The carriage ride back to Hogwarts was a masterclass in suppressed chaos. Sebastian was a live wire, vibrating with a toxic mix of fear for his sister and fury at the world. Ominis was a statue of silent anxiety, his hand gripping his wand so tightly his knuckles were white. And Longstaff… Longstaff was a open book written in a language Alex only half-understood. He kept muttering things like "fast travel point" and "wait, is this a side quest?" under his breath.
Alex filed it all away. Sebastian's rage was a tool. Ominis's worry was a vulnerability. Jon's… whatever that was… was an anomaly that required further study.
But first, Feldcroft.
He didn't wait for permission or for a group excursion. The next day, under the guise of a solo Quidditch training session, he Disapparated from the edge of the Forbidden Forest, the familiar hook-behind-the-navel sensation a welcome jolt of reality.
He appeared on the outskirts of the hamlet with a soft crack. Feldcroft was picturesque in a dreary, Scottish way. Stone cottages, rolling hills, and a general air of being forgotten by time. But Alex wasn't here for the scenery.
There were still goblins here. Not many. A scattered patrol, trying to look inconspicuous. But their posture was all wrong for casual loitering. Their focus wasn't on the village itself, but on a specific point: a dilapidated, lonely house perched on a hill overlooking the sea. Its roof was partially caved in, and it looked like a strong wind would finish the job.
Why that house? Alex thought. It held no strategic value. It wasn't a mine. It was a ruin. Ranrok didn't strike him as a goblin with an interest in historical preservation.
Using the terrain and a few well-placed Disillusionment and Silencing Charms, he moved like a shadow. He bypassed the goblin patrols with ease. Within minutes, he was slipping through the broken doorway of the ruined house.
The interior was even worse. The floorboards were rotten, the air thick with dust and the salty tang of the sea. Furniture was smashed and overturned. It was a place of abandonment and grief.
But there were signs of recent activity. Footprints in the dust. And the goblins' attention confirmed it: there was something here.
His search was methodical, room by crumbling room. Nothing. Then, in what was once a small study, his foot caught on a warped floorboard. It shifted with a loud, groaning creak. Not the sound of rotten wood giving way, but the sound of a hidden mechanism.
He knelt, clearing the debris. There was a rusted iron ring set into the wood. A trapdoor.
He pulled it open, revealing a set of rough-hewn stone stairs descending into darkness. The air that wafted up was cold and carried a faint, earthy smell of decay.
He descended, wand lit with a steady Lumos. The stairs gave way to a packed-earth cellar. And the moment his foot touched the ground, the world erupted.
Thick, black, rope-like vines shot from the shadows, coiling around his ankles with shocking speed, pulling him off balance. Devil's Snare.
Alex sighed. Amateur.
he raised his wand.
"Lumos Solem."
A blinding, sun-bright light erupted from his wand tip. The Devil's Snare recoiled as if scalded, withering and shriveling away from the light with a hissing shriek, retreating back into the cracks in the earth from whence it came.
"Predictable," he muttered, stepping over the now-inert vines.
The cellar was larger than he expected. It was less a storage space and more… a study. A secret one. A heavy oak desk, scarred and ancient, stood against one wall. And everywhere… there were papers. Scattered on the desk, piled on the floor, stuffed into crumbling boxes. It was the epicenter of someone's obsession.
He approached the desk. He didn't touch anything at first, just used his wand to carefully lift and separate the pages. Most were notes, hastily scribbled, the ink faded. Then one caught his eye. The handwriting was elegant, but the script was frantic.
It is my second week in the camp. More arrive each day. The Muggle doctors and even some of our own Healers are doing all that they can for them. The grief is palpable. The ones who have survived the plague are forever damaged by their loss. A fever may pass, the skin may mend and scar, but the devastating sorrow remains…
Alex's brow furrowed. A plague? He wasn't aware of any recent plague in the area. He kept reading.
…I saw a man, much like my father, who had lost a child. I couldn't bear it. I longed to give him some shred of relief. I'm beginning to think that the others are wrong. I have the power to help these souls. It seems as arbitrary not to help them as it would be to rid them of their torment.
Power to help souls? Alex thought, his curiosity fully ignited. This was about something else entirely. He found another page, the writing even more desperate.
I travelled to learn – but I long to help. My internal struggle is overwhelming. It's as though the magic wants to heal, and I am the one preventing it from doing so… Surely it wouldn't hurt to help him? I could further my research, of course, but that would be a fortuitous consequence of doing something good with this ability.
Ability. The word stood out. A specific, unique magical ability. What kind of ability could ease "devastating sorrow"? What kind of magic dealt directly with souls? This was far beyond standard healing.
His investigative trance was broken by a glint of light from the corner of the cellar. It wasn't the reflection of his Lumos charm. It was something else.
He moved towards it. It was an old, full-length mirror, its silvering tarnished and flaking. But his reflection… it wasn't his.
He saw a familiar, dark, stone-walled room. The Undercroft.
Undercrfot? he wondered, his mind racing. Why the Undercroft?
He saw the Undercroft again, but empty. The camera, for lack of a better word, pulled back, focusing on a specific, seemingly solid wall. As he watched, the stones of the wall in the mirror seemed to shimmer and fade, revealing a hidden alcove behind them.
A secret within a secret, he realized. The mirror wasn't showing him a memory; it was showing him a secret. A secret hidden in the Undercroft.
Compelled, he reached out and touched the cold glass.
The world dissolved into a whirl of color and sound. It was not Apparition. It was smoother, more violent, and yet utterly silent. For a moment, he felt a pressure unlike any other, as if he were being pushed through a solid wall. Then, his feet hit solid ground, and he stumbled, catching himself on a cold, familiar stone wall.
He was in the Undercroft. He'd just traveled from a cellar in Feldcroft to the heart of Hogwarts in the blink of an eye.
What in Salazar's name was that mirror? he thought, his heart hammering for the first time in years. A Portkey? A two-way magical conduit?
He steadied his breathing. Panic was not productive. He was here now. And the mirror had shown him something.
He went straight to the wall the reflection had revealed. It looked utterly normal. He ran his hands over the cold stones, muttering every Revealing Charm he knew. Nothing.
Frustration, a rare emotion for him, began to simmer. He kicked the base of the wall in irritation. His foot connected with a loose wooden barrel stave leaning against it, sending it clattering away.
And as it fell, it revealed something. Behind where the stave had been, the wall was different. The mortar between three specific stones was newer, cleaner. It outlined a large, rectangular section of the wall, about the size of a… painting.
A triptych.
triptych frame. But the panels weren't paintings. They were empty. The canvases had been cut out, leaving only the bare, stretched backing cloth.
Someone didn't just hide this, he thought. They removed what was here.
He examined the empty frame. In the center of the middle panel, where the painting's focal point would have been, a small, rusty nail had been driven into the wooden stretcher bar. Impaled on it was a single, small, yellowed piece of parchment.
He carefully pulled it free. It wasn't a note. It was a diagram. A complex, interlocking pattern of geometric shapes and ancient runes. It was a schematic. For what, he had no idea. But the style was unmistakably similar to the runes he'd seen depicting Ranrok's strange, metallic magic.
He stared at the empty frame, the cryptic rune diagram in his hand, and the memory of the desperate notes from the cellar.
The mysteries weren't adding up. They were multiplying. A healer with a dangerous ability. A hidden study. A secret portal mirror. A sanitized, hidden triptych.
He leaned against the cold wall of the Undercroft, the diagram clutched in his hand. Anne's curse. Ranrok's interest. Isidora's notes. This hidden schematic. It was all connected. And the key, the frustrating, bewildering key to it all, seemed to be a confused boy from another world who talked about "side quests."
For the first time, Alexander Hunter felt like he was playing a game where someone else had written the rules. And he hated it.