were glaringly obvious over such a long distance.
He really needed to figure out a solution for the relay stations...
Pushing the technical worries aside for now, Lucien tapped the page with his wand. Harry's frozen face vanished, replaced by a crisp input box and a blinking cursor as it switched to text mode.
"Harry, let's stick to text for now. Did you finish handing out the surveys?"
The reply came much faster. Almost two or three seconds after Lucien finished writing, Harry's handwriting—slightly crooked but legible—surfaced below:
"OK! All done!"
Followed by a simple stick-figure smiley face.
Immediately after, more words bubbled up, practically radiating excitement:
"I really wanted to test out this magic notebook you gave me! You can actually talk to people remotely with this?! Just like a telephone? That is so cool!"
This time, it was followed by a drawing of a face with stars for eyes.
Lucien chuckled as he looked at the words and emojis. Harry had adapted to this "Magical Smartphone" surprisingly fast.
Indeed, what they were using was the prototype for a remote communication device Lucien had designed and built using alchemy.
Within the range of a single county, it supported stable, instant text and video communication.
But for cross-country communication like this, video transmission suffered from severe lag and stuttering. Text mode was better, but even that had a slight delay.
The greater the distance, the more obvious the signal decay and latency became.
To achieve truly smooth magical communication, he would need to upgrade the notebooks and, more importantly, build magical signal relay stations. But that was a massive and complex alchemical engineering project...
Lucien looked at Harry's message and started calculating in his head.
Still, just revealing this current version of the "Magical Smartphone" should be more than enough to win this Three-School Exchange Competition.