The next morning arrived with a clear, bright sky.
Edward woke up, went to training, took a warm shower, and walked up to the Great Hall for breakfast.
He felt very relaxed.
He sat at the Hufflepuff table and started eating a bowl of oatmeal.
By the time evening arrived, the entire castle was buzzing with noise.
The news spread fast.
Professor Quirrell was missing.
He did not show up for his morning classes.
He did not show up for lunch.
His office door was locked, and his quarters were completely empty.
Students whispered in the hallways.
They whispered in the courtyard.
They whispered in the library until Madam Pince yelled at them to get out.
Argus Filch grumbled loudly in the corridors all afternoon.
Dumbledore made the caretaker pack up all the smelly, garlic-covered items left in Quirrell’s empty office.
Filch dragged heavy boxes down the stairs, complaining bitterly to his cat about the terrible smell sticking to his clothes.
Edward sat by the fire in the Hufflepuff common room.
He listened to his dorm mates talk.
There were dozens of theories flying around.
“I heard a vampire finally tracked him down,” Wayne Hopkins whispered loudly.
“They say a vampire got into the castle and dragged him out a window.” “No, my brother told me Quirrell ran away,” Zacharias Smith argued.
“He was so terrified of the vampires finding him, he just packed a single bag and ran into the snowy mountains to hide.” Edward drank a cup of hot tea.
He hid a small smile behind the rim of his cup.
The theories got weirder as the day went on.
When Edward walked to his afternoon Charms class, he heard a Ravenclaw boy say Quirrell tried to juggle cursed artifacts in his office and accidentally vanished himself into thin air.
During a break, a Gryffindor girl swore she saw the Giant Squid pull Quirrell under the water.
The best theory came from a group of second-year Hufflepuffs.
They truly believed Quirrell brewed a bad potion, accidentally turned himself into a purple bat, and got lost flying around the owlery.
Edward just nodded along whenever someone asked him what he thought.
He found all the rumors highly entertaining.
He knew the truth.
Quirrell was just a puddle of clean water soaking into the dirt in the Forbidden Forest.
Harry and Ron had their own theory.
Since they suspected Snape of trying to steal whatever was hidden in the third floor, they now fully believed Snape simply murdered Quirrell to get him out of the way.
That night, the students gathered in the Great Hall for dinner.
The room was loud with chatter.
Everyone looked up at the staff table.
Quirrell’s chair sat empty.
Dumbledore stood up from his tall golden chair.
He raised his hands.
The hall went silent instantly.
“Good evening to you all,” Dumbledore said gently.
His voice carried across the large room.
“I have a brief announcement to make before we eat.
As many of you have noticed, Professor Quirrell is not with us today.” The students leaned forward in their seats.
“Professor Quirrell has gone missing,” Dumbledore continued calmly.
“We have not received any information regarding where he has gone, or why he has left so suddenly.
We will continue to try and contact him.
Until we find him, or until a replacement is found, Defense Against the Dark Arts will be taught by Professor Snape.” The entire Gryffindor table went still.
They looked horrified.
Edward looked up at the staff table.
Professor Snape sat in his usual chair.
He wore his heavy black robes.
A very subtle, dark grin touched the corners of Snape’s mouth.
He looked highly pleased with the news.
Harry and Ron looked like they just ate bad fish.
“This is terrible,” Ron groaned loudly.
“Snape already hates us in Potions.
Now we have him for two classes?
He is going to give us detention every single day.” “Look on the bright side,” Harry muttered, pushing a piece of chicken around his plate.
“At least the classroom will not smell like rotten garlic anymore.
Now it will just smell like old dungeons.” Edward chuckled quietly from his table.
He ate his dinner happily.
He did not mind Snape teaching the class.
Snape was strict, but he actually knew how to defend against dark magic.
A few days later, Edward sat in his first Defense Against the Dark Arts class with their new teacher.
The room was quiet.
Snape was incredibly strict, pacing the aisles and taking points away for the slightest whisper.
However, Edward noted a major difference.
Snape actually knew the subject perfectly.
He taught them how to properly block basic hexes and curses.
The instructions were clear and simple.
It was a massive improvement over Quirrell’s constant, fake stuttering.
Edward found it quite refreshing.
Up in the Headmaster’s office, the mood was not relaxed at all.
Dumbledore sat behind his large wooden desk.
The portraits of the old headmasters pretended to sleep on the walls.
Professor Snape paced back and forth in front of the desk.
His black cloak billowed behind him.
He looked highly annoyed.
“It makes no sense, Albus,” Snape said, stopping his pacing.
“A man does not simply vanish from the grounds without leaving a single trace.
I checked his rooms myself.
His clothes are still there.
His books are still there.
He did not pack a bag.” Dumbledore sat back in his chair.
“I know, Severus.
I have checked the wards around the castle.
They did not trigger.
Nobody broke in, and nobody forced him out.” “I did find one highly unusual item locked in a trunk under his bed,” Snape added, crossing his arms.
“A large dragon egg.
A Norwegian Ridgeback, unless I am mistaken.
It seems our cowardly teacher was involved in illegal smuggling.” “Ah,” Dumbledore sighed softly.
“We will send the egg to a dragon sanctuary in Romania immediately.
It is not safe to keep it here.” “But what about the thief?” Snape asked, his dark eyes flashing.
“What about the Stone?
Our plan was to catch him red-handed.
We set the trap on the third floor.
We waited for him to make his move.” “The plan is finished, Severus,” Dumbledore said simply.
“The Stone sits safely behind the mirror.
The three-headed dog still guards the door.
But the thief is gone.
He must have realized that it was a trap.
He simply gave up and fled in the dead of night to avoid capture.” Snape gave a short, angry nod.
He hated unresolved puzzles.
He turned around and walked out of the office, his mind running in circles.
A few more days passed.
The commotion over the missing teacher finally settled down completely.
Life returned to a quiet routine.
One night, later in the week, Edward decided it was time to do some cleaning.
He waited until his dorm mates fell deeply asleep.
He put on his dark clothes and slipped out of the Hufflepuff basement.
He walked silently up the grand marble stairs, moving through the shadows.
He reached the seventh floor.
He walked down the quiet corridor and stopped in front of the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.
He looked at the blank stone wall.
Edward closed his eyes.
He paced past the wall three times.
I need the place where everything is hidden, Edward thought clearly.
I need the room where lost things go.
He opened his eyes.
A wooden door appeared in the solid stone wall.
Edward grabbed the brass handle and pulled the door open.
He stepped inside.
He stood in a massive, cavernous room.
It was the size of a large cathedral.
The room was not empty.
It was filled with towering mountains of absolute junk.
There were broken chairs, old desks, thousands of dusty books, rusty swords, and strange magical items stacked high into the air.
Edward closed the door behind him.
He walked down a narrow path between two tall piles of broken furniture.
The air smelled very dusty and old.
He did not want to search through all of this with his eyes.
He stopped walking.
He closed his eyes.
He breathed in slowly and pushed his awareness outward.
He used his Observation Haki.
He felt the quiet, still energy of the room.
Then, he pushed deeper.
He layered his Nen into his senses.
He looked for malice.
He looked for something nasty.
He found it almost instantly.
A heavy, cold feeling washed over his mind.
It felt like sticking his bare hand into freezing water.
It was a dark, pulsing sickness hiding among the normal trash.
Edward opened his eyes.
He turned to his right.
He walked down a different path.
He followed the bad feeling.
He walked past a stuffed troll head wearing a large pink bonnet.
He stepped over a pile of cracked teacups that tried to sing but had lost their voices, clinking sadly against each other.
He reached a small clearing in the junk.
Sitting on top of a dusty wooden crate was an old, chipped stone bust of an ugly warlock.
Resting on the head of the stone bust was a beautiful silver tiara.
It had blue gems set into the metal.
It was the Rowena Ravenclaw’s Diadem.
It was a Horcrux.
It held a piece of Voldemort’s soul.
Edward looked at it.
He could feel the dark magic rolling off the silver metal.
It wanted to be worn.
It whispered quiet, tempting things in the air.
It promised him ultimate knowledge.
It promised him endless wisdom.
It told him he could be the smartest wizard in the entire world if he just put it on.
Edward did not listen to the whispers.
He raised his right hand.
He pulled his aura out and wrapped it tightly around his hand.
He used Ten.
A faint, clear glow covered his skin like a thick glove.
He reached out and picked up the diadem.
The dark magic tried to bite him, but it hit the solid wall of his Nen.
The whispers were completely shut out, hitting a dead end against his aura.
“Ugly thing,” Edward said simply.
He opened his dimensional storage space.
He dropped the silver tiara into the void.
The heavy, cold feeling in the room vanished instantly.
Edward smiled.
His storage space stopped time completely.
The piece of Voldemort’s soul was now trapped in a timeless void.
It could not whisper.
It could not influence anyone.
Edward put his hands in his pockets.
He thought about the other soul pieces.
He liked to keep his plans organized.
First, there was the Gaunt family ring.
It was hidden under the floorboards of an old shack in Little Hangleton.
He explicitly remembered that it carried a deadly withering curse.
He needed his Nen to be much stronger before he touched those floorboards.
He would go there during the summer holidays.
Second, there was Helga Hufflepuff’s cup.
It sat inside the Lestrange family vault deep underground in Gringotts Bank.
The vault was protected by the Geminio curse.
If he touched anything inside, the treasure would multiply endlessly and burn his skin.
Breaking into Gringotts was far too messy right now.
He would just have to wait.
Third, there was Salazar Slytherin’s locket.
It was hidden in Grimmauld Place.
The house was guarded by a crazy house-elf named Kreacher.
A house-elf would instantly know if someone broke into the house without an invitation.
Sneaking in was a bad idea.
Edward knew he had to wait until his third year, when Sirius Black escaped from prison.
Fourth, there was Tom Riddle’s diary.
Lucius Malfoy currently kept it.
Edward knew Lucius would try to slip the diary into Ginny Weasley’s cauldron next summer when they went shopping.
Edward just had to wait for next year, stand near Ginny, and simply take the book.
Fifth, there was a giant snake named Nagini.
Voldemort did not even have a body right now, which meant he had not found the snake yet.
Edward crossed that one off his mental list entirely.
And finally, there was Harry Potter himself.
Edward hoped the Gacha system would eventually give him a healing item or a soul-cleansing tool.
He wanted a reward that could safely remove the dark magic without hurting him.
He had plenty of time to wait for a good pull.
Edward nodded to himself.
The plan was solid.
He looked around the Room of Hidden Things.
The bad feeling was gone.
Now it was just a massive room full of interesting junk.
He decided to do a little treasure hunting.
He walked down the dusty paths.
He opened old trunks.
He moved a stack of pillows and found a small wooden box.
Inside the box, he found three old spell books covering simple household charms and repairing spells.
Edward dusted them off and dropped them into his storage space.
He walked a bit further and found a shiny silver pocket watch hanging from a broken lamp.
He picked it up.
He watched the hands tick backward instead of forward.
It was completely useless for telling time, but it looked neat.
He tossed it into his storage as well.
He spent another hour opening drawers and looking under tables.
Eventually, the dust started to make his nose itch.
He got bored of looking at broken chairs.
“Enough for tonight,” Edward said.
He turned around and walked back to the wooden door.
He opened it, stepped out into the seventh-floor corridor, and watched the door vanish back into the solid stone wall.
Edward walked back down the moving stairs.
He slipped back into the Hufflepuff basement.
He tapped the barrels, crawled through the dirt tunnel, and entered his dorm room.
Justin and Ernie were sleeping peacefully.
Edward changed into his pajamas.
He climbed into his bed, pulled his warm yellow blankets up, and closed his eyes.
He had taken a massive piece off the board, and nobody even knew it was missing.
He fell asleep easily, ready to enjoy the rest of his quiet, simple first year at school.