Chapter 341: If You Don't Cause Chaos on the First Day, You've Wasted Your Time as an Art Student!
In the dead silence, a rich, unhurried voice rang out from beneath the gargoyles.
"Welcome to my first open lesson, my dear students!"
Their new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, Mr Unknown, stepped forward from the front of the space with an easy, measured stride.
He first gave the assembled professors a polite, courteous bow.
Then, wearing that spiral face, he became considerably less polite.
"These are the Twin Stone Gargoyles — forged by combining the physique of giants with the craft of Transfiguration gargoyles. When one is damaged to the point of breaking, the other enters a berserk state, its attacks becoming faster and far more varied."
He paused.
"Aren't they wonderfully considerate?"
Everyone: "..."
We are not thinking about the considerate nature of monsters right now!!
Michael's smile had gone completely rigid. A certain possibility was dawning on him, and the horror in his eyes was growing by the second. "Hang on — this man isn't actually going to—"
"I have given a great deal of thought," the Spiral Professor announced cheerfully, "to the question of how best to help all of you learn wandless magic."
He spread his arms wide, voice brimming with obvious excitement.
"And after careful deliberation, I have arrived at a conclusion. Practice! As the saying goes — knowledge comes from doing. Ninety-nine percent practice, one percent theory. At the moment of life and death, I believe each and every one of you will grasp the true essence of wandless magic!"
???
The students stared at the Spiral Professor — still vibrating with enthusiasm — the way one stares at someone who has lost their mind.
The words were all in English. Individually, they made sense. Together, somehow, they did not.
Michael was full of regret. Deep, aching regret. He wanted nothing more than to go back three minutes and slap himself twice.
That's what you get for tempting fate.
We're done for. We are absolutely done for!!
Connie stared at the two terrifying gargoyles, then at the raving Spiral Professor, and felt a small but urgent question forming in her mind.
Why does it feel like… the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor personally appointed by Dumbledore has a wanted poster materialising above his head?
He's been automatically added to the Most Wanted list, hasn't he?!
On the other side of the crowd, the professors had gone equally blank.
A wave of something — frustration, disbelief, that particular despair born from having been through this too many times before — welled up from somewhere deep and unnameable. The urge to tear one's hair out. To sit down on the floor like a child and simply refuse.
Why. Why was it always another one like this?
All they wanted was normal teaching. Just normal teaching!!
Defence Against the Dark Arts wasn't cursed. It was hexed, jinxed, and afflicted with something ancient on top of it all.
That suffocating, all-too-familiar sense of impending disaster…
Why does it feel exactly like every time before?!
Professor McGonagall was the first to recover. She stepped forward, face pale, under the quietly admiring gazes of those around her.
"You cannot do this, Professor Unknown," she said, her voice sharp and clear. "Sending these children up against gargoyles that even adult wizards would struggle to handle is completely irresponsible!"
Beneath her robes, she had already tightened her grip on her wand, braced for an argument.
What she got instead was agreement.
"You are quite right, Professor McGonagall. I hadn't thought this through."
The spiral face turned toward her, the voice utterly sincere. He even gave a small nod.
Not a trace of offence. Not a flicker of irritation.
Professor McGonagall blinked.
…Well. This alarmingly-faced individual was, against all expectations, apparently capable of listening to reason.
"Since this is a lesson on wandless magic," the Spiral Professor continued pleasantly, "I really ought to take their wands away first."
The grooves in his face shifted, as though something beneath them had curled into a smile.
"You've reminded me of something important. Thank you."
Professor McGonagall: ???
Under the collective expression of every person present — an expression that said what in Merlin's name are you talking about — their beloved Professor Unknown raised one hand.
A vast sheet of black fog descended over the students.
No.
Not fog.
A surface of water, suspended upside-down above them. Dark and lightless, it reflected their stunned, frozen faces back at them, rippling faintly with every small movement below.
"…Stephen," Michael said blankly, "didn't you say you were going to analyse the Professor's magical system? What kind of system is this?"
"…"
Stephen's mouth hung open, his eyes enormous behind thick lenses.
After a long moment, he managed weakly, "That's got to be some kind of non-human magic…"
The gargoyles, at least, could be loosely explained with Transfiguration.
But an inverted lake surface, hanging in mid-air, doing nothing anyone could identify?
What manner of magic is this?!
"There is so much in this world that I don't know…" Stephen murmured, with the tone of a man who has just experienced profound enlightenment. A look of something approaching reverence flickered behind his lenses.
Mum. I want to drop out.
"This magic was inspired by the beautiful scenery of the Hogwarts Black Lake," Ethan said, catching himself just before the word painted slipped out. This particular art magic was entirely his own, after all.
He tilted the corner of his mask with quiet pride. "I have named it — The Ferryman of the Styx."
The moment the name left his mouth, the vast black surface above them began to stir. Ripple after ripple spread outward from a single point. A dark shape moved beneath, rising slowly toward the surface.
Closer. Larger. Closer still.
Glug.
Several students swallowed.
The tension wound tighter with every passing second, drawn along by the spreading ripples and the swelling shadow beneath.
Something is coming—
Pop.
A few drops of water scattered upward.
And then, reflected in every pair of upturned eyes, two enormous grey-black arms slowly and gracefully reached through the surface.
Still. Silent. Their movements were almost elegant — weightless, unhurried — like fish drifting through open water, or a flower unfurling in slow motion. Wisps of pale silver mist clung to them like smoke.
And yet.
They also looked like arms dragged from a coffin.
Skeletal. Enormous. Tendons stood stark against the bone, while festering sores and rotting flesh mottled the skin.
"…"
Students, professors, Aurors.
Every single person went rigid again.
Heads tilted back. Eyes fixed on the enormous hands reaching slowly, steadily downward toward them.
As the fingers flexed and curled, it felt as though something was reaching for their minds. Their souls.
"Is that… is that an enlarged Dementor…?" Connie whispered, red lips parted in a perfect circle.
As an Auror, she had worked alongside Dementors more times than she cared to remember. But Dementors did not come to Hogwarts — the safest place in Britain. And they certainly did not appear enlarged dozens of times over, dozens of times more terrifying—
Death Eater Yaxley, meanwhile, had an entirely different theory.
Professor Unknown… could he be a fellow Dark wizard?
How else could anyone command magic this wrong?!
"Is it possible Dumbledore really does have ties to the Dark side… whose side is this, exactly? What are they trying to do?"
As a committed practitioner of evil, Yaxley found the supposed good side deeply unsettling.
I need to get closer. Find out more.
He narrowed his eyes and said nothing.
Across the space, Ethan surveyed the crowd — all of them frozen in what he generously interpreted as rapt appreciation — and felt a quiet satisfaction settle in.
A shame the mask had no expression function.
Should he add a mouth? Just one extra mouth?
He considered the image briefly: a grinning mouth splitting open across the surface of the flesh-mask, laughing cheerfully away.
…Actually, that was starting to resemble a Halloween pumpkin.
He'd revisit the idea later.
"Please surrender your weapons," Ethan said, very politely, while doing something very rude.
The two enormous hands of The Ferryman of the Styx reached out without ceremony.
Amid a chorus of startled cries, hundreds of wands flew upward and landed neatly in those massive palms.
"NO — my wand!!"
One student let out a wail and collapsed forward dramatically.
"Don't worry," Ethan said warmly. "They'll be returned to you in perfect condition once the open lesson is over."
The enormous hands curled around their cargo and withdrew, retreating back through the dark surface of water. The surface itself followed, both fading gradually until they vanished entirely.
Ron stared after them, then turned to no one in particular with an expression of profound suffering.
"All that… all that theatre… just to confiscate our wands?"
He searched his vocabulary.
Nothing quite felt adequate.
Had he ever taken a course on modern Muggle slang, he would have found the perfect word for it immediately.
"Right!" Ethan called out, spreading his arms wide toward his steadfast believers — his steadfast students — the two stone gargoyles flanking him on either side like a pair of extremely menacing sentinels.
He spoke each word with deliberate relish.
"It is time for our very first lesson of the new term!"
If you don't cause chaos on the first day back, what exactly have you been doing with your life as an art student?