The letter arrived with a sharp rap at the window—an official owl, feathers sleek and silver-tipped, bearing the Hogwarts seal. My heart stuttered once as I reached for it.
I had studied hard. *Harder than I ever had before.* But that didn't make opening the envelope any easier.
I broke the seal with my wandtip and unfolded the parchment.
**Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry**
**Third-Year Examination Results — Summer Term, 1934**
Student: Marcus Starborn
House: Ravenclaw
| Subject | Grade |
| Transfiguration | O |
| Charms | O |
| Defence Against the Dark Arts | O |
| Potions | O |
| Herbology | O |
| Arithmancy (First-Year) | O |
| Ancient Runes (First-Year) | O |
| Astronomy | EE |
| History of Magic | EE |
I leaned back in my chair, letting out a slow breath as a faint smile found its way to my lips.
Eight Outstanding grades. And two Exceeds Expectations. I could live with that—especially since *History of Magic* had mostly been a sleep-inducing scroll of dead names, and *Astronomy*… well, the skies were easier to admire than to map with precision.
But I'd done it. All those nights in the library. The weekends in training. The month of focused spellwork and theory. It had paid off.
I folded the parchment neatly and placed it into the drawer I'd warded shut just for correspondence of significance. Then, rising from my chair, I brushed off the dust of June from my robes and flicked my wand to call my trunk to heel. It rolled obediently after me.
Time for supplies.
I didn't bother going to the castle to use the main Floo hearth in the Headmaster's Office. I had other means. My own fireplace in the Hogsmeade cottage—tied by permission to the Floo Network through a quiet little establishment: the Hog's Head Inn.
It was early morning, and Aberforth Dumbledore gave me a curt nod as I stepped through the pub, my hood up.
"Fourth year already, eh?" he muttered as he polished a mug. "Try not to scare the shopkeepers."
I gave a tight smile. "No promises."
He gestured with a grunt toward the Floo hearth. "Go on then."
I took a pinch of Floo powder from the jar near the stone basin, stepped into the fireplace, and called out clearly, "Diagon Alley!"
Green flame engulfed me.
I stumbled out into the Leaky Cauldron's Floo grate, brushing soot from my robes and straightening my collar. The tavern was more lively than the Hog's Head—families, children, third years rushing about with their parents.
I slipped out through the back, tapped the brick wall precisely with my wand, and the archway slid open with a low rumble.
Diagon Alley never lost its wonder.
Shops gleamed under enchanted lanterns. The smell of ink and leather from Scribbulus. The sweet pull of fresh spellbooks. The thrum of magic in the cobblestones.
I had a list. Fourth-year requirements were heavier, but not unreasonable.
**Required:**
* *The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 4* by Miranda Goshawk
* *Advanced Magical Theory* by Adalbert Waffling
* *Elemental Transfiguration* by Argo Flinch
* *Rune Structures and Magical Syntax* by Ethelwynne Greaves
* *Numeromagicks: Advanced Arithmancy* by Cassius Rhyme
Plus ink, parchment, replacement robes, and potion ingredients.
I visited Flourish and Blotts first, letting myself linger longer than I needed to. They had a locked cabinet of advanced magical theory books, and though I couldn't afford all of them, I slipped a few titles onto a wishlist to pursue later—perhaps secondhand, or from Hogwarts' Restricted Section if I could get permission.
The clerk gave me a look when I slid seven books onto the counter.
"Fourth year?" he asked, eyeing the Arithmancy volume.
I nodded.
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Ravenclaws came in all types.
Next came Slug & Jiggers, for my potion kit. I replenished my standard ingredients and added a few rare ones—things I knew Professor Slughorn liked to experiment with. I'd impressed him before. I intended to do it again.
Then robes—Madam Malkin's. I went for a slightly darker blue than usual. Trimmed silver cuffs. Discreet, but refined.
By noon, I was done. I'd refused offers of help from shop clerks. I always did.
I stood for a moment just outside Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, watching the crowds.
They didn't know me. Not really.
Not the Starborn legacy. Not the heir of Slytherin. Not the boy who spoke with Salazar's portrait beneath the castle.
But I did. And I would live up to it—quietly, relentlessly.
With my purchases shrunk and packed neatly in my trunk, I made my way back to the Leaky Cauldron's hearth and returned to the Hog's Head.
The cottage in Hogsmeade welcomed me like an extension of myself. The wards rippled faintly as I passed through them—acknowledging their master.
I dropped the trunk by my desk and unshrunk the books, stacking them in order of priority.
Tomorrow, July would continue—and so would my studies. But for now, I allowed myself a rare indulgence.
I sat by the window, the summer breeze cool on my face, and read the first few pages of *Advanced Magical Theory*, my wand resting across my knee, the runes still humming in my thoughts.
Under the heavy summer sun of July 1934, my weeks fell into a rhythm—Monday through Friday spent quietly poring over ancient rune structures, refining the mental clarity Occlumency would one day require, and experimenting gently with wandless intent. But come Saturday and Sunday, the tone of my life shifted sharply.
It was on those two days that Professor Dumbledore and I met near the ruin by the Hogsmeade side of the Forbidden Forest. The place had long since been abandoned, a half-collapsed stone skeleton overrun by moss and silence. But the space was open, magically warded for privacy, and more than sufficient for the kind of dueling training I had come to cherish—painful, punishing, and exacting.
Dumbledore arrived promptly each morning, robes always simple but impeccably arranged, his auburn beard now streaked more with silver, eyes twinkling beneath the half-moon spectacles even as his wand moved with precise lethality. There was something infectious about the way he carried himself—commanding without arrogance, warm yet always two thoughts deeper than you'd expect. I respected him not only as a teacher but increasingly as a partner in battle, as odd as that might sound.
That first Saturday, he changed the routine. "You've mastered the back-and-forth," he told me, conjuring a translucent barrier between us with a flick. "Now we focus on control—not merely defense, but the redirection of magic."
He demonstrated first. I fired a standard Stunning Spell toward him with decent force. With a swift sideways swish of his wand and a sharp *"Fluxio"*, he batted the spell away at an angle. Not a Shield Charm, not a full absorption. He used a deflection—an elegant parry.
"This, Marcus, is more efficient than summoning a full shield when only a touch of pressure will do. Every bit of conserved magical energy might buy you another breath in a duel."
The next two hours were relentless. He forced me to react instinctively: Disarming Charms, silent Pinching Hexes, blunt-force Knockback Jinxes. I had to redirect, sidestep, absorb with minimal movement. I failed often at first, clumsily raising full Protego barriers when all I needed was a flick and angle. But by the end, I managed to *siphon* a stunner through my arm, grounding it with a twist of will and wand that left my fingers tingling and my pride soaring.
Sunday brought new lessons—offensive ones.
"Batting aside spells is one thing," Dumbledore said, eyes gleaming, "but a true duelist knows how to *improvise.* Let us explore the geometry of motion."
He taught me to chain spells through vector-based movement. For instance, casting a Cutting Curse while spinning to avoid an incoming jinx made my slash arc wider and more unpredictable. Or launching a Jet of Flame low across the ground in conjunction with a Dust-Making Charm to temporarily blind the opponent.
He called it "dynamic transfiguration." In our sparsest terms, it meant using the environment—stones, wind, even loose leaves—as weapons. Conjured fire could be fed by grass; a fallen tree branch could be transfigured into a lash mid-combat.
On one occasion, he stopped mid-duel and tossed me a stone.
"Turn that into a swarm," he said.
I blinked. "A swarm of what?"
"You choose. But make it terrifying."
I gritted my teeth, flicked my wand, and murmured, *"Mutare Formicam."* The stone shimmered, cracked, and exploded into a cloud of translucent glassy ants that surged toward him with eerie coordination. He laughed—laughed—and froze them with a casual charm, but not before nodding in visible approval.
Every bruise I earned was a lesson burned into my flesh. My boots scraped across stone, my robes singed at the edges, sweat pooling along my collar. And I grew stronger for it.
By the third week of July, I could not only parry hexes mid-flight but redirect them into counterattacks. Dumbledore taught me to *curve* a Stunner around corners using controlled magical pressure and to *split* spells like dividing light through a prism—dispersing force between multiple targets.
But what lingered most in my mind was his final advice one Sunday evening, as we sat in the shade of a broken archway.
"You are powerful, Marcus. But raw strength is not enough. Remember that a clever spell, precisely timed, is worth more than any avalanche of magic."
He touched my shoulder lightly and added, "You are no longer just learning how to duel. You're learning how to fight like a wizard who understands the weight of consequence."
And with that, he left, his silhouette vanishing between the ancient trees.
I remained for a while, watching the dust settle and feeling the magic lingering in the air like heat after a fire. The spells I'd cast, the paths I'd traced in the stone—each spoke of a future still unwritten, but increasingly within reach.
The fourth weekend arrived with the sky overcast and the air dense with humidity. I could feel the weight of the magic around me more keenly than usual—as if the ruin itself remembered our past duels and held its breath in anticipation.
Dumbledore was already waiting when I arrived, leaning lightly against one of the leaning stone pillars, wand tucked into his belt, arms folded. He looked at me not with challenge, but with expectation.
"We've moved beyond the basics," he said without preamble. "Today, we refine unpredictability."
I frowned slightly. "Unpredictability?"
He smiled thinly. "Magic is most dangerous when it refuses to be read. Duels are not chess games; they're storms. And you must learn to *be* the storm."
The exercise began simply: I was to duel him while he offered no verbal instruction, only shifting his style in increasingly erratic and unfamiliar ways. At first, it was easy enough to recognize a sequence—three sharp movements, a silent Disarming Spell, a quick sidestep into a Conjunctivitis Curse. But then he began chaining transfigurations between spells, reshaping rocks into whips mid-sprint, sending a conjured hawk hurtling toward me before transforming it into a net of energy mid-air.
I adapted—slowly, deliberately. My own spells began to twist around corners, paired with Transfigurations in odd timings. I summoned up a pillar of mud and froze it into jagged ice shards with a *Glacius* charm, sending them flying like arrows. I transfigured leaves into razor-thin sickles and sent them whirling like a cyclone.
When he forced me on the defensive, I began combining Charm theory into my movement—*Feather-Footed*, *Cushioning*, *Air-Cleaving*—spells to move faster, softer, and more unexpectedly.
The final test came when he fired off a spell I'd never seen before—silent, silver, and jagged. I dove instinctively, transfiguring a patch of stone beneath me into a slab of mirror, reflecting the edge of the spell just enough for it to shear past me harmlessly.
Dumbledore halted the duel, eyes sparkling.
"You *reflected* it," he said, approaching slowly. "Not shielded. Not redirected. Reflected."
I shrugged, panting, still on one knee. "I figured… if I could change the angle, I wouldn't have to waste magic resisting it."
He knelt beside me, hand resting on my shoulder again.
"That is exactly what makes you dangerous, Marcus," he said quietly. "You are not just strong—you're *efficient.* You understand the language of spellwork, and you've begun to rewrite it."
We sat together for a moment in the quiet that followed. I wiped the sweat from my brow, my mind still buzzing from the magical chaos of the duel. I was tired, but the good kind of tired—the kind that said something inside me had shifted.
"I think I'm ready to learn more," I said softly, looking at the ruin around us. "Not just what's taught. But what's *possible.*"
Dumbledore turned his head toward me, his expression unusually somber.
"You're already walking that path, my boy. Just promise me this—when you master power, let wisdom guide your hand. That is the balance our world has forgotten, and it will fall to people like you to remember it."
I nodded.
We parted that afternoon without further words, each carrying our thoughts in silence. I returned to my house in Hogsmeade, aching from the inside out, but with a spirit that burned as bright as a phoenix feather.
That night, as I stood by my desk, parchment scattered with notes and diagrams, I reviewed everything I had learned that month—from deflections to misdirection, vector chaining to transfigured terrain. I realized something profound: I had begun to think *like* a combat magician. I no longer fought spells—I shaped the battle itself.
I was no longer reacting.
I was orchestrating.
... Of course Dumbledore holding back helped a bit.
Tomorrow, I would return to the ruin once more—not just to train, but to *test* ideas of my own.
I smiled to myself in the mirror, eyes catching the glow of the fireplace, and whispered, "Let them come."
Then I extinguished the candles and slipped into sleep, a whisper of thunder rolling over the hills outside, as if the magic itself approved.