The enormous clock on the wall ticked steadily, each second slipping away like grains of sand in an enchanted hourglass.
The Ouroboros symbol that had appeared on Ian's hand after emerging from the depths of the Hogwarts dungeons pulsed faintly, as if breathing in sync with the passage of time— tied, in some inexplicable way, to the enchantment of Quietus.
November 30th.
The final day of November. The eve of December. A date Ian should have passed weeks ago, yet here it was, presenting itself once again, as though time had doubled back on itself.
"What in Merlin's name is going on? Am I trapped in some kind of Temporal Loop? A cursed Pensieve? A botched Time-Turner accident? This is starting to feel like something out of a Binns lecture— repetitive, dreary, and utterly terrifying!"
His heart stuttered for a moment before resuming at a breakneck pace. A wave of unease settled over him, his expression contorted into the same kind of horror one experiences after a late-night encounter with The Tales of Beedle the Bard's darker stories.
It was as if he had seen a ghost—
Not the Hogwarts kind, either.
Ian had always been fascinated by tales of time anomalies. He'd devoured every account of magical time breaches he could find. In theory, the idea of experiencing one himself had seemed thrilling.
However—
As the old saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for, lest you find yourself ensnared in a web of your own making." Hypothetical musings on time's mysteries were one thing— living through them was quite another. And at this moment, Ian found no joy in his predicament.
"I'm not going to be stuck in this loop for centuries, am I?" Panic was beginning to take root, twisting in his gut. No rational wizard could wake up to such an absurdity and remain calm.
His knowledge of magical theory was vast, yet even he had to admit that, when it came to time, the Department of Mysteries kept its secrets well-guarded. Hogwarts' library, for all its impressive collection, contained few in-depth tomes on temporal magic, leaving Ian with a distressingly incomplete understanding of what he was up against.
He had spent countless hours in the Twilight Zone— an obscure, magical space between worlds— questioning Professor Morgan about the nature of time. But that had been mere academic curiosity. Now, the problem was his own, and the stakes were far more dire.
"Professor Morgan's Hourglass of Fate might help me, but I don't even have the means to craft one right now!" The young wizard groaned, running a hand through his already disheveled hair.
"Why does my Christmas have to be so cursedly bizarre?" The chamber around him remained eerily still, the flickering torchlight casting unsettling shadows that should have evoked warmth—but instead sent a chill creeping down his spine.
"What are you blabbering on about? It's not Christmas yet."
The portrait of the rather daft Sir Barnabas the Barmy looked down at Ian in bemusement, his painted brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of the boy's obvious distress.
What was the fuss? Surely it wasn't over cleaning a bathroom?
Hogwarts lavatories were far better maintained than those of the Middle Ages, after all.
"What do you mean it's not Christmas?" Ian glanced at the clock again, clinging to the desperate hope that perhaps the Weasley twins had meddled with the timekeeping charms.
However—
The world was not so kind.
"Did you fall asleep in the Room of Requirement again?" Barnabas mused, his expression one of growing suspicion. "I understand your excitement for Christmas presents, but you've got several weeks yet."
"I did not sleep too much! Damn it— this has something to do with Salazar Slytherin, I just know it!"
Ian's face paled as his eyes drifted back to the ominous Ouroboros mark on his hand, its soft glow whispering secrets only time itself could comprehend.
If Ian tried to convince himself that the strange occurrences had nothing to do with Salazar Slytherin, he wouldn't believe it for a second. The mark on his hand had not faded since the moment it appeared.
When it first manifested, Ian had felt a deep sense of unease, it was an instinctive discomfort he had dismissed at the time. He hadn't expected his sixth sense to be so terrifyingly accurate.
The Ouroboros, also known as the "serpent devouring its own tail," was an ancient symbol representing an eternal cycle, an endless loop.
It signified infinity and recurrence.
This emblem carried a multitude of interpretations, it was deeply rooted in magical traditions, mythologies, and alchemical studies, where it held a particularly profound significance.
"I should have known I was walking straight into a trap!" Ian muttered darkly. He had no idea what Slytherin's so-called "selection" entailed, but one thing was certain— the founder, dead for a thousand years, seemed to take great pleasure in playing tricks on people.
Why now?
Why not earlier?
Why not later?
Why, of all possible moments, did this have to happen on Christmas Day?
It was an absolutely wicked sense of humor.
"While it's true this lavatory was designed by Slytherin himself, I fail to see how your toilet-scrubbing duties are his doing." Sir Barnabas the Barmy still seemed convinced that Ian's behavior stemmed from some particularly nasty punishment assigned by Snape.
Had the boy gone mad from cleaning toilets? Barnabas wasn't a complete fool, but he was certainly incapable of guessing the truth.
No point in explaining anything to the portrait.
Even if Ian ran straight to Snape or Professor McGonagall right now and declared that he had traveled back from the future, they would dismiss him outright.
"The use of Time-Turners is traceable. What I'm experiencing isn't." Ian had read extensively about their restrictions and mechanics.
He knew this much.
His displacement in time had nothing to do with a Time-Turner. This was something deeper, an older and more elusive kind of magic, which led Ian to some rather unsettling theories.
"Magic that was never passed down…" He glanced at the mark on his hand, recalling what the bronze eagle had once hinted about Slytherin's secret experiments in the Chamber of Secrets.
It all made sense now.
"He was researching time itself… and he actually succeeded." Ian could scarcely believe it. The idea that a simple mark, left behind a millennium ago, could disrupt the wizarding world's understanding and control over time was nothing short of astonishing.
Could Professor Morgan achieve something like this?
Ian highly doubted it.
"Or perhaps… I didn't travel through time at all. Maybe I just fell asleep in bed..."
This entire ordeal was so far beyond Ian's expectations that he almost preferred to believe it was all some bizarre, convoluted dream.
"Smack."
Ian struck the edge of the portrait frame with his palm.
"Does that hurt?" He asked, watching as Sir Barnabas flinched back in shock.
"Are you daft?" Barnabas sputtered indignantly.
He had been about to scoff that portraits don't feel pain when he caught sight of Ian reaching for the enchanted pigments used to restore magical paintings. Barnabas yelped and clamped his hands over his face in horror.
"It hurts! It hurts terribly!" He wailed, his performance rather impressive.
Perhaps it was the memory of once being thumped by a troll, or perhaps he simply had a natural flair for theatrics, but Barnabas's depiction of suffering was quite dramatic. At that moment, he would have rather faced an actual troll than risk Ian tampering with his portrait. Every painting in Hogwarts had heard the rumors about Ian's "zombie dog."
"Then I'm not dreaming..." Ian murmured, rubbing his hand where he had secretly pinched himself. But he needed to be thorough— eliminating every unlikely possibility was key.
This wasn't a dream.
(To Be Continued…)
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