History of Magic was the first class on the Slytherin first-years’ schedule, shared with Ravenclaw.
Elias arrived ten minutes early and claimed a seat in the back row.
The classroom smelled of dust and old parchment — not unpleasant, just old, like a library that had been left alone for a century too long.
Students trickled in with the enthusiasm of children who didn’t yet know better, jostling for front-row seats.
By the time the bell rang, the front benches had filled entirely.
Then a ghost drifted through the wall.
He was a translucent, pearly-white figure in outdated robes, and he floated over the lectern without acknowledging the gasps and jerking chairs below him.
His voice, when it came, had all the emotional range of a dripping tap.
“You may call me Professor Binns. I will be teaching you History of Magic.”
Pause.
“Now turn to page one of your textbooks.”
By the twenty-minute mark, the students in the front rows had learned their lesson.
Professor Binns’s voice wasn’t merely dry — it was a monotone so perfectly flat that even the dust motes seemed to drift slower.
A maths lesson after double P.E.
would have been energizing by comparison.
Scattered heads began to droop.
A Ravenclaw girl in the second row lost her battle with consciousness entirely, her quill slipping from slack fingers.
The scratch of Elias’s notes was one of the few sounds still cutting through the drone.
He couldn’t afford to sleep.
So he read — not just the assigned pages, but forty years of goblin rebellions and giant conventions, turning the textbook into a narrative because the alternative was joining the girl in the second row.
The material itself wasn’t the problem.
The delivery was.
When Professor Binns finally announced the end of class, no one moved.
The ghost surveyed the room with growing comprehension — and fury.
“Sleeping in class!” His voice spiked to something almost human.
“Five points from Slytherin!”
The Slytherin and Ravenclaw students, jolted awake by the shout, exchanged silent, terrified glances.
Not a single one of them pointed out that the ghost had somehow deducted from the wrong house — or that Slytherin hadn’t had a Gryffindor in it since the founding.
They fled.
The Great Hall at lunch was a different beast from breakfast.
The morning had been sparse and sleepy; now every table heaved with students, and the enchanted ceiling blazed with afternoon light.
Elias slid into a seat at the Slytherin table.
He still hadn’t figured out a reasonable way to avoid the crowds during meals — sneaking food out of the Hall would raise questions he didn’t want to answer.
Hermione found him minutes later, her cheeks flushed and her bag already overflowing with books.
Elias shared a few choice anecdotes from History of Magic — the sleeping students, the bewildered professor, the five points vanishing from a house that wasn’t even present.
He also suggested, in as diplomatic a tone as he could manage, that she might consider sitting further back.
Hermione’s expression sharpened with immediate disdain.
Only people who didn’t pay attention fell asleep in class.
She, obviously, would not be one of them.
Elias let the subject drop.
They ate and talked, working through half-formed theories about the castle’s shifting staircases and the merits of Hogwarts: A History as a guidebook versus a doorstop.
But as the meal stretched on, Elias’s attention kept snagging on something else.
The looks.
Other Slytherins at his table kept glancing their way — quick cuts of the eyes, muttered asides to neighbors, the occasional curled lip barely hidden behind a goblet.
None of it was friendly.
He didn’t react visibly. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
He just ate, talked, laughed at appropriate moments — and catalogued every face.
Crabbe.
Goyle.
Parkinson.
Nott.
A half-dozen older students whose names he hadn’t learned yet.
He and Hermione weren’t the only mixed-house pair at the table.
A Ravenclaw boy and a Hufflepuff girl sat together three seats down, and no one was staring at them.
Whatever curdled these looks, it was specific to him.
He didn’t get his answer until he returned to the dormitory.
Draco Malfoy blocked the doorway, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle flanking him like mismatched bookends.
“What is it?” Elias asked.
“You’re friends with a Gryffindor?” Malfoy’s voice carried the particular smugness of someone who believed he’d discovered a fatal weakness.
Elias frowned.
“Is there a problem?”
Malfoy’s laugh was a short, cold bark.
“Slytherin and Gryffindor are mortal enemies. Don’t you even know that?” His eyes ran over Elias with fresh calculation.
“Are you from a Muggle family?”
Elias had never heard this particular piece of house politics.
Two groups of children in the same castle — mortal enemies.
It would have been funny if Malfoy’s tone hadn’t made the implications clear.
“Is it not allowed?” he asked.
Malfoy’s face went through several expressions in rapid succession.
The calculating look that had been sizing Elias up as a potential pure-blood ally curdled into something uglier.
He’d misjudged.
And Malfoy, clearly, did not enjoy being wrong.
“I’m roommates with a Mudblood!” He stepped backward, two theatrical paces, as though proximity itself might contaminate him.
Crabbe and Goyle’s eyes widened in dull synchronization.
“I’m telling my father! I want a room change! I refuse to share with your kind!”
He was already moving toward the corridor.
“Wait.”
Elias’s voice came out low and even.
The insult’s meaning had landed — the wizarding world’s equivalent of the ugliest slurs from his previous life.
He couldn’t let it stand.
Some lines, once crossed, required an immediate response.
Heat coiled behind his ribs, sharp and seeking.
[Wrath +1]
Malfoy paused and turned.
Whatever he saw on Elias’s face made him grin, and his two shadows mirrored the expression with less precision.
Elias ignored the notification.
“Apologize now, and I’ll let this go.”
“Oh, you want to fight?” Malfoy’s wand was in his hand, the grin widening.
“We don’t mind teaching you a lesson. Someone should tell you not to get too cozy with those Gryffindor blood trai—”
Elias moved.
The wood twisted, stretched, sprouted scales — and then three long serpents were launching themselves at the three boys.
Malfoy’s eyes went wide.
He thrust his wand at the snake coming for him.
“Dif—”
“Diffindo!”
The cutting curse passed through the serpent’s body like a knife through water.
Transfigured creatures didn’t bleed.
“Hurry up!” Malfoy shrieked at his henchmen.
Crabbe stood frozen, his wand dangling uselessly.
Goyle’s face purpled with effort before he finally managed to spray water from his wand tip — a sputtering Aguamenti that hit one snake squarely in the face and did absolutely nothing.
“You two idiots!” Malfoy’s realization came too late.
He should have aimed at Elias.
Should have done a lot of things.
The snakes coiled around all three of them in a single fluid motion, then shifted — scales smoothing into rope, bodies flattening into bindings.
Crabbe and Goyle were trussed from shoulder to ankle.
Malfoy had an extra loop around his mouth that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Goyle lost his balance first.
He tipped sideways, crashed into Crabbe, and sent both of them stumbling.
Crabbe, by sheer dumb mass and momentum, bumped hard into Malfoy.
Malfoy, bound and off-balance, had nowhere to go.
He pitched forward with a thin, high scream and hit the flagstones face-first.
“My father—” His voice cracked, wet and furious.
“I’m going to tell my father—”
Three quills rose from the nearby desk, twisted into wads of cloth, and stuffed themselves into the boys’ mouths.
Silence.
Elias checked the corridor.
Empty.
He dragged all three of them fully inside the dormitory and pulled the door shut.
The Trace would register underage magic — but in a castle saturated with centuries of spellwork, a few transfiguration signatures from the Slytherin dorms couldn’t be linked to any specific wand.
He left them writhing on the floor and picked up Hogwarts: A History from his trunk.
It was almost funny.
That morning he’d silently laughed at Hermione for ruining her relationship with her dormmates so quickly, and now here he was, doing exactly the same thing before the first day had even ended.
At least the chaos of term’s start meant no one would notice three missing first-years for a few hours.
He couldn’t reason with boys like Malfoy.
Their worldview wasn’t a misunderstanding he could politely correct.
So he wouldn’t waste the breath.
A few hours bound on the floor would serve as a warning.
They’d be more cooperative after.
Probably.
He stepped into the corridor with the book tucked under his arm, already mapping the first secret passage he planned to investigate.
The castle sprawled above him — staircases waiting to shift, doorways pretending to be walls, seven floors of stone and magic with a thousand years of secrets baked into the mortar.
He had a lot of ground to cover.
Hear me out y’all the bonus chapter is written, it’s ready, sitting in the dark like a firefly waiting to be set free into the night.
Only your powerstones hold the key, folks.
Don’t you let it sit there waiting.
Set it free now