Steam curled along the platform like something alivebreathing, coiling, clinging to the air with the scent of coal and new beginnings. Children swarmed in flashes of black robes and scarlet ties; trunks screeched, owls shrieked, and voices tangled in a dozen dialects. Somewhere in the noise, a whistle gave a warning note that nobody obeyed.
Alden Dreyse stepped through the cloud of white with his trunk in one hand and his wand-case tucked neatly under the other. He looked, as always, composed beyond his years: hair brushed back, collar aligned, his expression unreadable but not unfriendly. Where other third-years darted and shouted, he moved with that quiet precision that made teachers notice and students forget him too late.
He paused beside the gleaming red carriages of the Hogwarts Express. Steam burst up between them, hot against the chill morning. In the haze, he caught a glimpse of Draco Malfoy laughing too loudly, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, performing for an audience that didn't really care.
"Same play every year," a dry voice murmured behind him.
Alden turned. Blaise Zabini was already immaculate, coat pressed, eyes bored and assessing. He looked past Malfoy with mild disdain. "You'd think money might buy new dialogue."
"Arrogance costs less," Alden replied. His mouth barely curved. "And sells better."
Theo Nott appeared next, dragging a trunk half his size, the edges reinforced with bronze runes that pulsed faintly in the fog. His spectacles were new, slightly crooked already. "If you two are done psychoanalyzing our House mascot," he said, "I'd like to board before my invention electrocutes itself."
Daphne Greengrass came last, her owl balanced in a lacquered cage and her hair pinned with casual precision. There was something restrained in her carriage, the kind of control that could only come from old blood and strict upbringing. "Theo, if that thing explodes before we reach Scotland, I'm hexing it and you into the nearest window."
Theo sniffed, wounded. "It's perfectly safe."
"It's humming," Blaise pointed out.
"It's alive," Theo corrected.
"That doesn't make it better," Daphne muttered.
Alden hid a smile and gestured toward a half-empty carriage farther down, well away from Malfoy's noise. "Same compartment as always."
They filed in without fanfare. No handshakes, no formal greetings, this was a habit, a ritual, a comfort. The four of them, every September: the quiet carriage no one bothered with, the place where silence felt deliberate.
Inside, the compartment was washed in warm light and framed by condensation on the glass. The whistle blew; the train lurched forward. Outside, parents waved and faded into steam.
Theo unpacked his brass "compass," a small circular contraption layered in runes and thin plates of silver. It whirred softly as the train gathered speed.
Daphne leaned back, opening a book on wizarding law Reform in the Era of the Goblin Treaties. Blaise arched a brow at her. "Light reading?"
She didn't look up. "It's preferable to listening to you complain."
Blaise smirked. "I wasn't complaining. I was making an observation."
"You make a lot of those," Alden murmured, gaze still on the fog outside. His reflection blurred in the glass, twin eyes shadowed by light. "Few of them are kind."
"Oh come on," Blaise said, stretching his legs lazily across the opposite seat. "You've seen what happens when we mingle too freely. Half the train doesn't even hide the way they look at us."
Theo glanced up. "Maybe they look because you stare first."
Blaise rolled his eyes. "Please. You really think a Mud? "He stopped mid-word. Daphne's book snapped shut like a spell.
"Don't," she said. Her voice was low, even. "We're better than that."
For a heartbeat, tension coiled through the compartment like static. The rhythmic clatter of the rails filled the silence.
Blaise's smirk faltered. He exhaled through his nose. "Old habits," he muttered, half to himself.
"Then unlearn them," Daphne replied, reopening her book. "You sound like your mother."
Theo coughed to hide a laugh. Alden didn't. He turned from the window finally, studying Blaise not with judgment but calculation. "She's right. Words carve deeper than hexes when you aim them wrong."
Blaise met his eyes, irritation tempered by something like shame. "Fine. Consider more for the next five minutes."
"That's all anyone manages at our age," Alden said, turning back to the window. Outside, the city blends into the countryside, then into the forest. "Improvement is measured in minutes."
Theo adjusted a dial on his device, frowning at the way the needle trembled toward the north, then quivered back. "Magnetic interference," he muttered. "Or a ghost in the machinery."
Daphne didn't look up. "Or maybe it just doesn't like trains."
"Machines don't have feelings."
"Neither do you, most days," Blaise said. "Perfect match."
Theo ignored him. "It's detecting magical pressure changes. Ambient energy flux. Every year it shifts earlier."
"Meaning?" Alden asked softly.
"Meaning something big's brewing at Hogwarts this term." Theo tapped the glass face, watching the needle jitter. "Bigger than usual."
"Bigger than usual would be the apocalypse," Blaise said. "Or another of Potter's accidents."
"Statistically, those are the same thing," Alden murmured. The line was dry enough that Daphne nearly laughed. The corner of her mouth betrayed her.
Outside, rain began to fall in slow streaks across the glass, cutting the countryside into watery ribbons. Alden's reflection fractured in them, his gaze following the ripples as if charting a map only he could read.
Daphne studied him for a moment, then looked away. "You're going to dissect the weather next, aren't you?"
"If it misbehaves," he said, and his faint smile met hers through the window's sheen.
The train roared on, steady and sure, carrying them north into stormlight four quiet shadows amid laughter and chaos, bound not by loyalty but by the discipline of their silence.
They didn't know yet that the silence would not last.
For now, it was enough.
--
Rain had begun to pattern the glass in steady, silvery strokes. The sound was almost hypnotic, a metronome to their silence. Blaise had just begun to hum under his breath when the corridor outside erupted in laughtersharp, brittle, the sort that cut rather than warmed.
Malfoy's.
The door to their compartment slid open with unnecessary force, letting in a gust of corridor chill and the smell of cheap sweets. Draco stood framed in the doorway like a boy who'd practiced his entrance a dozen times. Pale hair gleamed under the gaslight; his robes were trimmed with Slytherin green, just a shade too bright, the crest newly embroidered, the smile rehearsed. Behind him loomed Crabbe and Goyle, obedient monuments of meat, and Pansy Parkinson with her lacquered smirk, eyes flicking immediately to Daphne.
"Well," Malfoy drawled, letting his eyes sweep the quiet compartment. "I should have guessed where the dull half of Slytherin went to hide. Studying already, Dreyse?"
Alden didn't look up from the window at first. "Observing," he said evenly. "There's a difference."
"Between boredom and brains?" Malfoy sneered. "Yes, I'm sure you'd know."
Theo looked up from his notes. "One requires actual use of the mind. The other's just noise."
Crabbe frowned, unsure if he'd been insulted. Goyle blinked, still processing.
Malfoy ignored them, stepping inside. The light caught on his prefect badgeshiny, unearned, a family favor rather than a merit. "You four think you're clever. Sitting apart. Acting as if you're better than the rest of us."
Daphne's gaze lifted, steady and unimpressed. "We don't act," she said. "It's simply the way things are."
Her voice was calm, aristocratic, and dressed in silk. Malfoy's color rose, not from the insult but from the fact that everyone in the corridor could hear her tone and know she meant it.
"Careful, Greengrass," he said softly. "You sound almost like you don't care about blood. Your family wouldn't want that whispered, would they?"
Blaise's mouth twitched into a lazy half-smile. "Whispered by whom? You?"Then, with a glance at Crabbe and Goyle: "Do they even know how?"
Malfoy's eyes snapped to him. "And youZabini. Your mother's reputation doesn't make you noble."
Something mean flickered across Blaise's face. He leaned back, voice honeyed with venom. "At least she's invited to the sort of parties where people bathe first."
Theo's quill paused mid-stroke. Daphne exhaled through her nose, quietly appalled.
Alden turned from the window at last, slow, deliberate. The compartment seemed to tighten around his stillness.
"Enough," he said.
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. The word landed like a weight.
Blaise shifted, the faintest guilt in his eyes. Malfoy hesitated, uncertain whether he'd just lost the room. The silence thickened.
Alden's tone stayed mild. "Every year you come to remind us of something, Draco. That your father still writes letters. That you still think that makes you important." He tilted his head slightly. "You should find new material."
For a heartbeat, Malfoy's practiced smirk faltered. Then Pansy tugged at his sleeve, whispering something sharp. His chin lifted. "Enjoy your little club of traitors," he said. "You'll regret siding with filth when it matters."
The word filth hung in the air like smoke.
Daphne closed her book with precision, the sound crisp as a slap. "You mistake composure for weakness. Leave, before you learn the difference."
Her voice didn't rise. That was the worst partit didn't need to. Something in her calm unsettled him more than any shouted curse. Malfoy's glare lingered one heartbeat too long before he turned, robes flaring in carefully practiced indignation. Crabbe and Goyle lumbered after him, Pansy trailing last, her expression caught somewhere between contempt and envy.
The door slid shut. The sound of their retreat dissolved into the rattle of the train.
Blaise blew out a slow breath and gave a low whistle. "You know, I might start timing how long it takes him to trip over his own ego."
Theo smirked faintly. "Impossible to measure infinity."
Daphne's eyes flicked to Blaise. "And you watch your tongue next time. Insulting blood doesn't make you better than him."
Blaise raised both hands. "Reflex," he said. "Force of habit."
"Then unlearn it," she replied.
For a moment, her gaze held challenge, not cruel. Blaise looked away first.
Alden leaned back, the faintest smile ghosting across his mouth. "Progress in minutes," he murmured.
"What was that?" Theo asked.
"Nothing," Alden said. He turned back toward the rain-streaked window, where his own reflection overlapped with the dim blur of mountains in the distance. Steam from the engine drifted upward, coiling against the glass, and in it the faintest tracery of green light ran across the surfacethin, branching, vein-like.
He watched it fade, the corner of his mouth tightening in thought.
Outside, thunder rolled somewhere beyond the hills. The train pressed on into it, carrying its noise and its silence northward.
--
For a long moment after the door closed, only the rails spoke an endless metallic heartbeat beneath their feet. Steam coiled past the window in slow ribbons, softening the reflection of four faces that didn't quite look like children anymore.
Blaise slouched deeper in his seat, staring at the fogged glass. "Every year," he said, voice low. "He walks in, reminds us what we're supposed to be, and walks out certain he's won."
"Let him think it," Daphne murmured, reopening her book. "Belief is cheaper than proof."
Theo's brass device still hummed on the table between them. Its needle quivered, light pulsing faintly from runes etched along the rim.
Alden leaned forward, studying it. "You never said what you built it for."
Theo blinked, surprised by the question. "I wanted to measure magical pressure ambient flux along ley intersections. Hogwarts sits on three of them. Every term the readings shift."
"Like tides?" Alden asked.
Theo nodded, the edge of pride softening his usual reserve. "Exactly. Magic has weather. The device records its storms."
Alden's gaze followed the trembling needle. "You said the flux changes every year. Any pattern?"
"None that holds," Theo said, frowning. "Except this, each time the reading spikes, something happens at the castle. Last year, the basilisk. Before that, Quirrell and the Stone. Chaos leaves fingerprints."
The thought hung there. The train lurched over a bridge; the compartment lights flickered.
Alden tapped the glass gently. "May I?"
Theo hesitated, then pushed it toward him.
Alden's fingers rested against the rim. The runes brightened for a heartbeatsteady, rhythmic, like a pulse syncing to his own. The humming deepened.
Daphne looked up from her book. "What did you do?"
"Nothing," Alden said quietly. "Just… listening."
He traced one rune with his thumb, its edges catching faint green light. "If this records storms," he murmured, "perhaps we can chart themtrace how emotion distorts magic the way wind distorts current."
Theo tilted his head, curious. "Emotion? That's not measurable."
"Maybe not yet."
Blaise snorted softly. "Only you two could make terror sound like arithmetic."
Alden smiled faintly. "Fear's just energy without a direction. Give it one, and it becomes power."
That line stilled the air. Even the train seemed to hesitate before finding its rhythm again.
Daphne shut her book. "You say that like it's simple."
"It could be," Alden said. He met her eyes for the briefest second in an exchange of intellect, challenge, and something unspoken beneath both. "If we can learn to see the patterns."
Outside, rain thickened. The view turned to mirrors: forest, fog, skyeach reflecting the other until it was impossible to tell where any line began. A low vibration passed through the carriage; the brass device quivered as if sensing something ahead.
Theo frowned. "That's new. It shouldn't react this far south."
Alden didn't answer. He watched the quivering needle, then the frost beginning to gather at the corners of the glass. His breath fogged the pane, and in the mist he traced one careful line with his fingertip thin, branching filament that glowed for the briefest instant before fading.
"Maybe," he said softly, almost to himself, "the storm's already here."
The compartment went quiet again. The hum of the machine blurred into the rhythm of the rails. Somewhere forward in the train, laughter turned to shouts. The lights flickered once moreand this time, they didn't come back on.
--
The lamps guttered once, steadied, then dimmed again until the glass globes held only a bruised blue glow. Outside, the rain had thickened into sheets. Frost crawled across the windowpane in branching veins that pulsed faintly, as though something unseen were breathing just beyond the glass.
Theo's device whirred violently, the needle snapping back and forth. A thin tone rose from it, keening through the silence like a whisper through metal.
"What's wrong with it?" Blaise asked, leaning forward. His voice came out too low, too sharp.
Theo swallowed, eyes wide behind his lenses. "I don't know. It shouldn't react this far from"
He stopped. The air had turned heavy, the sort of cold that felt inside the bones, not on the skin. Their breaths fogged pale in front of them, drifting like smoke.
Daphne rubbed her arms. "Do you feel that?"
Alden didn't answer at once. He was watching the frost, tracing the way it spread across the glass like a map. His reflection wavered behind it, faint green eyes rimmed with silver.
Theo's voice trembled. "It's not just temperature. The flux looks"
He turned the device toward them. The runes had shifted color, not gold but a dull green-white, flickering like candlelight caught underwater. Each pulse came with a faint vibration, as if the train itself were breathing wrong.
Blaise muttered, "I've felt drafts before, but this isn't weather."
The whistle blew somewhere ahead, long and hollow. It wasn't the conductor this timeit sounded like a warning.
For a moment, no one spoke. The hum of the rails slowed. The world outside the window seemed to vanish into fog.
Daphne's breath shivered in front of her. "It's the Dementors," she whispered. "They're searching the train."
Blaise stiffened. "They're not supposed to come this far back."
"They don't care where they're supposed to," Theo muttered, his hands tightening around the device. "Magic's dropping look, it's draining."
Alden reached out slowly, placing two fingers against the rim. The metal burned cold. For a heartbeat, the needle steadied. His pulse matched it, rhythm for rhythm.
Theo blinked. "How did you?"
Alden's voice was quiet, distant. "Emotion's energy, remember? It moves, it resonates. Theirs justconsumedes."
The frost on the glass deepened. Beyond it, they could see vague shadows of the world outside: a bridge, a curve of forest, and the faint suggestion of a shape moving through the mist. It wasn't near. It didn't have to be.
Daphne's voice cracked the quiet. "Does anyone else feel? "She stopped. Her words vanished into mist, half-swallowed by the cold.
It wasn't terror exactly; it was absence. The way the world felt when every color dimmed at once.
Alden sat perfectly still, eyes on the window, not blinking. "This," he said softly, "is what power without restraint feels like."
Blaise tried to laugh and couldn't. "You sound like you admire it."
"I don't." Alden's breath clouded the glass. "I want to understand it."
For a moment, the compartment filled with a soundless vibrationsomething too low for the ear but felt in the heart, a pressure that made Theo's device scream once and die.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the cold began to lift. The frost cracked, flaking away in glittering shards. The light steadied, weak but warm. Their breaths returned invisible. Outside, the fog thinned to reveal rolling fields under a dim, pewter sky.
Daphne sank back against her seat, pressing a hand to her temple. "Is it gone?"
Theo examined the dead instrument. "For now."
Blaise leaned back, forcing a laugh that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Next time I want, we sit with the Gryffindors. They seem to get all the attention anyway."
No one answered.
Alden stared at the window again. In the last traces of frost, the patterns still lingeredbranching lines like veins, glowing faintly where the cold had touched deepest. He lifted a hand, tracing one of them with a fingertip. The light followed his motion, dim, obedient, almost alive.
Then it faded, leaving only his reflection staring back.
Theo broke the silence. "What are you thinking?"
"That emotion has structure," Alden said quietly. "And maybe… if we learn its shape, we can control it."
Daphne looked at him. Her voice was soft but certain. "Control isn't always the answer."
He didn't argue. He just watched the fading pattern until it was gone completely, the train rocking them northward again.
The lamps steadied. The noise of laughter filtered from distant carriagesother students, other worlds.
Inside theirs, the quiet held.
And beneath it, unseen, something new began to take form.
--
Steam still clung to the window's edge, its mist curling away in pale ribbons. The train had found its rhythm againiron wheels whispering, rails thrumming beneath their feet like a slow heartbeat regaining confidence after a fright. The lamps burned, low amber now, gentle but alive.
Theo sat back with his broken instrument on his knees. He turned it once, twice, as if it might suddenly correct itself. Blaise stretched long legs out and said, almost to convince himself, "Whatever that was, it's gone. Best left that way."
Daphne didn't answer. She was staring at the water marks fading from the glass, the way they'd run together into branching, vascular patterns. "It looked," she said softly, "like the train was bleeding light."
Alden's gaze followed hers. He didn't correct her. He pulled a slim leather-bound notebook from his coat pocket and opened it on his lap. The spine creaked; the pages were already filled with small, exact handwritingnotes, sketches, equations, phrases written more like arguments with himself than study.
He dipped his quill, ink glinting green-black.
Theo leaned over. "You're writing now? After that?"
Alden didn't look up. "If you wait until you're comfortable, you only ever record half the truth."
Blaise snorted. "You collect truths the way my mother collects jewelry."
"Yours sparkle longer," Daphne said, a little wry, a little tired.
Alden's quill moved steadily. Emotion is a current, he wrote. When it floods, it carries everything reason with will amercycyy. To master power, one must first contain the flood. Control is the dam; understanding is the riverbed.
There were older lines above the new ones. Fear makes men slaves. Control makes them gods.Emotion is the rawest magic curse that begins as a feeling.
Theo read them upside-down, then sat back. "You don't sleep much, do you?"
"Sometimes," Alden said, still writing. "When the ink runs out."
Daphne folded her arms. "You sound like you want to bottle humanity and label it."
"Not bottle," he said. "Map. If we can read emotion's shape, maybe we can choose when to feel it."
Her voice sharpened. "And what happens when you stop choosing? When the map replaces the world?"
He paused then, quill hovering, the rhythm of the train ticking under the silence. He looked at her properly, seeing the steadiness in her eyes. "That," he said, "is why I need people who'll argue with me."
The tension thinned; Blaise's low laugh filled the gap. "I'll argue until the day you explode, Dreyse. Then I'll sell the ashes as souvenirs."
"Kind," Alden murmured, closing the notebook. He pressed his palm flat on the cover; for an instant, a faint warmth bled through the leather, a pulse answering his own. The sigil etched in the corner shimmered green, then dulled againjust ink in the light.
Outside, the hills rolled past, dark and endless. The frost had melted from the glass, leaving only water streaks that caught the reflection of four facestired, thoughtful, different from the ones that had boarded that morning.
Daphne finally spoke. "Whatever you're planning to map, Aldenjust remember people aren't rivers. They don't flow the way you think."
He inclined his head, respectful, unreadable. "That's why I'll keep watching."
The whistle blew long and low ahead, echoing across the fields. The sky beyond the rain had begun to clear, a slow bloom of pale gold breaking along the horizon. The train curved toward it, carrying the faint warmth of returning light and the cold promise of the pages now waiting in Alden Dreyse's pocket.
--
The feast had long begun, the clatter of silverware and the murmur of hundreds filling the vaulted air like a living symphony. Candles floated above, their flames wavering against the enchanted ceiling where clouds slid heavy and dark mirror to the storm that had chased the train north.
The Slytherin table gleamed under emerald banners. Alden sat among his circleDaphne to his right, Theo bent over his plate, absently drawing sigils into the condensation on his goblet, and Blaise half-listening, half-drifting into thought. The chatter that normally coursed through their table avoided them tonight. Eyes slid past and away, wary, curious, unsure.
At the head of the hall, Albus Dumbledore watched with the calm patience of a man who had seen too many patterns repeat. His fingertips rested lightly together. The candlelight found the half-moon glint of his glasses, but not his eyes; those remained hidden behind reflection, unreadable.
Beside him, Severus Snape leaned forward slightly, his voice a low, measured thread beneath the noise. "You're staring again," he said. "One might think you suspect them of plotting your downfall already."
Dumbledore smiled faintly. "Plotting? No. Planning, perhaps. They have that lookchildren who already believe the world is too small for them."
Snape's mouth twitched, something between pride and warning. "Ambition is hardly a crime in my House."
"No," Dumbledore said softly, "but ambition sharpened by intellect becomes a blade. I've seen that before."
Snape followed his gaze. Alden Dreyse was speaking quietly with Daphne Greengrass, their heads inclined close. She looked poised, composed; his tone was calm but carried that unsettling intensity that filled every space he occupied. The group around themNott, Zabinimoved like satellites around an invisible gravity.
"They are disciplined," Snape said after a pause. "Unlike most of their peers. They work, they study, they keep to themselves. I might even call them" his mouth curved faintly "responsible."
Dumbledore's eyes remained on the group. "Responsible. That's not the word others whisper, Severus. I've heard calculating.Cold.Untouchable. They're very young to already feel apart from the rest."
Snape's tone cooled. "Perhaps it's because the rest treat them like curiosities. Slytherin produces brilliance, Headmaster, and brilliance is rarely companionable."
Dumbledore turned then, the faintest humor in his face. "Defensive, Severus?"
"I defend my students," Snape said simply. "Because no one else will."
"Of course." Dumbledore's gaze drifted back. "Still, one must wonder what sort of brilliance blooms best in shadow. I see in that boy's eyes something… searching. Not hunger. Not cruelty. Understanding, perhaps, but of what I can't yet say."
Snape said nothing, but his hand curled once against the tablecloth. "Dreyse reads too much. He spends nights in the library beyond curfew. The younger ones follow him. I find nothing forbidden among their studies yet. I'd rather they read than hex each other in corridors."
Dumbledore nodded absently. "A fair trade. And yet I've known minds that began in books and ended in chains. Grindelwald, for instance."
The name fell like a spark into oil. Snape's gaze snapped to him, dark and sharp. "If you're suggesting the boy resembles"
"I'm suggesting nothing," Dumbledore interrupted gently. "Only remembering patterns."
Down below, Alden lifted his head slightly, as if aware of being watched. His eyes caught the candlelight and held it green, not bright but deliberate. Dumbledore's smile thinned.
"He sees more than he should for his age," he murmured.
"Then teach him," Snape said, low, deliberate. "Before someone else does."
For a long moment, Dumbledore didn't answer. The sound of laughter from the Gryffindor table rolled faintly across the hall. A hundred students. A thousand futures, any one of them capable of becoming history's echo.
Finally, Dumbledore said, "Perhaps I already am. Or perhaps he's teaching me."
Snape looked unconvinced. His eyes returned to his House tablehis gaze softer now, just slightly. He watched Daphne quietly adjust her sleeve, Theo scribble invisible equations on the table, and Blaise grin with that arrogant ease that rarely reached his eyes. Then his attention settled on Alden, againsteady, analytical, wary.
When he spoke again, it was almost to himself. "He's clever enough to destroy everything and careful enough to make it look like salvation."
Dumbledore sighed. "Then let us hope, Severus, that he learns which is which before the choice is his to make."
The ceiling above shimmered faintly as thunder rumbled over the castle. The candles flickered; for a heartbeat, every shadow in the hall stretched toward the Slytherin table.
And Alden Dreyse, feeling none of it, dipped his quill again, opening his notebook beside his untouched plate. Emotion is power. Power must be mastered before it masters us. He closed it softly.
--
The dungeons slept in deep green shadow. Moonlight from the Black Lake bled through the glass, turning the stone walls into wavering waterlight. Every ripple carried the muted thrum of the la above the soft, endless heartbeat of Slytherin's domain.
Alden's dormitory was carved into the cliffside, a chamber of polished basalt and cold ambition. Each bed bore its owner's character like a signature:
Theo's corner was chaos, ordered by intellectbrass instruments disassembled across his desk, parchment layered with runic scrawls and faint burns from failed enchantments. The hum of dormant magic lingered there like static before a storm.
Blaise's side was a study in aesthetic controlneat, almost luxurious, with silver thread embroidered into his pillowcases and a framed photograph of his mother frozen in elegant laughter. A scent of ink, leather, and sandalwood drifted faintly.
Alden's space, by contrast, was austere. A single candle, a stack of books bound in green and black, his wand resting precisely parallel to his quill. Everything deliberate. Every object is aligned to an unseen rhythm.
The candle burned low as the three sat in the half-light.
Theo hunched over his desk, adjusting a copper hinge with his wand. Blaise lay sprawled on his bed, tossing an old galleon into the air and catching it with idle precision. "We survived our first Dementor encounter," he said lazily. "Barely."
"Speak for yourself," Theo muttered, tightening a screw. "You screamed."
"I exclaimed," Blaise corrected, dignified. "There's a difference."
Alden smiled faintly, ink whispering against paper. He was writing againslow, precise strokes, his face calm but inward, lit by the trembling candlelight.
Theo noticed first. "You're still on that?"
"On what?" Alden didn't look up.
"Your theory. About emotions as energy. You said it earlier, on the trainfear as current, control as channel. You're writing it down again."
Blaise rolled the coin across his knuckles. "He's trying to patent the human condition."
"Maybe," Alden said softly. "But if fear has shape, it can be studied. If it can be studied, it can be used."
Theo frowned. "Used for what?"
Alden's quill paused. He turned the notebook so the others could see. Across the top of the page, underlined twice, he had written:
Entry VII – The Veins of Power
Below it: Emotions leave residue. Anger burns bright and fast, fear coils, love anchors. When felt strongly enough, each leaves a trace in the air's signature. If that residue could be bound, like lightning in a rod… perhaps it could be drawn into form. Controlled. Transferred.
Theo read silently, then exhaled. "You're describing a magical circuit powered by emotion."
"Not powered," Alden corrected. "Born. Magic is emotion. We've simply forgotten the language."
Blaise sat up, intrigued despite himself. "You make it sound poetic. Dangerous, but poetic."
Alden's gaze stayed on the candle flame. "It started before Hogwarts," he said quietly. "The first time I felt… powerless."
The others waited. They had learned not to interrupt when Alden shifted into memory; his words always came measured, almost sacred.
"I was ten," he said. "A Muggle boy in our town drowned. The river was shallow, but no one could reach him in time. I remember the way his mother screamed. It wasn't a sound that was forced. I felt it in my chest, like someone pressed a wand against my heart. I didn't understand it then, but something in that pain moved the world. The river froze solid. Just stopped."
Theo's quill stilled midair. Blaise lowered the coin.
Alden's tone remained even. "That was the first time I realized feeling alone could bend nature. Not spells. Not Latin. Just emotion."
Theo leaned forward, eyes wide. "So that's why you call it Vein Magia. Emotion as a circulatory forcemagic as blood."
"Exactly."
Blaise tilted his head. "And what happens when the blood runs dry?"
Alden smiled faintly, not kindly. "Then you find a new heart."
The candle flickered. The words hung there, too still, too calm. The surface of the Black Lake shivered against the windows, scattering light like fractured glass.
Theo finally broke the silence. "You know, if the professors heard half of this, they'd throw you into the Department of Mysteries just to dissect your mind."
"They wouldn't find much," Alden said, closing the notebook. "Just a theory."
He blew out the candle. Darkness filled the roomthick, soft, total. The faint green from the lake brushed their faces like underwater ghosts.
From the shadows, Blaise's voice came, low and thoughtful. "You ever think maybe we're the wrong kind of Slytherins?"
Theo answered first. "Maybe we're the right kindjust in the wrong era."
And Alden, eyes still open in the dark, whispered to no one: "Or maybe we're the beginning of something new."
The ripple of the lake answered like a pulse, steady and slow. The night moved on, and with it, so did the first heartbeat of Vein Magia.