There are wars fought with spells, and there are wars fought with systems.
This was both.
---
The Calm Before the Siege
Hogwarts was too quiet.
After the anomalies of the previous night, the castle seemed to hold its breath. Portraits whispered nervously in empty halls. Staircases shifted only when watched. Even the ghosts lingered at the edges of rooms, as though the walls themselves were listening.
To the younger students, it felt like the worst had passed. To the professors, it felt like a storm's eye.
And to Eric Dillan, it was nothing but delay.
In the workshop of Salazar Slytherin, the Inner Circle stood gathered around the pulsing orb of the leyline map. Ailis pressed her hands against the crystalline surface, eyes shut.
"The flows are wrong," she whispered. "They're fraying. Like harp strings pulled too tight. If one snaps—"
"They all do," Regulus finished, voice calm but eyes sharp.
Eric studied the map, fingers steepled under his chin. He said nothing. But in his mind, every line was already a battlefield.
---
Dumbledore's Warning
That evening, as curfew fell, Eric found himself summoned—not to the Headmaster's office, but to the empty Great Hall.
The long tables were gone. Only Dumbledore sat in the center, hands folded, expression unreadable.
"Severus," Dumbledore greeted softly. "You've drawn the storm closer."
Eric tilted his head. "Better it hits me than the children upstairs."
"Perhaps," Dumbledore mused. His blue eyes glinted. "But storms are not selective. They do not strike only the guilty."
He leaned forward. His voice lowered.
"These are not enemies you can duel. They are not men, nor monsters, but equations older than spellcraft. They will not stop until they overwrite you."
Eric met his gaze with measured calm. "Then I'll overwrite them first."
For a moment, silence stretched. Then Dumbledore's mouth quirked into something between sorrow and admiration.
"If you truly mean to anchor this storm, you will risk everything. Including yourself."
Eric allowed the faintest smile. "I already have."
---
The First Breach
It came at midnight.
The Astronomy Tower shuddered as stone peeled open—not shattered, not cracked, but rewritten. Sections of wall dissolved into flickering white static, revealing a void that screamed without sound.
From it stepped the first Manifestations.
They were faceless giants of shifting geometry—limbs that folded into angles, torsos that reflected light wrong, edges that shimmered with broken equations.
A prefect screamed. Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and a cadre of Aurors hurled spells at the intruders.
Nothing held. Charms rebounded twisted. Transfigurations warped mid-air. Even curses shattered into harmless fragments.
The Manifestations walked forward unhindered.
Hogwarts was no longer a school. It was a test chamber.
---
Eric's Counter-Design
The Inner Circle arrived with him at the breach, robes snapping in the unnatural wind. Nemesis flared on Eric's arm, its dragonbone plates glowing faint black-gold.
"Form lattice!" Eric barked.
At once:
Lisette bent reality with her will, transmuting stone into mercury, mercury into fire, fire into salt, destabilizing the constructs' balance.
Cyrus scrawled furiously on parchment, his ink sketching attack arcs before they happened. The Circle dodged before the blows landed.
Ailis dropped to her knees, channeling leyline streams into stabilizers—green light flooding the floor beneath them like roots anchoring a tree.
Regulus snapped orders, orchestrating timing: "Three steps back—now! Shield up—pivot left!"
And Eric—Eric chained thirty spells into a lattice formation, his wand singing with heat. Spells bent and looped, feeding paradox errors into the constructs.
The first Manifestation faltered, limbs distorting, before collapsing into static.
For the first time, the Originals bled.
---
Hogwarts as a War Zone
The battle spread like fire. Staircases bent into arenas, portraits screamed warnings, and ghosts flickered in and out of centuries, caught in unstable loops.
Students were herded underground, some crying, others peeking back in awe as flashes of impossible light tore the sky.
From the eyes of the professors, the sight was worse.
Flitwick watched Eric cast not spells, but structures—chains of logic so alien they bent dueling magic into new forms. "Merlin's bones," he whispered. "He's weaponizing Arithmancy itself."
McGonagall's lips thinned. "That boy… that boy is no boy at all."
Dumbledore only watched, ancient eyes unreadable.
---
The Originals Speak
Mid-battle, the Manifestations froze.
Then the voices came.
They did not speak aloud. They spoke through everything—through stone, through bone, through the blood in one's veins.
"You design dominion from scraps of decay."
"We were the First Equations. The frame beneath your world."
"You are not Architect. You are plagiarism."
Every student in Hogwarts heard it. Every professor. Every ghost.
The Inner Circle faltered. Ailis stared at Eric, eyes wide. "Are they right? Are you just… copying them?"
Eric's gaze sharpened like steel. "Then I'll be the copy that improves the original."
And with that, he unleashed Nemesis in full.
---
The Architect's Gambit
He sliced open his own arm. Blood hissed on the gauntlet, runes igniting. He began coding spellwork directly into his bloodstream, each heartbeat a pulse of logic and sacrifice.
Nemesis roared with black-gold light. Eric raised his wand and carved an Equation of Reversal into the air.
The sky split.
Magic inverted. The Manifestations collapsed, sucked screaming into their own rift. Hogwarts shuddered as reality sealed itself, stone folding back into shape.
Silence fell.
Eric dropped to his knees, blood streaming from his eyes, veins glowing faintly with burned runes.
He had won—but the cost carved itself into his flesh.
---
Aftermath
The professors stood in shock. Students whispered rumors before the echoes of battle had even faded.
"Snape's magic is terrifying."
"No, it wasn't Snape—it was something else. Something older."
"He's not one of us anymore."
McGonagall said nothing. Flitwick trembled. Dumbledore's expression carried no triumph—only sorrow.
Later, in private, the Inner Circle broke apart in their reactions:
Regulus swore loyalty deeper than ever: "If you can do this, I'll follow you anywhere."
Lisette's fascination burned hotter: "You rewrote reality itself. I want to learn how."
Ailis looked at him with fear: "You're bleeding yourself into your code. That's not brilliance—that's suicide."
Cyrus simply drew in silence. His parchment showed Hogwarts in flames, Eric standing alone in the ashes.
---
Closing
Atop the Tower, still pale and bleeding, Eric looked over the scarred horizon.
"They call me plagiarism," he whispered to the night.
"Good."
His fingers tightened around Nemesis.
"Then I'll improve the design."
Lightning cracked across the horizon. Not natural lightning—coded lightning, written into the very air.
The first war was over.
The real one had only begun.