Severus Snape kept to the dungeons, even after his public absence from life itself. Officially, he had died. Unofficially, he was now the ghost within Hogwarts—the living shade whispering across corridors long after students slept.
He worked in secret under the castle's foundations where Slytherin's older chambers had been sealed centuries before. The air here was thick with untouched magic, raw and volatile. It suited his work.
Snape had not merely returned from the brink of death. He had brought with him knowledge—visions seen between life and death, whispers from beyond the Veil. They had shown him how to change magic itself.
One such result: the Evo-Serum.
Brewing with ingredients drawn from unicorn marrow, Phoenix tears, and modified Muggle DNA, the serum could activate latent magical potential in humans whose lineage carried even the faintest spark.
By 2005, twenty-seven test subjects across Europe had received it—unknowingly. Administered through aerosols, herbal tinctures, and innocuous medicine, the serum passed undetected. The results were staggering.
A seven-year-old boy in Warsaw made fire without a wand. A mute girl in Morocco whispered to shadows that answered. In Vietnam, a teenager healed a dying bird with a kiss.
"It spreads like folklore," Snape noted in his private journal. "But it is science. Magical science."
Meanwhile, Nicolas Flamel operated from a hidden laboratory beneath Mont Blanc. There, with Perenelle, he crafted antidotes, false cures, and memory-safe delivery mechanisms. Their greatest achievement came in early 2006—a vapor that carried spells between breath.
It could make Muggles forget or remember. It could enchant their dreams. It could awaken their children.
"No spell must ever leave evidence," Perenelle said. "Only progress."
Meanwhile, Voldemort operated beneath the name Valentin Moros, a charismatic European diplomat. Through a combination of the Imperius Curse and unnaturally persuasive charisma, he entered political spheres unnoticed. A whisper here, a broken alliance there. He was orchestrating the world like a symphony.
Grindelwald revived old sleeper cells in Austria, Norway, Brazil. He gathered magicals disillusioned with the Statute of Secrecy and fed them a new purpose: to guide humanity into ascension.
And Dumbledore? He traveled.
He visited ancient temples of magic, spoke to dragons and Veela clans, consulted with African animagi and Tibetan spiritbinders. He was building bridges—magical ones.
But always he returned to Hogwarts, his secret base of operations. Here, he coordinated the global magical awakening—one carefully measured revelation at a time.
By late 2006, strange occurrences were being reported in Muggle news:
Children who spoke languages they had never learned.
Surgeons who healed fatal injuries by touch.
Machines malfunctioning in certain schools and nurseries.
Magic was waking. Quietly.
And no one noticed the hands guiding it.