The last summer before Hogwarts carried with it a strange electricity. For Victor, every day was another step toward the future he was shaping with his own hands. For Albus, it was a season of discovery, each conversation with Victor sharpening his hunger for something greater than the quiet lanes of Godric's Hollow.
Most afternoons they could be found beneath the great oak at the edge of the pastures. Books, scraps of parchment, and broken quills littered the grass between them.
Albus argued with a brilliance that bordered on ferocity.
"The Statute of Secrecy was fear made into law. We creep in shadows while Muggles build railways and governments and armies. Imagine what we could achieve if we no longer had to hide, if magic was free to shape the world alongside them."
Victor leaned back against the trunk, watching him. "Muggles fear what they don't understand. If we reveal ourselves, they'll resist us at first. But if we are strong enough, if we give them no choice, they will adapt. They will learn to see magic not as a threat, but as the natural order."
Albus's lips curved into something between a smile and a challenge. "And who decides that order?"
"Those with the strength to shape it," Victor replied quietly.
Aberforth, sprawled on the grass a short distance away, snorted. "You two talk like you want to crown yourselves kings. Muggles don't need wizards telling them how to live."
Albus waved him off, but Victor caught the edge in the younger brother's thoughts when he peeked inside. Distrust. Resentment. A sense that this path was dangerous. Aberforth might have been blunt and practical, but his instincts were sharper than Albus gave him credit for.
Victor filed that away.
Nights belonged to him alone. In his room, candles guttering low, he worked until his magic trembled at the edge of exhaustion. His father's textbooks lay open, their margins scribbled with notes. Runes and equations covered loose parchment, half-mad combinations of movement and collapse.
Apparition was too crude, too loud, too easily blocked. Victor wanted something cleaner. He took the rune Isa, the symbol of stillness, and fractured it, reshaping it to lock a single point in space. Raido, rune of travel, he bent into something unnatural, a path that did not connect but collapsed. He bound them with Eiwaz, not as a symbol of life and death but as the hinge between presence and absence.
The Arithmantic framework nearly broke him. Nights passed where he could hardly see straight, where his wand scorched lines into the floor from failed attempts. But one night the world folded around him, and in the space of a heartbeat he was not by his desk but standing at the window, candlelight flickering behind him.
Victor laughed softly, his breath ragged. Blink. The spell was real.
He showed Albus days later. He said nothing at first, only stood a few paces away, focused, and vanished. The air made no sound. The world simply skipped — one moment Victor was near, the next he stood behind Albus, silent as a shadow.
Albus froze. "That wasn't Apparition."
"No," Victor said simply. "It's new. Silent. Unstoppable."
Albus's thoughts surged so loud Victor didn't need to read them. Possibilities. Freedom. Power.
"You've created a way past every wall, every ward," Albus breathed. "The Ministry itself couldn't hold you."
"Then they shouldn't try," Victor answered.
Albus laughed, exhilarated. "You're extraordinary. With this… with you… the world will have to change."
Victor only smiled.
Albus wanted to learn it, of course. Victor hesitated — Blink was his greatest creation — but eventually relented. They trained in secret.
"Don't think about moving," Victor instructed. "Think about being. The fence, the tree, the hill — fix it so clearly in your mind that you're already there. Apparition tears you through space, that's why it cracks and pops. Blink doesn't move you at all. It collapses the distance."
At first, Albus failed. He staggered forward, drained himself pale, nearly collapsed with exhaustion. But he was relentless. His genius let him grasp the theory faster than Victor expected, and with each attempt he bent closer to the truth.
One evening, Albus vanished. No sound, no shimmer, not even a shift in the air. For half a breath Victor thought the world had lost him. Then Albus stood by the fence, chest heaving, his face wild with triumph.
"I did it," he whispered. "Without a wand. Without a word."
Victor inclined his head, acknowledging both pride and caution. "Most could never cast it at all. You forced it barehanded. That's your gift, Albus. You bend magic itself to your will."
Albus's grin was fierce. "And you, Victor, built the path."
But Aberforth noticed. He wasn't stupid. He saw his brother vanish from one spot and appear in another, saw the strange silences between Victor and Albus, and his suspicions grew.
One evening, he confronted them behind the house.
"What are you two playing at?" Aberforth demanded, his fists clenched. "That vanishing trick — it isn't normal. It isn't safe."
Albus's smile faltered. "You don't understand, Ab."
"I understand enough!" Aberforth shot back. "Every day you spend with him"—he jabbed a finger at Victor—"you start sounding less like my brother and more like some dark lord in training. Secrets, speeches about power, and now this Blink. What are you planning?"
Albus's eyes flashed. "I'm planning for a better world. One where we don't have to cower in shadows. Victor sees it. Why can't you?"
"Because it's madness!" Aberforth barked. "You're boys. You'll get yourselves killed — or worse."
Albus stepped closer, trembling with conviction. "Maybe you're too small-minded to see it, but I won't stop dreaming just because you're afraid."
Aberforth's face twisted with hurt. "You're not dreaming. You're playing with fire, and he's handing you the matches."
The silence stretched. Then Albus turned, fixing his gaze on the fence twenty yards away.
And he was gone.
No crack of Apparition, no ripple of air. One instant he stood before them, the next he was across the field, silent, whole, untouched.
Aberforth froze, shock written plain across his face.
Victor said nothing. Albus had chosen to show his brother the truth of Blink — not as a secret, but as defiance.
From the far end of the field, Albus's voice carried steady and unshaken. "You can't stop us, Aberforth. Not you, not anyone."
Aberforth's fists clenched, but he had no answer.
Victor met Albus's eyes across the pasture, and both boys understood — they were no longer merely dreamers. They were already building the future.
To Be Continued…