The Felix Felicis slid down Dawn’s throat.

The pleasant sensation surged through him again—stronger than when inhaled as vapor.

Ideas sparked, collided, and rearranged themselves in his mind. Instinct and intuition filtered them one by one.

White.

Among earthworms, white was an unnatural color—opposite to the dark greys of the soil. It represented difference. Exception. Reversal.

And earlier, Slughorn had said that people associated worms with hiddenness, selfless labor, and resilience.

Dawn agreed—and the fact Slughorn had said this under the influence of Felix Felicis only increased its credibility.

The opposite of hiddenness was openness. The opposite of selfless labor was taking—stealing, even.

The opposite of life was death.

Thus, the white worm symbolized openness, taking, and death.

Looking at the role it played at the foot of the mountain in the fairy tale, this interpretation made sense.

Adding that to the second trial—repetition—and the third trial—cycle—

No. That wasn’t right.

Dawn narrowed his eyes, focusing on the line describing the four travelers simply walking forward along a path that never seemed to end.

“Repetition” wasn’t quite accurate.

“Process” fit better.

Openness. Taking. Death. Process. Cycle.

Those were the five conceptual elements Dawn extracted from the tale of the Fountain of Fair Fortune.

Perhaps they weren’t perfect—Felix Felicis didn’t grant absolute truth, only heightened intuition based on what one already knew.

But this was as far as he could reason for now.

He rubbed his chin, suddenly remembering the lost Ravenclaw diadem—the artifact said to enhance wisdom.

He wondered what his mind would be like if he still had it.

Too bad. He had agreed with Dumbledore not to destroy Horcruxes hastily, yet retrieving the diadem now felt almost impossible.

For someone as greedy as Dawn, losing such a treasure was agony.

He shook his head and pushed away the distraction, pulling a parchment sheet toward himself. He wrote the five words down in order.

What next?

Recognizing the components wasn’t enough. He needed to recreate the ritual implied by the fairy tale.

But what was that ritual?

Dawn considered this, then asked suddenly, “Slughorn, how was the Animagus ritual invented?”

“Huh?”

The half-bald potioneer blinked up at him. “How should I know?”

Slughorn stared at him, exasperated.

A centuries-old ritual, with no recorded creator—how could he possibly know its origins?

Dawn snorted softly, thinking Slughorn was proving unusually useless.

The feeling was mutual; Slughorn looked equally pained—only with more flattery and fear.

With no answers from the old man, Dawn went back to thinking.

Should he gather objects representing the five elements? Brew them together with tears, sweat, and memory?

He stared blankly ahead.

In the canon, both the Animagus ritual and Voldemort’s resurrection involved potions—but under the influence of Felix Felicis, Dawn felt instinctively that this was wrong.

He looked again at the three trials in the fairy tale. These were deeds—actions, not ingredients.

The tears, sweat, and memories were all byproducts of the actions, not components prepared beforehand.

So— What kind of action, in the collective imagination, would embody these five concepts?

Open. Take. Die. Process. Cycle.

Dawn frowned—no clear answer.

Then a thought struck him.

In the story, “my suffering,” “the fruits of labor,” and “the wealth of the past” were all defined by the characters themselves.

Which meant— What if the ritual’s specific form could also be determined by the performer?

If he enacted something that fulfilled the five elements and produced tears, sweat, and memory along the way—then regardless of the action itself, the ritual would count as complete.

The cool clarity of the potion began to fade.

He took another sip of Felix Felicis.

A new idea surfaced.

In any ritual, the sorcerer’s intent mattered—sometimes more than the external form.

He thought of the Unbreakable Vow.

Thanks to Haris, Giggs, and Slughorn, Dawn had accumulated deep understanding of that spell over the past months.

The ritual was simple—just words spoken and sealed with magic.

But the vow only worked because both participants fully understood the consequences. Without internal acceptance, a casual oath alone would never invoke natural magic.

Dawn smirked.

He had long suspected that if one party truly rejected the vow in their heart, the ritual might fail.

But because the spell had been passed down for generations, its effect had become rooted so deeply in collective belief that even unwilling participants subconsciously accepted its power.

Dawn twirled a quill between his fingers—then dropped it, leaving an ink blot on the parchment.

He didn’t look at it.

Magic, at its core, was an expression of will. A manifestation of mind. Even rituals bound by tradition were still shaped by intention.

He stared down at The Tales of Beedle the Bard again.

The essential elements were all laid out. But how one wove them into a ritual—there were infinite possibilities.

For Dawn, the rule was simple:

If he believed his actions fulfilled the five elements— Then any action he performed could count as the ritual.

But— He still had to ensure that during the ritual he produced the necessary byproducts: tears, sweat, and memories.

He sank into thought, considering what sequence of actions could satisfy:

Openness. Taking. Death. Process. Cycle.

Four were easy enough. But incorporating cycle made everything strangely complicated.

Hands clasped beneath his chin, Dawn finally looked up.

“Slughorn,” he said suddenly, “what do you know about the Department of Mysteries?”

“The Department of Mysteries?”

Slughorn blinked.

Of course he knew it. After thinking for a moment, he began explaining what he could:

“It’s a highly autonomous division of the Ministry. They handle major, secret magical matters. Everything there is classified.”

“The wizards who work there are called Unspeakables. They hide their faces so no one knows their real identities.”

He continued with a broad summary, then, noticing Dawn’s childlike curiosity, added quickly:

“Be careful! The Department is extremely dangerous. It deals with magic related to death and time. Even standing in the wrong room could kill you!”

“I recall thirty years ago, a wizard simply vanished inside. They never found the body.”

Dawn raised a brow. “You’ve been inside?”

“Once,” Slughorn said.

“It’s not that hard. Fame or a donation can get you a visitor pass. But that’s all—no one is allowed to handle anything.”

He went on describing what he saw.

Dawn listened attentively.

“And do you know,” Dawn asked, “if the Department has made any real progress in magical research recently?”

“Progress?”

Slughorn made an odd face.

“Well… despite what people say about research, even back when I visited, the place was more like a storage vault.”

He shrugged.

“Honestly, they weren’t researching anything. Just hoarding artifacts.”

Dawn felt deflated.

But thinking logically—it made sense.

Recent decades had produced few magical prodigies. The wizarding world had been turbulent. Unspeakables were rare, and the Ministry leadership incompetent.

No wonder the Department had declined.

He recalled the canon.

The Death Chamber. The ancient arch that whispered to the dead.

The Time Room with its clockwork devices and the looping hummingbird.

The Brain Room.

The Hall of Prophecy.

It was the most mysterious magic the wizarding world possessed. Dawn had always wanted to explore it.

One day, he would. But not now.

After stumbling through trial-and-error when learning magical creature transfiguration, he had realized how lacking his theoretical foundation was.

He needed time to study. Preferably inside Hogwarts again—its library still haunted his mind.

But first, he had other tasks.

“Slughorn,” Dawn said suddenly, “I need a Time-Turner. Whatever you must do—steal it, borrow it—I want one within three days.”

Slughorn froze.

“A… Time-Turner?”

Dawn nodded firmly.

“Yes. And when you retrieve it, make sure no one discovers your identity. And if you get caught—you will reveal nothing about me.”

Their vow marks glowed faintly.

Slughorn had already sworn to fulfill any task that did not directly harm himself.

Dawn rose from his chair.

While Slughorn worked, Dawn would go find Rita Skeeter.

Not to punish her—yet.

He needed her as a journalist.

One of the ritual elements was openness. Publicity.

He needed something printed in the Prophet. And under Felix Felicis, he already knew exactly what he planned to do.

Just before Apparating away, he paused, reached into his wallet, and pulled out a pile of ingredients he’d taken from Giggs’s shop.

He tossed them onto the table.

“One more thing. Besides the Time-Turner, brew more anger potions. The kind that makes a person furious. I need them soon.”

Ignoring the anguish on Slughorn’s face, Dawn vanished with a sharp crack.

___________

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