Chương 67: Ch61- Tribute

Cassian stayed put, standing before Dumbledore's desk.

"I've decided what to do about the third-floor corridor," he said, flicking a folded bit of parchment from his pocket.

"My part of the trial, I mean." He dropped a scroll on the table.

"Right, so. Here is the thing. This? This is not the greatest ward in the world." Dumbledore blinked over his teacup.

"No?" Cassian leaned forward, eyes a little wild.

"No. Couldn't remember the greatest ward in the world." He waved a hand.

"The greatest ward in the world was drawn on a Monday night, under duress, with poor lighting and better company. It had recursive layering, a memory loop, and a spatial fold so tight it made time stutter. But then..." he sighed, "the rug... oh, the rug had just witnessed things no furniture should." Cassian pointed at the parchment.

"So I did my best. I lit a candle, stared into the void, and tried to remember. This is what I got. It is close. It is clever. But it is not that plan. That plan is legend now. Possibly absorbed into the fabric of the rug."

"No, Headmaster. This is just a tribute." Dumbledore set his cup down.

"And this tribute… what does it do?" He shrugged.

"Basic illusion of light. Makes the corridor look longer, darker, and emptier than it really is. Adds a sense of dread, if you are prone to that sort of thing. Also creates a riddle." Dumbledore picked up the scroll and let it roll open. His eyebrows gave a polite twitch.

"This is perfect, Professor Rosier. This is the level of challenge I was looking for in the first place.."

Days slipped by, quicker than a Ministry budget vote. Malfoy scrubbed cauldrons with a frown etched so deep into his face. Two weeks of elbow grease and not a single protest past day three... not after Daddy Rosier had a little chat with Daddy Malfoy and came back looking like someone told him House Rosier might call in a few old debts. Draco turned up quiet after that. Polite. Even wiped down the benches after class once. Cassian almost checked his temperature. Harry made the Quidditch team, of course.

First-year on the team wasn't exactly subtle. McGonagall dropped the news like it was nothing, and Cassian nearly choked on his tea when he heard. Not because it was Potter... Cassian could already tell the boy flew like he was born with a broom jammed up his spine, but because it meant Snape would sulk harder than usual. And he did. All the way through staff meetings. Cassian stopped offering him biscuits. No point wasting good shortbread. Classes kept rolling.

Cassian's lectures slid from ancient blood pacts to magical plagues and how the goblins nearly cursed the entire south wing of Gringotts into a permanent echo chamber. The students started showing up five minutes early just to get decent seats. Bathsheda drifted in and out of his rooms like she was doing it for years. Her boots ended up under his bed, her notes on his table, her sleep schedule entirely wrecked.

She still scolded him in staff meetings, occasionally with a quill to the ribs, but she never left without "borrowing" one of his jumpers on the way out. Cassian didn't mind. He found three of them folded in his wardrobe, washed, pressed, and smelling faintly of ink and chamomile. Domestic terror. He liked it. Then came Friday.

Cassian was mid-lecture, pacing in front of the second-years, halfway through a sentence about how a Welsh necromancer once tried to trademark the colour black, when Cho Chang raised her hand.

"Professor. Is it true you can bottle someone's voice?" He stopped walking.

"Depends," he said, squinting.

"Do you mean legally, magically, or romantically?" A few of the Ravenclaws snorted. One Gryffindor scribbled something as if she was worried it might be on a quiz. Cho hesitated.

"Magically." Cassian nodded.

"Right. Then yes." Katie Bell raised her hand, chewing on the end of her quill.

"Isn't it only Djinn and Fairies who can bottle voices?" Cassian's smile twitched. Not because she was wrong, opposite, really. Because his head still hadn't shaken loose that image. That awful, sticky vision the ancient variation had dropped on him like a bucket of blood. A circle of stone, a mouth stitched shut, and a scream soaked in salt. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. He nodded.

"Technically, yes. But magic is flexible. Slippery. It is not about the who, it is about the how. You want to trap a voice, it depends on your method." Marcus Belby squinted.

"Like... actual voices? Talking voices?"

"Yes, Marcus. Not metaphorical ones. I am not bottling someone's 'inner truth' and selling it at a poetry reading." Cho's brow furrowed.

"But how does that even work?" Cassian chuckled.

"It works a bit like Silencio, only ruder. Instead of muting them, it cuts the voice out entirely. Neatly. Like a spell-cast throat punch." He gave the room a glance, noting who looked intrigued and who looked mildly traumatised.

"You can think of it like Stupefy. If I knock someone flat with that, they don't get up unless someone helps them, or I let them. This works the same way. Only the caster can lift it."

"Or someone can find the container where the voice is trapped and break it," Cassian went on, pacing tall to make them nervous.

"Drawback is, you need a container. But we are magicks, aren't we? We can conjure, summon, transfigure… pinch a jam jar off the breakfast trolley if it comes to that." Marcus raised his hand again, cautious now.

"What kind of container?" Cassian paused.

"Anything that can hold a spell. A bottle. A shell. Someone once used a hollowed-out galleon. Bit on the nose, but it worked. Voice stayed in there til someone had the bright idea to snap it open." Eddie Carmichael frowned.

"So… if someone finds it and breaks it, what? The voice just comes back?" Cassian grinned, toothy and unbothered.

"In that case? The bloke it belonged to had already snuffed it. Voice didn't have a body to crawl back into, so it latched onto the room. Screamed for years. Mostly about unpaid debts and someone named Lorna." A few students shifted in their seats. Katie leaned forward.

"So, wait. If the voice can't go back into the person, it just... hangs around?"

"Sometimes. Depends on the magic. Depends on the container. Depends on the magick who did it and whether they knew what they were doing or just flailed a wand and hoped for the best." He tapped his temple with his wand.

"Same as everything else. Intent, structure, effect. Get it wrong, and you are building a banshee out of bad luck and glassware."

"Why would anyone do that?" Cho asked.

"What is the point of taking someone's voice?" Cassian looked at her.

"Control. Revenge. Fear. Bit of a laugh, if you are the sort of person who finds that funny." He started walking again, hands tucked behind his back.

"I used it on Mr Malfoy because he was being a prick. I would rather not use it casually though. So... don't be a prick." He turned halfway, casting a dry look at the lot of them. Belby had gone a little pink. Eddie looked like he was waiting for someone to explain the joke. Marietta stopped breathing entirely.

"Right," Cassian said, clapping to pull them out of their stupor.

"Moving on. Voice magic, also known as Echo Binding if you want the pretentious name, has been around longer than half your family trees. Fairies do it, sure. Djinn perfected it. Wizards, though?" The room watched with bated breath, "A few in the history of magicks can use it. I am one of them." That landed. Those sitting near front, leaned away. Cassian checked the clock in his pocket with a quick glance.

"That is all, children. Unless someone has a spare voice and a jar handy." Hah, it was funny. Books snapped shut in a staggered chain. Quills were stashed. A few exchanged looks like they weren't entirely sure if what they just heard was legal. Eddie mumbled something about checking the library. Marietta all but bolted. Cho lingered, brow furrowed as if trying to memorise Cassian's exact phrasing for later dissection. Katie paused at the door.

"Professor," she said, "if someone breaks the container, and the voice's still… angry… does it always haunt the place?" Cassian leaned on the desk.

"Depends how long it's been trapped. Some come out screaming. Some forget how to speak. One bloke came back singing the same three bars of a sea shanty for six years straight. Poor sod that lived there had to be buried with earplugs." Katie paused like she couldn't decide if she was fascinated or scared, and wasn't sure which felt worse. She then thanked and left. Cassian stayed at the desk, fingertips drumming, and then the memory returned. Not like a strike this time. Not like it had when it first arrived.

It flooded his head a couple of days before term started, while he was halfway through packing. Back then it had knocked him flat, left him trembling and breathless on the floor. He remembered the heat first. A circle. Sand-colored marble. Carved symbols like bone against bone. A Djinn, not bound, not summoned. Its form was all smoke and symmetry, and something in its eyes looked like it had been watching since before maps were invented.

Cassian watched from outside the circle, bound like the man before the Djinn, he couldn't move. He could feel the ropes around his wrist. The poor sod kneeling in the center bled from the mouth. Just a thread. A thin crimson line dripping down his chin. His voice was already leaking into the air, curling in silver wisps from between his lips. The Djinn stood in front of him, tall as death, arms folded, expression unreadable beneath a face that seemed carved from dusk and fire. Cassian wanted to scream.

To intervene. To run. But he was rooted to the ground. The Djinn reached down and pulled. And the man convulsed. His voice was ripped out, dragged by invisible force, drawn from the throat in a single scream. Cassian watched as it twisted from the man's mouth into the Djinn's hand, coalescing into a tiny glass orb. The man collapsed. Silent. Still breathing. But broken. And then the Djinn turned. Toward him. Cassian. And it saw him. Not glanced. Not sensed. Saw.

Its eyes, gold-ringed and too old to name, met his through the veil of memory, and for the briefest instant, the binding circle shivered. Cassian gasped and blinked. He still shivered remembering it. Even now, seated in an empty classroom, a prickle climbed his spine. Because that wasn't just a memory. That was a gaze. For the first time since he started awakening memories, since the ancient variants began to pop up, someone stared back. Not at the body he was riding like a boat through time. Not at the scene.

At him. Cassian Rosier.