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Night fell.
The twinkling stars in the sky gleamed like pieces on a wizard’s enchanted chessboard. As darkness deepened, Hogwarts Castle and its grounds seemed to dissolve into the shadows, embraced by the night.
Every detail softened beneath the starlight, leaving behind a serene stillness as the world awaited the dawn to stir life and magic anew.
“Today we continue learning Jinxes!”
By the time Ian gathered his small class in the evening, the latest rumors about him had already taken on a life of their own. The most ridiculous version now claimed that he had dueled Grindelwald in the Forbidden Forest over one of Dumbledore’s long-hidden secrets.
‘A grand battle between a legendary dark wizard and a ten-year-old boy?’
That was utterly absurd!
Ian was certain Daphne Greengrass had a hand in these tales. He regretted not confiscating that ludicrous storybook from her when he had the chance.
“Little professor, are you really Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s child?”
That question finally shattered Ian’s composure. The sheer absurdity of it struck him like a Stunning Spell. These rumors were escalating to the point of lunacy.
“That blasted storybook! Anyone spreading this nonsense had better not complain when I get even with them!” Ian fumed, glaring at the Ravenclaw common room’s chattering crowd.
He threatened to retaliate with ancient Dungbombs. At first, the threat was met with laughter, but when he clarified that these particular Dungbombs contained actual aged dung, the laughter abruptly ceased.
That, indeed, was a true deterrent.
At least it ensured Ian no longer had to endure the increasingly ridiculous gossip within Ravenclaw Tower. After his tutoring session concluded, he briskly exited through the common room door.
“Where’s the little professor off to? Do you think he’s sneaking into the Forbidden Forest again?”
“Oi! That’s not something we ought to be poking our noses into. Do you fancy finding yourself on the wrong end of a Dungbomb attack? A clever witch keeps her mouth shut… like me.”
“If the little professor were to sneak into the girls’ dormitory and, I dunno, feed me chocolate frogs with his own hands… Well, even then, I’m not sure I’d accept it.”
…
Seventeen or eighteen students were clearing up the remnants of their practice session. They had just learned a new jinx, and the evidence of several botched attempts was still scattered around the room.
Evening lessons like these not only introduced them to fresh spells but also gave the enthusiastic Ravenclaw students ample opportunities to practice their Reparo charms.
As for the older students who weren’t part of Ian’s lessons, the commotion had become a daily occurrence. They had quickly learned to dodge rogue spells mid-study, a skill which, they often claimed, would serve them well in future Ministry jobs.
From the way the senior students were positioned tonight, books in hand, eyes flicking cautiously around the room, it was evident that Ian’s sessions had unintentionally become a valuable defensive training course.
There was little doubt that, thanks to Ian, many of these Ravenclaw graduates would go on to become promising Aurors or Ministry officials.
“Next time, no jinxing the founder’s statue!” Penelope Clearwater, a seventh-year prefect, called out sternly as she assisted with the cleanup. She directed a pointed glare at a group of younger students who had clearly been up to no good.
But when it came to the younger Ravenclaws, the older students were surprisingly forgiving.
Perhaps they were simply resigned to the chaos.
After all, in comparison to the wild rumors swirling around Slytherin concerning Ian’s supposed dark lineage, the gossip in Ravenclaw was far more whimsical. Some upper-years whispered conspiratorially about his so-called “Merlin bloodline,” fueled by nothing more than house pride and overactive imaginations.
And, of course, for the prefects who knowingly spread such stories, it was all part of the peculiar, secret traditions of Ravenclaw Tower.
One could only say.
Ian might be the student with the most rumors swirling around him since Hogwarts was founded, particularly regarding the mystery of his background. The number of outlandish theories could be counted on one hand.
“Why has little Ian been teaching you Jinxes for several nights in a row?” After helping to tidy up the common room, Penelope curiously asked Ian’s two roommates. Ravenclaw House members were renowned for their insatiable curiosity, and Ian’s behavior had certainly piqued hers.
“He wants to make us stronger, to become his right and left hands!” William declared, his voice brimming with exaggerated enthusiasm. Penelope raised an eyebrow, though she didn’t think too much of it.
Michael scratched his head, wearing a puzzled expression. “Honestly, I haven’t asked. Ian must have his reasons for teaching us like this.”
The boys’ vague responses didn’t satisfy Penelope. It was obvious they were deflecting. Their attempt at nonchalance wasn’t even half as convincing as the clever little professor himself.
“I actually asked Ian about it too.”
Cho Chang had just selected a study book for some evening reading at the common room desk when she overheard Penelope’s question.
Penelope turned to her, intrigued. “And? Did he tell you anything useful?”
She knew Cho and Ian shared a good rapport.
“It seemed like a whim. He said something mysterious about ‘something foul’ creeping into Hogwarts. Then, before I could ask further, he nicked my Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.” Cho sighed with a resigned smile.
William and Michael immediately burst into laughter, agreeing that this sounded exactly like Ian’s style. The trio quickly launched into a light-hearted discussion of Ian’s increasingly mischievous tendencies.
“Is that so…”
But Penelope, unlike the younger students, wasn’t so easily amused. After hearing Cho’s account, she tapped her finger thoughtfully against her lips, her mind already connecting threads.
“Perhaps it’s linked to the strange disturbances reported in the Forbidden Forest today.”
The sharp-witted prefect enjoyed sharing gossip, but she didn’t actually believe the wild tales circulating through the school. She preferred constructing her own theories, built on whatever fragments of information she could gather.
Now, with her suspicions ignited, Penelope’s mind was already racing.
“Let’s see… Ian is rumored to be a descendant of the House of Ambrosius, and now he’s claiming something foul is at Hogwarts?” She quickly retrieved several books from the Ravenclaw shelves, her eyes gleaming with excitement.
Less than ten minutes later, her face lit up with sudden revelation.
“I’ve got it! There must be more than one legendary house descendant at Hogwarts! This year is clearly a once-in-a-generation event! Descendants of King Arthur or even the dark enchantress Morgana must be walking among us!”
Her imagination surged wildly.
“Love and rivalry! Ancient grudges! Twists of fate!”
Penelope wore an expression of utter certainty, as though she had unraveled a great historical conspiracy. For all her Ravenclaw brilliance, sometimes even her intellect gave way to the power of a fanciful imagination.
How to put it?
Perhaps girls who indulge in magical novels and wizarding biographies are the most dangerously imaginative of all.
…
Outside the corridor window, the first snow of the season drifted down upon Hogwarts. The delicate flakes brushed against the castle’s ancient stone walls, twirling gently in the crisp night air. They spiraled and danced before finally settling, covering the castle towers, leafless branches, and frosted windowsills in a pristine white embrace.
“I think Hogwarts should issue a rumor law; little wizards who spread gossip should at least go without dessert for a few days, and the professors who allow it to run wild should experience a hundred stinging hexes to the feet.”
Ian grumbled to the Ravenclaw portrait in the corridor for quite a while, but the lady in the Twilight Zone frame seemed to have no intention of offering her support.
He certainly hadn’t come out to confront Grindelwald; Ian was well aware of his own capabilities. He was simply on his way to the Room of Requirement to adjust the potions he had been working on.
The reason he was still wandering in the corridor, shivering as frost gathered on the windows and the cold seeped through the castle, was that he hadn’t resolved his ongoing feud with the bronze eagle.
The ever-vengeful bronze eagle knocker refused to let him in. It had even grown tired of its usual game of posing riddles, now blatantly ignoring him, no matter how long he stood at the entrance.
This effectively shattered any hopes Ian had of returning to the common room after his studies.
To be fair, the door knocker might indeed be developing a sense of sentience. how else could it gleefully exploit loopholes in the rules? Only something with a mind of its own could harbor that kind of mischief.
With no choice but to seek shelter elsewhere, Ian was prepared to spend the night in the Room of Requirement. On his way, he passed the Ravenclaw portrait once more. Remembering the infamous shortcuts and tricks left behind by Rowena Ravenclaw herself, he vented his frustration to the portrait for a good five minutes.
“You tell me, what’s Grindelwald playing at by encouraging students to spread these absurd rumors?” Ian’s irritation only seemed to build.
“This is a tactic he learned from Muggles.”
Suddenly.
A cool voice rang from behind Ian. He spun around to see Aurora, the German girl, using the Levitation Charm to float a bundle of long iron bars through the air.
“What are you doing? Planning to sell scrap metal for Galleons?” Ian stared at her in disbelief. He could tell that the bars had been gathered from the Owlery and various other forgotten corners of the castle.
“My grandfather wants to restart the underground classroom. Naturally, I’ve been conscripted as free labor,” Aurora replied with a resigned expression, clearly not thrilled by the task.
“I’m not sure scrapping other classrooms was part of the assignment,” Ian observed dryly, his eyes lingering on what unmistakably appeared to be the iron teacher’s desk from the Charms classroom.
“He only said to find iron bars. He didn’t give me any Galleons to buy them,” Aurora answered, her tone as direct as ever.
“Of course, I can’t use my own money. I’m not about to raid Professor Snape’s office, and I need to save up for my own potion ingredients.”
Apparently, she was quite the thrifty one.
“Didn’t last time’s materials give you enough for plenty of Veritaserum? Surely that’s sufficient?” Ian’s expression grew more perplexed, especially when Aurora’s silence hinted at something far from reassuring.
After a moment’s pause.
“I left IOUs in Professor Lockhart’s name for everything I took from the classrooms.” Aurora stated this with an alarming degree of calm, as if this made her actions entirely justified.
“…”
Ian was stunned into silence. There was something deeply unsettling about her logic, but no immediate counterargument came to mind.
“Do you want to lend a hand?” Aurora’s voice broke the silence once more.
Ian immediately shook his head like a rattle.
“I just want to give our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor a gift.” Saying this, Ian took out a bag of itching powder from Zonko’s and liberally sprinkled it over the floating iron objects.
Aurora quietly watched him cause mischief without any intention of stopping him. Even after Ian had satisfyingly tucked away the powder bag, the girl tilted her head thoughtfully and offered a suggestion.
“I think you should mature a bit and carve some explosive runes on it, so they detonate immediately when touched. Something with the power of a small blasting hex would be ideal.”
Merlin’s beard! He had truly encountered a little menace!
“??????”
Ian was utterly shocked by Aurora’s suggestion; he only wanted to give the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor a harmless inconvenience, while the German girl clearly had more destructive ambitions!
“I think you’re missing the point; if you actually do that, it won’t be your grandfather who gets blown up… it’ll definitely be us… no! It’ll definitely be ‘me’!”
Ian rejected Aurora’s suggestion without hesitation.
“I’ll say it was me who set it up.” Aurora earnestly declared her loyalty.
Ian still firmly shook his head.
He was the sort of wizard who knew where to draw the line, so instead, he retrieved a few Dungbombs and devised a small magical mechanism to install beneath the Charms classroom’s teacher’s desk.
“I’m just responding to his attempts to tarnish my reputation… By the way, you said this is a method he learned from Muggles? What exactly is your grandfather trying to do?”
After setting up the prank, Ian began washing his hands. A quick wave of his wand produced a steady stream of water using the Aguamenti spell. Without pausing, he levitated his wand in mid-air using a non-verbal charm, keeping the water flowing as he scrubbed his hands.
Aurora frowned slightly, watching the unusual display of wandless control.
“The best way to suppress a scandal is to cover it up with an even bigger one; it’s a method Muggles use to manipulate the press and divert public attention,” Aurora answered, though her attention remained fixed on Ian’s levitating wand.
She looked at her own hand, still raised to maintain the Levitation Charm on the iron bars, then back at Ian’s wand. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out how he was maintaining the spell without direct contact.
“Dumbledore is supposedly a male Veela, seducing others with his charm and wiles?”
Seeing Aurora nod, Ian’s jaw nearly dropped.
He finally understood Grindelwald’s cunning ploy. The old dark wizard was orchestrating a scandal to overshadow Ian’s situation!
“Ugh! So now that he’s facing backlash, he’s trying to drag me into the mess too?” Ian grumbled, utterly exasperated. “Shouldn’t he be punishing the actual rumor-spreaders instead?”
To this, Aurora simply blinked.
Outside the corridor window, the first snow of the season drifted down upon Hogwarts. The delicate flakes brushed against the castle’s ancient stone walls, twirling gently in the crisp night air. They spiraled and danced before finally settling, covering the castle towers, leafless branches, and frosted windowsills in a pristine white embrace.
“I think Hogwarts should issue a rumor law; little wizards who spread gossip should at least go without dessert for a few days, and the professors who allow it to run wild should experience a hundred stinging hexes to the feet.”
Ian grumbled to the Ravenclaw portrait in the corridor for quite a while, but the lady in the Twilight Zone frame seemed to have no intention of offering her support.
He certainly hadn’t come out to confront Grindelwald; Ian was well aware of his own capabilities. He was simply on his way to the Room of Requirement to adjust the potions he had been working on.
The reason he was still wandering in the corridor, shivering as frost gathered on the windows and the cold seeped through the castle, was that he hadn’t resolved his ongoing feud with the bronze eagle.
The ever-vengeful bronze eagle knocker refused to let him in. It had even grown tired of its usual game of posing riddles, now blatantly ignoring him, no matter how long he stood at the entrance.
This effectively shattered any hopes Ian had of returning to the common room after his studies.
To be fair, the door knocker might indeed be developing a sense of sentience. how else could it gleefully exploit loopholes in the rules? Only something with a mind of its own could harbor that kind of mischief.
With no choice but to seek shelter elsewhere, Ian was prepared to spend the night in the Room of Requirement. On his way, he passed the Ravenclaw portrait once more. Remembering the infamous shortcuts and tricks left behind by Rowena Ravenclaw herself, he vented his frustration to the portrait for a good five minutes.
“You tell me, what’s Grindelwald playing at by encouraging students to spread these absurd rumors?” Ian’s irritation only seemed to build.
“This is a tactic he learned from Muggles.”
Suddenly.
A cool voice rang from behind Ian. He spun around to see Aurora, the German girl, using the Levitation Charm to float a bundle of long iron bars through the air.
“What are you doing? Planning to sell scrap metal for Galleons?” Ian stared at her in disbelief. He could tell that the bars had been gathered from the Owlery and various other forgotten corners of the castle.
“My grandfather wants to restart the underground classroom. Naturally, I’ve been conscripted as free labor,” Aurora replied with a resigned expression, clearly not thrilled by the task.
“I’m not sure scrapping other classrooms was part of the assignment,” Ian observed dryly, his eyes lingering on what unmistakably appeared to be the iron teacher’s desk from the Charms classroom.
“He only said to find iron bars. He didn’t give me any Galleons to buy them,” Aurora answered, her tone as direct as ever.
“Of course, I can’t use my own money. I’m not about to raid Professor Snape’s office, and I need to save up for my own potion ingredients.”
Apparently, she was quite the thrifty one.
“Didn’t last time’s materials give you enough for plenty of Veritaserum? Surely that’s sufficient?” Ian’s expression grew more perplexed, especially when Aurora’s silence hinted at something far from reassuring.
After a moment’s pause.
“I left IOUs in Professor Lockhart’s name for everything I took from the classrooms.” Aurora stated this with an alarming degree of calm, as if this made her actions entirely justified.
“…”
Ian was stunned into silence. There was something deeply unsettling about her logic, but no immediate counterargument came to mind.
“Do you want to lend a hand?” Aurora’s voice broke the silence once more.
Ian immediately shook his head like a rattle.
“I just want to give our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor a gift.” Saying this, Ian took out a bag of itching powder from Zonko’s and liberally sprinkled it over the floating iron objects.
Aurora quietly watched him cause mischief without any intention of stopping him. Even after Ian had satisfyingly tucked away the powder bag, the girl tilted her head thoughtfully and offered a suggestion.
“I think you should mature a bit and carve some explosive runes on it, so they detonate immediately when touched. Something with the power of a small blasting hex would be ideal.”
Merlin’s beard! He had truly encountered a little menace!
“??????”
Ian was utterly shocked by Aurora’s suggestion; he only wanted to give the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor a harmless inconvenience, while the German girl clearly had more destructive ambitions!
“I think you’re missing the point; if you actually do that, it won’t be your grandfather who gets blown up… it’ll definitely be us… no! It’ll definitely be ‘me’!”
Ian rejected Aurora’s suggestion without hesitation.
“I’ll say it was me who set it up.” Aurora earnestly declared her loyalty.
Ian still firmly shook his head.
He was the sort of wizard who knew where to draw the line, so instead, he retrieved a few Dungbombs and devised a small magical mechanism to install beneath the Charms classroom’s teacher’s desk.
“I’m just responding to his attempts to tarnish my reputation… By the way, you said this is a method he learned from Muggles? What exactly is your grandfather trying to do?”
After setting up the prank, Ian began washing his hands. A quick wave of his wand produced a steady stream of water using the Aguamenti spell. Without pausing, he levitated his wand in mid-air using a non-verbal charm, keeping the water flowing as he scrubbed his hands.
Aurora frowned slightly, watching the unusual display of wandless control.
“The best way to suppress a scandal is to cover it up with an even bigger one; it’s a method Muggles use to manipulate the press and divert public attention,” Aurora answered, though her attention remained fixed on Ian’s levitating wand.
She looked at her own hand, still raised to maintain the Levitation Charm on the iron bars, then back at Ian’s wand. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out how he was maintaining the spell without direct contact.
“Dumbledore is supposedly a male Veela, seducing others with his charm and wiles?”
Seeing Aurora nod, Ian’s jaw nearly dropped.
He finally understood Grindelwald’s cunning ploy. The old dark wizard was orchestrating a scandal to overshadow Ian’s situation!
“Ugh! So now that he’s facing backlash, he’s trying to drag me into the mess too?” Ian grumbled, utterly exasperated. “Shouldn’t he be punishing the actual rumor-spreaders instead?”
To this, Aurora simply blinked.
(To Be Continued…)
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