The train had already gone quiet.
Not the gentle quiet it sank into on the way up, when the compartments were full, and the corridors smelled of sweets and damp wool and people pretending the summer had never ended. This was a different kind of silence—one that came after everything had been said, after the last shout, the last laugh, the last slam of a door.
King's Cross Station slept around him.
Or at least, the part of it that mattered did.
Alden stepped down from the last carriage of the Hogwarts Express, and the platform received him without ceremony. There were no parents jostling at the barrier. No shouted names. No trunks stacked like fortresses. No owls swooping low, no squeals, no crying, no teachers shepherding the dawdlers along.
Just lantern light pooling on old stone.
Steam curled up from the train in slow, pale ribbons, drifting toward the black iron rafters and vanishing into soot-dark shadows. The air carried the sour tang of coal and cold metal, and underneath it something older—something like the ghost of a thousand departures.
His trunk thudded onto the flagstones with a sound that seemed too loud, echoing along the empty stretch of platform as if the station itself had been waiting for it. Alden kept his hand on the handle a second longer than he needed to, fingers firm, knuckles pale, as though letting go might make the night swallow it.
He was still dressed like a student.
White shirt, collar unbuttoned. Tie loosened and pulled slightly askew. Dark trousers pressed sharply enough to look cruel. His robes were gone. His cloak was gone. Without them, he looked younger, and the platform did not reward him for it. The cold found every inch of him that the uniform didn't cover, slipping under the rolled sleeves, biting at his wrists like a reprimand.
Behind him, the Hogwarts Express gave a low, tired sigh, its engine settling. For a moment, the Alden stared at it—at the dark windows, the faint suggestion of movement behind a curtain that might have been nothing at all—and he had the irrational feeling that if he waited long enough, someone would step down after him.
Snape, perhaps, appeared at the last minute with that look of disgust and reluctance that passed for concern.
Dumbledore, with his eyes too kind for the world he lived in.
Theo, breathless, pretending he'd only come to make sure Alden didn't forget his trunk.
But there was nothing.
Only the distant murmur of the Muggle station beyond the barrier—a faint, indifferent hum of other lives, other platforms, other trains. The wizarding side felt sealed off, like a room someone had left in a hurry and never returned to.
Alden swallowed, and the sound of it seemed too loud, too.
He glanced down the platform again. Empty. Dark. The lamplight made long shadows out of nothing. Somewhere far overhead, a pigeon fluttered in its sleep, and the small noise of wings made Alden's shoulders tighten as if expecting a curse.
He did not flinch.
He stood still, his hand still on the trunk, breathing slow and controlled, as though he could out-stubborn the night.
Then he spoke softly, because there was no need to raise his voice in a place like this.
"Crix."
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the air snapped.
A small crack of magic—cleaner than Apparition, sharper than a Disillusionment Charm—split the stillness, and a figure appeared beside the trunk as if pulled out of the shadows by the name itself.
Crix stood hunched in a travelling cloak that hung too large from his narrow shoulders, the hood fallen back so his long ears drooped into the damp air. His skin had the greyed tone of age, parchment stretched over bone. His eyes, however, were bright and furious, the colour of old bottle glass catching lamplight.
He did not speak at first.
He looked at Alden.
Not at his face—at his hands. His wrists. The line of his throat. The set of his jaw. The way his shoulders held tension was like a wire pulled tight.
Crix's gaze flicked to the trunk, then back to Alden's eyes, and something in his expression shifted—not surprise, not confusion, but recognition.
The kind of recognition that came from having seen boys sent home wrong before.
"You are not meant to be here," Crix said at last, voice roughened by age and too many swallowed words.
Alden's mouth twitched, a half-smile without humour. "Neither is the platform," he said quietly. "Yet here we are."
Crix's fingers curled, as if he wanted to take Alden by the sleeve and march him somewhere warm and safe, as if warmth and safety could be conjured like soup. He took a half-step forward, then stopped himself, the old habit of restraint holding him back. House-elves did not touch without permission. Not even those who had raised Dreyses for centuries.
"What happened?" Crix demanded, low and sharp. "Why is young master alone? Where is—"
"Not here," Alden cut in. The words were not harsh, but they were absolute.
Crix's ears twitched, offended—and then drooped again, the offence swallowed by whatever he saw in Alden's face.
Alden released the trunk handle and rolled his fingers once, as though easing a cramp he hadn't noticed until now. "Home," he said. "Now."
Crix blinked. "Home," he repeated, and the word sounded like a prayer and a warning at once.
Alden nodded, gaze drifting across the empty platform. His eyes were steady, but there was a flatness beneath them that hadn't been there at the start of term, a heaviness held in check by sheer discipline.
"Take us somewhere no one can follow," he added after a moment.
Crix's jaw tightened. "Crix always does."
Alden looked down at him, and for a second, there was something like gratitude there—quick, reluctant, real. "I know," he said.
Crix's gaze flicked to Alden's collar, to the loosened tie. "Where is your cloak?" he asked, as though a missing piece of fabric might be the thing that didn't make sense.
"I left it," Alden replied.
That did it.
Not the lack of cloak—the implication that Alden had left in haste, in disorder, without the careful packing and clipped farewells that belonged to the Dreyse way of doing things.
Crix's fingers flexed at his sides, trembling with restrained anger. "They did not even let young master dress properly," he muttered, and the words were older than Alden, spoken with the same disdain he might have used for the Ministry in 1898.
Alden didn't answer. He bent, gripped the trunk handle again, and lifted it himself.
Crix made a sound of protest. "That is not necessary."
"It is," Alden said and began to walk.
Crix fell in beside him at once, pace surprisingly quick for so small a body, cloak dragging at his heels. He did not ask where they were going; he did not ask how bad it was. He only looked once over his shoulder at the empty platform, as if expecting someone to appear there with a wand and a warrant.
No one did.
Alden stopped just short of the brick arch that marked the end of the wizarding platform and looked down at Crix.
"Ready?" he asked, voice even.
Crix's eyes narrowed. "Young master must hold tight."
Alden gave the faintest nod and reached out.
Crix's thin fingers closed around Alden's hand—cold, strong, steady in a way that only old loyalty could be—and the air tightened around them.
For the briefest moment, Alden felt the world pull sideways, felt the station and the lantern light and the empty stone platform stretch thin—
—and then they were gone.
The world folded in on itself.
It was not the smooth compression Alden associated with Apparition under ideal conditions—the clean, breath-held snap that left the body behind for a heartbeat and then returned it whole. This was harsher. The air wrenched sideways, pressure closing around his chest, his stomach lurching as though gravity had momentarily forgotten which direction it belonged to.
There was a sound like cloth tearing.
Then the cold hit.
It struck his face and hands first, sharp and immediate, stealing the breath from his lungs before he could brace for it. Wind cut across exposed skin, tasting of slate and rain and something metallic underneath, as though the mountain itself exhaled iron. Fog slid past his boots in pale coils, damp and restless, curling around stone like breath in the dark.
Alden staggered half a step, caught himself, and straightened.
The ground beneath his shoes was uneven—rock rather than pavement—slick with moisture and scattered with grit that ground softly when he shifted his weight. He took in the space around him with a quick, instinctive scan: no lights, no buildings, only the looming outline of hills rising against a sky the colour of wet ash. Somewhere nearby, water moved, unseen but insistent, its sound low and constant.
He narrowed his eyes, adjusting to the darkness.
Mist clung low to the ground, thick enough to soften edges without obscuring them completely. The air felt heavy with old weather, with storms that had broken and reformed over centuries, their memory sunk deep into stone. This was not a place that welcomed intrusion. It endured it.
Alden turned his head slightly, gaze lifting toward the jagged silhouette ahead—peaks cutting into the cloud like broken teeth.
"Where are we?" he asked.
His voice carried farther than he expected, swallowed quickly by fog and wind.
Crix did not answer at once.
He stood very still beside Alden, one thin hand still wrapped around the boy's, his head tilted slightly as though listening not just to the sounds of the night but to something beneath them. The elf's ears twitched once, twice, reacting to currents Alden couldn't feel. His eyes moved over the stone, the slope of the land, the way the mist pooled and thinned, measuring and confirming.
Only when he seemed satisfied—when whatever test he was conducting in silence came back favourable—did he speak.
"Yr Wyddfa," Crix said.
The name sat heavy in the air, old and resonant, shaped by a tongue that had learned it long before maps had been polite enough to translate it.
Alden looked up again, following the line of the mountain with his eyes. "Snowdon," he said. Not a question.
Crix inclined his head. "In the old tongue," he agreed. "The mountain that remembers."
Alden's gaze lingered on the dark mass above them, the way its upper reaches vanished into cloud. Even half-seen, it dwarfed everything else, a presence rather than a landmark. "Wales," he murmured.
"Yes," Crix said simply.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The wind tugged at Alden's sleeves, dampened his hair, whispered through the heather with a sound like distant voices arguing and reconciling all at once. The cold crept steadily inward, not cruel but thorough, settling into bone and breath.
Crix broke the silence first.
"I have hidden Dreyses in worse places than this," he said.
The words were not boastful. They were factual. They carried the weight of memory—of other nights, other departures, other young masters escorted away from danger with the same brisk efficiency and the same quiet dread.
Alden glanced down at him. "Worse how?"
Crix's mouth twitched. "Louder," he said. "Flatter. Full of people who thought the world owed them attention."
He lifted his free hand and gestured vaguely at the stone beneath their feet, the fog sliding past their ankles. "This place does not care who you are. That makes it useful."
Alden considered that, eyes returning to the mountain.
Crix continued, his tone shifting into something more instructive, more deliberate—this was not comfort, but explanation.
"Old magic sits thick in these hills," he said. "Not the sort the Ministry teaches. Older. Wilder. It seeps into the stone and confuses anything that tries to listen too closely." He tapped the ground lightly with the toe of his shoe. "Tracking charms slip here. They argue with themselves."
The fog gusted suddenly, parting for a moment to reveal a narrow path winding upward between dark rocks before closing again as though offended by the intrusion.
"And the weather," Crix went on. "Always moving. Always changing. Long-distance signatures do not like to be bent and stretched by wind and rain. They fray."
Alden's eyes followed the movement of the mist, the way it thickened and thinned without pattern. "It's untidy," he observed.
Crix's expression sharpened with approval. "Exactly."
He turned in a slow circle, taking in the slopes, the half-seen hollows, the places where the land dipped and rose again in ways that suggested forgotten structures buried beneath centuries of earth. "There are old wards here," he added. "Not all of them are friendly. Not all of them are named. Wizards abandoned them when they stopped being convenient."
Alden frowned faintly. "Abandoned?"
"Forgotten," Crix corrected. "Which is worse?"
He lowered his hand and looked up at Alden then, eyes bright and knowing. "It is easy to hide a secret inside something already half-lost."
The wind shifted again, colder now, pressing the fog closer, wrapping the space around them in a kind of damp privacy. Alden felt the mountain's weight more keenly, not oppressive but insistent, like a presence that did not demand acknowledgement yet resented being ignored.
Crix's voice dropped, rough with something like old amusement.
"And besides," he said, "wizards do not like places that do not flatter them."
Alden glanced down at him.
"They do not search mountains," Crix went on, lips curling. "They search ministries. Offices. Corridors where their names echo back at them."
He gave a short, humourless huff. "They look where they expect to be important."
The words settled between them, heavy and precise.
Alden let out a slow breath, watching it fog briefly in the air before vanishing. The knot in his chest eased by a fraction—not because he felt safe, but because he understood.
He nodded once. "It'll do."
Crix's fingers tightened briefly around his hand, then loosened. "It will," he agreed. "And it will keep its mouth shut."
Together, they turned toward the path that only existed if you knew how to look for it, and began to walk.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
What little definition it had dissolved into mist and uneven stone, the ground sloping gently upward until Alden could no longer tell where the mountain ended, and the sky began. Fog pressed in on all sides now, thicker and closer, swallowing distance and sound alike. Even the wind seemed to lose interest here, its bite dulled to a cold, steady presence that slipped beneath collar and cuff.
They walked a few more paces.
Then the path simply… stopped.
Ahead of them lay nothing but rock and fog—dark stone slick with rain, rising sharply into a wall thatdid notsuggestf passage. The mist clung to it in shifting layers, as though daring them to try.
Alden slowed, then halted. He frowned at the space before them, eyes scanning for some sign he'd missed.
"This is nothing," he said flatly.
Crix looked up at him, and for the first time since they'd arrived, there was something like offence in his expression—ears lifting slightly, mouth drawing into a thin, unimpressed line.
"That," he said, with quiet emphasis, "is the point."
He stepped forward before Alden could respond and raised one thin hand. For a moment, it hovered in the air, fingers splayed as though feeling for heat from an unseen fire. Then his palm pressed forward—into nothing.
The world answered.
There was no flash, no crack of displaced magic. Instead, the air seemed to shift, as if something massive had exhaled after holding its breath for a very long time. The fog rippled outward in a slow, deliberate wave, peeling back from the stone like a curtain drawn aside.
The rock face softened.
Lines appeared where none had been before—straight edges, deliberate angles, the faint suggestion of mortar seams emerging from the illusion as though remembered rather than revealed. The mist thinned, retreating just enough to allow form to take shape.
And then the manor stood before them.
It rose from the mountain as it had grown there.
Black slate walls, dark as wet ink, their surfaces clean and unweathered despite their age. The stone drank in what little lamplight filtered through the fog, refusing to reflect it, as if the building preferred secrecy to display. Narrow windows cut upward along its face in careful symmetry—tall, severe, unadorned—dark glass set deep within thick stone.
The roof sloped sharply, slate tiles layered with meticulous precision, shedding rain and snow alike. No ivy clung to its walls. No ornament softened its lines. It was not grand in the way palaces were grand; it did not reach for the sky or announce itself to the land.
It endured.
The manor blended so perfectly with the mountain that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. Black stone against dark earth, slate against slate—if you did not know to look for it, your eyes would slide past it without ever truly seeing.
Alden took it in without comment.
He drew a slow breath, the cold filling his lungs, and let it out again just as evenly. Something in his posture eased—not relaxation, but alignment, as though the place matched a part of him he hadn't realized was out of place.
He nodded once.
"That'll do," he said.
Crix's mouth twitched, pride and caution warring in the lines of his face. He rested his hand briefly against the stone beside the door, fingers splayed in a gesture that was half-caress, half-warding.
"No owl finds this unless I permit it," he said quietly.
The words carried no boast. They were a statement of fact.
"No Ministry charm points here," he went on. "They slide off the wards like rain. Get confused. Go looking for something else."
He turned slightly, casting a glance back toward the fog they'd come through, already beginning to thicken again, smoothing over the path until it was indistinguishable from the mountain's skin.
"And no witch with a warrant will stumble upon it by accident," Crix finished. "Not even a determined one."
Alden followed his gaze. The fog was closing in once more, the world beyond the manor blurring and folding back into anonymity. Already the outline of the mountain was reasserting itself, the concealment settling like a second skin.
"Well," Alden said, tone dry but not unkind, "at least the view's beautiful."
Crix snorted softly. "Only from the inside."
He reached for the door.
As it opened, the wards shifted again, reconcealing the land behind them with a smooth inevitability. The mountain reclaimed its secrecy, the path vanished entirely, and Dreyse Manor drew itself inward—black stone, silent windows, waiting.
Alden stepped across the threshold without hesitation.
The door closed behind them with a muted, final sound, and the mountain forgot they had ever been there.
The library was warm in a way that felt almost accusatory.
Firelight crawled along the spines of books stacked floor to ceiling, catching gilt titles and sinking into old leather as though the flames themselves were trying to read. Shadows climbed the shelves and settled there, heavy and watchful. Black curtains were drawn tight across the tall windows, sealing out the mountain night and its cold breath, leaving only the low crackle of the hearth and the slow, steady tick of a clock Alden had never bothered to wind.
Crix lit the fire quickly—efficient, practiced. One snap of long fingers, a murmur under his breath, and the logs caught, flames blooming bright and clean. The heat rushed outward at once.
Alden didn't sit.
He stood too close to it, coat still on, tie still knotted at his throat, hands hanging loose at his sides as if he didn't quite trust them. The warmth licked at his knuckles, climbed his wrists, pressed into his chest. He leaned into it a fraction, eyes half-lidded, like someone testing whether something was real—or whether he was allowed to feel it.
Crix watched him.
Not like a servant watching a master.
Like an old soldier watching a young one come home wrong.
"You can take the tie off, young Master," Crix said at last, voice low. Not scolding. Just stating a fact. "The fire won't judge you for it."
Alden huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh if it had more air behind it. He didn't move.
"It just happened," he said instead. His voice sounded scraped thin, like it had been used too much in too short a time. "Yesterday. And the week before that never really… stopped."
Crix inclined his head once and said nothing.
After a moment, Alden turned away from the fire and crossed the room. His movements were controlled, deliberate, but tired—every step a decision. He dropped into the high-backed chair near the hearth without ceremony, shoulders slouching the instant he sat, as though whatever had been holding him upright finally gave permission to fail.
Beside the chair, exactly where he'd left them weeks ago, lay a loose stack of books.
Mathius Grindelwald's essays, their margins crowded with Alden's precise notes. A battered volume on spell architecture, spine cracked from overuse. A thin journal he hadn't touched since midsummer, its clasp still undone.
He stared at them for a long moment.
Then he dragged a hand down his face and let his head fall back against the chair.
"They brought the L.I.A. in," he said finally. No drama. No emphasis. Just a fact. "Second week of term. Announced it like a curriculum update."
Crix's ears twitched.
"In the Great Hall," Alden went on. "In front of everyone. Restraints. Artifacts. Truth charms that burn when you don't say what they want."
His jaw tightened, just briefly.
"They wanted my name," he said. "All of it."
The fire popped softly.
"I gave it to them," Alden continued. "Eventually. Grindelwald included. Because lying would've hurt more—and because I was tired of pretending the truth is something I should apologize for."
Crix moved closer, silent as breath, and took up his place by the edge of the rug. He didn't interrupt.
"They asked about my wand. My magic. The graveyard." Alden's fingers curled against the arm of the chair. "They showed everyone what I cast. Slowed it down. Named it. Framed it like evidence."
He laughed then, short and hollow. "They never asked who it was for."
Crix's eyes darkened.
"They pushed," Alden said quietly. "Over and over. Umbridge too. She—" He stopped, jaw tightening again. "She reopened the wounds. Said it was corrective magic. Educational. I bled through my robes in the corridor, and she smiled like she'd graded a paper well."
Crix made a sound low in his throat. Old. Dangerous.
"And the castle?" Alden went on. "Changed overnight. People stared. Whispered. Like I'd grown fangs between classes. Gryffindors stopped arguing with me. Ravenclaws started watching instead. Slytherin…" He hesitated. "…went quiet."
Crix's hands curled slowly into fists.
"They baited me," Alden said. His voice was flat now, stripped bare. "Selwyn did. He stood there and told everyone I belonged in Azkaban. Said it like it was obvious. Like it was already decided."
The fire crackled louder, sparks lifting briefly before dying.
"I dueled them," Alden said. "Because I needed them to stop talking. Because I needed them to answer."
He swallowed.
"I won," he added. Not proud. Just factual. "And that was the problem."
Crix said nothing. He did not need to.
"They turned it," Alden continued. "The moment I stopped being clever and started being… angry. They let everyone watch me cross the line."
His eyes dropped to his hands.
"I almost did it," he said.
The words were quiet. Careful.
Crix went very still.
"I almost cast it," Alden repeated. "The Killing Curse. I didn't want to erase him. I wanted it to end. I wanted the noise to stop. I wanted him to see."
He closed his eyes.
"And that was enough."
The silence stretched, heavy but not empty.
"Dumbledore stopped me," Alden said after a moment. "Disarmed me mid-word. In front of everyone."
He exhaled, slow and shaky.
"And then Selwyn talked about my parents."
Crix's head lifted sharply.
"What?" he demanded.
Alden's mouth twisted. "Records. Experiments. Missing people. Things I already knew—but not like that. Not… publicly."
He laughed again, brittle. "He said my friends' parents had written to the Ministry. That they were afraid of me."
Crix's breath hitched.
"I don't know if it's true," Alden said quietly. "I have no way of knowing. But when he said it… they didn't deny it. They just looked—"
He searched for the word.
"Sorry," he finished. "Like they were already apologizing."
Crix's hands trembled now, barely.
"That is a lie," he said fiercely. "Those children—"
"I know," Alden interrupted. Then, softer, "I think I know. But in that moment… I believed him."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together.
"And that's when it almost happened," he said. "Not because I hate him. But because I didn't trust myself not to become what they already decided I was."
The firelight flickered across his face, catching in the pale lines beneath his eyes, the exhaustion carved too deep for a boy his age.
Crix stepped forward then and did something rare.
He knelt.
Not in servitude. Not in reverence.
In solidarity.
"You came back," he said quietly. "You stopped."
Alden shook his head once. "I didn't. He did."
"But you listened," Crix replied. "And that matters."
Alden was silent.
After a long moment, he reached up and finally loosened his tie, fingers clumsy with fatigue. He let it fall to the side of the chair, then slouched back again, eyes fixed on the fire.
"I don't know what they'll do next," he said. "I don't know if Hogwarts is still safe. I don't know if—"
He stopped.
"I don't know who they think I am anymore."
Crix looked at him, old eyes sharp and shining in the firelight.
"I do," he said simply.
Alden didn't answer.
The fire burned on, steady and unjudging, as the manor settled around them—books watching, walls remembering, and an old house-elf sitting guard beside a boy who had walked to the edge of something terrible and come back carrying its shadow with him.
Crix remained kneeling for a long moment after Alden fell silent.
The fire settled into a steady rhythm, logs shifting with soft pops that sounded too loud in the space between words. Outside the curtains, the mountain pressed close, its presence felt even through stone and ward. The manor listened.
At last, Crix straightened with a faint creak in his joints and moved to the chair opposite Alden's, lowering himself into it with care. He folded his hands together, long fingers knotting and unknotting as if rehearsing something he had not said in a very long time.
"You know," he said slowly, "I have watched Dreyses break before."
Alden's gaze flicked toward him.
"Not loudly," Crix continued. "Not with curses and fire and all the nonsense the Ministry likes to imagine. Quietly. Inside. The sort of breaking that looks like obedience on the outside and rot beneath."
The elf's eyes were sharp now, reflective in the firelight. "Men and women older than you. Stronger, by their own measures. They lasted weeks. Months, if they were stubborn."
He paused.
"You have endured this since the graveyard," Crix said. "Since before, really. Since the world decided your name was easier to fear than to understand."
Alden didn't respond. He stared into the fire, watching a coal split and glow.
"A lesser person," Crix went on, voice low and steady, "would have broken much sooner. Would have lashed out. Would have begged. Would have become exactly what they were accused of being, simply to end the pressure."
His mouth tightened. "You did not."
Alden's jaw shifted, discomfort flickering across his expression. "I almost did."
Crix shook his head once, firmly. "No," he said. "You almost reacted. There is a difference, and it matters."
Silence settled again, gentler this time.
Then Crix tilted his head, studying Alden with an expression that was equal parts scrutiny and care. "Will young Master be staying?" he asked.
The question was simple. Practical. But it landed with unexpected weight.
Alden blinked, then let out a quiet breath that turned, somehow, into a soft, surprised chuckle. It escaped him before he could stop it, rough at the edges but real.
"Staying?" he repeated. "Crix, I don't have anywhere else to go."
He glanced around the library—the shelves, the fire, the shadows that felt less like threats here and more like old acquaintances. "This is home," he said. The word came easily, without ceremony. "It always has been."
Crix's shoulders eased, just slightly.
"And besides," Alden added, something steadier entering his voice now, "suspension doesn't mean stagnation."
The elf frowned faintly. "Young Master?"
Alden leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees again, but the tension in his posture had changed. Where before it had been coiled and brittle, now it felt… directed.
"There's a great deal I can learn," Alden said. "More than Hogwarts could offer me this year, even without Umbridge poisoning half the curriculum."
Crix studied him carefully. "Learn what?"
Alden's eyes lifted from the fire and met Crix's directly.
"That," he said quietly, "is the interesting part."
The firelight flickered higher, casting long shadows across the shelves, as though the books themselves leaned closer to hear what would come next.
Alden didn't look away when he spoke.
That, more than anything, told Crix this was not impulse or bravado. This was a decision that had already been made somewhere deep and quiet, long before the words reached the surface.
"I'm going to read everything," Alden said.
The fire shifted, throwing a brief flare of light across his face. It caught in the pale edges of his eyes, sharpening the lines carved there by sleeplessness and restraint.
"Not fragments," he continued. "Not summaries. Not what Selwyn decided to weaponize for an audience."
Crix's fingers tightened together.
"Everything they left," Alden said. "The full journals. The research logs. The unfinished work. The parts no one bothered to catalogue because they didn't fit a neat narrative."
He leaned back slightly, gaze drifting toward the shelves lining the far wall, where the older, darker volumes rested behind subtle wards of their own.
"I already know what they did," he added. "I'm not naïve. I know people were taken. I know lines were crossed. I know what it costs to push magic until it stops pretending to be gentle."
His mouth twitched faintly. "The Great Hall called me a monster for nearly killing Selwyn. That word's lost its sting."
Crix inhaled sharply, but Alden pressed on.
"If the accusation doesn't change who I am," Alden said, voice calm, "it doesn't change who they were either."
The fire cracked softly.
"They loved me," he said simply. "I know that. Nothing I read will undo it."
Crix studied him, eyes glimmering with something dangerously close to grief.
"And you still believe they found something," the elf said quietly.
Alden nodded. "Yes."
Not hesitation. Not doubt.
Certainty.
"Magic doesn't scar people randomly," Alden went on. "It isn't cruel by nature. It responds. It reflects. They weren't experimenting because they enjoyed suffering. They were trying to understand why some magic breaks the caster, and some don't."
He paused, fingers curling once against the chair arm.
"I think they were closer than anyone wanted them to be."
Crix exhaled slowly through his nose. "And what will young Master do with what he finds?"
"I don't know Crix, truly I don't know. However, I know that whatever they found will answer Mathius's philosophy. With there being no difference in magic, just the intent. And that hopefully, it will reveal to him that everything hasn't been for nothing." Alden replied gently.
Alden's gaze then sharpened again, focus settling into place.
"Then I'll learn Occlumency," he said. "Properly. From the beginning. The foundational theory. The mental architecture behind it."
His lips curved, just barely. "I've resisted the Imperius before. Not cleanly, but long enough to know the difference between strength and structure. I want the structure."
Crix inclined his head, approval flickering across his features.
"I'll finish Mathius's journals," Alden continued. "All of them. He understood isolation better than Gellert ever did. Understood what it costs to stand apart and still remain human."
The word lingered.
"And I'll refine my magic," Alden said. "Not to make it louder. Make it cleaner. More precise. More understood."
He met Crix's eyes again.
"I don't believe magic is divided into light and dark," Alden said. "I still don't. What I did was severe—but severity isn't the same as corruption. There's redemption in understanding. In refusing to let ignorance decide what's allowed to exist."
Crix was silent for a long moment.
Then, quietly, "You believe people will listen."
Alden considered that.
"No," he said. "I believe one day they won't be able to ignore it."
The firelight shifted again, shadows lengthening, deepening.
"And until then?" Crix asked.
Alden's expression didn't harden—but something in it settled.
"Until then," he said evenly, "I learn enough to survive being misunderstood."
The manor creaked softly around them, as though acknowledging the weight of the promise. Somewhere deep within its walls, old wards stirred, readying themselves not just to hide a boy—but to shelter the making of something the world had not yet learned how to name.
Crix took the trunk without asking.
He did not comment on its weight, though Alden noticed the brief tightening of his fingers as he lifted it, the old elf compensating without complaint. The runes along the brass fittings pulsed once, recognizing familiar magic, then settled as Crix hoisted it against his shoulder.
"I suppose," Crix said, voice deliberately casual, "the manor will feel a bit less like a mausoleum again."
Alden glanced up from the fire. "High praise."
Crix snorted softly and started for the stairs. "You should have heard it when you were ten," he muttered. "Books everywhere. Ink in the carpets. A chair exploded once."
"That was an accident," Alden called after him.
"So was the second one," Crix replied over his shoulder. "The third showed ambition."
Alden shook his head faintly, a ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth despite himself. The sound of Crix's steps faded as he climbed, the manor responding to his presence with the quiet creaks of recognition—wood flexing, stone settling, an old house stirring from its long restraint.
"Rest," Crix added from the stairwell, not turning back. "You've earned at least a few hours of it, whether you believe that or not."
"I'll try," Alden said.
Crix disappeared from view, the trunk bumping once against the banister before the sound was swallowed by the upper floors.
The library fell quiet.
Not the tense, watchful silence of interrogation rooms or Great Halls full of held breath—but a deeper stillness, the kind that existed when nothing was demanded of you. The fire burned steadily, its heat pressing against Alden's shins, warming him through layers he hadn't realized were still cold.
He leaned back in the chair and let his head rest against the high leather, eyes fixed on the flames.
They shifted as he watched—orange and gold collapsing inward, then flaring again. A pocket of green fire bloomed suddenly near the heart of the grate, sharp and vivid, its colour too rich to be natural. It threaded through the darker embers like veins through stone, emerald lines pulsing once, twice, then spreading.
Alden didn't move.
For a fleeting instant, the reflection in the glass-fronted bookcase across the room seemed to change.
The chair in the reflection looked… wrong. Larger. Heavier. The firelight behind it burned darker there, green-black instead of gold, casting long, throne-like shadows across the floor. A figure sat in that reflected seat, posture relaxed but absolute—silver-white hair catching the glow, grey-green eyes bright and distant, hands resting calmly on the arms as though the world had already decided to come to him.
No one stood beside the chair.
No one knelt.
The space around it was empty.
The fire shifted again.
The image fractured, dissolving back into flickering light and familiar stone. Alden exhaled slowly and turned his gaze away, unaware of what the flames had briefly shown him.
He stared into the hearth once more, watching the green recede, watching gold reclaim its place.
Hidden.
Contained.
Safe, for now.
Outside, the mountain kept its silence. Inside, the manor held its breath. And at the center of it all sat a boy who still believed—quietly, stubbornly—that understanding could save the world.
The fire crackled, emerald and black threading together at its heart, and the house remembered the moment for later.