A bolt of blue magic struck the massive pendulum in the center of the hall with dead-on precision. Under the watchful eyes of the five students, the heavy weight slowly began to swing to the left.
The deep, grinding sound of heavy gears turning echoed through the room. As the pendulum reached its absolute peak, a massive, deafening boom ripped through the hall.
BONG!
Trapped by the group's Large-Scale Silencing Charm, the invisible shockwave of sound had nowhere to escape. It violently ricocheted around the enclosed hall before finally dissipating.
"One!" Hermione called out, keeping her wand raised as she started the count.
The pendulum slowly swung back down. All of its kinetic energy seemed to be absorbed by invisible gears, coming to a dead stop the exact second it hit the bottom of its arc.
Seeing this, Richie thought quickly. Relying on basic physics, he switched directions and fired off another spell.
"Pendulum Sonorus!"
BONG!
"Two!"
Richie found the rhythm and kept firing. The pendulum's swing grew smoother, violently rocking left and right, blasting out thunderous chimes with every pass.
He had to hit thirteen chimes as fast as possible. During their practice runs, the group had maxed out their Large-Scale Silencing Charm at exactly four minutes. If he couldn't pull this off before the dome collapsed, they'd be forced to rest for hours before trying again—and their next attempt would be even shorter.
There were way too many variables at play. Getting it done on the first try was non-negotiable.
Based on their current pace, four minutes was more than enough time.
Assuming, of course, that nothing went wrong.
But as the chimes stacked up, a quiet, sinister change began creeping through the hall.
"Oh, Merlin... look at the statues!" Neville's terrified voice suddenly rang out.
Richie instantly stopped casting and whipped his head around.
What he saw made his pupils shrink.
The suits of armor—the knight statues that had been standing silently in the corners of the hall—had left their alcoves. And they were moving right toward them.
Using the pendulum as the center point, the five statues had already silently covered a third of the distance!
The others saw it too. Seamus, completely terrified, violently shuddered, and the hand gripping his wand twitched.
That single flinch sent a massive ripple of instability straight into his magic.
The fluctuation hit the intersection of their spells mid-air, feeding back violently into the wands of the other three.
A sharp, physical backlash struck Hermione, Neville, and Ventis. Their wands were literally blasted out of their hands, clattering onto the stone floor.
Instantly, the Silencing Charm shattered. The group hissed in pain, grabbing their stinging hands.
Fortunately, the magical kickback was minor. It just felt like they had been sharply whipped across the palms; there was no serious damage.
Seeing the perimeter collapse, Richie lowered his own wand.
The others scrambled to pick up their wands and grouped up tightly around him.
"I'm so sorry, guys," Seamus whispered, looking down at his shoes in utter defeat. He knew his slip-up had broken the spell and gotten them hurt.
"It's okay, Seamus," Hermione said, shaking her head. "We honestly should have expected that it wouldn't be this easy."
Neville didn't say anything, just reached out and gave Seamus a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"Alright, so what's the play here?" Ventis asked, crossing her arms.
The group scanned the room.
The knight statues had completely stopped moving. They were just standing there, frozen out in the open, looking entirely out of place in the middle of the hall.
Richie frowned, studying the five statues intently.
Nothing he knew about the Clock Tower mentioned anything about moving armor. Visually, they looked completely ordinary. Stone armor, stone swords. You could find identical statues scattered all over Hogwarts.
But they had undeniably moved. And there was no telling what they would do next.
He had only managed to ring the bell seven times. He still needed six more.
Based on the distance they had covered, by the time he hit the thirteenth chime, those five statues would be standing directly behind them.
"Do you guys want to keep going?" Richie asked, looking around the circle. "If we think this is getting too dangerous..."
"We keep going!" Seamus blurted out.
He looked up, his expression hard. "We've been planning this for way too long. We're not backing down just because of some creepy armor! If... if things actually go sideways, we can use magic to defend ourselves!"
Neville lifted his chin, fully backing him up. "Seamus is right. We're not giving up. They're literally just rocks!"
Ventis blew a stray hair out of her face. "We're already here. Tucking our tails and running now would be pathetic."
Richie nodded, impressed by their grit. He turned to Hermione. "What do you think?"
Hermione stared at the bizarre, creeping statues, then looked at the fierce determination burning in her friends' eyes. Finally, she nodded.
"We keep going! But we have to be extremely careful!"
"Alright then. We finish this," Richie said, letting out a slow breath.
The four of them stepped right back into formation and raised their wands.
"Quiescat Magnus!"
The invisible dome snapped back into place. Richie immediately resumed his attack.
"Pendulum Sonorus!"
The dead pendulum swung back to life, and the deafening chimes started blasting through the hall once again.
But this time, hyper-aware and listening for it, the group instantly caught the anomaly.
Buried beneath the booming chimes and the grinding gears, there was a faint, agonizing scraping sound. Stone dragging against stone.
The statues were advancing.
Even though they knew it was coming, hearing it sent chills straight down their spines.
"Eight!" Hermione's voice was tight and strained.
The pendulum dropped back down to the bottom of its arc.
The statues stopped dead.
Richie narrowed his eyes, watching the mechanics of the room.
A theory clicked into place.
What if the gears powering the pendulum are directly linked to the statues?
They were only moving because his magic was forcing the pendulum to swing. The kinetic energy was turning the gears, and those gears were driving the statues forward.
If that was true...
To test his theory, Richie didn't wait for the pendulum to finish its swing. He fired his spell early.
Blue light flashed. The pendulum swung past the lowest point and kept moving without stopping.
And sure enough, the statues kept dragging themselves forward without pausing!
Hypothesis confirmed. Richie instantly came up with a counter-strategy.
He stopped the pendulum before it reached the absolute peak, forcing it to swing back the other way.
No chime sounded. It definitely needed to hit the maximum height to trigger the bell.
Richie quickly fired another Pendulum Sonorus, pushing it all the way up.
"Nine!"
"..."
"Ten!"
"..."
"Twelve...!"
As the twelfth deafening chime echoed through the hall, the five massive knight statues finally reached them—closing the circle and trapping the five students squarely in the center!