The silence inside Hogwarts had changed.
It wasn't the ordinary silence of empty halls or sleeping portraits. It was dense. Breathing. Watching. The kind of silence that pressed against your skin and made your heartbeat feel too loud.
For the third day, no classes had been held.
Students were confined to their dormitories and common rooms.
Meals were brought by house-elves. The Fat Lady refused to open for anyone after sunset.
Even the ghosts had disappeared.
Tom sat in the corner of the Slytherin common room, the green flames crackling beside him. No one spoke loudly anymore.
Whispers ruled now. Nervous glances. Jumpy movements. The air felt thick, like the castle itself was holding its breath.
He kept thinking about the message in the Herbology greenhouse — the one burned into the glass like acid:
"We are no longer safe. Danger is coming."
Tom hadn't spoken to anyone.
Not since the lockdown began. Not since the message in Herbology.
Not since... that mist.
He remained in his room most of the day, claiming exhaustion when Lucius asked. But sleep never came easy. Not after what he had seen. Not after what he had felt.
The black mist hadn't been a dream. It had dragged him into something old — something buried in his blood. He could still remember the chill in the air, the sting in his lungs, the weight in his chest.
He had seen a girl. Her childhood days, her teenage eras even her love life,
He had known who his mom was,
Then he saw a man.
Marvolo Gaunt. His Grandfather
He spoke in a language that made Tom's ears burn — not from sound, but from meaning. A hiss that settled beneath the skin. Words meant only for the blood to understand.
And somehow, Tom did.
He understood every word. Every command.
All he showed him made sense,
His world became a bit confusing to him; He didn't know what to do
Whats the next step to take.
Even now, in the quiet of his room, he could still feel that voice inside him:
"The blood is still awake."
The memory left his throat dry. His wand trembled when he picked it up. He didn't know why. Or maybe... he did.
The writing in the greenhouse — "We are no longer safe. Danger is coming." — had stirred the same feeling in his chest.
Like a lock turning.
Like something just beneath the surface, preparing to rise.
Tom clenched his fists.
He didn't know how he could remember what he'd never lived.
Didn't know how a voice he'd never heard felt like it had been whispering to him all his life.
But he could still hear it.
Faint. Inevitable.
"The blood is still awake."
"Blood always remembers," Slughorn said grimly.
His voice filled the cold staffroom, drawing the eyes of every professor present.
He wasn't speaking to anyone in particular. Perhaps not even aloud. But the words hung there, thick with meaning.
Professor McGonagall stood by the fireplace, stiff as stone.
The others were seated in tense silence around the long table — a flickering dome of protective spells hovering over the charred glass message from the greenhouse.
"We are no longer safe. Danger is coming."
No one could remove it.
Sprout's hands trembled slightly as she wrapped them around a teacup. "It hasn't stopped glowing," she said quietly. "Even sealed. It's like it wants to be read."
"It wasn't just a message," said Professor Vector. "It felt like... like a pulse. A magical reflex."
"A reaction," Flitwick added slowly. "To something stirring near the wards."
The staffroom went still.
McGonagall took a slow breath. "Like a reaction to something within."
"This..." she said slowly, voice just above a whisper, "this wasn't written by any student. It wasn't burned with magic. It wasn't cast by wand or spell."
The others watched her. No one dared interrupt.
"This was drawn from the castle itself."
A flicker of wind moved through the room, though no door had opened.
McGonagall's voice tightened. "Hogwarts is not just reacting. It's... recoiling. Like a creature sensing something it once ran from — something it couldn't fight."
Professor Burbage's face went pale. "You think it's remembering?"
"No," McGonagall said, eyes distant. "It's terrified."
The temperature in the staffroom seemed to drop.
"Something ancient is drawing near — something the wards recognize. And it's close enough now that even the stones are trembling."
Outside the high windows, a strange green shimmer flashed across the edge of the sky — thin and sickly, like something crawling beneath the clouds.
The message inside the glass pulsed harder, as if the words themselves were trying to scream.
Sprout's teacup cracked in her hand.
McGonagall didn't flinch.
"The castle is alive," she said. "And it's warning us the only way it can."
Professor Sprout being terrified said.
"Wa..wait, So if Hogwarts is afraid," she said darkly,
Her trembling hand gripped the table.
"Shouldn't... shouldn't we be too?"
The words hung in the air like frost.
She looked around the room, eyes wide, breath shaky.
Then, almost childlike, she asked the one question none of them wanted to say out loud:
"Where's the Headmaster?"
Silence.
McGonagall took a slow breath, her face drawn tight with something between worry and something deeper — guilt, maybe. Or fear she wasn't ready to name.
"He left the night before the message appeared," she said. "Said he felt something stirring... far beyond the castle."
"Far beyond?" Vector echoed. "Where could he possibly have gone?"
McGonagall's eyes lingered on the green shimmer now stretching thin across the sky outside.
"I don't know," she admitted. "He wouldn't tell me."
A beat passed.
"Only that he was going somewhere no owl could follow."
Far from the castle, where the ground was bare and the air sharp with silence, a lone figure walked.
Dumbledore moved slowly through the mist-covered field, his steps steady, his cloak brushing across the grass like ash. There were no stars above — only a bruised sky, dark and clouded.
He came to a halt beneath the limbs of a twisted tree, old and blackened with time.
Ahead, waiting in the stillness, stood a figure cloaked in deep shadow. Motionless. Wordless.
Neither moved.
The wind passed between them.
The moon, half-veiled by the clouds, glinted off something silver at the stranger's wrist.
Dumbledore's eyes narrowed.
They stood like that for a long time — still and silent beneath a sky that no longer felt like their own.
No words were exchanged.
Only understanding.
Then the clouds thickened. And the scene vanished into darkness.
Darkness lingered.
But it did not stay outside.
It crept downward, slipping beneath the lake, through stone and chamber, settling finally in the deepest dormitory of the dungeons.
Slytherin.
The torches were long extinguished. The room cold, silent — until a breath caught.
Tom stirred.
His body remained still, but something beneath his skin flinched — like his very blood had sensed the shift in the world above.
And then the mist returned.
Not creeping. Dragging.
Tom gasped awake.
Soaked in sweat.
The dormitory was still dark, quiet. But something had changed.
His wand — resting beside his bed — was vibrating.
Humming.
And from the window beyond his bed, the green shimmer in the lake had started to rise.
Like a mist crawling into the castle.
But the night did not release him.
As soon as his head hit the pillow again, the dark took him — and this time, it wasn't mist.
It was fire.
The dream opened with screaming.
Not distant. Not imagined. Real.
The sky above Hogwarts was black — not from night, but from smoke.
The towers were burning. Flames danced along the Astronomy Tower. Windows shattered one by one. The ground was shaking, and the very air buzzed with spells — not lessons, not play — but war.
Tom stood in the middle of the courtyard, his heart racing, but he couldn't move. The sky cracked with green light, and shadows spilled from the Forbidden Forest like an army.
He looked around — bodies. Students. Teachers.
And then he saw her.
Lily.
She was lying near the front steps. Motionless. Her red hair soaked with something darker than water.
He tried to run to her, but the ground pulled him back — as if the castle itself didn't want him to reach her.
A high, cruel laugh echoed across the smoke.
Marvolo stood atop the steps. Or... something that looked like him. Cloaked. Twisted. His eyes were no longer human.
He raised a hand — and Hogwarts screamed.
The castle's walls cracked like bones snapping in unison.
And Tom fell to his knees as the sky began to bleed.
He awoke again — this time with a gasp loud enough to echo.
The dormitory was dead quiet. No one else stirred.
But the feeling remained.
The image of Lily. The burning towers. The shattered castle.
And that voice...
Somewhere, deep within the stone...
Something was waiting for him to open the door.
But he didn't sleep again.
Tom sat by the window as morning crept in — but the lake outside still shimmered with that unnatural green, dull and slow like poison spreading through water.
The castle felt heavier today. Every step he took through the Slytherin dormitory floor sent a soft vibration through his bones. As if the stone was humming something old.
He wasn't the only one who noticed.
In the staffroom, Professor McGonagall stood with her arms folded tightly across her chest, her wand tapping against the map of the castle floating between her and the others.
"We can't keep them locked in any longer," she said, jaw tense.
"Minerva—" Flitwick began.
"We've had no further magical ruptures since the day of the carving," she cut in. "No pulse surges, no new enchantment bursts. And the students are starting to panic in their dorms."
Sprout nodded reluctantly. "I've had three emotional magic spikes just in Hufflepuff. It's turning inward."
"It's not just Hufflepuff," Vector muttered. "Ravenclaw's tower staircase folded in on itself for two full minutes. A first-year started levitating without control."
McGonagall closed her eyes for a moment. She knew what they were all thinking.
The longer they sealed them away, the more the castle turned against itself.
"Then we let them out," she said quietly. "But only into the main areas. No forest, no dungeons, no late hours."
"And if something happens?" Burbage asked softly.
McGonagall looked to the window, where a single crack had formed in the outer glass overnight — just a hairline. But it hadn't been there before.
"If something happens..." she said, her voice barely above a whisper,
"...we'll already be too late."
In the Hufflepuff common room, the atmosphere shifted the moment Professor Sprout stepped through the barrel entrance.
Every head turned.
She offered a small, tired smile. "The stay is lifted. You may return to the castle grounds. Classes are still paused, but you're free to move within the permitted areas."
The room erupted with gasps, cheers, and claps.
A first-year dropped her pillow and hugged the nearest person. Someone else began to dance in place. The warmth returned to the room almost instantly, like a long-held breath finally exhaled.
A few students bolted up the stairs to gather their things. Others began whispering plans — who they'd meet, where they'd walk, how fast they could leave.
But amid the joy, Sprout's smile slowly faded.
She glanced toward the far side of the common room, where one of the enchanted plant pots had begun to wilt overnight — its leaves curled inward, black at the edges.
The magic in the room was moving again.
And deep beneath her relief, something in her stomach turned.
In the Slytherin dormitory, Tom hadn't moved.
He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at the ripples across the window glass. The news had reached their common room not long ago — the stay was lifted. Students were allowed to roam again. The room had erupted in cheers, some even tossing their books in the air. Someone had enchanted the fireplace to shoot green sparks.
Tom didn't move.
The door to his room burst open.
Lucius stormed in like a gust of spoiled wind. "You are unbelievable."
Tom didn't turn. "Good morning to you too."
Lucius pointed at him with theatrical disgust. "The castle is open, the sun is up, people are already flirting in the hallways again, and you're just sitting here like a forgotten ghost!"
"I'm thinking."
"You're sulking."
"I'm thinking."
Lucius dropped onto Tom's bed dramatically. "You have the emotional energy of a graveyard."
Tom raised a brow.
"I have waited three days," Lucius groaned, "locked in with younger years transfiguring teacups into screaming mushrooms and one kid who tried to bribe the Bloody Baron with chocolate frogs."
Tom smirked slightly. "Did it work?"
"No, but the Baron took the frogs."
He sat up, fluffing his hair. "The point is, we are free. I expect you to come bask in hallway sunlight with me. One lap. That's all I ask."
Tom didn't budge.
Lucius glared. "If you stay here, I swear I will summon Peeves and let him read my poetry outside your door for an hour."
"You write poetry?"
Lucius flipped his hair proudly. "Every Malfoy has a tortured soul. It's practically family tradition."
Tom sighed, stood, and grabbed his wand. "One lap."
Lucius grinned. "That's all I needed."
Lucius and Tom strolled round the school for some time.
They reached the hallway
The moment Tom stepped into the hallway, he felt it.
Not cold. Not hot.
Just... wrong.
Like walking into a memory that didn't belong to him.
Lucius strutted ahead, oblivious. "Now this—this is what freedom smells like. Stone, dust, and lingering adolescent rebellion."
Tom barely heard him.
The corridor torches flickered, even though there was no wind.
The shadows stretched just a little too long behind each stone pillar.
They walked in silence for a few more paces.
Then—
Crack.
A sound—like glass under pressure—echoed from the ceiling above them.
Tom looked up.
So did Lucius. "What was that?"
Hairline fractures were forming along the arch — not physical, but magical. Faint green cracks glowed for just a moment, then vanished like blinking eyes.
Tom narrowed his gaze. "Something's shifting."
A low hum started beneath the floorboards.
Lucius froze. "Okay, that I definitely felt."
They turned a corner—just in time to see a long stretch of corridor begin to darken from both ends, as if ink was being poured into the stone itself.
The middle stayed lit.
Trapped.
Tom pulled his wand.
Lucius didn't speak.
From somewhere beyond the corridor came the sound of a laugh — not high, not loud, but ancient. Like the wind had learned to mock them.
And then something else moved.
Not a person.
Not a beast.
Just a shadow, slithering low along the edge of the wall... and vanishing beneath a suit of armor.
Lucius whispered, "We should go back."
Tom didn't answer.
He stepped forward.
And the torches behind them all blew out.
Far above them, outside the tallest tower, the sky cracked.
Not with thunder. Not with lightning.
A ripple — silent and wide — broke across the clouds like a scar reopening.
Inside the castle, windows shuddered. Paintings stirred and muttered to each other. A distant bell rang once, then fell silent.
Minerva McGonagall stood frozen at the top of the marble staircase, her hand clenched tightly around her wand. Professors Flitwick and Burbage flanked her, equally still.
Across the foyer, students had begun to gather. Not many — just a few clusters from every house, drawn by the strange pressure in the air.
By the change.
They looked to the sky.
And saw them.
The first figure descended.
A cloaked silhouette, drifting like smoke just beyond the tallest spire of the Astronomy Tower. Head bowed. Arms folded. No broom. No wings. Just falling — on purpose.
Then another followed.
And another.
Seven.
Ten.
Twelve.
A full circle of black-robed figures spiraled above the school, silent and watching — as if waiting for something to stir beneath them.
Gasps spread through the gathered students. A few stepped back. Others clutched their wands.
McGonagall stepped forward.
Her heart pounded, but her voice was firm.
"Stay inside," she said to the group.
"Do not follow."
She moved quickly down the steps toward the front courtyard, Flitwick and Burbage close behind.
Each professor raised a shield charm as they approached the threshold.
The front doors groaned open.
Wind surged in — and then stopped, mid-breath, like the storm itself had frozen in fear.
Outside, the final figure landed.
Taller than the rest. A silver-threaded crest glinted on his chest — old, familiar, and terrifying.
McGonagall's eyes locked on it.
Her breath caught.
"The Gaunt line..." she whispered. "They've returned."
Inside the castle, Tom stood at the back of the crowd, unmoving.
He hadn't followed the others outside. He didn't need to.
He could feel them.
His hand brushed the wall — and the stone beneath his fingertips felt like it was pulsing.
The dream.
The voice.
The mark.
The serpent.
They were real.
They were here.
And deep in his chest, something answered.
A whisper, quiet and cold:
"The blood has called."
NESSGEEORIGINAL