The notes arrived overnight.
He had asked the elves while getting the sandwiches — Sable first, who had received the request with the specific quality she had when she was already two steps ahead of what was being asked and had been waiting for the asking. Approximately three hundred and eighty, she had confirmed. Every student currently at Hogwarts. Every member of staff. The visiting delegations.
The notes themselves he had prepared in the Room of Requirements the previous week, because he had learned from the leaving feast photograph that the logistical preparation needed to happen before the occasion rather than after it. The paper was good — heavier than standard parchment, the Hogwarts crest embossed on the front in the specific gold that was neither too bright nor too understated. On the back, the Witness mark: the eye inside the circle, in deep black ink.
Inside, in clean print:
Welcome to Hogwarts. We have stood a thousand years on this land, and we do not intend to stop. Never tickle a sleeping dragon — but know first that the dragon is awake.
Nothing else. No signature beyond the mark. No explanation.
He was at breakfast before most of the Hall and watched it fill with the patient attention of someone who had arranged a thing and was now observing what the thing did.
The notes had been placed in the dormitories overnight — on pillows, on desks, tucked into the covers of books left open on bedside tables. The first students to arrive at breakfast were already holding them. By the time the Hall was half full the notes were everywhere — being read, being compared, being passed between people with the specific energy of something that had arrived without explanation and was refusing to provide one.
'It's the Witness again,' Lavender said, at the Gryffindor table, holding her note up so the crest caught the morning light. 'The same mark as the leaving feast photograph last year.'
'Someone who was here last year,' Parvati said. 'And this year. And knows the castle.'
'That's half the school,' Seamus said.
'Someone who could arrange for around four hundred notes to appear in people's rooms overnight,' Hermione said, in the tone of someone thinking aloud rather than contributing to the general conversation. 'That's not half the school. That requires either a great deal of help or a very specific kind of access.'
Ron reached for the toast.
'The elves,' Neville said quietly, from beside him, with the specific quality Neville had when he had worked something out and was deciding whether to say it. He looked at Ron. Ron looked back with an expression that gave nothing and confirmed nothing and was its own kind of answer.
Neville looked at his breakfast and said nothing further.
At the Durmstrang table, Viktor Krum was reading his note with the focused attention he gave things he considered worth understanding. He turned it over, examined the Witness mark, and set it on the table beside his plate with the quality of someone filing something for later consideration.
At the Beauxbatons table, Fleur Delacour had read hers twice and was looking at it with an expression that was not quite what Ron had expected — not the slight condescension she gave most things, but something more like genuine assessment. She said something to the girl beside her that Ron was too far away to hear.
At the staff table, McGonagall had her note propped against her teacup, which was where she had placed the leaving feast photograph last year. She was reading it with the expression of someone who had been thinking about the Witness since last June and had just received a new data point.
Dumbledore was looking at the Hall.
Not at his note — at the Hall, with the quality he had when he was watching something he found both interesting and unresolved, the benign mild expression doing its usual work of concealing the older thing underneath it. His note was open in front of him. He had clearly already read it.
Ron buttered his toast and listened to the table around him generate theories, none of which were correct and several of which were creative, and thought about the three weeks ahead.