The decision about the championship came to Rowan on a Tuesday evening in late February, during dueling club.
He'd fought four opponents that evening, all upperclassmen, and beaten each with a mix of verbal and nonverbal casting. From the sideline afterward, he watched Sebastian duel a fourth-year Gryffindor. Sebastian fought with his usual aggressive energy, but twice during the exchange his lips didn't move. The silent spells were weak, barely registering, but they arrived without warning, and the Gryffindor didn't react to either one in time. Sebastian won verbally, a clean Disarmer through an opening he'd built with a feint, but the seeds of a larger change were there.
Rowan had already been to the championship. He'd fought his way to the finals as a first-year, youngest finalist in tournament history, and earned a silver medal. He'd stood on that stage and proven what he needed to prove. Now, with the expanded core and nonverbal casting, the challenge the tournament represented no longer matched what he needed. Against students his age, even the best from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang and Ilvermorny, his advantages were too large for the matches to teach him anything he couldn't learn faster elsewhere.
And the things that had been building at the edges of his attention, the alchemical transmutation theory the Flamels had pointed him toward, the magitech applications he'd been sketching in his journal, the artificing concepts he and Lawrence had discussed, those were unsolved problems. The championship was a test he'd already passed. Alchemy and magitech were tests he hadn't begun.
He found Hecat before breakfast the next morning.
"Professor. I'd like to withdraw from the championship and recommend that Sebastian Sallow take the fourth spot."
Hecat studied him. "Withdraw."
"I've been to the tournament. I made finals. My priorities this year are elsewhere. Alchemy, Runes, practical applications I've been developing. Sebastian needs the competition, the preparation, the high-stakes matches. I don't, not this year."
"And you're certain this isn't charity."
"Sebastian would resent charity. This is me stepping back from a thing I've already done so that someone who hasn't had the chance can take it."
Hecat was quiet for a moment. "Tell him yourself."
He found Sebastian at lunch, at the far end of the Slytherin table with Ominis. Rowan sat down across from them. Several Slytherins glanced over.
"I'm withdrawing from the championship," Rowan said. "I've spoken to Hecat. The fourth spot is yours."
Sebastian's fork stopped. He set it down slowly and looked at Rowan with an expression that had nothing of his usual competitive sharpness in it. "You're withdrawing. From the tournament you made finals in. The thing you beat me for last year."
"Yes."
"Why."
"Because I've been. I made finals. I have the silver medal. This year, my time is better spent on things the championship can't teach me. For you, four months of championship preparation will push you harder and further than anything else available right now."
Sebastian was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that the noise of the Great Hall swallowed it from anyone not sitting directly across from him. "Here's my problem with this, Ashcroft. I lost that selection duel last year. Fair and square, on the platform, in front of everyone. If you give me the spot now, I didn't earn it. I got it because you decided you had better things to do, and that's a different thing entirely."
"You earned it by being the best duelist in the club after me. The selection duel was close. You know it was close. And you've spent three weeks in the Undercroft learning nonverbal casting on nothing but stubbornness and talent, which is exactly the kind of person who should be representing Hogwarts."
Sebastian held his gaze. Ominis sat between them, his sightless eyes aimed at the table, his attention entirely on the conversation.
"Okay," Sebastian said finally. "I'll take the spot." He paused, and his expression shifted toward resolve. "But when I come back from that tournament, however it goes, I want you to know it was because I belonged there."
"I wouldn't expect anything less."
Sebastian picked up his fork and returned to his food with deliberate casualness. "Tomorrow night, then? I've got four months to turn a nonverbal Stunner into a weapon worth using on a stage."
"Tomorrow night."
Rowan walked back to the Ravenclaw table. Iris looked up from her textbook.
"You gave him the championship spot," she said.
"I've been. He hasn't."
Iris considered this for a moment, then nodded and returned to her reading.
Rowan opened his journal to the page he'd been working on the night before. The sketch was rough but functional: a three-tier runic array built around Kenaz as the core function rune. Controlled release. The luminaire.
The idea had first come to him on the Victoria Embankment, almost two years ago, walking back to the Foundling Hospital after dark. The Embankment was one of the first streets in London to get the new electric arc lights, tall iron poles with brilliant white globes that turned the pavement bright as noon. He'd stood there watching the Thames reflect that unnatural brightness and thought about how the Muggle world was solving the oldest problem in civilization, darkness, through sheer engineering. Filaments and current and glass. The wizarding world had candles and torches and Lumos charms and had never thought to want more.
He'd been thinking about it differently since rereading the Flamels' chapter on runic combination theory, the section where Nicholas had explained how Kenaz's geometry channelled magical energy into steady, directed output. Pair it with Sowilo for sustained intensity and Jera for continuous cycling, regulate the flow with Isa to prevent overload, bind the structure with Eihwaz, and the array would produce clean, stable, permanent magical light from a single activation.
The theory was sound. What he didn't have yet was a substrate that could hold the inscription at scale without costing more than the product was worth, and that problem had been circling in his mind for weeks, pulling him back toward the Flamels' chapters on alchemical transmutation and the planetary hierarchy of metals.
He picked up his quill and started writing.