Herd instinct is a simple magic.
When someone screams “Run!” and you don’t know why, your legs answer before your brain bothers to ask the question.
Elias had given his legs exactly that order three seconds ago, and now he was paying for it.
Left, right, dead end.
Behind him, Argus Filch’s furious muttering and Peeves’s cackling braided into a single disharmonic chase, drawing closer with every wheeze of the caretaker’s lungs.
Did you lead him here?
was the question Elias wanted to scream at whoever was also running through the corridors tonight.
But screaming wasn’t exactly subtle, and “not technically returning from a night of forbidden exploration” was not the kind of alibi that would soften Filch’s heart.
Detention.
Points deducted.
A lecture about rule-breaking that would peel paint.
So Elias did the only thing left: he aimed his wand at a locked door, whispered Alohomora, and slipped inside, pulling it shut with the whisper of a click.
He leaned back, breath catching—
And nearly bit through his tongue.
A dog.
No, a geological event disguised as a dog.
Three heads the size of armchairs, each one snoring in a different key, drool puddling on the stone floor in ropes.
No collar, no chain, nothing between Elias and those rows of teeth except a few feet of darkness and the creature’s current state of unconsciousness.
Fluffy.
The name surfaced from Dumbledore’s opening-feast warning, the one that had sounded so whimsical at the time.
Elias’s mind raced.
If this place was lethal enough to warrant a headmaster’s explicit “stay away,” then why lock it with a single spell a first-year could break?
Why not seal it, wall it up, bury it under a password only professors knew?
Unless the seal wasn’t meant to keep students out.
Unless it was meant to draw them in.
“Is magical education always this hardcore,” Elias breathed.
The three-headed dog stirred in its sleep, one paw twitching.
Outside the door, voices cut through the corridor.
“Hahaha, little brat, the first-grader’s here!”
“Shut up, you bloody poltergeist—”
“Little devil, please!”
“Get out!”
“Alohomora!”
The locked door burst open.
Feet pounded into the room.
Fluffy’s middle head snapped upright, groggy and furious.
Elias didn’t think.
He drew his wand so fast the motion was a single line of silver, and a shape erupted from the tip—a winged, silver-white creature that coalesced midair.
Patronus Charm — LV.6 [756 EXP]
He swung onto its back.
The Patronus understood wordlessly, drifting upward over three stirring heads, its paw hooking the iron ring of the trapdoor set into the floor.
A creak.
The tiniest sound in the world.
Trouble.
Elias knew it even before the dog’s left head began to turn.
He jumped.
The Patronus dissolved into mist and reformed beneath him during the fall, solid arms catching him just before he hit anything lethal.
Above, the trapdoor slammed shut with a hollow boom that echoed down through the dark.
Two of Fluffy’s heads blinked at the noise, saw nothing worth their time, and sagged back toward sleep.
And then the third head spotted the three small figures standing frozen in the doorway, and all drowsiness evaporated.
The dog rose.
He found out the next morning at breakfast.
Petrified, all of them, when Fluffy’s third head bowled them over in the doorway.
Madam Pomfrey had them back on their feet by sunrise, according to the murmured gossip that ran down the Slytherin table.
Minor injuries.
No lasting damage.
No one seemed to know what they’d been doing in the forbidden corridor in the first place, and none of the three were apparently eager to explain.
Elias filed it under not his problem and ate his toast.
The darkness beneath the trapdoor was absolute until Elias’s Patronus kindled to life again, its glow revealing a short drop over beds of twisting, rope-thick vines.
Devil’s Snare.
Professor Sprout’s contribution, he guessed—positioned to catch a careless child so the challenge didn’t end in a splat.
A test of wit before the first actual room.
He felt more like he was trespassing through a gauntlet designed for the curious.
The headmaster really had built a trial.
The Patronus carried him through a short stone corridor and into a chamber so bright it stung.
Keys.
Hundreds of keys.
They winged through the air on enchanted wings, rustling softly, chiming against one another like tiny bells.
When Elias caught one, it was solid brass in his hand, its wings beating against his palm.
Not chaos-transfigured, but permanent magic, the kind that soaked into metal and never left.
He walked to the heavy wooden door at the far end.
The lock resisted Alohomora with the flat refusal of a charm specifically made to stymie such tricks.
Set challenge, then.
Flitwick’s handiwork.
Elias pointed his wand, and a freezing spell rippled outward.
The keys dropped from the air in a clatter of brass rain.
He caught them all—every last one—and started trying.
The silver key, old and heavy, turned with a satisfying clunk.
Just in case, he cast Geminio and pocketed the duplicate before releasing the rest.
Transfiguration — LV.4 [203 EXP]
The second room woke as he entered.
Light flared, and Elias found himself standing at the edge of a giant chessboard, the black pieces towering over him like stone judges.
“I take it you want me to play a piece,” he said.
The black king, faceless and motionless, inclined its head.
Elias considered the board, the white pieces gleaming at the far end, the door behind them.
He’d never played wizard’s chess in his life, and he wasn’t about to learn tonight.
He pulled himself back onto the Patronus and floated straight across.
The faceless pieces watched him go, heads tilting slowly.
A knight half-raised its stone arm, then lowered it.
No one moved to stop him.
Whether exploiting a loophole counted as passing, they didn’t seem to agree on, but they let him land.
Bug successfully exploited.
The next chamber was empty.
Elias’s wand tested for traps: nothing.
Just a room waiting for something he couldn’t see, which made his skin prickle.
But there was no time to linger.
He crossed it and pushed open the door beyond.
Purple fire roared to life the instant he stepped across the threshold, sealing the entrance.
Ahead, black flames barred the next door.
Trapped in the middle.
A table.
Seven bottles.
He picked it up.
A logic puzzle, neat handwriting spelling out which bottles held the way forward and the way back, which three were poison, and which two were only wine.
Very Snape.
Elias finally understood.
The gauntlet was a collaboration.
Sprout, Flitwick, McGonagall, Snape.
The empty room—was that Dumbledore’s?
Some test that required the old man’s presence?
He realized he’d reeled in his Patronus without noticing.
His magical reserves scraped bottom, and his body felt poured full of lead.
He was so tired that the letters on the parchment swam when he tried to focus, a logic grid dissolving into a gray smear.
He sat down hard.
The purple fire crackled behind him.
The black flames waited ahead.
Normally, he’d be in bed by now.
His brain was a fog, his limbs heavy.
Solving riddles required a mind that wasn’t three-quarters asleep.
The bottles glinted.
Seven.
Three poison, two wine, one forward, one back.
A very Snape test.
But he couldn’t possibly be serious about the poison.
A professor wouldn’t actually put something lethal in a student challenge.
Right?
Snape was cruel, not a murderer.
Probably.
Possibly.
The whole school seemed half-insane anyway.
Elias’s gaze dropped to the bottles.
The idea was lazy and dangerous and fit the ache behind his eyes perfectly: just drink all seven.
One of them had to be the right one, and he trusted that Hogwarts wouldn’t let him die in a staff-designed puzzle.
Probably.
A faint shimmer pulled his eyes downward, and the system, that ever-watchful parasite on his soul, flickered into view.
[ ORIGINAL SIN STATUS ]
Pride [96/120]
Wrath [66/120]
Sloth [112/120]
Greed [90/120]
Envy [30/120]
Gluttony [52/120]
Lust [22/120]
He stared at the number beside Sloth.
One hundred twelve out of a possible one hundred twenty.
Edging dangerously close to whatever threshold the system considered unforgivable.
Drink all seven.
Trust in luck and professorial restraint.
It was the lazy way.
The slothful way.
Elias let out a breath that was half a laugh and half a groan.
Was he really willing to risk it?