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The entire corridor went dead silent.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Every gaze, curious, gleeful, or just plain nosy, froze as one.
Countless eyes landed on the platinum-haired youth standing at the far end of the hall, perfectly still, gray-blue eyes like a frozen lake.
The color drained from James and Sirius’s faces in an instant.
Their swagger collapsed into something tighter, colder, a wariness that made both of them go rigid, their wand hands white-knuckled.
Everyone in that corridor understood it at once.
This person was the symbol of this generation of Slytherin.
James’s gaze swept the crowd.
His throat moved.
He knew he couldn’t afford to show fear, not now, not in front of everyone.
“So you showed up, Malfoy.” He forced his voice into something hard, something contemptuous.
“What, these cowering bugs finally found their backbone?” He gestured at the Slytherins behind.
“This is our business.
Not yours.
Who do you think you are — the King of Slytherin?!
Get lost!”
Sirius stepped forward, shoving down the unease twisting through his chest.
“You Slytherins are all a pack of filthy snakes.
Malfoy, if you’re going to lead these cowards to, ”
The words died as if someone had closed a hand around his throat.
A binding spell hit James in an instant, precise and invisible.
The long pale hand holding the fir wand rose, just slightly, and James shot upward, suspended upside down, robes falling to cover his face, locked so completely he couldn’t even twitch.
Jiang Fengyue barely lifted his eyes.
“I gave you a chance.
Didn’t I?” His voice was quiet.
Unhurried.
“Who permitted you to provoke Slytherin?
Who permitted you to question me?”
Wandless incantation.
The students from the other three houses stared.
A wave of sharp, collective inhales crashed through the corridor.
A wordless, perfectly placed Petrificus Totalus and Levicorpus, cast simultaneously, without uttering a syllable.
Even some professors might not have pulled that off so cleanly.
From behind Jiang Fengyue, the Slytherins’ gazes converged on that platinum figure, bright with something close to reverence.
“Malfoy!” Sirius roared, lunging forward with his wand.
“You damned—”
His legs went out from under him.
Both of them, all at once.
He pitched forward, crashing to the floor in a graceless sprawl.
A Leg-Locker Curse had struck him like a bolt of lightning.
Jiang Fengyue turned his wrist.
The wand angled down.
Lupin pushed through the crowd, his eyes desperate.
“Please, Senior, I’m sorry, I’ll stop them from going after Severus, I promise.
Please, ”
Jiang Fengyue gave no sign he had heard a word.
A tall Gryffindor seventh-year stepped forward through the shifting crowd, gripping his wand, his voice sharp with warning.
“Enough, Malfoy.
Whatever James and Potter did to your people, you’ve paid it back.
Don’t push this into a house war.”
The words hit the surface of Jiang Fengyue’s expression and left nothing.
Not even a ripple.
Jiang Fengyue lowered his wand.
The Gryffindor seventh-year exhaled.
The next second, a violent burst of red light shot straight into the figure still sprawled on the floor.
Sirius had no time to react.
Like a broken sack, he was launched sideways by the Disarming Charm and slammed hard against the corridor’s stone wall.
He slid down to the ground.
Dust and gravel rained after him.
He coughed, wracked with it, each breath ragged and painful.
The corridor went quieter than it had ever been.
Wandless.
Wordless.
“Malfoy!
How dare you!” The Gryffindor seventh-year’s voice cracked into a shout.
Fury at being ignored rushed straight to his head.
He swung his wand forward.
Jiang Fengyue looked at him.
Just that.
The seventh-year dropped flat to the ground as if a thousand pounds had landed on his back.
Magical suppression.
Something he had learned from the Dark Lord, releasing magical pressure outward, letting it press down on those weaker than himself.
It pinned them to the ground.
Left them unable to move.
Left them with no option but to kneel.
Jiang Fengyue’s refined face was calm, eyes slightly narrowed.
When he spoke, his voice was soft.
It rang through the entire corridor anyway.
“I said: who permitted you to question me, Gryffindor?”
One person.
Three opponents.
The whole corridor stood frozen as if hit by a Petrificus of their own.
They looked at the boy hanging upside down, the one crumpled against the wall, the one crushed flat to the stone, and then they looked at the platinum-haired youth still standing in the exact same spot, robes unruffled, not a single fold out of place.
A chill ran all the way up to the crown of every skull in that hallway.
Behind him, the Slytherins straightened, one by one.
Their bodies trembled, not from fear, from the effort of containing something they had no words for.
Upper years and first-years alike, their faces carried the same expression: deep, bone-level awe wrapped around fierce, blazing pride.
Every gaze in that house pointed at one person.
The Malfoys had led Slytherin through bloodline and family name.
But here, now, Lucius Malfoy had earned the title through something else entirely.
“Damn you, Malfoy!
What did you do!”
The silence broke.
Gryffindor erupted, shouting, surging forward.
Fear lived at the back of their eyes, but house pride and raw anger were louder.
They came forward anyway, together.
A curse streaked toward Jiang Fengyue and shattered halfway there.
“Protego!”
Narcissa stood behind him, wand raised, her face white.
The proud Black sister lifted her chin and let her voice cut through everything like a blade of ice.
“Who gave you the audacity to offend Slytherin’s Princeps?”
Goyle and Crabbe stepped up on either side of Jiang Fengyue and planted themselves there, glaring.
Shafiq’s wand was already up.
All around him, every Slytherin wand rose at once, tips out, pointed forward.
Gryffindor answered in kind.
Red and green faced each other across that corridor, one house on the edge of open war with the other.
Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff stepped back in silent, unanimous agreement: not our fight.
Gryffindor struck first.
Seven, eight offensive spells blazed toward the platinum figure at Slytherin’s front.
Slytherins of every year threw up whatever defensive magic they had, casting themselves as a wall between the spells and Jiang Fengyue.
“Stand down.” Jiang Fengyue tilted his head, just slightly.
His voice was quiet.
Goyle and Crabbe didn’t understand.
Nott grabbed them both before they could move.
The Princeps spoke, you obeyed, no questions asked.
The spells kept coming, furious and relentless.
Jiang Fengyue raised his wand with perfect composure and swept it through a rapid sequence: “Protego Totalum!
Protego!
Impedimenta!”
A massive silver shield surged up in front of every Slytherin in the hall.
Spell after spell crashed into it and dissolved into scattered light.
“Stop!
Every single one of you — stop this NOW!”
The voice came from the far end of the corridor, high and furious, cracking off the stone walls.
A wand went up.
Blinding white light burst from its tip and cut through the whole chaotic tangle of magic aimed at Jiang Fengyue.
James, still suspended in the air, was lowered carefully to the ground.
Then she saw Sirius.
Professor McGonagall’s face was the color of ash.
Her lips were a thin, flat line.
She swept her gaze across both sides, landed on the lions, hard, then passed over the pale-faced Lupin and the Slytherin students, and stopped on the platinum-haired boy at the very front.
“Malfoy!
Potter!
Black!
All of you!” She was barely containing her fury.
“What is this?
A mass standoff?
Casting spells openly in the corridor?” Her voice cracked through the hall like a whip.
“What do you think Hogwarts is, a dueling club?!”
Dead silence.
The Gryffindors hunched their shoulders, shrinking instinctively.
James and Sirius, freed and aching, went rigid.
Even the Slytherins pulled back their energy, just a degree.
“Everyone present who participated in this brawl, all of you, to the Headmaster’s office.
You can explain yourselves to Dumbledore.” Her gaze passed over every face in the corridor, leaving no one out.
Jiang Fengyue inclined forward at the waist, a clean, precise bow, the posture of someone who had been performing perfect courtesy since before he could read.
He straightened without hurrying.
“I regret having disturbed you, Professor McGonagall.” His tone was unhurried, untroubled.
“However, with the exception of myself, no Slytherin present initiated anything.
They cast only defensive spells.
There was no retaliation.”
He paused, just briefly.
“I accept full responsibility.
Whatever the punishment, I’ll take it.”
➤ Next: Dumbledore — Face to Face