Chapter 14: Echoes in the Castle
The silence of the castle, which had become his sanctuary and his personal laboratory, was shattered.
The students' return after the Christmas break was like the rumble of a high tide, an avalanche of noise, laughter and chaos that flooded the stone hallways.
Timothy felt the transition not with joy at the return of his companions, but with a twinge of deep irritation.
The noise was a distraction. It was an inefficient variable that I now had to filter.
His life, once a simple flow of solitary discovery, settled into a relentless rhythm, a double existence that pushed him to the limit.
During the day, he was the model student he had promised Professor Flitwick.
He sat in class, his face a mask of quiet attention. His grades stood at an almost insulting "Extraordinary," achieved with the slightest apparent effort.
But his body was in the classroom, and his mind was a universe away.
While Professor McGonagall explained the complex theory of animated switching, Timothy's mind was in the background, in his mental library.
He was processing and analyzing a 12th-century grimoire on blood curses that he had copied the night before.
His body performed the wand movements to transform a mouse into a snuffbox with impeccable precision, but his consciousness was busy sorting through the seventy-two forms of defensive rune magic.
This duality, this disturbing absence, did not go unnoticed.
The other Ravenclaw students, who had at first been fascinated by his genius, were now beginning to find him... strange.
He answered questions with brilliant accuracy, but he never participated in the discussions in the common room. I did my homework, but I never socialized.
They gave him a nickname. They called him "The Ghost of the Tower".
A being gliding through the corridors in a silent hurry, always alone, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance that no one else could see.
His interactions with Harry and the Weasleys became brief. A nod in the Great Hall, a quick smile. They were distractions he appreciated, but couldn't afford.
But it was Hermione who noticed the real change.
He found it in the library on a Tuesday afternoon, three weeks after the start of the new quarter.
She was surrounded, as usual, by a fortress of books, her hair frizzier than usual from the stress of new duties.
"Tim!" he whispered, his face genuinely lighting up as he passed by. "I haven't seen you in days! Did you solve the problem of the transmogrification that I sent you?"
Timothy stopped, forcibly removed from his mental analysis of a text on arcane herbology. It took him a second to focus on it. His name felt like an anchor that dragged him back to reality.
"Ah, Hermione. Hello. Yes, the problem." His voice was a little rough from lack of use.
"The answer is not transportation," he said automatically, his tone distant, as if reciting a fact from a textbook. "It is conceptual duplication. You're creating an echo, not moving the original object."
Hermione blinked, impressed by the answer, but even more so by her tone. His enthusiasm faded a little, replaced by visible worry.
"Are you okay, Tim? Look... tired." He took a closer look. "And very distracted. You're pale."
He looked at her, seeing the genuine concern in her brown eyes. He felt a twinge of something he identified as guilt. She was his friend. But his project... his project was his life.
"I'm fine," he lied, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Just... A lot of study. The agreement with Flitwick. You know. Keep the notes high."
She didn't seem convinced. "But I hardly see you eat. And you're never on our study table."
"I've been working in my room. In addition... Relax," he said.
She nodded, though the wound on her expression was evident. There was a new barrier between them. An invisible wall he had built, made of thousands of books she would never know he was reading.
"Well," she said quietly, returning to her scroll. "If you ever want to... talk, or really study, you know where to find me."
"Sure, Hermione. See you later."
He walked away quickly, not looking back. He felt her gaze on his back, filled with confusion and a hint of pain.
He couldn't stop. He couldn't afford it. The hunger of his Archive, the hunger to know everything, was too great.
…..
The pace was relentless. For weeks, Timothy had maintained his double life with an almost monastic discipline.
His days were a blur of classes, rehearsals delivered with lazy brilliance, and brief social interactions that made him feel like an actor.
His nights, however, were a frenzy of acquisition.
He sat in the Room of Requirements, his hand on a book, Archive. Ten seconds. Following. Archive. Ten seconds.
Hundreds of books per night. Thousands per week. The Hogwarts library was pouring into his mind like a river into an ocean.
It felt powerful. Each book copied was a victory, one more weapon in his arsenal, one more piece of the puzzle.
One night, I was working on a complex Charms essay on the theory of magical resonance. He recalled copying an obscure text on the subject the week before.
He closed his eyes, accessing his mental library, and... Stopped.
Where was it?
His mind, which he had imagined as a tidy library, didn't feel that way. It felt... Chaotic.
It was a warehouse. A dark warehouse, the size of a continent, where thousands of books had been thrown into a gigantic and messy pile.
I could feel the book I was looking for. It was there, somewhere in the pile, but finding it would be like looking for a specific needle in a haystack the size of a mountain.
Panic, a cold and unknown emotion, hit him. What was the point of having all the knowledge in the world if I couldn't find it when I needed it?
He realized his mistake. A fundamental and arrogant error.
I had spent all this time building the copying software, but I hadn't built the storage hardware.
He had focused on how to obtain knowledge, not how to organize it.
"Idiot," he whispered to the empty room, his voice trembling with frustration.
He stood up and began pacing the room, his mind racing at feverish speed. His project was not over. It had barely begun.
I needed shelves. I needed corridors. I needed a cataloguing system.
It was not enough to be a thief of knowledge. He had to become an architect. An architect of his own soul.
…..
Months passed. Winter clung to the Scottish mountains before finally giving way to the first, timid hint of spring.
Inside the castle, the routine of Hogwarts was still ongoing. But the conversation in the staff room had changed dramatically.
The "Hunter problem" was no longer a matter of laziness. He had become the "Hunter mystery".
The staff room was filled with a different kind of tension. It was not frustration for lack of effort. It was a palpable uneasiness in the face of an unnatural perfection.
"His grades are impeccable," McGonagall said at a staff meeting in late March. His voice lacked his usual tone of victory.
He held a scroll: the last essay of Timothy's Transfigurations.
"An 'Extraordinary', of course. As usual. His analysis of Gamp's Law was... bright. And painfully short. Exactly eleven inches."
Severus Snape, who was grading jobs in a dark corner, let out a snort that sounded almost like a mockery.
"Brilliant is not the word I would use, Minerva." His voice was a low hiss, but the usual disdain had been replaced by something else. A resentful fascination.
"It's... unnatural," Snape continued. "Your potion this morning. The Reducing Solution. A notoriously volatile potion that most fifth-year students ruin."
He held up a small jar of neon green liquid for all to see. The potion was perfect. Translucent. Impeccable.
"The boy didn't make a single mistake. Every cut of the lily was accurate to the millimeter. Each agitation was timed to perfection. It's not the work of a passionate student."
He muttered, more to himself than to others. "It's the work of a machine. Is... disturbing."
"Unsettling!" squealed Flitwick from across the room, his pride hurt. "It's genius, Severus! Something you clearly don't recognize!"
The diminutive Professor of Charms was beaming. "The boy is fulfilling his end of the bargain. He is the best student of his year, and he does it with hardly any sweat."
"Imagine what I could do if I really tried!" he added with an excited chuckle.
"That's precisely what I'm worried about, Filius," Professor Sprout said, wiping dirt from her hands on her apron.
The kind herbology teacher rarely seemed worried, which made her words carry more weight.
"The boy is... absent. His work in the greenhouses is impeccable. He waters the plants with the exact amount of water, prunes them with surgical precision. But there is not... connection".
"He doesn't talk to them. He does not feel them. It's like... as if he were following an instruction manual that only he can see," he explained.
McGonagall nodded, his stern expression softened with genuine concern. "I agree, Pomona. It's the same in my class."
"He performs the transfiguration, and then his gaze is lost. It's a thousand miles away. His body is in the classroom, but his mind is somewhere else."
The problem was no longer discipline. The problem was isolation.
The nickname "The Ghost of the Tower" had spread among students, but for teachers, it was becoming a real concern.
They saw the feverish energy in his eyes, an intensity that never wavered. They saw the paleness of his skin, the result of countless sleepless nights.
They saw him in the Great Hall, eating mechanically while his gaze was lost in the void, processing who knows what information.
He didn't seem like a happy student who enjoyed his talent. He looked like a man on a desperate mission, wasting away from within.
"The deal has given him free rein," Snape said, his voice now devoid of mockery, almost analytical. "You have untied it, Filius. Now he's obsessed."
"And what happens when such a powerful wizard becomes obsessed?" he asked, leaving the question hanging in the air.
The silence in the room was heavy. The shadow of two other bright, obsessed students—Tom Riddle and Gellert Grindelwald—hung tacitly in the air.
"It's not the same!" protested Flitwick, though his voice wavered for a moment. "His obsession is knowledge, not power! There is no cruelty in it!"
"Cruelty is often the next step after boredom," Snape retorted. "And that kid seems to be getting bored of perfection."
"Enough," McGonagall said, ending the discussion. "We agree that the situation has changed."
"It's no longer a disciplinary issue, Filius," he said kindly. "But it's still an anomaly. An anomaly that seems to be consuming itself."
He looked at the other Heads of House. "I think it's time for the Director to know about this new evolution."
"Albus must be informed. Not about their grades, but about... his condition."
…..
Albus Dumbledore listened with his fingertips together, his blue eyes fixed on Timothy's report card that rested on his desk.
This time, the worry on McGonagall's face wasn't about laziness. It was for perfection.
"It's unnatural, Albus," she said, her voice strained. "His notes are impeccable. Perfect. But he's... absent. It is being consumed."
"I've seen it in the hallways," Sprout added, wringing his hands. "It looks like a ghost. His obsession has become... total."
"Obsession? Excessive talent? A total disregard for the rules?"
Snape's voice hissed from his corner in the shadows.
"I don't know why you are so surprised. It's the same pattern we've seen before. It's another Tom Riddle. And you're letting it flourish under this same roof."
Riddle's name fell into the room with the weight of a grave. Flitwick seemed to shrink, and McGonagall looked at Dumbledore, his face filled with a new and terrible anxiety.
Dumbledore was silent for a long moment, his gaze lost in the rain hitting the tower window.
"No," he finally said, his voice soft but full of absolute certainty. "You're wrong, Severus. And that's a mistake we shouldn't allow ourselves to make."
He turned to them, his eyes no longer shining with mischief, but with the clarity of a scholar.
"I watched Tom Riddle grow up. I met Gellert Grindelwald. I saw their souls. His obsession was not knowledge. It was power. Power over others."
"They reveled in cruelty," Dumbledore continued. "The pain of others was a tool for them, and sometimes, a reward. Magic was a means to dominate."
He looked at Snape. "Tell me, Severus. Have you seen a single act of intentional cruelty in Mr. Hunter? Does he make fun of the weak? Do you torture others for fun?"
Snape frowned, unable to answer. "He's arrogant. Indifferent."
"Exactly!" said Dumbledore. "He is indifferent, not malevolent. His arrogance is that of the scholar who has no time for those who are slower, not that of the tyrant who despises those who are weaker."
"I remember my conversation with him at Christmas," Dumbledore muttered, more to himself. "We talk about Dark magic and Light."
"His philosophy... it is not that of a Dark Lord. It is that of an architect. For him, magic is neither good nor bad. It's simply a tool. Is... a purer mentality. And perhaps, more dangerous."
He stood, walking toward Fawkes, who was looking at him intelligently.
"No. Timothy Hunter is not Gellert. It's not Tom."
"He's different. It's something new. And I believe," he said, his voice now filled with quiet conviction, "that at his core, in spite of his obsession... he is, fundamentally, a better person than they are. And maybe even a better person than me."
The professors fell silent, processing the enormity of that statement.
"Continue with the agreement, Filius," Dumbledore concluded. "Give him his space. Leave his obsession with him. But keep an eye on him."
"Watch their humanity. Not their power."
- - - - - - - - -
Thanks for reading!
If you want to read advanced chapters and support me, I'd really appreciate it.
Mike.
@Patreon/iLikeeMikee