The chamber stank of damp stone and stale magic, the kind that clung to skin like smoke. The hooded figure had returned, moving slowly across the uneven floor until he came before the sealed door. This time, there was no caution in his movements, no attempt to blend with the shadows. He belonged here. He always had.
He pushed the hood back.
The man beneath was gaunt to the point of skeletal, skin stretched too thin across sharp cheekbones. Black hair, once proud, now hung in long, limp strands, greasy from centuries of damp. His eyes were a pale, almost colorless grey that glinted even in the dim light of the chamber. They were not the eyes of someone alive in the usual sense, but of something preserved, maintained by willpower and rituals older than the castle itself.
His name had been scrubbed from Hogwarts history, though not completely. If one were foolish enough to dig far enough into dusty archives, one might find a fragment of a note, a smudge of ink in the margin of an old scroll, or a reference so vague it seemed meaningless. Corvinus Gaunt.
He had been there at the beginning. Not standing proudly among the four founders, but close. Too close. A cousin to Salazar Slytherin, sharing the same heavy bloodline that traced its roots to a time when wizards ruled by strength alone. Where Salazar sought to pass that bloodline on through heirs, Corvinus wanted something else entirely. He wanted permanence. He wanted the castle itself.
At first, he played the loyal follower. He spoke smoothly, learning their secrets, offering ideas with that same pale smile. But the more the other founders spoke of education, of raising generations to carry on their ideals, the more his contempt grew.
"Schooling," he had once hissed at Salazar, "is for children too weak to grasp power themselves. Magic is not taught—it is taken."
Salazar, who tolerated much in his allies, would not tolerate that. And so Corvinus was cast out before the school's walls had even risen fully into the sky.
But he did not leave. He never intended to.
Instead, he dug. He tunneled beneath the foundations like a worm through rotten wood. He found natural caverns, older than the castle, older than the founders themselves, places where magic hummed raw and unshaped. There he carved out his sanctum. There he etched the first runes of his own chamber, hiding them so deep not even Salazar's Basilisk would stumble upon them.
It was in those caverns that he performed the ritual that had broken him.
Corvinus had wanted immortality, but not in the childish sense. He didn't care for a body that would never die, nor for flesh that stayed young. He wanted endurance. He wanted to anchor his will so deeply into the bones of the earth that the very stones would carry his name.
The ritual burned him alive from within. It hollowed out his veins, withered his flesh, and left his body a fragile shell. But his spirit? His spirit clung. It sank claws into the foundations of Hogwarts. The stones remembered him. They would not let him vanish, not fully.
The centuries that followed blurred together. Children came and went, their laughter muffled through the weight of the rock. Wars were fought, spells were invented, Dark Lords rose and fell. Corvinus endured. Sometimes he drifted in sleep for years at a time, roused only by shifts in the magic of the school. Sometimes he woke, listening, waiting, patient as stone itself.
And then… something changed.
The boy came. The one they whispered about. The castle hummed differently now. It vibrated, softly, endlessly, with the presence of this scarred child. Luck clung to him like a shield, spilling across the halls, making even the walls hum with its song.
That was when Corvinus stirred fully. That was when he began to listen again.
Corvinus crouched before the sealed door, his knees creaking like brittle wood. His pale hand hovered over the surface, trembling with anticipation. The runes carved there were not his—no, these were older, older than his own work. Salazar's hand had shaped them, binding them with layers of intent and secrecy. That, more than anything, enraged him. Salazar had wanted him gone, yet even here, beneath the castle's belly, he had left his mark. A reminder that Corvinus had been excluded. A barrier meant to keep him from what he believed was rightfully his.
"Centuries, cousin," he muttered, his voice raw, each syllable rattling in his throat. "Centuries, and your walls still bar me. You thought your wards would outlast me? Fool. I have outlasted you, your heirs, your line. Only I remain."
He pressed his palm flat against the stone. The runes flared red, faint at first, then brightening until they glowed like embers. They resisted him—the way a body resists poison—but they could not deny him. He was written into the bones of this place, as much a part of it as mortar or moss. The light flickered and guttered like a dying candle, but it did not extinguish.
Corvinus smiled. A terrible thing, stretched thin across his face.
"I exist because this castle remembers me. Every stone above trembles with my name. You thought me too dangerous, Salazar. You were right. But you made one mistake." He leaned close, lips nearly brushing the glowing runes. "You left me here. And I do not forgive."
The glow faltered again, dimming, but the faint heartbeat of it remained. It was a promise, not yet a victory.
Corvinus sat back on his heels, eyes glittering like knives. "They speak of a boy," he whispered, voice echoing in the hollow chamber. "A boy who lived. A boy cursed and marked. But what they do not understand—what they will never understand—is that luck is not power. It is waste. And I will strip it from him, thread by thread, until even his breath deserts him."
The stone shivered beneath his hand. A faint crack ran along one of the carvings, no wider than a hair, but enough to make his pulse quicken. The first fracture in a prison centuries old.
"Good," he hissed, drawing his hood back over his skull-like face. "Let them laugh above, let them think the castle is theirs. They are children. Dumbledore—bah, he is but a man. Voldemort? An heirling with delusions." He straightened, taller in his shadows, a silhouette sharp as a blade. "But me? I am patience made flesh. I am hunger carved in stone. I will wait. And when the door falls…"
The torches guttered, as if the chamber itself wanted to silence him. He only laughed, a rasping sound that rattled against the walls.
"…when the door falls, all of Hogwarts will remember the name... Corvinus."
The glow of the runes finally dimmed, fading into the ordinary stillness of stone. But the hairline crack remained, hidden in the dark, waiting to spread.
...
Here is another chappie form yours truly, I am thinking to do a mass release