The two last days before Myrddin's departure for Hogwarts passed in a blur of pine-shadowed mornings and frost-edged evenings. The house—his house—seemed to breathe with him, shifting slightly, room to room, in silent encouragement. Yet despite its uncanny intuition, it did not yield answers he did not already possess.
He spent most of the time in the woods surrounding the house. A clearing had formed not far from the front steps, shaped by invisible hands into a natural arena. The trees gave respectful distance, forming a wide ring with trunks like spectators and branches that whispered in a language he almost understood.
Myrddin stood barefoot on the moss, the earth cool beneath his feet. He had left his wand inside.
It wasn't that he disliked it. The wand was powerful, responsive, and clearly well matched to him. But there was another kind of magic stirring within him—a raw, ancient force that didn't answer to Latin words or flicks of polished wood.
The kind that had bloomed the house around him.
The kind that had twisted roots from the floorboards and brought him home.
He didn't know if the Trace would detect this magic, but he didn't want to risk it with his wand. Besides, he suspected the Ministry didn't quite know how to track whatever this was.
He breathed slowly, remembering the feeling of the cat in the forest—the way he had felt the silence in its padded steps, the rhythm of its breath. He had tracked the twitch of its ears, the flick of its muscles as it stalked prey in the undergrowth. In those moments, he'd sensed something primal stir inside him. A rhythm. A language of movement and silence and breath.
He returned to that memory often, standing barefoot in the clearing behind the house.
But it was still just memory. That moment had been instinctual. Repeating it proved maddening.
Artemis, ever his silent observer, had taken to her storm. She now lived partially within it, the glass vivarium crackling with elemental life. Lightning arced silently within. Snowflakes turned and danced with gravity-defying grace. She would fly loops through it, let herself be carried upside down in the current, then crash through clouds like a living comet of ice.
Watching her stirred something.
She wasn't casting spells. She wasn't even using conscious magic. She was the storm.
And something clicked.
He no longer tried to force magic. Instead, he let it rise.
He focused on Artemis circling through the trees, cutting arcs through low clouds. The mist that trailed from her wings shimmered like moonlight. The wind stirred as she passed.
Myrddin took a breath.
The air in front of him shimmered faintly. He concentrated again, this time not trying to form anything with words—just with emotion. With will. With longing.
A soft hum built in his chest, a vibration low and deep like a glacier shifting.
He pictured Artemis soaring.
He pictured wind, not as an effect, but as a being, a personality.
He let his breath fog in the air, let the cold pool in his stomach, then his chest, and finally into the space behind his eyes. His heartbeat slowed. A thin mist curled around his feet.
Then he exhaled.
He thrust out his hand.
A white jet of air burst forward from his hands, trailing frost. It hit a nearby rock and exploded in a flash of snow and glittering ice shards. The ground iced over in a wide arc before him.
Artemis screeched in delight and launched herself from the vivarium into the clearing. She dove into the frozen gust, letting the wind carry her, feathers rippling with refracted moonlight.
Myrddin laughed—genuine, wild, and triumphant.
The magic hadn't needed words. It had needed understanding.
He practiced until his breath misted even when the spell wasn't being cast. His skin chilled, but he didn't feel cold. He began to shape the wind—direct it with his arms, swirl it with his breath. It became like an extension of his body.
On the second evening, he discovered he could pulse it from his palm in short, bladelike bursts—tiny spears of ice that embedded themselves into ground. They melted quickly, but the satisfaction of control was undeniable.
The house responded to his growing magic. The clearing widened. Small crystals formed on the windowsills. The air inside the house chilled ever so slightly when he practiced too long. It was as if the building, too, was learning him.
That night, as he sat beside the fire with Artemis perched above him, the owl's feathers drifting snow, he opened a fresh notebook.
He drew diagrams of the spell: not runes, exactly, but shapes and motions. Spirals. Arcs. Lines that hummed with intention.
It was not how Hogwarts would teach him magic.
But it was his magic.
In the final hours before his journey, he stood once more in the clearing. A small trunk rested at his side, packed and ready.
He raised his palm. Frost curled from his fingertips.