Julien smiled and didn't argue further. He knew that in this era, where the shadow of Voldemort had not yet fully dissipated, people's prejudice against Slytherin was like an impenetrable iron wall.
"Anyway," he raised his goblet of pumpkin juice, gesturing to Harry. "Congratulations, Harry. The first first-year Seeker in Hogwarts in a century. That's incredibly cool."
"Yeah, Harry, congratulations," Ron said, genuinely happy for his friend.
"Exactly," Casen agreed, raising his goblet as well. "If it weren't for that Malfoy, I would have been the first first-year Seeker."
"Hahaha."
Harry finally laughed and raised his own goblet. "Thanks! When I play my first match, you guys have to come watch!"
"Absolutely!" Casen declared immediately. "I'm sitting in the front row. As long as you're not playing against Ravenclaw, I'll cheer for you!"
The group burst into laughter once again. The minor disagreement from earlier was quickly washed away by the smell of food and the boisterous energy of the young boys.
Right after parting ways with the Ravenclaws, Hermione took Harry and Ron to the trophy room to see the Hogwarts Quidditch trophy Harry's father, James, had won as a Seeker. It was the first time Harry learned his father had also been an exceptional Seeker.
On their way back to their dormitory, as the three of them were chatting and laughing on a staircase, the stairs suddenly jolted into motion. Terrified, they quickly crouched down and gripped the railings tightly.
"Don't panic!" Hermione was the first to regain her composure. "Percy said the Hogwarts staircases move on their own. If we wait a bit, we can just walk around and find our way back."
The staircase shifted nearly 180 degrees, depositing them in an unfamiliar corridor—the very same third-floor corridor on the east side that Dumbledore had explicitly forbidden them from entering at the start of the term.
The adventures of the golden trio had begun...
---
The library was much quieter than the Great Hall. The only sounds were the turning of pages and the occasional soft scratching of a quill against parchment. After saying goodbye to Edgar and Casen—who had wanted to take a walk by the Black Lake—Julien had headed straight to the library to work on his assignments.
It was nearing nine o'clock. Julien sat in a corner at an oak table enchanted with a Silencing Charm, a rather thin, ancient tome spread open before him: A Study of Magical Leylines in Europa. With his brow furrowed, he traced his finger along lines of faded text.
It was less a book and more of a manuscript—a handwritten copy or a set of notes belonging to a wizard from an unknown era. Many of the words looked vastly different from modern script, and the handwriting was blurred and difficult to read.
"...Three nodes, established in alignment with the stars, anchored by stone, drawn by blood... Tickle not a sleeping dragon; these are no idle words."
The text was obscure and difficult to decipher, but the solemnity and sense of impending danger bleeding through the lines sent a chill down his spine. Tickle not a sleeping dragon—wasn't that the Hogwarts school motto? Did it carry some deeper, hidden meaning?
Only after Madam Pince, the librarian, shot him three nearly threatening glares did Julien finally close the book and carefully tuck his completed homework into the inner pocket of his robes. By the time he stood up to leave, the sky outside the window was already a river of stars.
His mind was heavy with thought as he walked back toward Ravenclaw Tower. As he passed a spiral staircase connecting the third and fifth floors, that familiar clack sounded again. The stone steps trembled slightly beneath his feet, then began to rotate.
Julien didn't panic. Having slipped around the castle multiple times, he was already used to its capriciousness. However, this time, the stairs didn't deposit him at the familiar entrance to the Ravenclaw common room. Instead, they stopped at a corridor on the north side of the fourth floor that he had never noticed before.
It was much more desolate here than the west wing he usually took. The wall sconces cast a dim, sallow light, and cobwebs clustered in the corners. The air smelled old, carrying a scent of stale wax and magical dust. At the end of the corridor, a faint light spilled from a half-open door.
Julien hesitated for a moment, then walked over. Pushing the door open, he found a moderately sized, empty classroom. In the center of the room stood a single, tall mirror. The frame was ornate gold, and a line of stylized text was carved into the top:
Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
"Oh, it's the Mirror of Erised..." Julien murmured softly.
He remembered Dumbledore telling Harry that this mirror showed the deepest, most desperate desire of a person's heart.
The old headmaster had probably placed it here so that Harry, burdened by the crushing weight of opposing Voldemort, could see his parents and find a sliver of comfort. And, of course, to serve as a dry run for retrieving the Sorcerer's Stone later on.
Since this was just a piece of Dumbledore's grand chess game for Harry, Julien knew he should simply turn around and leave. No matter how magical the mirror was, to him, it was just a magical artifact with a backstory.
But halfway through his turn, his feet felt as if they were nailed to the floor.
"What would my deepest desire... actually be?" he asked with a self-deprecating laugh. "Probably going back to my past life and lying in the sun on my balcony? Or... sitting around the fireplace at the Black Vine Estate with my parents and grandparents in this life?"
In the end, curiosity won out. As people always say, I'm already here. So, he walked slowly up to the mirror and looked up.
There was no sunlight in the mirror. There was no fireplace. There were no warm smiles from his parents.
There was only a chaotic darkness, like the void at the dawn of the universe. Deep within that darkness floated a long, black stone tablet, its surface etched with what looked like trails of starlight.
It was silent and ancient, yet it seemed to pulse with a terrifying power capable of tearing through time and space. The tablet's silhouette was blurred, shaped somewhat like the long, hide-wrapped bundle Liriya had brought to school. Yet, it radiated a resonance that sang to his very blood, a calling from the absolute depths of his soul.
Then, a deep, hoarse voice—sounding as if it were echoing up from the bowels of the earth—spoke directly into his mind:
"Is it you? My guardian, the last bloodline of Black... have you come to break my chains?"
Julien jolted violently, as if struck by lightning. He stumbled back a step, his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might shatter his ribs. He whipped his head around, scanning the room. It was completely empty. Dumbledore hadn't suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
But that voice hadn't been a hallucination! It had spoken with clear intent, carrying the bone-deep exhaustion and desperate hope of a thousand-year wait, piercing straight to the core of his consciousness.
"The stone tablet..." he murmured, his fingers subconsciously flying to his chest, where the fabric of his robes felt faintly warm.
"Aren't you the Mirror of Erised?" Julien asked, his voice trembling.
"No. The Mirror of Erised is merely the final failsafe left by the Four Founders, a beacon that only activates for a specific bloodline!" the hoarse, ancient voice echoed again. "The Mirror of Erised does not sit here to reflect 'desire,' but to identify the 'key'—the key of the guardian!"
The image of the stone tablet in the mirror began to rotate slowly. The starlight-like patterns lit up one by one, tracing out a star chart Julien had never seen before.
Of course, if he ended up doing well in Astronomy later on, he would eventually realize that it depicted the night of the winter solstice, the exact moment the three stars of Orion's Belt hung directly above the Hogwarts Astronomy Tower.
"Chains?... Bloodline?... Key?" Julien repeated the words in a low whisper. Was he some kind of guardian? Did it have something to do with the Black bloodline?
He looked up into the mirror again. The stone tablet seemed to vibrate slightly before the whispering faded away, eventually returning to total silence. The image began to dissolve, reverting back into an ordinary mirror reflecting Julien's own pale face.
He stood frozen in place for a long time. The night wind blew through the empty corridor, sounding almost like a quiet sob.
Originally, his plan had been simple: although he knew the plot, he just wanted to be a bystander who safely survived his school years, learned magic properly, and gained enough ability to protect himself. He figured he could leave everything else to Harry and the others.
But now... it seemed that he, Caelum Julien Black, had a plotline of his very own.
He gave the mirror one last look, turned, and walked away. The door clicked softly shut behind him.