"Weasley!" Filch called out Ron's surname in a sinister tone.
For some well-known reasons, this castle caretaker did not look favourably upon any student with the surname Weasley.
When he shouted the surname, it was only natural that he sounded as if he were gritting his teeth.
In the past, seeing Filch blocking their path like this would have already made Harry and Ron nervous, and Hermione would have started wondering if these two troublemakers beside her had committed some new offence.
But this time, they had absolutely none of those previous thoughts.
Whether it was Harry, Ron, or even Hermione, they all stared intently at Filch, and the anticipation in their eyes made even Filch himself feel that something was wrong.
"What kind of look is that! Are you trying to intimidate me!"
he said, looking wary.
Having been terrified by George and Fred so often, he would sometimes display a level of caution and wariness that far exceeded that of ordinary people.
Ron, however, paid no attention to what he said, and instead said eagerly,
"Why did you call me, Filch? Hurry up and say it; if you don't, we're leaving."
Filch cast a suspicious glance back and forth between the three of them, and after confirming that there were no other issues, he finally spoke.
"I went to patrol the Trophy Room today and discovered something, Weasley! The last time you were punished and cleaned in there, some places weren't cleaned properly at all! The trophies in the very back were still covered in dust. I have already requested permission from Professor McGonagall, and you must clean it again today until I consider it thoroughly clean!"
After he finished speaking, he expected Ron to argue with him, claiming he had already cleaned it well enough, or to simply grab his companions and run, refusing to accept the punishment.
So Filch had prepared himself in advance, ready at any moment to reach out and grab Ron's arm.
But unexpectedly, Ron showed no signs of resistance at all.
Not only that, but Ron and Harry actually jumped up in excitement on the spot!
"I didn't make a mistake! And I didn't break any school rules!"
"But Filch found you! And imposed a punishment on you!"
Watching them say these two sentences with such immense joy, Filch looked at them as if he were looking at lunatics.
"You're happy to receive my punishment?"
But no one paid him any mind, and even Hermione stood there dumbfounded, muttering to herself unconsciously.
"It's all true... It's all because of Professor Cavendish..."
Her mindset had already shifted at this moment.
If everything before could still be explained as a coincidence, could this scene now still be a coincidence?
Ron had indeed not broken any school rules; he just hadn't cleaned the Trophy Room properly during his last punishment, so Filch was making him serve the punishment again.
This wasn't anything strange, but the magical part was that it happened right after Sherlock had told Ron that if he didn't make any mistakes before Christmas, Filch wouldn't cause him any trouble!
Such low-probability events were happening frequently, and every single time it was after Sherlock's jinx, so this was no longer a coincidence.
This clearly had something to do with Sherlock!
"What kind of tricks are you playing!" Filch said impatiently, looking at Harry and the other two who seemed like fools.
"Even if you play the fool, you still have to go re-clean the Trophy Room, Weasley! Don't even think about escaping punishment!"
Ron said, looking excited.
"Of course I'll accept the punishment! You guys go back to the Common Room and wait for me; I'll be back soon!"
He looked even more excited than if he had received a new wand, and followed Filch, who was looking at him with the gaze one might reserve for a lunatic, as they left.
Harry and Hermione continued walking toward the Gryffindor Common Room.
"You can't still think this is a coincidence, right, Hermione?"
Harry was very excited.
That indescribable excitement was just like having accidentally discovered the biggest bug in the world.
Facing facts that could no longer be denied, Hermione naturally couldn't find a reason not to believe it.
"I really don't understand, why would anyone have such a talent? No matter what is said, the final result always develops in the opposite direction. How has Professor Cavendish lived all these years? Wouldn't that mean everything in his life is unsatisfactory?"
Harry said, suddenly enlightened.
"No wonder Professor Cavendish's personality seems so cold; if I had been living such an unsatisfactory life all the time, I would have gone crazy long ago."(TN: This storyline is torture.)
"Do you think the Professor himself knows he has this... jinx-like condition?" Hermione suddenly thought of a key question.
Harry scratched his head and guessed.
"He probably doesn't know, right? If he knew, he would have already figured out what we were trying to do with our tests, and he wouldn't have let us experiment like this."
Hermione and Harry waited in the Gryffindor Common Room for Ron to finish cleaning the Trophy Room and return.
She pondered for a long time and said to Harry,
"We should continue the tests!"
Harry looked at her, looking puzzled.
"Test what else? Don't we already know that Professor Cavendish has a one-hundred-percent accurate jinx?"
"It's not necessarily one-hundred-percent accurate," Hermione said with a serious face. "The previous events—the weather, good luck, including Ron not being punished by Filch today—were all things that had a probability of happening anyway; it's just that the probabilities were high or low. But what if it were something that absolutely could not possibly happen?"
"For example, the sun rises normally from the east every day. If Professor Cavendish were to say, 'The sun rises from the east every day, isn't that the most normal thing?' then do you think the sun would rise from the west the next day?"
Hearing Hermione's hypothesis, Harry's mouth opened wide, as if it could fit Hagrid's fist.
He hadn't expected Hermione to have such an incredible conjecture.
"No, that's impossible! If that were really the case, wouldn't Professor Cavendish have become a god!"
Harry looked terrified.
"And if Professor Cavendish's jinx really had such power, and we went and did the test, and the next day the sun really did rise from the west, then what would happen to this world?"
Hermione displayed the perfect spirit of scientific hypothesis.
"We certainly can't perform such an experiment with serious consequences, so we can switch to one with the same meaning but without such severe results."
They waited in the Common Room until Ron returned, and then Hermione explained her plan to them.
In the end, the three of them unanimously agreed to continue testing Sherlock with this method again tomorrow.
And Sherlock, who was still bitterly grading upper-year assignments in his office, couldn't have imagined it in a million years.
His students were preparing to test whether he could make the sun rise from the west tomorrow.