The air in the Great Hall had been thick with the murmur of a thousand conversations, students winding down after another day of studies.
E.g. ：I still cringe thinking about my lunchbox exploding in the cafeteria.
- 1、The Malfoy Legacy: A Burden of Blood
- 2、The Awakening of Varkos
- 3、A Desperate Battle of Wills
- 4、The Lingering Shadow
Then, the world shattered.
A guttural roar ripped through the high arches, a sound so primal it vibrated in their very bones.
From seemingly nowhere, a monstrous black dragon materialized, scales like obsidian shards, eyes glowing with an unholy, internal fire.
It wasn’t just physical destruction; a wave of pure, agonizing despair emanated from the beast, sweeping through the hall.
Chairs splintered, tables overturned, ancient tapestries ripped from their moorings as the dragon thrashed.
Students screamed, a high-pitched chorus of terror, scrambling for cover under collapsing stone and flying debris.
Professors, wand in hand, were frozen for a critical second, their faces a mixture of disbelief and horror.
This was no ordinary beast; its movements were not directed by predatory instinct but by a frantic, tortured urgency.
It wasn't attacking, not truly, but its immense power caused widespread devastation as it lunged, cried out, and clawed at the air as if trying to escape an invisible cage.
Amidst the swirling chaos and panicked shouts, one figure moved against the tide of terrified students.
Draco Malfoy.
His aristocratic features were contorted, not in his usual sneer, but in a mask of raw, visceral fear.
His silver-blonde hair was disheveled, robes askew, and his usually composed posture was replaced by a desperate, lunging gait.
He struggled for breath, his chest heaving, but it wasn't from exertion; it was from a profound, emotional anguish.
He pushed past petrified first-years, past stunned prefects, his eyes locked on the behemoth of scales and shadow.
As he neared the dragon, its tormented roars seemed to intensify, and a chilling echo, almost a shriek, emanated from deep within the beast.
Malfoy reached out, his hand trembling uncontrollably, not with a wand for combat, but an open palm.
He pressed his hand against the dragon’s dark flank, seemingly ignoring the danger.
A faint, sickly green light flickered from his fingertips, pulsing weakly against the dragon’s scales.
He began to whisper, his voice hoarse, strained, barely audible above the dragon’s keening.
"Varkos..." he breathed, the name ancient, alien, filled with a terrible significance.
"Varkos, cease… please… remember our pact."
It wasn't a spell of healing, as some might have assumed.
It was an incantation of desperation, an attempt to re-bind, to control, to suppress a force that had ripped free.
The Malfoy Legacy: A Burden of Blood
The Malfoy family history, though publically boasting of pureblood prestige and political influence, held far darker secrets.
Whispers of ancient, forbidden magic clung to their lineage, tales of pacts made in shadowed times.
Generations spoke of a 'Blood-Debt,' a powerful, symbiotic entity bound to their ancestral line.
This entity, known only as the Shadow-scale or "Varkos" in ancient tongue, was not a mere familiar or a pet.
It was a fragment of primordial chaos, a living magical force that manifested as a dragon.
The Shadow-scale was the source of much of the Malfoys’ immense, often unsettling, power.
But it came at a price.
It required constant suppression, a delicate balance maintained through generational rituals and a unique blood-magic only the eldest Malfoy could wield.
The dragon’s wild rampages were not attacks but symptoms.
Symptoms of imbalance, of pain, of a desperate struggle for release from its magical cage.
Or worse, a frantic reaction to an external threat that resonated with its ancient being.
Draco, having recently inherited the full weight of the Malfoy legacy upon his father's mysterious incapacitation, had felt the stirrings of Varkos.
He had felt the pressure building, the ancient power yearning to break free from his control.
He had dismissed it as stress, a result of the war's lingering shadows and his own internal turmoil.
He had been wrong.
The Awakening of Varkos
The disturbance had begun subtly, a creeping coldness in the dungeons, a faint, metallic scent in the air.
Then, a sudden, powerful surge of dark magic had pulsed through Hogwarts, a magical anomaly he couldn't identify.
It was a resonance, a discordant note that had struck the ancient chords of Varkos.
The containment, painstakingly maintained for centuries, had snapped.
The Shadow-scale, a manifestation of the collective Malfoy power and burden, had ripped itself from the ethereal plane it inhabited, appearing physically in the school.
Its cries were not rage, but agony, confusion, and a terrible hunger for the source of the disturbance.
Draco felt its raw emotions like a branding iron on his soul.
He felt its confusion, its pain, and a primal, overwhelming urge to find and consume the encroaching magical anomaly.
He knew if it wasn't re-contained, if it wasn't brought back under his desperate control, the truth of his family's dark pact would be exposed.
But more terrifyingly, Varkos, unbound, could unravel reality itself or consume him entirely, its host and keeper.
A Desperate Battle of Wills
Teachers had now rallied, spells of stunning and binding flying towards the black behemoth.
"Stop!" Draco screamed, his voice cracking, as a powerful Stupefy hit the dragon, causing it to thrash violently, sending a wave of concussive force through the hall.
