The air inside the temple had been still, eerily so. Even with the flickering torchlight casting dancing shadows along the worn marble columns, there was a sense of timelessness, as if the temple had existed in a realm untouched by the chaos of the outside world. Percy stood near the altar, the mysterious artifact he'd discovered clutched tightly in his hand, a small obsidian orb inscribed with golden runes that pulsed softly in his palm.
Hermione, Ron, and Harry stood just behind him, watching with a mix of awe and caution.
"This place is older than Hogwarts," Hermione whispered, her voice nearly drowned by the heavy silence. "Older than the wizarding world as we know it. I've never seen runes like these."
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 didn't do anything!" Percy shouted back. "The orb must have triggered something."
From the far end of the temple, a massive stone pillar snapped at its base and crashed to the floor, sending a shockwave through the chamber. Tiles shattered. Statues tipped and fell. Ancient mosaics cracked down the middle like glass.
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 shrine they had just left shuddered violently. A massive crack split the ceiling, sending beams of aquamarine light and chunks of marble down into the corridor. Behind them, the glowing sigils they had disturbed dimmed, flickered, and then died.
"Come on!" Hermione shouted, her voice hoarse, wild eyes fixed ahead as the shimmering blue tunnel leading to the surface came into view.
The path they'd used to enter the temple had changed. Instead of a serene, still descent, the water now surged like a whirlpool, and the magic within the tunnel pulsed erratically. Percy gritted his teeth.
"It's unstable," he muttered. "Hold your breath!"
He grabbed their hands tightly, left hand to Harry, right to Hermione, and then dove forward into the surging current, dragging them behind him. The tunnel twisted and spiraled like a living creature in pain. Stone columns and debris from the collapsing structure whipped past them in flashes of gold and green.
Percy could feel the water now in a new way, not just around him, but in him. It was like his senses had deepened, expanded. He could feel the ocean's currents as emotions. Panic. Rage. Power.
As they swam upwards, the current momentarily shoved them off course, slamming them into a section of the tunnel wall. Percy acted on instinct, raising his hands, the water itself obeying his command. A barrier of liquid formed, slowing the current just long enough for them to regain their course.
Above them, daylight shimmered like a mirage.
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.
Behind them, the temple's glowing entrance collapsed in on itself, a thunderous boom echoing through the ocean. Massive waves spread outward, rolling past them harmlessly.
Then, stillness.
They floated on the surface, coughing, trying to breathe. The silence that followed was eerie, unnatural even. It wasn't the same calm as before. This felt… empty.
Something had changed.
Something had awakened.
Percy sat in the sand a short while later, staring out at the ocean. The beach was quiet except for the crash of waves, but the energy in the air still buzzed like static before a storm.
His fingers trailed through the wet sand. Water slithered up from the tide, pooling around his fingers like a living creature. It obeyed him faster now, more freely. He didn't even need to concentrate. The power flowed through him like a second heartbeat.
He should have felt triumphant.
Instead, he felt unsettled.
"It felt like the ocean… recognized me again," Percy murmured, staring down at his dripping hands. "Like it was… claiming me a second time."
Harry sat beside him, pale and silent. His green eyes were unfocused, lost somewhere else entirely.
"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."
Percy frowned. "Sounds like a prophecy. Or a threat."
"Or both," Hermione said, approaching with a towel around her shoulders. Her hair was wild with salt and wind, and she looked as shaken as they did. "We weren't meant to be there. That shrine… it wasn't just ancient. It was hidden."
She rubbed her temples. "And something's in my head now. I don't mean memories or thoughts, I mean words. A language I've never studied. But I understand it. It's like the knowledge from the shrine copied itself into my brain."
"Is that safe?" Harry asked.
"Absolutely not," Hermione said bluntly. "But it's done. I can't undo it."
Percy stood and looked out over the waves again. They seemed… more alive than before. Less like a body of water and more like an aware being. Watching.
"We've got to report this," Hermione said.
"To who?" Percy asked. "Dumbledore's gone. McGonagall wouldn't even know where to begin. And let's be real, no one's gonna believe three students broke into an underwater temple and woke up ancient sea magic."
Hermione frowned. "Then we don't tell them everything. Just that we discovered ruins, barely escaped a collapse, and felt… magical surges."
Harry was still quiet. He held his hand out to the sea, and for a moment, Percy thought the water rippled toward him in greeting. Like it remembered him, too.
"We're part of something now," Harry said softly. "Bigger than just Hogwarts. Bigger than Voldemort."
Percy nodded grimly. "We need to figure out what we unleashed. Before it figures us out."
That night, back at Hogwarts, Percy sat in the Gryffindor common room, staring into the fire. The flames crackled softly, but his mind echoed with water, not heat. He felt the sea's pull inside him more strongly than ever. His powers weren't just back. They were evolving.
He clenched his fist, and water from a nearby glass spiraled up lazily, swirling in intricate loops before settling back down.
What had the temple done to him?
Upstairs, Harry tossed and turned in his sleep, his scar burning faintly, not like before, but as if warning him about something deeper, older.
And in the corner of the common room, Hermione sat by a candlelight, scribbling furiously in her notebook in two languages: English… and one Percy didn't recognize.
Outside, the moon reflected off the Black Lake.
The surface was calm.
Beneath, something moved.
The next morning, the sky over Hogwarts was clear, but there was a heaviness in the air, like the calm that came before a storm. Inside the castle, students bustled to classes as if the world hadn't shifted beneath their feet the day before. But Percy, Harry, and Hermione knew better.
They had seen something ancient, awakened it.
And now, none of them were the same.
In the Gryffindor common room, Hermione sat cross-legged in an armchair, eyes locked on the open notebook in her lap. The pages were filled with writing, rows of symbols, some spiraling, others jagged, almost alive on the page. They shimmered faintly, as if inked in moonlight.
"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."
Across from her, Percy was practicing. A bowl of water hovered in front of him, sloshing lazily back and forth. He moved his hand, and it obeyed with eerie precision. But there was something different now, something deeper. It wasn't just manipulation. It was… communication.
He could feel the water listening.
"It's like it understands me better," Percy said, breaking the silence. "Or I understand it. Like I've gone from shouting into a storm to speaking the ocean's native language."
Hermione didn't look up. "That may not be far from the truth."
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."
Later that day, the trio slipped into the library between classes. Madam Pince gave them her usual glare, but didn't stop them as they headed toward the Restricted Section. Percy held up the pass Professor McGonagall had given Hermione. "For advanced magical study," she had called it.
They searched for hours. Tomes in ancient dialects, scrolls half-decayed from time, grimoires bound in seaweed-like leather. It was Hermione who found it : The Echoes of the Abyss, a book so old it didn't have a known author.
She opened it, and the pages whispered.
"I can read this," she said, stunned.
The script was indecipherable to Percy and Harry, ink flowing like river currents. But Hermione's eyes darted across the lines, absorbing meaning at lightning speed.
"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."
They all looked at each other.
This wasn't just ancient magic.
It was a prison.
And they had cracked the door.
That night, Percy stood alone at the edge of the Black Lake. The moon's reflection rippled across its surface, disturbed by wind and the occasional leap of a fish. But beneath the surface, Percy felt something moving. Not a creature. A current.
It brushed his consciousness, like a finger trailing down his spine.
He knelt and touched the water. The lake responded, coiling up around his fingers like a silver ribbon.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered.
The water rippled in response.
But you were chosen, something seemed to say.
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."
He jerked his hand back, breathing heavily.
The lake slowly returned to its natural rhythm.
Back in the Gryffindor common room, Harry couldn't sleep. His scar didn't burn, but it ached, like something pressing in from far away. He sat by the fire, staring at the flickering flames until Hermione came down the stairs, clutching her notebook.
"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.
"Whatever's rising," she said, "isn't just coming back."
"It's coming through."
Far below Hogwarts, beneath the Forbidden Forest, deep in a cave long forgotten by men and centaurs alike, a single glowing rune flared to life on the floor.
Water pooled around it.
And then it began to spin.
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!