The lake-glow of early dawn filtered through the dungeon windows as Richard stirred, casting his bed in a muted shimmer of green and grey. The castle, still wrapped in slumber, felt ancient and watchful, its breath slow, its walls cool with pre-morning calm.
He rose in silence, movements fluid and deliberate. First came stretching, measured flexes of limbs and spine to wake his body without shock. Then breathing: four counts in, four counts held, four counts out. His mind settled into focus, not sharp or eager, but balanced. Grounded. He moved to the washroom, brisk and efficient beneath icy water that sharpened the senses, steam curling like thoughts left unspoken. His robes, already pressed and laid out from the night before, slid over him like a second skin.
By the time he left the dormitory, the only sound was the faint ripple of water pressing against the submerged walls of the Slytherin common room. The green lanterns still burned low, casting reflections like falling leaves across the polished stone. No one else stirred.
The corridors beyond the common room were a study in shadow and stone. Richard walked with silent steps, not prowling but mapping, testing each route for its reliability, its risks. He took a path he hadn't before, ascending gradually through a side stair that curved tighter than the main ones. The steps here were narrower and uneven in their rise, with a line of candle sconces that lit only when he passed.
He paused at a tapestry of a kelpie dragging a fisherman into a murky river. As he watched, the fisherman surfaced, gasping, and the kelpie rolled its gleaming eyes in annoyance. The motion looped with uncanny smoothness. Richard made note of the timestamp: it reset every twenty-two seconds.
He found a high alcove with a narrow window that overlooked the greenhouses. Mist was still curling around the glass domes, and the first hints of sunlight barely stirred the soil inside. He studied the view for several minutes. The castle wasn't just built; it had grown, like ivy, layered, strange, intentional. Its secrets felt old enough to be alive.
When he returned to the Slytherin dormitory to collect his schoolbag, the day had begun to stir. The torches had brightened. Somewhere above, a bell chimed faintly. The world was starting to turn.
Inside the room, Colin blinked blearily at him from beneath a mound of blankets, his hair a tangled mess.
"Do you ever sleep in?" he croaked.
Richard met his gaze and replied with a faint smile, his tone amused but mild.
"Only when there's nothing worth staying up for."
Colin groaned and pulled a pillow over his head.
Richard slung his satchel over one shoulder and stepped back into the hall. He moved like a shadow, not out of secrecy, but because he didn't yet know who was listening, and he hadn't finished learning what they all might be worth.
The Transfiguration classroom felt older than the castle itself, older even than the stories whispered into dormitory shadows. Its walls were heavy with age, streaked with soot from torches long burned out, its vaulted ceiling carved with swirling runes that gleamed faintly in the morning light. Ancient brass inlays lined the floor like invisible boundaries, and chalk dust clung to the floorboards, floating occasionally when the light struck just right. The entire room hummed with a disciplined stillness, a place where time felt thinned and raw, where even idle conversation hesitated at the threshold.
A hush fell as the class entered, Slytherins filing in with watchful glances, Gryffindors with shoulders squared as if expecting battle. The old rivalry had already infected the first years, sparking tension that coiled like a serpent under the surface. Students avoided sitting too close to one another unless forced.
At the front of the room stood Professor Albus Dumbledore, still decades from his eventual renown, but already a presence unto himself. His suit was deep violet today, edged in black, and they whispered like old silk when he moved. His brown hair shimmered under the torchlight, and his half-moon spectacles caught faint glints of gold. He stood tall, though never rigid, less a man holding power and more a man who had long since made peace with it.
He didn't greet them with theatrics or humour, only a calm, measured welcome.
"Transfiguration," he said, voice low and magnetic, "is the art of alteration, of reshaping matter with clarity, precision, and unwavering will. It is not flashy. It is not forgiving. It is magic in its purest, most exacting form."
He paced slowly as he spoke, hands loosely folded behind his back. The room leaned forward.
"Intent is your compass. Willpower, your hammer. Focus… your chisel. Without all three, you will create accidents, not miracles."
He turned with the quiet surety of someone who had done this a hundred times.
"Today," he said, and with a flick of his wand, a small wooden matchbox soared gently through the air, "you will turn this," it opened, spilling matchsticks across their desks, "into a needle. You may begin."
The room shifted from silence to tense murmuring as wands were raised. The faint smell of ozone and wood shavings filled the air. Muted sparks flickered. Someone's matchstick twitched, then sizzled and blackened.
Across the room, a Gryffindor boy named Thorne cursed under his breath as his wand jolted sharply, the tip crackling. His matchstick caught fire. The flames vanished with a snap from Dumbledore's fingers, and Thorne slumped, his frustration plain.
Gryffindors were loud about their failures. Slytherins were quieter. Richard noted this as he kept his hand steady.
His wand traced a clean, practised arc, no wasted movement, no flair. The matchstick before him quivered slightly, then elongated, thinning, gleaming faintly along one edge. It was not perfect; the tip was still a shade too round, and the wood grain was faintly visible, but it was unmistakably a needle in progress.
"Excellent, Mr. Magus. 5 points to Slytherin," Dumbledore said, looking up from a parchment he was inscribing upon. "Just a little more precision."
Richard nodded once, acknowledging the feedback without reacting to the praise.
Then, he turned his attention, not to his own work, but to Colin beside him, whose wand was trembling at the wrong angle.
"Grip lower," Richard said in a low voice, quiet enough not to draw attention. "And keep your focus in the centre, not the edges, expand outward."
Colin adjusted, exhaled slowly, and tried again. The second attempt was better. A thin, curved sliver of silver shimmered into view.
"Almost," Richard added, before glancing to his other side. A Gryffindor girl, Elspeth Rookwood, was biting her lip, her hand tense.
"You're bracing too hard," Richard said gently. "Anchor your thumb under the wand. Less strain. Focus on the image of the needle in your head."
She blinked at him in surprise, clearly uncertain whether to accept help from a Slytherin. But she obeyed. On her next try, the matchstick stiffened into a needle's shape, rough, but whole.
She turned slightly. "Thanks."
He nodded again, but said nothing more.
By the end of class, the scent of the room had faded, replaced by quiet pride and the occasional groan of disappointment. Several students had succeeded. More had failed. Richard's needle gleamed fully formed, now metallic and clean, a stitch of silver against the wood grain desk.
Dumbledore made his rounds slowly. When he reached Richard, he paused only a moment.
"Understanding is one thing, Mr. Magus. Sharing it… is quite another."
Richard didn't blink. "We learn more by teaching."
A faint gleam flickered behind the professor's spectacles.
"Indeed."
As the bell rang, signalling the end of class, the students stood and shuffled out. Some looked exhausted, others annoyed. Elspeth glanced back at Richard once as she left.
Colin leaned over. "You should've just perfected yours."
Richard slid his wand into his robes. "Helping you helped me more."
Colin frowned. "How's that?"
But Richard only smiled faintly and walked toward the door.
The lesson, after all, was about transformation.
And Richard Magus understood precisely what he was transforming.
The Charms classroom sat higher in the castle, and unlike the heavy gloom of the dungeons or the stern stillness of Transfiguration, it felt almost airy. Sunlight filtered through tall, arched windows that had been flung open to admit the crisp breath of early autumn. Dust motes drifted lazily in shafts of light, and the polished stone floor reflected more sky than ceiling.
Professor Bristlecone entered with a brisk energy, his every movement a flicker of enthusiasm barely restrained by his wiry frame. His robes flared as he moved, and he spoke as if everything was part of a joke only he had the punchline to.
"Welcome, welcome!" he sang, as if announcing a performance. "Today we begin with one of the most elegant and misunderstood branches of magic!"
His wand danced midair, trailing sparks that formed the words Wingardium Leviosa in shimmering script. "Intention! Clarity! Precision! You are not fighting your feather, you are inviting it to dance. Let's begin."
Ravenclaw and Slytherin, two houses with very different reputations, shared the room. Where Gryffindors might have charged headfirst into the spell, the Ravenclaws and Slytherins approached it like a duel of patience and focus. There were no wild outbursts here, just narrowed eyes, flicks of wand, and quiet corrections.
Richard took his seat near the centre of the room, beside Malcolm and across from a quiet Ravenclaw boy named Thomas Belby, whose sharp cheekbones and ink-stained fingertips marked him as someone more used to reading than wandwork.
Feathers were distributed. Bristlecone demonstrated again with flair, his own feather soaring effortlessly upward, twirling once before settling back down.
The room filled with the soft murmur of students repeating the incantation. Feathers shifted slightly. Some trembled. A few rolled over listlessly. One burst into sparks, much to the embarrassment of its owner.
Richard held his wand loosely between his fingers, rolled his shoulder once to settle into posture, and flicked it just so. "Wingardium Leviosa."
His feather rose, steady and smooth, hovering half a foot above the desk. He didn't grin. Didn't call attention to it. He guided it gently downward again, then set his wand aside for a moment.
"Was that your first try?" Malcolm asked, frowning at his own unmoving feather.
"Second," Richard replied simply. "Try angling your wand slightly lower. You're overextending the arc."
Malcolm grunted but adjusted his motion. It didn't rise, but it twitched, his first reaction all lesson. "Huh."
Across from him, Thomas's brow furrowed as he muttered the incantation again. The feather wobbled, then slumped like a sigh.
"You're gripping too tightly," Richard said across the table, his tone light, not instructional. "Let the wand guide the magic, don't force it."
Thomas glanced at him skeptically but tried again. This time, the feather rose in a jerking, uncertain fashion. Still, it rose.
"That's better," Richard said, nodding once.
Professor Bristlecone weaved between desks like a conductor between instruments. He stopped briefly at their table, watching the lifted feathers and the calm among the students there.
"Very good. Very good indeed. 5 points to Slytherin," he said, eyes flicking between Richard, Malcolm, and Thomas. "Charmwork favours calm and clarity, both of which seem in good supply here."
As the professor moved on, Malcolm muttered, "How do you do that? You make it look like it's just... obvious."
"It's not obvious," Richard said, voice quiet. "You just need to think more like the wand and less like the hand."
Malcolm gave him a sidelong look. "That supposed to be philosophical?"
Richard only offered the faintest smile, then returned to practising, his feather lifting again, controlled, centred, deliberate.
He wasn't trying to stand out. Just to be better.
The dungeons deepened for Potions, not just physically, but in feeling. The air grew cooler, damper, dense with the scent of old stone and something faintly metallic. The Potions classroom was long and low, its vaulted ceiling lit by softly flickering green-glass lanterns. It felt more like a vault than a space for learning: ancient, secretive, humming with the quiet power of centuries of alchemical experimentation.
Shelves lined the walls, cluttered but meticulous. Rows of glass jars held dried roots, coiled serpent scales, and shavings of what looked like silver bark. Some ingredients pulsed faintly, others shimmered like trapped fog. Bottled essence of something pale and sentient blinked as they passed.
The class was a blend of Slytherins and Gryffindors again, an old pairing that set an undertone of subtle rivalry. The Slytherins moved with quiet competence, their eyes cool, their motions measured. The Gryffindors, by contrast, were louder, brasher, more likely to toss ingredients in with the faith of instinct.
Professor Horace Slughorn entered with the warmth of a hearth fire, his round face bright with genial interest. His bottle-green robes swirled slightly as he turned to face them.
"Welcome, welcome! First-years, today you begin your journey into one of the most noble branches of magic: potion-making!" His voice rolled through the room like butter over toast. "Precision! Patience! Intuition, yes, but never recklessness."
He waved his wand, and recipe instructions unfurled in gold script over the blackboard. "Today, we'll be preparing a Cure for Boils. Nothing flashy, but a good test of your attention to detail. I'll be watching, and yes, assisting where needed."
Cauldrons were brought to temperature. Ingredients dispensed. The murmuring began.
Richard read the recipe twice before lifting a single tool. His movements were practised without being flashy. He sliced the dried nettles with care, measured the crushed snake fangs exactly, and stirred counter-clockwise with a steady rhythm. When he adjusted the flame under his cauldron, it responded obediently. His mixture transitioned from a cloudy grey to the expected bright turquoise, a good sign indicating proper chemical bonding.
Across the room, the bubbling of a cauldron hissed too sharply. Colin, two burners down, had smoke rising from his mixture.
Richard glanced up, nose wrinkling slightly. Burnt nettle. Too much grind on the snake fangs, he thought. He stepped over with a calm voice.
"You've over-pulverised them. It's throwing off the reaction," Richard said softly, gesturing toward Colin's pestle. "You want texture, not dust. Let me show you."
Colin yielded without complaint, watching as Richard demonstrated with a slower, more deliberate motion.
"Try it now," Richard said.
Colin copied the motion, scraped in a fresh pinch, and within moments, the smoke thinned, and the potion began to clear into the proper hue.
"Nice," Colin murmured, grinning. "Thanks."
Slughorn was passing behind them just then and stopped mid-step, peering into both cauldrons.
"Now that's a fine-looking brew, Mr. Magus. 10 points to Slytherin. It seems we have a rare talent on our hands," he said approvingly, his eyes twinkling. He patted Richard's shoulder, then glanced toward Colin. "And helping your classmates already? Splendid! That's not something we always see in Slytherin, not so soon, anyway."
Richard gave a modest nod. "We're all more capable when we're not working alone."
"Mmm!" Slughorn's moustache twitched with delight. "A wise young man. I'll have to remember that one."
He moved on, but the compliment lingered, the room subtly quieter around Richard. Even the Gryffindors seemed to glance his way now and then, not with open hostility, but a kind of grudging curiosity.
Malcolm muttered to Arjun a few burners down, "Slughorn hasn't said that to me."
"He didn't say it to anyone else," Arjun replied under his breath, smirking.
Richard returned to his potion, refining it until the steam rose cleanly and the surface still held a perfect sheen. He didn't gloat. He didn't seek eyes.
But when class ended, Slughorn tapped his name into a mental list, one Richard suspected existed long before he'd stepped into the room. Slughorn was known to keep talents close.
And somewhere beneath that vaulted ceiling, surrounded by flame and stone and scent, Richard Magus had already begun to stake his place.
The sky had clouded over by the time the first-years gathered on the broad, sloping field beside the Quidditch pitch. The wind carried the faint scent of damp grass and distant storm, ruffling robes and tousling hair. Overhead, the enchanted stands of the pitch loomed like quiet sentinels, empty for now but heavy with the memory of past cheers and crashes.
Dozens of school-issue brooms lay in precise rows on the trimmed green. They were utilitarian items, smooth and worn, with handles featuring bristles bound tightly in bronze wire. Nothing elegant. Nothing fast. Just enough to teach a student the air.
Their instructor, Madam Shale Minks, strode across the field with a gait that belonged in the sky. She was lean and wiry, with short, wind-tangled grey hair and weathered hands that had gripped more broomsticks than most people held wands. Her boots kicked up tufts of grass as she passed them.
"Up, you lot! Brooms to the right, feet planted, eyes ahead! Let's see who respects gravity today and who gets introduced to the ground face-first!"
A ripple of nervous laughter passed through the group. The lesson was a pairing of Slytherin and Hufflepuff today, an odd blend of quiet calculation and open-hearted optimism.
Richard stepped forward smoothly, eyes cool, posture exact. At Minks's barked command, "Up!", his broom leapt into his hand with a crisp snap. No hesitation. No wobble. It wasn't flashy, but it was responsive.
Colin's broom hesitated, hovered uncertainly, then thudded into his palm with an ungainly wobble. "Oi," he muttered. "Bit rude."
Malcolm's broom rose halfway, then tilted sideways just as he reached for it, causing him to stumble into Arjun, who shouted something not printable.
Once brooms were in hand, Minks wasted no time.
"Mount! Grip tight! Listen close! We go up, hover, and back down. No showboating, no spinning unless you fancy a mouthful of turf."
At her sharp whistle, the air filled with the sound of wind and startled laughter as students kicked off.
Richard rose smoothly, not far, but steadily, just a few feet above the earth. He kept his centre low, knees loose, shoulders relaxed. His broom bobbed slightly in the breeze, but he adjusted quickly, leaning into the current with instinctive grace. He didn't soar. He studied.
Across the pitch, a loud whoop rang out as a Hufflepuff boy from the next group up performed a wobbly barrel roll. Minks shouted, "You try that again, Daxley, and I'll let the ground discipline you!"
Closer by, Lian, a Hufflepuff student, let out a soft squeak as her broom began spinning in place, her legs kicking helplessly to stop it.
Richard descended just enough to reach her side and reached out, steadying the handle.
"Don't fight it," he murmured. "Guide it. Shift your weight like this, see?"
She followed his instructions, and the broom's spiral slowed, then stilled.
"Thanks," she whispered, still breathless.
Nearby, Elliot cursed as his broom sagged to the left mid-hover. Richard caught his eye and mimed a shift in stance, pointing subtly to Elliot's leaning posture.
Elliot adjusted, and his broom evened out.
"Much better," Richard said simply.
By the time they touched down, sweat beading on foreheads and faces flushed from wind and nerves, Minks paced down the line, hands behind her back, evaluating with a glance.
She paused as she passed Richard.
"Stable. Could be solid with time," she said, half to herself.
Richard met her eyes and dipped his head in quiet acknowledgement, his expression unreadable but polite.
Minks moved on, barking something at Malcolm about foot positioning, but the nod had been given. Not public praise. Not fanfare. Just recognition.
Which, to Richard, was the only kind that mattered.
That night, as the students filed back through their House corridors, Richard felt the tug of something more substantial than pride. Not victory. Not even success.
Foundation.
He sat again beneath the shifting glow of the lake, notebook in hand, ink gliding across parchment.
Names. Observations. Possibilities.
By now, most of his yearmates knew his name. A few respected it. A few watched him curiously.
The castle, older than any ambition, had taken notice.
And Richard Magus had begun to leave his mark.
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3 Extra Chapters Achieved. :)