The following morning, at six, used to get up at this time, he rapidly dressed up, feeding Aura some treats before immediately moving out of the castle.
As always, he would complete his daily physical training while exploring the exterior of the castle.
Starting his run, he started by moving out a small door near the greenhouses and immediately started his run towards the Black Lake.
With no one else around, he didn’t have to worry about being bothered as he trained.
Running all around the Black Lake took him a surprisingly large amount of time before moving on to the Quidditch pitch.
The quidditch pitch was quite long yet not overly wide.
The three goals on both sides of the field seemingly jutted out of the earth as there was no indication of the poles being built following normal construction techniques, which was to be expected in the wizarding side of the world.
Following the Quidditch pitch, he moved on to the Whomping Willow which he didn’t dare to approach as the branch started to move the moment he got a little too close to it.
Making a huge detour around it, he saw a small house in the distance and a loud bark.
He still didn’t approach as it was obviously someone’s house and he wasn’t one to intrude in other people’s places.
Continuing his run on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, he soon reached a large stone bridge that led to the main entrance of the castle.
With a single path which led to both the main entrance of the castle on one side and huge fences on the other side, Lux obviously understood that this was the main entrance for visitors.
He held no doubt that an enormous amount of wards were placed on the fences and the surroundings of the school.
Truly, anything related to magic, especially old magic normally would have countless wards and with his interest in them, being the first piece of magic he could truly learn, he was certainly interested in learning more about them in the future.
Walking back to the castle, walking in between four large towers, two at each side of the bridges, he entered the now opened entrance door and made his way back to the Ravenclaw common room.
Having spent almost two hours out training, he was filled with dirt and sweat, needing a shower to clean up before starting his day.
Reaching the common room, there were surprisingly few students up at this time, most still sleeping after heading to bed late the previous day.
Only a few students were already up and about, lounging in the large couch of the common room, talking to each other and comparing the homework they had completed over the summer.
With a nod in greetings to the older students, he washed up and was soon enough back out of his room, his necklace around his neck, all of his possessions in it.
It was always useful to have it with him.
After all, who knew what he would need during the day.
For the day, he decided he would explore the castle as he would be spending his seven following years here and it was a necessity to be able to orient himself well.
“Here is your schedule, take the time today to find the location of your classrooms so as to not arrive late to class tomorrow.” Said an older young woman as she handed over a schedule sheet to Lux who accepted it.
If you need anything, don’t hesitate to come and ask for help.” She said with a gentle smile as he nodded his head, showing a thankful nod.
“Thank you, I’ll make sure to remember.” He said before departing from the common room.
As he left, his thoughts went back to the StagHart’s High Blood potion.
The materials were not exceedingly rare and with enough practice, he would be able to properly complete the potion.
The sole reason he had pushed it back was first due to his lack of time, wishing to spend more time learning magic catching up as much as possible with the other students.
Secondly was due to the lack of people to turn into followers.
However, the most crucial was the large amount of funds he would have to spend in order to produce the potion as while it wasn’t overly difficult, for someone like him with almost no knowledge of potion making, it wouldn’t be easy to prepare, he would often fail which meant the waste of countless magical material.
However, now that he was in Hogwarts, perhaps it would soon be time to start thinking about brewing this miraculous potion that could only function thanks to the modification in his bloodline by the potion’s creator.
At least, having such a potion would allow him to be ready to turn someone should he find someone with the proper mentality for it even if he would have to spend quite a bit of money on practice.
Deep in his thoughts, he reached the Great Hall where breakfast was already beginning to be served.
Looking around, he only saw a few students, less than a dozen seated sparsely across the hall in between three of the four main tables, the Gryffindor’s table being notably empty of any student, most likely still sleeping soundly.
With some toasts, bacon and some fruits for breakfast, he left a dozen minutes later, ready to properly start his day.
The castle was huge and he doubted that even if he explored for a whole week that he would manage to find everything there was to find of this magical establishment.
“Alright, let’s first find the location of all the classes.” He decided, heading straight up the stairs, looking for the transfiguration classroom.
He had plenty of time and with the classroom number written on the schedule, he wouldn’t have much problem finding them.
Walking slowly through the castle, he walked upon the moving stairs, encountered a surprising amount of ghosts, walked in darkened alleys, climbed up the various towers and even found the divination classroom.
He entered abandoned classrooms, found some old equipment and even a secret passage.
However, what truly gave him the chills were the dungeons.
The Slytherin common room was on the first floor of the dungeon and the potion classroom was close to the stairs.
Perhaps he had gone a little too far, no torch illuminating the surroundings leaving him in complete darkness.
With his own wand lit up to illuminate the passage, he walked down a few corridors, finding some large metallic door reminiscent of some ancient jail doors shown in books.
Yet, he wasn’t too surprised to find some jail cells in the remote corners of the castle.
After all, having been built about a millennia before, battles raged around the continent and jails were useful for witches and wizards to control and get information from their enemies.
No, what gave him the chills was when he found the second dungeon floor over forty-five minutes into his exploration.
He had encountered a few weak runes strewn around the floor in various wards.
Yet due to the age of the wards and the obvious lack of care on them, their effects were greatly weakened and with slight tweaks, he could with some difficulty bypass them.
The stairs were grim.
Cold air was seemingly part of the castle itself as no heat from the sun could reach such depths.
Simply due to the large amount of dust on the ground, Lux knew that this part of the castle was seemingly abandoned.
However, he was quite curious about what lay beneath this floor.
After all, not only were those floors protected by additional wards but they were obviously left behind, uncared of for centuries.
As he finally reached the bottom of the stairs leading to the second dungeon floor, the dust floating up behind him as he threaded on stones not stepped on for centuries at the very minimum, other explorators having been misled by other corridors and wards as they easily numbered the hundreds on the first floor of the dungeon only, he finally arrived in front of the first room, a torture room.
With old and rusty equipment which hadn’t seen use for an extremely large amount of years, what remained was simply a cold and unnerving silence.
Wondering if he wished to go further, already feeling the hair on his arm get up, the chills spreading through his body, a cold wave of air seemingly went past him causing his body to freeze up before he immediately decided to turn around and go back up the stairs, his rapid footsteps showing how unnerved he was.
He had lived for years in his small cave, living through the cold oceanic winter winds, in a cave barely protected.
Yet, even then, he had never felt a breeze as cold as he had just felt.
Having already seen this much of the castle, he felt no need to continue exploring, turning around and going back on his steps.
Yet, he noticed that as he walked, his previous footsteps mysteriously erased themselves with time, erasing any traces of his passage.
‘Weird.’ He thought as he once again arrived back in front of the potion classroom, his breathing stabilizing after his run and rapid walk through the treacherous corridors of the abandoned part of the dungeon.
You Want Extra Chapters?
(14th of September) For the week of the 14-20th September 2026.
The Chapters are given at the end of the week, the 21st of September