The Start-of-Term Feast came to an end.
The Slytherin prefect stood at the front of the table and clapped his hands twice, expressionless.
“First-years, follow me.”
The prefect was Marcus Flint, a fifth-year with an exceptionally mean-looking face from years of scowling.
His teeth were uneven, and his lips barely moved when he spoke.
“Keep up, don’t wander off, and don’t touch the paintings on the walls. Some of the portraits have nasty tempers and will remember your faces.”
The first-years shrunk their necks and trailed behind him.
The queue filed out of the side door of the Great Hall and down a wide stone-paved corridor.
Downwards.
Always downwards.
The corridors grew narrower, the ceilings lower, and the torches on either side scarcer.
The air shifted from warm to cool, and then from cool to a damp, chilling cold.
It felt like stepping into a bottomless cellar.
A few girls began rubbing their arms, someone muttering a complaint about the cold.
A short, chubby boy almost tripped over a protruding paving stone, letting out a startled yelp that was instantly silenced by a sharp glare from Marcus Flint.
Malfoy walked near the front-middle of the line, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.
His face remained pale in the torchlight, his lips pressed tightly together; he had barely spoken since the feast ended.
Aaron walked at the very end of the line.
No one noticed him.
It was not because he was actively trying to hide, but because the passive effect of his Divine Shielding caused everyone’s attention to automatically slide right past him.
The first-years ahead of him occasionally glanced back, their gazes sweeping over his position and then turning back forward as if there were nothing there but a stone wall and a torch.
Aaron did not mind.
He was focused on other things.
As the corridor continued downward, a certain presence in the air grew increasingly potent.
It wasn’t dampness, nor was it mildew.
It was water.
Vast, living, flowing water.
His sensory network automatically expanded, covering a range of over ten meters on either side of the corridor.
On the other side of the stone wall, behind rock layers several feet thick, was the water of the Black Lake.
He could feel things moving in the water.
Many things.
Vast numbers, ranging in all sizes.
Some were swimming, some were crawling, and some floated completely motionless in the water.
Aaron’s pace did not falter, his breathing remained steady, and his expression did not flicker.
Like a sleeping beast catching the scent of its prey.
“We’re here.”
Flint stopped in front of a bare stone wall.
There was no door on the wall, nor any handle—only a square stone block slightly darker than the surrounding masonry.
“The password changes every fortnight. It will be posted on the notice board. If anyone gets tricked into giving it away to other Houses, you will deal with the consequences yourselves.”
Flint faced the stone wall and coldly uttered two words.
“Serpent Crown.”
The stone wall parted silently.
The masonry slid aside like a living thing, revealing an arched passageway.
The first-years filed inside.
The Slytherin common room was larger than Aaron had anticipated.
The entire space was long and narrow, with a low ceiling, and the surrounding walls and pillars were constructed of rough, dark grey stone.
A green fire crackled in the hearth.
The sofas and armchairs were all upholstered in dark green and silver-grey leather, exuding a cold aura of old money.
But what truly caught everyone’s attention was the wall.
The entire northern wall of the common room was made of glass.
It was no ordinary glass.
Transparent crystal at least three inches thick, reinforced with high-level enchantments, held back the waters of the Black Lake.
On the other side of the glass lay the fathomless, dark depths.
Occasionally, the shadow of a fish or two glided by in the distance, like shooting stars in a night sky.
Green light filtered through the water, blending with the green flames of the hearth, casting a submerged, ghostly hue over the entire room.
“So cool…” someone whispered.
“It’s a bit too gloomy…” muttered another.
Malfoy glanced at the glass wall, his brow furrowing slightly less.
He strode over to a sofa closest to the fireplace and sat down as if it were his birthright, with Crabbe and Goyle immediately flanking him like two hulking sentinels.
A few first-years began to gather in small groups, whispering about the events of the feast.
“Did you see the Sorting Hat? It was shaking on that new kid Klein’s head for at least half a minute…”
“Who?”
“Just… you know… I can’t quite remember. Anyway, the voice the hat made at the end was really weird.”
“Oh, did that happen? I don’t seem to recall.”
Divine Shielding was taking effect.
The Sorting Hat’s bizarre reaction still lingered in their short-term memories, but details regarding the person “Aaron Klein” were rapidly fading.
In another two or three days, the incident would morph into “it seems some first-year made the hat act weirdly, but I forget who.” The source of this chapter is g.com.
Marcus Flint began assigning dormitories.
The Slytherin first-year boys’ dormitories were at the end of the corridor, growing more secluded the further down one went.
Marcus Flint read names off a list, assigning two or three to a room.
The spots closest to the common room were the prime locations.
Predictably, Malfoy was assigned to the closest three-person room with Crabbe and Goyle.
Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott shared another.
Finally, only Aaron was left.
Marcus Flint looked down at the list, frowning.
“Klein?” He looked up and scanned the room.
His gaze brushed past Aaron, staying on him for less than a second before sliding away, then snapped back with some effort to focus.
“…At the very end of the corridor, the last door on the right. A single.”
His tone was tinged with impatience, as if he were dealing with some trivial errand.
No one objected.
No one questioned why a first-year was getting a single room to himself, because nobody wanted to room with someone they couldn’t even remember.
Aaron carried his trunk down the dark stone corridor, walking all the way to its deepest end.
At the end of the hall stood a single wooden door, a coiled silver serpent carved into its panel.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The room was not large.
It held a four-poster bed with green hangings, a desk, a chair, a wardrobe, and an unlit oil lamp.
And…
An entire wall made of an underwater window.
Even larger than the one in the common room.
As this dormitory sat at the very back of the Slytherin area, it was also closest to the heart of the Black Lake.
The waters outside were deeper, darker, and more unfathomable than those visible from the common room.
The green shimmer filtering through the water cast swaying patterns of light across the unlit room.
Aaron set his trunk on the floor and walked over to the window.
He pressed his palm against the glass.
It was ice-cold.
Magic flowed across the glass’s surface—the combined effect of high-level strengthening and waterproofing charms.
His sensory network extended right through the glass, sinking into the waters of the Black Lake like an invisible spiderweb.
Nearby, within fifty meters of the window, a dozen ordinary lake fish swam lazily.
Further out, some two hundred meters away, colonies of water spirits glowed with faint bioluminescence like stars on the seabed.
And further still…
Aaron’s senses brushed against several much larger life signatures.