Hogwarts: Chill, I'm Not That Riddle

"Where are we right now?" Tom turned his head and asked the Ilvermorny professor beside him.

The professor answered quickly. "West of the Hebrides, northwest of Ireland. We’re deep in the Atlantic now, and we haven’t strayed from our course."

Tom gave a small nod.

He had no idea what the actual route looked like, but if these people could sail from America to Hogwarts, they could obviously sail back.

He did know the Hebrides, though. It was the famous birthplace of the Hebridean Black dragons, with over twenty of them living on the islands. The Ministry kept a permanent ten-man Auror squad stationed there, along with a team of more than fifty dragonologists. Best of all, the dragon reserve on the islands held shares belonging to the Greengrass family, which made it more or less his own business.

Past the outer edge of the Hebrides, the Rockall Trough lay to the southwest. That was well away from any ordinary Muggle shipping lane, and all you could see in every direction was endless ocean.

"What a pain..." Tom looked at the apocalyptic scene in front of him and sighed quietly.

The professor, who’d been watching his face the whole time, panicked even harder.

Wait, why are you sighing?! Are we going to die?

"What do we do now?" the professor asked, flustered.

Wizards had power ordinary people couldn’t imagine, but before a natural disaster on this scale, they were no more than specks of dust. The ship was only holding steady because of the magical runes they’d carved so painstakingly. Once the power in those runes ran out, the Mayflower could capsize at any moment.

But if the ship went down in the middle of nowhere, how many would make it out alive?

"Don’t panic. Let me take a look at what’s going on first." Tom waved a hand to shoo the balding man away so he’d stop pestering him.

"Tom, I really don’t want to die." Ivy Warrington had squeezed in next to him at some point, her voice trembling. She was still trying to put on a brave face, but her hand had already latched onto his sleeve. The wind on the deck was so strong she could barely keep her eyes open, and a few other students nearby were watching nervously.

"Relax. I’ve got time to save you, at least. Oh right, and those two brothers too."

He’d just remembered that Cassandra had two little lackeys. More precisely, they were lackeys of the Vole family, those two dim-witted twins. Dumb as they were, they were far more loyal than Crabbe and Goyle, so saving them was no big deal.

Hearing this, the professor was about to break down.

You can only save three people. What about the whole ship? What about me?

"..."

After reassuring Ivy, Tom naturally ignored everyone else and looked up at the sky.

Between the grinding masses of black cloud, blinding lightning had already started flashing. The storm at sea grew wilder by the second, and the ship wasn’t moving forward at all. It was actually being pushed back, looking dangerously close to the edge.

The barrier on both sides of the hull flickered constantly. Every time a wave slammed into it, a spray of fine glowing specks scattered, and the wind snatched them away before they could even drift apart.

This was definitely not a simple natural phenomenon.

Through his magical sight, the whole area was thick with powerful magic. But it was too spread out and the area was too large, so he couldn’t trace it back to the source of the disturbance any time soon. The thunderheads overhead were where the energy gathered most strongly.

The boy stepped forward. His figure blurred for a moment, and in the next instant he was standing outside the ship’s protective barrier. The barrier had been interfering with his scan.

Wind and rain far beyond hurricane force slammed into him, but the raindrops never touched his body. A fine web of electric current burned them away first.

The next moment, a point of gold light lit deep in Tom’s pupils.

The glow spread quickly. His dark eyes slowly turned a pure, flawless gold, and a ring of tiny runes surfaced around his pupils before fading from view.

On the deck, the professors and students felt a crushing tightness in their chests, and their faces filled with even more fear. All they could see was Tom’s slight frame, yet that body gave off a pressure that terrified them. It was like being locked in the gaze of a fire dragon, magnified several dozen times.

Gold had always been the most iconic color of the gods. Gold stood for the sun, for holy light, for revelation. Gold was also the metal least prone to rust or fading, a symbol of eternity and immortality. That was why so many of a god’s defining traits were gold.

Once Tom’s pupils were completely taken over by gold, the human side of him was fully suppressed, and the traits of a god began to show.

This wasn’t a good sign. A true powerhouse should have perfect control of themselves. They shouldn’t let the strength of any particular stage, or any bloodline, sway their mood and personality. If it weren’t for special circumstances, Tom wouldn’t have wanted to end up like this either.

For days now he’d been following Mystryl’s instructions, trying to master the shaping of magic through reason and knowledge. But the harder he tried to control himself, the harder his squeezed-down talent and bloodline pushed back.

In that constant tug-of-war, the divine power of the Golden Apple had been fully inherited, and the divinity hidden in his Rayquaza bloodline had been stirred up and blended in with it. The divine aura in his body had shot up several dozen times over in an instant.

Talent and bloodline aside, he was now a minor Legend. A burst of divinity on this scale was more than Tom could hold in check, so every time he drew on it, his emotions were completely suppressed and he turned into a detached, higher-dimensional being.

The upside was that he could coat all his power in that divine aura, so one part of strength could play out as five, ten, or even more. His senses sharpened too, and so did his handling of all his talents.

Under normal conditions, magical sight couldn’t see the source of these anomalies. Now it was different.

The world in Tom’s eyes had changed.

The howling wind had become countless gray-white threads, and the rain had become dense falling points of light.

The magical barrier around the ship looked like a translucent screen, every flow of magic through it clearly traceable.

Farther out over the water, elements of every type were colliding wildly. Water elements were the most massive, filling nearly his whole field of view. Lightning poured down out of the clouds and drove into the sea along the waves.

By rights it should have dispersed quickly once it hit the water, but instead it was converging on a single point on the seabed, as if something down there were forcibly drawing it in.

These points, lines, and planes together wove an enormous net. The net was irregular, twisting toward one spot.

Tom didn’t rush to act. He pushed his senses further out. Soon he realized the disturbance on the surface was only a symptom, and the real problem was hidden much deeper.

His golden eyes turned toward the most abnormal spot.

"Found you."

He pointed a fingertip forward, and countless threads of light from the wind, the rain, and the clouds converged on it. First a tiny dot, then a ball of light, which kept swelling until it was bigger than Tom himself. Then he sent it crashing down at the sea.

A razor-sharp beam stabbed straight into the water, down into the unfathomable depths, and held for a full ten seconds or more before slowly fading.

On the New Mayflower, everyone noticed with delighted surprise that the moment the light appeared, the wind and waves over the sea eased off considerably, and the thunder in the sky quieted down at once.

Just as they thought Tom had solved the problem, the sea ahead suddenly bulged upward, and huge masses of water parted to either side.

A strange, mournful roar rolled across the waves.

A black shadow rose from the depths.

First came a rough, ridged back, then a neck armored in bone plates. Seawater streamed down its scales, churning white foam across the surface.

"Roooooar!"

Under the horrified eyes of the crowd, a colossal beast, so huge it should never have existed in this world, broke the surface and opened its bloody maw at them!

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