DO NOT TICKLE THE SLEEPING DRAGON
PROLOGUE
There is a myth…
It concerns people, and places, and darkness, and most importantly, magic.
The magic that escapes from wizards beings, and jumps from the shoulders of witches, and scurries through the nearest hole or crack, and joins together, until there is enough of it…
And then the magic that is lurking in the depths of a castle, curling, twisting, stewing in its own energy becomes more. It is no longer just magic, now it has form, texture, being.
It is dangerous.
Sometimes, it isn't just a myth anymore.
Hogwarts had stood for several centuries. Most of its history was unknown; not even to be found in Hogwarts: A History, as if it had just sprung up from no-where, and perhaps it had.
In its second century a wizard named Eldritch Gryffindor found it and decided he quite liked it, and his descendants lived in it for a while longer.
Halfway through this century, in the lifetime of Godric Gryffindor, a young pair of travelling witches came across it in their adventures and were welcomed in. Rowena, and her daughter Helena, Ravenclaw had come to the castle.
By now the castle had become famed for its magical inhabitants, and soon enough two more people of great stead: Salazar Slytherin and Helga Hufflepuff, who had come across the castle in their own stories.
Godric, Rowena, Salazar and Helga became, as you no doubt know, the founders of a school: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (meanwhile, leaving their children, and the many other inhabitants of the castle to their own devices- but that is beside the point). Before long they had organised the school into four houses, and the young children that they taught had established a rivalry between each other.
In due time the founders left the castle, died or just retired, leaving the school to the running of its Headmasters and Headmistresses, and its assembled staff.
And all the while the magic was building up- in the emptiest of classrooms, in the quietest of corridors, in the deepest of dungeons…
It was nearing the end of summer. Soon old pupils would be returning to the school, and new pupils would be filing nervously into the Great Hall to be sorted.
Headmaster Dumbledore sat in his office, wondering what this year would have in store for he and his students.
Professor McGonagall wandered around the grounds in cat form, paws padding softly in the slightly-yellowed grass and tiny whiskers twitching in the breeze.
Professor Sprout pulled open the portrait to the kitchens, greeting the resting House-Elves with a smile and a request for a sandwich.
Professor Flitwick flicked his wand across the lengths of his classroom, filling inkwells and pushing books back onto shelves.
Professor Snape lurked in his dungeons, robes billowing as he stirred the many brewing potions surrounding him.
Hagrid, the groundskeeper and Keeper of the Keys, trudged through the forest with his boarhound at his knees (a testimony to his height, you understand), pruning bushes and cracking twigs.
In an abandoned classroom on the seventh floor, a floorboard creaked. Below the floorboard was darkness.
Seven pure, uninterrupted storeys of solid darkness.
Foreboding ran up Professor Snape's spine, and he paused, peering into the shadows of his classroom.
Something was wrong.
And then his Brilliance Brew almost bubbled over, and he pushed the thought from his mind in order to return to his waiting potions.
Deep in the darkness, something blinked.