章節 52: Hallowe'en Of Illusions and Symbols
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The dinner feast at Halloween was always special at Hogwarts.
The decor of the Great Hall was all Halloweeny and spooky. Floating pumpkin heads from the ceiling and spooky bats flew around the dark, enchanted sky.
The lighting on the Great Hall was also dimmed by a level, giving it a different feel than usual. It was oddly stimulating to see a place that you saw every day changed slightly.
The goblets had engravings of pumpkin, and the food came in cauldrons instead of the usual utensils.
Like every year, Quinn had put on his pointed hat for the occasion and had a pumpkin and bat lapel pin on his robes. It was his way of being festive.
Plus, he had dipped into his chocolate reserves and distributed chocolate to every Ravenclaw he came across in the Ravenclaw common room.
Unknown to him, they gave him the nickname Chocolate West because of the chocolate he had been giving out. It didn't help when he would randomly produce chocolate and give them to people even before Halloween.
Quinn cleaned his hands and corners of his mouth before turning to Eddie and smiling, "What Halloween candy is never on time for the party?"
Eddie gave the question a thought before shrugging, "I don't know. Which one is it?"
"Choco-LATE," laughed Quinn.
Eddie gave him a flat look and spoke, "That wasn't funny."
Quinn pursed his lips and nodded, "I know, here you go." Placing something on Eddie's hand.
Eddie looked at his hand, expecting to see the usual chocolate, but it turned out not to be chocolate.
"A candy cane?" asked Eddie, his brows quirking up.
Quinn showed a shallow lopsided grin and chortled, "The chocolate is late."
Eddie's jaw fell as he gawked at Quinn. He closed his mouth before asking, "Did you plan that?"
"No, it just came to me!" smiled Quinn, shaking his hands around his head. "Genius, right?!"
"... No, it wasn't," spoke Eddie, his face showing his complete disagreement.
Both friends got up from their bench spots and started to walk towards the exit
Quinn threw his arm around Eddie's shoulder and poked his cheek, "Come on, admit I got you."
"Nope, it didn't."
"It did." "Didn't."
"It did." "Didn't."
"It did." "Didn't."
.
.
.
"It did."
"Didn't!"
Quinn and Eddie walked together among the crowd of students who were going to the common room. He would walk with them till the fifth floor, then he was going to part with them to go to the Room of Requirements.
But then the crowd of students slowed down till every stopped and stilled. A murmur spread across the students, and then all of them heard something that bought chills to Quinn.
"Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"
Quinn froze when he heard Draco Malfoy's familiar voice. He had familiarised with it from all the times he had quarreled with Harry Potter in the Great Hall.
Eddie felt Quinn's arm slip away from his shoulder and watched as his friend step away from him and walk towards the front of the crowd.
"Hey, where are you going?" Eddie called out to Quinn but didn't get a reply from his roommate. "Quinn!"
Quinn didn't hear Eddie as he moved through the crowd towards the front of the traffic. His fingers twitched occasionally, and numerous students felt tugs on their clothes, shifting them slightly to the side as Quinn used magic to make a path from himself.
Quinn finally reached the front of the crowd and saw the scene he had read about and seen in the cinematic representation of the books.
Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches. And, not any words, but words, written in blood red, and the dripping marks certainly upped the graveness of the wording.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.
His eyes shifted away from the bloody words and saw Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring.
'Is she dead?' thought Quinn and immediately looked at the floor to see a puddle of water.
'Okay, there is a chance that it might be alive.' The events exactly matched the canon, so there was a chance that Mrs. Norris was alive and was just petrified.
Quinn finally took note of his surroundings. The chatter, the bustle, the noise died suddenly as the people in front spotted the hanging cat. Harry, Ron, Ivy, and Hermione stood alone in the middle of the corridor as silence fell among the mass of students pressing forward to see the bloody sight.
Attracted no doubt by Malfoy's shout, Argus Filch came shouldering his way through the crowd. Then he saw Mrs. Norris and fell back, clutching his face in horror.
"My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris?" He shrieked at Harry, his eyes popping red as he looked feral.
You!" he screeched. "You! You've murdered my cat! You've killed her!
I'll kill you! I'll —"
"Argus!"
Quinn looked as Dumbledore made his entry on the scene, followed by the professors. In seconds, he had swept past the golden quartet and detached Mrs. Norris from the torch basket.
He handled the situation swiftly and immediately asked Filch and the golden quartet to follow him to his office, and Lockhart offered his office because it was the closest.
The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and significant, hurried after Dumbledore; so did Professors McGonagall, Lily Potter, and Snape.
Quinn felt relieved as he saw the events happening just as canon progression. It made him feel in control and brought calmness that the diary-Horcrux was in the castle and not out of Hogwarts, which meant there was a solid chance the Basilisk might die at the hands of Harry Potter this year.
But...
Quinn didn't know that his relief would turn against him as without his knowledge, someone had seen his relief, someone that didn't have a good impression of him.
Ivy Potter, the Potter Princess, part of the golden quartet, caught sight of Quinn's figure in the crowd's front. And, something caught her attention, and when she observed, she saw a look of recognition in Quinn's eyes as he stared at the bloody scene.
Her eyes widened as she saw relief and something else in Quinn's expression as he watched the wording on the wall and the hanging cat.
A seed of apprehension gripped her heart as she saw him not showing the stunned and dismayed expression matching the others surrounding them.
Ivy continued to glance at him with the corner of her wide green eyes as her mother pulled them away from the crowd.
Without Quinn's knowledge, his hated wench had struck again.
Fate had placed an impending crisis on Quinn's head, and he did not know what was about to come.
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- (Scene Break) -
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The knowledge that the Basilisk was active in Hogwarts was a positive and negative thing at the same time.
The positive from the situation was that the course of events remained close to the canon progression. Quinn didn't need to worry about canon blowing itself out of the pool and the Basilisk wrecking havoc later on.
The negative of the diary-Horcrux being at Hogwarts was in the short term. It wasn't sunshine and daisies when you lived in the same building as the deadliest snake in the world, one that could kill you with a single look.
To feel a moment of safety, Quinn had come to the Room of Requirement to think about... something. He couldn't think much about how to handle the Basilisk.
Quinn's first priority was to stay away from the serpent and make sure he and the snake never met. He had no delusions of taking on the Basilisk.
'If it was blinded, then I would take my chances,' thought Quinn, tapping away at the armrest of the chair he had asked from the Room of Requirement.
There were two places in Hogwarts where he was safe from the Basilisk, he was sitting in the first, and the second was the Icy vault. Snakes didn't like cold, and Basilisk wasn't an exception; if Quinn became a squatter in the Icy vault, he would be safe from the Basilisk as it would avoid the cold climate of the vault.
'Even Voldemort won't be able to command the Basilisk to go in there.'
"I do not know who is the pitiful victim of the diary-Horcrux. That itself is a problem," contemplated Quinn. If Ginny Weasley was the Horcrux host, he would have robbed the diary from her and chucked it into the Room of Lost Things.
But, there was a part of Quinn's mind that didn't worry about the Basilisk, and it was because of his blood status.
Quinn came from a pure-blood family, and the young Tom Riddle was obsessed with his Slytherin lineage. Slytherin didn't want students of non-magical or mixed-lineage to enter Hogwarts, and the young Tom Riddle followed that mindset with his heart.
He wanted to rid Hogwarts of first-generation magicals (muggleborns). All his victims were muggleborns, except Penelope Clearwater, who was collateral damage, an unplanned victim.
Quinn was a pureblood wizard, so there was a part of Quinn's mind that thought he was safe. That the controlled Basilisk won't target him. The one time in his life that his blood status would help him out. His being pureblood would help him out in this situation.
He didn't believe in pureblood propaganda. Why would he? It didn't help him in magic. His hard work was what helped him progress in his magic capabilities. Blood purity had nothing to do with it.
But now, here he sat, wondering if this 'blood purity' would save him from mortal danger. An archaic way of thinking that led to genetic abnormalities, gene poll degradation, the possibility of declination of magic, and the birth of Squibs.
He didn't like this fact at all. It didn't fit well with him that this inherently corrupt doctrine might possibly help him out.
Quinn just sat there in his chair, staring at the floor, lost in thought about the time to come.
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- (Scene Break) -
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"Mr. Veridian, how are you today? Having a quiet day, I hope," said Quinn as he put on a pair of gloves over his head.
Portrait-Vindictus stared down at Quinn but didn't open his mouth to utter a single sound in greeting.
Quinn waited for some chat back, but as every day, the Portrait didn't entertain him, so he moved on, "Alright, please open up, I have to go inside."
"Password," demanded Portrait-Vindictus.
Quinn exhaled a sigh and put his hands on his waist before asking, "You know if you didn't ask me for a password every day. We would have been good friends."
"Password."
Quinn clicked his tongue and spoke, "Immortalis."
The door opened up without a single word of response, and Quinn stepped but not before saying, "See you in a bit, Mr. Viridian."
The inside of the Room of Rewards was dull as ever, with black binders resting on shelves.
Orbs of light manifested around Quinn, providing proper lighting for him to navigate and read.
"Okay, time for another session of reading random people's school records," said Quinn. He started from where he left off yesterday.
'Like a damn blue-collar worker.'
Quinn sat down his butt down on the floor and began reading, and while he read, a small holographic image of the binder appeared in front of him in mid-air.
The holographic binder opened up, and it was the exact copy of the binder in Quinn's hands. When he looked at a parchment, a holographic image of parchment would appear in the holographic binder.
If you looked closely at the holographic parchment, you would see words appear on it. If you backed up and looked at Quinn and the binder on his hand, you would notice that the words on the holographic parchment were the same as Quinn was reading.
As Quinn read, the words were appearing on the holographic image on the parchment.
Quinn didn't want to waste his time just reading, so he devised a practice exercise to utilize his time.
The practice was to get better at illusion magic.
An illusion was a distortion of the senses, revealing how the mind usually organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. By disrupting and manipulating the sensory input to the brain, a magical could their perception of reality.
Currently, Quinn was casting illusion magic on himself. He was disrupting his own senses to make himself feel the illusions. It was the best way to practice illusion magic. If he understood how his mind interpreted sensory input, then he would have an understanding of every single mind out there.
There were six base sensory perceptions; Sight (Visual), Smell (Olfactory), Touch (Tactile), Hearing (Auditory), Taste (Gustatory), and Magic (Extrasensory).
Currently, he was working on the visual sense or the perception of sight; he was working on how the eye interpreted light and was deceiving his own eyes to believe that there is a holograph of the binder he was reading.
By using the binder, he was changing the illusion with every second by adding words to parchments. It was great practice by creating dynamic illusions.
The only limitation to Illusion magic was the imagination and understanding of the caster. If you wanted to cast an illusion of fire, you needed to know the physical characteristics of fire. How the wisps of fire moved, the heat of the fire, the color, the light projected by fire, and everything that would make the fire illusion believable.
Illusions worked the best when the target believed that the illusion was real. It made the caster's work easier because the target was digging themselves a hole, and all the caster was to give them a push.
In the quiet room, the only sound was the turning of the pages. Quinn continued to read the student binders, sitting on the floor, and binders would float into his hands, and the ones he read would return to their places on the shelves.
After two dozen binders, Quinn stood up from his spot on the floor to stretch his body. He walked to the shelf of the binder he was holding in his hand.
He arrived at the section of the Room of Rewards that held the records of students from the time Hogwarts was under a century old. Both the shelves and the binders were old despite the preservations charms cast on them.
With a sigh, Quinn looked for the empty slot in the shelf to put the binder back.
"Ah, there is it," said Quinn, walking to the empty and was about to put the binder back when he noticed something weird.
There was some kind of engraving on the shelf wood that was visible because there wasn't a binder covering it. He hadn't noticed it before because he used magic to draw the binders to his spot on the floor.
Quinn put the binder back into its place and stepped back. With a twitch of his magic, the entire row of binders floated out of the shelf and glided overhead.
The dust on the empty shelf cleared, and small orbs of light appeared to shed some light on the rack. Quinn moved closer to get a better look and saw that the entire plank of wood was engraved. He thought of something and saw that the roof of the rack, too, was embossed with symbols.
"Alright," responded Quinn and memorized the symbols on the plank before putting the binders back into the rack.
He concentrated on the entire multi-row shelf and pulled out all the binders from top to bottom. And, lo-and-behold, the entire bookshelf was engraved with symbols.
He laughed in discovery, "Now, we are talking!"
Quinn looked left to right and saw that the designs of the shelves in this section were identical. He had ignored the fact because he didn't think it was relevant, but now it gave him a starting point.
He ran to one corner of the section of shelves and pulled out entire rows of binders to memorize the symbols on the wooden planks. Repeating the process on every row of binders and every rack in the section.
It took some before Quinn had managed to memorize every single rectangle of symbols.
"These aren't from a traditional language," noted Quinn, while he paced up and down the room, thinking about the symbols he saw.
He suddenly stopped and blurted, "They weren't complete!" He looked around the room and decided that it was time to leave the room for today.
"I need to work on this," spoke Quinn. A toothy grin reared on his face, threatening to split his face. He had been reading the boring binders for closer to two months now. He knew about people's test scores who were dead centuries ago.
Finding this clue was like an escape from his personal hell.
Quinn hopped his way out of the Room of Reward and turned back to shoot finger guns at Portrait-Vindictus.
"See you later, Mr. Veridian. I will see you later~."
The stoic man in the Portrait just stared at Quinn and began to think of a new password for tomorrow.
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(Omake: Extra)
Quinn: ": If an old man and a child come in front of your broom, what will you hit?"
Eddie: "The old man."
Quinn: "Idiot. You should hit the BRAKE."
Eddie: "..."
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Quinn West - MC - Oh boy, here we go again.
Ivy Potter - Observer - Yeah, her stock of Quinn is dropping really low.
Eddie Carmichael - Loves sweet - Not gonna lie, the first half didn't get him, but the second one did.
Portrait-Vindictus Veridian - Gatekeeper - One day, he would triumph over the smug brat.
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