The Great Hall had fallen into that strangest kind of silence—the one that thrums with disbelief, like a heartbeat that the world itself has forgotten to take.
Cassius sat alone at the newly formed table, the black-and-silver cloth gleaming faintly beneath the soft candlelight.
The other four houses stretched outward in their familiar symmetry, but the fifth—his table—stood solitary and central, carved from stone and shadow, older than any of the others, as though it had merely been waiting beneath the floor for someone to awaken it.
All around him, whispers began to return, cautious and fragmented.
"Draconis…?"
"What house is that supposed to be?"
"I've read every Hogwarts history—there's never been a fifth house."
"Maybe it's a mistake?"
No one dared approach.
Not even the ghosts who lingered uncertainly near the ceiling.
The pale woman, however—the one who had called this chaos into being—moved closer.
Cassius didn't flinch as her ethereal form glided to his side.
When her hand settled lightly on his shoulder, it felt just a little bit cold.
Her touch was steady—supportive, almost maternal.
And with that gesture, the castle moved.
Behind the teachers' table, the towering hourglass canisters that measured house points began to tremble.
Gems of crimson, gold, blue, and green shimmered and churned as the ancient mechanisms groaned awake.
Then, with a deep, resonant click, a fifth canister—enormous, running horizontally across the top of the other four—rose, its glass untouched by time.
The machinery rearranged, slotting the new vessel in the center, almost as if in the lead of the other four.
Black onxy stones appeared in the hopper waiting to be dropped into the tube announcing the accumulation of housepoints.
The sight left even the staff momentarily stunned.
For decades they had looked over the cannisters never questioning or wondering what the horizontal cannister atop it was for.
The candles flickered, time seemed to breathe again—and then chaos.
Students erupted into excited, frightened chatter.
The sound was overwhelming—hundreds of voices at once.
"Is he even allowed to have his own house?"
"That ghost—she made it happen!"
"Can they do that?"
"Maybe it's cursed—"
Dumbledore, calm but with that rare edge of command in his eyes, raised his wand and tapped it to his throat.
"Silence."
The word rolled like thunder across the hall.
Every whisper died instantly.
The floating candles steadied, the enchanted ceiling dimmed slightly, and all attention fell on the Headmaster.
He regarded the ethereal woman carefully.
"My lady," he began, his voice polite but weighted with the authority of one who guarded this school, "you have appeared before us unannounced, bearing a house none here have ever known. I must ask—who are you? And what is this Draconis that you have claimed as this boy's own?"
The ghost turned slowly toward him.
When she spoke, her voice filled the hall not through volume, but through resonance—a tone that seemed to echo within bone and stone alike.
"I am Guinevere Draconis," she said. "The Mother of Dragons. The one who laid the foundation of this school when this nation was still young."
A ripple passed through the professors like a gust of cold air.
"Impossible," breathed Professor Binns, the history ghost who had drifted forward from the wall.
His usually drowsy tone was sharp with disbelief.
"There is no record—no mention—of—"
"Of me?"
Her silver eyes glinted.
"No. There would not be. My children erased what they could not equal."
Gasps spread through the hall.
"My children," she continued, her voice rising and softening in equal measure, "were four in number. You know their names well—Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin."
A murmur of awe rolled across the tables.
She drifted forward, gaze sweeping the students like moonlight crossing the sea.
"They were my legacy—and my failure. I built this castle as a sanctuary for all those with magic in their blood, a place to shape wisdom, courage, loyalty, and cunning into one unified strength. But my children… they divided what was whole. Each founded their own house, judging themselves by traits they cherished most. None of them met the standards I had set."
Her tone darkened slightly.
"So after my death they sealed my name away. They thought me too proud, too demanding, too… unyielding. And perhaps I was. But they were content to nurture fragments of greatness, while I sought the whole."
She turned then, her gaze falling on Cassius.
The movement was subtle, reverent almost.
"For a thousand years, I have lingered here, unseen by all save the stones themselves. I waited. I dreamed that one day, a soul would be born—balanced in all virtues, yet ruled by none. A mind unshackled by blind loyalty or inherited sin. One who would not fit into the houses of my children, because he was never meant to."
Her hand lifted, pointing toward the boy who sat silent amidst the shifting starlight.
"That day has come. Cassius Snape is my heir."
The hall erupted.
A thousand voices surged up at once.
"Her heir?"
"Snape's son—?"
"She's lying—"
"How can a ghost have an heir?"
Dumbledore raised his wand again, silencing them, though his face remained grave.
"Thank you lady Draconis for explaining this to us, as this is clearly the will of hogwarts itself it is not our place to object, however we will need time to adjust as the school schedules have only ever accounted for the four houses."
"So long as his studies are not disturbed that is fine."
The Ethereal lady remained floating relatively impassive.
As for Dumbledore the aged headmasters world had been rocked.
Unbenownst to all, his pulse right now was racing.
From the moment this lady ghost appeared his control over the school slipped, the power of the headmaster was absolute within these walls, and yet, when she appeared it was almost as if he was not headmaster anylonger, the control he could feel was lessened to an extent.
"Have we really been forgotten so greatly? Is this not still the schools crest?"
Lady draconis produced a banner featuring the crest of hogwarts, a shield with the four house animals and a scrawl of test along the bottom.
Only looking at it again much larger many now wondered, why was there a Knights head sitting atop the shield, with 'wings' on the right and left?
And once more, those few in the audience who could read latin gasped.
'Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus'
'Never tickle a sleeping dragon'
The news started to spread as many began to interpret the crest deeper, the knight atop and the wings representing a dragon rider surrounding the four houses, while the text could be taken as a warning about the fifth house, rather than a titular warning about being careful about who you provoke.