Chapter 468: Kariel's Story
Kariel sat hunched in his chair, silent and motionless, as if utterly consumed by remorse and despair.
He could hear Professor McGonagall’s voice rising in heated argument with the Aurors beyond the door:
“How could you… how could you just snap his wand in half? The Ministry of Magic has no right to expel our student like this!”
“Please, calm down, Professor. The incident was this way…”
“That’s impossible! Kariel Johnson is an exceptional student! Even if his background… his heritage isn’t quite the same, I refuse to believe he committed the crimes you’ve accused him of!”
“Believe it, Professor McGonagall. If it were possible, I wouldn’t be willing to treat a child this way. But do you know what he did? He deliberately led Wade Gray into a room ambush—filled with dozens of vampires!”
“Could there have been a misunderstanding?” Professor McGonagall’s voice trembled. “Perhaps… perhaps it was an Imperius Curse. He didn’t know what he was doing!”
“No. He knew. We’re certain he came to Hogwarts with a purpose, Professor McGonagall. The Kariel Johnson you knew was nothing but a mask.”
The voices carried through the thin door—Professor McGonagall’s anger shifting into shock, then slow, devastating disappointment. Kariel didn’t react. He had no thoughts.
She was a good professor. But he had never felt close to her.
He lowered his head, staring at the golden chain in his hands. After a long silence, he slipped it around his neck and gave it a gentle twist.
The golden hourglass spun slowly, glowing faintly. The craftsmanship was exquisite—the sand inside trickled down in perfect silence.
But nothing happened.
Outside, the voices continued without pause.
Kariel exhaled deeply, leaning back into the chair, eyes hollow, staring at the ceiling as if all strength had drained from him.
He had known this wouldn’t be easy.
Especially after Wade left without reclaiming the timer, Kariel had already guessed it was a fake. But still, the weight of that realization hit him like a tidal wave—giant, crushing, and utterly devastating.
…
He had always been puzzled: why were his classmates so blind? How could no one have noticed that both Wade and Hermione were concealing a secret of immense magnitude?
Especially Harry, Ron, and Neville—those who had spent the most time with Hermione. They knew she never missed a class, that she repeated her lessons perfectly. Yet, when faced with her seemingly absent-minded behavior—her constant exhaustion, the way her head sometimes looked like it had been gnawed by a Flobberworm—they never questioned a thing.
Kariel was different. He had watched Wade closely from the start, and long before anyone else, he had sensed something was wrong.
At first, he thought it was some kind of Doppelgänger magic. He searched every book in the library, but found no spell matching that description. Then he suspected a magical puppet—but it wasn’t until he observed Hermione’s increasing fatigue that the truth finally struck him: it was time.
Wade’s movements were unpredictable, hard to track. But Hermione was careless. After days of surveillance, Kariel noticed: whenever she turned that golden hourglass, she simply vanished from the spot.
Then came the long, painstaking process of verification—cross-referencing texts, tracing obscure references, sifting through forbidden knowledge. It was agonizingly slow. But in the end, he confirmed it: the device was a Time-Turner. He knew its function, its limitations, its rules.
Every account warned: Time-Turners were meant for minor adjustments—tiny corrections, not rewriting history.
Yet there was one infamous experiment, one that had become a cautionary tale:
A witch who traveled back hundreds of years, spending several days in the past, had altered the lives of those she met. Some people who should have been born simply… vanished. Later, time itself became unstable. She aged rapidly and died.
It proved that changing the past was possible. The cost was just too great—magic itself refused to bear it.
But Kariel didn’t care.
From the moment he learned of the Time-Turner’s existence, he had been obsessed with how to obtain one.
He had seen Dumbledore’s power—terrifying, absolute—and dared not act recklessly at school. He refused Wade’s holiday invitation. The only opportunity he had was the Hogsmeade Weekend.
And that was when the flaw in the plan became clear.
The Organization had once erased Kariel’s memories, replacing them with false ones—making him believe he had grown up within their ranks, a loyal servant. But when Wade’s fame grew, they realized the boy—The Alchemist—was too valuable to waste.
They discovered Kariel had been raised alongside Wade. So they seized the chance to exploit their friendship.
But greed blinded them.
Before erasing memories, the Organization preserved the originals. To help Kariel gain Wade’s trust, they returned fragments of his past—his memories of childhood with Wade.
But those memories clashed violently with the sterile, emotionless life they had built for him.
So they altered them—changing his parents’ faces, rewriting his identity. They told him he was a vampire by birth.
They believed the racial divide would keep him forever isolated, unwelcome in the wizarding world. The fact he had killed as a child would make any bond with others too fragile to survive.
Even if they sent him to Hogwarts, he would still belong to the Organization—his Vampire Home Clan.
But memory isn’t film. You can’t just cut out a scene and pretend it never existed.
Kariel forgot his parents’ real faces. But he remembered the warmth of his mother’s voice, the brightness of his father’s smile, the scent of them—familiar, comforting, like home.
Vampires smelled of blood. No amount of washing could remove it. And beneath it, a strange, ancient odor—like decay, like forgotten things buried deep.
And then there was the soup.
A bowl of seafood soup, served at dinner—its taste utterly alien, wrong, wrong. Nothing like the one his mother used to make.
When the fake parents appeared during the Hogsmeade Weekend, Kariel felt something inside him shatter.
A glass cracked.
The mask of lies cracked wide open, revealing the truth beneath—cold, cruel, and agonizing.
For countless sleepless nights, he pieced it together.
One early morning, sitting in the library, flipping through a newspaper, he saw it—a single line in the corner:
A Muggle woman, known only as “Mrs. Johnson,” died in a sanatorium hospital bed, strangled by a necklace she was wearing.
The article said nothing of her name, no photo. It condemned wizards who sold magical artifacts to unsuspecting Muggles. It praised the Ministry of Magic’s Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes for handling the incident, and announced that the Auror Office would continue tracking down the wizard responsible.
Kariel didn’t know why.
But when he saw those words—Mrs. Johnson, necklace, died—his heart tore open.
He couldn’t breathe. His body shook. Silent tears poured down his face.
In that instant, he was certain: the nameless Muggle woman, murdered without cause, was his real mother.
…
A single tear slid from the corner of Kariel’s eye, tracing a path through the cracks in his hair, vanishing into his temple.
“Mr. Johnson.”
The voice came from the entrance.
Professor McGonagall stood there, flanked by an Auror. The head of Gryffindor’s house looked heartbroken. The Auror’s expression was a mix of pity and contempt.
“Your request has been approved. You may now go to your dormitory and collect your things.”
Kariel rose slowly, following the Auror down the corridor.
They didn’t bind his hands. But an Imprison-type spell had been cast on him. Dark-black iron rings encircled his ankles. If he tried to run, they would snap shut instantly, freezing his movements.
They walked in silence.
Before they reached the fifth floor, the corridor erupted in chaos—a sudden explosion, screams from students, then the triumphant, smug laughter of Peeves:
“Peeves, Peeves—pranks without equal!
Peeves, Peeves—ink everywhere, fools can’t flee!
Peeves, Peeves—no one escapes his grip!”
The poltergeist zipped through the hall, hurling ink bottles at students who scrambled for cover. Ink splattered from ceiling to floor.
“Peeves!” Professor McGonagall stormed forward, furious.
Peeves shrieked, spotted her, and vanished in a flash—escaping through a different passage.
Kariel froze.
Just as Peeves fled—had he… winked at him?
Then, from the chaos, a disheveled girl emerged—backpack slung over one shoulder, wiping ink from her face, muttering angrily.
A faint golden glimmer flickered at her collar.
Hermione.
Kariel’s eyes narrowed slightly.
(End of Chapter)
Chapter end
Report
