While the Great Hall echoed with laughter, clinking plates, and the noise of the welcoming feast, Harry and Ron were having a very different kind of reception.
They stood stiffly in Professor Snape's office.
Snape held up the newspaper so the headline faced them.
"You were seen by no fewer than seven Muggles!" he said sharply. "Seven! In broad daylight."
He threw the paper onto the desk with a snap and glared at them.
"Do you have any idea how serious this is? You have risked exposing our entire world." His voice grew colder. "And that is without mentioning the damage you inflicted on the Whomping Willow — a tree that has stood on these grounds since before either of you were born."
Ron shifted uncomfortably. "Honestly, Professor Snape, I think it did more damage to us."
"Silence!" Snape snapped, striding around the desk toward them, robes sweeping the floor. "I assure you, if you were in Slytherin and your fate rested with me, both of you would already be on the train home tonight."
"Unfortunately," a calm voice said from the doorway, "their fate does not rest with you."
Everyone turned.
Albus Dumbledore stood there, hands folded behind his back. Beside him stood Minerva McGonagall, looking every bit as stern as Snape.
Harry straightened immediately. "Professor Dumbledore. Professor McGonagall."
Snape's lip curled slightly. "Headmaster, these boys have violated the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry. As such—"
"I am well aware of our bylaws, Severus," Dumbledore said mildly. "Having written more than a few of them myself."
Snape fell silent.
"However," Dumbledore continued, turning slightly, "as Head of Gryffindor House, it is Professor McGonagall who will determine the appropriate course of action."
Ron swallowed and muttered quietly, "We'll go and get our things then."
Professor McGonagall blinked at him. "What are you talking about, Mr. Weasley?"
"You're going to expel us, aren't you?"
"Not today, Mr. Weasley."
Both boys visibly relaxed.
"But do not mistake that for leniency," McGonagall continued sharply. "What you have done was extremely serious. I will be writing to both of your families tonight."
Ron's shoulders sank again.
"And you will both serve detention."
Harry and Ron nodded quickly.
Behind them, Snape said nothing.
But the glare he fixed on the two Gryffindors could have melted stone.
Harry and Ron hurried back toward the Great Hall just as the feast was still going on.
"I really thought we were going to be expelled," Harry muttered under his breath. "After all that."
Ron looked miserable. "Expelled might've been better."
Harry glanced at him. "Better?"
"My mum is going to get that letter tonight," Ron groaned. "You don't know what that means. She's going to send a Howler. I can already hear it."
Harry tried not to smile. "It can't be worse than being expelled."
Ron looked at him as if he had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
At the far end of the hall, Argus Filch was standing near the doors. His sharp eyes followed the boys as they entered.
For a moment his face twisted with disappointment.
Clearly, he had been hoping for something far more permanent.
When he realized they were returning to the feast instead of packing their trunks, he gave a small, irritated sniff and stalked away.
***
Night settled over Hogwarts.
The castle had grown quiet. Torches burned low in the corridors, and the distant sounds of students faded as the dormitories filled with sleep.
In the Slytherin dormitory, Victor lay still in his bed.
Then his eyes closed.
A moment later, something pale and weightless separated from his body.
His astral form rose slowly above the bed.
Victor glanced down once at his sleeping body, then stretched slightly, adjusting to the strange lightness of the form.
This ability is useful.
Not that he used it for anything improper. Tonight, he had a very specific purpose.
Tom Riddle's diary.
If he could retrieve it now, before Ginny became entangled with it, then the Chamber of Secrets would never open. No petrified students. No basilisk roaming the pipes. No chaos for the entire school year.
Victor had no intention of relying on luck — especially not the kind that required students repeatedly encountering a basilisk and somehow surviving.
His astral form drifted forward and passed effortlessly through the stone wall of the Slytherin dormitory.
The corridors of Hogwarts slid beneath him as he moved silently through the castle.
Up staircases.
Through closed doors.
Across empty hallways lit only by moonlight spilling through tall windows.
Soon he reached the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.
The portrait of the Fat Lady snored quietly in her frame.
Victor simply passed through the wall beside her.
The Gryffindor common room lay beyond, warm and dim in the glow of dying firelight. Chairs sat scattered around the hearth, and abandoned books lay on the tables.
No one was awake.
Victor hovered quietly in the center of the room.
Then he turned toward the two staircases leading upward.
One for boys.
One for girls.
He frowned slightly.
Now then…
Which one led to the girls' dormitory?
Victor drifted upward through the staircase on the right and passed through the wooden door at the top.
A narrow corridor stretched ahead with several dormitory rooms. He moved silently through the first one, gliding through the door like mist.
Inside, several girls slept in their beds beneath thick curtains. One of them snored softly, another had twisted her blankets into a knot, and a third slept with her eyes half open — which was unsettling enough that Victor quickly looked away.
Not my business.
He checked the next room.
And the next.
Finally, in the last dormitory, he found the small figure he was looking for.
Ginny Weasley slept curled beneath her blankets, red hair spread across the pillow.
Victor moved toward her things.
He reached out, using a quiet levitation charm to lift the contents and search without touching anything. Books rose one by one, quills, parchment, a few chocolate frog cards.
No diary.
Where is it?
He scanned the room again.
Then his gaze dropped to the trunk at the foot of the bed.
Ginny's trunk.
She probably hadn't taken the diary out yet.
Victor hovered over it, considering the latch.
He could open it.
But the trunk would creak, and if Ginny woke — or worse, if one of the other girls woke — the noise would draw attention immediately.
That would create far more problems than the diary was worth tonight.
Victor sighed quietly.
I'll have to come back.
The objects settled gently back into Ginny's bag. Without another sound, his astral form drifted away from the bed, slipped through the wall, and disappeared into the dark corridor.
The diary would have to wait.
*****
A/N : 🔥 On Patreon, the story has already been updated up to Chapter 76🔥
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