Excerpt from "The Scripture of the Threshold" – Second Scroll:
"A god cannot walk into the mortal world without a shell. A Gatekeeper cannot move among humans without a mask. And the first, most important mask, is a name. Elias Aurelius – the name Lily Potter whispered in the most exhausted moment of her life, not chosen by her, but whispered into her ear by a voice from the Threshold. A name that is a door, a threshold, the first step of an unfinished god into the world..."
August 2, 1991, two days after Elias's eleventh birthday, a knock sounded on the stone wall of the House Between.
Not a knock on a door – for there was no door to knock on. But a knock directly on the air, on the very fabric of space where the house existed.
The Guardian was sitting with Elias in the round, cornerless room, teaching him how to sense the slightest changes in Thresholds. Both startled.
"They're here," The Guardian said, his sunset eyes narrowing. "Earlier than expected."
The knock came again, clearer this time, more patient. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Elias stood up. "Should I go open... but how?"
"You don't open," The Guardian said. "You invite. Because this isn't a place with doors to open, but a place with thresholds to cross."
He stood up, leading Elias to a smooth wall. "Place your hand here. And invite."
Elias placed his palm on the cold stone. He didn't know what to say, but from deep within, the words came: "Who stands outside may enter this space between spaces?"
The wall became translucent like frosted glass. And through that glass, Elias saw a woman – tall, stern, hair pulled into a tight bun, square spectacles, wearing a dignified emerald-green robe.
Minerva McGonagall.
She looked through the transparent wall, her sharp eyes scanning the room, landing on Elias. A flicker of surprise crossed her face at the sight of his white hair and starry eyes, but she quickly regained her composure.
"The door, please," she said, her Scottish accent crisp.
The wall melted into a simple wooden door. McGonagall stepped through, and immediately, she shivered slightly. The room of the House Between had no stable temperature – it had the temperature of the moment between hot and cold, of autumn dusk.
"Professor McGonagall," The Guardian said, giving a slight bow. "As arranged."
"You are the boy's guardian?" McGonagall asked, her eyes sweeping from him to Elias.
"I am the one who has cared for Elias since he was young," The Guardian replied, choosing his words carefully. "After that terrible night."
McGonagall nodded, her face softening slightly. "Albus has told me. Another tragedy of the war. And a child who needed protection."
She turned to Elias. "You are Elias Aurelius?"
"Yes, ma'am," Elias said, his voice calm and measured, not that of an eleven-year-old.
"I have a letter for you." McGonagall drew from her robes a thick envelope made of high-quality parchment. The dark red wax seal with the owl and "H" was unbroken. "But before I give it to you, I must ask: do you know who you are? Do you know why you're being invited to Hogwarts?"
Elias looked at The Guardian, then back at McGonagall. "I am a student. And I'm invited because... I have a special ability."
It wasn't a complete lie.
McGonagall tilted her head, studying him. "Albus says you can sense things others cannot. Weaknesses in reality's fabric. Doors that shouldn't exist."
"Yes," Elias said simply.
"And for that reason," McGonagall continued, her voice becoming more formal, "you will not be an ordinary student at Hogwarts. You will have special duties. You will learn to use your ability to... protect. To close doors that should not open. And to help those who are lost between worlds."
She handed the envelope to Elias. "This is the official invitation. But there is another letter as well – from Albus himself. A letter explaining your true duties in more detail."
Elias took it, his fingers touching the wax seal. It warmed under his touch, then broke on its own. Inside were two sheets – one the standard Hogwarts invitation, the other a handwritten letter on thin parchment, the writing elegant and flowing.
Dear Elias,
You come to Hogwarts with two roles: student and Gatekeeper.
As a student, you will learn how to live among others.
As a Gatekeeper, you will learn to protect what does not belong to this world.
Within the castle's stone walls are ancient secrets.
Beneath its deep lakes are forgotten doors.
In the air between its corridors are souls who have not found their way.
Your work is to observe. To listen. And when needed, to intervene.
But above all, you must learn.
Learn to be human, though you are not quite human.
Learn to be a wizard, though magic does not quite touch you.
Learn to be a bridge, for that is your true nature.
We will speak more when you arrive.
Until then, prepare for your journey.
Albus Dumbledore
Elias folded the letter, feeling its weight not in his hand, but in his chest. This wasn't just an invitation to school. This was a summons to a mission.
"Today we will go to Diagon Alley," McGonagall said, breaking the silence. "You need a wand, books, robes. And..." She looked at The Guardian. "Anything special to prepare?"
The Guardian shook his head. "Elias is ready. But there is one thing..." He looked at Elias, his sunset eyes filled with complex emotion – pride, worry, regret. "The wand. It may not... react normally."
McGonagall frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," The Guardian said, his voice lowering, "Elias has a special relationship with magic. It doesn't work on him in the ordinary way. And that may affect how the wand responds."
McGonagall nodded, her face thoughtful. "I understand. Then let us begin."
She turned back to the wall that had become a door. "This path will lead us directly to Diagon Alley. But it is not an easy path."
Elias looked at The Guardian one last time. Eleven years in the House Between. Eleven years learning about Thresholds, souls, the spaces between worlds. And now, he was about to leave.
"I will miss you," Elias said, his voice still measured but with something like emotion flickering in his starry eyes.
"And I will miss you," The Guardian said, his voice thick. "But this is not goodbye. Just another threshold to cross."
Elias nodded, turning to follow McGonagall. He stepped through the door, and the House Between, along with eleven years of safety and separation, remained behind.
Stepping out from a brick wall at the end of a small alley near the Leaky Cauldron, Elias set foot on the ground of the real world for the first time in eleven years. A strange sensation ran down his spine – the solidity, the firmness, the presence of everything.
"This is Diagon Alley," McGonagall said, leading him out of the small alley into the main street. "The shopping center of the wizarding world in Britain."
And indeed, it was a sight.
Diagon Alley wasn't just a street – it was a living creature, breathing magic. Shops leaned against each other like crooked teeth, windows glittered with strange wares, and above all, there were people. So many people.
Witches in colorful robes dragged children who pulled them toward toy shops. Elderly wizards sat outside cafes, reading the Daily Prophet and arguing politics. A group of Hogwarts students laughed in front of a joke shop, holding bags of Chocolate Frogs.
But through Elias's starry eyes, Diagon Alley appeared completely different.
He saw tiny cracks in the walls – not ordinary cracks, but microscopic Thresholds where reality thinned enough to glimpse other worlds shimmering behind. He saw areas of denser air where magic accumulated like mist. He saw ghosts of the past – faint images of people who had once walked this street, imprinted on the very fabric of space.
And he saw... souls. Not frightening ghosts, but small fragments of light, lost, trapped between layers of reality. A young woman stood before a wand shop, her face full of indecision – around her, a soul fragment also indecisive, not ready to move on. An old man sat on a bench, watching children play – beside him, a soul fragment also watching, with nameless longing.
"Mr. Ollivander first," McGonagall said, breaking Elias's train of thought. "The wand is most important."
They entered Ollivanders. The shop was narrow, dark, dust-hazy. Thousands of narrow boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, and the air smelled strange – ancient wood, time's dust, and something else, something primordial and unexplored magic.
A man with wide, silvery eyes appeared from the shadows. "Professor McGonagall. And a new student. I've seen many this August, but none like this."
He approached Elias, his silvery eyes staring unblinking. "White hair. Not albinism. Skin so white it's translucent. And the eyes..." He took a step back, exhaling. "Eyes like small galaxies. Interesting. Very interesting."
"Mr. Ollivander, this is Elias Aurelius," McGonagall said. "He needs a wand."
"Of course, of course," Ollivander said, but he continued staring at Elias as if he were a living museum artifact. "Which is your wand arm?"
"I don't know," Elias said truthfully.
"We shall find out."
What followed was an hour of frustration.
Ollivander began with the most common wands. "Oak and unicorn hair, fourteen inches, supple."
Elias took it. Nothing happened. No sparks. No warmth. Just emptiness.
"Hmm." Ollivander took back the wand. "Try this one. Maple and dragon heartstring, twelve and a half inches, rigid."
Again nothing.
Third. Fourth. Fifth. Each time the same. The wands lay dead in Elias's hands like pieces of dead wood.
Ollivander became confused, then intrigued. "Curious. Very curious. I've never seen this. Even Squibs usually produce some reaction – a small spark, a wisp of smoke. But with you... nothing."
He tried rarer wands. Hawthorn with phoenix feather. Blackthorn with veela hair. Yew with thunderbird tail feather. Nothing.
Finally, Ollivander stopped, his face thoughtful. "There is a coldness about you, boy. Not the cold of death. But the cold of... emptiness. Of places between places."
He disappeared into the back of the shop. McGonagall and Elias heard rummaging, boxes falling, muttering. When Ollivander returned, he carried a box different from all the others – not wood, but a kind of pale gray stone, smooth as jade.
"This one," Ollivander said, his voice hushed with reverence. "My grandfather called it 'The Wand of Thresholds.' He found it not in a forest, but in a place... between places. A place not on any map."
He opened the box. Inside, on black velvet, lay a wand made of wood so pale it was almost white, with spiral grains running along its length like a spinning galaxy. The handle was carved with strange symbols – doors, arches, bridges, thresholds.
"What wood is that?" McGonagall asked.
"I don't know," Ollivander admitted. "And the core... my grandfather said it was 'essence of nowhere.' Essence of places that belong nowhere."
He handed the wand to Elias.
The moment Elias's fingers touched it, three things happened simultaneously:
Every other wand in the shop rattled in its box, creating a strange, chiming chorus.
The temperature in the shop dropped suddenly, the air becoming crystal clear, still like the air in an ancient temple.
And from the wand's tip, a thin gray mist emerged, forming a fleeting image of a door opening, then closing.
Ollivander exhaled a long, trembling breath. "So it is done."
"What does that mean?" McGonagall asked, her hand already gripping her own wand.
"It means," Ollivander said, his silvery eyes not leaving Elias, "this wand has been waiting. Perhaps for centuries. And it means this boy... is unlike anyone I've ever met."
He refused payment. "No. I cannot charge for a wand that chose its master before I was born. But a warning, boy: that wand will not perform magic in the ordinary way. It may open things that should stay closed. It may close things that should stay open. And it will always find its way home – to the places between places."
Elias nodded, gripping the wand tightly. It felt... right. Not comfortable, but correct. Like a part of him that had been missing had been found.
The rest of the shopping proceeded quickly but was filled with moments that captured Elias's attention.
At Madam Malkin's, as they were being fitted for robes, the door opened and a skinny, blond boy entered with a tall, hook-nosed woman. The boy seemed arrogant, speaking in a drawling voice about not wanting secondhand robes.
"Draco Malfoy," McGonagall whispered to Elias, her tone disapproving. "Son of Lucius Malfoy. A... complicated family."
Draco spotted Elias and frowned. "Mother, look. One with white hair. Is it a disease?"
"Draco!" the woman scolded, but her voice didn't sound particularly stern. She looked at Elias with cold curiosity.
Elias simply looked back, his starry eyes unblinking. And in that moment, Draco Malfoy suddenly fell silent, paling, turning away as if he'd seen something that frightened him.
When they left the shop, McGonagall looked at Elias. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Elias said truthfully. He had only looked. But perhaps, when a Gatekeeper looks at someone, they sense more than they want to sense.
At Flourish and Blotts, as Elias was selecting books, he heard a familiar voice from across the store.
"...really don't need all these, Hagrid. Are you sure?"
A boy's voice. Childlike. But with a deep familiarity that made Elias's heart beat faster.
He turned. At the checkout counter, a thin, bespectacled boy with a lightning scar on his forehead was trying to stuff a towering pile of books into a bag. Beside him stood a giant with a bushy beard and an oversized coat.
Harry Potter.
His brother.
Eleven years. Elias still remembered that face, though only from faint memories of his first year. Still remembered that cry. Still remembered the feeling of lying side by side in the crib.
Harry turned, and for a moment, the brothers' eyes met.
Harry's green eyes widened, staring into Elias's starry ones. There was a strange recognition, an unexplainable familiarity. Harry frowned, as if trying to remember something.
Then Hagrid said something, and Harry turned away, confused.
"Elias?" McGonagall called. "Are you all right?"
Elias turned back, regaining his composure. "Yes. It's just... that boy. Is that..."
"Harry Potter. Yes." McGonagall looked at Harry with rare gentleness. "He'll be starting this year too. Perhaps you'll be in the same classes."
Elias nodded, saying nothing more. But inside, a door had opened – a door of memory, of connection, of a relationship never allowed to exist.
They continued shopping – cauldron, potion set, telescope. With each item, Elias felt more anchored to this world, to the student role he had to play.
Finally, they went to a small shop selling magical timepieces. Elias chose a simple silver pocket watch. But when he touched it, the hands began to spin backward, then stopped, then moved in strange concentric circles.
The shopkeeper stared. "It's... broken."
"It's not broken," Elias said softly. "It just measures time differently."
He paid and put the watch in his pocket. It ticked softly, not in regular rhythm, but in a complex pattern, as if recording not just time, but the changes in the Thresholds around him.
As they left Diagon Alley, the sun was beginning to set. McGonagall led Elias to the Leaky Cauldron.
"You'll stay here until September first," she said. "Then you'll take the train from King's Cross. Platform nine and three-quarters. It's between platforms nine and ten. You'll see it when you get close."
Elias nodded. "I understand."
McGonagall looked at him for a long moment. "Albus believes you're special, Elias. And I trust Albus. But I also see that you're... different. Different in ways even I don't fully understand."
"I am just myself," Elias said.
"And that may be what makes you most special," McGonagall said, a rare small smile touching her lips. "Good luck, Elias Aurelius. We'll meet again at Hogwarts."
She turned and walked out, leaving Elias alone in the noisy pub.
He went up to his room – small, clean, ordinary. He placed his belongings on the bed, the strange wand on the nightstand. Then he went to the window, looking out at the London street below.
Muggles passed by, unaware of the wizarding world right beside them. Unaware of the boy with stars in his eyes watching them. Unaware of the Thresholds that existed around them, thin places where reality could be pierced.
Elias took out his watch. The hands were now forming a complex spiral, and the numbers on the face had rearranged themselves into symbols: a door at 1, a key at 2, an eye at 3, a star at 4, a bridge at 5, a veil at 6, a clock without hands at 7, an empty book at 8, a mirror at 9, a shadow at 10, a light at 11, and at 12, a question mark.
He smiled, a small, sad smile. He was Elias Aurelius. First-year at Hogwarts. Gatekeeper. The third deity.
And the real journey had only just begun.