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In the carriage, most students looked around in blank confusion, as if they’d just jolted awake from a nightmare.
Sirius Black dragged a hand across his handsome face, exchanged a glance with James, and turned a cold sneer on Jiang Fengyue.
“Well, look who it is — the head of the vipers, arriving at last.” His gaze dropped to Jiang Fengyue’s bandaged left hand, and he silently mouthed something.
The Dark Lord’s little dog.
Jiang Fengyue’s expression went glacial.
His gaze swept across Sirius like a blade, then he tilted his head slightly to check on Narcissa, standing behind him, looking mortified, and briefly closed his eyes.
That big-mouthed Bellatrix.
“Remus Lupin.” Jiang Fengyue shifted his attention to the boy tugging at Sirius’s sleeve.
“I believe Headmaster Dumbledore gave you this position so you could maintain order — not indulge your companions.”
Lupin flushed and murmured an apology.
“You,” James, seeing his friend reprimanded, started forward in outrage, but the two Gryffindor prefects striding over cut him off before he could get a word out.
Alice and Frank stepped between Sirius and James, grabbed one each, and shoved them back toward the compartment.
“Give me a break, my dear Marauders!” Then they looked to Peter and Lupin, gesturing for them to follow.
“Keep an eye on them, would you, Remus.”
With the source of the trouble handled, students from all four houses swiftly retreated to their own compartments under Jiang Fengyue’s frost-cold stare.
The young snakes scattered among them practically bent double as they fled.
Jiang Fengyue rubbed his temple, took his leave of the prefects, and continued his patrol down the now-quiet corridor.
Passing one compartment, he spotted two familiar faces inside.
He raised an eyebrow and pushed the door open without hesitation.
The beautiful girl who had been trying to defuse things outside looked up in surprise and greeted him politely.
“Good afternoon, Prefect Malfoy.”
“Good afternoon, Evans.” He nodded to her, then turned to the boy who had snapped his book shut the instant the door opened.
“Severus — it looks like you didn’t go out just now.”
Severus Snape sat with his shoulders hunched, greasy hair falling across his eyes.
“No, Prefect,” he said quietly.
“I just found them too…
noisy.”
The unspoken part was clear to everyone present.
Attend a Marauders’ party?
He’d sooner earn a T on his Potions exam.
Lily nodded in agreement beside him.
Jiang Fengyue looked at them both with a quiet warmth.
“Better change into your robes.
We’re almost there.”
He waited for their replies, then stepped back out and kept walking.
The earlier incident had clearly sobered most of the student body.
Some of the younger years actually trembled when they saw him coming.
Even the Gryffindors went quiet and stuttery.
Jiang Fengyue found this deeply satisfying.
He made his way to the very end of the train.
This last carriage was nearly empty.
He stepped into the final open compartment, swept a casual glance around, and was already turning to leave when his feet stopped.
The dark-haired boy was by the window, chin propped in his hand, watching the scenery blur past in silence.
As if he’d finally noticed Jiang Fengyue’s scrutinizing gaze, Aegus turned his head and looked at the figure in the doorway without a flicker of emotion.
Jiang Fengyue’s brow drew together slightly.
He tilted his chin up, an angle that verged on arrogant.
Aegus looked back at him.
No resentment.
No anger.
As if everything that had happened two days ago had never occurred at all.
A long pause.
Then Aegus curved his lips into a perfect, easy smile.
“Good afternoon, Lucius.”
Something was wrong.
Ten thousand things were wrong.
Even as he walked into Hogwarts, Jiang Fengyue was still thinking about that last compartment.
Aegus was practically a different person.
Someone that reckless and brainless, smiling at him as if he felt nothing at all.
He thought of what Abraxas had said yesterday.
The sense of wrongness sharpened.
A foreboding settled slow and cold in his chest.
Wind skimmed low along the ground, carrying the smell of rotting late-autumn leaves, and underneath it, something harder to name, like aged leather left too long in the dark.
Jiang Fengyue stopped thinking.
His eyes went wide.
There, in front of the carriages, a massive figure.
Enormous membranous wings folded against its sides.
Skin stretched drum-tight over jutting bones, tracing the sharp lines of its shoulders and the individual ridges of its ribs.
A Thestral.
He stared at it with open, unguarded admiration.
A hand clapped his shoulder.
He turned to find Narcissa giving him a look of exasperated amusement.
“What are you standing around for?
Get in.”
He glanced once more at the Thestral, Narcissa couldn’t see it at all, then climbed in beside her.
Close on their heels came the Malfoy family’s hereditary hangers-on: Crabbe and Goyle, two hulking figures who crowded aboard and took the seats opposite.
“Hey, Malfoy, you didn’t send us a single letter all summer!” Crabbe complained.
Goyle nodded vigorously.
“Even that great L, ”
“Shut up.” The command came sharp and quiet.
Jiang Fengyue didn’t look at them.
His gaze had fixed on something in the distance.
Crabbe and Goyle went silent immediately.
Even Narcissa stopped speaking.
He stared coldly at a figure not far from the carriage.
He hadn’t imagined it.
Aegus had just tried to come this way.
After being thoroughly disciplined with dark magic.
After being punished by the Dark Lord himself.
And the boy had just now intended to share a carriage with him.
Yesterday’s summons from the Dark Lord had been wrong. This story is hosted at g.com.
Deeply wrong.
Jiang Fengyue kept his eyes locked on Aegus.
Seeing the carriage was full, Aegus glanced around without any particular reaction, then walked to another carriage, one sitting completely empty, and got in.
Only then did Jiang Fengyue look away.
His brow stayed furrowed.
The other three in the carriage had nothing more to say.
The rest of the journey passed in complete silence.
By the time they reached the Great Hall, Professor McGonagall was already waiting off to one side with a cluster of chattering first-years.
Jiang Fengyue walked straight to the Slytherin table.
When the young snakes saw him coming, those seated at the center shifted along the bench, clearing the best spot for the Malfoy heir, though the space they’d already left had been more than generous.
Covert gazes followed him down the length of the table as he took his seat, searching and reverent.
Up at the staff table, Slughorn was beaming, and the attention of several other professors drifted his way as well.
Jiang Fengyue sat down without hurry, without ceremony.
These kinds of gazes were nothing new.
They barely registered anymore.
Though it was obvious the young snakes had fast intelligence networks, at the very least, all twelve family heads who had been at Voldemort’s manor had surely told their children and nephews exactly what had happened that day.
Nearly everyone had been warned again: do not touch the Malfoy family’s platinum viper.
Narcissa didn’t sit beside him.
She settled next to Isadora Greengrass instead.
And just as Crabbe and Goyle moved to take their seats, something unexpected happened.
A wand came up and blocked Goyle’s path.
The Slytherin table fell silent almost instantly.
Every head turned to look at who was standing behind Goyle.
Aegus held his wand up, expression perfectly composed, and looked past Goyle to Jiang Fengyue.
He smiled again, warm, easy, flawless.
“Lucius.
I believe I should sit beside you.”
Silence blanketed the table.
Some of the young snakes knew what had passed between Aegus and Malfoy.
Quite a few even knew how it had ended.
Disbelief was written across every face.
No one understood what Aegus thought he was doing.
Jiang Fengyue watched the standing figure with cold, unblinking eyes.
Aegus looked back, steady and unhurried, waiting.
The quiet at the Slytherin table had already drawn notice.
Students at all three other house tables were glancing over.
Slughorn at the staff table had craned his neck visibly forward.
Even the little first-years trailing Professor McGonagall had turned their bewildered faces in this direction.
Jiang Fengyue’s gaze flickered.
Then, at last, he gave one slow, imperious nod.
“Permitted, Parkinson.”
Aegus looked at him, an expression that defied easy reading, and held for one moment on those cold grey eyes, radiating calm authority.
Then he settled into the seat beside him, unhurried, composed, as if this had always been exactly where he belonged.
➤ Next: The Great Hall Feast