Chapter 44: Midnight Recitation
Harry hurried over with his notebook and handed it to Douglas, deeply embarrassed.
At that moment, he very much wanted to tell Professor Holmes that memorizing something and being able to write it down were two completely different things.
Douglas took the notebook, skimmed it, and sighed.
"Don't write it out yet. Go stand with Ron and memorize the passage first."
Just then, a burst of laughter came from the twins' direction.
Ron immediately shouted, "George! Fred! Do you want me to—"
The twins quickly put on apologetic smiles.
Douglas looked at Ron and Harry and said, "Once you've memorized it properly, take one of my notebooks and copy it out again."
Then, to Harry and Ron's astonishment, the words they had already written vanished from the page.
Next, Douglas did something surprisingly humane.
With a quiet flick of his wand, he cast a charm over himself, George, and Fred.
Almost at once, George and Fred realized that all sound had vanished from around them.
They turned in surprise and saw Ron and Harry staring down at their textbooks, their mouths opening and closing.
But no sound reached them at all.
The twins looked at each other.
Fred said loudly, "George! Why can't I hear anything?"
George read his brother's lips and shouted back, "I can't hear anything either!"
Their sudden loudness caught Harry and Ron's attention.
Both of them turned in surprise. Clearly, the twins were speaking much louder than before, yet Douglas, who was still sitting there drinking tea and reading parchment, seemed not to hear them at all.
Then George and Fred started experimenting.
First they slapped the table.
Nothing.
Then they looked at each other and grinned, picking up whatever they could find on the desk and banging it around to make noise.
To them, the experience was fascinating.
George sighed in admiration, "The silent world is beautiful."
Fred, unable to hear him, responded with perfect instinct anyway.
"If we could use this at home, we'd never have to listen to Mum nagging again."
At that very moment, a voice suddenly exploded in their ears like thunder, as though it had risen from the depths of their own minds.
"Really? Then perhaps you'd like to try a muting spell too."
"Make yourselves a pair of deaf-and-dumb twins."
The voice was so sudden and so loud that both boys nearly dropped their quills.
Their heads rang.
It took them only a moment to realize the voice belonged to Douglas.
But when they looked over, he still wasn't looking at them.
Harry and Ron, meanwhile, were both baffled. One second the twins had been delightedly fooling around, and the next they looked as though they had been hit by a curse, clutching their heads and shaking all over.
Before either of them could ask, Douglas said coolly, without lifting his eyes from the parchment in front of him, "Ignore them. Memorize your own work."
The voice they had heard really had come from Douglas, but it was a spell in itself.
He called it the Sound Transmission Charm.
When used together with the Muffling Charm, it created exactly the effect George and Fred had just experienced.
Douglas had once used the same combination while traveling and had stunned seven dark wizards at once.
The Muffling Charm was something Douglas had invented during his student years. At its simplest level, it created perfect silence around the ears of the target. At a more advanced level, it could create a zone of silence around the caster, cutting off all sound for anyone within range. It worked equally well on wizards, ghosts, and even poltergeists like Peeves.
The Sound Transmission Charm had also been one of Douglas's inventions, developed from principles similar to those behind the Patronus Charm. It allowed him to direct his voice precisely into someone else's ear within a certain distance.
When combined with the Muffling Charm, the result was a sort of three-dimensional surround-sound effect inside the victim's ears.
The side effect, of course, was that if the volume was not carefully controlled, the target might be stunned, deafened, or in severe cases, suffer permanent damage.
There was also the Muting Charm, which Douglas had created after failing to find a proper silencing spell in any known records. Unlike harsher muting magic, this one temporarily sealed the vocal cords without causing serious harm, making it particularly useful for practicing silent spellcasting.
An hour passed quickly.
At last Harry and Ron picked up fresh notebooks and began copying again.
George and Fred exchanged another grin, then walked over to Douglas with their work.
"Professor, we've finished today's dictation."
"Professor, may we read for a while now?"
Douglas lifted the charm, took their notebooks, and glanced through them.
Then he let out a cold laugh.
"So. You two are quite talented at cheating, aren't you?"
"The error rate's below twenty percent. Very impressive."
The twins froze.
They looked at each other in shock.
They couldn't understand it. Throughout the whole process they had kept an eye on Douglas using the reflection in the ink bottle. As far as they could tell, he had never once noticed what they were doing.
They even turned to look accusingly at Harry and Ron, who were trying not to laugh.
The two younger boys shook their heads frantically.
Douglas slammed the notebooks down in front of the twins.
Then, with a wave of his hand, the office door flew open.
"You two," he said coldly, "take your notebooks and stand at the office door. Recite until you truly know it."
"Then write it out again for me there."
The twins stared at him, stunned.
This was not how it had gone last time.
Then they realized, with a bit of relief, that it was late and there would probably not be many people in the corridor.
At least it would not be too embarrassing.
So the two of them trudged dejectedly toward the door.
"Leave the cheat sheets behind," Douglas barked.
"Or were you planning to use them again?"
George and Fred had no choice but to pull the false cuff-sleeves off their arms and place them on Douglas's desk.
Then they stepped outside and stood on opposite sides of the office door.
George whispered, "Fred, were you caught when you copied?"
Fred looked back in disbelief.
"How could I have been? I was being careful. It was obviously you who was discovered."
From inside the office came Douglas's roar:
"What are you two muttering about?"
"Stand properly!"
"And if I catch you cheating again next time, I'll put you at the school gates and let all of Hogsmeade watch you!"
"Harry! Ron! What are you two laughing at? Didn't I tell you to get on with it?"
The office door slammed shut.
The corridor fell quiet.
George and Fred pulled faces at the door, then obediently opened their notebooks and began to read by the light of the torches.
A moment later, a figure drifted lazily into view in the air opposite them.
He looked like a stunted little man with black hair beneath a tall hat and a pair of wicked eyes.
It was Peeves.
He stared at the twins for a long time.
Then he suddenly threw back his head and laughed.
"Tsk tsk," he whispered gleefully. "Peeves heard it—cheating! What fine students!"
He took off his hat and gave them an exaggerated bow.
"The warriors who challenged the devil have earned Peeves's respect!"
George and Fred looked at each other.
"The devil?"
"Peeves, are you calling Professor Holmes the devil?"
That title startled them more than they cared to admit.
Peeves was a bully who loved the weak and feared the strong. Even when dealing with powerful professors, he usually used mock-polite forms of address. Behind their backs, he preferred sneering nicknames.
But this was the first time they had heard him call anyone the devil.
Before Peeves could answer, Douglas's voice came through the closed office door again.
"Didn't you two eat? Or do you think reciting doesn't require your voices?"
At once, Peeves vanished with a whoosh.
The twins didn't dare waste any more time. They lifted their notebooks and began reading aloud.
In the quiet corridor, their voices echoed strangely.
They found the effect amusing and soon turned it into a competition, each trying to outshout the other by one degree, then two, then three.
The sound carried down into other corridors, startling students and making several doors crack open so people could look out and see who on earth was making that much noise.
Mrs. Norris, prowling on patrol, spotted the twins and immediately raced off toward the lower floors.
Obviously, she was going to summon Filch.
The twins saw her too—but instead of lowering their voices, they grew even louder.
This time they had been ordered to recite in the corridor.
If Filch came to accuse them of disturbing the peace, they were not afraid.
Before Filch arrived, however, another door opened first.
Professor McGonagall's office door swung wide.
"Mr. Weasley! What on earth are you doing? Gryffindor—"
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