The word attempt looked harmless at the top of Hermione's page. Percy suggested writing it in larger letters so nobody could accidentally mistake it for a promise.
Hermione underlined it instead. Beside her, Dumbledore moved the two covered bowls farther apart and asked Flitwick for the result of his inspection.
The smaller drop was ordinary rainwater now. It accepted a warming charm, reflected the lamp correctly, and failed to produce anything sinister when Ron called it several names Professor McGonagall hadn't approved.
"That proves what it is now," Flitwick said. "It does not prove what might have accompanied it through a larger opening."
"Comforting distinction," Percy said. "I was getting dangerously cheerful."
They weren't going to repair the whole seal. The plan was to enter the lower chamber, interrupt the false claim using the moment when Voldemort's damaged clamp released its pressure, and leave before the return channels opened fully.
Hermione had written the intended limits below the heading. No complete invocation, no surrender of an entire power or memory, and no attempt to draw the stolen sample back towards Percy.
Harry read the last line twice. "And if it doesn't let go?"
"We leave," Dumbledore said. "If the claim does not release within the agreed interval, signal Ron. Do not try a larger offering."
Snape asked Harry to describe the feeling he would use during the attempt. Harry put down the written plan and answered.
Harry talked about his broom. He described the moment before he pushed off, when being afraid and wanting to fly belonged to him at the same time, and Percy watched Snape listen without interrupting.
"Not a happy thought," Harry said. "Just mine."
"Precisely."
Ron leaned towards Percy. "If he starts giving points, check whether he's been replaced."
Percy started to laugh, then stopped as the sample connection tightened. Harry looked at him. Percy held up a hand until it passed.
The adjustment lasted longer than before. Whoever was handling the sample had learned to hold it steady, at least for a few extra breaths, and Percy told Dumbledore before anybody could count on yesterday's gaps lasting forever.
They rehearsed the withdrawal once more. Ron repeated the signals, and each of the three answered before McGonagall let them approach the stairs.
----------------------
Flitwick showed Ron the new arrangement one last time. The upper slab and the return tongue could now be held separately, with two plain wooden markers showing their positions in a narrow inspection slot.
One marker meant the entrance channel was open. The other meant the way back remained clear, and Ron checked the second before touching anything connected to the first.
McGonagall stood behind him with the safety rope. Dumbledore would watch the channel itself, while Flitwick watched the markers and the wedges that prevented the old mechanism from closing both routes together.
"And you," Ron told Percy, "will actually climb when I pull. No stopping to investigate mysterious noises."
"There goes my entire personality."
Ron didn't smile until Percy nodded. Then he handed over the lamp and checked Harry's knot with enough force to make Harry complain.
Hermione carried no copy of the old language. She had left her notes upstairs, and when Percy glanced at her empty hands she explained that she didn't want something in front of her making the next line look inevitable.
The channel ran downhill. Percy watched for the ridge that had moved against it during the inspection. It did not appear.
At the last bend, Aequor's presence settled beyond the wall. Percy felt the guardian's weight take up strain somewhere deeper than the chamber, and the brief image that followed showed a great body braced against a door.
Percy told the others what he had felt. Then he checked the rope leading back up the stairs.
The chamber was dry except for the sea hollow. A shallow lens of water sat inside it, perfectly still, with a dark point at its centre that failed to reflect the lamp.
Harry stopped at the threshold. His hand moved towards his forehead, paused, and dropped to his side.
"Cold. Still separate."
Hermione stood beside the hollow marked for mind, keeping her eyes above the inscription. Percy took the sea position, and the lamp between them cast three shadows back towards the doorway.
Percy looked from his position to the other two. Each return groove led separately toward Ron. He hoped they had understood what those paths were for.
The dark point opened in the hollow. Percy gave the stop signal before it widened farther. Ron answered.
----------------------
They waited through the first adjustment. The lens of water thickened, lifting above the stone without spilling, and a pressure shaped like Percy's own command pressed against his senses.
He let it pass. His hands remained open at his sides, and he concentrated on the ordinary dampness inside his shoes instead of the water inviting him to recognise it.
Hermione made a small sound. Harry looked across at her, and she shook her head before he could ask.
"I haven't answered."
The water settled. Percy felt the stolen sample become distinct for half a heartbeat, and he gave the signal by lowering two fingers towards his knee.
Harry closed his eyes. Hermione let out a slow breath, and Percy allowed one drop of water to rise from his wet sleeve into his palm.
He held the drop above his palm. It followed his hand without pulling toward the stolen water. He lowered it over the dry edge of the hollow.
"This is what I brought," he said. "I didn't bring that."
He kept the stolen water separate from the drop he had brought. Hermione waited beside her own hollow.
Hermione refused the sentence waiting behind her teeth. Harry opened his eyes and looked at Percy rather than at the dark centre of the hollow, keeping hold of the moment before flight.
A click sounded below them. A thin line appeared between the single drop and the lens of water. The pull against Percy's hand eased.
Percy felt the stolen sample fall away from him. The relief was so sharp that he nearly followed it, almost reaching down the connection to make the separation complete.
Harry caught the movement. "Leave it."
Percy flattened his hand. The single drop slid from his palm onto the stone, and the return groove nearest him brightened with a thread of silver water.
Hermione's shadow turned toward the center while she stood still. Percy gave the return signal. He did not wait to find out what would happen next.
A voice came from the floor. Percy heard it plainly above the water.
"I can send them back."
Harry went white. Hermione's fingers closed against her robes, but her feet stayed where they were until the rope tugged them towards the door.
"The people from the shop," the voice said. "The man in the road. Every place you left empty."
Percy wanted to ask where the missing people were. He took another step toward the door before the question left his mouth.
"We aren't agreeing to anything," Hermione said. She took another step towards the doorway.
Hermione stopped speaking and pressed a hand over her mouth. She pointed toward the door with the other. Harry caught her elbow.
Harry took her elbow. They moved together towards the doorway while Percy backed after them, watching the silver thread travel down his return groove.
The dark point stretched. For an instant it looked less like an eye than a hole with somebody standing very far behind it, and then the stolen sample tightened around Percy's senses again.
The pull continued instead of breaking. Percy told Harry to keep moving as stone ground beneath the hollow.
----------------------
Percy lost the lake. One moment it was beyond the wall, familiar as the weight of his own body, and the next there was nothing where that awareness should have been.
He stumbled. The rope caught his waist before his knee struck the floor, and the shock of needing it frightened him more than the pain.
"Percy!"
He heard Harry clearly. That helped him find the doorway in a room that had suddenly become only stone and lamplight, stripped of the larger world he'd been using without noticing.
"Can't feel it," he said. He forced his foot onto the threshold. "Keep going."
The silver thread gathered against the raised edge of the lower stone. Percy pointed to it. "That should be flat."
The way back was closing. Hermione saw it at the same time and dropped to one knee beside the small gap where the tongue could be lifted from the passage.
She didn't read the marks. She put her fingers into the plain recess and pulled, achieving nothing except a scrape across her knuckles.
Harry joined her. Between them the stone moved a fraction, enough for the silver thread to slide underneath, and somewhere above Ron shouted to Flitwick that the second marker was wrong.
A knock sounded in the wall. The lower stone dropped. Water passed into the return groove, and the rope helped Percy across the threshold.
Dark water rose behind him. It leaned toward the doorway in a narrow shape with no visible face.
Percy reached for it by reflex. Nothing answered, and the failure brought him back to the only useful thing he could still do.
He picked up the lamp. Harry hauled Hermione upright, and the three of them climbed while something wet struck the bottom step.
The rope moved in firm lengths. Ron wasn't trying to pull them through the stairs; he was giving them enough tension to find the next foothold, while McGonagall took the weight whenever one of them slipped.
Percy counted the steps aloud. Hermione joined him at seven, and Harry answered at eight. Their voices helped him keep climbing.
At the bend, the lake returned. It struck Percy's awareness so abruptly that he nearly fell again, and beneath it Aequor's vast presence held against something pushing hard enough to make the walls creak.
Percy kept both hands on the lamp and rope. He climbed toward Ron's voice while Aequor held the pressure below.
----------------------
Ron waited until Hermione's shoes cleared the top step. Then he checked the second marker, shouted that the return was clear, and dropped the upper slab with Dumbledore's hand braced beside his on the lever.
The sound cut off in the middle of a splash. Flitwick drove a fresh wedge into place, McGonagall pulled the rope's slack away from the channel, and nobody spoke until the stone stopped vibrating.
Ron counted them. Percy watched his lips move through the numbers before he seemed satisfied enough to breathe.
"Three," Ron said. "Three came back."
Hermione sat against the wall, pressing a clean handkerchief over her scraped fingers. Harry crouched beside her, his glasses crooked and his face still too pale, while Percy put the lamp on the floor before he could drop it.
Water dripped from Percy's sleeve. He raised one drop, let it fall, and sat down before trying anything else.
Snape arrived from the upper corridor carrying his bag. Dumbledore gave him the facts while McGonagall checked Hermione's hand, and Percy was too tired to resent being told to sit still.
Harry's scar had quieted after the channel closed. The foreign pressure remained, but he could distinguish it without forcing himself empty, and Snape ended the examination before exhaustion could turn that success into another experiment.
Hermione remembered the entire descent. She could still understand the language, but the next line no longer crowded her mouth when she thought about the sea hollow.
"Only that part," she said quickly. "I can still feel the rest waiting. We haven't ended the agreement."
Dumbledore nodded. He looked towards Percy, who was listening carefully to a sensation that had become conspicuous by its absence.
The stolen sample was still out there. Percy could sense it faintly when he concentrated, but it no longer pulled at him with every adjustment of the clamp.
"He can't use that route the same way," Percy said. "I don't know how long that lasts."
From beneath the lake, Aequor sent an image of one narrow crack closing beside a much larger seam. The great door remained under strain, and something pressed against it from the side Percy couldn't see.
Percy described the smaller crack closing. "One fewer," Ron said. "We did that much." Hermione wrote it beside the limits of the attempt.
Then Hermione asked about the voice. The question settled over the passage more heavily than the report of anything they'd managed to close.
"It named the missing officer without a name," she said. "The man in the road. Could it have taken him when the sample was stolen?"
"I will give Dorridge the words it used," Dumbledore said. "Her officers can compare them with the missing-person reports. We will look for those people without accepting the bargain."
Percy looked at the slab. He remembered how close he had come to asking the voice for help.
Voldemort had heard a similar promise. Percy wondered how long he had waited before accepting it.
----------------------
Snape left them before dinner. He paused in the corridor with one hand pressed against his sleeve, then changed direction without explaining, and Harry watched him go until Dumbledore quietly called his name.
They returned to the office for food and a report short enough that Hermione couldn't turn it into another night of work. Ron kept his new instruction card, though he crossed out nothing this time and added the word check twice at the bottom.
Percy stood by the window after eating. The lake reflected the evening sky, and his awareness of it felt ordinary again in a way he no longer expected to take for granted.
Aequor did not offer another image of victory. The guardian sent the shape of the stolen water's route, severed near the chamber, followed by a pressure moving elsewhere along the old boundary.
Harry put down his cup when Percy stepped away from the window.
"What is it?"
Percy waited until he was certain of the distinction. The sample was no longer pulling at him, but somewhere beyond the repaired crack, something was searching for another way to knock.
"We stopped him using our entrance," he said. "I think he's looking for his own."
Dumbledore joined him. Percy described the pressure moving along the boundary and asked him to tell Dorridge before she left the school.
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HOLY SHIT 50 CHAPTERS OF MY BS!!! I think I deserve a few power stones, right? Anyways, I have another 5 chaps to write :p
BAII GAIS!!!
Edit: Here's the rumoured extra chapter!!! Yayyy!
[SHAMELESS PLUG]
Fifty chapters, three survivors of extremely questionable plumbing, and one author still powered by instant noodles. Thank you for reading! If you want more chapters and would like to support the story, visit Reader004 on Patreon. Your support helps keep Percy arguing with ancient problems instead of leaving them on a cliffhanger forever!