Chapter 2 – Fire Over the Highlands
The older wizard introduced himself as Professor Eleazar Fig. The Ministry man was George Osric. The courtyard off Muggle London was, apparently, the meeting point they had actually planned to use.
Jasper was the unexpected variable.
He learned all of that in the span of a few minutes while trying very hard not to look like someone who had just been torn out of a corridor in another time.
It helped that Fig seemed almost unflappable.
"Jasper Hemlock," he repeated, as if tasting the name. "An unusual arrival for an unusual student."
George snorted.
"That's one way to put it," he said. "When Weasley wrote about you, I pictured something more along the lines of a timid boy with too much theory and not enough broom sense. Not—" he waved a hand at Jasper's scuffed clothes and the faint dust-print on the flagstones "—whatever this is."
"I had a Portkey accident," Jasper said, sticking to the lie because it was the only one that came close to the truth without requiring an entire lecture on temporal knots. "It misfired."
George winced in sympathy.
"Nasty things, Portkeys, when they go wrong," he said. "You're lucky you didn't end up inside a wall."
Jasper decided not to mention that if he'd been a little less lucky—or unlucky, depending on how one looked at it—he might have ended up smeared across several years instead.
Fig's gaze lingered on him a moment longer, the professor's eyes sharp behind his spectacles. There was curiosity there, and something else, recognition, maybe, of a kind of strangeness he'd seen before in Miriam's letters.
But he let the explanation stand.
"Regardless," Fig said, "you're here now. We can sort out the Ministry's paperwork later. For the moment, our priority is to get you to Hogwarts."
"Then to Gringotts," George added, patting his breast pocket. "I'd sleep easier once this is under lock and key."
He drew out a small cloth-wrapped bundle and held it up. Jasper didn't need to see inside to know what it was. The magic coming off it thrummed at a pitch that made his teeth ache.
Fig unwrapped it carefully, revealing the shifting key.
The etched metal seemed to crawl in place, unable to decide what shape it preferred. The lines carved into it traced symbols Jasper didn't know by name, but his bones recognised them all the same.
The note in his chest answered.
It was like someone had plucked a string inside him that had been humming this whole time quietly.
He couldn't stop his hand from lifting.
When his fingertips brushed the metal, light flowed along the carved lines, tracing them in blue-white. For a heartbeat, the key locked solid, fixed in a shape that made sense even as his mind refused to name it.
Then the glow faded.
Fig's breath hitched
"It responds to you," he said softly.
George looked between the key and Jasper, eyebrows climbing.
"Well," he said. "That explains a few of Miriam's wilder theories."
Fig smoothed the cloth back around the Portkey, more careful with it now.
"My wife believed," he said, "that there are witches and wizards who can sense an older kind of magic. Not the charms and curses we teach in class. Something woven into the world before Hogwarts was even stones on a hill. She thought she'd become one of those people." He nodded at Jasper. "Professor Weasley thinks you might be another."
Jasper swallowed. The hum in his bones hadn't stopped. It had settled back down, but now that he'd heard it clearly, he couldn't pretend it wasn't there.
"I don't… see anything," he said. "Not the way I see, say, that carriage. It's more like… knowing there's a thunderstorm behind a hill before you see the clouds."
George's expression went briefly serious.
"If Miriam's work is right," he said, "and if goblins like Ranrok have caught even a whisper of this sort of magic, we could be looking at more than thunderstorms."
He pulled a folded copy of the Daily Prophet from his robes and flicked it open. The front page showed a goblin mid-speech, eyes blazing, captured in black-and-white motion.
RANROK DENOUNCES MINISTRY "LIES", GOBLIN UNREST GROWS
The headline rearranged as the ink shifted, but the words didn't get any friendlier.
Jasper looked at the moving picture and felt his stomach twist.
He didn't remember this goblin. Not exactly. But the anger in those eyes, the set of his shoulders—that felt familiar. Like a story he'd brushed against before, one that never ended well.
Fig glanced at the paper and frowned.
"Miriam thought Ranrok had stumbled onto some fragment of this ancient magic," he said. "She wasn't sure how much he understood. That frightened her more than anything else."
"And she died trying to chase it down," George said quietly.
Silence sat in the courtyard for a moment, heavy and real.
Fig cleared his throat.
"Which," he said, "is why you and I are going to Gringotts after we leave Jasper at the castle. Whatever my wife found, we need to understand it before Ranrok or anyone else does."
George nodded.
"Hogwarts first," he said, tucking the Portkey back into his pocket. "Then goblins and vaults and headaches."
"And I'm just… along for the ride?" Jasper said.
"For now," Fig said. "You are my student, not my assistant. You have enough ahead of you without adding goblin banking politics to the list."
George grinned.
"Don't worry," he said. "If we find anything wildly dangerous, I'm sure it'll find its way back to you eventually."
"Comforting," Jasper muttered.
The carriage dipped, steps aligning with the courtyard. Fig climbed in first, then Jasper, then George. The door shut with a solid thunk that felt more final than it had any right to.
Inside, the carriage was all leather and polished wood, the air faintly scented with old tea and travel. Runes glowed along the ceiling beams, gentle and steady.
Outside, the thestrals tossed their bony heads.
The carriage rose.
The courtyard fell away, bricks shrinking. They swept up over London, rooftops and chimneys spreading beneath them in damp grey rows. Strings of carriages and cabs moved along the streets like beads on a wire. Muggles, Jasper thought automatically. Unaware of any of this.
The note inside him hummed, quieter now but present. It threaded itself through the carriage's enchantments, through the sky, through the distant ache of whatever Alder had been trying to hold back.
It was all connected. He could feel it, even if he couldn't chart the lines.
"Here," Fig said.
He produced a small bottle from his satchel and passed it over. The potion inside glowed a gentle blue, swirling when Jasper tilted it.
"What is it?" Jasper asked.
"A restorative," Fig said. "For shock. Falling out of the sky, Portkey mishaps, and surprise dragon attacks."
Jasper blinked.
"Dragon attacks?" he repeated.
Fig smiled thinly.
"A poor joke," he said. "Drink. It will help."
Jasper uncorked the bottle. The potion smelled of mint and something sharper underneath. He swallowed a mouthful and felt cool relief spread through his chest and limbs, smoothing the ragged edges of pain and tension out of his muscles.
The pounding at the back of his skull eased. The note in his bones faded from a roar to something more like a steady hum.
"Better," he admitted.
"Keep it," Fig said. "It's been a trying morning."
George had unfolded his paper again, but he wasn't really reading. His eyes kept flicking to Jasper, to the pocket where the Portkey rested, to the sky ahead.
"So," he said eventually, "a fifth-year with no wand history, no record of formal schooling, and a… talent for unusual magic. How did you manage that trick, Mister Hemlock?"
"I grew up far from anyone who cared to teach me properly," Jasper said carefully. "Magic was always there, just… not in books. Not with names. It did what it wanted. I tried to keep up."
Fig leaned forward slightly.
"You've cast spells without knowing the incantations," he said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Sometimes," Jasper said. "It's more like remembering how to do something with your hands than memorising the theory. I see what needs doing and my magic tries to do it, with or without me."
"Instinctive casting," Fig murmured. "Rare. And extremely interesting."
George made a noise low in his throat.
"Interesting isn't the word the Ministry uses," he muttered. "They prefer things they can catalogue and regulate."
"The Ministry prefers things it can file," Fig said. "Fortunately, Hogwarts is somewhat more flexible."
The clouds ahead began to thin. Between gaps in the grey, Jasper caught glimpses of dark water and, beyond it, a shape rising from the shore.
Towers. Battlements. A constellation of lit windows.
Hogwarts.
His throat tightened.
He'd known he was being taken to the school. He'd had three years of his own. But seeing it like this—from above, across the lake, the castle outlined against the mountains—hit him with a strange mix of nostalgia and unease.
He had been here before.
Not this way. Not like this. But some part of him knew the rhythm of its magic, the way it sat in the landscape, the way its wards hummed under the sky.
He pressed his palm against the glass unconsciously. The castle didn't look back, but something in its stones recognised him all the same.
"Not far now," Fig said, following his gaze. "We'll get you sorted, introduce you to Professor Weasley, and then George and I will go attract goblins' ire without you."
"And you're sure you don't want help with that?" George asked dryly.
"I prefer my students alive," Fig said.
Jasper almost smiled.
He didn't get the chance.
The first impact was subtle—a jolt under the carriage, like hitting an air pocket.
The second was not.
Something slammed into them from below with enough force to send Jasper bouncing off the seat. The restorative bottle flew out of his hand, clinking against the opposite bench before rolling under George's boots.
"What in Merlin's—" George started.
The carriage lurched sideways. Wind roared louder as they tilted, the world outside the windows spinning.
The thestrals screamed silently, skeletal bodies twisting in their harnesses.
"Hold on!" Fig shouted.
Jasper grabbed for the edge of the seat. His fingers closed around the leather just as the clouds in front of them split open.
Something huge burst through.
Black scales gleamed slick with rain. Wings like sails beat the air, each stroke sending gusts of wind slamming into the carriage. Horns swept back from its skull in cruel curves. Its eyes burned molten gold.
A dragon.
It opened its jaws.
Heat washed over the carriage, too intense, too immediate. Smoke curled from between its teeth. For a heartbeat, Jasper saw the long dark tunnel of its throat, the glint of fangs as long as his arm.
"Down!" George shouted, throwing an arm across his face.
The dragon struck.
Its jaws clamped around the front of the carriage.
Wood splintered. Metal screamed. The front half of the carriage crushed inward, glass shattering. Thestrals thrashed, wings flailing as the harnesses twisted.
Jasper saw George for a single, painfully clear moment.
The Ministry wizard clung to the front bench, eyes wide, mouth open in a shout Jasper never heard. The Portkey bundle popped loose from his pocket as the dragon's teeth closed.
Then the front half of the carriage—and George with it—vanished into the dragon's maw in a spray of debris and flame.
Time didn't slow. It just seemed to stretch in every direction.
The shockwave hit the remaining half of the carriage, sending it spinning. Jasper's grip tore free. He slammed into the side, shoulder screaming, and then there was nothing under him.
He fell.
Cold air grabbed him and flung him downward. Cloud and sky and the underside of the dragon's belly whirled around him. Splinters and twisted metal fell with him, turning end over end.
The lake and hills rushed up from below.
The Portkey bundle tumbled half a dozen yards away, spinning uselessly through the air.
Jasper's lungs forgot how to work.
Everything he'd been trying not to think about—Alder's tear, the corridors, the flashes of other moments—rose up at once.
He wasn't ready. He didn't know enough. He hadn't even reached the castle. This wasn't supposed to—
Something crashed into his wrist.
A hand. Fingers clamped down like iron.
Jasper jerked to a halt. The rest of him kept trying to fall, leaving his arm feeling like it was being torn out of its socket.
He looked up.
Fig dangled above him from a jut of broken carriage frame, one hand hooked over splintered wood, the other wrapped around Jasper's arm.
"Don't let go!" Fig shouted.
Jasper didn't intend to. His free hand flew up and grabbed the professor's sleeve just above his wrist, clinging so hard his nails dug through the fabric.
The Portkey bundle still spun through the air, falling faster now.
Fig saw it too.
In that instant, Jasper understood something about the man who had taken responsibility for him without hesitation. Fig didn't weigh risks in tidy piles. He threw himself at whichever one would cause the least harm.
He shifted his grip; teeth gritted and tore his wand free of his belt.
"Accio Portkey!" he bellowed.
The spell cut through the storm.
The bundle jerked mid-fall, as if an invisible hand had grabbed the string. It reversed direction, shooting back toward them like a launched stone.
It hit Fig's outstretched hand.
The moment his fingers closed around it, Jasper felt the hook.
Portkey magic grabbed him by the navel and yanked. The sky smeared. The dragon, the broken wood, the distant glint of the lake—all stretched into coloured streaks.
Fig's grip on his arm tightened to the point of pain.
"Hold on!" the professor shouted again, even as the world tore sideways.
Jasper did.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing but pressure and light and the peculiar, horrible sensation of being somewhere and nowhere at the same time.
Then gravity returned.
They slammed onto a rock.
Jasper hit hard enough that stars burst behind his eyes. He rolled, momentum carrying him over his shoulder and onto his back. Pebbles dug into his ribs. Cold air rushed into his lungs in a ragged gasp.
The world was suddenly very loud.
Waves crashed. Wind howled. Somewhere to his right, Fig groaned.
Jasper blinked grit out of his eyes and sat up carefully.
They were on a narrow ledge halfway down a cliff. Above them, black rock reared up in jagged lines. Below, the sea threw itself against the base of the cliffs, white foam spraying up with every impact. A narrow path hugged the rock, slick with moisture, winding away in both directions.
Fig lay a few feet away, one hand pressed to his side, the other still wrapped fiercely around the cloth bundle. His knuckles were white, but he hadn't let go.
"Professor?" Jasper managed. "Are you—"
"I've had worse landings," Fig said through his teeth. "Not many. But some."
He pushed himself up, wincing, and squinted around.
"No dragon," he observed. "Small mercies."
Jasper's gaze skated over the empty sky and snapped back to Fig.
"George," he said.
Fig's mouth tightened.
"I know," he said quietly. "I saw."
Jasper swallowed.
There wasn't anything else to say that would make it better. George was gone. A living person, talking and joking and worrying about goblins, turned into a moment of noise and teeth.
Jasper could already feel the memory of it trying to mix with all the others in the back of his head.
Fig unwrapped the Portkey again, almost as if to reassure himself it was still there.
"It brought us where it was meant to," he said. "Miriam described a coastal site. Ruins. A place where this… older magic pooled. She believed there was a way from here into Gringotts, hidden even from goblins."
He looked at Jasper.
"I suspect," he added, "that the key needed someone like you holding onto it to work properly."
Jasper shook out his aching arm.
"Lucky me," he muttered.
"Lucky all of us," Fig said. "Even George, in a way. Better he dies quickly than end up in the hands of goblins who have forgotten the meaning of restraint."
The wind gusted along the cliff, tugging at their robes.
Jasper pushed himself to his feet. His legs wobbled but held.
"Now what?" he asked.
"Now," Fig said, "we follow Miriam's path."
He nodded along the cliff, where the narrow track hugged the rock.
"She wrote about a symbol carved in stone," he said. "Invisible to most. A door hidden with magic older than the bank. If we can find it—and if you can see it—we may be able to reach the vault she discovered."
"And then?" Jasper asked.
"And then," Fig said, "we see what she was willing to die for. And we decide whether anyone else deserves to know it exists."
He looked at Jasper more closely.
"I won't drag you any further in than you wish to go," he said. "You were meant to be on your way to a Sorting, not clinging to broken wood above a dragon's head. If you'd rather stay here, I will find a way to get you to Hogwarts after I return. Or send for help."
Jasper stared at the path, then at the sea.
Wait on a narrow ledge, alone, while Fig walked into whatever Miriam had found? Accept that once again somebody else would step into the heart of the problem while he stayed on the edges, trying to guess what would come back out?
No.
He thought of Alder's hand slipping from his. Of the crack in the corridor widening. Of the way the magic had grabbed hold of him, as if it had already decided he was part of all this, whether he liked it or not.
"I'm coming," he said.
Fig studied him for a moment, then nodded once.
"Very well," he said. "Let's hope my colleagues never hear about this."
They set off along the path.
It was narrow and uneven, worn by centuries of salt and wind. In some places, it was barely more than a ledge; in others, it widened enough that scraggly grass clung to cracks. The air tasted of salt and something older, a tang that made Jasper's tongue tingle.
The hum of that deep magic grew stronger as they walked.
Sometimes it gathered ahead of them in knots. Sometimes it drifted past like a current. Jasper could feel it pressing against his skin, the way he'd once felt river water pushing against his legs when he'd stood too far out.
"Miriam wrote that she could feel these places," Fig said quietly as they walked. "Junctions, she called them. Places where… choices clung. Where what people did mattered more than elsewhere."
"I can feel it," Jasper admitted. "It's like static just before you touch something and get shocked."
They rounded a bend where the path squeezed between a jut of rock and a scraggly bush clinging to life. On the other side, the cliff face seemed unremarkable: streaked with mineral lines, damp patches, a scatter of lichen.
Jasper stopped.
It wasn't unremarkable at all.
Under the surface, lines of light coiled and crossed, just out of sight. A circle. Lines through it at odd angles. The shape hovered right on the edge of perception, but the feeling it gave off was unmistakable.
The same mark he'd felt in Alder's corridor. The same pattern that had burned across the air as he'd been dragged away.
"Professor," he said. "There."
Fig followed his gaze and frowned.
"I see stone," he said. "What do you see?"
"A symbol," Jasper said. "Threads. Like… veins of light in the rock, all tied together. It's the same as—" he cut himself off before he said corridor "—before. It feels the same."
Fig's eyes brightened.
"Miriam described something like that," he said. "Patterns only those attuned to this magic could see. If this is the door, then you're the one who has to open it."
Jasper stepped closer.
The air in front of the stone felt thicker here, like the space between him and the wall had weight. The hum was almost a vibration against his skin.
He raised his hand, hesitated, then set his palm flat against the rock.
Cold sank into his fingers.
Then warmth flowed up, meeting him halfway.
The lines beneath the surface flared. Light traced the hidden pattern, burning it into visibility. The symbol glowed, bright and clear, an eye-not-eye staring outward from the stone.
The hum swelled, becoming a single chord that resonated from the rocks under his boots all the way up to his teeth.
The cliff rippled.
Stone flowed outward from Jasper's hand like water disturbed by a dropped pebble. The grey dark turned glassy, then translucent. A tunnel appeared where there had been only rock moments before.
Rough-hewn walls. A single rail embedded in the floor. A faint glow from crystals further in.
Fig let out a slow breath.
"Incredible," he murmured. "A hidden way into Gringotts, carved and concealed with magic older than goblin wards." His gaze went to Jasper. "And opened by you."
Jasper kept his hand on the stone a moment longer, feeling the last tremors of the magic settling. The wall felt different now, less tense. Like a clenched fist slowly unfurling.
He let his hand fall.
The opening stayed.
"George should have seen this," he said.
"Yes," Fig said quietly. "He should have."
The sea roared below them. The wind tugged at their robes. The hum of ancient power hung in the air like the held note of a song, waiting to see what they'd do next.
Fig squared his shoulders and lifted his wand.
"Ready, Mister Hemlock?" he asked.
Jasper stared down the tunnel, into the shadows and the old light.
He thought of George. Of Miriam. Of Professor Alder, somewhere far away in a corridor that might never be the same again.
He nodded.
"Yes, Professor," he said. "Let's find your vault."
Together, they stepped through the stone and into the hidden way beneath the bank.
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