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Nagini’s tail nudged him awake again.
Jiang Fengyue forced his eyes open and found that the Dark Lord had not left early.
‘Argus’ was sitting fully dressed in an armchair, reading the Daily Prophet.
He didn’t dare make him wait.
Jiang Fengyue got up quickly, tidied himself, and walked out of the dormitory hand in hand with the Dark Lord.
Nagini watched their retreating figures, flicked the tip of her tail, then climbed to the top of the wardrobe, coiled up, and went back to sleep.
He froze the moment he reached the common room.
At this hour, the place should have been nearly empty.
Instead, every armchair and sofa was packed.
Students who couldn’t find seats stood against the walls or leaned against the bookshelves.
Nearly all of Slytherin was gathered here.
The instant Jiang Fengyue stepped into the corridor, every pair of eyes turned toward him.
Sighs of relief swept through the crowd, followed by low cheers.
Students of every year, upper and lower alike, dipped their heads to him in unison.
“Chief.”
Jiang Fengyue instinctively glanced to his side.
The Dark Lord was watching him with an ambiguous smile, his eyes utterly indifferent to the scene, as if this were a minor theatrical performance hardly worth his attention.
Jiang Fengyue steadied himself and smiled.
“What’s all this, gathering here so early?”
Narcissa said softly, “They were here last night, too.
When you still hadn’t come back by curfew, we sent everyone to bed.
This morning, they all came back.”
Goyle broke in anxiously.
“Malfoy!
Were you alright yesterday?
I was so worried I couldn’t eat dinner!”
“You only sent Snape back to tell us you were safe.
How were we supposed to be at ease?” Nott said.
Snape, standing in the corner, was watching him in silence.
The Slytherin students chimed in all at once, talking over each other, the scene so warm and chaotic it was utterly un-Slytherin.
Jiang Fengyue stood on the steps and looked out at this crowd of them, something soft in his gaze.
At his side, shielded by the fall of his robes, the Dark Lord had already slipped a hand onto his waist and was stroking it slowly.
“Come on,” Jiang Fengyue said, smiling.
“Let’s go to the Great Hall.”
The Great Hall was destined to be interesting that morning.
Only a handful of Slytherins were already at their table.
Students from the other three houses kept glancing toward the long, nearly empty bench, and the professors on the dais did the same.
Then noise came from the entrance.
All eyes swung toward it, and stilled.
A tide of silver and green surged in without a sound.
At its very front walked the platinum-haired Slytherin who had ignited yesterday’s brawl, Lucius Malfoy, with only a single dark-haired boy beside him.
The tide of dark green followed in his wake, poured through the hall doors, and packed the long table to the last seat.
James stared, open-mouthed, pumpkin juice slipping from his fingers.
That’s brilliant.”
Beside him, Sirius, still wrapped in bandages, looked like his blood was about to boil.
“Bloody hell.
That’s brilliant.”
The entire Great Hall erupted.
Eyes locked onto the Slytherin table, and heated conversation broke out across all four houses, rippling all the way up to the professors’ seats.
The professors, without any apparent agreement among themselves, all turned first to look at a thoroughly baffled Professor Slughorn.
FLAP, FLAP — FLAP — the beating of wings, growing louder from a distance, cut through the noise.
A flock of owls streamed in through the hall entrance, carrying the sharp, thin cold of high-altitude morning air and flooding the space with it.
Letters and parcels rained down like hailstones.
Copies of the Daily Prophet slapped onto the tabletops.
The Malfoy family’s snowy owl dove straight for Jiang Fengyue, a house-crest silk scarf tied around its neck.
He cast a quick Levitation Charm on a letter that was about to drop into someone’s goblet, then set a dish of oatmeal in front of the owl, Alexander, the Malfoy family’s bird.
The silver-white owl dipped its head and began to eat.
Jiang Fengyue looked at the seal on the envelope and smiled.
He held the letter out to the person beside him.
“My Lord.
It’s a letter from Father.
Would you like to read it together?”
Voldemort didn’t even lift his eyes.
“You read it.”
Jiang Fengyue opened the letter and skimmed quickly.
Abraxas opened with praise for his performance the day before.
The corner of Jiang Fengyue’s mouth curved up, and then kept reading, and the warmth drained from his expression.
A chill swept straight to his scalp.
He turned his head slowly.
The Dark Lord beside him was enjoying breakfast with complete composure, his posture flawlessly elegant, like a nobleman taking his ease in a sun-warmed afternoon garden.
The next second, the Great Hall detonated.
Voices crashed over one another as people stared down at their copies of the Daily Prophet.
“Gringotts was attacked yesterday!
Over a dozen goblins killed on the spot, the Ministry of Magic has issued a ban on Gringotts, the Financial Conversion Restriction Clause —”
“The French Minister of Magic was confirmed dead in Paris yesterday afternoon!
France is in complete chaos —”
The noise nearly blew the ceiling off.
Jiang Fengyue looked up toward the dais.
Dumbledore’s deep blue eyes were lowered, his expression undisturbed.
He had received this news last night, certainly, including the details that hadn’t made the papers.
Jiang Fengyue’s throat tightened.
The parchment in his hand felt like it was burning.
Abraxas’s handwriting was cold, sharp, and fast.
The situation is changing far faster than anyone expected.
Half the seats in the French Ministry changed hands overnight.
The Lestranges were ruthlessly efficient, disguised as ordinary wizards, they captured the goblin elder and nailed him dead in the entrance hall of Gringotts before launching a full assault on the bank.
Carrow led a small team and purged three Order of the Phoenix underground contacts in Ireland and Italy.
Karkaroff moved even faster in Eastern Europe.
One event after another.
One after another after another.
Every word landed like a stone.
Europe was tearing itself apart.
Jiang Fengyue turned his head and fixed his gaze on the Dark Lord.
This man, the one who had set all of it in motion, raised his cup and took a calm sip of lemon juice.
His other hand rested loosely on the table, fingertips tapping the surface in a slow, unhurried rhythm.
He sat here, inside Hogwarts, and had decided the fate of a continent a thousand miles away.
He had thrown all of Europe into upheaval with a single hand.
And now he sat utterly apart from it, as if the mountains of corpses beyond these walls, the map of power he was rearranging at will, had nothing to do with him at all.
A violent, full-body tremor swept through Jiang Fengyue, excitement and dread flooding into his every limb.
This man.
This man, who bent the weather of the world to his will.
The Dark Lord turned his head slowly.
He was not a man who ever let emotion cross his face, but when he saw the complexity in Jiang Fengyue’s eyes, something like surprise flickered there.
Then the corner of his mouth lifted, just slightly.
An expression of approval from someone who had already understood everything.
The upheaval beyond the castle gates couldn’t touch the school.
For most students, the news had been something to exclaim over at breakfast and forget by lunch.
It wasn’t their fault.
They’d never even seen a Thestral.
Narcissa and Nott came by to invite Jiang Fengyue to Hogsmeade.
He declined.
Goyle and Crabbe looked at him with regret and promised to bring him something from Honeydukes.
Hogwarts was nearly deserted by mid-morning, close to half its students gone.
Even the little Gryffindors who had been serving detention alongside him had cleared out.
Jiang Fengyue decided to get an early start on the trophy room.
As he polished today, he found several more trophies engraved with the Dark Lord’s name.
He wiped each one spotless and arranged them beside the Special Award for Services to the School.
He climbed onto the windowsill, stood on tiptoe, and spread foam across an entire pane of glass, then wiped it clean section by section with a dry cloth.
A light breeze curled through the window and lifted strands of his hair.
He turned to jump down, and caught sight of the doorway.
The Dark Lord was there, leaning lazily against one of the display shelves.
Jiang Fengyue had no idea how long he’d been there.
Those dark, deep eyes had been watching him the whole time.
Jiang Fengyue wrung out the cloth, put everything away, and jogged toward him like a bird heading home.
He tilted his face up with a bright smile.
Voldemort pinched his cheek and led him straight out.
Jiang Fengyue was in a good mood.
He didn’t entirely understand why the Dark Lord, who had already given him two rewards yesterday, was apparently still planning to give him another one, but more was always better.
The abandoned girls’ lavatory on the second floor.
Jiang Fengyue watched, completely dumbfounded, as the Dark Lord knocked Moaning Myrtle unconscious, then turned to one of the taps and hissed.
The entire sink shifted and sank downward, opening into a massive pipe that disappeared into the dark below.
Wait, why was he being brought to the Chamber of Secrets?!
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