Harry Potter: Fire Lord Black

The escort rota reduced one danger and created another: students began treating the approved routes as safe.

Edward heard the word three times in one evening. Safe corridor. Safe staircase. Safe hour.

"Safer," he corrected each time. "Not safe."

The distinction became more important after Harry admitted to Hermione that he had heard a voice no one else could hear near at least one attack. Hermione did not tell Edward the details, but she asked an unusually pointed question in the library about whether Parseltongue might carry through walls.

Edward looked at the castle plan beside them. "Pipes might carry ordinary sound. I do not know what they do to snake speech."

"If a serpent were moving through pipes, people could hear it without seeing it."

"A small serpent."

"Or magically enlarged spaces. Hogwarts has enough of those."

They wrote the idea under possible routes and took it to McGonagall. The professor listened, thanked them, and prohibited both students from testing the pipe system themselves.

Edward returned to the Slytherin common room thinking about Colin's camera and the possibility of indirect sight. If looking away mattered, students needed something simpler than courage in the moment. Telling frightened children not to look at a threat was sensible and unreliable.

His first idea was a blindfold.

Pansy stared at him. "Your great Black family invention is cloth?"

"Cloth has the advantage of being difficult to explode."

They tested ordinary scarves during a supervised Defense period Snape had grudgingly allowed for safety drills. The result was poor. Students lost direction, collided with desks, and took too long to cover their eyes. A blindfold worked only if the wearer was already against a wall with a clear route out.

Theodore suggested darkened glass. Hermione, when Edward mentioned the problem the next day, suggested simply carrying a small mirror to check corners. Edward rejected that for the same reason she did after thinking about it: if the attacker truly was a Basilisk, deliberately using a reflection still meant looking at its eyes through something.

"So the object should reduce sight without requiring a person to find the creature first," Hermione said.

That sent Edward back to his fire work.

He could make a thin sheet of flame that emitted more light than heat. The dangerous question was whether he could reverse the effect and make a sheet that absorbed enough light to obscure detail without burning the wearer.

He did not test it on his face.

Instead, he drew the simplest version on parchment and brought it to Flitwick.

"You want a veil in front of the eyes," Flitwick said, "not a shield, not armor, and certainly not proof against a creature you have never seen."

"Yes."

Stolen story; please report.

"Good. Then stop calling the first sketch 'Flame Armor.'"

Edward crossed out the name.

They began with a pane of glass on a stand. Edward formed a narrow ribbon of orange light in front of it and reduced the spell until the center darkened to smoky red. Through the glass he could still see movement, but letters on the far wall became unreadable.

The spell failed when his concentration slipped. The ribbon brightened, then vanished.

"That is the useful result," Flitwick said. "It fails open. It does not trap fire against someone's face."

A second test used a wooden practice head. Flitwick placed temperature charms around the eye sockets while Edward held the darkened veil several inches away. The reading rose only slightly. They stopped anyway.

"Why?" Edward asked.

"Because 'only slightly' becomes an excuse after the third successful attempt. We test again tomorrow."

Edward wrote the limitation into his notes.

The next day, Snape joined them. His contribution consisted mainly of asking what would happen if Edward were stunned, distracted, frightened, or unable to speak. The veil collapsed in every case.

"Then it is not protection," Snape said.

"It reduces visibility while active."

"Better wording."

They moved the working from Edward's continuous spell to a prepared strip of parchment. The parchment carried a simple reviewed charm that released a dark sheet for a few heartbeats when touched with a wand and given the phrase. It did not recognize threats, move with the bearer, or block spells. If the parchment tore or became wet, nothing happened.

Edward called it the Flame Mask because the name was already in his notes and because Pansy refused to accept "temporary low-light visual obstruction ward" as something a frightened first-year could remember.

Snape looked pained by both options.

The first human test belonged to Edward only after Flitwick placed him against a padded wall and stood close enough to end the charm. Edward activated the parchment.

A dark red veil unfolded before his eyes.

He could see the floor, Flitwick's shoes, and the outline of the door. He could not read Snape's expression from six paces away, which was probably a benefit independent of Basilisks.

"Walk to the door," Flitwick said.

Edward kept one hand on the wall and moved slowly. He reached it without colliding with anything.

"Now the failure."

Snape flicked water across the second strip of parchment. Edward touched it with his wand and spoke the phrase. Nothing happened.

"That is the version everyone needs to remember," Snape said. "An object may fail before danger does."

They authorized no general distribution. Edward received two prepared strips for supervised drills. Hermione received one only after McGonagall reviewed the idea and made her repeat its limits aloud. Pansy and Theodore helped test evacuation while wearing ordinary dark scarves so the drill did not become a demonstration of Edward's invention.

Draco was disappointed.

"You made something useful and you are giving out three pieces?"

"I made something that has worked in a classroom. That is not the same claim."

"What if the monster attacks tomorrow?"

"Then the best protection is still not being alone in an empty corridor."

The Flame Mask did not solve the Chamber. It did not make Edward faster, stronger, or immune to a Basilisk. It gave a trained student a few dim seconds to keep eyes low while moving toward an exit.

That narrow purpose was enough to continue testing.

The evacuation drill exposed another weakness that had nothing to do with the charm. When Edward activated the veil, he instinctively slowed until the student behind him nearly collided with his back. Flitwick stopped the exercise and reset everyone.

"A defense can create a new hazard," he said. "What do you change?"

Edward considered making the veil lighter, then rejected the first thought. "The person using it should not lead. Someone with clear sight guides from behind or beside them, if doing so is safe."

They tested that arrangement with Pansy giving verbal directions. It worked in the empty classroom and failed when Flitwick moved a chair into the route. Pansy saw the obstacle and stopped Edward before he struck it.

"Which means the mask depends on another person as much as the wearer," Pansy said.

"Yes."

"Put that on the front, not page six."

Edward did.

He also removed a planned hand gesture that required two fingers near the eyes. Snape pointed out that a frightened student might jab himself while moving. The revised release used wand contact with the parchment instead. Every simplification made the project less elegant and more likely to be remembered under stress.

That night, Edward sealed the unused parchment in Snape's office rather than taking it to the Astronomy Tower. The decision felt annoyingly responsible.

He was beginning to suspect that was what progress often felt like.