The Story so Far

File:Balthory.jpg
Each year, new mysteries and dangers inevitably arise to threaten the students of Hogwarts, each seemingly more perilous and labyrinthine than the last. Each major school-wide event is charted below.

## Year 1 (2016-2017): The Phantom’s Mists

By the time that 2016’s first years stepped off the boats and began to make their ways to Hogwarts, eighteen years had passed since the demise of Lord Voldemort—eighteen years of uneasy peace and tentative reconciliations that whilst perhaps less exuberantly celebrated than the first defeat of the most recent Dark Lord to entertain ambitions of conquest had been were nevertheless a time far more prosperous than the three years before them. Whilst the rebuilding of Hogwarts had proven to be a slow and difficult endeavour, one still not yet fully completed, the school enjoyed for those eighteen years a relative peace unbroken by the seemingly annual dangers that had cast a shadow over it during Harry Potter’s years at Hogwarts. These first years, however, quickly found that peace disturbed.

Throughout the year, a strange apparition known as Cyrus repeatedly targeted first-year students exclusively, appearing to be a ghost and yet capable of supernatural command of fire and cold that it used to fearsome effect, severely burning Slytherin Alex Lyons and attempting to do the same to several other students on various occasions as well as using fearsome powers of possession to puppet Calypso Casseo, taking her almost to the brink of death, and using Jesse Wellens as a pawn on one occasion to harm his fellow first-years.Whilst most early encounters with the entity were harrowing enough that the students involved were counted lucky to escape unscathed, as the year progressed, the Gryffindor student Laken Valentine decided to investigate the apparition personally, interviewing those who had encountered it and gathering clues. He was later joined by the Ravenclaw Medraut Prince, who invited Ivy Su to join the investigation despite her initial friction with Valentine.

Despite the investigation temporarily being a tad stalled due to Prince being taken out from the school by his family over Winter Break, things continued well enough for the first-years despite subsequent encounters with Cyrus. Over the remainder of the year, as well as the early weeks of the students’ second year, they discovered that Cyrus was the spirit of a magical missionary who sought to spread the way of British magical traditions and approaches to other nations. When he met his end abroad, slain by natives he’d offended by trespassing upon their sacred grounds, he found himself resurrected as a powerful spirit with capabilities clearly surpassing that of a typical ghost, for reasons as yet unclear. Once the spirit had been fully formed, it made its way to Hogwarts, targeting the first-years due to considering their unusual interests in exploring magic and the high number of foreigners amongst them as a sign that respect for traditional British magic was dwindling even in the school the spirit had once held so dear.

Having gained a deeper understanding of the apparition’s motives, the now much-larger group of first years determined to put a stop to Cyrus’ menace banded together and confronted him in the heights of the castle, ultimately talking down the entity when it was forced to consider the possibility that it had failed to kill students thus far due to subconscious reluctance rather than lack of opportunity, and exposed to fascinating new advances in magic made possibly only through atypical magical practises (Laken Valentine’s artificial magical arm). The controversial decision was made to allow Cyrus to stay on at the school as librarian, with several in the group deeply sceptical of this but ultimately outnumbered by those either sympathetic towards Cyrus’ tragic fate or simply fascinated by his strange and unusual powers.

## Year 2 (2017-2018): The Dracula Deception

The school was relatively peaceful for a brief time following Cyrus’ change of heart, leaving the students and staff some time to attend to their own interests, relationships and escapades. It was on one such escapade that the then-Charms Professor, Morgan Seward, unwittingly set a chain of events into motion that would once again throw the school into chaos and unrest. During an exploration of the Forbidden Forest, Seward unearthed a hidden cave containing an immense and deadly sea serpent resting in a mysterious lake of glowing blue water who she engaged in battle. Despite the serpent defeating her, the witch woke in the now-drained lakebed with no company save for the bones of the apparently slain serpent.

This was the first strange encounter to occur, but by no means the last or most terrible—only a few weeks later, the Head Boy of the school, Brian Badgerworth, was slain in grisly circumstances by an unknown infiltrator, spurring a flurry of investigations from concerned members of the student body, as well as the Ministry, who for some time stationed Aurors around the castle in order to investigate the attack and prevent repeat occurrences from taking place.

The attack was witnessed by two first-year students, Christine Marilyn and Audrey Wolfrum, as well as the Herbology Professor Amelia Mahoney. Whilst Badgerworth was able to distract the murderer long enough to buy the lives of the other witnesses, Christine imbibed a vial of mysterious blue water offered to her by the assailant before his hostile intentions became fully known.

A variety of student-led investigations took place over the course of the year, many of which were spearheaded by a newly formed Detective’s Club comprised of a number of concerned younger students. The club started with Laken, Christine and Audrey, as well as a yearmate of Laken’s by the name of Meryl Webb, but rapidly expanded to contain a number of other students including Amir Williams, Calypso Casseo, Ivy Su, Jem Hapunda, Marilyn Ambers, Martyn O’Maloney, Orwell Galilei and Soufyan Potfoy.

During these investigations, the club came to the conclusion that Badgerworth’s murderer was none other than the infamous vampire Vlad Drakul, better known as Dracula. Meanwhile, multiple students found themselves infected by the same magical water that Christine imbibed earlier, rendering them apparently vulnerable to the murderer’s control, and strangely misshapen creatures formed of clay with the strange water for blood began to spill forth from caverns beneath the forest and harm those who would stumble into the Forest unprotected.

Whilst the students investigated the murder, Morgan Seward found herself in a tense alliance with the serpent she believed she had slain, which had apparently instead infested her mind. Calling itself Sthenis, the Serpent Beneath, the spirit claimed to be in conflict with Dracula and willing to provide useful, albeit, ruthless, commands to help Seward put an end to the threat—including having her recover and forge a spear from the bones of a relative of Elizabeth Báthory, a believed vampire of great power whose remains were claimed by the serpent to be capable of destroying Dracula.

At the same time, Sthenis made contact with the Slytherin Balthazar Maxim and the Herbology Professor Amelia Mahoney, entering similar pacts with both of them. Maxim in particular performed several tasks for the entity, going so far as to surrender his own flesh to the creation of a magical construct of clay, collect unicorn blood and rob a museum alongside Calypso Casseo to recover certain magical reagents that Sthenis promised would be crucial to their own magical growth and development.

Meanwhile, the Detectives Club found themselves with a variety of internal issues, some of which they did not even recognise. Calypso was exposed as a thief, whilst Audrey left the group during the same event without sharing that she herself had been contacted by Drakul. Laken Valentine was hospitalised after being attacked by the murderer and harvested for blood, and the group relations found themselves rather strained for a time. Meanwhile, Ivy Su began to experiment in secret with the cursed water, using it to water a Devil’s Snare.

Even in these crises, however, the students were able to progress and managed at some personal cost to discover Drakul’s lair. After recovering Seward’s spear, the group, assisted by Headmaster Newman, attacked the lair together and confronted Drakul and his new servant, a plant abomination created from stolen magical plants and inspired by Ivy’s earlier reckless experimentations. Although the group were able to impale Drakul on the bone spear, they quickly found that they had been deeply misled.

The entity they knew as Drakul and Sthenis had been the same entity all along, the shade of Elizabeth Báthory, lying dormant in the sea serpent Seward had disturbed at the start of the year. The clay mannequins had been earlier abortive attempts for the witch to reclaim her own body, and the bone spear, Laken’s blood and Balthazar’s sacrificed flesh proved the cornerstones of a resurrection scheme that allowed her to produce a new form for herself. As Newman battled the plant monster and the students found themselves distracted by a magically empowered Balthazar, Báthory escaped and disappeared to parts unknown. Seward’s body had been the murder tool, her possession by ‘Sthenis’ rendering her the perfect catspaw.

The castle was now free of Badgerworth’s killer, and Seward resigned (or was fired) shortly after—but despite the immediate danger having passed, the school year ended without Báthory being brought to justice, or the details of her mysterious immortality having been fully unearthed...

## Year 3 (2017-2018): The Shadows of Hogwarts

In Year 3 of Model Hogwarts, the castle came under siege by the attack of a gigantic shadow amalgamation. The attack began in the dungeons, and it rampaged its way through the castle, splitting off into two separate creatures and injuring students and teachers alike. While it lashed out at many, injuring others didn’t seem to be its intent, but rather it was trying to find something. On it’s search it ended up washing over many of the students, the figure phasing through their bodies and leaving pieces of itself behind within them.

After much destruction, the students and staff were able to work together to destroy the monster by exposing it to sunlight, but that was only the beginning of what was to come.

Following the attack, many who were involved were able to relay some important bits of information:
The amalgamations were not just shadow beasts, but made of people, many people. While not exactly souls or spirits, whatever happened to them was traumatizing enough to burn impressions of them behind, which all managed to gather up to form a single entity.

Those who had been touched by the monster were each left with a small black stone that could empower three of their !casts before the power it possessed was extinguished, but most importantly those who received them spent some time hearing voices afterwards. Each person had their own specific voice that spoke to them about Hogwarts and what happened to form the shadow amalgamations. The voices all belonged to former children and students who had vanished while they were at Hogwarts, part of their spirits trapped within the shadows until they were able to free themselves from it by attaching to the students during the chaos.

With how limited the power was of the children, they could speak with those they possessed, but not for long periods, nor could they offer much information. Even if much of their information was useless, the companionship they offered to those they were bound to was not, and their presence left lasting impressions on the hosts they inhabited. Beyond just talking with their hosts, they would make requests of those touched by them, asking to see certain parts of the castle, or to live vicariously through their hosts daily lives.

In the end, each spiritual impression was able to find release, either by the satisfaction of being able to "live" within Hogwarts for a little while longer, or by the host fulfilling certain criteria for them, like finding a certain object, or visiting a special place. The former students all left with gratitude, but the parting was bittersweet for many, and many of the hosts found themselves missing their odd friends once they were gone.

After that things grew silent, with no further incidents involving the shadows... for a while, anyway.