January 6th, 1991 — Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
The snow outside the castle hadn't melted, but the warmth of Christmas had already gone cold. Luggage wheels scraped across stone, robes fluttered in drafts, and students returning from the holidays wore expressions halfway between sleep and regret.
None of them noticed the boy who walked through the gates without a trunk.
He wasn't wearing a uniform.
He wasn't sorted.
And he wasn't looking for friends.
He wore a dark coat lined with phoenix-down insulation and gold-stitched cuffs, tailored to hold spell vials at the wrist. A single leather case floated behind him, humming with low-grade enchantments and locked with seven different security charms — two of them illegal in most wizarding jurisdictions.
If anyone had asked his name, he might have lied. But no one did.
He walked through the crowd like smoke.
Past the ghosts.
Past the staircase.
Past the students.
Right to the staff wing.
---
At the High Table, a new seat had been added. Untouched, polished, and cold.
"Are we truly doing this?" Professor McGonagall asked, adjusting her spectacles in that particularly sharp way she used when she disliked something but couldn't logically refute it.
"He's already arrived," Dumbledore replied, watching the doors. "Punctual, as expected."
"Thirteen," Snape muttered. "Let's give a child a classroom and hope he doesn't transfigure it into a vault."
"He's not just a child," Flitwick said with a curious glint in his eye. "I've read his thesis. He solved gold transmutation theory. With a quill and a lemon biscuit."
Professor Burbage snorted. "He convinced a Gringotts board to back his startup at twelve. Either he's brilliant, or he's dangerous."
"I'm afraid he's both," Dumbledore said. And then he smiled. "Which makes him perfect for Hogwarts."
---
Caelum Morrigan entered the Great Hall as if he'd been here before — not in this lifetime, but in some blueprint. Like he'd reverse-engineered the room in his sleep.
He moved straight to the staff table. Sat down. Took a slice of toast.
Silence spread like frost.
"Is that a student?" someone whispered near the Ravenclaw table.
"Did he just sit up there?" a Slytherin muttered.
A few seventh-years exchanged uncertain looks. First-years simply stared.
Caelum poured himself tea, added cinnamon, and let the weight of a thousand staring eyes wash over him like wind over stone. Unbothered. Calculating.
Dumbledore stood.
"Welcome back, students," he said, eyes twinkling. "I hope your holidays were restful. I trust your break gave you time to reflect... and to prepare for new challenges."
He gestured to the boy beside him.
"This term, we welcome a new member of our faculty. Professor Caelum Morrigan will be teaching Advanced Alchemy to our upper years."
The whisper turned into noise.
"He's what?"
"He's a professor?"
"He looks twelve."
"I heard he invented that broom — the one that outran a dragon."
"I heard he patented a magical brain."
Caelum raised one hand in a casual half-wave. "If anyone's got a cursed artifact they want appraised, I charge by the hour."
A few Hufflepuffs blinked. A Gryffindor snorted.
The rest just gawked.
---
Later — Underground Workshop (Hidden)
Beneath the school — deeper than the dungeons, beneath the old pipes, past the wards no one maintained anymore — was a chamber that didn't exist.
The door was written into the wall like a scar. It had no knob, only a shifting puzzle of alchemical glyphs that responded to Caelum's touch.
Inside: silence, soft mechanical hums, glowing crystal nodes, and hexagrammatic shelves filled with prototype devices. It smelled like copper, old paper, and dried basilisk venom.
Caelum set the suitcase down.
A shimmer of runes flickered above it — then dissolved. A warm golden glow bloomed from the air, whispering softly in a neutral voice.
> "Welcome back. I monitored your vitals. No threats detected."
"Though one of the Hufflepuffs looked at you oddly."
"Statistical chance of violence: 0.7%."
Caelum sighed. "Sol. I told you — silent mode."
The glow dimmed.
He turned to a table and unwrapped something sealed in dragon-scale cloth: a crystalline communication core, faintly pulsing with aether.
Project Echo. His next invention. Nearly ready.
From the stone wall behind him, he could feel it again — the Gate.
Old. Buried. Waiting.
The castle had forgotten it. But it hadn't forgotten him.
---
Next Morning
Students crowded the announcement board, voices tangled in disbelief.
> 📜 Advanced Alchemy — Years 5–7 Only
Instructor: Professor C. Morrigan
Location: R.A. Lab (Access by Permission Only)
"I'm not calling him professor," someone scoffed.
"I heard he sells potions to the Ministry."
"I heard he builds wands."
"He looks like he should still be in charms class."
No one noticed the boy sitting alone at the far end of the hall, calmly watching.
He took a sip of tea. Eyes gold and unreadable.
He didn't need them to believe.
He needed them to come to class.