On Christmas morning, a rare blizzard sealed Hogwarts completely inside a pale, frozen world.
The common room was empty. Most of the young witches and wizards had already fled the cold castle for the holidays.
Even the knights in the paintings had squeezed themselves into other frames in search of warm mulled wine.
Only the fireplace remained alive, pine branches crackling as flames struggled to push back the cold seeping through the stone walls.
Lucian sat alone in a high-backed chair beside the window, a notebook spread across his knees.
His quill hovered above the parchment, moving rapidly. The tip scratched across the surface as ink spread into messy black stains.
While others would be enjoying hot cocoa and unwrapping gifts this morning, Lucian was reconstructing the past.
Or more accurately, he was trying to decipher the fragmented conversation that had crossed a thousand years.
After receiving the Star Sight, the remaining divine imprint of Rowena Ravenclaw had not passed down any clear inheritance.
Instead, she had left only several illogical fragments of memory and a few vague prophecies.
"You certainly left me an interesting puzzle."
Lucian muttered softly.
"If you couldn't speak plainly… then that means that thing is watching us, doesn't it?"
He took a slow breath and began sketching the fragments onto the page, forcing them together with logic.
Lucian closed his eyes.
The first image Rowena had given him appeared in his mind.
It looked like an abstract painting.
Under a vast night sky, countless sparks of magic were going out one by one.
On the ground below, countless faceless figures gathered into a gray ocean.
They possessed no magic, yet the combined weight of their gazes formed an invisible iron curtain that slowly pressed upward toward the sky.
Rowena's voice echoed faintly, like something rising from the deep ocean.
"…not disappearing… but being rejected…"
"…billions of observers… anchors of reality…"
Lucian opened his eyes.
"Observers… Muggles."
He wrote a short equation onto the parchment.
Reproduction plus Rationality equals Iron Law.
"So that's it…"
Lucian stared at the still-wet ink.
"For centuries we believed the International Statute of Secrecy existed to protect wizards from persecution, or to maintain a fragile peace between worlds. But that explanation is wrong."
This was never about laws.
It was about survival.
Magic, by its nature, distorted reality and defied reason. Yet the outside world was now filled with believers in science and rationality.
Billions of Muggles believed firmly in ordinary rules. They believed cups could not turn into mice. They believed people could not fly through the air.
That overwhelming collective belief was slowly erasing the foundation that allowed magic to exist.
Not with swords.
But with common sense.
"The witch hunts of the past were almost merciful in comparison," Lucian said quietly.
"Those people burned witches at the stake."
"What we face now is far worse. A silent suffocation."
This was exile.
Memory surged again.
In the vision, Rowena Ravenclaw stood tall, almost towering over the world.
"For a thousand years... I have seen every prophecy."
"I saw the end. I saw how the fire of magic slowly faded within mediocrity.
To prevent magic from becoming nothing more than legend… I had to make a choice.
I became the foundation that anchors magic itself."
In the vision, Rowena's body began to break apart.
Her form dissolved into countless silver chains filled with starlight.
Those chains shot upward and merged with the gray curtain pressing down from the sky.
"I spread my will across every stone of this castle. Beneath the weight of physics and material reality, I forced open a refuge called Hogwarts."
"As long as I do not let go… as long as this castle still stands… magic will not die."
The vision slowly faded until only her lonely silhouette remained, holding the sky back by herself.
Lucian turned to the window and looked toward the dark outline of the Forbidden Forest.
At last, a long-standing question in his mind had been answered.
No wonder.
No wonder modern magic seemed so weak compared to the legends of ancient times.
During the age of Celtic myth, wizards like Merlin or Morgan le Fay could reshape mountains and seas. That had been true power.
But now?
Even the greatest figures of this age, Dumbledore and Voldemort, fought battles that mostly consisted of colored beams of light shooting from their wands.
Magnificent, perhaps.
But small.
The world had changed.
It had become too crowded. Too rational. Too noisy.
In an age ruled by Muggles, the mysterious side of reality was slowly being squeezed out of existence.
Lucian turned another page, his fingers tightening slightly.
Another fragment of memory appeared.
This time it showed a dark forest in ancient Albania.
Massive twisted trees blocked out the sky. In the endless shadows stood Helena Ravenclaw.
The girl from legend who had supposedly stolen her mother's crown out of jealousy.
But in the vision, Helena wore the Ravenclaw diadem while staring upward in despair.
Above her gathered an invisible and suffocating pressure.
Then punishment descended. A silent lash from the void struck her spirit.
Her soul screamed as it was torn apart.
Behind her, a man stepped out of the shadows. The man later known as the Bloody Baron.
His eyes were empty. There was no love in them. No anger.
Only mechanical obedience as he raised his sword.
Snap.
The sound of breaking wood shattered the silence of the common room.
Lucian had crushed the quill in his hand. Ink splattered across his fingers. "The greedy daughter. The jealous pursuer."
"All lies created to hide the truth."
Lucian's voice was hoarse.
He grabbed another quill and began writing again, ignoring the ink staining his hands.
The truth was simple.
Rowena Ravenclaw, the greatest witch of wisdom, had attempted to step beyond mortal limits and touch the will of the magical world itself.
The world retaliated.
Helena did not steal the crown out of jealousy.
She fled with it. She carried the curse that would destroy her mother and ran to Albania.
As for the Baron... He was nothing more than an executioner chosen by fate.
The so-called crime of passion was merely a story created afterward to make the tragedy understandable to ordinary minds.
Whenever history becomes too strange, people invent simple explanations.
Lucian stared at the chaotic writing covering the parchment.
History could be rewritten.
Memories could be altered.
This was what the world called destiny.
It would never allow anyone to replace heaven with their own will. Anyone who crossed that boundary would simply become a footnote in a ridiculous legend.
The fire in the fireplace had nearly gone out. Only a few red embers glowed quietly within the ashes.
Lucian remembered the final phrase Rowena had left him.
The phrase that still sent chills down his spine.
"The rise of the Muggles."
If the world itself desired to purge uncontrollable magic and return everything to ordinary physical laws, then who had it chosen as its agent in this era?
"Harry Potter."
Lucian whispered the name.
He drew a tilted scale beside it. "A perfect half-blood. The hinge connecting two worlds."
To Lucian, the boy with glasses looked less like a hero and more like a carefully crafted tool.
Harry possessed wizard blood.
But he also carried a completely Muggle-shaped soul, forged during years inside a cupboard.
Lucian wrote a note beside the name.
The undertaker of the old age.
That boy who longed only for family and warmth might never realize that his true purpose was to ring the funeral bell for his own world.
The world did not need Harry to become another Merlin.
It only needed a blade.
A blade covered in ordinary rust, yet sharp enough to pierce the heart.
Its mission was simple.
Destroy the tumor that tried to preserve ancient dark magic and pure-blood supremacy.
Voldemort.
It was the most ironic play imaginable.
A boy who desired a normal life would eliminate the most fanatical defender of the magical world.
Once Voldemort fell, the twisted backbone of dark magic would collapse with him.
Lucian's quill screeched across the parchment as he wrote another name.
Hermione Granger.
The image of the brown-haired girl appeared in his mind.
He remembered her raising her hand high in Transfiguration class. He remembered her voice correcting pronunciation.
'It's LeviOsa, not LevioSA.'
"The brilliant know-it-all?"
Lucian shook his head.
Behind that hardworking student, he sensed something enormous approaching.
He wrote beside her name.
The killer of miracles.
Her thirst for knowledge was pure and sincere, yet she unknowingly served as an accomplice in the destruction of wonder.
The world always used humanity's best qualities in the cruelest ways.
In this castle, only she and Lucian truly lacked reverence for miracles.
Without realizing it, she was becoming the agent of a greater will. Turning wild, mysterious magic into neat formulas obedient to physics.
That thought sent a chill through Lucian.
He looked down at his own notes.
Were they not filled with the same kind of rational deductions?
When had he begun trying to measure the shape of mystery using logic, just like Hermione?
Had he unknowingly become a tool of that same great will?
In his previous life, he had never been obsessed with forcing the world into a physical framework.
Otherwise he would not have studied inner alchemy alongside science.
Even after arriving in this world, he had not tried to fully reduce magic into physical laws.
So why now?
Something unseen seemed to be interfering.
Without Lucian's existence as a variable, he could almost imagine the future.
Twenty years from now, Minister for Magic Hermione Granger.
Every law she passed would transform wizards into office workers. Wands would become tools for standardized procedures.
When mysterious magic was fully absorbed into physical theory, magic itself would die.
Lucian dropped the quill and let it roll across the stone floor.
He leaned back heavily into the velvet chair, which now felt almost like a tombstone.
Rowena had left him nothing but fragments of riddles. Yet in this moment, he could see the entire suffocating picture.
This was never a simple battle between good and evil.
It was a massive, silent campaign to remove mythology from the world.
Voldemort was the final guardian of the old magical age, the last symbol of pure-blood dominance. He had to be executed.
Dumbledore was the undertaker of that same age, gently guiding the magical world toward a peaceful death in the name of openness and democracy.
Harry and Hermione were simply the cleaners of a new era.
They would sweep away the remaining variables and build a safe, ordinary order on the ruins.
Outside the window, the winter wind howled across Hogwarts.
To Lucian, it sounded like the final sigh of ancient magic fading from the world.
"So… what am I?"
Lucian stood up.
The velvet chair scraped across the stone floor as he walked toward the tall arched window.
Through the frozen glass he looked out at the snow-buried world.
The clouds hung low and heavy over the Forbidden Forest.
Above those clouds, Lucian could almost feel a vast and cold will watching the world below.
Waiting for every actor to take their place. Waiting for the story to slide perfectly back onto its predetermined path.
Lucian casually transfigured the broken quill into a matchstick.
A small flame flickered to life in the dark room.
He brought the flame to the corner of the parchment.
Fire devoured the ink hungrily.
The paper curled and blackened.
All those terrifying deductions, those cruel truths about divinity and humanity, and the unfinished words left behind by Rowena turned into fragile ashes.
"Such a pity," Lucian murmured softly.
"I never intended to be a savior."
His blurred reflection appeared in the frozen window.
"I didn't come here to finish this play with you."
He looked into the empty darkness outside. "I came to flip the chessboard and watch what happens next."
If the sky truly was an iron curtain slowly pressing downward, if reality itself intended to erase miracles, then what was the point of mastering magic?
If he could not tear a hole in fate itself, then all of this was nothing more than a prisoner's struggle.
Rowena's method had failed.
But Lucian was different.
His soul carried memories from another world.
That alone made him a variable beyond the laws of this one.
If Muggle common sense could suppress magic, then perhaps another system of truth could break that iron curtain.
Perhaps somewhere among countless possibilities, a new form of magic could be born.
Or perhaps a new ecological niche for miracles.
That Christmas, Hogwarts was filled with the smell of roasted turkey and the laughter of exploding wizard crackers.
No one knew.
No one could possibly believe.
Behind a frost-covered window in the castle, an eleven-year-old Ravenclaw first-year had just picked up the wand that Rowena had been forced to lay down a thousand years ago.
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