Hogwarts Castle was dead quiet. The young wizards were all fast asleep.
But down in the Clock Tower hall, Richie and the crew were breathing hard.
The five knight statues were practically on top of them. A single swing of their stone swords would be a direct hit. Nobody could stay calm with that hanging over their heads.
But they were only one chime away. None of them wanted to bail now.
"Richie!" all four of them yelled in unison.
Richie looked back. The others gave him firm, resolute nods.
"I'm ready! Let's see how they like my Disarming Charm!" Neville's voice was shaking, but the adrenaline was obvious.
"This is so incredibly badass! Right, Seamus?" Ventis stood sideways, her entire body tense, but she was still playing it cool.
"I... I'll do my best!" Seamus squeaked, sounding like he was on the verge of tears.
Richie looked up at the statue looming just a few steps away from him, his mouth twitching.
The statues had been speeding up. They were basically point-blank now, forcing the five of them into a tight, defensive circle.
But there was no turning back. The arrow was already drawn.
Seeing that everyone was ready, Richie quietly slipped the Hyper-Cognitive Hourglass out of his pocket, hiding it in his left palm while raising his wand with his right.
"Pendulum Sonorus!"
Richie fired the spell. Under the magic's pull, the massive pendulum slowly began its upward swing.
The statues surrounding them completely stopped advancing. Instead, they rotated their wrists and raised their massive stone swords.
BONG!
The chime echoed just as the statues raised their swords to the absolute peak.
But just as the pendulum was about to swing back down, Richie slashed his wand again. "Wingardium Leviosa!"
A massive force seized the pendulum, and the statues' movements violently hitched.
But a second later, a brutal wave of magical feedback blasted Richie backward. The statues' swords ripped downward.
"Now!" Hermione, who was watching the perimeter like a hawk, screamed. "Destroy them!"
All four dropped their wands. The Large-Scale Silencing Charm shattered, the invisible dome vanishing. Hermione scrambled to Richie's side, her mind racing for a counter-strategy.
The Locking Spell? "Colloportus!" Hermione fired at the pendulum, but the spell did absolutely nothing.
The General Counter-Spell? "Finite Incantatem!" Useless!
Out of options, Hermione copied Richie and threw a Levitation Charm at the pendulum to help hold it. It slowed down slightly, but the massive weight kept dropping.
Seeing Hermione pivot to help Richie, Neville and Ventis locked eyes, instantly raised their wands, and yelled: "Expelliarmus!"
Two sharp cracks echoed. The stone swords ripped right out of the hands of the two closest statues.
A second late on the draw, Seamus violently shook as he raised his wand. "Expe—lliarmus!"
The sheer panic made him stutter mid-incantation. The Disarming Charm, which he barely knew how to cast anyway, completely misfired. And the consequences of that misfire...
BOOM!
A massive explosion ripped through the hall. The top half of the statue right in front of Seamus detonated, blasting chunks of stone shrapnel in every direction.
The sudden blast caught Neville and Ventis totally off guard. They stared at Seamus, who was standing there looking completely horrified with his wand raised, entirely dumbfounded.
"I... I..." Seamus's face flushed bright red, but Neville just cheered.
"Nice shot!"
Out of the five statues: one was blown to pieces, two were disarmed, and the last two were standing directly behind Richie and Hermione.
Their stone swords were fully raised directly over their heads, ready to drop like guillotines. Richie and Hermione were still deadlocked, pouring everything they had into the Levitation Charm to stall the pendulum.
Richie couldn't believe it. The pendulum was so easy to move with the Sonorus spell, but trying to physically stop it was an absolute nightmare.
Before Neville, Ventis, or Seamus could fire another spell, the two statues flanking Richie and Hermione suddenly accelerated, bringing their massive swords crashing down.
"Look out!"
"Merlin!"
Nobody had time to react. The blades were already dropping toward Richie and Hermione.
Richie heard the others scream and knew it was over. Without hesitating, he flipped the Hyper-Cognitive Hourglass in his palm.
The entire world instantly froze. But Richie knew it wasn't time stopping; his brain was just processing reality thirty times faster.
He pushed himself to the absolute limit, violently twisting his body. Overlapping afterimages bled into his vision, making it feel like his soul was ripping out of his body. Thankfully, two weeks of brutal training had helped him adapt to the sickening visual lag.
He painfully torqued his torso around, finally seeing the statue behind him bringing the sword right down on his head.
The sheer speed was obvious. The overlapping afterimages were rapidly collapsing into a single, solid object. He had maybe a few actual seconds before the blade connected.
Hermione was in the exact same boat. Except she was still fully facing the pendulum, entirely locked in on her spell, totally oblivious to the executioner right behind her.
Across the hall, Neville and the others had their wands raised in pure terror, desperately trying to cast. But they were way too slow. Not a single person in that room could get a spell off in time to stop this.
But with those borrowed seconds, Richie could still forge an out.
His only play: drop the wand in his right hand and use his wandless "brain-flick" magic. Given his reaction speed, he could definitely deflect—or straight-up blow away—the sword right before it hit him.
But if he did that, Hermione was going to get cut down. Or, he could deflect the blade aimed at her.
But if he saved her, he wouldn't have time to cast a second flick. The physical rotation took way too long in this delayed state.
Which meant Richie had to make a choice: save himself, or save Hermione.
Even with accelerated thinking, his physical window was vanishing. In a split second, Richie let go of his wand, whipped his arm around, and locked onto the sword dropping toward Hermione.
He was incredibly pissed off and frustrated. He never expected an "unsolved mystery" left behind by the Founders to be this lethal—literally putting first-years' lives on the line.
If he had known it would go down like this, he never would have dragged the other four out of bed in the middle of the night to play with a giant clock.
Getting the first two puzzle pieces had been way too easy, giving him a false sense of security. He had completely underestimated the threat.
But there were no do-overs. Richie had to make the call. And obviously, he chose to save Hermione.
His logic was simple. First, if he protected himself, Hermione was guaranteed to take a hit. If he protected her, he still had a slim chance of surviving—by relying on the visual lag to anticipate the strike and barely dodging it, taking a glancing blow instead of a lethal one.
Second, he was the one who brought them here. It was his absolute responsibility to get them out alive.
With that final thought locked in, Richie flicked his finger.