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London, King’s Cross Station.
The early morning mist lay thick across all the rail lines.
When Jiang Fengyue reached Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, the red-haired family was already ahead of him.
Abraxas had wanted to see him off, but the Dark Lord had apparently handed him some urgent task during their meeting the previous day.
He’d had to bid Jiang Fengyue farewell at the breakfast table, and not without regret.
Jiang Fengyue waited until all the Weasley children had gone through, then picked up his trunk and boarded the train.
He found the prefects’ compartment, tapped his wand against the yellowed window to open it, and let the cold damp air rush in.
His trunk popped open on its own.
He dug through one of its Extension-Charmed compartments, pulled out a robe and put it on, and his Slytherin prefect badge flew to his chest without being asked.
“Good morning, Lucius.”
He looked back.
A tall, slender girl was stepping into the compartment, stowing her luggage as she spoke.
Alice Abbott, the Gryffindor girl prefect.
“Why didn’t you greet me first, Alice?” A boy’s aggrieved voice followed on her heels.
Frank Longbottom, the Gryffindor boy prefect from his year, walked in and gave Jiang Fengyue a nod.
“Good morning, Lucius.
Oh — what happened to your hand?”
Alice turned at that, spotted the bandages wrapped around Jiang Fengyue’s left hand, and let out a short shriek.
Jiang Fengyue shrugged.
“Small accident.”
“Must have been quite the accident.” Narcissa Black materialized in the doorway, fingers still twined in her curls, looking at him with undisguised amusement.
He shot her a weary look.
She gave him a knowing smile in return.
Oh.
Bellatrix and her enormous mouth.
A blond boy slipped past Narcissa into the compartment.
“What are you all on about?
Hey, Alice, Frank — I’d go check the back if I were you.
Potter and Black are at it again.”
The two Gryffindor prefects let out matching groans and headed out together to deal with the school’s most notorious troublemakers.
“Aren’t you curious?” Jiang Fengyue said to Narcissa.
She gave him a flat stare.
“Black will never get dragged down with him.
Don’t test me, Lucius.”
Heaven knew he was only after a good show.
But it was no surprise, really.
The Black family’s candidate for disownment in this generation had been settled since the day Sirius first walked through the castle doors.
The moment he noticed Narcissa starting to open her trunk, Jiang Fengyue made the sensible choice and quietly left the compartment, pulling the door shut behind him.
He began his inspection rounds.
The compartments near the prefects’ carriage had been claimed by Slytherin’s little snakes.
At the sight of the Malfoy prefect, most of them rose to their feet and greeted him properly.
He was, on the whole, satisfied with the little snakes.
Slytherin’s hierarchy was sharper than the other houses, which meant they stayed well-behaved most of the time.
At least in the presence of real power.
He continued forward.
Most compartments sat empty.
Passing one, he paused to rescue a handful of lower-year Ravenclaws who’d been swept up to the ceiling by a miniature tornado capsule. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The little eagles settled back into the wreckage of their compartment, trembling, and greeted him loudly.
Given how well-behaved they were, the Malfoy prefect decided to confiscate the capsule and leave the points alone.
The closer he got to the middle of the train, the louder it became.
Nearly every student on the Hogwarts Express had crowded into the central corridor, shoulder to shoulder, blocking every inch of the aisle.
Half the carriage was shaking with roars and half-formed melodies.
At the far end, standing on a sofa cushion, Sirius Black was belting out the Blast-Ended Skrewt Song into his Sonorus-charmed wand with full emotional commitment, even pulling off a high note at the peak.
Beside him, James Potter had his Comet II levitating at chest height, using his wand to produce harmonies.
The fifth-year Gryffindor prefect stood helplessly to one side, trying to pull them down, getting absolutely nowhere with two friends who had collectively lost their minds.
Short, round Peter Pettigrew stood cautiously at the compartment entrance.
Lily Evans stood beside him.
“Potter!
Black!
That’s enough!
You can’t keep this up!” Lily shouted, but it was already far too late.
In half an hour, this impromptu concert had grown into something unstoppable.
Off-key singing and the rhythm beaten out on seats and trunks, mixed with the Mandrake-shriek howling of students from all four houses, it was beyond anyone’s power to stop now.
Jiang Fengyue could even spot several Slytherins in the crowd.
“Lucius!
You’re here!” Someone shouted, and he looked over.
Packed into the corner of the compartment were the other house prefects, all pushed to the edges by the mob.
“It’s madness!
Lucius, we can’t even get through!” Ravenclaw prefect Emily Rohr had to shout just to be heard.
“They can’t hear our Amplifying Charms!
Black brought Muggle speakers!”
“I say we just Petrify the lot of them!” Alice’s face was tight with irritation.
Frank nodded beside her.
“We can’t!
Casting on this many students at once — Professor McGonagall will strip points from us.
Headmaster Dumbledore won’t approve either!” The Head Boy, tall and square-jawed, spoke up.
Narcissa frowned and looked at Jiang Fengyue.
“What do we do?”
Jiang Fengyue was quiet for a moment, taking in the scene.
An endless tide.
It punched through every closed door, rattling the frames.
The singing was tangled up with the hoarse howling and uncontrolled laughter of a hundred young voices, with the clatter of luggage racks shaking loose overhead.
It refused to quiet.
Refused to be tamed.
Outside this train, Michael Selwyn had just been confirmed as the new Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
The pure-blood supremacist rhetoric in the Daily Prophet had grown louder still in the wake of his inaugural remarks.
The twelve Wizengamot seats were convening in the Ministry of Magic to debate stripping Albus Dumbledore of his title of Chief Warlock.
But here, on this shuddering, vibrating Hogwarts Express, none of that could reach this carriage.
The chaos lived outside the politics.
All four houses, even Slytherin, were shouting themselves hoarse.
“Let them finish,” Jiang Fengyue said.
“This song.”
The Blast-Ended Skrewt Song wound its way to a close.
Sirius tossed his black curls and called into his wand: “Next up, my personal favorite.
‘The Enchantment of the Siren’!”
The carriage exploded.
The Muggle speakers were already primed.
And then, just as the noise seemed ready to burst through the steel roof and tear the sky open, it happened.
A silence fell.
Cold.
Dense.
Carrying the weight of something absolute.
It came like the deepest current in the ocean floor, no warning, no buildup, simply there all at once.
Not a dimming of sound.
A seizure of it.
As if an invisible hand had closed around the throat of the entire train and squeezed.
Sirius had just drawn breath to sing.
The sound died in his windpipe.
He coughed violently, whatever had been rising in his chest shoved back down by a magical force he had no words for and no way to refuse.
Every source of noise in that carriage, every howling face, every clapping hand, every stomping foot, went still.
Someone had pressed pause on the entire world.
The flood of sound was gone.
Completely, entirely gone.
Sirius lifted his head, disoriented, and followed James Potter’s gaze toward the rear of the carriage.
As if pulled by the same invisible thread, the frozen crowd turned.
Every set of eyes crossed the wrecked aisle, crossed the equally stunned students, and came to rest at the far end.
The prefects stood in their house robes.
The Gryffindors looked at their little lions with helpless exasperation.
The Ravenclaw prefect swept a sharp eye across the damage and began restoring the compartment with precise flicks of her wand.
The Hufflepuff prefect rubbed her buzzing temples, her headache written plainly on her face.
And at the front of them all, the focal point of every set of eyes in the carriage, platinum hair falling smooth and easy over his shoulders, skin pale and flawless, silver-gray eyes sweeping coldly across the wreckage before him.
He had just lowered that slender wand.
At its tip, the last trace of a cold silver-blue light was fading out.
The Silencing Charm, wide enough to blanket an entire carriage and strip every voice from it in an instant, was slowly dissolving.
Everyone stared.
Sirius’s eyes were burning and defiant, locked on him.
James let out a quiet, contemptuous sound.
Neither of them said a word.
Lucius Malfoy.
Jiang Fengyue’s gaze moved across the crowd without any particular expression.
It settled, finally, on the two at the far end.
He passed judgment.
“Sirius Black and James Potter,” he said, his voice carrying easily through the silence.
“You created a large-scale disturbance.
Twenty points from Gryffindor.” He glanced to his left.
“Alice.
Frank.
I assume no objections.”
The two Gryffindor prefects looked out at their little lions with tired, burning eyes.
Then they dropped their gaze.
“None.”
➤ Next: A Thousand Things Wrong