With a sharp whoosh, the pitch-black space blazed to life.

The horse at the center of the fountain sculpture burst into flames. Fire leaped across the stonework in a steady rhythm, then split outward toward the fountain's edges, the wind shaping each tongue of flame into the curve of a petal.

The blaze lit the surroundings as bright as noon.

Snape moved alertly in front of Lucas, the fur along his body bristling all over again.

Lucas's expression turned grave. His wand wasn't deliberately aimed at the horse or the armor, but he held it ready to strike at any moment.

Clang— The armored knight took its first step forward. Flames erupted across its body.

Rivulets of fire spread across the stone tiles.

Perhaps no coincidence: the garden's paving tiles were each a meter square, the same dimensions as the space that had trapped Lucas and Snape earlier.

The tile nearest the armored knight caught fire.

BOOM, In perfect symmetry, the tile directly behind Lucas and Snape ignited as well.

The wave of heat pushed them forward, hunting for safer ground somewhere in the middle.

"Is this the manor's trial?"

Lucas used the firelight to study the manor's mechanisms. His true vocation was Alchemical Master, and rather than earnestly working through the challenge, he was far better at reading the structure of a magical puzzle, finding a way to break the spell, or exploit a loophole.

As if sensing the question, words appeared above the armored knight, spelled out in fire.

When preparing the recovery potion used in making a Transformation Draught, if Moonstone powder is mistakenly substituted with Sage powder, what reaction will occur in the potion? What state is the potion in the crucible at that step? How should it be corrected?

The flames churned restlessly above the knight's head.

Both Lucas and Snape read carefully through each group of five or six words as they appeared. By the time they finally finished the full question, the armored knight fell still.

A burning countdown appeared above its head.

The design of this scenario was genuinely poor.

Lucas examined the tiles beneath him with a critical eye. Through magical perception and accumulated knowledge, the garden's overall design took rough shape in his mind.

The coordination between the horse and the knight was extremely crude.

He figured that once the countdown hit zero, the tiles would ignite one by one, compressing the available space and ultimately forcing the test-taker into contact with the burning knight.

The method used to display the question was a little juvenile, too. Showing only a few words at a time, leaning too hard on flame and metal, too rigid.

What did deserve credit was the question bank. Lucas stole a glance at Snape and read a look of contemplation on the black panther's face.

And perhaps a touch of irritation.

Because the Transfiguration question was an obvious reflection of Snape's current predicament.

Adapting the question based on external circumstances, the sensing magic behind that was genuinely well done.

Lucas set aside the alchemical angle and thought for a moment. "The common function of Moonstone is to stabilize fluctuations in magical energy, while Sage is commonly used to purify the effects of Dark Magic."

"A mistaken substitution would cause the potion to fail." Lucas paused.

He'd noticed that when he answered correctly, the countdown slowed. When he started bluffing, it resumed.

This particular potion wasn't one commonly taught at school, and when it came to predicting the potion's exact state, Lucas wasn't sure.

The panther beside him let out a sigh.

If Snape hadn't transformed, that would typically be the precursor to his dissatisfaction with a student, usually followed by some mockery and point deductions.

This question was beyond Lucas's curriculum. Even with every effort, a second-year wouldn't have studied this far.

Snape searched for the sensation of extending his claws, then attempted to scratch letters into the tile.

Fortunately, Lucas was quick on the uptake. The moment he saw Snape scratch out a B and an N, he understood.

"Under normal brewing sequence, the potion in the crucible will boil violently once the herbs are added..." Lucas caught Snape's nod and answered the rest with greater confidence. "But with the wrong ingredient added at that stage, there'll be no obvious difference in the potion's state."

The countdown slowed again.

"The correction is to cool the crucible down promptly." Standard response to violent boiling. "The stirring rod moves in an '∞' pattern..." Lucas looked down, seeking help.

The spelling work required of Snape this time was considerably larger.

He bared his sharp teeth at Lucas, then considered how to express himself.

Lucas watched Snape scratch out a triangle on the ground, then a feather.

A few question marks rose in his mind, then it clicked. This was pictionary. "Unicorn hair?" he confirmed quietly.

The panther swept its tail.

"Adding an appropriate amount of unicorn tail hair can remedy the mistake. The exact quantity is adjusted according to the state of the crucible."

Done.

Both Lucas and Snape let out a breath.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

The armored knight advanced three steps. The symmetrical tiles at the front and back ignited faster, quickly sealing off all four sides.

The second question refreshed.

A crystal ball, smallest size, rolled out from within the armored knight.

The question appeared above it in flame.

Look through the roaring fire toward an uncertain future. This crystal ball holds the power to discern what is to come. Speak aloud the first future you see within it.

Lucas and Snape exchanged a glance. Lucas hadn't taken the crystal ball Divination course yet.

"I see..." Lucas looked into the sphere, glowing deep red in the reflected firelight. A dark shadow seemed to flit through it, the flame's reflection dancing across the crystal surface like a small, glinting fang.

"I see that someone will die tonight." Lucas had taken Divination as an elective the first time around.

The charm of the course lay in the night before your very first lesson, lying awake with the textbook, letting your imagination run wild, picturing yourself slipping into a trance, gifted with a true Seer's rare talent, on the verge of delivering some great prophecy.

That feeling typically ended with the first class.

Divination was generally a subject where you learned the most in that very first lesson.

Because in class, you learned fast: the stranger and more ominous your divination, the more house points it earned you.

General disasters, deaths, forgetting something important, or for the more dramatic, achieving great glory only to find yourself left with nothing.

Lucas had been one of the top students in Divination that year. Young as he was, he'd already grasped the essence of it. Though perhaps "grasped" was generous, he remembered writing, purely to bluff his way through an assignment, something along the lines of: I shall perish by time. A line full of meditations on life.

Looking back now, one couldn't exactly call it wrong.

Lucas slipped quickly into a state of complete absorption, tapping into a latent flair for dramatic performance. "I see the form of a vampire running — he attempts to hunt but fails. I see a plan fall apart, a flight into escape..." A sharp, heaving breath.

Professor Trelawney had taught that year, and everyone had gotten quite good at imitating that signature pause.

Besides, it wouldn't arouse any suspicion. No matter the year, Slytherin students who'd taken Divination all enjoyed spending a day or two afterward in the common room doing impressions, then using the pretense of reading their classmates' fortunes as cover to get away with a little mischief at their classmates' expense.

"I see the vampire's death — he shall turn to ash!"

The armored knight was unmoved. The flames radiated heat steadily. Snape slowly turned his gaze from the crystal ball to Lucas.

Even one second of believing Lucas possessed a gift for prophecy would have been an insult to his own intelligence.

➤ Next: The Knight's Final Bow

Chapter 231 - The Knight's Final Bow

But a moment later, the blazing crystal orb rolled between them.

It rolled past Lucas and Snape, all the way to the fountain statue, and vanished into the flames.

CRACK — The stone shattered violently, and a small cluster of purple rose from the fire.

Snape swished his tail numbly.

He was starting to question the competence of whoever had designed these trials.

The first question had looked simple. In truth, most wizards couldn't clearly explain the difference between moonstone powder and sage powder. It was a seventh-year Ordinary Wizarding Level topic.

Lucas's foundational knowledge was solid.

Analyzing a cauldron's condition and identifying remedies was considerably harder, it required both talent and an accumulation of formulae well beyond any standard textbook.

Among thousands of possible ingredients, correctly naming unicorn tail hair or mistletoe extract was the hardest part of all.

A complete answer required a level of knowledge somewhere between Potions Master and Senior Potions Brewer.

Mistletoe actually produced a better effect, and it was easier to obtain.

But in his current panther form, pronouncing the word "mistletoe" was simply beyond him.

After seeing how difficult the first question was, Snape had been deeply anxious about the second.

Then Lucas passed it. Just like that.

Thinking it over, it made a degree of sense.

They were bound to come into conflict with Walter eventually. If this prophetic orb truly could distinguish truth from falsehood, then predicting Walter's failure first and predicting theirs second meant at least one prediction would pass.

Either way, the crystal orb's judgment that Walter would die gave Snape a small measure of relief.

The flames had already driven them to the center of the garden. The problem now was how they would escape once they answered the third question correctly.

There was barely a meter between them and the armor.

Heat rolled in wave after wave. The air itself seemed to warp with the burning.

Lucas, still in his winter wizarding robes, was beginning to sweat. He kept a constant watch on the black panther's condition.

Snape was agitated too, roasted from all sides. He had found a half-sitting posture to stay as far from the fire as possible, tail coiled over his paws.

Lucas noticed that the panther's whiskers had started to curl from the heat.

"Ah —"

He layered several heat-deflecting charms around Snape.

The breastplate over the armor's chest had vanished. In its place sat a magical vortex, dark and bottomless.

The question appeared —

Defeat the armor.

The flames tracing those words burned fiercer than before. Fire tongues nearly leapt beyond where the armor stood, reaching for whoever answered.

Lucas didn't hesitate. He raised his wand.

"Incendio!" Flames surged from his wand tip and drove straight through the vortex at the armor's center.

A magical link formed between his wand and the vortex.

The Incendio didn't spread into a sea of fire as it normally would. Instead it poured steadily, continuously into the vortex.

Lucas's opening move was a probe: magical strength of 'seven,' a second-year wizard of healthy development and considerable innate talent.

The armor was testing the measure of his output.

These questions had, in the end, not exceeded what the manor expected of an heir. A magical strength of 'seven' was more than sufficient for the vast majority of magical situations.

As the output held, Snape could see this was part of the test. But the occasional surges rippling through Lucas's magic made him wonder whether Lucas would clear it cleanly.

That worry proved unnecessary.

Lucas had taken good care of himself over the past year.

The flames held steady for close to a minute.

After bearing that sustained output, the ancient armor began to show signs of loosening at its joints. Liquid started to drip down through the fire, like sweat, like blood, and on closer inspection it was the metal beginning to melt.

Lucas raised his output slightly.

Through the long burning, the armor melted from the chest outward. The back plate and belly plate ran down to the ground. Then the hip guards melted into the leg guards, the leg guards into the knee guards. The armor grew shorter and shorter. At last it sank onto one knee.

The final thing to melt was the visor and helm, like the last bow of a loyal knight.

It had fulfilled its purpose.

The link dissolved.

The surrounding flames went out.

The molten metal flowed into the paving stone where the armor had stood, filling the grooves in the tile. It was still too hot to cool, but the shape was already visible.

A family crest was emerging from the stone.

A horse, wreathed in flame, at full gallop.

➤ Next: Taking a Shortcut