While Snape's icy voice was still echoing "Begin" in the Hogwarts dungeon and Liriya's fingertip was forming its first thread of frost, several hundred miles away in the deepest levels of the Ministry of Magic in London, one of the countless identical black doors in the circular hall of the Department of Mysteries swung open.
Inside the Space and Nodes Research Room, Cassian Thorne stood against the wall.
There were no windows, no clocks—only the heavy, sealed silence of a place where time itself seemed to have been placed under a Stasis Charm. Twelve identical black doors lined the circular chamber; no one was entirely sure which ones were real.
Only one door gave off a faint blue glow—the exit to the Time Room next door. Rumour said that door should never be opened casually, or time itself might unravel.
Cassian— the same young man who had stood on Platform 9¾ just days earlier—frowned deeply, his fingers tracing rapid patterns across a glowing silver parchment map.
He was barely thirty, grey hair cut with military precision. A single-lens eyepiece set with a miniature astrolabe rested over his left eye; glowing runes constantly shifted across the lens—his personal "Eye of Insight," which rendered invisible magical flows into visible star-trail patterns.
"Still not right…" he muttered. The words echoed strangely in the empty room.
Three days earlier, three of Europe's oldest magical nodes had begun fluctuating: one deep inside the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia, one in the Dinaric Alps of Albania, and the third right beneath Hogwarts in the Scottish Highlands.
The disturbances weren't the sharp sting of dark magic or the slow fade of natural decay. They felt more like something ancient waking up—a bell that had slept for a thousand years finally struck, its resonance still rolling through the earth.
Even more unsettling was the faint "tremor" that followed every surge, as though the entire castle were a sleeping dragon being gently prodded awake.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus," Cassian whispered the Hogwarts motto with a bitter smile. He had been a Ravenclaw himself, yet only now did he truly understand that the old warning might not be decorative after all.
On the first day of term his assignment had been routine monitoring of the Hogwarts Express. The Ministry had the right to inspect it with prior notice.
He had stood on Platform 9¾, eyes sharp, scanning every first-year. No contraband, no traces of dark magic. He had encountered the man in black trailing a student, but intelligence already confirmed he was from the Rosier family, sent to retrieve Isabella—some pure-blood factions in Germany still preferred Durmstrang for their children.
On the surface, nothing was wrong.
Yet his instincts screamed that the real problem lay with those three children.
Caelum Julien Black—eyes green as spring leaves, bearing far too much composure for an eleven-year-old, magic rolling like a tide.
Liriya—cloak drawn tight, surrounded by an aura of northern frost, clutching that long hide-wrapped bundle. He should have insisted on opening it.
And the quiet Rosier girl. The family had been moving antiques and funds across Eastern Europe in secret, urgent and discreet.
Magical talents came in wildly different forms—Seers, Parselmouths, Metamorphmagi, those who could commune with beasts or plants.
Cassian's gift was seeing order in chaos. No matter how tangled the threads, he could follow them to the truth. Combined with Auror-level combat skills, it had earned him an early spot in the Department of Mysteries' Space and Nodes Research Room as its youngest analyst.
Just minutes ago an encrypted briefing had landed on his desk: a new student from northern Europe named Liriya had presented a black stone tablet directly to Headmaster Dumbledore on the day of arrival. The tablet's material was unknown, covered in lost runes, and had briefly caused magical turbulence around Hogsmeade.
"She handed it straight to Dumbledore?" Cassian repeated softly, fingers absently polishing the astrolabe lens. That meant the tablet was now buried under layers of the headmaster's protection—completely beyond the Department's reach. Dumbledore's authority had long outgrown the Ministry's.
But one detail stood out: ever since the tablet entered Hogwarts, local magical fluctuations had intensified dramatically. At the same time the Albanian node in the Dinaric Alps had surged in perfect synchrony, as if answering a call. The strongest node of all—the Arctic Circle, Liriya's homeland—had gone strangely quiet, as though its duty was complete and it could finally rest.
Cassian waved his right hand. A glowing magical screen woven from pure energy appeared before him. He pulled up the residual magical image of the tablet—snatched by one of his discreet contacts inside Hogwarts:
A slab roughly the length of an arm, shaped like an ancient sword, pitch-black with spiral patterns like intertwining star trails. At its centre sat a tiny, dim crystal. When probing magic approached, the tablet didn't repel or absorb it. Instead it guided the energy along the grooves, channelling it deep inside like water disappearing into an underground river—or stars returning to their proper places.
"This isn't an ordinary ancient relic," Cassian murmured with absolute certainty. "This tablet… is both a key and a beacon. It's a Leyline Resonance Anchor. Could it be connected to the lost relics of the Moon Shadow Council?"
He remembered a sealed file from 1979: an investigation team had discovered a mural in the ruins of a Carpathian castle showing three stone tablets standing beneath the aurora, a griffin's nest, and a dragon's spine. The entire team vanished shortly afterwards. The case was marked "untraceable."
All three locations now matched.
Cassian pulled out a small silver whistle-like recorder, infused it with magic, and began dictating:
(Top Secret)
European magical node activity elevated. Although Hogwarts is not traditionally classified as a node, recent anomalies suggest it may correspond to a forgotten—or even dominant—node. The stone tablet delivered by the new student is almost certainly an activation key. Given that the artefact has been transferred to Headmaster Dumbledore, direct intervention is not recommended at this time. However, continuous monitoring of all European nodes is advised. Additional note: the tablet's runes bear striking similarity to the 1979 "Moon Shadow Council" ruins. This may indicate a reactivation of ancient magical geography with extremely high potential risk.
— C. Thorne, Space and Nodes Research Room
He sealed the recorder with a drop of molten mithril and summoned a silver-grey magical raven. The bird snatched the message and vanished into the dark corridor leading to the Director's office.
Cassian removed his eyepiece and rubbed his tired eyes. Then he remembered the casual postscript at the end of the briefing: "Liriya employed a non-standard frost-processing technique during Potions, which has already drawn Professor Snape's attention."
Cassian smiled faintly. His little informant inside Hogwarts really was thorough. That meant he now owed Amelia Bones—one of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's most formidable directors—another favour.
Technically he should call her "Aunt Amelia." The fair but iron-willed official was far harder to fool than her niece.
At the same moment, high in the tallest tower of Hogwarts, the headmaster's office was warm and quiet.
Fawkes perched on his golden stand, quietly watching the black stone tablet resting on the desk.
The tablet's surface was dark as night. Only the tiny crystal at its centre, in a corner no one was watching, gave one almost imperceptible flash—as if answering a distant call from deep within a faraway mountain range.