Classes ran like nothing was wrong.
Feathers are burning, and charms students shriek.
McGonagall lectured a herd of terrified second-years about Animagus law.
Ron Nearly blew his eyebrows off in Transfiguration and acted like he meant to.
Normal life went on.
Harry walked right through it, like a ghost.
He heard every whispered rumour. Every flicker of shifting stone. Every pulse beneath the floor. The castle wasn't just awake; it was aware.
And it wanted him back.
By evening, the hum under his skin had become a pressure, low and steady, like standing too close to a storm.
Hermione cornered him in the library before dinner.
"Anything from Draco?" she whispered.
Harry shook his head. "Not yet."
She chewed her lip. "We need to be ahead of the Circle. Whatever they want… it isn't small."
"No," Harry muttered, "it's not."
He didn't tell her what the coin had shown him circles of masked figures, fractured timelines, the word Convergence thrumming with hunger.
Hermione leaned in closer still. "Were you there again?"
Harry didn't answer.
She seized his wrist. "Harry, you promised-"
"I didn't promise anything," he said, his voice soft, and tugged free. "And this isn't something I can wait on."
"Waiting is literally the safe approach!
"We're out of safe approaches.
That killed the conversation.
Hermione's stare lingered on him as he walked away fear mixed with something sharper.
She knew that something was pulling him.
She didn't know it was calling him by name.
That night, he went back.
He never used the Cloak.
Didn't hide his footsteps.
Didn't pretend he was "just investigating."
Well, if the castle wanted him, fine.
Then he would come on his own terms.
As he touched the blank wall, the stone pulsed faintly, almost… greeting him.
"Right," Harry muttered. "Let's see what you really are."
He laid his palm flat.
The chill wrapped around him like a cloak, sucking the oxygen out of the air and then the world snapped open.
He stepped into the chamber.
And froze.
Because it was different.
It had changed.
For him.
The torches weren't blue-white anymore they burned gold, brighter, hotter. Runes that hadn't been visible before crawled across the ceiling like constellations rearranging themselves. The stone disc pulsed in a steady rhythm, matching his heartbeat.
Appallingly, for an awful instant Harry thought it was his heartbeat that was changing.
"What do you want from me?" he shouted at an empty room.
The air thrummed.
Not a voice. Not words.
But intention.
Recognition.
Harry's stomach dropped.
"You know me," he whispered.
The pulse quickened.
Images flashed in his skull, fast, dizzying:
A boy in a cloak walking through half of a built Tower.
A hand pressing against another disc of stone.
A voice, his voice, but older said a name he didn't understand.
Harry staggered.
"That wasn't me," he hissed, "I'm not him."
A second pulse.
Like the room disagreeing.
"I'm not," Harry repeated, louder. "I'm not Az-"
His tongue froze.
He couldn't say the name.
It slid off his mind like water, refusing to leave his lips, as if the world itself rejected the idea of him speaking it aloud.
The disc pulsed once more.
This time it wasn't emotion.
It was command.
Harry steeled himself. "Alright. You want an answer, here's one."
He stepped on the disc.
As soon as his foot touched stone, magic welled up like a geyser.
He didn't drown.
He didn't fall.
The magic bound him, clutched him like in the clutches of something very old.
His breath trembled.
His mind split open not painfully, but surgically, like a door being unlocked.
And the room spoke in response.
Not in sound.
In meaning.
Anchor. Return. Incomplete. Prepare.
Harry's legs almost went out from under him.
"Prepare for what?" he whispered.
The pulse came again, harder.
Convergence.
Harry's blood ran cold.
The same word the coin had showed him.
"Convergence of what?"
The room brightened.
Harry had a vision.
Not a whole memory.
Not like before.
Just flashes
- Hogwarts imploding inwards like a dying star
Time folding in upon itself, infinite repetition of corridors.
- Human-faced shadows walking out of cracks in the air
- A spiral of threads converging to one point
– Him
He hopped backward, stumbled. His heel caught the edge of the disc. He almost went down.
"No," Harry panted. "No. That is not going to happen."
The room pulsed once more; sharp, impatient.
An order.
Learn.
Harry felt something hit his mind not violently, but insistently, like a book opening itself inside his skull.
He saw spells he'd never learned.
Symbols he'd never drawn.
A ward structure so old the Founders would call it primitive and so powerful it made modern magic look like children scribbling.
His breath hitched. His hands shook.
"Stop," he hushed.
The pressure let up - barely.
"I can't, not this fast-"
The disc flickered, protesting, as if frustrated he couldn't absorb the information at Azelar's pace.
Harry gritted his teeth. "I'm not him. I'm learning my way. Slow. Controlled."
The room pulsed-disapproval mixed with reluctant acceptance.
Harry let out a trembling breath.
"Good," he said. "Now show me something I can actually use."
The room darkened.
Then a single symbol rose from the disk in a resplendent glow.
A rune: simple, elegant, sharp.
Harry scowled. "What's this?"
It came back with a single pulse of intent.
Protection.
Harry blinked. "Against what?"
The pulse changed, darker, colder.
Them.
Harry's stomach turned.
"Them who?" he asked.
The answer came as a flash:
Masks.
Robes.
A ring of coins around a circle.
Hands wet with blood.
The Circle of Eterion.
Harry's jaw clenched.
His voice sank to a whisper.
"What do they want from me?"
The response was quick and brutal.
Claim.
Harry's pulse spiked. "Claim me? Like property?
The pulse hardened.
Like legacy.
He staggered back.
His voice shook. "I'm not their legacy. I'm not yours, either."
The room fell silent.
For the first time, Harry felt something new in the chamber something he hadn't noticed before.
Exhaustion.
Ancient.
Vast
Wounded.
The Tower had once shattered time.
It had paid for it.
Pieces of it scattered across eras, waiting for someone who could hold them.
Not a vessel.
A repair.
Harry stared at the disc.
"You want me to fix what you broke."
The answer came - soft, but iron-hard.
Yes.
Harry sighed.
Outside, lightning cracked and shook dust from the ceiling.
His shadow stretched across the glowing stone: long, thin, almost regal.
Almost Azelar-shaped.
Harry closed his fists.
"Then we do this my way," he said. "No rifts. No wars. No collapsing the world. I'm not tearing time open. I'm stabilizing it."
The room froze.
Then pulsed once not approval, not agreement but acknowledgment. A pact. Apprehensive. Unspoken. A start. Harry stepped off the disc. He hesitated in the threshold before he left. "Tell me one thing," he said softly.
"Why me? Why choose me?"
The stone shone dimly. A whisper of meaning brushed his mind. 'Cause you break… differently. Harry swallowed hard. Then the wall dissolved, and he stepped back into the corridor shaken, changed, and aware of one terrifying truth: The Tower wasn't awakening. It was hiring. And Harry Potter was no longer just the Boy Who Lived. He was becoming the boy upon whom the world converged.