Hogwarts Raven (Harry Potter)

You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395

After leaving the Slytherin common room, Ian decided not to slip into class halfway through. He checked the time, then headed first to the Room of Requirement to brew a few potions before making his way straight to the Great Hall.

Lunchtime soon arrived.

Sunlight poured through the stained glass windows, casting golden rays across the Great Hall of Hogwarts. The warm light danced along the long tables, glinting off silver goblets and platters, cloaking the grand and timeworn chamber in a mellow, golden glow.

Though summer's heat hadn't yet abated, thanks to the ever-curious and enthusiastic Professor Nicolas Flamel, Hogwarts now boasted its own enchanted cooling system.

No one quite knew what powered it.

What everyone did know was that, as long as they remained within Hogwarts Castle, they no longer suffered in pools of sweat. Even the blazing height of summer could be enjoyed in the bracing chill reminiscent of a crisp October morning, much like the comforting presence of Autumn Chang.

Naturally, this was a change welcomed by all. At the very least, Hogwarts students no longer faced the same waning appetites during mealtimes that they'd endured in sweltering years gone by.

That said, given the bold experimentation the house-elves had unveiled during breakfast, many students approached their lunch with a degree of caution.

Clearly, the house-elves had entered a phase of boundless culinary exploration.

Still, while some of the offerings leaned toward the peculiar, the flavours were vastly improved from the morning meal. As Ian sat down at the Ravenclaw table, he couldn't help but wonder whether one of the professors had "offered feedback" to the kitchens, perhaps even by wandpoint. The improvement had been remarkably swift.

"This pineapple pizza's not bad."

Ian lounged back slightly as he ate, enjoying the surprisingly well-balanced combination of tang and cheese. Across from him, William was experimentally dunking cherry dumplings into salad dressing, while Michael chomped away on a duck-flavoured chicken leg.

The house-elves were clearly trying everything under the sun. Despite the bizarre pairings, Ian's two roommates gave their dishes a nod of approval.

"Who took that diary?"

Even as he chewed, Ian's thoughts were elsewhere. His gaze lazily swept the length of the Great Hall, but beneath that casual veneer, he had silently activated 'Thought Perception', a rare gift he had come to wield with increasing finesse.

Through persistent training and experimentation, Ian had mastered this unusual magical ability. It allowed him to perceive the surface emotions and passing thoughts of those nearby, without needing to perform full Legilimency.

He couldn't extract detailed memories, of course, that would require more invasive techniques, but he could easily detect fluctuations in mood or the stirrings of concealed motives.

He began, naturally, by surveying his own table. Though Malfoy's diary had vanished from the Slytherin common room, the thief wasn't necessarily a Slytherin. While most students couldn't move about the Houses undetected, there were countless magical workarounds, charms, enchanted tokens, even secret passageways.

At the Ravenclaw table, several students were chattering animatedly over a plate of colour-changing vegetable salad.

"Look, it just turned from green to purple!" One student exclaimed.

"That's because its nutritional enchantments are recalibrating," another replied, adjusting his thick spectacles with a knowing look. "The house-elves must've used chameleon grass extract!"

He sounded remarkably confident in his deduction.

"Yes, it is chameleon grass," added another with approval. "It adapts to whatever nutrients we're short on. Brilliant bit of enchantment, really, a meal that adjusts to your needs." Classic Ravenclaw behaviour: analytical, precise, and wholly focused on the magical mechanisms at play.

This was quite the contrast to the reactions at other tables, where most students were content simply to marvel.

Over at Gryffindor, their responses to the colour-changing salad were succinct: a few wide-eyed gasps of "Blimey" and "Wicked!", the sort of commentary that suggested more than a few Muggle-borns had made their way into the House this year.

"I'm not usually one for greens, but…" Ron Weasley was sitting opposite a plate of wriggling spaghetti, looking thoroughly dispirited.

"Can this thing I got really be eaten?" Having lost his pet, Ron had been in a glum mood all day. He prodded the animated pasta on his plate, only for the noodles to suddenly twist and coil like a miniature serpent, winding themselves tightly around his fork.

Neville couldn't hold back a laugh.

Meanwhile, Hermione leaned forward with the familiar air of someone delivering a carefully thought-out explanation.

"This must be a magical version of 'living noodles'. I think the texture's a bit springier than normal, almost like conjured dough with a reanimation charm." She clearly wasn't quoting a textbook, but giving her personal assessment with as much authority as she could muster.

Miss Granger's drive for validation was just as Ian had quietly noted before.

It stemmed from deep-rooted self-doubt and a sensitivity to being overlooked.

She was always striving to prove she was still top of her class. However, Ron was far too distracted to care about Hermione's commentary. As he slurped the twitching noodles, he suddenly set down his fork, his voice heavy with frustration.

"Scabbers was definitely stolen by Harry Potter!" he declared, the words tumbling out with raw emotion. He still couldn't stop thinking about his missing pet rat, though even he didn't know exactly why he'd arrived at this conclusion.

"My family keeps saying that boy's a hero, a proper legend, but he's a Slytherin, isn't he? I reckon there's something dark lurking behind all that charm."

He ought to have been one of Harry Potter's closest friends. But because they'd missed their chance meeting on the Hogwarts Express, they'd never truly connected. Instead, Ron had formed a quiet grudge that had grown into something more like suspicion.

Perhaps it also had something to do with Harry being sorted into the House Ron distrusted the most.

A textbook example of the butterfly effect: Draco Malfoy, surprisingly, had warmed to Harry, while Ron had become the boy who had once admired him, then slowly turned bitter.

"You can't just decide someone's good or bad based on their House," Hermione replied sharply, her brow furrowing. "Yes, there are unpleasant people in Slytherin, but that doesn't make the whole House rotten."

She resisted Ron's judgmental stance with quiet force. After all, her own "mentor" often spent time with Slytherin girls, girls Hermione had never truly disliked, and it wouldn't do to believe that everyone from that House was cruel or twisted. That would mean Ian was as well, and she wasn't about to accept that.

"You've never grown up around magic. You don't understand Hogwarts. Or Slytherin," Ron snapped back, his words tinged with irritation and dismissal.

"Actually… I think you're both right, in a way."

Neville, still chewing thoughtfully, spoke up from across the table. "It's not fair to judge someone on a House, but you also can't ignore the fact that some people hide bad things behind a smile."

His reasonable tone only seemed to increase Ron's frustration. Feeling the need to validate himself, Ron leaned forward and lowered his voice.

"Last night, my two older brothers dragged me along for one of their nightly 'experiments'. I fell behind, got lost near the third-floor corridor, and I saw Harry Potter in an abandoned classroom. He was whispering some really strange incantations."

"Why would he be hiding, doing magic like that if it wasn't something dark? I swear there was blood, on the floor. It looked like a ritual, a proper one, the kind Mum always warned us about."

"I think he sacrificed Scabbers! That's how far he's gone, my poor Scabbers!"

Ron's voice cracked with grief as he finished recounting his tale, while Hermione and Neville exchanged troubled glances, clearly unsure whether to believe him or dismiss the whole thing as Ron's imagination gone wild.

Nearby, Ian had caught every word.

"Was it Harry's blood that was left behind…?"

Ian's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He wasn't surprised. Ever since he uncovered signs of Harry's unusual magical state and visited the Chamber of Secrets himself, he'd begun to suspect something strange had occurred the previous night.

(To Be Continued…)