Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 92 Different levels, different exam papers

Rice took out a wiping cloth and gently wiped away the remaining red liquid on the stone's surface, revealing a blood-red stone. Visually, it was indistinguishable from the Philosopher's Stone Rice had obtained that day, but merely looking the same was far from enough. What he wanted was a replica that could deceive Dumbledore's eyes.

As the most powerful wizard he encountered after his awakening, Rhys would not treat Dumbledore lightly; he was willing to regard this junior, born nearly a thousand years later, as an equal. In other words, he needed to create a replica that even he himself would find difficult to distinguish.

In the Muggle world of antiques, there are many methods of forgery. For example, making an ancient-style plate and stamping the bottom with the mark of the corresponding era is the most clumsy imitation method; a slightly more sophisticated method is to use physical or chemical methods to age the artifact; the most sophisticated method is to combine and splice antiques from different eras to create a fake with a longer historical background and higher value, or simply disassemble an antique into two pieces.

Rice was determined to use the most sophisticated methods of forgery.

His painstaking efforts to replicate the Philosopher's Stone were naturally because Rice wanted to obtain the real Philosopher's Stone for research while not wanting Dumbledore to find out.

He had previously obtained some fragments from the Philosopher's Stone. Although this sample was not enough for research, it was sufficient for him to make a realistic replica.

Rice channeled his magic but failed to detect anything unusual about the fake in his hand. After several failed attempts, he finally created a fake that was convincing enough to fool even his own eyes.

Having chosen the Philosopher's Stone in his hand, Rice began to further replicate it.

He evaporated the liquid in the crucible until only a small clump the size of a fingernail remained. Then, he used magic to manipulate this clump of gelatinous substance and evenly spread it on the surface of the fake Philosopher's Stone. Finally, he let it air dry, and the job was done.

The fake in Rice's hand was so indistinguishable from the real thing that even he couldn't tell the difference: the stone's interior was evenly filled with powdered genuine magic stone, making it virtually impossible to detect anything amiss even with magical power. Even more ingenious was that Rice had used a genuine magic stone as a base to coat the fake with an extremely thin film, allowing it to almost mimic the functions of a real magic stone—if a real magic stone could extend life by a year, this one could probably extend it by a few hours.

This operation allows the fake to pass off as an elixir of immortality even if it were actually used to make one.

After putting the fake in his pocket, Rice left the secret room and headed straight for the fourth-floor corridor.

It's still a puzzle-solving game, but along the way, Rice has made some slight changes to these game levels. These are all tests he prepared for Daphne - how can students of different levels use the same test paper?

As for whether his tricks would be discovered, Rice had his own plans.

When he arrived at the final checkpoint, he found that things had changed slightly: the Mirror of Eris that he had seen that night had been placed here.

Rice used the same method to take the Philosopher's Stone out of the mirror, then modified the shape of his own stone to make the two stones look exactly the same before putting the fake one in.

After placing the replica Philosopher's Stone inside, Rhys pondered for a moment and then added another item. Having done this, Rhys left the examination room Dumbledore had prepared for Harry.

……

As the days went by and the final exams approached, Harry, Quirrell, Daphne, Rice, Dumbledore, and everyone else began to busy themselves with their own things.

Voldemort behind Quirrell's head had finally gathered enough power to force Quirrell into the enclosed corridor on the fourth floor, and Harry, the examinee, finally realized that something was wrong.

It was a sunny afternoon, nearing the end of the semester. The professors stopped lecturing and instead allowed students to review on their own. If they had any questions, they could go to their offices.

Harry tossed the notebook aside in frustration and rubbed his forehead vigorously.

Ron, sitting next to him, sighed. He knew Harry hadn't been doing well since returning from the Forbidden Forest, and the approaching final exams seemed to have exacerbated his symptoms.

"Why don't you go to the infirmary? Perhaps Madam Pomfrey can prepare a pain-relieving potion for you, or maybe you could try finding Rice? That guy really knows potions."

Harry waved his hand; his intuition told him the pain-relieving potion wouldn't work. What Ron didn't know was that he'd been repeatedly waking up from a nightmare in which a hooded figure with blood dripping from its mouth was constantly approaching him.

Harry took this as a warning, a sign that some kind of danger was imminent. At the same time, he had a vague feeling that Ron's second half of his statement made sense, and that looking for Rice might be a good idea.

"I may have forgotten to do something, something very important," Harry said to Ron.

"It's most likely the exam that's to blame. I really don't understand. The professors taught us knowledge, and we studied it diligently, so why do we still have to take an exam? It's like they don't trust us!" Ron complained bitterly about the final exam.

Harry didn't want to talk to Ron for the time being. He stood up and decided to find Rice and Daphne and have a good talk with them. To Harry's surprise, when he found Daphne, he discovered that Rice, who was always with Daphne, was nowhere to be found.

"Where's Rice?"

"I don't know. He said he had something to do and told me to study here by myself." Daphne pouted. Of course, she knew that Rice had gone to work on his extremely complicated potion, but what obligation did she have to tell Potter?

We can't exactly take him to the Chamber of Secrets to find Rice, can we? That's the territory Slytherin left to his heirs, what does it have to do with a Gryffindor like him?

Harry grew increasingly agitated after failing to meet Rice. Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him, and Harry felt as if he had grasped the tail end of the truth.

He slammed his palm on Daphne's notebook and snatched it away from her.

Faced with Daphne's shocked and angry gaze, Harry simply begged her to go with him to see Hagrid.

Calling on the bored Ron, the three of them headed straight for Hagrid's cabin.

"You'd better give me an explanation," Daphne said, her face dark, following behind the two. She swore that if Harry couldn't provide a reasonable explanation, she would teach him a lesson.

"Don't you think some things are too coincidental?" Harry counted on his fingers, telling Daphne about the suspicious points he had noticed one by one.

"Hagrid is the owner of that three-headed dog in the corridor, and then he encountered a wizard with a dragon egg while playing cards—what kind of wizard would bring a dragon egg to play cards?! The key is that this dragon egg eventually lost to Hagrid! Add to that the trolls of Halloween and the monsters in the Forbidden Forest, no, I have to go find Hagrid to verify some things."

Harry's face turned deathly pale: "If my guess is right... that would be terrible!"

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Update delivered! No overtime today, so this is a double update!

(End of this chapter)