Hermione's first experiment involved a shopping list. Ron regarded this as a considerable improvement on the previous plan, which had involved three people entering an ancient chamber and hoping the floor agreed to give them back.
She placed the list beside Dumbledore's Pensieve. It contained bread, ink, and six other ordinary things, all written in her own hand that morning and none capable of opening a door beneath a lake.
"I remember writing it," she said. "I remember deciding what to put on it. Those aren't necessarily the same memory."
"Bread's going to be devastated if you forget it," Percy said. Ron nodded solemnly beside him.
Hermione ignored him with the efficiency of long practice. She drew a silver thread from her temple and lowered it into the basin, then closed her eyes while Harry covered the paper.
She could name every item. When Dumbledore asked which word she'd crossed out, she hesitated, frowned, and finally admitted that she couldn't picture the correction clearly enough to answer.
Ron checked the list. "You changed biscuits to bread. That's probably a symptom of something."
"It's a distinction," Hermione said. She opened her eyes and reached for her notes. "I haven't lost the idea. I've moved the occasion on which I handled it."
Snape stood near the door with his arms folded. Percy had begun to suspect the man considered chairs a personal insult, especially when somebody else might be comfortable in one.
"And the ancient agreement is neither a grocery list nor a classroom exercise," Snape said. "Do not confuse a demonstration of memory with a demonstration of release."
Hermione's quill stopped. For a moment Percy expected her to argue, but she looked at the covered seal fragment instead.
"Then we need to test whether it still recognises me after the memory moves."
Nobody answered immediately. The office clock ticked four times, and Percy wished it would choose a less dramatic hobby.
Dumbledore returned the ordinary memory first. He waited until Hermione had identified the crossed-out word without looking, then moved the Pensieve to a clear table away from the fragment.
"One encounter," he said. "The first line you deliberately translated. We stop if the fragment responds beyond its present strength."
Harry shifted beside Hermione. "And if you start finishing sentences you haven't heard."
She nodded, which mattered more to Percy than any promise that she felt perfectly well. This morning she'd wanted to keep looking into the chamber, and all of them had seen how easily wanting could arrive disguised as work.
----------------------
The memory took longer to draw out than the shopping list. Hermione's wand moved a fraction before she caught herself, and the silver thread stretched between her temple and its tip like something reluctant to break.
Percy could feel the bowl of water on the windowsill. He kept his attention there while Dumbledore guided the memory into the Pensieve, because watching the thread made him want to help in a way he didn't understand.
The seal fragment clicked against its wooden tray. Harry's head lifted, and Snape took one step away from the door.
Under the cloth, a narrow line of light brightened. It held for two breaths before fading to the dull glow they had learned to distrust.
Hermione swallowed. "I know what the line means. I can't remember seeing it for the first time."
"Does it want finishing?" Harry asked.
She looked at the covered fragment without leaning towards it. Her hands stayed flat on the table, but Percy noticed the pressure whitening her knuckles.
"Yes."
Ron exhaled through his nose. He had been balancing on the front edge of his chair, and now he planted both feet as though disappointment might otherwise knock him off it.
Dumbledore asked Hermione to describe the feeling without supplying the words. She tried twice, crossed out what she'd written, and finally put the quill down.
"It's like someone asking a question I know the answer to. Leaving it unanswered feels wrong."
"Even if you don't remember them asking?" Percy said.
Hermione looked at him. Then she turned towards the Pensieve, where the first translated line moved inside its own silver weather.
"Because I agreed to answer," she said. "Not because I remember the question."
Snape's expression changed very slightly. It wasn't approval, but it was the look he wore when somebody had finally stopped standing on the useful evidence.
"An undertaking can survive imperfect recollection," he said. "The loss of a memory would be an exceedingly convenient way to escape certain magical obligations. It is seldom so obliging."
Hermione sat back. The fear on her face was quieter than panic, and that made Percy dislike it more.
"So I could throw away everything I remember learning and still be attached."
Dumbledore covered the basin. He did it gently, but the movement ended the experiment more firmly than a raised voice would have.
"Which is a useful danger to discover here. Your memories are not the debt merely because the debt reached you through them."
He returned the translated memory before anyone touched the fragment again. Hermione gasped once as it settled, then described the edge of the original page, the ink stain, and the place where she had first mistaken a mark for punctuation.
Harry listened to every detail. Percy knew he was checking that she had come back with all the ordinary things people usually forgot to count.
----------------------
They took lunch in an unused classroom because none of them wanted to explain the Pensieve to curious spectators. Ron acquired sandwiches, Percy acquired a headache, and Hermione acquired three pages of crossed-out theories before Harry confiscated her quill.
"Eat first."
"I'm not going to forget the idea."
"Good. It can wait for cheese."
Percy sat on a desk beside the window. The lake was hidden behind a corner of the castle, which didn't stop him feeling the distant rhythm of the stolen sample whenever whoever held it changed their grip.
The interruptions weren't regular. Sometimes a minute passed without one, and sometimes three sharp pulses came so close together that Percy had to stop talking until they finished.
Hermione noticed the third silence. She put down her sandwich and waited instead of immediately reaching for the quill Harry was still holding.
"The clamp?"
"I think so. He's having a productive afternoon ruining mine."
Harry's eyes moved to Percy's hand. The fingers had curled against the edge of the desk without his permission, and Percy deliberately opened them.
"Does it hurt?"
"More like somebody tugging a tooth that isn't in my mouth. Which sounds worse now I've said it."
Ron considered this with a mouthful of bread. After swallowing, he asked whether Percy could tell when the tugging stopped or only when it started again.
Percy almost answered too quickly. Instead he waited through another faint pull and paid attention to what came after it, keeping his own power still.
The absence wasn't silence. There was a little delay in which the sea sample felt like an object again, separate enough that Percy could sense its shape without feeling the impulse to move it.
"Both," he said. "For a moment after he lets go, it's just water."
Hermione held out her hand. Harry gave the quill back this time, and she drew a short line followed by a gap instead of another page of language.
"Then that's when we test recognition," she said. "When it isn't already answering somebody else."
Percy stared at the small gap. It was barely wider than the quill tip, which seemed an unreasonable amount of space to put hope in, but he had worked with worse.
----------------------
The next test took place beside the upper channel, with the large slab locked down and nobody below it. Flitwick had spent the afternoon exposing enough of the old linkage to wedge the return tongue open independently, though he refused to call the arrangement reliable until he had tried it under pressure.
"Stone is patient," he said. "People tend to mistake that for obedience."
Ron stood beside him with a new card. This one said to check the lower marker before closing the channel, and the professor made him rehearse the sequence until he could do it while Percy asked deliberately stupid questions.
Harry waited against the wall with Snape. He hadn't been asked to offer blood, enter the chamber, or do anything more dramatic than report what he felt, which visibly improved his opinion of the proceedings.
The fragment rested on a dry tray between two ordinary bowls. One held rainwater collected from the gutter; the other was empty, and neither touched the channel.
Percy looked at Dumbledore. "Just so we're clear, if this starts growing teeth, I'm blaming your equipment budget."
"A reasonable allocation of responsibility."
Hermione's task was simpler to describe than to do. She would listen for the urge to answer the fragment and decline it without translating the urge into actual words, while Percy watched for a pause in the stolen sample's connection.
Snape had insisted on a further limit. They would attempt it once, and any change in Harry's scar would end the test whether it appeared helpful or not.
Percy waited. The sample tugged twice, settled, and then tightened so sharply that he felt a phantom ring of metal around his smallest finger.
"Not yet," he said. He kept his hands against his knees.
Hermione kept her gaze on a crack in the wall. Her breathing had become deliberate, and Percy hoped nobody would tell her to relax because he might have to throw them into the empty bowl.
The pressure slipped. Percy felt the sample separate, distinct and small, and lifted one finger without reaching towards it.
Hermione said nothing. She shut her eyes, shook her head once, and the light beneath the cloth went out.
Water struck the inside of the full bowl. A single drop jumped across the gap into the empty one, landing with a sound far louder than it deserved.
Then Harry hissed and caught the edge of the shelf. Snape was already moving, Dumbledore covered the fragment with a second folded cloth, and Ron checked the wooden marker before putting his weight against the sluice lever.
Percy felt the stolen sample pull again. This time the pull caught somewhere beneath his ribs, and his answer rose so quickly that he bit his own tongue stopping it.
The bowl tipped. He caught it with both hands instead of his power, spilling rainwater over his sleeves and most of the tray.
"Done," he said. "We're done."
Nobody asked for one more try. Flitwick checked the lower marker, Ron secured the lever, and Dumbledore carried the covered fragment away from the channel while Snape spoke quietly to Harry.
Hermione had sat down on the floor. She looked furious with herself until Percy put the dripping bowl beside her and lowered himself onto the stone.
"That was an impressively complicated way to spill a drink."
She gave a small, unwilling laugh. It lasted just long enough for her to breathe properly afterwards.
"For a second, I didn't owe it an answer," she said. "I still understood it. I just didn't have to reply."
Percy looked at the drop in the second bowl. It trembled with the ordinary vibration of their feet, and he was careful not to decide that made it harmless.
----------------------
Harry described the sensation as a door being pressed from the other side. He hadn't seen Voldemort, heard a voice, or lost track of where he was, but the cold had spread beyond the usual line of his scar before Snape interrupted the test.
"You recognised it as foreign throughout?" Snape asked.
"Yes. That didn't stop it pushing."
"Recognition is not a wall. It is how you avoid mistaking the intruder for the house."
Ron looked at Percy. Neither of them smiled, but Percy knew they would be remembering that sentence the next time Snape complained about imprecise metaphors.
Hermione recovered enough to object when Dumbledore called the test conclusive. He let her finish explaining everything they hadn't proved before specifying what he meant.
"We have established that forgetting the language is insufficient," he said. "We have also seen the fragment fall silent while you retained your understanding. The rest remains uncertain."
"The drop moved when it went quiet," Percy said. He glanced at the covered bowls. "It didn't move because I told it to."
Aequor's attention reached him as a slow pressure behind the castle walls. There were no words at first, only the feeling of holding a door while somebody stepped through and then releasing the weight when they had passed.
Percy stayed still. This was the guardian's familiar depth rather than the quick, hungry pull of the stolen sample, but familiarity had nearly walked him down the wrong stairs that morning.
He waited until the impression separated into something he could report. Aequor had recognised the moment of release, and the warning that followed was so heavy Percy felt it in his teeth.
"The opening works both ways," he said. The words left his mouth colder than he intended.
Hermione looked at the bowls. Harry looked at the blocked channel, and Ron quietly moved his foot so it rested against the base of the lever.
The return path could carry something out. During that brief moment when the three locks stopped holding their own parts, anything already pressed against the opening might try to follow them.
Dumbledore's face lost the last trace of satisfaction. He turned the tray so the single escaped drop sat farther from the larger bowl, then asked Flitwick to bring two separate covers.
Percy felt another adjustment in the distance. The stolen sample slipped free of its handler's pressure for a heartbeat, and this time the gap ended with a jolt that seemed almost angry.
"He's noticed the interruption," Percy said. He rubbed his arms without easing the chill.
Snape looked towards the stairs. Whatever report he might be expected to give Voldemort later, Percy doubted it would include a pleasant conversation about laboratory standards.
"Then our next attempt," Dumbledore said, "must assume he is waiting for it."
Hermione took back her notes and crossed out the word surrender. Beneath it she wrote release, paused, and added a second instruction in plain English: check what comes back.
Percy watched the ink dry. For the first time, giving the seal what it wanted wasn't the part of the plan he feared most.
===========================
Oh mah gah I have another 6 chapters to write (i'll rest after that, prob do some hw)
Edit: Dayum we got a whole 1334 views yesterday!!! So heres an early release chapter! Another chapter is coming shortly (i'll upload it in a few minutes)
[SHAMELESS PLUG]
Ron deserves hazard pay for ts. If you are enjoying the story, find Reader004 on Patreon for more chapters and support the author behind these increasingly unreasonable school days. The instant noodles appreciate your kindness!