Chapter 63: A Strange Prophecy
Before Ryan's arrival at Hogwarts, the library at night was a place of deep and profound silence. After his arrival, it became a place where one might randomly encounter a wild Ravenclaw.
"Cho Chang?" Ryan said, spotting a familiar figure in a corner of the library. "Out for a bit of night-reading?"
"Ryan," Cho Chang said, stepping out of the shadows. "I didn't expect to see you here. I heard footsteps, and since they didn't sound like Filch's, I figured it had to be a fellow Ravenclaw."
"Looking for a book? Need a hand?" Ryan asked. "I'm quite familiar with the library's collection."
"That would be wonderful, thank you," she said. "I'm looking for Advanced Potion-Making or Moste Potente Potions."
"Moste Potente Potions is in the Restricted Section," Ryan advised. "I wouldn't recommend it. But Advanced Potion-Making is on the third row, fourth shelf of the Potions section, the ninth book from the right on the top shelf."
"Thank you," she said, and went off to find the book. Ryan, meanwhile, headed straight for the Charms section and began pulling books: The Secrets of the Enchanted Portrait, How to Make Your Own Magical Moving Pictures, and The Magic of Consciousness. On his way out, he stopped at Madam Pince's desk and added to the checkout list: Ryan Welles, borrowing the following books…
"I am such a good student," he said to himself, and put down the quill.
The next day, in the Room of Requirement, a massive piece of parchment was spread out on the floor. On it were the detailed schematics for five different alchemical devices, a complete list of the spells required to create them, a multi-stage flowchart, and a comprehensive plan for a magical workshop, including different sections with specific temperature and humidity requirements, and a single, continuous production line connecting all the stages.
"That should do it," he said, dropping his quill and stretching his stiff muscles. "Four devices to produce the main components, and a final one to assemble them. For now, it's enough." It was just a theoretical design, but he was confident that after one or two failed attempts, he would be able to successfully create the devices. "An assembly line," he mused, "is by its very nature a reproducible technology. The truly advanced stuff doesn't get mass-produced." He had, he realized, underestimated the efficiency of magic. He, a self-proclaimed novice in alchemy, was on the verge of creating a production line for a magical communication device.
His fellow alchemy students: You're a novice? Then what are we? Chopped liver?
The Hogwarts Alchemy professor: You may be a novice, but you're already developing your own unique alchemical style! How is that possible?! It took me decades to do that! Did the Headmaster personally teach you?
Dumbledore: I'd just like to say that I did not teach him alchemy, I merely gave him a few pointers. Though, the Transfiguration notebook he checked out from the library in his third year was, in fact, mine.
Ryan, blissfully unaware of the immense resources he had poured into his alchemical studies, glanced at the clock. 7:59. His daily intel was about to arrive.
Right on time, an image appeared in his mind: a dark, damp cave. Water dripped from the tips of stalactites into a pool of still, dead water, devoid of any life. There was no moss on the cave walls. The entrance to the cave was a void of pure black, like a bottomless abyss in the middle of a dark sea. The air was thick with a sense of oppressive lifelessness.
And then the text appeared. It was unusually short, only a single, cryptic sentence.
[If it is, it is. If it is not, it is not.]
"What?! What does that mean?! No time or location this time?" Ryan was completely bewildered. At that moment, he wished more than anything for a "Transmigrators' Online Forum" where he could post: "Help, my superpower has started speaking in riddles! What do I do?!" Of course, he thought, if such a forum did exist, I wouldn't get a single serious answer.
This was no ordinary piece of intel. The lifelessness of the cave was unnatural, a place that shouldn't exist in the natural world, neither magical nor Muggle. And the text was more of a riddle than a prophecy. Desperate, he decided to try, for the very first time, to use the methods of "real" divination he had read about in Penelope's textbook. He began to cross-reference the symbols from his vision with their traditional meanings.
"Black… misfortune."
"An empty cave… a predicament."
"Stillness and shadows… ignorance?"
"The oppressive feeling… a spider's web?"
He strung the words together. "Misfortune, predicament, ignorance, web." He chewed on the words, and a sudden, horrible thought came to him. It couldn't be… Could it? "Not knowing the 'web' brings misfortune and a predicament to students!" he blurted out.
He had to be wrong. He was at Hogwarts now, but this was a different kind of "web," a different kind of "net"... But the fear was real. The fear of… plagiarism detectors.
He burst out laughing at the absurdity of his own interpretation. But then he stopped. What if…? No. It couldn't be. "If that's what this is about," he declared to the empty room, "I'll jump from the top of the Headmaster's tower and let the curse take me before I ever look at another piece of intel again!"
~~~
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