202: Chapter 202 Fragments of the Future

"Your left hand has only just regained the ability to write, and you want to sleep in there again? Allen Potter, do you really take yourself for an old clock being wound up?" The door knocker slammed against the door panel, making it tremble. "The seventy-two hours have just passed; a second less should be considered a breach of contract."

Allen placed the hemostatic potion, recording board, glass bottle, and three unactivated knuts beside the rug. The study's phantom was hunched over the desk writing a thesis on soul protection, while his real body sat down leaning against the ebony box. His left fingertips brushed over the silver thread of the family crest, conducting an eighty percent recovery.

The family crest provided an assessment: "Magic tide has returned to the safety line. The left hand still has some latency. It is recommended to change the training to observation, without making contact with the blue tributaries, and not touching the intersection points."

"Write that into the protocol." Allen took off his glasses. "Training number four, sleep infiltration, goal is only to observe the edges of the golden main stream."

Peter was dragged to the recording position by the Void, his complexion worse than parchment. He clutched the quill, looking first at the cracked pocket watch, then at Allen. "I beg you to find someone else to count the seconds. Every time you fall asleep, it feels like I'm digging a grave for myself."

The door knocker scolded him, "You're already in a grave to begin with."

Peter pointed at the ebony box. "Time eats people. Back then, the Master had people touch time-related experiments; three people returned only able to repeat the words of the same day. And you're still taking notes? Taking notes to line a coffin with?"

Allen lay down and tapped his fingers lightly on the floor. "Begin."

The tip of the Void's tail pressed down on the lid of the box. The blue light inside the ebony box did not rush out, but only clung to the outer layer of Allen's consciousness along the gaps. Drowsiness descended, the edges of the study receded, and the silver thread of the family crest became a narrow bank.

The golden riverbed appeared.

The river surface was calmer this time than the last. Images of the past were pressed underwater, with only some short sounds remaining. The sound of train wheels, the Basilisk's scales scraping against stone walls, the Patronus Charm shouted by Harry by the Black Lake, and the sound of the doorbell at the old furniture shop in Knockturn Alley being bumped by the wind.

"Seven." Peter's voice counting the seconds came from afar. "Eight. Move to the right, don't look left, the blue light is on the left."

Following the protocol, Allen only looked at the golden edges. The gold threads of the cracked pocket watch extended into his consciousness like a fine needle, gently scraping along the main stream. The boundaries of space opened accordingly, and the golden patterns on the north side of the Portable Space lit up, but did not leak out.

At the sixteenth second, the water surface suddenly turned dark.

A ball of flame rose, its color blinding, like camping tents being set ablaze and swirling into the night sky. People were screaming in the fire, wand light flying wildly everywhere; tent ropes, flags, wine bottles, and children's shoes were all mixed together.

"Twenty-one." Peter's voice trembled. "Don't chase the image; that's a residual shadow from a tributary."

Allen didn't move. The flames shattered, and the water surface replaced them with a giant cup. The rim of the cup reflected white light, the surrounding crowd shouted, and then the light retracted inward, the bottom of the cup trembling like a Portkey.

The third image appeared right next to the second. Water, vast amounts of water. The Black Lake surface pressed down overhead, and someone underwater was hitting a glass-like barrier, their screams swallowed by the water, leaving only bubbles and hand shadows. Allen saw a piece of school robe, a strand of red hair, and a faint blue mark lighting up in the distance.

When Peter counted to twenty-eight, he completely lost his composure. "Enough! Void! Pull him out! He's seen the future!"

The Void did not move immediately. The fourth image had already surfaced from the bottom of the golden main stream.

A graveyard. White bones. A stone statue. A cauldron. Harry's face flashed at the edge of the firelight, then was blocked by a black robe. A thin, long arm reached out from the rim of the cauldron, and the air was filled with shrill laughter and the smell of blood.

Allen's consciousness was jolted as if pricked by a needle. A crisp sound came from inside the cracked pocket watch, and the gold threads expanded violently toward the surface, covering nearly two-thirds. Only then did the Void wrap around his thin spatial wall and drag him back from the edge of the riverbed.

When the study returned to his sight, there were only a few drops of blood in the glass bottle. Sweat had plastered his shirt to his back; his left hand could still move, but his fingertips were ice-cold and stiff. The door knocker didn't scold him, instead letting the family crest push the hemostatic potion over first.

"Speak now that you're awake." The door knocker's metallic voice was dry. "Your face was so pale just now you could have been hung on a wall."

Allen drank the potion, raised his hand, and wrote four words on the recording board. Flames. Cup. Underwater. Graveyard.

Peter, holding the quill, knelt in the cage, his hand shaking so much that his writing was crooked. "That wasn't an ordinary tributary. That's a major event in the future. You saw a graveyard? The Master likes graveyards; he likes bones, blood, families, rituals."

"Precognition processing can misjudge." Allen turned the recording board toward the family crest. "Classify as a time warning."

The silver thread of the family crest paused for a moment. "Classification changed to time warning. Trigger conditions: Quidditch World Cup intelligence, Crouch's old thread, Harry's involvement, and the fourth sleep infiltration after the gold threads of the cracked pocket watch exceeded half."

After recovering, the door knocker began to scold him, "You call a hand reaching out from a graveyard a warning? This thing is already standing outside the door knocking!"

"Only when they knock do you have time to prepare." Allen pressed the four words into the archive. "Flames correspond to the Quidditch World Cup campsite. The cup is undetermined, underwater is undetermined, and the graveyard is the fatal point."

Peter was so anxious he slapped the bars. "The cup could be a trophy, a Portkey, or a lure. Back then, the Master loved turning ordinary objects into crossroads. Don't let Harry touch any prizes of unknown origin."

Allen glanced at him. "You just said Barty Crouch Jr. should have rotted in there long ago."

Peter shut his mouth too quickly, and the cage tightened immediately. He was forced to bend over by the bars, and as the Void's silver eyes drew near, he strained his voice to speak. "Barty worships the Master. He's crazier than many Death Eaters. If he is alive, the Quidditch World Cup is a good place."

The family crest adjusted the "probability of Barty's survival" upward. The door knocker didn't interrupt this time, only pressed its iron ring against the door panel to listen to the movement outside.

The perimeter of Potter Manor was stable. The observers at the street corner didn't move, and the lights in the empty house opposite were out. The training wave peak was swallowed by the core of Potter Manor, but the old sealed area in the Dungeon sent back a circle of golden patterns, as if responding to the ticking of the cracked pocket watch.

Allen turned the archive page to the blank space after the third year and wrote down the fourth-year warning: Flames, Giant Cup, Underwater, Graveyard. Below that, he added a sentence: Harry's risk level adjusted upward, Crouch line listed as core.

The door knocker watched him finish writing. "Are you going to warn Harry?"

"If I warn him now, he'll only ask me where I got the information." Allen sealed the paper into the thin wall. "Let the thread approach on its own first."

Peter slumped back into the cage. "You always wait for the last second."

"The last second has the most complete information." Allen pushed the ebony box an inch further away. "But this time, I've established a file in advance."

The tip of the Void's tail pressed on the golden patterns on the north side. A fine golden light flashed across the boundary of the Portable Space, and the edge of the two hundred and twenty square meters pushed outward a little, then stabilized. Allen stared at the north side, where a golden pattern lit up briefly, its direction still pointing toward Hogwarts.

The family crest recorded in a low voice, "The north golden pattern has reacted to the keyword Triwizard Cup."

The door knocker's temper, which had just recovered, exploded again. "Triwizard Cup? You just wrote 'cup', and it recognized the name itself? Your family's broken watch can also solve riddles?"

Allen circled the three characters "Triwizard Cup" separately. The cracked pocket watch was silent in the ebony box, but the gold threads had already exceeded two-thirds, as if pressing a corner of the future onto the surface.

"The next training is postponed." He closed the archive. "First, check the Potter Manor Dungeon."

The door knocker stalled for a moment. "Finally willing to look at that old door?"

Allen put the four warning words into the Portable Space. "Some answers shouldn't wait for others to deliver them to your door."