| THE SERPENT; chapter ii | directory & chapter i
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enjoy, my little serpents. 🐍
Hidden away in a compartment in the third train car of the Hogwarts Express, I sat with my nose buried deep in a book. I had spent most of the summer hunting for this particular copy—Elemental Earth Transfiguration by Miranda Goshawk—and it had proven itself endlessly fascinating.
Provoking, even.
With the war, things had become harder to come by. Floo powder, potions, herbs, books—really, anything once considered ordinary before the world split open.
I'd already read the text three times. It hadn't taken long for me to understand the premise: granted enough concentration, an intentional spell or enchantment could transfigure the elements around a witch or wizard without the use of a wand, using the mind alone as its conduit.
Difficult magic.
Dangerous, too.
But I'd never been one to avoid skills simply because they weren't meant to be touched.
Orion had dissapeared into the train hours ago, swallowed by his sixth-year companions with little more than a smile thrown over his shoulder. He never let me keep solitude for long though.
So I wasn't surprised when the compartment door slid open.
I glanced up briefly before returning to the page.
We'd always been close for siblings, especially with only eleven months between us, but age brought separate expectations to the both of us.
Several quiet minutes passed before I finally closed the book with a sigh.
"Are your friends not entertaining enough for you?" I asked, arching a brow.
"Well, I suppose they are," Orion said, leaning lazily against the doorframe. "I think I just wanted to be in your presence before Hogwarts steals you entirely."
"Distracts, you mean?" I corrected with an amused smile.
His grin widened.
"This is your last year."
"And yours is next."
He hesitated. A beat passed between us. "If we even make it to next year."
I rolled my eyes at the dramatics. "We will." Then, softer, "It's not as though you'll never see me again."
He nodded, warm spirit alive as ever. Suddenly his face brightened.
"Oh! I almost forgot—"
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a cloth-wrapped package carrying the unmistakable scent of fresh sweets. The smell hit me first.
My eyes widened immediately.
"Are those—"
"Sugar cakes!" he announced proudly. "Before rationing steals the last joys of civilization."
"Ori..." I breathed, a laugh escaping me. "How did you get those? I thought the train wasn't offering treats this year."
He only shrugged. "They're your favorite, aren't they?"
He handed one to me, and I couldn't help the rush of gratitude that followed. I took a bite, the warm sugary cake practically melting in my mouth like heaven itself.
"Thank you," I groaned dramatically through another bite, being sure to savor every second of it.
Orion only smiled before wrapping the remaining cakes and placing them beside me.
"I think we're almost there," he said after glancing out the window. "I should probably get back before Alphard starts gambling away our luggage."
"You say that as though he hasn't already," I humored him. And for a moment, he looked as though he wanted to say something more. Something I'd grown used to with him.
"A fair point." he spoke quietly.
"Be safe, Orion." I hummed.
"You sound like Mum." He replied, glancing at me sideways. His hand paused briefly against the compartment door, "Just... avoid trouble this year."
I nearly laughed at that.
At Hogwarts, trouble rarely needed an invitation.
I glanced out the window toward the approaching platform. Orion Black slipped from the compartment, disappearing into the crowded train corridor.
It was strange watching him grow up, though I supposed I had done it first.
The Blacks were not people who said I love you. We expressed it differently—through reminders, through careful glances that quietly dissected one another's wellbeing, through small tokens that proved someone had paid attention to the things you loved.
I tucked the sugar cakes carefully into my bag before moving to slide my book beside them neatly. As the train squealed against the tracks, everything changed.
The book slipped from my hands, and a violent force overtook my body.
Not pain. Recognition.
Pressure slammed through my senses, heavy and cold, as if my magic had collided with something it did not understand.
The compartment seemed to tilt, and something tight gathered behind my ribs. Like invisible hands had suddenly wrapped around my lungs and squeezed.
I sucked in a breath, but the air felt wrong somehow—
My fingers gripped the edge of the seat hard enough to ache. Beneath it all there was this awareness. Not of the compartment. Not of the train.
Close.
The thought was not mine.
It moved through me like an ancient instinct.
The train slowed harder.
The sensation sharpened like thread drawn between two unseen points.
Something was near—someone existed with terrifying clarity.
I stood so abruptly the compartment lurched beneath me. Cold air rushed in as I slid the door open, carrying with it the scent of rain and coal smoke from the corridor beyond the Hogwarts Express.
A group of students passed outside the doorway in blurred motion, laughing loudly over one another as trunks scraped against the walls of the train.
Normal.
Everything looked painfully normal.
I forced myself to breathe. Whatever had just happened, I refused to let myself believe it meant anything beyond exhaustion. Nothing more.
The summer had been suffocating enough without my body deciding to betray me now.
The train fully stopped.
Hogsmeade.
Outside the window, fog curled low across the platform while rain lashed violently against black stone. Students had already begun flooding the corridors in frantic waves, gathering trunks and owls beneath bursts of hurried conversation.
I reached for my things quickly.
The moment I stepped outside the compartment, the feeling returned. It was a more focused awareness now. Like being watched before you could prove it.
The noise around me dimmed strangely—not silence exactly, but distance, as though the world itself had shifted half a step away.
Then I saw him.
Several feet down the corridor stood Tom Riddle.
He faced partially away from me, speaking to Abraxas Malfoy in low conversation while students unconsciously moved around them like water around stone. Even among pure-blood aristocracy, Tom carried himself differently. Not wealth. Not status.
Control.
Perfect and terrifying control.
Abraxas spoke animatedly, though I heard none of it.
Tom went still. Subtly.
The kind of stillness predators possessed moments before noticing movement in the dark.
Then his head turned. Our eyes met instantly.
The world seemed to have sharpened, and something inside of me recoiled immediately.
I froze.
Not visibly. Every instinct I possessed seemed to pull tight at once. It felt primitive.
The feeling was familiar in a way I couldn't place. Like my body had recognized danger before my mind could shape it. The kind of danger that existed long before logic.
I looked away first, my pulse quickening. When I looked back, he was still watching.
And for one impossible moment, confusion crossed his face.
As if he'd felt it too.
It then vanished, beneath practiced composure so quickly, I almost convinced myself I had imagined it. Like standing too close to shattered glass.
His expression tightened almost imperceptibly. There and gone.
Abraxas continued speaking, breaking whatever invisible tension had settled between us.
My grip tightened around the handle of my trunk as I forced myself down the corridor with the rest of the students, pulse thundering loudly enough to make me nauseous.
Rain greeted us violently.
What in Merlin's name is wrong with me?
Torches flickered against the storm as students crowded beneath the narrow awnings, black robes billowing through heavy wind. Somewhere nearby, prefects shouted instructions no one truly listened to while first-years stumbled anxiously toward the boats.
Hogwarts loomed beyond all of it.
Usually the sight filled me with relief.
Tonight the castle looked almost severe beneath the storm clouds, every tower disappearing into sheets of rain and darkness.
The war had reached Hogwarts long before any of us arrived.
It lived in the reinforced wards. The quieter halls. The strained expressions worn by professors attempting to disguise fear as discipline.
A group of seventh-year boys brushed past me discussing Grindelwald openly without lowering their voices.
"...French Ministry practically collapsing already—"
"My father says Britain's next if they don't strengthen restrictions—"
"Well they should've done that years ago."
I looked away before they noticed me listening.
By the time I reached the Slytherin dormitories beneath the lake, exhaustion had settled heavily into my bones.
The common room glowed green beneath the shifting light of the water outside. Shadows drifted across the stone walls in strange patterns as students reclaimed familiar corners and velvet chairs with tired relief.
Nothing about Slytherin House ever truly felt warm.
Elegant, yes.
Powerful, certainly.
But warmth implied comfort, and Slytherins rarely allowed themselves luxuries that made them vulnerable.
"Kaida!"
A familiar voice broke through my thoughts.
Cassiopeia Burke crossed the room toward me gracefully, ginger curls pinned neatly back despite the weather outside. Behind her, two girls I vaguely recognized from sixth year were already unpacking books beside the fire.
"You look dreadful," Cassiopeia observed immediately.
"I feel dreadful."
"That's reassuring. Everyone else looks terrified."
I glanced around the room properly then.
She wasn't wrong.
Conversations remained quieter than usual, fractured by lingering unease. A group of girls near the staircase whispered intensely over copies of the Prophet while several older boys discussed Ministry affairs with far too much confidence for seventeen-year-olds.
"...they're reconsidering old family contracts—"
"My mother said the Wizengamot's discussing preservation measures—"
"Well they have to. Magical society can't survive like this forever."
Preservation.
The word had seemingly become a plague.
Cassiopeia lowered her voice slightly. "Have you heard the rumors?"
"Which ones?" I frowned slightly.
"That Hogwarts may begin implementing Ministry oversight this year."
A cold feeling settled low in my stomach.
"That's absurd."
"Is it?" She glanced toward the common room entrance. "Half the school's families are already involved politically. The Ministry's terrified Grindelwald sympathizers have infiltrated Britain."
Before I could answer, my magic shifted. It was like the air itself bent wrong.
I looked instinctively toward the staircase leading deeper into the dormitories. The torches lining the common room walls flickered.
My fingers sparked.
The distortion was sharp enough this time to steal the breath from my lungs entirely.
"Kaida?"
Cassiopeia's voice sounded far away.
I blinked.
The sensation vanished as abruptly as it had arrived, leaving only the faint sting of magic beneath my skin.
"You alright?"
"Fine," I lied automatically.
Her eyes lingered on me for a moment, unconvinced.
Then, thankfully, she sighed.
"Well, have your crisis after Transfiguration." Before I could respond, she excused herself. "I'll see you in the morning."
I watched her disappear toward the girls' dormitories, the sound of her footsteps fading into the stone.
Only when she was gone did I let myself look back toward the staircase.
And there he was.
Tom Riddle had just entered the common room.
Conversation did not stop when he appeared. It shifted.
The room seemed to bend around him without meaning to. Heads turned. Voices lowered. Even laughter sounded different—as though people were suddenly aware of themselves.
There was something wrong with him this year. Not wrong in any obvious sense.
If anything, he looked exactly as he always did. Immaculate. Composed. Handsome in that infuriating way that made people forgive him things before he'd even spoken.
But something was different, like a crack running beneath ice.
I couldn't tell if anyone else noticed it. Something fractured lingered beneath the surface of him. Not weakness. Not instability.
Division.
It felt like a part of him stood in front of me in the common room while another part watched from somewhere impossibly in the distance.
My eyes followed him despite myself.
In all the years I'd shared corridors, classrooms, and common rooms with Tom Riddle, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was looking at a stranger wearing his face.
His dark robes were damp from rain, sleeves rolled neatly toward his forearms as though even storms failed to truly touch him. Several students acknowledged him immediately while others straightened unconsciously in his presence.
His gaze lifted. Directly towards me.
My magic resisted as if I'd touched a wand that didn't belong to me.
I grew up understanding, without being told, that attention was currency—and very few people were worth spending it on.
So I didn't reach.
I decided to observe instead.
Him now especially.
I watched him the way I might watch something that didn't yet know it had been noticed. A story existed in the way he carried himself. Not one I belonged to. Not one I wanted to belong to.
Every logical part of me dismissed the physical reaction as nonsense. A momentary discomfort.
A trick of unfamiliarity.
Later that evening, staring into the dark canopy above my bed, I realized I could not remember half of the faces I'd seen that day. That irritated me more than it should have.
My magic had noticed something worth fearing.
That explanation should've been enough.
But over the following weeks, I found myself tracking him. Across corridors, at meals, in classrooms. Small details.
Like where he stood, who he spoke to, when he arrived, when he left.
I told myself it was because he'd unsettled me. Because there had been something strange about the encounter.
But every time I thought back to him, I felt that same strange recoil deep within my magic. Like a warning delivered in a language I hadn't learned to speak.
And since returning to Hogwarts, I found myself wondering whether my magic was trying to tell me something I would not survive understanding.
𓂃𓂃𓂃
© 2026 by Ari Loren
