Location: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Date: September 27
Time: 2:43 AM
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Lyra Straithe couldn't sleep again.
The dormitory walls whispered to her when the others were quiet. Not in words — not exactly. More like sounds folded into stone: rushing wind beneath the floorboards, a distant thump like a heartbeat behind the fireplace. Even her bed creaked in rhythm, as if it were breathing.
And tonight, the castle felt… anxious.
She slipped on her boots, wrapped herself in her too-big cloak, and padded out of her dorm. Her roommates, enchanted into silence by the warded curtains, didn't stir. Hogwarts didn't stop her. The Fat Lady barely opened an eye as she crept out of the portrait hole.
That was the first sign.
The second came when she reached the fourth floor, turning right toward the library — only the staircase didn't lead to the library.
It bent left.
Upward.
She stopped.
The steps now led to a hallway she had never seen before — one that didn't exist on the map Professor Clearwater had given them. The stones were darker here. Older. And cold.
But Lyra felt pulled. Not with fear. With… recognition.
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At the end of the hallway was a door with no handle. No lock. No runes. Just a blank stone arch, humming faintly.
She reached for it. Then stopped.
The hum deepened.
Her fingertips pulsed.
And the air in front of her shimmered like broken glass, rearranging itself into glowing lines. They formed a pattern — a circle. A spiral. A symbol she didn't know but her bones remembered.
It was a wand snapping in half.
Wrapped in thorns.
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Her chest ached suddenly.
Her hands felt warm — too warm.
"Please," she whispered, not knowing who she was speaking to.
"I don't want to be weird."
But the magic didn't stop.
It surged through her palms, a pulse of light without a wand, without a spell. The stones in the arch responded with a low groan — and began to part.
Not like a door. Like a mouth opening.
Behind the arch was a library — but not the normal kind. The books were suspended in midair, glowing faintly, titles in languages she didn't know. Some had no titles at all. Just symbols. Spirals. Names that felt familiar even though she'd never seen them.
One book floated toward her on its own.
She reached out—
—and the moment her hand touched it, a voice not hers whispered from her throat:
"Straithe. Echo-blooded. Spellbound by silence."
"You are remembered."
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Lyra gasped and dropped the book.
The magic snapped. The hallway recoiled, vanishing in a flash of light.
And suddenly she was standing outside the normal library again — empty corridor, cold torchlight, and the faint sound of Filch muttering somewhere below.
But her palms still glowed faintly.
And burned into the inside of her sleeve, in silver thread, was the symbol from the door.
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A broken wand.
A circle of thorns.
And a single word beneath it:
Wandbound