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The end of the term was fast approaching. Most young wizards in the castle were always in a hurry, rushing between revision sessions and last-minute cramming, but Aiden Prewett was enjoying a rare, peaceful moment of leisure. He was, to put it mildly, ahead of the curve.
Several professors had already begun their preparations for the end-of-term feasts and grading, so many of the usual related school activities and club meetings had been suspended. It left a comfortable lull in Aiden's usually packed schedule.
As for the upcoming final exams? They might already be a bit beyond Aiden's current academic level—in the sense that he'd probably find them laughably easy.
Aiden, finding himself with nothing particularly pressing to do in the Ravenclaw common room, saw his cat, Lada, entertaining herself with something in a corner. He prepared to go over and indulge in some therapeutic cat petting.
However, what awaited Aiden was a rather large and, frankly, quite disgusting surprise from Lada.
Aiden spotted her chewing on something. "Lada, what on earth is that you're eating?" he asked, a slight frown creasing his brow. He reached down, gently touched Lada, and tried to turn her over to get a better look.
Lada looked up, a large, dark, and unmistakably leggy insect protruding from her mouth. "Human," she seemed to say with her eyes, still crunching audibly, "do you also wish to partake of these delicious cockroaches?"
Aiden froze. "....." Utterly speechless.
"Good heavens, Lada! How can you possibly eat that disgusting stuff?" Aiden finally exclaimed, his voice a mixture of horror and revulsion. His hair practically stood on end. "And you're not going to try and lick me after eating that, are you? Tell me you're not!"
"Aww, I ate it, so what? What's the big deal?" Lada looked completely indifferent, thoroughly unfazed by Aiden's distress. If she could speak, Aiden imagined it would be with a rather nonchalant, standard Northeastern accent, probably asking if he wanted a bite.
"Hey, now, I haven't been skimping on your actual cat food, have I? We always buy the best stuff!" Aiden said, trying for a reasonable tone despite his internal gag reflex. He managed a wry, slightly strained smile. "Let's talk about this like civilized beings. Please, don't eat that… stuff… anymore. It's not good for you. Or for my sanity."
"Hey, don't you humans eat this stuff too?" Lada seemed to project, her feline gaze genuinely puzzled. "I definitely saw your headmaster, the old one with the beard, eating them last time. He had a whole bag!"
"That's… that's different, Lada," Aiden stammered, trying to explain the concept of Cockroach Clusters to a cat. "His were replicas! Candy! Not… not actual insects. Be good now; we won't eat real ones. If you really want to try them, I'll get you some of the Headmaster's special candy ones in the future, alright?" Aiden coaxed, hoping his cat wasn't developing a taste for live vermin.
"Okay, fine. You humans are so incredibly fussy," Lada seemed to concede with a flick of her tail, finally relinquishing the half-eaten cockroach. She then proceeded to groom her whiskers with an air of utter unconcern.
Aiden, shuddering, quickly scooped Lada up and rushed her to the nearest washroom to thoroughly and forcibly disinfect her mouth and paws. Lada, naturally, cursed him loudly in a series of indignant meows and hisses throughout the entire unwanted bathing and disinfection process. Fortunately, no one else was in the washroom at the time to witness the rather undignified scene.
Peaceful, if slightly cockroach-traumatised, days passed by, and the end of the term finally arrived, bringing with it the dreaded final exams.
The English summer was proving to be truly unkind to the students of Hogwarts; it was swelteringly hot, especially in the large, stuffy exam classroom where hundreds of nervous students were crammed together.
Everyone had to write their exams using the special quills that were handed out by the professors. These pens had been heavily enchanted to prevent any form of cheating, much to the chagrin of many.
Professor Flitwick's Charms exam question was characteristically whimsical: he required the students to make a pear perform a lively tap dance across their desk. Aiden, with a casual, almost bored wave of his hand, fulfilled Professor Flitwick's requirement with ease, his pear executing a flawless, if brief, routine. He then walked out of the exam hall under the Headmaster's visibly satisfied and approving gaze.
For the Transfiguration exam, Professor McGonagall, ever practical, asked them to turn a live rat into a snuffbox. The more beautiful and ornate the resulting snuffbox was, the higher the score. However, points would be severely deducted if it didn't actually look, or function, like a proper snuffbox.
Because he couldn't immediately think of any particularly good-looking or original patterns for a snuffbox, Aiden, with a mental sigh, could only rely on the System's vast repository of aesthetic wisdom to give Professor McGonagall a bit of a shock—something reminiscent of the more flamboyant designs from bygone eras.
'A child with… rather peculiar and somewhat ostentatious aesthetics,' Professor McGonagall commented sharply in her feedback, though Aiden still received top marks for technical execution.
For Potions, Professor Snape, in his usual charming fashion, required everyone to brew a perfect Forgetfulness Potion. Throughout the exam, Aiden was acutely aware of being stared at intently for a solid twenty minutes by a certain professor exuding an almost palpable aura of cold air and disapproval. Despite the pressure, he completed the potion flawlessly and handed it directly to Snape.
Snape, without a word, took a small, critical sip from the sample vial on the spot. "So-so, our great celebrity genius," he drawled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I do hope you can endeavour to be somewhat more serious and less… theatrical… next semester. Otherwise," Snape continued, his dark eyes glinting dangerously, "what awaits you will be endless homework assignments and a plethora of detentions. You do know that, don't you?" As he spoke, Snape theatrically pointed his index and middle fingers at his own eyes, then sharply at Aiden, a clear, unmistakable warning.
Finally, there was the History of Magic exam. This, thankfully, was not particularly difficult, though incredibly boring. Aiden, with his enhanced memory, had simply crammed the entire textbook the night before. Job done.
After the last exam was over, the young wizards and witches of Hogwarts were officially liberated. A wave of joyous, unrestrained frolicking and noise erupted throughout the castle and grounds.
Just as Aiden walked out of the exam hall, feeling a sense of relief, he heard Hermione Granger saying animatedly to Harry and Ron, "Honestly, this exam was much easier than I expected! If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered to review all those tedious chapters on the 'Werewolf Management Act of 1637' and 'The Complete and Unabridged History of the Goblin Rebellions' quite so thoroughly!"
"Whatever. It doesn't really matter. I memorised the whole book anyway," Aiden shrugged nonchalantly, overhearing her.
Hearing Aiden's typically understated statement, Hermione's eyes immediately lit up with academic fervour. She instantly grabbed Aiden by the arm and eagerly pulled him aside to compare answers in minute detail, much to Aiden's feigned dismay.
Ron, finding it incredibly difficult to understand the appeal of comparing answers after the exam was already over and done with, quickly made his excuses. He, Harry, and a reluctant Aiden (once he'd escaped Hermione's enthusiastic post-mortem) wandered down to the sun-dappled lakeside.
They sat down comfortably under the shade of a large, ancient tree. Nearby, George and Fred Weasley, along with their partner-in-crime Lee Jordan, were gleefully tickling the massive, waving tentacles of the giant squid, which was apparently sunbathing lazily in the shallows of the Black Lake.
"Finally! It's all over!" Ron declared, stretching out languidly on the soft grass with a contented sigh.
Harry, however, looked worried, his brow furrowed.
Seeing Harry's troubled expression, Aiden raised an eyebrow. "Harry", he said gently, "try not to worry too much about things that aren't really ours to worry about right now. Enjoy the break."
"That's right, mate!" Ron chimed in enthusiastically. "The exams are over! From now on, what happens next is entirely up to the professors to decide. We can just relax and play for a whole week before the results come out!" Ron declared, sounding like the king of slackers.
Harry rubbed his forehead, a grimace of pain twisting his features. The pain made him feel frantic, on edge. "My forehead… it's been hurting a lot lately," he confessed, his voice strained. "It's hurt before, of course, but it's never been as frequent or as sharp as it is now."
"Want to try letting me help you with that?" Aiden offered, his expression thoughtful. He knew, with a chilling certainty, that this was the connection between the Horcruxes—between Harry and Voldemort—flaring up. An idea, a potential experiment, arose spontaneously in Aiden's mind. He planned to try and investigate it.
"Help? How?" Harry asked, looking both hopeful and apprehensive.
Aiden beckoned to Harry. He helped Harry lie down on the grass, allowing Harry to rest his head on his lap. Aiden then closed his own eyes for a moment, focusing his intent, and gently covered Harry's forehead, specifically the lightning-bolt scar, with his hand.
"Soothing," Aiden murmured, activating one of his more subtle, mind-affecting abilities. Harry immediately felt a pleasant, cool sensation spreading from his forehead, like a calming balm. The sharp irritability and a significant portion of the throbbing pain caused by the scar were gently dispelled.
"Wow… that's much better," Harry said, a note of surprised relief in his voice. "But… my forehead still hurts a bit, underneath."
"Well then, I'll try to see if I can sever the connection that's causing it or at least block it off temporarily," Aiden replied, his expression now more serious.
Taking out his wand, Aiden began to carefully sense and capture the subtle, almost invisible threads of the Horcrux connection, not just in the physical reality around Harry's scar but also within the deeper, more esoteric pathways of the sea of consciousness.
Subsequently, as he delved deeper, Aiden discovered an astonishing and rather disturbing fact.
"System, this… this connection, it's not just one-way, is it?" he thought, a sense of unease growing within him.
[Ding! As the host correctly surmises, Lord Voldemort, by splitting his soul so many times, has significantly damaged and thus lost his own innate ability to directly link his consciousness to the Collective Unconscious Sea of humanity.]
[However, after inadvertently making Harry Potter into a Horcrux, Voldemort can now, unknowingly or perhaps instinctively, use Harry Potter's existing permissions—his natural connection as a living being—to link to the Collective Unconscious Sea. And, furthermore, he can use Harry Potter as an unwitting transit station, a kind of psychic beacon, to sense the general state and location of each of his other Horcruxes.]
"Was this intentionally arranged by him? That level of foresight and magical understanding… if so, he's even more terrifying than I thought."
[Ding! Based on available data and psychological profiling, it is highly speculated that this particular outcome—the Horcrux network via Harry Potter—was caused by a magical accident during the soul-splitting ritual, not by deliberate, conscious design on Voldemort's part.]
Back in the real world, under the shade of the tree, Aiden hesitated for a moment, choosing his words carefully. He then said to Harry, "Harry, it seems you may be… connected, in a rather unusual way, to some rather bad, dark things. Some wizards, you see, are just naturally more… inspired, more sensitive to these kinds of magical resonances than others."
"Cool! Why do you all seem to have these amazing secret talents and abilities?" Ron said, a note of genuine envy in his voice.
"Then what should I do, Aiden?" Harry asked, looking worried again.
"Like this," Aiden said reassuringly. "I'll make you a special accessory, a kind of talisman, to block that unpleasant induction, that connection. You must try to carry it with you at all times. Of course," he added, "you can also choose to take off the accessory if, for some reason, you ever want to try and sense what's happening on the other end of that connection."
Then, much to the surprise of his companions, Aiden proceeded to give everyone present a practical demonstration of how to make simple, effective alchemy products by hand, using basic materials and focused intent.
He took out a length of sturdy cord from his pocket. Then, using a small, precise cutting charm, he carved a small, smooth piece of wood from a fallen branch of the tree they were sitting under. He carefully made a small cut on his own finger with a tiny, almost invisible, flick of his nail (a trick he'd picked up) and squeezed out a single, crimson drop of his blood onto the wooden block. Finally, with focused concentration, he engraved the Algiz (ᛉ) rune—a powerful symbol of protection and sanctuary—onto the blood-marked wood.
An alchemical pendant, specifically designed with a potent mind barrier enchantment, was thus created. Harry put the pendant on immediately. The throbbing, persistent pain in his forehead, the pain that had plagued him for so long, finally, blessedly, disappeared.
"It… it doesn't hurt anymore! Not at all!" Harry exclaimed, touching his scar in disbelief. "Thank you so much, Aiden!" He looked incredibly grateful.
"You're most welcome, Harry," Aiden said with a small smile. "Actually, doing this also allowed me to verify some rather interesting guesses I had."
"What guesses?" Hermione asked immediately, her curiosity piqued, her analytical mind already whirring.
"Well," Aiden began, a mysterious smile playing on his lips, "you all know the primary reason for Harry's fame, don't you?"
"He defeated You-Know-Who, of course!" Ron replied promptly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Yes, exactly. He defeated that particular dark wizard," Aiden explained, choosing his words with care. "And because of that unique, violent interaction, there may exist some kind of… occult, unseen connection still lingering between them. A resonance, perhaps."
"I knew it!" Harry exclaimed, suddenly sitting up straighter, his earlier relief now mixed with a new, determined glint in his eyes. He clenched his fist. "This is just an omen! An omen that danger is still out there, and it's coming!"
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