"How's the Academy doing?" Douglas asked.
"Brilliant!" Hagrid said, beaming.
He gave the oak tree entrance beside him a proud thump.
"Look at this — solid as anything! Those werewolf lads are proper craftsmen, they are. Even reinforced it with an Unbreakable Charm. An Acromantula couldn't squeeze through here if it tried!"
This was the portal to Silvermane Academy. Funded by Sirius Black, built around the teleportation array core Douglas had provided, and constructed by the most skilled hands among the werewolves.
Hagrid's grin widened. "An' they do custom work! Look at this!"
He fished a sturdy leather sheath from his coat pocket. Inside sat a massive pair of magical pruning shears, purpose-built for trimming dangerous plants.
"A hundred times better than anything those black-hearted crooks in Knockturn Alley peddle!"
The portal's design was careful work. It threaded cleanly between the Forbidden Forest's most dangerous territories , well clear of centaur ground and Acromantula nesting sites.
"The best of the students have already started helping me patrol the outer forest," Hagrid added. "They understand it better than I do, honestly. Know how to handle themselves around those creatures."
The top students could even apply, with Hagrid along as escort, to enter the forest's edge for hands-on fieldwork. It took a real load off him. And for the students, it meant something rarer: actual experience. Learning to coexist with the magical forest was their first step back into the world.
"Oh — brought you something." Douglas reached into his pack and produced a small box wrapped in papyrus.
Hagrid took it with curious eyes, his thick fingers working clumsily at the wrapping.
Inside was a pair of wrist guards.
They looked much like the ones Douglas had given the Weasleys: self-regulating temperature, adjusting to whatever the wearer needed.
Hagrid slipped them on.
A wave of warmth rolled through every joint in his body, instant and deep.
"Merlin's beard!" he exclaimed. "That's better than sittin' next to a fire!"
"Is Remus inside?" Douglas asked.
"In there, yeah." Hagrid nodded. "Him and the Weasley twins are at it in the workshop. Been clanging and banging all morning. Some new project, sounds like."
Douglas gave an approving nod and stepped into the swirling entrance.
Light and shadow bent around him. The scent of grass and soil vanished in an instant, replaced by something dry and warm , sawdust and herbs, the smell of work.
The portal's exit was nothing like a dark cave.
It opened onto the world.
A vast valley stretched before him, carved into the dark heart of the Forbidden Forest. Sunlight fell warm and even across the ground without glare. Stone houses and timber workshops climbed the surrounding slopes, built into the hillside in rough terraces. The architecture was unpolished , no carved archways, no ornamental ironwork , but it breathed. There was a raw, swelling vitality to it that no amount of refinement could manufacture.
Nothing here resembled Hogwarts' elegance or its centuries of careful tradition. This was something else. Something that had grown on its own terms.
At the valley's center sat a broad training ground.
Dozens of werewolves were in the middle of a lesson, their expressions a map of different histories. Every one of them carried scars, some shallow and some deep, pressed into their skin by years they hadn't chosen. Their eyes held a tangle of wariness, self-doubt, and something sharper underneath, a suppressed ferocity they'd learned not to trust. But beneath all of it, unmistakable: the hunger for something new.
Remus Lupin stood at the center of it.
He wasn't wearing his old robes. Those were gone , the patched, faded things that had always looked a size too tired for him. In their place he wore close-fitted dark leather armor, a gift from Ash-Claw. It suited him. He looked alert, present, nothing like the exhausted man Douglas remembered.
His voice carried across the valley, steady and unhurried.
"Remember — power itself is not the danger."
"What's dangerous is losing control of it."
"You have to learn to accept it. To guide it. Not to be swallowed by it."
Douglas didn't interrupt. He watched from the valley entrance.
This wasn't just a magic class. It was closer to group therapy, Lupin teaching them, patiently and seriously, how to stop fighting the beast inside and start negotiating with it.
Across the training ground, an older witch was working a Transfiguration on a lump of stone, coaxing it into a small bird. The bird was perfect , wings beating softly in her cupped palm, utterly alive. Her hands were steady and practiced. Her eyes were wet. She looked like someone mourning something she couldn't name.
Nearby, a one-armed man was running through Shield Charms again and again, one-handed. The motion wasn't textbook. It didn't matter. His eyes were iron. Each failed attempt pulled a low, suppressed sound from somewhere in his chest, not quite a growl, not quite anything else, and then he raised his arm and tried again.
The point of Silvermane Academy was never to produce soldiers.
It was to take people the world had thrown away and give them back something they'd almost stopped believing in: their own worth. Their own dignity. And to take the suffering they'd already survived , the suffering they couldn't undo , and forge it into something that belonged to them. A strength that was theirs.
That kind of strength, properly directed, would outlast any army.
The lesson wound down. Students drifted off in small clusters, comparing notes, faces carrying expressions that looked new on them , or at least long out of practice. Something like ease. Something like belonging.
Lupin spotted Douglas across the valley.
He crossed the training ground with quick strides, the leather armor making a soft rasp with each step. There was tiredness in his face, honestly earned. But there was more satisfaction than tiredness.
"You're back," he said, smiling.
"You look like you've settled into the role." Douglas studied him. "Headmaster Lupin."
"It's harder than I expected," Lupin said without deflection. "Every one of them is carrying something heavy from before." He paused, watching the last students filter away. His expression softened. "But every one of them is worth the effort."
"How is the Academy progressing?" Douglas asked, moving things along.
Lupin shifted into his report.
"The first cohort has mostly gotten a handle on their new situation. We've sorted them into workshops based on aptitude: Herbology, Alchemy, Enchanting, even magical architecture. The pace they learn at is remarkable. Faster than I expected from anyone."
Douglas nodded. It tracked. Years of suppression left people starved for knowledge and capability. Given the opening, they ran toward it.
"Although..." Lupin's expression shifted into something harder to read.
"The most popular course. You'd never guess."
He tilted his head toward the far side of the valley.
One building stood apart. Where everything else around it was functional and rough-hewn, this stone house was almost dainty , framed shutters, careful stonework, window boxes that had no business existing in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. It looked as if it had wandered in from somewhere else entirely and decided to stay.
The door plate was engraved in ornate Italian script.
Noble Etiquette and Muggle Society Concealment.
Douglas's eyebrows went up.
The door swung open.
A figure stepped into the light , tailcoat immaculately cut, white bow tie without a wrinkle, hair slicked back with absolute precision. White gloves. A professional, flawless smile.
Valerius the vampire, personally escorting a broad-shouldered werewolf student to the threshold with all the ceremony of a five-star maître d'.
"Please remember, sir," Valerius said, his voice smooth as aged silk.
"In a Muggle restaurant, the sound of your cutlery must never exceed the sound of your chewing."
"That is the most fundamental of courtesies."
The werewolf student nodded with visible concentration, then bent into an awkward, earnest bow.
➤ Next: Art is Explosion, and It's Bright Pink!
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