Chapter 340: What Does "BOSS Ahead" Mean?
The golden fog rolled and shifted, radiating a vague but unmistakable sense of danger, like a wall of natural magic sealing the entrance. From outside, no one could see a thing.
Someone fired a spell into it experimentally. The fog swallowed it with barely a ripple.
"What's going on? Is the new professor giving us a surprise?" Michael said.
"Could be a puzzle of some kind," Stephen said, frowning, trying to push his way through the crowd.
It wasn't only students. Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, Professor Flitwick — a good number of professors had come along out of curiosity, and they were all stuck outside as well. Dumbledore had not told the rest of the staff that Ethan was the new Defence professor, aside from Snape and Mad-Eye. As a result, even the professors had developed a keen interest in this mysterious, spiral-faced stranger who had appeared from nowhere.
Professor Flitwick had, in fact, approached him after the feast the previous evening and asked, with some boldness and no small amount of nervous energy, whether he might examine the spiral face up close. He was keenly curious about what magic had produced it.
The new professor had agreed without any fuss. In temperament, he was the complete opposite of his appearance.
"Quite the mysterious one, isn't he," Flitwick said cheerfully. "Our new colleague's face is a bit unusual, but he seems perfectly pleasant. And here he is now, properly preparing a lesson."
After years of surviving one extraordinary Defence professor after another, the staff's threshold for tolerance had expanded to encompass more or less anything. All they asked was that the person teach. Just teach. And please, for the love of Merlin, don't turn out to have any connection to the Dark Lord.
Snape's face convulsed at the words "perfectly pleasant" as though he had just taken a mouthful of one of Longbottom's potions.
Ethan. Pleasant. Pinocchio's nose could reforest every desert on the planet.
Professor McGonagall maintained her usual caution, expression carefully neutral. "We shall see," she said. But as she looked at the swirling golden fog, something small and tentative stirred beneath the composure. She hoped — quietly, privately — that this one might actually teach the students something real.
Not far away, Connie and Yaxley stood wedged in the crowd, jostled on all sides and unable to move. Connie's hair was damp at the temples, strands plastered to her forehead by the heat of the press of bodies. She stared hard at the fog door, jaw set with private resolve. I will uncover the truth about you. I will protect Ethan's name.
Her colleague had his own thoughts entirely. The concealed Death Eater Yaxley watched the fog with cold calculation. If this strange creature really does have ties to Ethan, he'll need to be dealt with first.
A hundred different intentions, all pressing toward the same door.
Then the bell rang.
Dong — dong — dong—
Deep and resonant, the sound rolled through the castle. And at the same moment, three lines of blazing text rose from within the golden fog:
[BOSS AHEAD]
[Enter the Fog Door?]
[Note: Failure to enter will be counted as withdrawal from Defence Against the Dark Arts for the term.]
"BOSS ahead?"
"Aren't we here for a lesson? What does 'BOSS ahead' mean?"
Before anyone could work it out, a cry came from the front of the crowd. The barrier dissolved without warning, and the students pressed against it, tumbled straight through, swallowed up by the rolling golden mist before they could catch themselves.
With someone having gone in first, and with nobody wanting to establish failing Defence as their baseline for the term, the rest of the students surged forward with a collective noise somewhere between a battle cry and a groan.
"Charge!"
The Weasley twins appeared near the front, wearing Quidditch helmets and light leather padding, with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of people heading into combat. They ignored the laughter and the chorus of "you're not even fifth years!" without any sign of remorse.
"Here we go! I am going to decode the Professor's magic!" Stephen's eyes lit up as he moved with the flow of the crowd.
Michael yawned. "I mean, whatever. I never really thought we'd actually learn wandless casting anyway." He grinned. "Unless the penalty for failing is death — ha, joking — " He stepped through the golden fog with mild curiosity.
The moment he crossed the threshold, it was like passing through a membrane of water.
The scene on the other side opened up slowly before them.
"Wow — where — where are we?"
The Great Hall was gone entirely. In its place stretched an enormous expanse of open rocky ground, wrapped in white mist. Distant cliffs rose through the haze, and the broken shapes of ancient ruins were just visible along the ridgeline — crumbling walls, shattered arches, the bones of something vast and long-abandoned. It felt less like stepping into a classroom and more like stepping out of time entirely.
"It's a spatial transposition charm!" Hermione's voice rang out, startled and delighted at once. "It exchanges the original space with another location entirely!" She paused, then added with a slightly giddy laugh, "There's probably a Muggle survey team somewhere having a very confusing morning — they've just found a fully equipped Great Hall in the middle of an ancient ruin." She looked around again, more carefully. "And it's been combined with an Undetectable Extension Charm. The scale of this is extraordinary."
"An excellent analysis, Miss Granger. Five points to Gryffindor." Professor McGonagall looked quietly satisfied and gave her student an approving nod.
Michael stared. "She's genuinely something. Why didn't Granger come to Ravenclaw?" He glanced around, scratching his head. "Though — how exactly are we supposed to have a lesson here? It looks more like somewhere you'd go to have a fight."
He had barely finished the sentence when a sharp, percussive sound split the air.
Dum-dum—DUM—
Then — BOOM!!
Two enormous shapes dropped from above and slammed into the ground with the force of falling meteors. The earth shook. Dust and debris exploded outward in a wall of thick smoke, sending students staggering.
"What — what was that?!"
"What's happening?!"
"I can't — the smoke, my eyes—"
As the dust began to clear, two colossal figures emerged from the haze.
Gargoyles.
But nothing like the decorative stone gargoyles that lined the corridors of Hogwarts Castle. These were massive — built on an entirely different scale. Long, sharp noses. Fangs jutting from their jaws. Grey stone skin overgrown with dark green moss and streaked with rust-brown decay, which only made their faces look more savage and wrong.
One held a great axe. The other carried a double-headed sword. Each weapon looked capable of taking off ten Hagrids in a single swing.
And as if that weren't already well beyond any reasonable specification — they had wings.
Actual wings. On their backs. Fully functional.
They could fly.
Was that strictly necessary?!
"Merlin's beard," Professor McGonagall murmured, staring. "I have never seen gargoyles that powerful." Even with her formidable command of Transfiguration, conjuring something that moved like that — something that size, that fluid — was beyond her. These were creatures out of myth.
"Bloody. Hell," Ron said, with the precision of a man who had found exactly the right words.