The calm did not last. By morning, the sky above Hogwarts was clear and painfully blue, as though the storm had never existed. But the lake had changed. It no longer reflected the sky.
It swallowed it. Students gathered along the shore in uneasy clusters, whispering. The surface was too dark now, too still, like ink stretched thin across unfathomable depth. Even the Giant Squid did not surface.
Percy stood at the water's edge with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. None of them had slept. "It's quieter," Ron muttered. "That's worse, isn't it?"
"Yes," Hermione and Harry said at the same time. Percy felt it immediately. The lake wasn't reaching anymore. It wasn't testing. It was consolidating. Like something pulling its strength inward. Behind them, hurried footsteps approached. Professor McGonagall's tartan robes snapped sharply in the wind. "Inside. All of you," she ordered, voice clipped.
"We need to study it—" Hermione began.
"You need to remain alive," McGonagall replied. "Inside. Now."
They obeyed. By midday, the castle itself began reacting. Staircases shifted erratically. Suits of armor vibrated faintly as if humming to an inaudible frequency. Water in basins across the school trembled continuously. Not violently, just enough to be noticed. In the second-floor girls' bathroom, every faucet turned on simultaneously.
In the kitchens, pitchers burst without warning. In the hospital wing, a bowl of water rose three inches into the air and hovered. Dumbledore convened the staff in the Great Hall. Students were dismissed early from classes, told to remain in their common rooms.
Rumors spread faster than fire. Some said the lake was cursed. Some said You-Know-Who had returned in liquid form. Some whispered that Hogwarts itself was sinking. In Gryffindor Tower, the four of them sat in tense silence.
Hermione's parchments were now covered wall to wall. She had transcribed every fragment of the ancient script she could recall. The language no longer came in sleep. It came while she was awake.
It was accelerating. Harry paced near the window. Percy sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, listening. Ron watched all three of them like he was waiting for one to explode. Then Percy's eyes snapped open.
"It's moving."
Harry froze. "What is?"
"The seal."
Hermione turned sharply. "You can feel that?"
Percy nodded slowly. "It's not breaking yet. But it's… thinning. Like cracks spreading under pressure." As if summoned by the word, a low vibration hummed through the stone floor. The castle shuddered. Distantly, somewhere far below, something boomed.
Not an explosion. Impact.
Hermione went pale. "That wasn't random."
Another tremor. Stronger. Ron grabbed the table as ink bottles rattled violently. Harry rushed to the window. The lake's surface had begun to spiral. A massive whirlpool was slowly forming at its center. Dumbledore's voice echoed through the castle moments later, magically amplified.
"All students are to remain inside their dormitories. Professors to defensive positions." Defensive positions. That was not reassuring. Percy was already on his feet.
"We can't stay up here."
Hermione hesitated only a second before nodding. "The convergence point is the lake. If the seal fractures fully, it will rupture outward."
Ron groaned. "Brilliant. Love that."
Harry didn't argue. They ran. Down staircases that shifted violently beneath them. Past portraits shouting in alarm. Past teachers moving in the opposite direction, wands drawn. By the time they burst out onto the grounds, the whirlpool had widened to nearly half the lake.
The sky above it darkened unnaturally, though no clouds were present. Lightning flickered. Not from above, but from within the water.
Percy stopped dead. "It's not trying to rise," he whispered. Hermione followed his gaze. The vortex was pulling downward. "It's opening something," she breathed. A deep crack split the air, the sound of stone fracturing beneath unimaginable pressure.
The water at the center of the whirlpool dropped suddenly, revealing something beneath. Not rock, not mud, structure.
Ancient pillars, impossibly large, carved with the same script Hermione had been translating. They circled a central abyss, chains of light stretching across the void.
The seal. Harry felt his breath leave him.
"That's been under us the whole time."
"Yes," Hermione said faintly. "Hogwarts wasn't built near it by accident."
Another crack. One of the luminous chains flickered. Percy felt the lake surge in response, neither malicious nor enraged. It felt... strained. Like something shackled too long. The golden eye opened within the abyss. Closer now. Clearer.
'Aequor endures' The voice resonated through their minds. Then, the chain snapped. The sound was catastrophic. A shockwave blasted outward, slamming them to the ground. Water erupted skyward in a colossal spiral, but instead of forming a creature, it formed a dome, a barrier enclosing the exposed seal.
Hermione scrambled upright. "It's containing the fracture!"
Harry stared. "It's… protecting itself?"
"No," Percy said slowly.
"It's protecting the world."
The realization hit them all at once. Aequor Thalorath had not risen in fury. It had been holding something back. Another crack. Another chain strained. Percy's heart pounded violently. "What's beneath it?" Ron asked, voice shaking. The eye shifted toward Percy.
What was bound became binding.
Hermione's mind raced. "When it was corrupted and sealed, it fused with something deeper. The text hinted at an abyss older than even it." Lightning arced across the exposed pillars. The second chain shattered. The dome flickered. Harry stepped beside Percy.
"What do we do?"
Percy didn't answer immediately. He could feel the pull now, stronger than ever. Not a call to claim him. A call to join. "It can't hold it alone," he said. Hermione's eyes widened. "Percy, don't you da—"
I'm not surrendering," he cut in. "I'm stabilizing." Before anyone could stop him, he ran forward. The lake surged to meet him.
Water rose in a spiraling path, lifting him upward toward the fractured seal. It did not batter or drown him. It carried him. Harry shouted his name. Percy reached the edge of the glowing dome and pressed both palms against its surface. Energy exploded through him, ancient and powerful.
He saw it then. Beneath Aequor Thalorath's massive coiled form, beneath the cracked chains and pillars, there was something else. Endless dark.
An Absence.
And it was pushing upward.
Aequor had not been sealed as punishment. It had been sealed as a gate. Percy gritted his teeth and pushed back with everything he had. The lake roared in response.
On the shore, Hermione screamed something in the ancient language, her runes blazing brighter than ever before. Harry added his magic, Reparos raining down, reinforcing the dome's failing edges. Ron, jaw set in determination, anchored them with every spell he knew.
The third chain snapped. The dome cracked. Percy felt himself slipping. The abyss below pulsed, Hungry. Aequor's eye fixed on him one final time.
Balance, sea-born. Percy understood. Not dominance. Not destruction. Balance. He drew the lake into himself, not to command it as he normally did, but to align with it.
The storm that followed was silent. A pulse of blue-white light surged outward from the dome, sealing the fractures in radiant threads. The abyss recoiled. The exposed pillars sank back beneath the surface. The whirlpool collapsed. Water rushed upward, reforming the lake in a single thunderous crash.
Percy fell. Harry caught him before he struck the ground. The lake stilled. Completely. Gone was the spiral that threatened to engulf the lake, the lightning lighting up the area, the eye that appeared out of nowhere had disappeared as abruptly as it had appeared. The lake appeared as if the dramatic events that had just occured were but an illusion. Hermione's hands trembled as she lowered her wand. Ron stared at the calm surface.
"Tell me that worked."
Percy coughed, exhausted beyond measure.
"For now," he said.
Far beneath the restored surface, deep beyond sight, something ancient shifted, aware. The seal had not shattered, it had changed.
And so had Percy.
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I wrote this chapter at 2 in the morning, so I might have lost the plot a little. I'll try to foolow up with exposition in the next chapter.