The Great Hall still looked wrong in the mornings.
Not the ceiling. Not the banners. The gaps.
Empty seats dotted every table, little pockets of nothing that pulled at the eye, no matter how hard people tried to look away. Gryffindor had the most. Ravenclaw hid theirs with books and elbows. Hufflepuff pretended the spaces belonged to late arrivals. Slytherin did not bother pretending. Their line stayed unbroken.
Hermione noticed all of it. She noticed the way people sat closer together without meaning to. She noticed the way some of the older students still angled their shoulders toward the empty places, as if expecting someone to slide back in and laugh at the joke.
The castle kept moving anyway.
Even after catching up in all the classes, for most of the years, the night classes and Saturday lessons stayed on the timetable. The first week, a handful of Gryffindors complained loudly enough for everyone to hear. By lunch, the answer came.
It was not a speech, nor was it a memo.
It was a Ravenclaw in sixth year, face pinched from too little sleep, telling them to stop whining because half the syllabus had been shoved into one semester, and if they wanted a holiday, they could write a petition to time itself.
A Slytherin added, almost lazily, that if anyone wanted to sit out, they could always follow the ones who chose the Muggle world. The word Muggle landed like a pebble in a quiet pond. It rippled, then it sank.
Hermione kept her mouth shut. She had learned when to speak. She had learned that when speaking only painted a target on her back.
More professors had helped. Core subjects ran in pairs now. Lessons moved faster, sharper. There was less theatre and more work. Detentions came quicker and were much harsher too. The castle had always had rules. Now it had consequences that arrived on time.
After breakfast, the notices went up again.
Another list of names.
Not punishment. Not praise. Choices.
The Ministry's phrasing never changed. Choose either the mundane or the magical. No more dual citizenship. No more quiet letters home with information on Magicals.
Some students had already taken the mundane path. Hermione had watched two of them pack in silence while their friends pretended to help and did not meet their eyes. The official process sounded clean on parchment. In practice, it looked like grief.
Their wands broken, their cores bound.
Memories were removed until the magical world became a dream you could not hold on to after waking.
The ones who stayed were still called Muggleborns in conversation, but the tone had shifted. Not pity, not pride. This was pure calculation.
They had options now. Official options.
Affiliation with a house.
Adoption into a house.
Both came with obligations. Both came with protection.
The first meant a patron, a name to stand behind when someone decided you were a problem.
The second meant blood.
Hermione had listened to whispers at the edge of corridors. Some students treated adoption like a ladder. Some treated it like a noose. Some simply stared at the idea as if it were a foreign language. It was hard to select the latter option after abandoning their families.
Yet, as summer crept closer, the students who had not chosen started asking the question out loud.
What happens to us?
The answer arrived, blunt as a slammed door.
Orphanages.
The word felt old and ugly in Hermione's mouth. It belonged to another century. She could picture iron beds, thin blankets, and cold hands.
She did not want to picture it. That did not stop her mind.
So she did what she always did when fear tried to sit on her chest.
She went to the library.
The library had changed. That was obvious the first time she walked in after Dumbledore was removed from the castle. Shelves that had always felt politely limited now stretched deeper. Locked cases still existed, but the locks looked different, older, and the ward lines around them made her skin itch when she got too close.
Madam Pince still watched like a hawk guarding a nest full of stolen jewellery, but even she had changed. Less snapping, more measuring. She had started to look at Hermione the way a strict tutor looked at a student who might actually be worth the effort.
Hermione pulled the records first. Ministry circulars. Wizengamot precedents. Accounts written in careful, ugly ink by clerks who had survived several purges and learned how to phrase horror without emotion.
Then she pulled the ritual texts.
Blood adoption.
The ink in those books felt heavier, as if the words had cost something to put down. The method did not read like a fairy tale. It read like law.
Blood was drawn from both guardians. Intent declared to Mother Magic, to love, protect and accept the child.
A binding that rewrote the biology of the child.
The child's magical signature shifted.
Family magic recognises the child after the ritual, as if he or she were born to the guardians.
Hermione read that line twice. Then she read it again.
She sat back, fingers cold on the page, and tried to breathe normally.
She always wanted to be the best at whatever she decided to do. Not in the childish way. She wanted to be capable. To know things. To be useful.
But the idea that blood could change what a person might become sat in her stomach like a stone.
She started asking professors.
Not in a crowd or in front of students who would twist her questions into rumours.
Quiet questions after lessons. Polite requests during office hours. A careful tone that did not sound like a challenge.
Most answered in generalities.
One watched her for a long moment and advised her, very softly, to choose quickly.
And then there was Countess Seraphine Lasombra.
Hermione had not approached her at first. The Countess was a vampire. That fact alone made half the students uneasy. The other half was already in love with her, and made it worse.
Seraphine taught History of Magic.
Not like Professor Binns.
Binns had been a drone that filled space. Seraphine filled the room.
She did not raise her voice. She moved slowly along the front of the class, robes dark and precise, hair pinned in a style that belonged to a portrait. Her gaze landed on students like a hand on the shoulder.
Today's lesson had been about the eras Hermione had only ever seen as names in textbooks.
Sumer.
Egypt.
Cities and dynasties that the Muggle world called myth because what was written was neither logical nor possible in the Muggle World.
Seraphine spoke of wizardkind as rulers without sounding proud. It was worse than pride. It was a matter of fact.
She spoke of dilution like a physician discussing disease.
When she mentioned mixed bloodlines, a few students shifted in their seats. Hermione felt her own spine go tight.
Seraphine's chalk drew a simple line on the board.
Magical.
Mundane.
Then she added two more words beneath it.
Confusion and Betrayal.
Whenever a Magical diluted the blood with a Mundane spouse, they start to give lethal information on the limits of the era's magic and what the Magicals could do to their relatives. This, without exception, ended in betrayal and the removal of the Magicals from the positions of power.
When the bell rang, students filed out quickly.
Hermione stayed.
She waited at the front, hands clasped behind her back, because it kept them from fidgeting. She did not speak until the Countess looked up and gave the smallest nod.
The Countess gathered her parchment notes with unhurried care, as if time were something she owned.
"How may I assist you, Miss Granger?"
It was not a question. It was an opening.
Hermione chose her words. "Minister Black's policy. About Muggleborns. Has it been done before?"
Seraphine's lavender eyes stayed on her.
Hermione kept going before she could lose her nerve. "And when people were given the choice, when adoption was offered, what did most choose?"
Seraphine set the parchments down. She folded her hands on the desk, fingers pale against dark wood.
"This is not the first time," she replied.
Hermione waited.
Seraphine's mouth curved faintly. A hint of amusement at the idea that history ever changed.
"Every few generations, someone stands up and asks why we do not simply merge. Why do not share? Why do not make it easy?"
Hermione did not interrupt.
Seraphine leaned back slightly, posture perfect. "Sometimes it comes from stupidity. Sometimes it comes from fear. Sometimes it comes from malice dressed up as virtue."
The word virtue sounded dirty in her mouth.
"And every time," Seraphine continued, "it ends the same way. Fire, ropes, drownings, tortures and more executions. Crowds that swear they are righteous while they do it."
Hermione's throat tightened.
Seraphine watched her reaction without pity. "They call it purging. They call it cleansing. They call it saving their children. That is what the mundane world does when it cannot control what it fears."
Hermione thought of her parents. Their hands. Their smiles. Her father's terrible jokes.
Seraphine's gaze sharpened as if she had caught the thought. "Do not mistake this for a comment on your family. I am describing patterns. History does not care about exceptions."
Hermione swallowed. "So adoption happened."
"It happened," Seraphine confirmed. "Not always kindly. Not always with permission."
A pause.
Hermione forced herself to ask. "And when it was offered as a choice."
Seraphine tapped one fingernail against the desk once. A small sound. It made the room feel quieter.
"Most chose protection," she said. "Some chose pride and called it loyalty to their birth. Some chose fear and called it love. Those who chose protection survived more often."
Hermione nodded slowly. The logic made her sick. It also made sense.
Seraphine's expression softened by half a degree, which on her face amounted to warmth. "You are not foolish, Miss Granger. That is why you are still standing here."
Hermione took a breath. "What will happen if I accept adoption?"
"It would make you part of their line," Seraphine continued. "Do not romanticise it. You would have a name, obligations, and enemies who would treat you as if you were born with the house crest you chose."
Hermione's nails dug into her palm. "Would it change me?"
Seraphine's eyes flicked to the shelves behind Hermione, then back. "Sometimes. In small ways. Talents can surface. Affinities can shift. A family's old magic may recognise you and decide you belong."
Hermione hesitated. "So it could give… abilities."
Seraphine gave a quiet, dry exhale that might have been laughter if she were human. "You have been reading the interesting chapters."
Hermione felt heat creep up her neck.
Seraphine continued, tone turning practical. "House Black carries metamorphmagus blood. House Bones carries a relationship with death magic, whether they admit it or not. There are houses with bloodline enchantments, elemental leanings, ritual aptitudes."
Hermione's mind raced. Lists formed. Pros and cons. Risks.
Seraphine leaned forward. "You are trying to decide as if this is an academic problem."
Hermione froze.
"It is not," Seraphine added. "It is a survival problem."
Hermione forced herself to hold the Countess's gaze. "Minister Black. Is he… cruel?"
Seraphine's expression went still. "Cruelty is wasting lives for nothing. I have lived long enough to recognise the difference between cruelty and a decision that stops a slaughter."
Hermione's voice came out thin. "So you agree with it."
"I agree with reality," Seraphine replied. "The Ministry is finally acting to keep its people alive. Arcturus Black offered a choice. In other eras, the ones who refused the Magical World were used as a ritual ingredient."
Hermione's stomach turned.
Seraphine let the words sit there. Then her tone shifted, almost conversational. "If you want my advice."
Hermione waited.
"Choose a house," Seraphine said. "Not because you want a new mother and father. Because you want a shield while you learn to build your own."
Hermione's lips parted. She managed, "Which house would take me?"
Seraphine studied her as if weighing a gemstone.
"That is the wrong question," she replied.
The Countess's gaze softened again, just slightly. "You have your answer, childe."
Hermione kept her face steady. "I do, Countess." She dipped into a proper curtsy, the kind Professor Morozova had drilled into them until her ankles ached. "Thank you for your time."
As she left, she felt the weight of the empty seats in the Great Hall again, and for the first time, she understood they were not only absence.
They were warning.
Behind her, Seraphine remained by the desk, gaze distant. Her lips moved in a soundless murmur that Hermione did not hear.
Let us see which house reaches first.
--
Vinda did not like any of this.
The second floor corridor slept in its own stale air. Corvus walked a half step ahead. He did not hurry.
The girls' bathroom waited at the end of the passage like a bad joke that refused to die.
He pushed the door open. The hinges complained. Damp hit them first, then the sour edge of old soap. One stall door hung loose, and a single tap dripped into a sink that had never learned how to stop. Myrtle Elizabeth Warren was there as usual. She was there for the last fifty four years, to be exact.
Vinda stepped in behind him. She turned to Myrtle, "Miss Warren, if you would be kind enough to give us the space, please." The ghost nodded and sank to the floor.
Vinda waited for a while, then focused on Corvus.
"This," she said, slow and flat, "is where you insist the entrance is."
"I never insisted. I merely told you the entrance to the chamber was here and refused to argue. You are the one who keeps insisting that it cannot be."
Her gaze slid to him. The stare was a lesson in posture.
He walked the sinks and examined them one by one. Fingers over porcelain rims, eyes on the small details, the places a careless hand would miss. A faint carving here. A hairline crack there. A snake was engraved at the base of one tap, worn smooth as if a thousand hands had tried to scrub it away.
He stopped.
A small mark on the brass. A serpent, mouth open, fangs set in a curve that did not look decorative. It looked like a warning.
Corvus leaned in, close enough that his breath fogged the metal.
A quiet hiss slipped out of him.
The sink shuddered.
Stone complained beneath the tiles. The basin sank, not down like a trapdoor, but aside, sliding with a grinding patience as if the castle had been waiting for a password for a century and hated being disturbed. The floor beneath it spiralled open. Cold air rose from the shaft, wet and old, carrying the taste of underground water and something sharper, like the memory of blood.
Vinda stared into the dark.
Corvus straightened and turned, a faint smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
"Would you like the honour?"
The deadpan look he received could have curdled milk.
His hand moved. The Elder Wand appeared. Corvus pointed the wand at the pipe mouth. The stone around the shaft softened, reformed, then sharpened into steps. Not a ladder. Stairs, steep and clean, set into the throat of the passage.
"After you," he offered.
Vinda went first. She did not want to see the look on his face about being right on the location of the entry.
They descended slowly. Water ran somewhere in the walls. The air grew colder with each step. Their footfalls echoed, then doubled, then multiplied, as the shaft opened into a wider tunnel. The stone here was older than the castle above. Rougher.
At the bottom, a corridor stretched forward, slick with damp. The walls curved in places, as if the rock itself had been persuaded into shape instead of carved. Multiple light orbs came to life and followed them. Their light struck grooves along the stone.
Vinda crouched and touched one.
Runes, of a sort. Not in the clean lines of a textbook. These were older, half swallowed by mineral growth.
"How come no one noticed the mechanism at that sink until now?" she asked.
Corvus walked past her. "Who knows, maybe girls do not wash their hands on that particular sink?"
Corvus kept his hissing quiet on purpose, and Vinda had not noticed; instead, she thought there was some kind of mechanism.
They were not iron bars in a frame. The whole face of the door was stone, carved as if it had once been fluid. Serpents were woven through it, bodies looping and biting tails, heads set around a central seam. Their eyes were small hollows that drank the light.
Corvus stepped up, hand hovering as if he expected a latch.
He acted the part for a heartbeat. Search. Consider. Pretend there was a trick.
Then he hissed as quietly as possible again.
The serpents moved.
Stone slid, heads of the serpents unwound. The seam split with a slow groan, and the lock opened itself with the sound of weight shifting, ancient mechanisms stretching after long sleep. The doors pulled back into the walls.
The Chamber lay ahead.
It was not a room. It was a hall cut from the earth.
The ceiling rose high enough that the orb's light did not reach its full height. Columns lined the aisle, each carved with serpents that seemed to watch from every angle. Water glittered on the floor in thin sheets, reflecting their light in broken green shards. The air carried the taste of moss and something metallic.
At the far end, a stone head waited.
Salazar Slytherin's face was too large to be anything but arrogance made permanent. The mouth sat half open, the lips carved as if they were about to speak.
Vinda walked forward a few paces, slowly. She did not turn her back on anything, not even empty air. Her orbs swept across the floor.
In a corner, something pale lay folded, like old parchment.
Shed skin.
Not from a garden snake. The strip was thicker than Vinda's wrist. The pattern of scales caught the light and held it.
She breathed out sharply.
Then she looked again, along the length of the hall, along the columns, along the shadows.
"No," she said.
Corvus glanced at her.
"We should leave," Vinda continued. "We should contact specialists. Egypt, Greece or India. They have kept a basilisk registry for longer than your Ministry." She held her wand steady, but her eyes kept moving. "A thousand years old basilisk is not something to toy with."
Corvus's smile did not reach his eyes. "I can deal with it, Aunt Vinda."
"I care not what you can deal with, Corvus." Her voice stayed controlled, which was worse than shouting. "I care what you cannot."
He tilted his head. "Then you should go. I am going to call for it, and I do not think it will appreciate you being here."
Her brow rose. The muscle in her jaw tightened.
"Pray tell," she said, each word clipped, "how you intend to call a creature that kills with a stare." She sent one of the orbs toward the shed skin without looking at it. "And what in Morgana's name do you mean it will not appreciate my presence. It will swallow you whole. Can you not see the size of that skin?"
Corvus watched her for a moment.
He had baited her enough.
"I can communicate with serpents," he said. "I am a Parselmouth."
The silence hit harder than the damp.
Vinda blinked once.
Then again.
Her eyes shut for a brief moment, a disciplined pause that looked like prayer if you did not know her.
When she opened them, her gaze was cold.
"When you are done here," she said through her teeth, "you will explain what else you can do besides being a Parselmouth."
Corvus did not flinch. "Of course, Aunt Vinda."
She turned sharply and walked back toward the doors. Her steps did not hurry, but her shoulders were stiff. She cleared the threshold, wand still up.
Corvus waited until she was out of sight.
A hiss slid out of him.
The door sealed. Stone serpents crawled back into place and locked themselves with a slow final grind.
He exhaled once, then moved toward the statue.
The hall felt different without Vinda.
He stared up at Slytherin's face, then at the mouth, then at the absurdity of it.
"Something was very, very wrong with you, Salazar. No sane man will carve his face into a stone only for a Basilisk to come out of its mouth," he muttered.
He shifted.
Bone and muscle realigned. Skin rippled into scales. His spine lengthened, ribs widening to carry the new shape. The air tasted sharper as his tongue split, scent flooding him in layers, damp stone, old blood, the distant trace of magic that had slept here and never stopped breathing.
He lowered into a coil at the base of the statue, body settling with weight that made the floor tremble.
He lifted his head and hissed.
"Open."
The statue answered.
Stone cracked. The mouth yawned wider. Dark space opened behind it, a tunnel into deeper dark.
Corvus scoffed, a sound that came out as a rasp of scales.
He imagined Salazar standing in front of his own statue and praising himself. What kind of sick mind will build a door in the image of his own face? Something had been wrong with him. He wondered if Salazar was dyeing his hair purple or pink.
Corvus stayed coiled. Still and waiting.
Somewhere in the dark, something shifted.