Get comfortable, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🔥 ✦ What had to come finally arrived.
The second-year students of Hogwarts were about to have their first Magical Close-Quarters Defense lesson.
The class would again be held on the Quidditch pitch, with students from all four Houses attending together.
There was still some time before class began, but the pitch was already crowded.
For days, the first-years had been describing Professor Vale’s class as though it were some legendary event, and the second-years had been itching to experience it for themselves.
When they arrived, however, they found that the Quidditch pitch had already been filled with a number of strange-looking training dummies.
The students circled them curiously, and the pitch soon hummed with speculation.
Professor Vale arrived exactly on time, looking composed and graceful.
He did not begin speaking at once.
Instead, he swept his catlike amber eyes across the students.
Everyone his gaze touched instinctively looked away.
The pitch fell silent.
After a moment, Elias spoke.
“Before we begin, can anyone tell me why Magical Close-Quarters Defense was created?” To general surprise, the first hand raised belonged to the round-faced Slytherin, Crabbe.
He had spent the past few days listening to Slytherin first-years talk endlessly about Professor Vale’s class.
When he heard the question, Crabbe believed he had found the secret to earning points for Slytherin and shot his hand up with unusual speed.
“Answer, Mr.
Crabbe,” Elias said, slightly surprised.
“To lose weight!” Crabbe blurted eagerly.
Crabbe himself was a chubby boy, so the answer sent the other students into laughter.
Elias could not help smiling.
“You are correct, Mr.
Crabbe.
That is certainly part of it.
Five points to Slytherin.” Crabbe was thrilled.
It was the first time he had earned points for his House.
He lifted his chin proudly, and even the Slytherins around him began looking at him with surprise.
“I did not graduate from Hogwarts,” Elias continued.
“At my school, training in close combat was considered even more important than magical instruction.” The students stared in astonishment.
First, their new professor had not come from Hogwarts.
Second, they could hardly imagine a school where close combat mattered more than magic.
“Professor Vale, which magical school did you come from?” one student asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
“Kaer Morhen,” Elias replied.
“The school of the witchers.” The answer stirred the class at once.
None of the students had heard of Kaer Morhen, and none of them knew what a witcher was, but the name alone sounded impressive enough to excite them.
Questions burst out from every direction.
When Elias explained that Kaer Morhen trained witchers to hunt monsters, the students’ eyes grew even wider.
The fear they had felt toward him because of his strange eyes quickly disappeared.
Now they crowded him with requests for monster-hunting stories.
Elias did not mind leaving them with the impression of an approachable professor, so he told them a few stories from contracts he had taken.
The students listened open-mouthed as he described hunting drowners that had killed farmers, a griffin that had been stealing horses, and a wraith haunting a well.
At the best moments, many of the children stared with shining eyes, wishing they could have been there.
The atmosphere reached its height.
Elias used the moment to show them a small trick.
He drew five throwing knives, turned his back to a training dummy, and threw without looking.
When the students checked the dummy, they discovered that each knife had struck the tiny target mark on the dummy’s head from a different angle.
The handles formed something like a blooming steel flower.
The display caused an uproar and a burst of applause.
Any concern that Professor Vale might be another Lockhart, all talk and no substance, vanished completely.
The students’ faces were flushed and their eyes bright.
Several looked as though they expected Elias to teach them the trick immediately so they could boast about it to parents and friends.
When the applause finally faded, a small hand rose.
Hermione.
“Miss Granger,” Elias said.
“What is your question?” “Professor Vale, I have read many books and magical histories from several countries, but I have never found any mention of a school called Kaer Morhen.
Why is that?” Hermione had been intensely curious about Kaer Morhen.
She had searched her memory of every book she had read and found nothing.
At last, unable to restrain herself, she asked.
The lively class quieted.
The other students were curious too.
“You would not find records of it, Miss Granger,” Elias said.
His voice grew lower.
“Kaer Morhen was destroyed in a massacre long ago.” Hermione and the others listened in shock.
They could not imagine how a school whose students were as powerful as Elias seemed to be could have been destroyed.
Elias did not intend to reveal that he had crossed from another world.
Instead, he told them a story set in a very distant age.
Fanatics, stirred up by slander against witchers from the various schools, had attacked the fortress with help from mages.
They seized Kaer Morhen and slaughtered every witcher inside.
Elias’s own mentor survived only by hiding beneath corpses.
A few witchers who were away on the Path escaped the massacre, and those survivors struggled to preserve the school’s legacy.
Now, Elias told them, he was the last remaining student of his school.
By the end, several sensitive young witches were crying.
The other students had fallen silent.
They could hardly reconcile the humorous, approachable professor before them with such a tragic past.
Hermione’s eyes were red.
She felt guilty for reopening what seemed to be an old wound out of curiosity.
In the distance, Professor McGonagall, still attending the class as an observer, wiped at the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief.
The story had moved her deeply.
Professors Flitwick and Sprout had already stopped supervising Elias.
They had concluded that he was a good professor and not a danger to the students.
Only McGonagall still attended his classes at Dumbledore’s request.
In truth, she had also begun to think Elias posed little danger, and she was increasingly unsure why Dumbledore remained so wary of him.
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CREATORS’ THOUGHTS EmberHollow Thank you for reading.
I hope this chapter pulled you deeper into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.