"Where magic and memory intertwine, the earth keeps secrets even the sky forgets."
Midnight Warnings
Albus hadn't meant to dream again.
But that night, as he lay in his bed in the far north tower of Gryffindor—surrounded by the deep hush of wintering stone—his eyes fluttered closed, and he fell.
This time, there was no wind, no chamber of ancient obsidian. Only a tree.
A great willow, its branches leafless and bowed. Its roots spread like black veins across an endless field of frost. Hanging from the branches were glistening shards—each the size of a wand—dripping silver ichor into the soil.
Below it, something moved. A shape of shadow, pacing around the trunk like a caged animal.
Then it spoke.
"One root severed. One heart shattered. Three keys remain."
The tree pulsed.
"You cannot change what you are, Albus Potter. Magic is memory. You are her heir."
Albus tried to step back.
He couldn't.
He was rooted.
The Plan Forms
He woke with a start.
Dawn hadn't broken yet, but he could feel it crawling over the horizon like frost.
Fiona and Scorpius met him in the Scriptorium, the hidden records chamber behind the seventh shelf of the Restricted Section.
Scorpius was chewing on a sliver of spiced applewood. Fiona already had her map unfurled.
"We're ready for the next shard?" she asked.
Albus nodded.
"It's under the Willow," he said. "I saw it."
Scorpius raised an eyebrow. "You dreamt it again, didn't you?"
Albus hesitated.
"Yes. But this time it was… clearer. Something's waiting beneath the tree."
Fiona traced a line across the map's veins of magic. The path to the next shard ran beneath the castle's northern border wall, deep into the earth just past the greenhouse enclosure.
"It's not just under the Willow," she murmured. "It's bound to it."
She pointed at the runes flickering along the path. "This is the Root Spiral. One of the original magical constructs the Founders used to anchor protective magic. If the Root latched onto it…"
"It might have buried itself in Hogwarts' defenses," Scorpius finished grimly.
Albus looked down at his wrist.
Two slivers of Root magic now pulsed beneath the silver-scarred skin. He was starting to feel it—not just a hum, but an awareness.
A presence.
Forbidden Roots
The Whomping Willow had long been cordoned off from students. Even those who knew its secrets—the hidden passage to the Shrieking Shack, the old Lupin tunnel—avoided it unless they were armed with knowledge and nerve.
They approached at dusk.
Fiona cast a temporal charm to slow the wind and movement around them. The world softened, sound becoming velvet. Scorpius disarmed the Willow's trigger knot with a whispered spell taught to him by Headmistress Chang.
As the great branches stilled, Albus knelt beside the trunk.
"There's something here."
He pressed his palm to the bark. The silver runes embedded in his wrist glowed—faintly, but enough.
Fiona opened a small vial of crystal-root ink and drew a circle on the ground. "This will reveal the root-spiral if it still lives."
She pressed her wand to the circle.
"Effero Arcanum."
Lines of deep purple bloomed from the soil, curling in slow, fractal spirals toward the base of the Willow. The roots—thick, ancient—were wrapped in spell-chains and living memory.
"This is older than the Willow," Fiona breathed.
"It's Founders' magic," Scorpius said. "No wonder it drew the shard."
Albus looked up.
"There's an entrance. It's not natural."
The Descent
Between the Willow's gnarled roots, a small arch of stone jutted out—no wider than a crawlspace, its surface carved with the crest of Helga Hufflepuff.
Albus felt the shard through it.
Not just a pulse. A pull.
They slipped inside.
The passageway narrowed immediately, curving in a downward spiral. Every few feet, golden carvings lit up as they passed—scenes of witches planting magical gardens, beasts curled around old trees, spells woven into seeds.
"This was part of Helga's first sanctuary," Fiona whispered. "She believed magic came from the land. The Root must have absorbed her legacy."
As they moved deeper, the temperature dropped.
The walls changed from stone to earth to something else entirely—smooth and pulsing, like the inside of a living creature.
The air buzzed.
And in the center of a circular chamber, beneath a canopy of root-tendrils that shimmered with ancient magic, they found it:
The third shard.
The Guardian
It hovered above a shallow pit, surrounded by bones and moss.
Not broken bones—deliberately arranged.
A circle of vertebrae and wand fragments spiraled beneath the shard like a ritual.
And at the far end of the chamber, something stirred.
A creature—not quite human, not quite spirit—rose from the roots.
Its eyes glowed silver.
Its hands were fused with twisted wood.
It wore robes half-eaten by time and marked with a faded sigil: a tree burned into a triangle.
"Who are you?" Albus asked, raising his wand.
The creature tilted its head.
Its voice was like wind through leaves:
"I am the Warden. I was once Osric—an apprentice to Helga. When the Root took seed here, I was the first to touch it."
It stepped forward. "I became its keeper. Its prison. Its last defense."
Scorpius narrowed his eyes. "Let me guess. We can't take the shard unless we defeat you?"
The Warden shook his head.
"No. You may take it… if you pass the Grove's Trial."
"What's the trial?" Fiona asked, tightening her grip on her wand.
The Warden extended an arm.
"To plant or to burn."
The chamber changed.
The Trial of Choice
Suddenly, they stood in a sunlit grove.
But everything was frozen. The wind did not move. Leaves hung like glass. The only thing alive was the tree at the center—a great silver birch with leaves made of memory.
The Warden stood beside it.
"Every bearer of Root magic must choose," he said. "You may take the shard and bind it. Plant it anew. Grow it within yourself. And the magic will answer your blood."
He turned to Albus.
"Or you may burn it. Sever the Root from this place. Break the memory."
Albus swallowed. "What's the cost?"
"Growth binds you. Fire severs. But nothing comes without echo."
Fiona looked to Albus. "We don't know what growing it might do."
Scorpius stepped forward. "And burning it could trigger a rupture—destroy the foundation."
Albus looked at the tree.
He thought of Morrigan.
Of Leora.
Of his father's silence.
He raised his hand.