“Don’t push, don’t push! Line up!”
Aaron slipped into the edge of the crowd and walked toward Hagrid, turning his Divine Shielding up to the maximum to reduce his presence to the bare minimum.
Under this level of shielding, even if he stood face-to-face with someone, an ordinary person’s eyes would automatically slide right past him.
Hagrid, however, was no ordinary person.
At least, not physically.
A half-giant’s bloodline carried the lineage of the giants, one of the oldest races in the magical world.
They retained many primal instincts that had long since withered away in human wizards.
One of those was the perception of a “predator.”
As Aaron passed by him, Hagrid was looking down and counting heads.
“…seven, eight, nine.”
His voice suddenly cut off.
It wasn’t because of anything he saw or heard.
Rather, goosebumps suddenly erupted across the back of his neck.
The sensation was unmistakable.
Something had just walked past him.
Not a student.
Not a pet.
It was a…
Hagrid looked up, scanning his surroundings.
The lantern light illuminated the fresh faces of the first-years—excited, nervous, curious.
All ordinary eleven-year-old children.
No anomalies.
Yet the goosebumps wouldn’t fade.
Hagrid rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “Odd.”
He shook his head to clear the unsettling feeling and resumed his count.
“…seventeen, eighteen… Right then, that’s about everyone! Follow me! Mind your step!”
The first-years followed Hagrid down a narrow mud path.
Black, dense woods lined both sides of the path, hiding whatever lay within, save for the occasional chirp of insects and the rustling of leaves in the wind.
Aaron walked at the very back of the line.
His Sensory Network was fully deployed.
On either side of the path—beneath the soil, among the roots, within the leaf litter—were dense clusters of life signals.
Insects, spiders, slugs, beetles, centipedes.
There were at least a hundred times more here than in the orphanage garden.
But these were not his focus.
Farther away, deep in the forest, were several much larger life signals.
One resembled a large canine moving through the thicket.
A few were completely stationary, like giant hibernating crustaceans.
There was also a massive cluster of signals, individually small but collectively forming a scalp-numbing, dense swarm of bright points.
The Acromantula nest.
Aaron noted the coordinates in his mind.
The mud path took a turn, and the woods suddenly opened up before them.
“Ye’ll get yer first sight of Hogwarts in a second!” Hagrid called back over his shoulder.
The first-years squeezed through the final row of bushes and stood upon the shore of a vast, black lake.
Then everyone froze.
“Ooh!”
Over a dozen voices gasped in unison.
Hogwarts Castle lay just across the water.
It perched atop a cliff on the opposite shore, its towers and turrets reaching for the sky, every window glowing with warm light.
The reflections of the lights rippled on the black surface of the lake, making it look as though another castle lay beneath the water.
Magnificent.
The first-years’ excitement reached a fever pitch.
Some tugged at their friends’ sleeves, some counted the towers on their fingers, and others were already imagining which house they would be sorted into.
Aaron didn’t look at the castle.
His attention was entirely focused on the Black Lake at his feet.
At first, there was nothing unusual.
Within ten meters of the surface, there were only ordinary freshwater fish and water weeds.
But as his perception plunged deeper…
Twenty meters.
Aaron’s pupils contracted.
The world below twenty meters was entirely different from the surface.
The water temperature plummeted.
The weeds vanished, replaced by bioluminescent aquatic flora resembling deep-sea coral.
Large schools of fish swam at this depth, but they were significantly larger than ordinary freshwater fish—some nearly half a meter long, with scales reflecting a fluorescent shimmer not found in nature.
Thirty meters.
The outlines of an underwater village appeared.
Low-slung stone dwellings stood arrayed across the sandy lakebed, complete with windows, doors, and open plaza-like spaces.
The merpeople settlement.
Aaron could sense living entities moving inside those structures.
Their signals differed from the fish—stronger, more concentrated, carrying the ordered fluctuations characteristic of highly intelligent beings.
Merpeople.
High-tier magical beasts.
Extremely high faith value.
Fifty meters.
Larger signals appeared.
Not just one, but several.
Massive and slow-moving, like ancient underwater behemoths patrolling the deep waters.
One hundred meters.
One signal was absurdly massive.
It coiled in the silt at the very bottom of the lake, measuring at least thirty meters long by rough estimate.
Dozens of colossal tentacles unfurled slowly through the dark waters.
The Giant Squid.
Aaron crouched down, pretending to tie his shoelaces.
The tip of his right index finger touched the edge of the water.
The moment his fingertip entered the water, an incredibly faint pulse of divinity traveled down through the depths.
It wasn’t a summons, nor was it a command.
It was merely a greeting.
As if saying, *I am here.*
One hundred meters below, the Giant Squid froze.
Its ten primary tentacles stiffened in mid-stretch.
Two colossal eyes slowly slid open in the darkness, pupils focusing as they looked toward the surface.
It couldn’t see Aaron’s face; a hundred meters of dark water blocked its vision.
Yet it perceived the meaning of that pulse.
Throughout its long life, having nested at the bottom of this lake for centuries, it had never felt such a signal.
It wasn’t the magic of a wizard.
It was older, more fundamental.
It paused for about three seconds.
Then, its thirty-meter-long body made a movement in the silt.
A shudder.
A wave-like shudder rippling from its head to the tips of its tentacles.
This shudder propagated up through the water, forming a series of tiny ripples on the surface—so subtle that no human standing on the shore could have detected them with the naked eye.
But Aaron did.
He withdrew his finger, his lips curving slightly.
*Promising.*
“No more’n four to a boat!” Hagrid called out from ahead.
A fleet of small wooden boats was moored at the shore, with neither oars nor sails.
The first-years scrambled aboard, and the boats began to glide across the water on their own.
Two other first-years were on board—a Black boy and a blonde girl.
Both were excitedly waving to their friends in the boat behind them, completely oblivious to the person sitting at the stern.
The boat glided smoothly across the lake.
The water around Aaron’s boat was abnormally still.
Beneath the other boats, schools of fish occasionally darted by, churning up bubbles.
But around his boat, not a single bubble appeared.
Within a ten-meter radius, the surface was as smooth as glass.
Every aquatic creature was actively steering clear.
The boats passed through a natural opening in the cliff face.
It was dark inside the cavern, illuminated only by the faint magical lanterns on the bow of each boat.
Then, the exit of the cavern appeared.
The light suddenly brightened.
The castle’s foundations loomed overhead, the massive stone masonry appearing grand and solemn under the torches.
A small harbor was carved into the rock wall, with stone steps leading upward.
The first-years climbed the steps and gathered before a massive oak door.
Hagrid raised his gigantic fist and knocked three times on the door.
The door swung open.
A tall witch in emerald-green robes stood behind it.
Her grey-streaked hair was pulled into a tight bun, her expression as stern as if carved from stone.
Square spectacles sat upon her nose, and the gaze behind them was sharp and scrutinizing.
Minerva McGonagall.
Transfiguration professor, Head of Gryffindor House, and Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts.
She was also the one who had gone to the orphanage to fetch him two months ago.
“Thank you, Hagrid,” McGonagall said briskly.
“I will take them from here.”
Hagrid nodded and stepped aside.
McGonagall’s gaze swept over the heads of the first-years.
Fresh, young faces—nervous, excited, bewildered.
No different from the first-years of any other year.
Then, her gaze stopped precisely at the very back of the crowd.
Aaron stood at the very edge of the crowd, tucked away in an obscure spot behind several taller students.
His Divine Shielding was at its peak.
By all accounts, McGonagall shouldn’t have been able to notice him.
But McGonagall was no ordinary person.
Their encounter at the orphanage two months ago had left a profound imprint on her memory.
That pressure transcended her understanding, and the cognitive interference had temporarily made it impossible for her to even remember his face.
These experiences had set an exceptionally high threshold of alertness in her mind regarding “Aaron Klein.”
High enough to pierce right through his basic Divine Shielding.
Through the layers of students, she located Aaron with unerring accuracy.
The look behind her spectacles was incredibly complex.
There was wariness, suspicion, and a trace of…
unease that even she couldn’t quite define.
She had mentioned this student to Dumbledore, but Dumbledore had merely smiled and said, “Let us wait and see.”
That answer had done nothing to put her mind at ease.
McGonagall withdrew her gaze, returning to her standard expression for welcoming first-years—stern yet welcoming.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” her voice echoed off the stone walls.
“The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats, you must first be sorted into your houses. The Sorting Ceremony is a very important ceremony because your house will be your home…”
She began to brief them on the four houses.
Aaron leaned against a stone pillar in the entrance hall, not listening.
His attention lingered on the Black Lake behind him.
The Giant Squid.
The merpeople.
And the unknown massive creatures dwelling in the deep waters.
This lake was a treasure trove.