25 December.
Christmas Day.
Hogwarts lay beneath a thick blanket of snow, and the Black Lake had frozen solid.
Morning sunlight struck the snow covered towers, scattering dazzling reflections across the castle grounds.
The Slytherin common room was almost deserted.
Most of the students had gone home for Christmas, Draco Malfoy included.
“I don’t want to go home, Morrin.” Draco had complained before leaving.
“I want to stay here and laugh at Potter.
I heard Weasley can’t even afford to go home.” “Go home, Draco.” At the time, Morrin had been sitting beside the fire with a book and had not even looked up.
“Christmas is one of the best opportunities for maintaining family ties.
You need to make an appearance at the Christmas dinner at Malfoy Manor.
Give your father my regards while you’re there, and hand him that proposal on ‘Gringotts Exchange Rate Reform’.
Both are considerably more important than laughing at Potter.” And so Draco had obediently packed his trunk and gone home.
Now Morrin had the entire first-year Slytherin dormitory to himself.
“Peace and quiet.” Morrin sat up in bed and stretched.
A mountain of presents had accumulated at the foot of his bed.
Most had come from home: expensive bespoke suits, the latest alchemical equipment, and a letter from his father reporting excellent progress with their acquisitions in the Soviet Union.
Professor Snape had given him an out of print copy of Moste Potente Potions.
There was no name attached to the gift, but the distinctive scent of potion ingredients clinging to the book betrayed its sender.
Hagrid had sent an enormous box of homemade fudge hard enough to qualify as masonry.
Morrin quickly finished opening his presents, washed and dressed, then changed into a dark green cashmere jumper.
Taking up the cane that rarely left his side, he made his way out of the dungeons.
His destination was clear.
Gryffindor Tower.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ In the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Ron were sitting beside the fire in the jumpers Mrs Weasley had knitted for them, surrounded by torn wrapping paper and half opened presents.
“There’s even one from Morrin.” Harry picked up a beautifully made little silver box in surprise.
Inside was a pair of finely crafted windproof goggles.
Tiny runes for automatic defogging and night vision had been engraved into the lenses.
“To the finest Seeker at Hogwarts.
May you still be able to see the Golden Snitch in a blizzard.
—Your Sponsor, M.W.” Harry smiled warmly as he finished reading the card.
“He’s really generous.” “I got something too,” Ron mumbled through a mouthful of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.
“Whole crate of premium feed for Scabbers.
He said Scabbers is too skinny and needs fattening up.” Inside Ron’s pocket, the old rat called Scabbers was trembling uncontrollably.
He could sense that there did not appear to be any poison in the food.
That only made it more terrifying.
Why was that demon being so nice to a rat?
At that moment, the portrait hole beneath the Fat Lady swung open.
“I hope I’m not too late, gentlemen.” Morrin stepped inside.
To him, entering the Gryffindor common room was scarcely more difficult than walking into his own back garden.
All one needed was the password.
Or a little ingenuity.
“Morrin!
Happy Christmas!” Harry sprang happily to his feet.
“Happy Christmas.” Morrin smiled and nodded.
His gaze swept across the sea of discarded wrapping paper before coming to rest on a pool of silvery grey fabric lying beside Harry’s feet.
The material seemed almost liquid.
The Invisibility Cloak.
One of the Deathly Hallows.
According to legend, a piece cut from Death’s own cloak.
Morrin’s pupils contracted slightly.
The system began screaming warnings inside his head.
[⚠️ Warning!
Warning!
⚠️] [Mythic-Grade Law Item Detected!] ━━━━━ 🔍 SCAN ━━━━━ Scanning target: Invisibility Cloak Origin: Deathly Hallows Energy Level: 🟡 Gold (Mythic – Complete Form) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ “What’s that?” Morrin pointed at the fabric, pretending not to know.
“I’m not sure.” Harry picked it up.
The strange material flowed between his fingers like water.
“It came with a note, but there wasn’t any name on it.
It said it belonged to my dad.” “Try it on,” Morrin suggested.
Harry draped the cloak over himself.
His body vanished instantly, leaving nothing but his head floating absurdly in mid-air.
“Whoa!” Ron exclaimed.
“It’s an Invisibility Cloak!
Those are incredibly rare!” “Extremely rare indeed.” Morrin stepped closer and held out his hand.
“Mind if I take a look at the material?
From an alchemical perspective.” “Course not.” Harry readily removed the cloak and handed it over.
The instant Morrin’s fingers touched its cool, silken surface, which rippled like water, he felt as though he were not touching cloth at all.
He was touching a woven rule.
━━━━━ EXTRACT ━━━━━ [Contact Successful] Analysing…
━━━ This is a perfect concealment.
It does not merely conceal light.
It conceals magic, scent, and even causality.
It exists within Death’s blind spot.
Remaining Extractions: 65 [Begin Extraction?] ⚠️ Warning: The item’s tier is excessively high and possesses the Indestructible property.
Extraction success rate is extremely low.
⭐ Recommendation: Activate Probability Stacking.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Morrin’s fingers gently rubbed the edge of the cloak.
He hesitated.
Should I extract from it?
If he poured all sixty five attempts into the Cloak, there was a very real chance he could obtain some godlike Trait such as ‘Permanent Invisibility’ or ‘Presence Erasure’.
But if he spent them here…
What about the Philosopher’s Stone?
The Stone was connected to completing [Origin of Alchemy].
It represented his path towards understanding and controlling the fundamental forces underpinning this world.
The Invisibility Cloak, for all its power, was ultimately more of a support item.
Hold back.
Morrin drew a slow breath.
Rather than hiding from the world, I’d prefer to stand at centre stage and control it.
“Extraordinary craftsmanship.” Morrin returned the Cloak to Harry with a note of genuine admiration.
A barely perceptible trace of greed flickered through his eyes, only to be suppressed by reason a moment later.
“This is certainly no Mundane item, Harry.
Take good care of it.
And try not to let Filch confiscate it.” ━━━━━ EXTRACT ━━━━━ [Extraction declined] Since the Host has declined extraction, the system has automatically recorded the item’s Law Fluctuation.
━━━ [Passive Boon Acquired] 🎁 True Sight acquired!
You can now see through low-tier Invisibility Charms and Disillusionment Charms.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This is a consolation prize?
Morrin smiled inwardly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Late that night, the castle sank into sleep.
Unable to contain his curiosity, Harry slipped out beneath the Invisibility Cloak.
He intended to search the Restricted Section for information about Nicolas Flamel.
Another pair of eyes watched him from the shadows.
Morrin had not gone to bed either.
Dressed in a black dressing gown and carrying his cane, he followed Harry at an easy pace, relying on [True Sight] and the heightened hearing of his [Half Giant Bloodline].
He watched Harry narrowly avoid being caught by Filch.
Then he watched him panic and duck into an abandoned classroom.
Once Filch’s footsteps had faded into the distance, Morrin emerged from the shadows and pushed open the door.
The classroom was filled with discarded desks and chairs.
But standing in the very centre of the room was a magnificent mirror, so tall that it reached almost to the ceiling.
It had an ornate golden frame and stood upon two clawed feet.
The Mirror of Erised.
Harry was kneeling before it.
He stared into the glass as though entranced, tears streaming down his face.
“Dad…
Mum…” Harry whispered.
Morrin did not interrupt him.
He knew how cruel, and how precious this moment must be for an orphan.
He simply stood quietly in the doorway until Harry finally came back to himself and noticed Morrin behind him.
“Morrin?
You can see me?” Harry was still wearing the Invisibility Cloak.
“I can’t see you, but I can hear you breathing, Harry.” Morrin lied smoothly as he entered the room.
“What are you looking at?” “My parents.” Harry pointed excitedly towards the mirror.
“And my family…
They’re all in there.
Morrin, come and look!
Maybe you’ll see your family too?” Morrin walked towards the mirror and stopped beside Harry.
Harry shifted aside to give him room.
“Well?” He looked eagerly at Morrin.
“What do you see?”