" ₜₒₒ ₗₐₜₑ ᵢ ₗₒᵥₑd ᵧₒᵤ, ₒ ₜₒₒ ₑₐᵣₗᵧ ᵢ ₖₙₑw ᵧₒᵤ. "
What if, in the prophecy, the chosen one isn't specifically a boy as previously thought, but rather a girl born at the end of July?
As Astria discovers that her life is irreversibly intertwined with...
Astria felt as if she had tumbled down a dark, viscous, and seemingly endless slide. As she slid, she noticed other pipes branching off in all directions, but none as wide as the one she followed, snaking and plunging sharply beneath the school, deeper than even the already deep dungeons.
The moment of greatest apprehension came when she began to wonder what would happen when she touched the ground. Suddenly, the pipe leveled out, and she was ejected with a watery impact, landing in a damp, stone tunnel, wide enough to stand in. As she raised her wand, she murmured, "Lumos!" and the light illuminated a dark stretch of her journey. Every step echoed on the soggy floor, casting sinister shadows of the damp walls.
Astria kept her senses sharp, ears tuned to any sound, ready to close her eyes at the slightest hint of danger. The tunnel remained silent as a tomb until an unexpected sound broke the silence: the crunch of something being crushed beneath her foot, revealing itself to be a rat's skull. As she lowered her wand, she noticed that the floor was sprinkled with the bones of small animals.
As she rounded another curve in the tunnel, her eyes met a mysterious and gigantic shadow blocking her path, making her heart leap to her throat. Something was there ahead, an immobile shape that seemed to occupy the entire tunnel. With cautious steps and half-closed eyes, Astria advanced with her wand raised, revealing a surprising sight.
The wand's light slid over the skin of a giant, colorful, and venomous snake, which was coiled and hollow on the tunnel floor. The monster that had once inhabited that cocoon must have been at least six meters long. Astria, still trembling, mentally scolded herself for her typical Gryffindor behavior and continued her solitary walk beyond the serpent.
The tunnel continued to twist and turn, and every step Astria took made her body's nerves tingle unpleasantly. A shiver of anxiety settled in her stomach as she wished for the tunnel to end soon. Then, turning another corner, she found herself facing a solid wall with two intertwined stone-carved serpents, their eyes encrusted with enormous glistening emeralds.
Astria swallowed hard, her throat dry as dust. Her eyes fixed on the emeralds, which seemed to have a life of their own. She sensed what she needed to do, cleared her throat, and the emerald eyes seemed to blink in response.
"Open," Astria whispered in a low, smooth tone.
The carved snakes separated, and the walls gently receded from view. Trembling intensely, Astria entered the chamber and found herself in a long, dimly lit room. Tall stone columns adorned with relief serpents supported a ceiling that disappeared into darkness, casting sinister shadows under the strangely greenish light that permeated the place.
With her heart pounding erratically, Astria remained still, listening to the hostile silence. She advanced cautiously, wand in hand, and the sound of her footsteps echoed loudly on the shadowy walls. The empty eye sockets of the stone serpents seemed to watch her, and more than once, a shiver ran down her spine, making her wonder if the sculptures were moving.
When she reached the last pair of columns, a colossal statue loomed against the wall at the back of the chamber. Astria had to crane her neck to see the gigantic face high above. It was an ancient, simian-like figure, with a long, scanty beard almost reaching the flowing robes of a stone-carved wizard. The giant grey feet of the statue rested on the smooth floor, and between them, lying down, was a small figure with flaming hair, dressed in black.
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