Chapter 153: Four Separate Threads

Edward's old notes treated fire, frost, weight, and wind as parts of one elegant arrangement. Burke's criticism made the elegance look suspicious.

The Heart Prism had been reviewed for one shield. Changing it into a source for four effects would invalidate every successful test. Rather than alter it, Edward began with four independent pieces of chalk on the laboratory table.

Remus read the labels. "Warmth, cooling, anchoring, and airflow."

"Small effects with clear limits."

"Why these four?"

"They match the branches I understand best, and each can be tested without a living target."

"That answers why you chose them. It does not answer why they belong together."

Edward looked at the square he had drawn around the pieces. Then he erased it.

They would not belong together unless evidence showed a reason. Each trial would have its own material, release mark, and failure rule. No shared source would link them.

The warmth sliver came first. Edward carved a familiar heating charm into a narrow piece of red jasper and set it in a clay holder. Its purpose was to warm a cup of sand by a fixed amount. It could not ignite wood and carried no recognition sample.

The first sliver blackened the cup because Edward had made the release mark too broad. The second warmed only one side. The third produced a steady rise, then continued past the agreed limit because the stopping mark had cracked.

Remus extinguished it with the physical valve and ended testing for the day.

"The charm was weak," Edward said while entering the failure.

"So was the crack. Small defects are allowed to matter."

They added two stopping marks on separate faces. If either failed, the release path broke. The next version warmed the sand and went inert before the bell rang.

The cooling piece proved more difficult. A sapphire fragment drew heat unevenly and split its glass container. Moonstone cooled the entire stand, including the silver clasp meant to hold it. They switched to a plain quartz sliver surrounded by wool and aimed the effect at a sealed vial of water.

It lowered the temperature without forming ice. A second release did nothing because the sliver had exhausted its prepared charm. Edward preferred that honest limit to a reusable object whose remaining strength could not be judged.

The anchoring piece was not a gravity weapon. It used a sticking charm to hold a wooden block against a marked surface for several seconds. Edward wanted it as an emergency brace for doors or loose equipment.

Kreacher watched the first test and asked what happened if someone's hand rested between the block and the surface.

They stopped.

Edward built a pressure plate that refused to activate if anything soft occupied the gap. Remus tested it with cloth, fruit, a leather glove, and a jointed wooden finger. The plate detected most obstructions but missed the finger when it lay flat.

"Then it is not ready for a door," Edward said.

They changed the intended use. The anchoring piece could secure only empty equipment on a marked laboratory stand. Any broader purpose would need a better safeguard.

Airflow seemed safest until the first gust lifted powdered pearl from a closed tray and spread it across the room. No one was harmed, but the sparkling dust revealed how far a small current could carry an irritant.

The revised piece worked inside a transparent tube. It moved coloured ribbons from one end to the other and stopped when the outlet was blocked. Edward imagined using it to clear smoke, then wrote that as a question rather than a claim. Smoke could contain poison, and moving it might expose someone else.

After a week, four slivers rested in separate boxes. Warmth had passed eight sand trials. Cooling had passed six water trials. Anchoring remained restricted to a marked stand. Airflow had never left its tube.

Edward drew no square around them.

Draco objected when the alliance met in the drawing room. "You had four branches on the original design. Now you have four objects that barely do anything."

"Correct," Edward said.

"That was not praise."

Hermione examined the registers. She had arrived with Harry and Ron through the Floo, under Mrs. Weasley's condition that they return before supper. "The old design barely did everything. That is worse."

Pansy tested the empty wrist mounting while Theodore compared the direction stitch to the diagram. Daphne read the warmth failures and stopped at the third entry.

"This one kept heating after the stopping mark broke."

"Until Remus shut down the stand," Edward said.

"Could it have burned someone?"

"Yes."

Draco's impatience diminished.

They discussed possible uses without touching the magical pieces. A short barrier might help a person reach cover. A cooling sliver might preserve a potion during travel. An airflow tube might clear fumes from a cauldron if a supervisor confirmed where the fumes would go. The anchoring test had no approved field use.

Samuel Rosier suggested joining the effects through silver threads so one person could choose among them. Edward showed him an earlier diagram with exactly that design and the three hidden paths it created between release marks.

"If one sliver leaked into another, we could not predict the result," Edward said.

"Then isolate the paths."

"That would require four separate objects. Which is what we have."

Samuel accepted the answer with a rueful smile.

The meeting moved to training in the cleared ballroom. No prototype was used. Remus placed coloured cloths around the room to represent exits, injured people, and uncertain hazards. Teams had to reach an assigned point using ordinary school spells while explaining each choice.

Draco cast a wind charm toward a cloth marked smoke.

"Where does the smoke go?" Hermione asked.

He stopped before releasing it.

Daphne tried to seal a door with a sticking charm, then noticed the injured-person marker on the other side. Theodore chose a shield instead and left the exit usable.

Edward's team failed when he focused on the nearest threat and missed a second route behind a screen. Remus recorded the error without granting extra weight to Edward's experience in the forest.

"You are designing aids for judgement," Remus said after the exercise. "None of them can supply the judgement."

At the next laboratory session, Edward tested the wrist mounting with an empty pouch while moving through the same course. It did not improve his decisions. It did catch on one curtain.

He shortened the pull-tab again.

Sirius contacted them after dark. His group had found traces of a struggle near the second shelter and a scrap of Ministry-green fabric caught on a thorn. They had not found Bertha. Dumbledore was arranging a small search party with authority to preserve evidence and extract any survivor.

"I may be out of mirror range for two days," Sirius said. "The missed-message plan begins tomorrow morning."

Kreacher stood rigid beside Edward.

"If you miss the deadline, Dumbledore starts the search," Edward said.

"Yes."

"And we wait for his instructions."

Sirius studied him through the glass. "Yes."

Afterward, Edward placed the four boxes in separate cabinets. The old version of him would have seen four weak effects waiting to become one powerful device.

He now saw four different questions, only partly answered.