"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." — Plutarch
December 21, 1968, The Ritual Chamber, Grimmauld Place, London
The Winter Solstice at Number 12 did not taste of pine needles or roasting chestnuts. It tasted of iron.
The Ritual Chamber, located three levels beneath the cellar, was a room hewn from black basalt. The air here was heavy, pressurised by centuries of blood-magic and the accumulated weight of the Black family ego.
Vega stood in the circle, dressed in ceremonial robes of crushed velvet, holding a silver bowl.
Opposite him, Orion and Walburga chanted in a drone that sounded like dry leaves skittering over stone. They were invoking the protection of the family totem, demanding strength from the darkness, binding the wards with fresh drops of blood pricked from their thumbs.
It was powerful, yes. Vega could feel the house groaning in satisfaction, drinking the offering. But it was also... stagnant.
It was magic as a transaction. I give you blood; you give me walls. It was a cage disguised as a castle.
"The sun dies," Walburga intoned, her eyes closed, her face pale in the candlelight. "And the shadow reigns."
"The shadow protects," Orion answered.
Vega repeated the words, playing his part. "The shadow endures."
But beneath his robes, against the skin of his forearm, his wand was humming a different tune. It wasn't humming of shadows or endurance. It was vibrating with a restless, pent-up anticipation.
Because the wand knew what Walburga did not: The Solstice is not the triumph of the dark. It is the moment the light returns.
The Garden, Midnight
An hour later, the house was silent. The family had retired, satisfied that their grim duty to the darkness was complete.
Vega stood at the back door, looking out at the walled garden of Grimmauld Place.
It was a desolate patch of earth. The Black philosophy extended to horticulture—if it wasn't poisonous or sentient, it wasn't worth keeping. Gnarled snargaluff stumps twisted in the frost, and withered vines choked the stone walls. The fog had frozen into a hard rime on the ground.
Vega stepped out.
The cold bit at his cheeks, but he didn't cast a Warming Charm. He wanted to feel it. He wanted to feel the absolute bottom of the year, the second before the pendulum swung back.
He walked to the center of the dead garden, his boots crunching on the frozen earth.
"You're suffocating," he whispered to the ground.
He wasn't talking about the weeds. He was talking about the magic of the earth itself, trapped beneath the heavy, dark wards of the house, buried under layers of concrete and cynicism.
He pulled the wand from his sleeve.
In the gloom of the Solstice night, the English Oak seemed to wake up. The iridescent veins of the Quetzalcoatl feather, usually faint, flared with a soft, bioluminescent pulse—teal and gold heartbeat against the bronze wood.
The Oak is the King of the Forest from the Winter Solstice until the Summer Solstice.
Tonight was the coronation.
Vega didn't raise the wand like a weapon. He didn't slash or stab. He knelt.
He placed the tip of the wand directly against the frozen soil.
He closed his eyes and abandoned the rigid mental structures of the Black family occlumency. He let his Metamorphmagus nature loose, dropping the barriers, letting his internal 'self' become fluid. He poured his own vitality, his own chaotic, joyful Hum, into the wood.
Wake up, he thought. The King is here.
He didn't cast a spell. He didn't know the incantation for what he was doing because there wasn't one. He was simply acting as a bridge between the sleeping earth and the turning sky.
The reaction began slowly.
A circle of frost around the wand tip melted.
The sensation rushed up Vega's arm, a torrent of connection. He felt the sleeping roots of the ancient trees under the London pavement. He felt the slow, drowsy heartbeat of hibernating beetles. He felt the magnetic pull of the sun, hidden far below the horizon, beginning its long climb back.
"Come on," Vega whispered, a smile breaking across his face—a smile of pure, unadulterated wonder. "Breathe."
He twisted the wand, a motion like turning a key in a lock.
The Quetzalcoatl feather caught the wind—the freezing, stagnant London air—and transmuted it. A breeze swirled around him, warm and smelling of wet loam and ozone.
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, like a pistol shot.
Three feet away, the frozen ground split.
It wasn't a monster clawing its way out. It was a sapling.
Driven by the pure, concentrated energy of the Oak wand, a shoot of English Oak burst through the frost of the Black garden. It grew with impossible speed, spiraling upward, fueled by Vega's joy and the wand's authority.
In seconds, it was knee-high. Then waist-high.
It stopped at chest height—a perfect, miniature Oak tree, standing defiant amidst the poisonous stumps of the dark garden. It was covered in silver bark, and on its branches, defying the season, hung leaves of vibrant, shocking green.
Vega laughed.
It wasn't a polite laugh. It was a bright, ringing sound that echoed off the high stone walls. He fell back onto the snow, sitting there, staring at the tree he had invited into existence.
The magic here felt clean. It didn't ask for blood. It just asked to live.
"Happy Solstice," he murmured to the tree.
He reached out and touched a leaf. It was warm. The magic of the Oak King had claimed a sovereign patch of land in the heart of the House of Black.
The Window, Third Floor
High above, behind the heavy velvet drapes of the Master Study, a figure watched.
Arcturus Black did not sleep well on Solstice nights. The blood magic always made his old scars ache.
He stood by the window, looking down into the darkness of the garden. He had seen the flash of teal light. He had seen the warm wind kick up the snow. And he saw the boy, sitting in the snow, laughing at a tree that shouldn't exist.
Arcturus looked at the small oak tree glowing faintly in the moonlight.
Walburga would call it frivolous. She would say the boy was playing gardener when he should be studying curses.
But Arcturus knew better.
He had felt the wards of the house shiver. The boy hadn't just grown a plant; he had bypassed the ancient Egyptian protection schemes, ignored the soil toxicity, and commanded life to spring from death.
"Magnificent" Arcturus murmured, his voice rough with a grudging, terrifying respect.
He watched Vega stand up, brush the snow from his robes, and bow respectfully to the sapling before turning back to the house.
Arcturus let the curtain fall back into place.
"Let Dumbledore try to teach him," the old man whispered to the empty room. "The boy is already listening to voices older than Hogwarts."
March 15, 1969, Vega's Chamber, Grimmauld Place
The London rain was relentless, drumming a ceaseless, gray rhythm against the windowpanes of Number 12. It was a suffocating afternoon, the kind where the house seemed to tighten its grip, the shadows in the corners stretching out to swallow the light.
Inside Vega's room, however, the atmosphere was one of warmth.
Vega sat cross-legged on the Persian rug, his back resting against the heavy oak frame of his bed. Opposite him sat Sirius.
At ten years old, Sirius was a coiled spring of kinetic energy. His hair was messy—a deliberate rebellion against Walburga's grooming charms—and his grey eyes were storm-dark with frustration.
Between them, resting on the intricate weave of the carpet, lay a simple, smooth gray stone.
"It's stupid," Sirius huffed, crossing his arms. He glared at the pebble as if it had personally insulted his lineage. "It's just a rock, Vega. Mother says I should be learning the Incendio motion. She says I need to learn to burn things."
Vega didn't scold him. He didn't lecture. He simply picked up the stone, turning it over in his long fingers.
"Mother teaches magic as if it is a hammer," Vega said softly, his voice cutting through Sirius's agitation like cool water. "She thinks you hit the world until it breaks into the shape you want. But that is why her magic feels... brittle."
He held the stone out to Sirius. "Take it."
Sirius sighed, the melodramatic sigh of the oppressed younger brother, and snatched the stone. "Fine. I'm holding it. Now what? Do I blow it up?"
"Close your eyes," Vega commanded, not unkindly.
Sirius hesitated, then obeyed.
"You remember Diagon Alley?" Vega asked, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a murmur that was barely louder than the rain. "You remember the wind in the shop? The way the dust turned to light?"
"Yeah," Sirius whispered, his face softening at the memory. "It was... loud. But quiet too."
"Exactly. That wasn't a spell, Sirius. That was a conversation. My magic spoke to the wand, and the wand answered." Vega reached out and placed his hand over Sirius's fist, which was clenched tight around the stone. "Right now, you are shouting at the stone. You are tight. You are angry at Mother. You are angry at the house. The stone can't hear you over all that noise."
Vega let a tiny fraction of his own magic, the warm, fluid Hum of his metamorphmagus ability, flow from his hand into Sirius's skin. It wasn't a spell; it was a guide. A tuning fork.
"Relax your hand," Vega instructed. "Don't drop it. just... cradle it. Like you're holding a bird that might fly away."
Sirius's fingers loosened. The white knuckles returned to a healthy pink.
"Now," Vega said, withdrawing his hand. "Don't try to change it. Don't try to burn it. I just want you to find it. Your magic is in your blood, Siri. It's drumming in your ears. Push that feeling down your arm, into your palm, and just... say hello."
The room fell silent, save for the rain.
Vega watched his brother. He saw the struggle on Sirius's face—the instinct to force, to dominate, instilled by years of Walburga's harsh tutelage. He saw the moment Sirius let that go. His shoulders dropped. His breathing slowed.
Sirius sat there for a long minute, his brow furrowed in concentration.
Then, he gasped.
"It's... cold," Sirius whispered, his eyes flying open, wide with shock.
"Keep going," Vega encouraged, his eyes locking onto Sirius's. "It's cold because it's asleep. Wake it up."
Sirius closed his eyes again, but this time, there was no frustration. There was curiosity. The same wild, desperate curiosity that would one day make him a Marauder, but was now being channeled into something finer.
The stone in Sirius's hand didn't explode. It didn't turn into a diamond.
It simply shivered.
A low, faint vibration hummed from the rock, a resonance that caused the dust motes on the carpet to dance. It was a soundless frequency, a harmonic response to Sirius's intent.
Then, very slowly, the grey stone began to change. It didn't transfigure completely, but the surface rippled like water. For a fleeting second, the dull grey turned a translucent, smoky quartz—lit from within by a faint, chaotic light.
Sirius dropped it.
The stone clattered onto the rug, returning instantly to dull grey.
Sirius stared at his hand, then at the stone, then at Vega. His face was pale, but his eyes were blazing with a terrified delight.
"It... it moved," Sirius stammered. "It felt like it was humming at me. Vega, I felt it in my teeth!"
Vega smiled—a genuine, proud smile that reached his eyes. He reached out and ruffled Sirius's messy hair.
"That," Vega said, "is magic, little brother. Real magic. Not the Latin words, not the wand movements. It's the connection. You felt the stone, and for a second, you made it part of you."
Sirius looked at his hands as if he had never seen them before. "Mother never said it felt like that. She said it requires discipline. Pain."
"Mother is afraid of what she can't control," Vega said, his tone hardening slightly before softening again. "She wants you to be a soldier, Sirius. A weapon for the House."
Vega leaned in, catching Sirius's gaze with an intensity that made the younger boy freeze.
"But you are not a weapon. You are a wizard. And you are my brother."
Vega picked up the stone and pressed it back into Sirius's palm, closing the boy's fingers over it.
"When you go to Hogwarts," Vega said, his voice low and fierce, "you will meet boys who treat magic like a joke, and you will meet boys who treat it like a gun. Don't listen to them. Listen to this feeling. Listen to the hum."
Sirius gripped the stone tightly. "I will. I want to do it again."
"We will practiced every day until I leave," Vega promised. "And when I am gone, you will practice with Regulus. You will teach him."
Sirius nodded vigorously, the sullen boredom of the afternoon completely forgotten. He looked at Vega with a hero-worship that was absolute. James Potter might one day offer Sirius friendship and adventure, but he would never offer him this—this understanding of the soul of the world.
"Vega?"
"Yes?"
"Can we make it float next time?"
Vega laughed, leaning his head back against the bedframe. "One step at a time, Siri. First, we wake the stone. Then... we teach it to fly."
Outside, the rain continued to lash against the Grimmauld Place, but inside the room, the air was light, charged with the secret, wondrous spark of a fire truly kindled.