Percy stood near the altar with the black orb wrapped in cloth. Its marks gave a weak light. Harry could walk again, but nobody looked interested in another inspection.
Ron checked the corridor while Hermione helped Harry steady his glasses.
"We need these marks copied," Hermione said. "Later. First we leave."
Suddenly, a low groan echoed from deep within the walls.
Percy's head snapped up. "Everyone, back away from the altar. Now."
The runes on the orb flared with blinding light. The ground shuddered violently beneath their feet. Dust rained from the high ceiling, and the torches lining the temple walls flickered and died.
"What did you do!?" Ron shouted as the floor cracked beneath them.
"I have not touched it again," Percy said. "Keep moving while we work out what changed."
A pillar broke at the far end of the room. Percy watched its falling edge rather than the noise, then pulled Hermione clear of the stones crossing their route.
The rumble beneath their feet grew deafening.
"Run!" Percy shouted, grabbing Hermione by the arm and pulling her toward the narrow corridor they'd come through. The walls of the underwater temple groaned as the magic that had held the place together began to fail.
They sprinted, water rushing through the cracks, sweeping around their ankles and rising with terrifying speed. Harry stumbled on a loose stone, nearly going down, but Percy whirled and yanked him back up without breaking stride.
The ceiling split behind them. Pieces of marble struck the passage, and Percy stopped counting the fading marks when the first one fell close to Harry.
"Come on!" Hermione shouted, her voice hoarse, wild eyes fixed ahead as the shimmering blue tunnel leading to the surface came into view.
Water was entering their original passage faster than the charm could hold it back. Percy checked all three friends before deciding they would have to swim.
"It's unstable," he muttered. "Hold your breath!"
He took Harry's hand with his left and Hermione's with his right. Ron held Hermione's other hand. They entered the current together, keeping the chain intact when the first wave struck.
Percy could distinguish the returning flow from the water entering through broken stone. He held to the first rather than treating every current as an order he could give.
They struck the wall when the flow turned. Percy slowed the water nearest their bodies long enough for all four to recover the direction toward the surface.
Pale morning light showed above them.
One final push. Percy surged upward, kicking hard, his lungs burning. Just as his vision began to blur from lack of oxygen, they broke through the surface, gasping, sputtering, and dragging themselves into the sunlight.
The entrance collapsed beneath the Black Lake. A wave lifted them, and Percy kept it moving past rather than allowing it to separate the group.
Then, stillness.
They counted each other before swimming for the bank. Ron answered last because he was coughing, not because he had disappeared.
Percy could still feel the opened pattern below.
Getting out had not closed it.
They sat on the Black Lake's sandy bank while Hermione found dry cloth in her bag. The castle was visible beyond the trees. Percy checked it more than once.
Water gathered near his fingers without his asking for it. He moved his hand away and watched whether the movement stopped.
It did, but much later than he expected.
That frightened him more than having no response would have.
"It answers faster," Percy said. "I do not know whether that means I have better control."
Harry sat beside him with a towel across his shoulders. He was looking at the place where they had surfaced.
"I saw something," he said finally, voice soft. "When the statue collapsed… I think I saw… Voldemort. But not him. Something using him."
Percy turned sharply. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," Harry admitted. "There was this… darkness. A presence. And a voice. It said, 'The tide has shifted. The sea will not sleep again.' Then it laughed."
"It wants us to treat that as a prediction," Percy said. "We should report the exact words before deciding it is one."
Hermione joined them with her notebook. "There is something else. I can understand parts of the marks I copied without working through them."
"The words arrived with the shrine," she said. "I remember seeing them, but I did not learn them in the ordinary way."
"Is that safe?" Harry asked.
"I do not know," Hermione said. "I want someone to examine it before I decide I can safely use it."
Percy stood carefully. The waves looked ordinary from the bank, which now seemed like very limited reassurance.
"We've got to report this," Hermione said.
"McGonagall first," Percy said. "Dumbledore may still be away from the office. All four of us need checking."
Hermione closed the notebook. "We tell them about the orb, the bindings, and what Harry heard. Leaving out the difficult part will not make it easier to investigate."
Harry held a hand above the lake. The nearest ripple changed direction, and he drew his hand back without testing it further.
"It responded to me too," he said. "That belongs in the report."
Percy nodded. They collected their wet supplies and returned together.
After their examinations, Percy sat by the common-room fire. He had always been able to move water. Now the difference was how easily it moved when he had not fully decided to call it.
He clenched his fist, and water from a nearby glass spiraled up lazily, swirling in intricate loops before settling back down.
He lowered the water and stopped. Repeating the demonstration would not answer the question he needed to ask.
Harry slept badly upstairs. Each time his scar hurt, he tried to locate the room around him before attending to whatever came with it.
Hermione wrote in the common room until the words stopped coming easily. She left the new symbols separate from her own explanations.
Outside, the moon reflected off the Black Lake.
The surface was calm.
Beneath, something moved.
The next morning, students hurried to lessons while the four tried to fit their recovery around the timetable. Percy found that ordinary noise more comforting than another perfectly silent chamber.
They had escaped and reported the incident.
Now they had to distinguish its effects from the explanations it had offered.
Hermione laid the notebook open on a table. Several new marks joined the ones she remembered drawing, and she asked the others to check whether they had seen her write them.
"This language isn't just a code," she whispered, mostly to herself. "It's a structure. A system of magical concepts. A syntax of forces."
Percy used a bowl already on the table. He lifted a small amount of water, then stopped before its motion could become automatic.
The easiest response was not necessarily the one he trusted.
"I can feel the movement before I finish asking for it," he said. "I would like to know whether something else is answering first."
Hermione added that distinction to the notes.
Harry paced near the window, glancing periodically out at the lake. "Ever since the temple… I've been having dreams."
Hermione looked up sharply. "Dreams? Of what?"
"A city beneath the waves," Harry said. "Made of coral and glass. It pulses with light, and there's a throne at the center. But it's empty. Then something… calls me. It doesn't speak, not with words. But it wants me to come."
Percy's hand trembled, and the water in the bowl splashed. "A city under the sea?"
Hermione set her notebook down carefully. "That's what this language keeps referring to. I think it's called Thalassaeon—at least, that's the closest translation. It means something like 'deep dominion' or 'the sovereign ocean.' There are references to a Seat of Tides, guarded by a being older than the gods."
Percy looked grim. "We may have just rung its doorbell."
They went to the library with McGonagall's pass. Ron checked the smaller books first while Hermione compared their record with the older scripts.
Hermione found The Echoes of the Abyss after several unsuccessful matches. The copy named no author. She asked Madam Pince about its condition before opening it.
She opened it, and the pages whispered.
"I can read this," she said, stunned.
Percy and Harry could not read the script. Hermione could, but she copied the first passage before allowing herself to continue.
"There was a war," she murmured. "A war in the sea, before Atlantis. A god, or something like it, was bound beneath the ocean. They called it the Sleeper Below. It wasn't defeated. Just… sealed. With magic older than human memory."
She turned the page, revealing a faint, water-stained illustration, towers of coral rising from the depths, a massive eye carved into a black obelisk. Around it were symbols. The same symbols they'd seen glowing in the temple.
"Is this what we awakened?" Harry asked, voice low.
"Maybe not awakened," Percy said. "But stirred."
Ron moved closer to look at the drawing rather than pretending the title explained it.
The account described several structures serving one purpose.
That did not establish whether every structure was a prison.
It did give them a reason to check what they had interrupted beneath the lake.
That evening, Percy returned to the bank where he could still see the path back to the castle. A current moved below the surface without a visible creature causing it.
He felt the movement reach his attention.
He knelt and let ordinary water run around his fingers. He did not raise it into another shape.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered.
The water rippled in response.
The response was only an impression. He would not treat it as permission to follow.
A gust of wind blew, and suddenly the lake went still, unnaturally still.
Then Percy heard it.
A whisper, not from outside but inside his skull.
"He watches the gate. But the gate is cracking."
Percy took his hand away and waited until he could hear the small waves normally.
The lake slowly returned to its natural rhythm.
Harry was awake in the common room when Hermione came down with another translated passage. She sat where he could look at the page with her.
"I just translated another passage," she said without preamble. "The temple wasn't the only one. There are seven. Scattered across the world. Each one was a seal."
Harry sat up straight. "How many are still intact?"
Hermione swallowed. "It doesn't say. But it implies… at least two have already failed."
The fire popped loudly, sending sparks into the air.
"The account describes movement across a boundary," she said.
"Not merely a creature waking where it already lives."
Below the forest, a mark on an old chamber floor began giving light.
Water pooled around it.
The collected water turned around the mark. Nobody above had asked it to move.
To be continued!
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Funni chapter name :)
Where will our- wait, I already did this bit.
Hi guys I wanted to give you another chapter please comment I need to know what you guys think PLEASE I'M SO TIRED.
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See you next chapter!