Time in Thelmar passed swiftly. The rhythm of work and rest, of training and laughter, had settled into something that resembled peace. Dorin returned each evening weary but satisfied, hands covered in mortar dust, while Oliver came home from the mill with flour on his sleeves and pride in his eyes. Marya and Beth had found their place among the kitchens, laughing more often than they had in years. Elsa woke each morning eager for school, and Sirius spent his afternoons roaming with Nina, Hilda, and Edrik, always watching, always learning.
But Harry himself could not rest easy. He felt the pull of something greater, a whisper on the wind beyond the Wall. At night, in the silence of the Gryffindor Caste library, he sometimes caught himself staring northward, as if the very stones of the castle urged him to be ready.
It was then that Harry turned his mind toward an old dream—one he had never pursued in his youth.
The Animagus transformation.
His father had done it. Sirius Black, his godfather, had mastered it too. Remus Lupin had never been alone on full moons because of them. For years, Harry had longed to learn but had never had the time, the space, or the guidance. Now, with the Black family library at his disposal, he had found what he needed—a slim, weathered volume bound in green leather, tucked among darker tomes of curses and blood-magic. Its title was written in curling silver script: Metamorphosis of the Flesh: The Path of the Animagus.
One evening, Lyanna found him hunched over it by candlelight, the flame flickering across his intent face.
"Another project?" she asked, stepping softly into the study.
Harry smiled faintly without looking up. "Not just any project. Something my father did… something Sirius did. An Animagus. I've wanted to try it all my life."
Lyanna raised an eyebrow. "And why now?"
He turned a page slowly. "Because it's one of the purest transformations. No potions, no rituals of blood. Just will, discipline, and the courage to remake yourself. If I can master this, I'll not only gain power, but freedom."
She leaned against the table, scanning the inked diagrams of shifting limbs, half-human, half-animal. "The book says it needs potions, doesn't it? Complicated ones."
Harry chuckled wryly. "Yes. And I don't have the ingredients for the Animagus draught. Rare herbs that don't even grow in this world. So I'll do it the hard way. Manually. Step by step, through meditation and force of magic."
Lyanna folded her arms. "That sounds like torture."
"Good," Harry said, finally meeting her eyes. "If it's hard, it will teach me more than any potion could."
Harry's days became long and grueling. Each dawn, he sparred with the soldiers of Gryffindor Castle—blades flashing, sweat pouring, muscles burning. He drilled his body with unarmed combat until his knuckles split, then healed them with magic and started again. Afterward, he trained his wards and skinchangers, never neglecting the gifted children who looked to him as both master and protector.
But every night, when the castle quieted, he turned to the Animagus discipline.
He began with meditation, sitting cross-legged on the cold stone floor of the solar, drawing his magic inward until he could feel the pulse of his own heartbeat. He focused on the flow of magic in his veins, then forced his imagination to picture himself not as a man but as something else.
The book had warned: The first step is the Mirror of the Soul. In deep trance, one must discover the animal within—the reflection of one's truest nature.
Night after night, Harry sat in darkness, waiting.
The first visions were fleeting. A flash of flying, the curve of a wing. The glint of slitted emerald eyes. The echo of a roar. But each time he reached, the image slipped away, leaving him gasping with the strain.
Frustration gnawed at him. One evening, Sirius, who had been watching quietly from the door, piped up with his clear, too-wise voice.
"Maybe you're trying too hard, Dad."
Harry opened his eyes, panting. "What do you mean?"
"You always push," Sirius said simply, stepping closer. "But animals don't push. They just are. Maybe you should… listen instead."
Harry blinked at him, startled, then laughed softly. "You may be only four years old, Sirius, but sometimes you sound like a master sage."
Sirius smiled, serious in his own way. "I listen more than people think."
Even as he struggled with the Animagus path, Harry never let his guard down. He could feel it—a ripple of power beyond the frozen lands. When he stretched his magic too far north in meditation, the air turned cold, and the runes on the castle walls thrummed like taut strings.
Lyanna noticed his unease. One evening as they walked the battlements, she said quietly, "You're restless."
"There's something moving out there," Harry admitted, staring into the endless dark line of the Wall's shadow. "Something magical. Old. I don't know what it is yet, but it's strong."
"Stronger than you?"
Harry hesitated. "Maybe. That's why I keep training. Magic, combat, and now the Animagus transformation. I don't know who else walks this world, Lyanna. Sorcerers, witches, powers older than the Wall. If they come, I need to be ready."
She touched his hand briefly, grounding him. "You already carry more weight than most kings. Don't let fear drive you. Let it sharpen you."
Harry smiled faintly. "That's what I'm trying to do."
And so the days went on. The city of Thelmar grew. The newcomers found peace. The children played and learned. But in the quiet of night, while others dreamed, Harry pressed himself toward a transformation few had ever dared, certain that one day soon, the land would demand everything he had to give.
Harry had always relied on Lyanna to tell him about the North. But Lyanna was not a woman who placed faith in myths. She believed in history—the deeds of men, the rise and fall of houses, the truth written in stone and song.
By the firelight, she would recount the tales of the old Stark Kings, grim men who had ruled from Winterfell since before the Andals came. She spoke of their wars with the Marsh Kings, whose crowns were made of reeds, and with the bloody Boltons who flayed their foes. She spoke of the Wolf's Den and the building of White Harbor, of the long battles to unite the North beneath a single banner.
"These are the stories worth remembering," Lyanna would say, her eyes bright with the weight of lineage. "Stories of men, not phantoms."
Harry listened, learned, and admired the depth of her memory. But it was the free folk who whispered the other stories—the ones Lyanna dismissed as fables.
They spoke of the Night King. Of White Walkers. Of why the Wall had been built not just as a border but as a prison.
One old wildling woman, her face as weathered as the bark of a pine, told Harry by the hearth:
"They were made, boy. Made by the little green ones, the Children of the Forest. To fight the First Men. But you don't make fire and not expect it to burn your hand. The Walkers turned against all. That's why the Wall stands. That's why we remember the cold that kills."
Harry had felt the truth of it long before the tale. In his meditations, in his nightly vigils on the battlements, he could feel the stirrings of something vast and unnatural beyond the Wall. The wards in Gryffindor Castle hummed faintly when his magic stretched northward, as though warning him.
"White Walkers," he muttered to himself one evening, turning the words over like black stones. "The Night King. If it's true… then it's them. They're the source of the disturbance."
Lyanna, standing beside him, shook her head. "Harry, these are tales to frighten children. I have read every account I could find. The Wall was built to defend against the free folk, not phantoms. My uncle always said—"
"Your uncle wasn't wrong," Harry cut in, his tone calm but certain. "But he didn't feel what I feel. Magic doesn't lie. Something out there is stirring. If it is what the wildlings say… then I cannot wait for it to come south. I'll have to confront it before it comes to destroy what we've built here."
Lyanna frowned, folding her arms. "And how would you even begin? Even if such creatures exist, you'd march alone into the frozen waste?"
Harry's jaw tightened. "If I must."
She reached out, her fingers brushing his sleeve. "You sound like a man courting death."
"I'm a man defending life," he said softly, his eyes still fixed on the distant, endless horizon of the Wall.
That night, Harry sat alone in the solar, the Black family's Animagus book open but forgotten at his side. His mind was not on transformation but on confrontation.
The Children of the Forest, now extinct, had made the White Walkers with spells older than human memory. He imagined their magic, wild and green, twisting flesh and spirit into something colder than death. If even a shred of that power remained in the world, it would take everything he had—every skill, every weapon, every ounce of magic—to stand against it.
Harry placed a hand on the wooden table, letting the wards of Gryffindor Castle sing faintly through his palm. He had built something worth protecting. Families, children, homes, temples, schools. A civilization rising beyond the Wall where none had thought it possible. He could not allow it to be swept away in ice and shadow.
"I will not wait for them to come to me," he whispered. "If the White Walkers walk again, then I will meet them on my own terms."
Harry stood in the great hall at dawn, his cloak fastened and his weirwood staff in hand. The torches along the walls burned low, throwing long shadows across the carved beams. Lyanna stood before him, arms folded tightly, her lips pressed thin. Sirius sat on the steps just below the dais, his sharp eyes bright with something between pride and worry.
"You're truly going alone," Lyanna said at last, breaking the silence.
Harry nodded. "Yes. This isn't a war party. If I bring soldiers, it will look like I march to fight. That's not what this is. I need to see, to know, before we commit to anything."
"You could at least take scouts," Lyanna pressed, though her tone was softer now, not argument but fear.
"I don't need scouts," Harry said simply. "I can travel farther, faster, and quieter alone than I ever could with a company. And if things go wrong, I can return to Narnia with a thought."
Sirius leaned forward, his small hands clasped together. "But you'll fight them if you see them?"
Harry's gaze softened. "No, Sirius. Not yet. This isn't a battle. It's a search. If the White Walkers are truly out there, I need to understand them first. What they are. What they want. Charging in with fire and steel won't save anyone."
"But Father…" Sirius hesitated, then said with remarkable clarity for his years, "if they're coming, the Frostfang villages will fall first. The quarries, the settlement, the people—"
Harry crouched down before his son, resting a hand on his shoulder. "That's why I must go. If they are moving south, I'll know in time. And then we'll be ready. We won't be taken by surprise."
Sirius swallowed hard, nodding. But his eyes still burned with a spark of excitement, the thrill that his father was marching toward the great mystery whispered in stories.
Lyanna exhaled slowly. "No one here has ever seen you fight with all your strength. Not even me. You hide it, always. But I know, Harry. I know you're dangerous in ways the rest of us can't begin to understand."
Harry gave her a faint smile. "That's why I go alone. Better one man bear the risk than fifty."
As word spread that Harry was leaving, the training yard filled with murmurs. Nearly fifty apprentices—children and youths alike, those who trained under his guidance as skinchangers and spellcasters—gathered in hushed groups. When Harry stepped among them, silence fell like snow.
One boy of fourteen, tall and broad-shouldered, stepped forward. "Master… let me come. You've taught us to fight, to hold our ground. We could help."
Others quickly joined in, voices overlapping:
"Please, Master!"
"We won't slow you down!"
"We're ready—"
Harry raised his hand, and the clamor stilled at once. His gaze swept across their young faces, filled with loyalty and burning eagerness.
"You are my strength," Harry said. "Each of you. But this is not your fight. Not yet. You are still learning, still growing. I am not going to wage war—I am going to see. To understand. When the time for battle comes, you will have your part. But this time, you must stay."
A murmur of disappointment rippled through them. One girl, no older than ten, clutched the small fox that often curled around her shoulders and whispered, "Will you come back?"
Harry's eyes softened. "Always."
By midday, Harry stood at the northern gate of Thelmar. A small crowd had gathered—apprentices, soldiers, townsfolk, even some of the newcomers who had once feared him. They did not cheer or call out. They only watched, quiet and solemn, as Harry adjusted his cloak against the wind.
Lyanna stood closest. "If you fall—" she began.
"I won't," Harry said firmly. "And if I do… I'll rise again."
It was not bravado, not arrogance, but the steady voice of a man who had walked through fire and survived.
Sirius ran to him, clutching his father's leg briefly before stepping back, his voice clear. "Bring us knowledge, Father. That's worth more than any victory."
Harry's heart swelled with pride at the boy's words. He ruffled his son's dark hair, then turned northward.
Without another word, he began walking, the great Frostfang mountains looming in the distance, the Wall's shadow stretching long across the snowfields. The cold wind cut sharp, but Harry's steps never faltered.
He was not the schoolboy who had once stumbled through magic and destiny. He was Harry Gryffindor—mage, warrior, builder of kingdoms. And he was going to face the fear that haunted the North, alone.
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