Chapter Text
The pale light filtering through the window of the Hogwarts Express made the sharp contours of Draco Malfoy’s face appear even more pronounced. Outside, the vast green hills of Scotland were slipping away one by one, as leaden clouds blankets the sky, hanging over the train like a nightmare. Normally, the days of returning to Hogwarts meant a sense of relief for Draco—a retreat to that sheltered castle he had known since childhood, a safe haven. But this year, that familiar feeling had been replaced by a deep, eerie unease. Now, not a single inch of earth remained safe for him, neither in the wider world nor within that ancient castle.
His right hand, independent of his will, slowly moved toward his left arm. The cold, pitch-black stain beneath the fabric—the Dark Mark—was seemingly quiet. The brand seared into his skin with a white-hot iron did not actually burn, but in recent weeks, Draco could not help but feel its presence like a living, parasitic creature in his flesh. It was as if the Dark Lord’s breath was against the back of his neck at every moment.
Sitting on the opposite seat, Crabbe and Goyle were as lumbering and silent as ever. Every now and then, they munched on the sweets in the compartment, gazing around with vacant eyes, oblivious to the storm raging in the outside world. Draco was grateful for their idiotic silence for the first time; for he did not have the strength left to utter a single word. His mind was caught in a ruthless whirlpool spinning around a single word, a single name: Dumbledore.
Everything, in the end, came back to that old wizard. The Dark Lord’s icy, hissing voice kept echoing against the walls of his mind: “Failure is not an option, Draco.” If he failed in this mission, the price to pay would not just be his own life. The elegant, fear-stricken face of his mother, Narcissa; his father Lucius’s ruin in Azkaban... The fate of his entire family depended on the terrible choice he was to make this year.
Draco closed his eyes tightly. Breathing itself had turned into a form of torture due to the invisible weight pressing down on his chest. Just then, the sliding door of the compartment opened with a slight creak. Pansy Parkinson stepped inside, stripped of her usual haughty demeanor, carrying an anxious expression on her face.
"Draco?" she whispered, her voice trembling.
Draco did not pull his head away from the glass, keeping his eyes fixed on the gray darkness outside. His voice was as cold and detached as a stranger's: "What is it?"
Pansy hesitated for a few seconds against this wall-like, harsh reaction. She, too, had felt the heavy air in the compartment. "Are you okay?" she asked, trying to conceal the affection in her voice.
The corner of Draco’s lips curled into a bitter sneer. He felt a mad urge to laugh out loud. Was he okay? He was cornered like never before in his life, more alone and helpless than he had ever been. But he had no intention of showing this weakness to Pansy or anyone else. Without turning his gaze toward the girl, he whispered a single word in an icy tone: "Leave."
The hurt on Pansy’s face caused her to pause for an instant. Realizing she could not pierce through this dark shroud enveloping Draco, she quietly withdrew and vanished from sight, closing the door gently behind her.
Left alone once more with the suffocating silence remaining in the compartment, Draco turned his gaze back to the fogged window. As the train moved along the tracks with a rhythmic sound, Draco knew very well that he was now standing right in the middle of a darkness from which no one—neither his family nor his friends—could pull him out.
Around the same hours, far away from the bleak noise of London, a completely different journey was about to end in an eerie silence.
Lyra Ashbourne was seeing that legendary castle, Hogwarts, whose name she had only heard in whispers, for the first time in her life. The moment she looked out the fogged window of the carriage drawn by Thestrals, she felt the breath catch in her chest. The castle rose through Scotland’s relentless night mists like an ancient beast awakening from its slumber. Devious towers piercing the sky like knives, centuries-old dark stone walls bearing the traces of ancient battles, and the flickering torchlight reflecting on the still, pitch-black waters of the Black Lake... It resembled the castles in the fairy tale books she used to read in dimly lit rooms as a child. Yet, this place was much older than fairy tales, much more real, and definitely much more dangerous.
Albus Dumbledore, sitting directly across from Lyra, was as silent as if he had merged with the darkness of the night. His long, silver-white beard, falling over his midnight-blue robes, swayed gently with the jolting of the carriage. The old wizard had hardly spoken for the last few hours of the journey. This situation actually suited Lyra; because she, too, did not like to waste words. Especially with strangers. Especially with this mysterious stranger who, with a single touch, had altered the entire course of her life and torn her away from her roots.
Minutes chased each other amidst the rhythmic sounds the wheels made on the damp dirt road. Finally, Dumbledore stirred slightly, as if emerging from a deep sea of thought, and broke the silence with his paternal, soft voice:
"You will meet many people soon, Lyra."
Lyra did not break her gaze from the bleak grandeur of the castle. Her voice was as detached as the air outside: "I know."
"You do not have to trust any of them."
This sentence was not the kind of wisdom or consolation Lyra expected from the old man. She turned her head in surprise and looked at the wise wizard. But Dumbledore was not looking at her; he had fixed his blue eyes behind his half-moon spectacles out the window, at the castle enveloped in darkness.
"Because," Dumbledore continued, his voice growing heavy with a barely perceptible sorrow, "most of the people there will not know the truth."
Lyra paused for a few seconds, weighing the questions spinning rapidly in her mind. The sense of mystery was settling over them like a fog. "How many people know the truth?" she asked directly. "Right now, who are not in this carriage?"
A faint, almost mournful smile appeared at the corners of Dumbledore’s lips. "Right now? Just the two of us."
Instead of soothing that familiar unease inside Lyra, this answer made it flare up like an ember. She felt more alone than ever.
"The most powerful, most ruthless dark wizard in the world is looking for you, Lyra," Dumbledore said.
This time, Lyra did not take her eyes off the old man's face for even a second. That forbidden name poured from her lips: "Voldemort."
When she pronounced the name, there was not the slightest twitch on Dumbledore’s face. Unlike many people in the wizarding world, he neither lowered his voice nor flinched with fear. It was as if he were merely talking about the weather. "We do not want him to find you, to reach you."
"Why?" Lyra asked, erecting the wall of defense in her voice even higher. She was aware that Dumbledore planned everything like a chess master, and she wanted to learn his moves.
Dumbledore nodded calmly, as if he had anticipated this question long ago. For the first time, he looked directly into Lyra’s eyes; there was an eerie power in those blue eyes that left a person stripped bare, reading the depths of the soul. "Because when he finds you, he will not see a human being in front of him."
Lyra’s brows furrowed, the alarm bells inside her ringing more loudly. "What will he see me as, then?"
The old wizard’s voice was as low as a whisper, yet as heavy as a sledgehammer: "As a weapon."
A silence as heavy as lead settled inside the carriage. Now, only that mechanical, cold sound of the iron wheels on the stone road echoed. Lyra felt the danger underlying this intentionally incomplete answer left by Dumbledore in all its starkness. She turned back to the window. The castle was much closer now; its massive shadow was falling over the carriage.
She said nothing for a long time. Her mind wandered around these dangerous sentences Dumbledore had constructed. Finally, she broke the silence permanently with that calm but questioning tone in her voice:
"What about you, Professor?"
Dumbledore’s deep gaze turned back to her. However calm and smooth Lyra’s voice was, the fierce suspicion in her eyes was just as evident.
"When the time comes..." Lyra’s fingers involuntarily went to the ancient silver bracelet beneath her robes, the only inheritance left by her family. As the cold metal of the bracelet burned her skin, she asked: "...how will I know that you won't use me as a weapon?"
This time, the answer did not come immediately. Albus Dumbledore, who had an answer for every question throughout the journey and played the world on his finger, was silent for the first time. Veering his gaze away from Lyra, he turned back to the castle sinking into the darkness.
And Lyra knew what this deep silence of the old man meant.
For as long as she could remember, Lyra Ashbourne felt that she was different from other children, even from other wizards. There was always an incomprehensible hum in the folds of her mind, an impatient ache at her fingertips. However, there was someone who understood the true dimension of this difference long before she took her very first breath: her grandmother.
Everything had begun on that cursed and sacred night Lyra was born.
In a dimly lit upstairs room of a small, secluded house in the storm-swept moors of London, there were only three people: Lyra’s mother, whose shoulders bore a heavy burden at a young age; a baby clinging to life in the throes of labor pains; and the grandmother holding the rhythm of fate in her hands. Outside, a violent winter rain tearing through the sky poured down in torrents, and the fierce wind shook the old wooden windows as if to break them. The labor had lasted for hours, and the candles in the room had burned down to nothing. At that exact moment when all hope was exhausted and silence took over the room, a sharp baby's cry pierced the walls.
And in that second, all the rules of known magic were shattered.
Her grandmother would never be able to erase that moment from her memory for the rest of her life. From the tiny body of the newborn baby she took into her arms, a wave of pure, spotless, white light rose for a moment. This was neither an ordinary spark of magic nor a powerful charm a witch could perform. It was as if a tiny star, torn from the first day of the universe, had been born right in the middle of that bleak room.
Instead of fading as the seconds passed, the light shone even brighter, the small baby's skin glowing like a translucent lantern. The immense, pure power within her was impatient to spill out. Thin, silver lines began to appear on the ordinary stone walls of the room. These were ancient runes—symbols forgotten even in the darkest recesses of magical history, which no wand had been able to bring to life for hundreds of years... These silver inscriptions, burning like embers on the stones, spread across the ceiling like ivy, then flared one by one on the frosted glass of the windows. Moreover, this situation was not confined to the room; the old protection charms inside the house grew frantically stronger, and the wands hidden in drawers trembled slightly. It was as if all the magic around felt that light seeping from the baby's skin and was drawn toward it. The power accumulating in the air was so dense that the objects in the room had begun to shake gently.
The grandmother was struck with terror, but she knew what she was facing. Hidden in the oldest, yellowed records of her family was a worn diary that spoke of a similar event that had occurred centuries ago. Scribbled hastily and fearfully on the margin of that diary was a single word: Aetherial.
A being mentioned in legends, whose reality no one believed in... The very manifestation of pure magic, of raw power come to life in a human body. The grandmother used to think it was just a fairy tale; until she looked at that baby standing between her hands with a light that could move the world. Time was running out; if this light were noticed from the outside or if the magic spun out of control, everything would end. Her hands trembling, the grandmother rushed to that ancient, iron-bound chest kept ready in the room at every birth for generations. She quickly turned the lock and pulled out a thin silver sealing bracelet from beyond time. On the inner surface of the bracelet, the same forgotten runes that appeared on the walls at that moment were engraved.
As the tremors in the room increased, the old woman slipped the silver ring onto the baby's tiny left wrist.
And at that moment, miraculously, that pure white light seeping from the baby's skin began to retract from the point where the silver touched the skin. The bracelet had absorbed that massive power and locked it away in the deepest corner of Lyra's soul, placing an insurmountable lock upon it. The light died out, the silver runes on the wall faded, and that mysterious hum in the air was cut like a knife. Magic became tame once more, and nature returned to its normal rhythm.
However, the silver seal had not destroyed that massive power inside Lyra; no object had the power to do that. The bracelet was merely a floodgate; it prevented her from casting light around as an Aetherial and from exposing her identity by drawing the world's magic toward herself. Even with that silver ring on her wrist, Lyra possessed an unimaginable magical potential. The spells her peers tried to perform with wands and complex incantations, she could execute merely by thinking or with a small movement of her fingertips. The power within her was so intense that despite the heavy pressure exerted by the silver, it leaked out, making her one of the most powerful witches of her generation. And what was terrifying was this: this immense talent was merely a tiny crumb of her true, pure power.
Lyra’s mother had died. As for her father, she had nothing in her hands. Her mother had never uttered a single word about him to her grandmother, burying his name in a mysterious silence.
That night, the grandmother made that definitive decision that would change her life. She would warn no one, she would not go to the Ministry of Magic, nor would she whisper a single word to her closest friend. Because Aetherials were nothing more than a myth to the wizarding world. But if one day, someone realized the truth... If one day an ambitious wizard understood that the old stories were not merely fables, Lyra’s life would never belong to her again. They would not make her a queen; they would make her a captive, a powerful tool.
That is why they left the wizarding world, the wands, and the spellbooks behind and plunged completely into obscurity. For sixteen long years, they lived among ordinary people, among Muggles. As if they were an ordinary, carefree family.
As if Lyra Ashbourne were not hiding the most dangerous, most deadly secret in the world right beneath her fragile chest and just beyond that silver bracelet.