Hermione brought a shopping list to the first test. Ron read it and asked whether the bread needed a safety rope. She told him to sit down.
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 drew a silver thread from her temple and lowered it into the Pensieve. Harry covered the list while Dumbledore asked her to describe what she remembered.
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 beside the door. Percy pulled out a chair for him, but Snape left it empty.
"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."
Dumbledore looked at Flitwick before answering. The fragment remained covered on the other table.
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."
Hermione nodded and repeated the stopping condition. Percy was glad Harry had asked.
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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 sat back and put both feet on the floor. "It is still asking you," he said.
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 turned toward the Pensieve. The memory of her first translation moved inside the basin.
"Because I agreed to answer," she said. "Not because I remember the question."
Snape took out the notes on magical agreements.
"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 looked from the notes to her own hands.
"So I could throw away everything I remember learning and still be attached."
Dumbledore covered the basin and ended the test. He asked Hermione whether she was ready to have the memory returned.
"We will stop using memory loss as the proposed release," he said. "The connection remained after the memory moved."
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 asked where the ink stain had been. Hermione pointed to the same place she had described before the test.
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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.
After the pull stopped, Percy could feel the sample as a small amount of water. The urge to move it faded before the next pull began.
"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 asked how long the pause would need to last. Hermione left room beside the gap for Flitwick's answer.
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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.
"I have seen the stone catch twice," Flitwick said. "We will not use it until the wedge holds while water presses against it."
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 watched a crack in the wall. Percy counted the seconds between pulls and kept his hands on his knees.
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.
A drop jumped from the full bowl into the empty one. Percy heard it land and turned to Harry.
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 pointed out the drop to Flitwick. The professor covered that bowl separately before examining it.
----------------------
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."
"Keep naming what is yours," Snape said. "You can recognize the intrusion even when it has not stopped."
Harry asked whether they could practice that without the fragment in the room. Snape agreed.
Hermione asked Dumbledore whether he meant the test had confirmed a safe release. He shook his head.
"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 waited before trying to follow the impression. Harry watched him from beside the blocked channel.
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.
"There was a sharper pull after the interruption," Percy said. "Someone may have noticed what we did."
Snape went to check the latest message from his source.
"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 looked at the covered bowl. He wanted to know what else could arrive while they were trying to leave the chamber.
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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)
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