Chương 58: Ch55- The Greatest Creation!

Next morning, Cassian sat on the rug, stared at the remains of what had once been the single greatest logic-activated defence ward Hogwarts had seen since ever and made a long, guttural noise that probably translated to "Why, God, why?" Parchment. Ruined. Ink everywhere. One diagram looked like someone had summoned a jellyfish into a meat grinder. Another had a faint boot print over the delicate curvature of a rune that was supposed to control directional tethering.

He grabbed the most intact sheet and held it up with reverence.

"No," he whispered, heartbroken. His hair was sticking in six different directions.

"No, it was the best plan in the world." The parchment sagged in agreement.

"I was going to turn a whole corridor into a recursive false reality loop with semantic triggers and a conditional memory fog, but nooooo..." He stabbed a finger at the floor.

"Now it smelled of sweat, ink, and pure betrayal." Bathsheda padded in, half-wrapped in one of his cloaks, very smug. She glanced at the mess, picked up a singed pen with two fingers, and let it drop again. Cassian held up the page like it was a dead pet. She sipped his leftover tea. Didn't even blink.

"I mourn it," he said solemnly.

"You will live," she said, already walking off to bath.

"I will not," he called after her.

"I am artistically destroyed. A victim of my own lust." He rubbed at his temple. There was ink on his cheek. He wiped it, then made it worse. Then sat back and sighed, dramatic as hell.

"Fantastic. A masterpiece in failure."

He eventually cleaned it up. Sort of. Gathered the wreckage into a stack that leaned like a guilty secret and nudged it toward the bin with his foot. The ruined ink smeared across his palm as he carried the parchment over, dark and sticky. He paused halfway. Stared at the bin. Then shoved the stack onto the nearest bookshelf instead, between How Not to Wake What Sleeps and a cursed copy of Wandless Wonders: A Study in Hubris. He turned to leave and promptly tripped on a loose bootlace. Swore violently.

Kicked the table leg. The table, innocent as a nun, retaliated by spilling a half-dried rune plate across the floor. Cassian stopped, took a breath, and let the self-anger settle.

"Alright," he said aloud to no one, "we are calling this a teaching moment. Don't wardspell drunk on lust. Or at all, apparently."

Thursday brought the first-years. Gryffindor and Slytherin. Brilliant bunch for a slow, civilised morning. Cassian stood outside the classroom, flicking through his register and sipping tea that had somehow gone cold despite the self-warming charm. Hogwarts air did that... sucked the warmth out of everything. He was curious. Not because of the clash of Houses or the shiny, wide-eyed optimism most first-years dragged in by the cauldron. No, it was one boy in particular. Black hair. Skinny frame. Lightning bolt.

Name everyone whispered like he sneezed gold. Harry Potter. Cassian had a vague cultural memory of a scarred orphan and a Dark Lord with fashion issues, but no real opinion. Now, seeing the boy in person… yeah. Looked small. Not fragile. Just young. Okay maybe fragile too. And very lost in the crowd of oversized robes and pointy hats. He let them settle first. Watching them pour in, half-tripping over bags, half-fighting for seats. Malfoy sauntered in like he owned the place already.

Potter shuffled in two steps behind, flanked by the Weasley boy with the hair like sunset vomit and a girl whose bag looked heavier than her spine. No one spoke. Cassian set his tea down on the desk. Pulled out his wand. Pointed to the board. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The chalk flew up and scratched out two lines…

"Hogwarts: A History." He walked the aisle like a general reviewing a battalion of badly disguised puppies.

"I am Professor Cassian Rosier," he said, pausing halfway down.

"You can call me Professor Rosier." From the back Malfoy jabbed the thick-shouldered bloke beside him, grinning like he just discovered sarcasm. The third boy laughed too loud. Cassian didn't slow.

"Mudblood" and "squib-lover" weren't words that would fly unpunished in his class. He flicked his wand toward them before the last syllable had died. Three sharp pops cracked the air, like corks pulled from stubborn bottles. All three boys clutched their throats. Silence. Their mouths moved. Nothing came out. Cassian, still walking, caught the three floating puffs of light that had risen from their throats. Each faint and buzzing like a trapped fly.

He dragged them to his palm, split them apart and pulled three glass bottles from his coat like he was laying out condiments. Pop. Pop. Pop. One bottled voice per troublemaker. He placed the jars neatly on his desk as neatly as prized potions.

"Right then. I have your voices," he said, spinning one with a finger.

"Try not to need them before supper." He looked at the trio, faces pale, eyes wide, and gave them a bright, teacherly smile.

"Be respectful in my classes. Or I may keep them indefinitely. I am quite the collector." He awakened the ancient variant of Silencio two days ago. Amphora Vox. Nasty piece of work if you didn't know what you were doing, and even nastier if you did. It bottled the target's voice, literally. Cassian had been teaching Silencio for two years now, watching it hover at the edge of his interface like a moth pacing a flame. Knew it was going to happen sooner or later.

The second repeater session with older students had done it.

"Right," Cassian said, tapping the board.

"We will start with a bit of introduction. Hogwarts, its history, a few ugly secrets, and some flattering lies. Standard issue." The bushy-haired girl near the front, Granger, if he remembered right, was practically vibrating. She already had a quill in hand, parchment rolled flat, eyes locked on him like he might start reciting from scripture. Brilliant.

"Hogwarts," he began, "was founded over a thousand years ago by four people who couldn't agree on wallpaper, let alone the curriculum. Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Helga Hufflepuff. You heard of them. Big names. Statues. Bad fashion sense." Some of them laughed. He tilted his head.

"Ever wondered how all their first names and surnames start with the same letter? Salazar Slytherin. Godric Gryffindor. Bit tidy, isn't it? Sounds fake." Granger gasped, hand flying to her mouth as if he slapped a library. She looked genuinely wounded. Cassian held up both hands.

"I am not saying they weren't real. Just... look, you expect me to believe four founders with matching initials and dramatic flair met in a swamp and built a school? Either fate got a punchline, or the Ministry's been sanitising history harder than a Pureblood's vault audit." No one moved, but they all wore the same expression, already brainwashed, ready to defend their house's founder with their lives. Cassian dropped into his chair, one arm slung across the backrest.

"Alright, settle. The shiny story in Hogwarts: A History, the one where they all held hands and sang unity while laying bricks is absolute tosh. They fought. Loudly. Repeatedly. And someone definitely tried to hex someone else's livestock during the planning stages." Seamus blinked.

"Wait. Livestock?"

"Don't act like you never seen a wizard duel involving goats." Lavender leaned forward.

"You are saying the founders didn't get along?" Cassian snorted.

"Of course not." He flicked his wand in a wide arc. Light danced in the air, curling like smoke before taking shape. Four figures formed in the air... shimmering shapes that sharpened as the glow settled. Godric Gryffindor came first... tall and broad. His sword was strapped across his back, face set like he was already itching for a fight. Next, Salazar Slytherin, posture perfect. Rowena Ravenclaw hovered behind them, eyes needle-sharp. Last came Helga Hufflepuff.

Shorter, warmer, with kind eyes and a practical braid. Looked like she could hug you or hex you depending on what mood she was in. The four of them were rowing. The boat rocked wildly as Gryffindor stood to shout over Ravenclaw. Cassian gestured lazily, and the illusion tilted, sending imaginary water lapping over. Then, casually added, "I am making most of this up, by the way." That earned more than a few raised brows.

"Real history rarely talks about the day-to-day," he continued, gesturing at the founders now rowing in increasingly uncoordinated rhythms.

"You get dates, wars, inventions, bloodlines. You don't get arguments over boat paddles or spatial charm ratios or whose idea it was to drag goats into the planning meetings. Only hint of them in the subtext." He tapped the side of his head.

"But trust me, if four overpowered idealists built a school in the middle of nowhere, they definitely fought over everything from wall colours to how many towers counted as 'too many.'" Longbottom leaned forward.

"S-so none of this is real?" Cassian shrugged.

"The broad strokes are true. The rest? Well, let's just say history leaves gaps. I fill them with informed nonsense." He paused, then added with a grin, "When you read books, keep in mind, whoever wrote it was probably as generous as me." A few students laughed. One looked horrified. Cassian winked.

"Welcome to critical thinking." He let them sit with it then continued.

"According to the cleaned-up version," Cassian said, nodding toward the scene, "they met under a shooting star, shared a vision, and rowed to the shore with unity in their hearts and purpose in their eyes." He turned back to the class.

"In reality, Godric forgot the paddles, Salazar tried to make the boat fly, Rowena kept arguing about spatial ratios, and Helga had to stop them from drowning twice." He then shrugged.

"Well, we will get back to that." With a flick, he split the illusion straight down the middle. Another twitch of the wand and the thing evaporated. Students looked like he sliced the scene in half and hid the ending under his desk. He didn't care. Cliffhangers built character.