Fame, Jake discovered, was a deeply uncomfortable thing. He had spent his first few weeks at Hogwarts cultivating a quiet anonymity, his head perpetually buried in a book or focused on his private training. That anonymity was shattered the moment his feet touched the ground after the flying lesson.
The story had spread through the castle with the speed of a well-cast incendio charm. By the time he walked into the Great Hall for dinner, he was no longer just Jake Bloom, the quiet Ravenclaw. He was the boy who had outflown two Slytherins in a dive that older students were already starting to exaggerate.
The reactions were a fascinating, if unnerving, case study in house dynamics. The Gryffindors, who had previously ignored him, now offered him nods of grudging respect as he passed. The Hufflepuffs seemed vaguely impressed but mostly just happy that the bullies had been put in their place. His fellow Ravenclaws were a mixture of quiet approval and academic curiosity, with a few of the older students looking at him with newfound interest.
The Slytherin table, however, was a block of unified, silent hostility. As he entered, their conversations would dip, and dozens of pairs of eyes would fix on him with a cold, simmering resentment. He hadn't just embarrassed two of their own; he had embarrassed their House.
Jake dealt with it all with the same outward calm he had shown in the Potions dungeon. He ate his meals, walked to his classes, and answered the occasional curious question with polite, brief responses. But beneath the placid surface, his mind was working furiously. He wasn't basking in the victory; he was analysing the inevitable consequences.
That evening, while sitting in a comfortable armchair by the fire in the Ravenclaw common room, pretending to read A History of Magic, he conducted his threat assessment.
He knew Nott and Avery. He had observed them for weeks. They were arrogant, entitled, and possessed of a vindictive streak that was now aimed squarely at him. But they weren't stupid, and they wouldn't make the same mistake twice. The physical confrontation had failed spectacularly; the next attack would be magical.
He mapped out the likely progression in his mind, as methodical as if he were planning an essay.
Phase One: Nuisance. This would come first. They would try to humiliate him, to get a reaction. He anticipated a campaign of low-level harassment. A tripping jinx in a crowded corridor. An ink-squirting hex from a hidden alcove. A well-aimed Jelly-Legs Jinx as he climbed the moving staircases. Annoying, certainly, but not truly dangerous. The goal would be to see him flustered, to make him look foolish and restore their own bruised pride.
Phase Two: Escalation. This was the more dangerous part. When Phase One failed—and he was certain it would, as he had no intention of giving them the satisfaction of a reaction—their frustration would curdle into genuine malice. The jinxes would become curses. The intent would shift from humiliation to harm. A Furnunculus Curse that would leave him covered in boils. A Bat-Bogey Hex that was notoriously difficult to fight. Things that could see him laid up in the hospital wing for a day or two.
He closed the book, the dry dates of goblin rebellions meaningless in the face of his own strategic planning. He wasn't preparing for a fight tomorrow. He was preparing for the inevitable escalation weeks or perhaps months down the line.
Reacting to each jinx as it came would be inefficient, a game of magical whack-a-mole. He needed a single, elegant solution. A universal countermeasure that could handle everything from a simple jinx to a more dangerous curse. He needed a shield.
The next afternoon found him in the quiet, cavernous expanse of the Hogwarts library. The air smelled of old parchment and beeswax, and the only sounds were the rustle of turning pages and the occasional, distant cough. He bypassed the sections for first-year material, heading deeper into the library's heart, towards the towering shelves of the Charms section. He needed theory, advanced theory, on defensive enchantments.
He pulled down a heavy, leather-bound tome titled A Compendium of Common Defensive Magicks and settled at a secluded table in the back. For hours, he read, his brow furrowed in concentration. He scanned chapters on counter-jinxes, deflecting hexes, and protective wards. Many were too specific, too situational. But then he found it. A chapter dedicated to the pinnacle of personal defensive magic: The Shield Charm.
Protego.
The text was dense, filled with complex diagrams of wand movements and long passages about the philosophical nature of magical barriers. It described a shimmering, invisible wall of pure energy capable of repelling most minor to moderate jinxes, hexes, and curses. It was the perfect, universal solution he had been looking for.
There was just one problem. The author, a famously powerful Charms Master named Emeric Switch, was unequivocal on one point: the Shield Charm was N.E.W.T.-level magic, requiring a level of power, focus, and willpower that was simply beyond the reach of younger students. It was, the book stated plainly, impossible for a first-year.
Jake leaned back in his chair, a slow smile spreading across his face. Impossible for them, perhaps. But they didn't have his data. They didn't know about Focus and Stamina. They treated magic as an art; he was treating it as a science. And his hypothesis suggested that with enough raw power, brute force could overcome a lack of refined skill.
A sudden, unnatural chill swept over his table, raising goosebumps on his arms. The air grew heavy, and the faint, rustling sounds of the library seemed to fade into a distant hush. He looked up from his book.
Floating at the end of the aisle between two towering bookshelves was a woman. She was tall and carried herself with an air of ancient nobility, her form shimmering and translucent, the shelves behind her visible through her silvery-white robes. Her face was beautiful but etched with a profound, unending sorrow. It was the Grey Lady, the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower.
She didn't look at him, her gaze fixed on some distant point of memory only she could see. She had drifted through the common room many times, a silent, sorrowful presence, but she had never, to his knowledge, spoken to a single student.
He remained perfectly still, watching her. For a long moment, she simply hovered there, a spectre of lost knowledge and old regrets. Then, her voice, soft as the rustle of a turning page yet carrying the weight of centuries, echoed in the quiet aisle. It wasn't directed at him, but at the book he was reading.
"Ambition drove my mother to greatness," she whispered, her voice a fragile, mournful thing. "It drove me to ruin. Be wary of the knowledge you seek so fiercely."
Jake's heart hammered in his chest. She knew what he was studying. He opened his mouth to speak, to ask how, to ask why, but no words came out.
The Grey Lady finally turned her head, and for a fleeting second, her sad, ancient eyes met his. He saw a flicker of something in their depths—not curiosity, but perhaps a faint, ghostly recognition. She saw a boy, a member of her mother's house, not seeking knowledge for grades or for glory, but with a quiet, obsessive intensity that was all too familiar.
Then, as silently as she had appeared, she drifted away, her form melting into the shadows of the bookshelves, leaving behind only a lingering chill and her cryptic warning.
Jake sat frozen for a full minute, the ghost's words echoing in his mind. Be wary of the knowledge you seek so fiercely. He looked down at the open page, at the complex diagrams of the Protego charm. She was right, of course. Ambition was a dangerous thing. But was that what was driving him?
He considered it honestly. He didn't crave power for its own sake, nor did he want the fame he was already finding so uncomfortable. His goal was simpler. It was partly about security, about having a reliable defence against the escalating pettiness of a few entitled bullies. It was partly about proving his own thesis correct, a quiet, academic satisfaction in understanding the system better than anyone else.
But beneath it all, there was a third, more honest reason. This was a world of impossible, wonderful things. He could run laps and do magical push-ups to increase his Stamina, or he could learn to cast a spell that everyone believed was impossible for him. One of those things was a chore. The other... the other was magic.
And at the end of the day, magic was just incredibly cool.
The Grey Lady's warning wasn't a deterrent; it was a clarification of his own motives. He wasn't her. His ambition wasn't to steal, but to build.
He closed the heavy book with a soft thud, the sound unnaturally loud in the silent library. His plan was no longer just a theory. It was a challenge.
That evening, long after the other Ravenclaws were asleep, Jake slipped out of the common room. He made his way through the dark, silent corridors of the castle, his soft footsteps the only sound. He ascended the winding staircases to the fifth floor and pushed open the door to his secret, dusty classroom.
The room was bathed in the pale, ethereal light of the moon, the stacked desks and chairs casting long, distorted shadows. It felt like a sacred space, a private laboratory where the rules of the outside world didn't apply.
He walked to the centre of the room, took a deep breath, and drew his wand. The familiar, comforting warmth of the dragon heartstring core bloomed in his hand, a steadying presence. He pictured the shimmering, invisible barrier described in the book. He visualised the drain on his Focus, the heavy pull on his Stamina. He understood the cost.
Now, it was time to see if he could pay it.
His heart pounded in his ears, a frantic drumbeat in the silent room. He raised his wand, the tip trembling slightly, and spoke the word into the darkness, a declaration of intent against the impossible.
"Protego!"
Silence.
Nothing happened; there was a brief but powerful draw from his focus and stamina reserves before the spell cut off.
Jake sighed before making a note in his book.
Week 3:
Attempted to use Protego. Cost Unknown. Spell had an intense draw for a brief moment upon uttering the incantation, yet stopped just as quickly.
Conclusion: Not enough Focus and/or stamina reserves. Improve capacity and try again.
He closed the notebook with a soft snap. Disappointment was a useless emotion; it was just a response to insufficient data or a flawed methodology. His conclusion wasn't a mark of failure. It was the starting point for a new, more aggressive training regimen. The Aegis Project hadn't failed; its required parameters had just been defined.
The weeks that followed blurred into a relentless cycle of work. His life found a new, gruelling rhythm. The single lap around the Black Lake at dawn became two. The magical "sets" he performed in his secret classroom in the afternoons became longer, more intense. His schoolwork became a triage system; essays for McGonagall and Flitwick received his full attention, while History of Magic and Herbology were given the bare minimum to pass. He was perpetually tired, the dark circles under his eyes a permanent feature.
The first attack came during the fifth week. He was walking from the Charms classroom, his mind a foggy mess from a lack of sleep and the lingering ache in his muscles from his morning run. The corridor was crowded with students heading in the opposite direction. He felt, rather than saw, a flicker of movement from behind a suit of armour and heard a hissed, triumphant whisper. "Impedimenta!"
The jinx hit him squarely in the back. His legs immediately felt as though they'd been plunged into thick treacle. His forward momentum carried him, but his feet refused to keep up. He pitched forward, a gasp rippling through the students around him as his books and parchment went flying. He was going down.
But his body, honed by weeks of punishing physical training, reacted without his conscious thought. Instead of falling flat on his face, he twisted, dropping his shoulder and planting his hand on the cold stone floor. He absorbed the impact, rolling into a crouch, surrounded by his scattered belongings.
There was a burst of derisive laughter from down the corridor. He looked up and saw Nott and Avery peeking out from behind the armour, their faces alight with malicious glee. He met their eyes. There was no anger in his, no panic, just a profound, bone-deep weariness. He didn't say a word. He simply began to methodically gather his books, his movements slow and deliberate. The jinx faded after a few seconds, but he took his time.
His lack of reaction was more infuriating to the two Slytherins than any angry retort could have been. Their laughter died, replaced by confused scowls. They had wanted a show—a pratfall, yelling, maybe even tears. They had gotten nothing. Jake finished gathering his things, stood up, and continued on his way as if nothing had happened, leaving them fuming in his wake. In his mind, he made a single, cold note: Phase One initiated. The timeline is accelerating.
The harassment continued in petty, predictable ways. Ink would appear on his essays, his shoelaces would tie themselves together, but he met each attempt with the same infuriating, stoic calm. The attacks only served to fuel the fire of his training. Every Saturday, he would run his diagnostic. And every week, the numbers climbed.
Week 4: Focus: 42 (+2), Stamina: 92 (+12)Week 5: Focus: 45 (+3), Stamina: 105 (+13)Week 6: Focus: 48 (+3), Stamina: 120 (+15)
The growth was undeniable. He was getting stronger. But every Saturday night when he attempted Protego, the result was the same: a brief, intense draw, a flicker of something, and then nothing.
Until the last Saturday of October.
He stood in the dusty, moonlit classroom, his body humming with a familiar, deep-seated ache. He had finished his weekly analysis. His Stamina had just crossed the 130-unit threshold. He felt a different kind of energy tonight, a deeper well to draw from. He raised his wand, his focus absolute.
"Protego!"
This time, it was different. It wasn't just a draw; it was a connection. A torrent of power, far greater than anything he'd channelled before, surged from his core, down his arm, and into his wand. For a split second, a faint, soap-bubble shimmer appeared in the air before him, a circle of translucent light no bigger than a dinner plate. It held for a breathtaking instant, distorting the moonlight that passed through it, and then vanished with a soft pop.
He staggered back, gasping, the cost of the spell hitting him like a physical blow. He felt light-headed, and his wand arm trembled with the aftershock of the power he had wielded. But he wasn't disappointed. He was ecstatic.
He grinned, a wide, triumphant smile in the darkness. It wasn't a shield. It was barely a magical frisbee. But it was real. It was proof. He had done it. He had cast a N.E.W.T.-level spell.
He knew it would take months more of training to create a shield strong enough to block a real curse. But he had a path. He had a system. And for the first time since arriving in this impossible, wonderful world, he felt truly, unassailably safe in his own abilities.