"What would happen if that did occur?" Cedric asked.
"Your natural bones wouldn't be as strong as the reinforced ones, but the growth process itself would get… abstract," Kasenhis explained.
"The added skeletal structure would disrupt your body's natural perception, so when your bones are suppressed, they wouldn't stop growing—they'd just… snap. Like a hydraulic press crushing a bone straight down."
"Oh… wow…" Cedric imagined the scene for a moment—his bones getting compressed like some kind of collapsible pipe. Then he realized that bones don't bend like that; they'd just… snap diagonally in half.
"Professor, I think I should go see Madam Pomfrey," Cedric said, shrinking his neck.
"Then go quickly. The sooner you go, the sooner you're back."
Cedric nodded and left the office by boat, and on his way out, he happened to pass Lupin rowing in.
"Eh? Professor… Lu… pin…"
As the two drifted farther apart, Cedric's voice grew fainter and fainter, until Lupin couldn't even make out the last part.
"Yo, how've you been these past few days?" Kasenhis called out, tossing a wine glass toward him.
"Not bad," Lupin said, catching it. "It's just that staying in the camp is unbearably boring, so I thought I'd drop by for a visit." As he spoke, his eyes landed on the sketches Cedric had left on the coffee table…
"Ten mechanical arms still aren't enough for you?"
"That's Cedric's, don't overthink it."
"So now you've set your claws on the younger students, have you?" Lupin asked dryly.
"If you don't know how to speak properly, you can just shut up…" Kasenhis inhaled deeply, as if trying to make Lupin choke on the air.
"Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing. I've got some information about Nios," Lupin said. "Remember when you went invisible and came to find me? We talked in the bathroom."
"Mm-hm, yeah, I remember that." Kasenhis nodded.
"When you used Ender Teleport to leave that day, you left behind a trail of purple light particles."
"Oh… my bad, sorry…"
"No, that's not the point. It's that when a few of my colleagues saw me coming out of the bathroom covered in those purple sparkles, they gave me hell for it. But guess who had the biggest reaction later that night when we were having a barbecue at camp and someone brought up the incident in front of Nios?" Lupin said, lowering his voice mysteriously.
Kasenhis raised an eyebrow. "You're setting it up like that, so obviously it's Nios. Honestly, you're kind of insulting my intelligence here."
"…Fine, fair. But I did notice something odd about him. When he heard about the mass of purple light pouring out of the bathroom, his expression looked like he was calculating how to massacre every single one of us," Lupin added.
"Why would purple light make him react like that… Could it be some curse that uses those lights as a medium? Or maybe… does Nios have his own private dimension?" Kasenhis trailed off, suddenly freezing mid-sentence as a thought hit him.
"No, we just set up a few large tents—four people per tent," Lupin said.
"In that case…" Kasenhis thought for a moment. Then suddenly, his expression shifted as the pieces clicked together.
Sure, he'd been pretty foggy on a few recent mystery cases—but come on, if he didn't have some real talent, how could someone with Sherlock's strangulation-worthy personality ever get along with him?
When it came down to it, he did have a bit of a detective's instinct. If he hadn't awakened his MC abilities back then, he might've ended up tagging along with Sherlock to solve crimes for a living.
Lupin watched Kasenhis silently lost in thought for what felt like ages. He waved a hand in front of his face—no reaction.
"Ahem…"
Still no reaction.
Lupin sighed, rubbed his hands together, took a deep breath, and was just about to smack him upside the head when Kasenhis suddenly snapped out of it.
"If Nios doesn't have a personal space of his own, and places like the Forbidden Forest aren't completely secure either, then that leaves him with only one kind of private space—the bathroom!"
"So?"
"My point is," Kasenhis said confidently, "he's probably using the bathroom to contact his superior. And whatever he's using to do that must emit those purple light particles. That's why he reacted so strangely when he heard about them."
"Then here's the real question," Lupin said, following up. "What kind of spell or alchemical device produces purple light particles—and why would even a single one of them be enough to make Nios panic?"
"That's beyond what we currently know," Kasenhis said. "What we need to do now is set up round-the-clock surveillance on the bathroom. Sooner or later, we'll figure out exactly how those purple light particles are appearing!"
Lupin glanced up at the orbital dragon-slaying cannon. "…You mean a surveillance camera?"
Kasenhis shook his head. "Unfortunately, that thing needs wires and transmission lines—it'd be too easy to expose. Luckily, I have something much more convenient."
He pulled out his long-stored Thaumcraft Arcane Manual and began flipping through it intently. After a while, he found the recipe he wanted, hurried over to the arcane workbench, and laid out three gold ingots, one ender pearl, and a glass pane.
Before long, he had crafted a Magic Mirror.
"What's that for?" Lupin asked.
"Think of it as a simplified portal," Kasenhis explained. "But if we seal off the material channel, it'll function as a one-way mirror for long-distance viewing. That'll be your task—hang this thing on the inside door of the bathroom, and we'll be able to monitor it."
"This thing's going to need someone to watch it, right? Who on earth wants to monitor a bathroom? That's downright perverted," Lupin said, shuddering.
Kasenhis shrugged. "What do you think?"
"...Give me one good reason."
"I have classes every day, and you're around Nios all the time. Whenever he goes to the bathroom, you just take a peek—no big loss, right?"
"My sanity isn't a loss to you?"
"For the cause of resisting Voldemort, we all must make sacrifices!" Kasenhis declared solemnly.
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