Yeah, that's right, Harry Potter. You ain't ready for whatever I've cooked up. I'll tell ya that.
...
High atop the mountains, in a land most of the world still dismissed as myth, a single tower of black stone pierced the clouds. It was the heart of the Lostlands, the capital stronghold of the Bloodthorne dynasty, and even the wind seemed to move more carefully around its walls.
Within those halls walked a figure who looked less like a servant and more like something that had stepped out of an older, crueler age. His face was all sharp angles and pale perfection, jaw cut clean as a blade, eyes the colour of winter ice. Long white hair fell in a controlled cascade down his back. The most striking features, however, were the ears — long, tapered, unmistakably inhuman — and the twin black streaks that ran from the tips of those ears down across his cheekbones like permanent tears of ink. This was Talion, last of the High Elves, and the only one of his kind still walking the earth.
His clothing was deliberately plain: the dark, impeccable uniform of a butler. To anyone who still remembered the old histories, the sight would have been obscene. High Elves had once ruled continents. They did not serve. And yet here he was, moving with silent precision toward a pair of towering double doors at the end of the corridor. Ancient runes crawled across the wood, wards so dense that a team of veteran curse-breakers would have needed months to unravel them. Talion did not even slow. A single, almost lazy flick of his fingers and the runes folded in on themselves like silk. The doors swung open on a gust of cold air.
The office beyond was a monument to a violent life. Trophy cups from long-forgotten competitions lined the shelves. Mounted heads of creatures that no longer existed in the wider world stared down from the walls. Medals, broken wands, and the polished bones of old enemies occupied every available surface. At the centre of it all sat an old man behind an ornate desk of black oak, quill moving steadily across parchment. He did not look up. Drago was intent on finishing the sentence in front of him, yet still asked, without lifting his eye from the page, "What is it this time, Talion?"
The High Elf did not answer immediately. He stood in perfect stillness, watching the old man work. He knew better than to speak while that particular quill was still moving. This was no ordinary wizard. This was Drago Bloodvist, the man who had once faced Grindelwald in the frozen ruins of Stalingrad and walked away. The white beard was neatly trimmed, the remaining eye sharp beneath a heavy brow, and a broad black eyepatch covered the ruin of the left side of his face. A single scar ran from beneath the patch down into the beard like a pale lightning bolt.
Only when the final scratch of the quill faded did Talion incline his head.
"Apologies for the interruption, Lord Bloodvist. I have delayed this conversation longer than I should have."
Drago set the quill down with a soft click and finally looked up. The formality earned him a tired wave of one scarred hand.
"Enough of that. Behind these doors it's just Drago. You know that."
"Of course, Drago."
"Then tell me why you felt the need to dismantle my door."
Talion's face remained a mask of polite emptiness, but something in the set of his shoulders shifted by a fraction.
"It concerns His Grace."
The change in the old man was immediate. The war-hero hardness softened into something closer to fear. He leaned forward, the single visible eye narrowing.
"Is the lad all right?"
"There is no need for alarm. We finished his formal studies for the morning. He is currently in the forest below with Bruce and the others."
Drago exhaled, the tension leaving his shoulders in a slow roll. "Good. Still, send Oreius to keep an eye on him when you leave. I sleep better knowing someone with sense is nearby."
"It will be done."
"Now." Drago steepled his fingers. "What actually troubles you?"
Talion was silent for a long moment, as though weighing how much truth the old man required.
"Lucian is not well," he said at last. "Not in body. In spirit. You know as well as I that he is far older than his years. That maturity has become a wall. He has no true companions of his own age. The children of the noble houses are instructed to befriend him. He knows it. He feels the difference."
Drago's expression turned grim. He had watched the same distance grow in the boy ever since the accident that had left his sister in a coma and a jagged lightning scar across Lucian's face.
"We've spoken of this. We cannot force friendship into existence. Manufactured companions would only make the isolation worse."
"I am aware." Talion's voice never rose, never warmed. "Which is why I recommend an immediate transfer to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Scottish Highlands."
Drago stared at him as though the High Elf had begun speaking in tongues.
"Excuse me?"
"Lucian has made unprecedented progress in the ancient arts, particularly the blood magics of his line. Yet he shows little interest in the foundational charms and transfigurations taught at ordinary institutions. Hogwarts would force him to engage with those disciplines among peers who are not trained from birth to defer to him."
"If basic spellwork is the concern, we have a university here. Or I can bring in private tutors."
Talion shook his head once, a precise, economical motion.
"He is not behind. In truth he is already performing at a level most students reach only in their fifth or sixth year. The problem is the opposite. His other talents place him so far beyond his age that the ordinary curriculum feels like busywork. He needs friction. He needs to be among people who do not already know his name and bloodline."
Drago's remaining eye narrowed. "You know what the boy thinks of Hogwarts. Even if I agreed, you would have to convince him yourself."
Talion's hands came together in a soft, decisive clap.
"Then it is settled. Lucian will attend Hogwarts when the term begins."
There was a sharp crack of displaced air. The High Elf was simply gone.
Drago lurched to his feet. "Wait—! That is not what I said!"
Only the gently swinging doors answered him. The old warrior stood there for a long moment, then sank back into his chair with a heavy, defeated sigh. He pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward him and began writing in a tight, controlled hand. A list of contingencies. Preparations. Political considerations. And at the very bottom, underlined twice, a single grim reminder to have the medical wing on standby in case Talion's powers of persuasion proved less effective than the High Elf believed.
Some distance below the stronghold, the forest stretched in every direction like a living sea of green and shadow. Two figures moved through it in companionable silence: Talion, and the centaur Oreius, whose flanks were the deep red of old blood and whose eyes held the cold clarity of starlight.
They had spoken only once before leaving the castle gates. The rest of the journey had passed without words, the only sounds the soft thud of hooves and the distant cries of things that did not exist in the wider world.
It was Oreius who finally broke the quiet.
"Ask what you came to ask, ancient one. If you wait much longer I will be gone and you will be left alone with your thoughts."
Talion did not break stride. His voice, when it came, remained level, yet the questions left him in a rare, almost human rush.
"The stars. What do they say of His Grace? What waits for him if he leaves for Europe? Will he be safe? Is this the correct path?"
Oreius stopped so abruptly that Talion was forced to halt as well. The centaur turned, looking down at the High Elf with an expression that might have been pity on a less severe face.
"The stars speak of prophecies, of dangers, and of wars that have not yet found their names. But they cannot show us a future that has not been chosen. Until His Grace decides whether he will leave these lands, the sky remains silent on the matter."
He moved forward again. After a time Talion matched his pace, the tight coil of worry in his chest loosening by the smallest degree. The centaur's words carried the cold ring of truth. Worrying about paths not yet taken was a mortal habit, and Talion had not survived the ages by indulging mortal habits.
They found Lucian in a clearing where the canopy opened enough to let shafts of gold-green light spill through. The boy sat cross-legged on a flat stone, sleeves rolled to the elbows, a thick leather-bound journal open across his knees. Around him the forest was anything but quiet.
Bruce, the Nundu, lay sprawled like a living shadow at the edge of the clearing. A Wampus cat the size of a small horse paced restless circles behind him, amber eyes never still. Two colossal shapes rested further back beneath the trees — basilisks, brother and sister, each longer than a train, their emerald scales dull with age and power. They regarded Lucian with the calm affection of family. A Lethifold drifted in slow, contented loops above the boy's head like a living cloak. Somewhere deeper in the trees the ground trembled under the distant weight of something far more ancient that sometimes spoke to Lucian in dreams older than the Lostlands themselves.
Lucian did not look up when Talion and Oreius entered the clearing. He finished the sentence he was writing, closed the journal with care, and only then raised his eyes. The Inky lightning-bolt scar that cut across the left side of his face caught the light like a mirror.
"You're both have the faces you wear when you're about to ask me something I'm going to dislike," he said. His voice carried the clear American cadence that always sounded slightly out of place in the high halls of the stronghold. "So you might as well say it before Bruce decides one of you looks like lunch."
The Nundu gave a low, rumbling sound that might have been a laugh.
Talion inclined his head. "Your Grace. We have concluded your formal studies for the season. There is a proposal concerning the next stage of your education."
Lucian's expression did not change, but something behind his eyes cooled.
"Hogwarts," he said flatly. The boy wasn't asking.
Drago had been right. The boy already knew.
Oreius shifted his weight, hooves sinking slightly into the soft earth. "The stars remain silent until you choose, little king. But the choice itself is coming whether you wish it or not."
Lucian looked past them both, toward the distant towers of the stronghold that had been his entire world. For a moment the playful edge he sometimes wore was completely gone. In its place was the quiet, tired understanding of someone who had already carried too much for his age.
"She wanted me to go," he said at last. The words were soft, almost private. "Before the accident. She said the castle still remembers us. That it would be good for me to see it with my own eyes."
Neither Talion nor Oreius spoke.
Lucian closed his fingers around the small locket that rested against his chest — the pocket-watch case that held an entire menagerie of impossible creatures. When he looked up again the mask was back in place: calm, faintly amused, already three steps ahead of the conversation.
"Fine," he said. "I'll go. But I'm not wearing the uniform every day, I'm keeping Bruce and the others close, and if one more pureblood starts lecturing me about blood purity I'm going to introduce them to the concept of a firearm."
Talion's face remained carved from ice, yet something that might have been satisfaction flickered behind his eyes.
"As you wish, Your Grace."
Somewhere high above the canopy, the mountains themselves seemed to exhale.