Year Three — Chapter 7: The Weather Changes
Durmstrang's snowfields still remembered the prints from the war game—bootmarks like runes sprawled across white, char burns scalloped into the drifts, here and there a dropped glove that told its own short story. By morning, the wind had sanded most of it down, but not enough to erase the shape of what had happened: one side outmaneuvered, one side learning that numbers are not the same as nerve.
Ivar woke before the bell. Habit, not heroics. He liked the hour when the fortress whispered rather than roared, when you could hear the lake negotiating with its ice. He washed in water cold enough to close throats, laced his boots, and rapped twice on Jannik's bed frame.
"Up," he said.
Jannik rolled over like a man bargaining with fate. "I would like to file a protest with the morning. It arrived."
"You're alive," Ivar said. "Don't ruin the streak."
Klara was already dressed. Of course she was. She braided her hair with three clean pulls, each so uniform it could have been measured with calipers. "The yard at second bell," she said.
"First," Ivar corrected.
"Then first," she agreed, because she liked to win but liked being prepared more.
They ate quickly—with the morale of victors and the metabolism of wolves—and crossed the courtyard. Heads turned. Not deference this time; not exactly. Something pricklier. Admiration with corners. The way some people look at a cliff: drawn to the view, aware of the drop.
Mila—the second-year whose frostwork had cut a bully's plan to pieces—appeared at Ivar's elbow, walking in that careful way that disguised the ankle she didn't trust. "Volkov said I'm to shadow his seventh-years in Ritual," she reported, trying to sound casual and somehow sounding proud instead.
"Good," Ivar said. "You earned it. Meet me after last bell; we'll tune a brace and put grip runes in a pair of gloves."
She opened her mouth to argue she didn't need help, closed it on the realization that this wasn't pity, and nodded once. "Yes, sir."
"Don't call me sir," he said gently. "It makes me sound like a bad haircut."
Jannik snorted. "He is a bad haircut. It's just attached to a face that gets away with it."
Snow squeaked under boots as they entered the yard. The cold felt like clean math. Makarov paced a line into the frost with the inevitability of a metronome; when he saw them he grunted approval that he disguised as disinterest.
"Yesterday's plan?" he demanded.
"Worked," Ivar said.
"Why?"
"Because they believed the noise we made was our shape," Ivar answered. "And because their command forgot it was being watched."
Makarov's mouth twitched. "You humiliated them, not ruined them. That difference matters."
"It lasts longer," Ivar said.
"Just so," the professor said, and moved on to bark at two sixth-years wasting the wind on sloppy guards.
They drilled until their breath made smoke rings and the tips of their wands felt warm with friction. Ivar ran combinations that weren't on the syllabus and insisted on footwork no one thanked him for until their shields held when they shouldn't have. Between sequences, he laughed with Jannik, bickered in friendly tones with Klara, corrected Mila's stance with a touch that adjusted weight rather than pride. Chaos, for his people—yes. But never sloppiness. He was a storm that checked the map.
---
By lunch the hall was louder than usual. Noise has flavors; this tasted like pepper and something metal. A hawk skimmed the rafters and dive-dropped a newspaper onto Ivar's tray, landing with the flippant confidence of a bird that knows it can outfly consequences.
The Daily Prophet had done what the Prophet always did when it sensed blood in the water: it scented rumor into ink.
Not a front page—Dumbledore could still make editors behave for a day at a time—but a bold column high on page two, with words that pretended to be careful while winking with both eyes.
ABROAD TALENT RISES: DURMSTRANG PRODIGY DRAWS EYE OF BRITAIN
—by Fortuna Flint (Special Correspondent)
Ivar read without changing expression.
Though Hogwarts launches a promising year with the Boy Who Lived in attendance, whispers from the North speak of a different figure gathering weather around him. The Malfoy heir—yes, elder brother to the Slytherin first-year—has reportedly led older students in sophisticated war exercises and "commands serpents with the ease of a born speaker."
Ministry sources (who declined to be named) cautioned against "foreign sensationalism," but one senior official admitted that "prophecies are ambiguous things." Two boys were born as July waned. One bears a scar. Another, it seems, bears a crown.
The word sat there. Crown. Not his name, but close enough to point.
Jannik read over his shoulder, then whistled long and low. "They didn't print you," he said, impressed. "They printed around you. That's filthier."
Klara chewed a mouthful of bread like it was the throat of an argument. "That paper is a stage for cowards and kings. Choose which you'll be every time they set it."
"Why not both?" Ivar said mildly, flipping the page. The ink left a dusting on his fingertips, like the paper wanted to cling.
He wasn't the only one reading. Along the benches, his classmates passed the Prophet like contraband, heads bent. There were small flares of irritation, sudden stares at him followed by guilty looks away. Admiration with corners again. Some already made the leap in their heads: If not Potter, then—
He let the thought ricochet. He didn't need to catch it to own it.
A raven—sleek, businesslike—landed with a jolt beside his cup and dropped a folded parchment. Narcissa's seal.
My son, it read, you will not find truth in newsprint, but you will find weather. Britain is gusty today. The Prophet will not write your name until it thinks it can profit doubly for doing so—first by elevating, then by prodding. Ignore the flattery. Mind the timing. If they speak of a crown, make sure they also see who you shelter beneath it.
He touched the wax with his thumb in a gesture that was not quite a blessing. Across the hall, Mila lifted her bowl for seconds. A first-year poured for her, cheeks pink with the prestige of the duty. Good. Shelter. Understood.
Another bird—an owl this time, officious even in flight—shunted in with Ministry string tied around its leg. Ivar untied the knot and skimmed the narrow hand. Amelia Bones. No signature; she didn't waste ink proving she was herself.
Informal observation: the note said, those who fear you will push to contain. Those who admire will push to use. I do neither. I observe. When you step onto British ground, know which push you prefer to resist. —A.B.
Jannik leaned in. "Bones writes like a sword."
"She is a sword," Klara said. "With a conscience for a scabbard."
Ivar tucked the parchment away. Useful. Respectful without flattery. He liked people who spoke as if every word had to justify the air it displaced.
Midway through the meal, a third courier—no bird, a boy with the look of someone who would rather carry logs than gossip—brought a square envelope and placed it silently on the table, eyes low. The wax was a deep, old black. The crest was one you didn't carve unless you wanted your descendants haunted if they sold the family silver: Black.
He already knew the contents, because the house had begun to write like a person since Sirius's name had burned gray on the tree and Regulus's had faded to absence. The script that formed now felt like something old clearing its throat.
Blood remembers, it said—no greeting, no name. We note where you stand. We note who stands near you. We bind those who bind in return. Build your table. We will provide the wood.
Narcissa's voice in one ear; the family's in the other. Different instruments in the same orchestra. He folded the letter and placed it under his palm a moment, feeling the weight of inheritance do what it always did when handled correctly: add leverage, not chains.
"Your face," Jannik said cheerfully, "has the exact expression of a cat that just acquired both cream and the deed to the dairy."
"Eat," Ivar said, handing him a chunk of cheese he didn't remember stealing. "You're funnier when you're fueled."
---
After lunch, drills blurred into lectures, and lectures bled into quiet corridors where eyes followed him and quickly pretended they hadn't. On a landing near the eastern stair, three boys paused their conversation too late. He caught the last phrase as it fell.
"—if the prophecy never meant Potter—"
The speaker swallowed when he realized his timing had outlived his courage. Ivar stopped, not to intimidate—he didn't need to—but to allow the moment to decide what it wanted to be.
"What prophecy?" he asked—curious, not sharp.
"Nothing," the boy blurted, because people who think the world runs on secrets always say nothing as if that were a sturdy answer.
Klara's gaze shaved him like a whetstone. Jannik smiled as if he were about to sell the boy a joke. Ivar only nodded once and resumed walking. Let the idea ferment; it would taste stronger tomorrow.
He had other letters to answer. He wrote Daphne a note that discussed logistics instead of gossip—when you treat a strategist like a strategist, she sharpens for you. He told Susan exactly what he would not do in public life—no demagoguery, no cruelty for applause, no performances I can't afford to believe in later—because she had asked for truth and he believed in paying exact debts. He sent Fleur a sketch of an original rune weave and a line in French that translated, quite shamelessly, to if you are fire, come see what melts and what does not. Let the continent talk; that was its job.
In the late afternoon, Volkov called him into the ritual chamber and for once did not hand him anything to translate. "You are being measured by people who do not know what rulers are made of," the professor said. "Do not shrink to fit the sticks they hold."
"I wasn't planning to," Ivar said.
Volkov's mouth did a thing like a smile that had dragged itself over glass to get there. "Good. Bring the frost girl tomorrow. We will see if the ankle can be taught to listen."
---
Evening brought wind and a new mood to the hall. Someone had copied the Prophet column onto two sheets and pinned them to a pillar at eye level. He could feel eyes bouncing between the ink and his face, as if the distance between those two points could be walked with a single brave stare. He didn't indulge them with theatrics. He spoke to Mila about glove patterns instead. He teased Jannik about his posture. He asked Klara whether she preferred elk-leather or dragon-hide when the weather tried to negotiate with bones—and listened when she explained.
When the plates were cleared, a messenger in Ministry gray appeared at the doors, looking like a guilt that had learned to walk upright. He went to the staff table first, exchanged a few words with Karkaroff, and then—unwise, but earnest—approached Ivar's bench.
"Master Mal—" he began.
"Don't," Ivar said pleasantly. "That title belongs to men who misplace kindness. Try my name."
"Ivar," the messenger corrected, swallowing. "A note. Asked to be delivered promptly."
He accepted it. Not Bones' hand. Not Narcissa's. Not House Black's. The script had force without beauty, like a tool you swung because it worked rather than because it pleased: Minerva McGonagall.
Mr. Malfoy, it said, this is a courtesy. The Headmaster is considering writing to you. He is not in the habit of courting children, and I do not know if he would call it courting, but it would amount to the same. We are cautious because we must be. I am cautious because I teach more than one child who might one day define a country. Take this how you will: if you come to Hogwarts, you will be watched for weakness and leverage. If you do not, you will be watched for threat. I prefer my students within reach, but I prefer my fairness more. —M. McGonagall
Jannik mouthed Minerva! like a stage whisper could be subtle. Klara read the lines upside down and kept her face as blank as a wall that had decided to mind its own cracks.
Ivar folded the note. "Good," he said simply. "Polite wolves are still wolves, but they know what they are."
"Are we going to reply?" Jannik asked.
"Not yet," Ivar said. "Let them practice patience. It's a dying art."
---
The sky purpled at the edges by the time he slipped down to the ritual chamber. He didn't light torches; he preferred the dark to notice him first. The basalt floor held the day's cold like a secret. He stood in the center and breathed. The stones did what they always did when he came alone and unarmed: they leaned in.
"Good evening," he said in Parseltongue, the syllables tasting like mint and smoke.
The weight under his soles shifted. The world says your name in rooms you have not entered, the pressure suggested—an observation arranged as a compliment.
"Let them," he said. "If they speak, they spread."
He didn't ask the obvious question—Prophecy?—because he didn't like giving ideas the courtesy of ritual titles. But the thought threaded the room anyway, drawn by him the way iron turns to magnets without being asked.
Two boys born as July died.
One with a scar that sang to wands.
One with a crown people kept pretending not to see until the light angled right.
He saw Potter for a flicker—as he sometimes did when his mind relaxed the correct muscles. Not a vision, not the mirror, just the shape of a boy under an old roof looking up as if the stars overhead were telling him stories too large for a first-year's bones. The taste of protective magic hung around that glimpse like a stubborn perfume. Dumbledore's hand. Or a mother's.
Ivar felt neither envy nor mercy, only a kind, cold clarity: We will meet. The story wants us in the same sentence. Fine. Then when the sentence came, he would make sure the verb belonged to him.
The dark approved, the way darkness approves: by saying nothing and staying.
When he came back up, the sky had finished making evening and moved on to night. The air carried the fine-shot smell of snow that hadn't fallen yet. He found Jannik and Klara on the parapet, legs dangling in defiance of gravity and propriety both.
"Read your love letters to the subterranean?" Jannik asked.
"She wrote back," Ivar said. "We're eloping in spring."
Klara smirked. "Bring a coat."
He leaned on the parapet, forearms on cold stone. Below, the lake lay flat and glossy. If you looked long enough, the mirror broke and you saw the dark beyond, which is all a mirror is ever trying to confess.
A flicker at the edge of the courtyard made him still: three figures where two should be. The third moved with the posture of a man who had spent so long hunched with guilt his back had forgotten other shapes. Knockturn Alley had that walk. So did old causes.
They didn't approach. They watched. He watched them watch. Then he laughed quietly, because the habit of being surveilled had finally grown boring.
"To enemies," he said, raising an invisible glass, "may they continue to be obvious."
"To friends," Jannik countered, clinking an equally imaginary cup, "may they continue to be patient with your personality."
Klara lifted nothing and still managed a toast. "To choices," she said. "May we make ours before others make them for us."
"Done," Ivar said.
---
Before sleep, he answered one more letter—the only kind that needed no bird. On a scrap of thick vellum he wrote three lines, folded them twice, and slid the paper under his pillow as if tucking a blade where the throat would be.
Daphne—wolves circle; I prefer leashes in my hands.
Susan—if I am weighed, I will choose the scale.
Fleur—chains look different in winter; bring fire when you come.
He slept like a general with one boot on and woke ready to perform the same trick he did every day: make inevitability look effortless.
Outside, the weather shifted. Not a storm yet, but the kind of pressure change that pinches ears and makes birds quiet. Somewhere far to the west, a boy with a lightning-bolt scar laughed at a joke he didn't quite understand, in a hall that pretended the sky could be a ceiling. Somewhere closer, three men in a draughty back room argued whether the Dark Lord would claim or kill a Malfoy if given the chance. In a different tower, a woman with square spectacles set down her quill and decided that fairness would require courage soon.
In the north, a crown walked to breakfast, slung an arm around a friend's shoulders, and stole a bite of bread from a soldier who let him.
The weather, at last, had begun to change.