Silence is not what greets them.
The moment the mass apparition spell spits Selah and the other muggleborn students into the vast, candle-lit expanse of the Hogwarts Great Hall, the room erupts into gasps, scraping benches, and the whisper-rush of enchanted starlight flickering uneasily across the ceiling.
They look like ghosts who crawled out of a war-clothes torn, faces smudged with ash and fear, eyes too wide for children.
Selah stands in the middle of them, posture straight despite the exhaustion dragging at her bones. Hades, translucent-shadow of a cat, curls around her ankles in spirit-form like a living wisp of smoke, his tail brushing her calf.
"If one more child cries, I may combust," Hades comments dryly in her mind.
Selah doesn't smile. Not yet.
Not after what they escaped.
At the front of the hall, Headmaster Armando Dippet stands, stunned into momentary silence. Candles sputter. Staff members rise from their chairs in alarm.
A breath later, Professor Whitcombe-the one who helped cast the mass apparation-steps forward on trembling legs.
"Headmaster... Grindelwald attacked Eidolon Academy for the Arcane Arts. We barely held him off long enough to extract the muggleborns. We request sanctuary. They have nowhere else to go."
The hall ripples with shock.
Dippet's face goes pale, then hard.
"Of course they will be protected here. Hogwarts will not turn away children fleeing war."
The hall murmurs its approval-though some tables far less enthusiastically.
---
Across the room, Tom Riddle watches.
He sits with his small, curated circle: Abraxas Malfoy, Lestrange, Rosier. All of them immaculate in posture and expression. All of them trained in the art of pure-blood disdain.
Tom, however, is not disdainful.
He is curious.
His dark eyes flick over the newly arrived group-mudbloods, every last one of them-and he's prepared to be unimpressed.
Until she moves.
A girl in the middle clad in torn, soot-flecked student robes. Brown skin, warm bronze beneath smudges of ash. Pale hair braided back from her face in a way that shows her sharp cheekbones, her deep emerald, unreadable eyes.
She does not look around with awe or fear like the others. She scans the hall like she's memorizing an enemy fortress.
Abraxas sneers. "They're multiplying like vermin."
Tom notices the way Abraxas's voice falters when the girl passes.
He leans back lazily. "Not all vermin are uninteresting."
The boys follow his gaze-and freeze.
Even in ruin, the girl is striking.
Rosier blurts, "She's too pretty to be a mudblood."
Tom's lips tilt.
"A common mistake."
He watches her until she disappears out of the hall with the professors. Watches the set of her shoulders, the quiet fire under her stillness.
A storm in disguise.
Something about her pulls at him.
Something he cannot name.
Not yet.
---
The Hospital Wing
For a full week, the muggleborn refugees occupy half the ward. Healers flit around them. Professors patrol in shifts. Rumors circulate like wildfire-Grindelwald is getting bolder, Eidolon fell, the Ministry is panicking.
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Inheritance of the Damned
FanfictionSelah James has survived a lifetime of cruelty by hiding her power, her brilliance, and her true name, Amarielle Veyra Salazar-Merlin. But when Grindelwald attacks her school, the "muggleborn orphan" is sent to Hogwarts-where her bloodlines are reve...
