[**But I don't think it was a hallucination, so while Martha was asleep, I followed the direction of that voice to investigate. I found a door. I don't remember there being a door in the bedroom hallway—it looked like it led downward. Martha's house actually has a basement?**]
[**The door was locked. I tried an Unlocking Charm, but it didn't work. Some kind of magic was protecting it. Isn't Martha a Muggle-born witch? Why would her ancestral home have a magically sealed door? I didn't want to use anything more aggressive, or Martha might say I've turned into a crazy old man—she already thinks that anyway. I'll ask her about it tomorrow.**]
Cohen flipped back a page.
A mysterious, tightly locked door…
It had all the vibes of a suspense flick. Throw in something like "bank" or "time rewind," and it could fit right into a *Genius Club* script.
The next day's entry:
[**Martha says there's no basement in the house and no weird door in the bedroom hallway. There are only four doors in that corridor, but I swear I saw a fifth one last night. The strange thing is, when I dragged Martha to where that odd wooden door was, it was gone.**]
[**I'm guessing it only shows up at night—or when I can hear those voices—like one of those magical rooms at Hogwarts.**]
[**So I decided to camp out in the hallway all night. Martha thinks I'm wasting my time and says if I keep believing in hallucinations, she'll haul me off to St. Mungo's.**]
[**I'm not sick. I saw that door again today, but it only appeared for a few seconds. I yelled for Martha to come look, but it was like the door was躲着 us—dodging us. The second she showed up, it vanished again.**]
So what was behind that door?
Cohen was dying to know what Charleson had seen, so he started skimming ahead, ten lines at a time.
The door stayed locked. Charleson caught glimpses of it now and then, but Martha always missed it.
He tried everything to get it open—Blasting Charms, Smashing Charms, Dismantling Charms… The magic on that door was unreal. Even the wall should've crumbled, but the door didn't budge.
Martha hit her limit with Charleson's midnight explosions and dragged him to St. Mungo's for a month-long "tune-up."
For two months, Charleson didn't hear the strange roars of multiple beasts. He thought he was cured.
Until early November.
[**I'm back home. The door opened. I went inside. It's like a cellar—a narrow staircase leading down into pitch-black nothingness.**]
Charleson's handwriting lost its usual sharpness here. The words twisted, shaky with nerves or fear.
[**It's so dark in there, even spells couldn't light it up. I crept down the steps, and in the blackness, I saw a snake's head. I know this kind—it's a Horned Water Serpent. It's got horns, and there's a mirror-like gem on its forehead. They're supposed to come from the Americas. That gem's said to reflect the future.**]
[**It slithered toward me, the gem right in my face. I shouldn't have seen my reflection—it was too dark—but I did. And I saw other things too. Horrible things.**]
[**I saw Edward dead, lying alone in a snowy field, his face drained of color. Next to him was a twisted, terrifying black monster. And that woman from the Burke family, Rose—she was holding the black creature. She must've killed Edward to feed that thing.**]
[**There were other scenes too. Edward and Rose had a child—I memorized that face. But in the gem, I saw that child turn into a Dementor-like figure. It clicked: in the future, Edward would die at the hands of Rose and this kid. That black monster in the snow? It's their child.**]
[**Just as I was about to see more glimpses of the future, the gem's images vanished. The snake made a threatening noise—but what chilled me to the bone wasn't a hiss.**]
[**I heard a lion's roar. Why would a snake roar like a lion?**]
[**Then I saw it—behind the snake, a massive, furry black shadow with multiple glowing eyes glaring at me. It was a monster as big as the house. I couldn't even process it.**]
[**Before I could figure out what was happening, the snake lunged at me with its jaws wide open. I bolted back up the stairs. The basement reeked of sulfur—I could barely breathe.**]
[**After I got out, the door disappeared. But all I could think about was Edward lying dead in that snowy field. He's my only son—I can't let that woman and some unknown kid kill him.**]
[**I'm heading to Edward's place right now. I have to stop this.**]
Horned Water Serpent…
Cohen knew that creature, of course. It'd even been one of his top guesses when he'd wondered what kind of "snake relative" he might be tied to.
A magical horned snake—if Charleson's notes were right, the kind with a gem on its head was the most famous and rarest of all Horned Water Serpents. They had extra abilities: flight, invisibility, and prophecy.
But there's no way the basement just held a Horned Water Serpent. Charleson mentioned a huge, furry body and multiple eyes.
A Chimera fit the bill perfectly—a lion-headed, goat-bodied, snake-tailed multi-headed beast. The Silver Key's prophecy hadn't been wrong yet: human, nightmare, basilisk, Dementor, and Chimera. Those were the pieces of Cohen's bloodline.
That Chimera must've escaped from a lab and hidden here. But why *here*? Was it drawn by the bloodline scent of the "original Cohen Norton," one of the experiment's subjects?
So…
It seemed like Edward and Charleson had a massive misunderstanding because of this Chimera.
Charleson "saw" a fragment of the past and future. He thought Edward—who'd torn his soul to save Cohen—had died, so he'd desperately tried to stop Edward and Rose from adopting Cohen.
But Charleson got the timeline mixed up. It wasn't that adopting Cohen led to Edward lying half-dead in the snow. It was the other way around—Edward ripped his soul apart to patch Cohen up *first*, and *then* came the adoption.
That Chimera's snake head didn't even show the whole story—what a jerk!
Charleson just wanted to save his son—what a good guy!
The misunderstanding had dragged on way too long, though. Cohen was still debating whether to tell Edward about it. He didn't want Edward holding a grudge against Charleson forever. After all, Charleson only rejected Cohen because he thought Cohen would "kill Edward in the future."
(*End of Chapter*)