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Their footsteps blurred as they ran, every heavy tread echoing down the corridor like thunder.
They tore around corners, bolted down stairs, and didn't stop until they reached the fifth floor. Only then did they slump against the wall, gasping for breath and staring at one another.
Damn.
"That thing actually counts as a dog?" Hector muttered, still rattled.
Anthony let out a breathless laugh. "Why wouldn't it? It's got dog heads and a dog body. Just… a little bigger than average."
"And they didn't even chain it up," Hector said, shaking his head. "Lucky it's so huge. If it could've squeezed through that door after us, one bite and we'd be lining up for rabies shots we didn't need."
They stayed leaning against the wall for a while longer, catching their breath.
Hector spoke again. "Why would there suddenly be a three-headed dog here? According to Professor Dumbledore at the start-of-term feast, it was only placed this year."
"This term," Anthony corrected.
He shook his head. "Who knows? Maybe it's some rare protected creature that can't just be left loose in the Forbidden Forest."
"Protected creature," Charlie said with a half-smile. "Protecting who? The other little animals in the forest?"
The other two burst out laughing at the same time.
After resting a bit longer against the wall, they finally pushed themselves upright.
"We've seen it. Let's go find something else to do."
Charlie nodded in agreement and fell into step behind Anthony.
Hector stayed where he was, looking thoughtful.
"What are you thinking about?" Charlie asked.
"I… don't know," Hector said, shaking his head. "Just feels like something's off. Never mind. It's probably nothing important."
Charlie pressed his lips together in a small smile. Looked like Hector hadn't landed on a solid answer yet.
With the adventure over, the three of them headed back to the common room.
Anthony somehow produced two sets of Gobstones. The game was basically magical marbles—either played on a board like a billiards-style setup where you knocked your opponent's stones, or without one.
It was Charlie's first time playing, but years of street magic had given him quick, clever hands. He picked it up fast and soon had Anthony and Hector groaning in frustration every time he won.
In this game, the loser usually got sprayed with a foul-smelling liquid from the Gobstones. Charlie couldn't see the point of the punishment mechanic. It was just gross and offered zero benefit. A good game should have proper rewards, not penalties. That was probably why Gobstones stayed such a niche activity.
Still, according to Hector, there were actual Gobstones clubs in the wizarding world that held regular tournaments. Hector had been looking into all kinds of magical competitions lately because of his own chess matches.
Charlie learned that it wasn't unusual for young wizards to compete internationally while still in school. In the original story, aside from the Triwizard Tournament, those events had barely been mentioned—though there were hints, like one of Durmstrang's champions also being a Seeker in the Quidditch World Cup.
The conversation drifted to Dumbledore's own achievements back when he was a student: the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, representing Britain as a youth delegate at the Wizengamot, and the gold medal for groundbreaking contributions at the Cairo International Alchemy Conference. Every single one carried serious weight and showed that the greatest wizard alive today had been shining bright since he was young.
"If I could do even half that, I'd happily shave ten years off my life," Anthony said wistfully.
Charlie's hand paused mid-shot over the Gobstones. If you did the math, Dumbledore had probably already lost more than ten years.
He might look ancient now, but he was only a hundred. Still young, with at least another fifty or sixty good years ahead of him.
They played a while longer. After Charlie used the Scouring Charm one more time to clean the stinking liquid off everyone, Anthony and Hector finally called it quits and refused to play anymore.
Anthony always had another distraction ready. He dragged Charlie and Hector over to a third-year girl. She poured each of them a cup of hot tea. Once they finished, she collected the cups and studied the shapes left by the tea leaves at the bottom.
"You're going to spend some time alone with a girl soon," she told Anthony after looking at his leaves.
"Really?" Anthony's eyes went wide. He didn't even notice his grin stretching from ear to ear.
She moved on to Hector's cup. "You're going to be exhausted. You'll be thinking hard about something every day until the holidays end."
Hector groaned and rubbed his forehead. "Yeah, well… I still have to go to the finals."
Finally she looked at Charlie's leaves. She studied them for a couple of seconds, then flipped through the divination book on her desk. "Hmm. You're going to do something big."
"Oh?" Charlie leaned forward, interested. "Is it something I'm forced into, or something I choose to do?"
"You choose to do it."
"Then it's fine," Charlie said with a smile and a nod. "Usually when you're forced into something, it's not good. Right?"
The girl nodded in agreement. They chatted for a few more minutes before wrapping up.
By lunchtime Charlie's ears had finally stopped smoking. After eating he felt noticeably more energetic.
"So does that mean I'm better?"
"That's because you ate lunch," Anthony said flatly, looking at him like he'd said something painfully obvious.
Charlie blinked, then realized. "Yeah, that's true. Food gives you strength."
But that wasn't the real issue. The real issue was—he was bored out of his mind.
"Let's go to the club. What's more interesting than magic?"
Anthony and Hector exchanged a look. They'd already burned through every fun thing they could think of that morning. There really wasn't anything else left to do.
Was there a better option than heading to the club?
After lunch the three of them strolled up to the eighth floor and the Room of Requirement like they were out for a casual walk. Charlie first ducked into his alchemy workshop to grab a stack of design sketches, then joined Anthony and Hector inside the Moonlight Club.
The moment he sat down at his usual desk, Charlie slipped straight into focus. The sketches he'd brought back were for the automatic Moon Dew collector.
Progress on that project had been painfully slow lately.
Part of it was that he'd been way too busy. The other part was that designing a fully automatic collector was genuinely difficult—he'd hit several roadblocks and decided to shelve the whole thing for a while.
Sometimes grinding away at a problem just made you dig yourself deeper into a dead end. Putting it aside for a bit often helped. When you picked it back up later, details you'd missed before suddenly stood out, and new ideas started to appear.
Like right now—