"Spells are the language of the impatient."— Scholar Esrin Vaell, Treatise on Natural Resonances
January 4, 1970
The Hogwarts Express cut through the Scottish winter like a red serpent slithering through a sea of white. Outside, the world was a blur of snow-heavy pines and a sky the color of bruised iron, inside Compartment C, the air was warm, smelling of peppermint toads and the expensive, polished leather of new trunks.
Cyrus Greengrass was currently sprawled across the bench, looking as though he had survived a war rather than a holiday.
"If I hear one more Pavane," Cyrus groaned, draping his arm over his eyes, "I will be sick. My father hosted the Yule Ball for six hours. Six. I danced with three Bulstrodes, two Parkinsons, and a girl from Beauxbatons who didn't speak English but stepped on my feet with fluent malice."
"It builds character," Vega said, amused. He was sitting by the window, watching the landscape rush by. His foot rested lightly on his trunk, where the Lei Shen egg was currently wrapped in five layers of wool, humming a low, sleepy vibration that only he could feel through the floorboards.
"It builds calluses," Cyrus countered. "And resentment. How was your solstice? Did you do anything besides brood in a library and terrorize your brothers?"
"I went East," Vega said casually, unwrapping a Liquorice Wand. "To the Jade Empire."
The compartment went silent. Even Barty stopped organizing his quill collection.
"The Jade Empire?" Rhea Greengrass asked, leaning forward, her eyes widening. "But the Cloud Courts have been closed to the West for fifty years. No one goes there."
"Grandfather has... older alliances," Vega shrugged, keeping the details vague. "The tea was excellent."
"You saw a dragon?" Barty squeaked, his eyes darting to the window as if expecting one to fly alongside the train.
"From a distance," Vega lied smoothly. He wasn't about to explain the storm-eating leviathan or the obsidian treasure currently vibrating against his ankle. "It was mostly trade negotiations. Very dry. Lots of bowing."
"Still," Ellaria Shafiq murmured, her dark eyes assessing him. "That is... quite a journey. Most of us just went to our country estates."
The conversation drifted back to holiday gossip, who had been seen with whom, which families were feuding over land borders, and the scandalous shade of violet Mrs. Zabini had worn to the Ministry gala, but there was a tension in the air. A gap.
Rhea finally addressed the silence that was louder than the chatter.
"Vega," she lowered her voice, glancing at the corridor through the glass pane. "Is it true? About Bellatrix?"
Vega stopped chewing. He looked at his friends. They were purebloods; they lived on secrets and whispers. They already knew, or suspected.
"She's not coming back," Vega said quietly.
"She abandoned her N.E.W.T.s?" Barty looked horrified. "In her seventh year? She was top of the class in Defense."
"She has found... alternative tutelage," Vega said, choosing his words with the care of a potioneer adding volatility to a brew. "She believes Hogwarts has nothing left to teach her."
"My father said there was shouting," Cyrus murmured, dropping his arm to look at Vega. "He heard from his contacts at the Ministry that Arcturus nearly brought the wards of Grimmauld Place down around his own ears."
"Grandfather was... displeased," Vega admitted.
That was a kindness.
When the letter had arrived, delivered by a black owl on New Year's Day, stating her intention to forgo her final term to "serve the greater cause," Arcturus hadn't shouted.
He had gone terrifyingly cold. The temperature in the drawing room had dropped until the breath froze in the air. The windows had rattled in their frames not from wind, but from the sheer, crushing pressure of his aura. He had burned the letter without touching it, simply by looking at it until it disintegrated into ash.
She chooses to be a servant, Arcturus had whispered to the fire. Then let her serve. But she does not serve this House.
"Is she disowned?" Rhea asked, a thrill of scandal in her voice.
"Not yet," Vega said grimly. "Grandfather is pragmatic. You don't cut off a limb until you are sure it cannot be healed. For now, she is simply... absent."
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The compartment door slid open.
The chatter cut off instantly.
Narcissa Black stood there. She was wearing her school robes, her silver Prefect badge gleaming on her chest, but she wore a coat of white fox fur over her shoulders that looked heavy enough to crush a lesser witch.
Behind her stood Andromeda. She looked tired, her usually neat hair escaping its pins, dark circles under her eyes speaking of sleepless nights.
"Vega," Narcissa said. Her voice was perfectly level, iced over. "We are checking the lower compartments. Are you settled?"
"Comfortable, Cissy," Vega said, nodding to the empty seat. "Join us? The trolley witch hasn't passed yet."
"We have duties," Narcissa declined. Her blue eyes swept over Vega's friends, assessing loyalty, checking for mockery. Finding none, she relaxed a fraction. "And Andromeda is feeling unwell. We are heading to the Prefect carriage."
"I'm fine," Andromeda muttered, though she looked pale. She looked at Vega, her eyes pleading. "Did you speak to him? Before we left?"
"Grandfather?" Vega asked.
"Yes. He wouldn't look at me. Or Cissy."
"He's grieving, Andi," Vega said softly. "In his own way. He hates losing control. And he hates losing her."
"She made a choice," Narcissa cut in sharply, her voice brittle. "We are making ours. We are returning to school. We are finishing our education. We are Blacks, and we do not run away to join... crusades."
She said the word crusade with the same distaste one might say gutter.
"If you need anything, Vega," Narcissa said, regaining her composure, "send word. We will be in the front carriage."
She turned and swept away, dragging a reluctant Andromeda with her. The door slid shut.
"Crusade," Cyrus repeated, exhaling slowly. "That's one word for it. My father calls them the Knights of Walpurgis. Says they're meeting in old manors, drinking wine out of goblin skulls and toasting to the purity of blood."
"It sounds like a bad tragedy," Rhea sniffed.
"It sounds like an army," Vega corrected. He looked out the window again. The sky was darkening as they approached the Scottish border.
The reality of it settled on him. Bellatrix—the most powerful duelist in the school, the brilliant storm of a girl, was gone. She was with him now. With Voldemort.
She wasn't learning Transfiguration anymore. She was learning how to be a weapon.
And Arcturus knows it, Vega thought. That's why the house felt so cold. He knows he can't protect her from what she's signed up for.
He felt the Lei Shen egg pulse against his leg, a reassuring thrum of contained, elemental power.
"Let her go," Vega said to the reflection in the glass. "If she wants to play soldier, let her play. We have our own games."
"Like what?" Barty asked nervously.
Vega turned back to the compartment, a small, dangerous smile touching his lips.
"Like taking the board," Vega said. "The Queen has abdicated. That leaves a lot of empty space at the top of the tower."
Cyrus grinned, sitting up. "Now that," he said, reaching for his wand, "sounds like a better way to spend the term than learning the Gavotte."
The train whistled, a long, mournful sound that echoed off the mountains, carrying them north toward the castle, toward the snow, and toward the empty seat that Bellatrix Black had left behind.
January 5, 1970, Hogwarts
The first week of the new term brought with it a biting, crystalline cold that turned the windows of the Transfiguration classroom into sheets of opaque ice.
Professor McGonagall stood at the front of the room, her tartan robes sharp enough to cut the air. She surveyed the class of first-years with the expression of an eagle watching a field of particularly slow hares.
"Inorganic to organic transformation is a dialogue," she lectured, pacing between the rows of desks. "You are persuading the world to forget that an object was once alive. Today, we reverse the polarity. Organic to inorganic."
She tapped the bowl on her desk.
"Beetles," she announced. "Into buttons."
Cyrus Greengrass stared into the ceramic bowl on their shared desk with undisguised horror. Inside, a dozen large, black beetles were scuttling over each other, their mandibles clicking rhythmically.
"They have too many legs," Cyrus whispered, clutching his wand like a lifeline. "Why do they need that many legs? It's excessive."
"They're beetles, Cyrus," Vega said, picking one up. The insect struggled against his thumb, its shell slick and hard. "They're nature's little knights. Just think of them as very small, very angry suits of armor."
"I prefer my armor without antennae," Cyrus muttered, leaning as far away from the bowl as gravity permitted.
Vega set the beetle down on the square of velvet McGonagall had provided. The insect immediately tried to make a break for the edge of the desk.
"The incantation is Inanimatus Conjurus," McGonagall instructed, her eyes sweeping the room. "Visualize the button. The shape. The material. The holes. If you lack focus, you will end up with a button that scuttles away when you try to sew it on. I do not want to see anyone chasing their own homework across the floor."
Vega looked at the beetle.
Most students saw a bug. Vega saw a structure.
He engaged his Mage Sight, the lingering gift from the New Year's resonance. The world didn't just look physical anymore; it looked like a blueprint. He could see the faint, pulsing red lines of the beetle's life force, the geometric lattice of its carapace.
He felt the Hum in his blood wake up. It was stronger since the ritual, deeper. It didn't just want to change things; it wanted to improve them.
Don't just make a button, the Hum whispered. Make a treasure.
Vega raised his wand and flicked the wand in the same conducting motion, a loop and a sharp, decisive jab that McGonagall had demonstrated.
"Inanimatus Conjurus."
He pushed his intent into the beetle. He took the chaos of the insect—the scurrying, the clicking, the hunger, and froze it into a static form.
There was a flash of silver light.
The beetle collapsed inward, swirling like molten metal.
When the light faded, there was no bug. In its place sat a coat button. But it wasn't the simple plastic disc the textbook illustrated.
It was onyx, polished to a mirror shine. The rim was edged in silver filigree that looked suspiciously like tiny, frozen legs curled in rest. And in the center, instead of simple holes, two small chips of sapphire glittered.
"Show off," Cyrus groaned, looking at his own beetle, which had successfully turned into a button but was currently vibrating across the desk.
"It's about the visualization," Vega said, picking up his creation. It was cool to the touch. "You have to convince the beetle that being a button is a higher calling."
"My beetle has no ambition," Cyrus retorted, poking his vibrating button. "It just wants to go home to the mud."
Around the room, the sounds of struggle were audible.
Barty Crouch Jr. had managed to turn his beetle into a button, but it was fuzzy and hissed when he touched it.
Alice Fortescue had created a lovely mother-of-pearl button, but it still had antennae twitching from the side.
Frank Longbottom had somehow turned his beetle into a thimble that bit him.
McGonagall swept through the aisles, correcting wand grips and vanishing half-transformed abominations. She stopped at Vega's desk.
She looked at the onyx button. She picked it up, examining the silver filigree.
"Mr. Black," she said, her voice unreadable.
"Professor."
"The assignment was a button," she noted, turning the object over in her long fingers. "Not a family heirloom."
"I felt the material dictated the form," Vega replied smoothly. "The beetle's shell was hard and dark. Onyx seemed the logical transition."
McGonagall's lips twitched. It was the microscopic equivalent of a smile.
"The transfiguration is flawless," she admitted, setting it back down. "The structure is stable. There is no residual consciousness."
She looked at him over her spectacles. Her gaze wasn't just assessing his work; it was assessing him.
"You seem... different this term, Mr. Black. Your magic is denser."
Vega touched the Ring on his hand. He thought of the Lei Shen egg humming in his trunk, the dragon scale in his pocket, and the silver fire he had shared with his brothers under the winter stars.
"I had a productive holiday, Professor," Vega said.
"Indeed," McGonagall murmured. "See that you keep that productivity focused on the curriculum. Five points to Slytherin for... artistic interpretation."
She moved on to critique Cyrus's vibrating button.
"Mr. Greengrass, why is your homework trying to escape?"
"It has commitment issues, Professor."
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As the class wound down, Vega packed his bag.
He thought of Bellatrix. She should have been here, terrorizing the N.E.W.T. students.
Now, she was somewhere else. With him.
"Vega?" Barty asked, noticing his pause. "You coming? Lunch is roast chicken."
"Coming," Vega said, snapping his bag shut.
He walked out of the classroom, the onyx button in his pocket. He had mastered the small change, beetle to button. But the big changes? The changes happening outside the castle walls?
Those would require more than just a wand flick.
As they walked down the corridor, the whispers followed them, the usual rumors about the Dueling Club, the gossip about Bellatrix.
"Did you hear?" a Gryffindor whispered loudly as they passed. "They say she joined a dark order. They say she's learning to fly without a broom."
"I heard she killed a muggle just to get in," another hissed.
Vega didn't stop. He didn't turn around. He just let the Hum in his blood rise a fraction, letting a wave of cold, pressurized air trail behind him, silencing the gossipers with a sudden, inexplicable shiver.
"People talk too much," Cyrus muttered, pulling his scarf tighter.
"Let them talk," Vega said, his hand brushing the Dragon Scale in his pocket.
They turned the corner toward the Great Hall, leaving the Transfiguration classroom behind, but the lesson remained.
Change the form, Vega thought. Keep the substance.
Bellatrix had changed her form. She was a Knight now. But the substance? The Black madness? That was still there. And sooner or later, blood would return to blood.