Lucas filled in the numbers the same as last time and wrote his parents' names again.

Just as before, a torrent of magic spread out before his eyes, branching into paths no one else could see, like a vast mind map, each node tied to a name too blurred to read clearly.

One branch stood out among the rest. Thick. Vivid.

Last time, Lucas had deliberately passed over it, and that was what produced the wrong answer.

This time, Lucas looked toward that branch. His magic flowed like water, pouring into it, coaxing the tendril to grow slowly upward.

He traced further and further back through names both numerous and tangled.

The magical window in the room stirred without any wind. The hazy simulated moonlight vanished behind a heavy bank of dark clouds.

A mysterious surge of magic descended into the room, giving the divination the push it needed to complete.

And at the very end of that long line of descent, a single name waited in silence.

The name was faint, barely there. Lucas had to concentrate to make it out at all. His magic traced its shape for him. He committed it to memory, then spoke it aloud: "Walter Devillote."

The moment the name left his lips, something invisible shattered.

A wisp of magic barely heavier than a breeze drifted out around Walter.

Lucas had cast a name-revealing spell. Above Walter's head, a line of italicized text appeared: Walter Devillote.

"It really is you!" Walter cried out, and then came a muffled thud. The binding magic on the coffin wouldn't yield. Walter collapsed back down into it.

"It seems I'm the person you were looking for." Lucas's composure held. He had just restored Walter's name to Walter, and in doing so had found himself a very senior distant elder on his family tree.

Now it was time to see what exceptional wealth that elder could bring him.

"You are the person I was looking for. My judgment and Dumbledore's were both correct." The sharp pain brought Walter back to earth. Walter lay in the coffin catching breath, waiting for it to pass.

"I didn't leave the school with the students at the start of this summer. In order to fulfil certain conditions set at the time of my appointment, I stayed on until the middle of the holiday. The result of my third divination was very strange — I actually felt it was more like a prophecy."

"The Whisperer shakes the scales, the apprentice alters the course of fate,

The star of the old world shall return from days gone by, truth and illusion overlap in the mirror as riddle,

One among them shall defeat the Dark Lord..."

Walter recited those lines in a low, weighty tone. A long silence followed the last word.

Lucas said nothing.

"Could an old man get some sort of reaction?" Walter snapped his fingers several times inside the coffin.

Lucas asked, expression odd: "What does this prophecy have to do with me?"

Walter grew agitated again: "The apprentice! The apprentice!"

Like a parrot that had just learned to talk.

"The prophecy mentions an apprentice! Is Snape not preparing to take you on as one!" Walter knew the full story of the still-unresolved apprenticeship situation between Snape and Lucas in considerable detail.

"This doesn't sound like a prophecy about finding a relative. You didn't even tell the Headmaster?" Lucas was genuinely puzzled.

"Of course I couldn't tell him! You sometimes lack the guidance of your elders — when anything involves a prophecy, no amount of caution is too much!" Walter let a measure of concern for the younger generation show, and spoke with patient persuasion: "Fate arrives in ways no one can anticipate. Those who hear a prophecy are generally powerless to change it."

"So what are we supposed to do next?" Lucas asked, hesitating.

"My suggestion: commit the prophecy to memory and tell no one — not even your mentor. I trust a Slytherin is not so foolish as that. As for the future, if you're willing, I'd like to invite you to my home over Christmas. We can use that holiday to look into how to open Devillote Manor."

The vampire said this with an air of great relief.

Lucas walked out of the ward and made a circuit of the Hospital Wing. Walter was found outside the door.

Curfew had already passed. Snape was holding the lantern Madam Pomfrey had given him.

Snape trusted that Lucas wouldn't be caught by another professor even wandering the corridors at night, but things had been unsettled of late.

Snape didn't ask Lucas anything about the exchange with Walter.

Simply looking Lucas over to confirm there were no injuries, Snape told Lucas to follow and return to the dormitory to sleep as quickly as possible.

On the way back, Lucas turned Walter's words over in his mind.

If truly a twelve-year-old young wizard, the right response ought to be feeling moved, a long-searching elder relative had finally found Lucas, someone of great wealth, so that Lucas would no longer have to struggle to get by.

But was that actually the truth of what Walter had described?

Lucas noticed that the time Walter had received this prophecy was close to the time Lucas and Snape had received a prophecy in Albania.

Two corroborating divinations, produced for the same event.

But what was worth noting was this: Walter's second divination had cost Walter's own name, and all it returned was a vague, indistinct direction.

Why was the third so different? Walter had paid no greater price for it.

One thing in particular unsettled Lucas. Walter had said staying on in the castle for a period of time after the students left.

Who, at the very beginning, had awakened the Diadem?

That Slytherin student? That Ravenclaw student? But why couldn't it have been Walter?

Was Walter's injury truly the result of interrupting Alice's cry for help and drawing the backlash of the contract?

That could certainly be explained. But there was another possibility: Walter had used the Diadem. Used Ravenclaw's wisdom to obtain the third prophecy.

By not dealing with the Diadem directly afterward, Walter had allowed students to be harmed. The responsibility in that version would be considerable.

Lucas considered that a version of events that also held together.

And in that version, everything fit more cleanly.

Lucas happened to know one person who could corroborate everything. Before long, Lucas would know exactly what Walter wanted.

That vampire told precious little truth. If Walter could deceive Dumbledore, why would Walter not deceive anyone else?

Lucas's head-down silence the whole way back read, in Snape's eyes, as someone weighed down by something.

Dumbledore had also informed Snape that Walter had received more definitive information, that with the aid of magic, Walter had determined there was a strong probability Lucas was the person Walter had been searching for.

Though the Headmaster had shown trust in the vampire, Snape harbored doubts.

Most of the time, Snape could be the fearsome professor who sent students fleeing at the mere rumor of his approach, but that didn't mean Snape was unaware of what went on inside their heads.

If Lucas were desperately longing for a family member, cautioning Lucas to stay on guard at a moment like this was not something Lucas would truly take to heart.

Besides, Snape himself was someone who had benefited from one of Dumbledore's judgments.

And so Snape stayed silent the whole way back, waiting for Lucas to tell the outcome on his own.

➤ Next: A Baby Tooth

Chapter 219 - A Baby Tooth

The lantern's soft glow lit the path up to the eighth floor.

Lucas must have been too deep in thought, because he accidentally stepped on the corner of Snape's robes.

The professor's stride hitched. Snape turned back with mild displeasure, ready to scold Lucas for the bad habit of walking while lost in thought.

Lucas let out a soft "ah" and pressed a hand over one side of his mouth.

"Watch where you're going!" Snape warned.

Snape glanced down at the visible footprint on the black robes and was about to clean it off himself.

Lucas cast a Scourgify — muffled, indistinct, but it worked.

The footprint vanished. Lucas still kept a hand over his mouth.

Snape frowned. "Is your tooth hurting?" The question came out uncertain.

Lucas shook his head and said nothing.

A moment passed. Then Lucas turned away abruptly, rustling around with something unseen, and turned back to hold out an open palm in front of Snape.

Snape looked down.

It wasn't a common sight. Snape took a moment just to identify what he was looking at before asking, "You're losing a baby tooth?"

Lucas pressed his lips together and nodded.

He had already rinsed it clean, a perfectly ordinary milk tooth.

A young wizard's teeth carry magical power. They can be used to make protective charms and the like.

Lucas had felt the tooth working loose for some time, but it wasn't until today that the teething had actually begun.

Snape was briefly at a loss. "Is that what you've been thinking about this whole time?" He had assumed Lucas was preoccupied with the matter of Walter.

Lucas quickly pocketed the tooth. What had he just been doing, showing off that a tooth had fallen out?

But Lucas caught the implication in Snape's words. "I found Walter's family name. Walter Devillote. I recall that Devillote is also a rather well-known Potions family."

"Was," Snape corrected the tense. "That family has no heirs left. Apparently all the relevant spellbooks are kept in the manor, and they're nearly impossible to find on the open market."

"Walter said I could open that manor." Lucas said it with complete seriousness. "Walter invited me to complete this task over Christmas."

Snape frowned. Family property was now involved. It no longer sounded entirely reliable.

They talked through the last stretch of corridor, and the Slytherin temporary dormitory came into view.

The dark-robed professor stopped outside and watched as Lucas walked into the already-darkened common room.

Based on the conversation with Dumbledore, the headmaster had found yet another new task for Snape, working overtime later to brew a potion, because an underage young wizard had suffered an accidental magic outburst, and all of it had landed squarely on Snape's plate.

After stepping into the common room, Lucas didn't go straight to the dormitory. He slipped through the side door into the Room of Requirement.

Ruby out. Alcohol lamp lit. Heat it, and wait for a sliver of Lord Voldemort's soul to surface and speak, to tell Lucas what Lucas wanted to know.

The matter of Walter violating the contract did, in fact, have more to it than met the eye.

Lucas lifted the ruby away from the flame and sat quietly in the Room of Requirement for a while, thinking. Then made up his mind.

.

Two weeks later, Walter was finally discharged from the Hospital Wing, looking considerably more haggard than before.

During the hospitalization, the headmaster had announced to the school that Professor Walter had been struck by a rare curse.

After the discharge, that information was quietly updated: Professor Walter would need to seek further treatment elsewhere.

In other words, Headmaster Dumbledore had doubts about the explanation that Walter had accidentally triggered the contract.

But without clear evidence, suspicion was only suspicion.

Professor Walter, dismissed, was nonetheless given a grand farewell by the students.

Those who considered themselves closest to Professor Walter gathered outside the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom door, waiting as Professor Walter finished collecting personal belongings.

A miniature coffin pendant now hung at Walter's chest. The coffin could be shrunk down when not in use.

Some of the more sentimental students had already started to cry.

It was, after all, a sad story. The professor who taught Defence Against the Dark Arts had ultimately failed to withstand the evil of the Dark Arts, and was leaving the school bearing wounds.

The students followed Professor Walter toward the school gates, the crowd growing, more and more of them dragging their feet.

Lucas didn't join in. Lucas stood in a corridor some distance away and watched the whole spectacle in silence.

Alice broke away from the crowd and walked over.

During her hospitalization, Lucas had sent over notes to help her keep up with the coursework.

Alice thought back over everything that had happened since the start of term and still felt as though she had fallen into a nightmare she couldn't wake from.

She had said exactly that when the headmaster sat her down for a talk: "The senior student and I are distant relatives — very distant — but we had met at holidays before. I found a badly injured little fairy and only wanted to save it. The senior student only said he had seen a healing spell in a book, but the book never mentioned that if the spell failed the reaction could be this severe..."

The headmaster listened patiently through all of Alice's confusion, then gently pointed out the key distinction for this bewildered, guilt-ridden young witch: "The spellbooks you study in your classes have been carefully compiled. The spells are very stable, and you have professors supervising and guiding you."

Dumbledore's voice was measured. "I believe you have known from a young age to stay away from Dark Magic. But sometimes the real difficulty is learning how to tell dangerous magic from ordinary magic. Using unverified spells is equally dangerous."

Alice could barely lift her head. At the beginning, she truly had only wanted to save that dying little fairy.

Later, once the headmaster had fully investigated the Ravenclaw incident from start to finish, the disciplinary decision came down, with one question still unresolved: the students whose life force had been nearly entirely drained.

Alice and her two senior students were docked a very large number of points, nearly emptying Ravenclaw's gem counter entirely. On top of that, a full semester of work service.

After the decision was announced, no classmates had been willing to walk with Alice for a long time.

The classmates who had been scratched bore no scars after treatment. But the pain had been real.

Alice had been writing letters home ever since, asking her family to arrange a school transfer.

She didn't know how she was supposed to keep going here. Every single day at school was agony.

And today, Professor Walter was leaving too.

Alice knew why Professor Walter had been hospitalized. That was her fault as well.

If she hadn't fed that little fairy, perhaps it wouldn't have had the strength to hurt anyone. And Professor Walter would never have suffered the contract's backlash.

➤ Next: Moaning Myrtle