"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." — Gustave Flaubert
July 12, 1969, The Sun-Stone Stadium, Teotihuacan, Mexico
The heat in Mexico did not behave like the heat in London. In London, heat was a rare, suffocating blanket that smelled of tarmac and exhaust. Here, the heat was a deity. It was a heavy, golden hammer that struck the earth with a rhythmic intensity, demanding reverence.
Vega sat in the VIP box, carved entirely from cool, volcanic obsidian, and watched the riot of colour below.
"It is too loud," Walburga complained, pressing a scented handkerchief to her nose. She wore high-necked black robes, refusing to concede a single inch of sartorial dignity to the tropical climate. "And the drums. Must they hit them so hard?"
"It's a heartbeat, Mother," Vega said, his eyes hidden behind dark enchanted lenses. "The magic here is terrestrial. It comes up through the soles of the feet."
Down on the pitch, the Qualifying Match for the 1970 World Cup was a blur of motion. England was playing Brazil.
The English team played with a grim, military efficiency. They flew in rigid formations, seeking to control the Quaffle through geometry and brute force.
The Brazilians, however, did not fly. They danced.
Their seekers moved like hummingbirds, erratic and impossible to track. Their chasers passed the Quaffle with a telepathic fluidity that made the English Keeper look like he was trying to catch smoke with a fishing net.
"Look at that feint!" Sirius screamed, leaning perilously over the edge of the obsidian railing. He was wearing a green and yellow Brazilian scarf, a deliberate provocation to Walburga that Vega had silently paid for. "Did you see that, Vega? The Seeker was upside down!"
"I saw it, Siri," Vega replied, smiling at his brother's unbridled joy.
But Vega's mind was drifting beyond the Quidditch pitch.
He held a program in his hand. The finals were set for Alexandria, Egypt, next year. Alexandria.
The name triggered a cascade of thoughts in his mind. The Ministry history books claimed the Great Library burned down centuries ago, a tragedy of muggle ignorance. But the books in Arcturus's private study whispered a different truth.
They spoke of the Mouseion, the Magical Quarter of the Library, which had simply... sunk. Sunk beneath the sands and the wards, accessible only to those who knew the old path.
Hogwarts is a school, Vega thought, watching the Brazilian seeker dive. But there are Universities. The House of Life in Thebes. The Jade Mountain in China. The Invisible College in Prague. Why do we stop learning at eighteen? Why do we settle for N.E.W.T.s when the world holds wisdom that can rewrite the sky?
He felt a deep, hungry ambition stirring in his chest. He didn't just want to be a powerful wizard in Britain. He wanted to be a scholar of the World. He wanted to walk the sunken halls of Alexandria and read scrolls written by wizards who watched the Pyramids being built.
"Goal to Brazil!" the announcer roared in Spanish, the sound amplified by Sonorus charms that made the air vibrate.
The stadium erupted. Sirius cheered. Walburga looked as though she had swallowed a lemon.
Vega felt a sudden, sharp heat against his forearm.
It wasn't the sun.
He pulled up his sleeve. The English Oak wand was vibrating. The iridescent veins of the Quetzalcoatl feather were pulsing with a frenetic, desperate energy—teal, gold, teal, gold.
It wasn't hurting him. It was pulling him.
"Grandfather," Vega said, keeping his voice low.
Arcturus was sitting in the corner of the box, ignoring the match entirely while reading a local magical newspaper. He looked up, his eyes landing instantly on Vega's glowing forearm.
"It sings?" Arcturus asked.
"It screams," Vega corrected. "It knows where we are."
Arcturus folded his paper. A gleam of interest entered his eyes—the look of a man who preferred ancient mysteries to modern sports.
"Orion," Arcturus barked. "Stay with your wife. Keep Sirius from falling off the ledge. Vega and I have business."
The Avenue of the Dead, Teotihuacan
They left the noise of the stadium behind, taking a private portkey authorized by the Mexican Ministry to the heart of the ancient city.
The ruins of Teotihuacan stretched out before them, vast and silent under the baking sun. The tourists—both muggle and magical—were clustered around the Pyramid of the Sun.
Arcturus led Vega away from the crowds, down a path that was veiled from muggle eyes by shimmering heat-haze wards.
Stop looking at the stone with your eyes, Vega," Arcturus commanded, not looking back. "Look with your blood."
Vega closed his eyes for a moment, shifting his magical senses.
The world exploded into colour.
To the naked eye, Teotihuacan was beige stone and dry dust. To his magical sight, the city was a blinding grid of gold and crimson ley lines. The pyramids weren't just tombs; they were massive, geometric capacitors, designed to trap the magic of the earth and funnel it toward the sky.
"It's... heavy," Vega whispered, opening his eyes. "The air feels thick."
"Blood magic," Arcturus said dispassionately. "The Aztecs understood a fundamental truth that Europe has tried to sanitize: Magic is energy, and energy cannot be created, only transferred. For the sun to rise, something else must give its warmth. For the rain to fall, tears must be shed."
They approached the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It was smaller than the great pyramids, but far more potent. Stone heads of the creature—half-snake, half-bird—jutted from the facade, their fanged mouths open, their eyes wide and unblinking.
Arcturus stopped in the shadow of a great stone head.
"Tell me what you know of the Quetzalcoatl," Arcturus asked.
"A god," Vega recited from his textbooks. "The Feathered Serpent. Deity of wind, air, and learning. Worshipped by the Aztecs and Toltecs."
"Wrong," Arcturus said sharply. "That is the mythology. What is the reality?"
Vega touched the holster on his arm. The wand was vibrating so hard now it made his teeth ache. "It's a creature."
"Precisely."
Arcturus turned to face the temple. "The Muggles called them gods because they were terrified. The local wizards called them gods because they were respectful. But they are beasts, Vega. Apex magical creatures, akin to the Phoenix, or a Dragon, but infinitely more reclusive."
Arcturus pointed his cane at the stone serpent.
"A Dragon creates fire. A Phoenix conquers death. But the Quetzalcoatl? It governs change. It is the master of the threshold between the earth and the sky. They do not breed in captivity. They do not serve wizards. In the last thousand years, perhaps five wands have carried such a core. They are not pets; they are wind with a heartbeat."
Vega looked at the stone visage with new eyes. "Ollivander said the feather was given by a dying one."
"A rare gift," Arcturus mused. "Usually, when they die, they simply dissolve into wind. To leave a feather is an act of deliberate will. It means the creature wanted its power to continue."
"The core in your wand has been sleeping in a box in damp, grey London," Arcturus continued. "It is dormant. It needs to remember what it is."
He gestured to the base of the temple, where a small, unassuming altar of obsidian sat, worn smooth by centuries of hands.
"Place the wand on the stone. Do not cast. Just... open the door."
Vega stepped forward. The heat was intense now, smelling of ozone and dry sage. He pulled the English Oak wand from his sleeve.
The moment the wood touched the obsidian altar, the world went silent.
It wasn't that the sound stopped; it was that the sound was sucked out of the air.
Vega felt a jerk behind his navel, and then his consciousness was pulled out of his body.
Darkness.
Then, a heartbeat. BOOM-boom. BOOM-boom.
He wasn't a boy anymore. He was a current of air. He was soaring over a canopy of emerald green jungle, feeling the humidity on scales he didn't have. He felt a profound, alien intelligence brushing against his mind—not human, not verbal, but vast.
It wasn't a god. It was a predator. But a predator that hunted stagnancy.
The presence examined him. It tasted the Metamorphmagus fluid in his blood—the chaos, the lack of fixed form. It tasted the Oak wood—the stubborn, rooted loyalty.
It found the combination... amusing.
Change needs an anchor, the presence seemed to vibrate through his bones. The wind needs a tree to sing through.
Then, the vision shifted. He saw the Aztec priests of old. He saw them cutting their hands, letting blood drip onto this very stone. Not out of cruelty, but out of transaction. They were feeding the earth so the earth would feed the crops. Equivalent Exchange. The harsh, mathematical beauty of the sun.
You do not need to give blood, the presence whispered, its voice the sound of rattling leaves. You give Form. You are the Shifting One. You are the Offering.
Sky-Bearer. Wind-Eater. You have returned a piece of the Plume.
The sensation was overwhelming—vast, ancient, and utterly indifferent to human politics. It was the magic of the continent, massive and green.
Vega gasped, his Metamorphmagus physiology instinctively trying to adapt. His skin rippled, turning the rough grey of the stone, then the bright turquoise of the vision, before settling back to pale flesh.
"Vega!"
The voice snapped him back.
Vega gasped, stumbling back from the altar. He fell to his knees in the dust, his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon.
The wand lay on the altar. It was no longer vibrating.
But it had changed.
The wood of the English Oak had darkened, as if toasted by a great fire. And the grain of the wood now possessed a faint, shimmering iridescence, as if the oil-slick colours of the feather inside had soaked through to the surface.
Arcturus was beside him, looking down with a mixture of concern and sharp curiosity.
"I saw them," Vega choked out, grabbing his grandfather's arm to steady himself. "They aren't gods. They're... they're part of the atmosphere. They keep the air moving. If they died, the wind would stop."
He reached out and took his wand.
It was hot. blistering hot. But when his fingers closed around it, the heat vanished, replaced by a hum of terrifying competence.
"It accepted the Oak," Vega realized, looking at the darkened wood. "It likes the root. It needs the anchor."
Arcturus nodded slowly, his eyes gleaming. "The Deep Magic of the Americas is not about waving a stick, Vega. It is about resonance. You have tuned your instrument."
An Hour later
They sat on the steps of the temple for a moment, sharing a canteen of water and Vega having had a Pepper-Up potion.
"You must understand," Arcturus said, gesturing to the ruins. "Why the Aztec magic fell, and why it remains."
"They were conquered," Vega said. "By Muggles with guns and diseases."
"Their people were conquered," Arcturus corrected. "But their magic? No. Their magic failed because it was too rigid. They believed the sun would only rise if they paid for it in blood. They became slaves to their own transaction."
He pointed his cane at Vega's wand.
"That is why you are dangerous, Vega. You have the raw power of their 'god' in your hand—the power of wind and change. But you are a Metamorphmagus. You are not rigid. You do not need to break the world to change it; you can simply shift to fit it."
Arcturus stood up, dusting off his robes.
"The feather gives you the wind. The Oak gives you the root. And your blood... your blood gives you the freedom to be both."
Vega stood, holstering his wand. He felt older. The visit to the Quidditch match felt like a childhood memory, distant and trivial. He had touched the mind of a storm.
"Are there others?" Vega asked, looking at the silent stone heads. "Are there other places like this?"
"Many," Arcturus smiled, a wolfish, ambitious expression. "The World is vast, grandson. The Sphinx in Egypt. The Dragon Veins in China. The Ley-Nexus of Stonehenge. You have taken your first step into the Deep World. Do not let the small politics of Hogwarts blind you to the size of the board."
Vega nodded. He looked back at the temple one last time.
The stone serpent seemed to wink.
"I'm ready," Vega said.
"Good," Arcturus replied. "Because next week, we must buy your school books. And I daresay Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 will seem terribly boring after this."
As they walked back toward the stadium, the roar of the crowd signalling Brazil's victory echoing in the distance, Vega touched the wand in his sleeve.
It felt different. Before, the wind magic had been flighty, restless. Now, it felt anchored. It felt ancient.
He thought of the library in Alexandria again.
If the stones here can speak, he thought, a thrill of anticipation running through him, imagine what the books in the sand can say.
"Grandfather?"
"Yes?"
"When I finish Hogwarts... I want to go to Alexandria. I want to find the Mouseion."
Arcturus stopped walking. He looked at the boy—sweaty, pale, but vibrating with a power that was growing daily. He smiled, a rare, genuine expression.
"Finish your O.W.L.s first, boy," Arcturus said. "But... yes. I believe the Black family library is due for an expansion."