The dormitory was unusually still that morning. Light filtered through the high, narrow windows of Ravenclaw Tower, painting long streaks across the bed where Marcus lay with his eyes closed, still half-dreaming.
Fifteen.
The number lingered in his mind like a bell that had only just finished ringing. Fifteen years old. The age his mother had once marked in her letters as "the beginning of magical adulthood." It wasn't an arbitrary milestone—magically, it was the age where one's mind began to sharpen, where focused disciplines like Occlumency or Legilimency became accessible for the gifted.
He rose quietly. His eyes still shut as part of his ongoing Draconian ocular practice, but his senses had grown fine. Each step across the wooden floor echoed precisely, letting him map the room like a spellless echo charm. He dressed himself methodically. His wand floated into his hand from his desk as if drawn by memory.
Later that morning, he met his friends—Edgar, Henry, Eleanor, and Elizabeth—who had gathered in the Great Hall with a small wrapped parcel and a tiny cake enchanted with flickering golden candles.
"Happy birthday, Marcus!" said Elizabeth brightly, handing him the gift. It was a new leather-bound notebook enchanted to be fireproof, tear-proof, and self-organizing—perfect for the layered magical work he'd been immersing himself in.
They talked over breakfast, recounting their classes, duels, and Edgar's latest botched experiment in Arithmancy. But even amidst the laughter, Marcus's mind itched with a restless anticipation.
Tomorrow, he would begin Occlumency.
That evening, after completing his daily review of Charms, Transfiguration, and Ancient Runes, Marcus descended into the depths of the Chamber of Secrets, now second nature to navigate. The serpentine stone walls welcomed him like a cathedral of silence. At its far end, as always, sat the proud, watchful portrait of Salazar Slytherin.
"You've come," said the founder, his voice regal and unhurried.
"I'm ready," Marcus replied, standing tall. "You once said fifteen was the earliest I could begin."
Salazar inclined his head. "Indeed. The mind is a fortress, but until your magical core reached sufficient maturity, it would have been a sandcastle in a storm. Now, let us begin."
Salazar gestured to a stack of ancient tomes beside the basilisk statue—texts Marcus had never dared open.
"Occlumency," Salazar began, "is not merely shielding your thoughts. It is separating them, disciplining them, and—above all—commanding them."
As Marcus sat cross-legged before the portrait, he opened the first book: Clavis Mentis: The Mind's Key. The pages glowed faintly with ancient enchantments, detailing the structure of memory, emotion, and consciousness as understood by early mind-mages.
He read aloud:
"The Occlument must create layers within their consciousness. One must know what to hide, what to protect, and what to let float atop the surface like harmless driftwood."
Salazar added, "The mind is best visualized as a castle with many gates. Most wizards only bar the main door. A Legilimens trained in true technique will enter through the windows, the wells, even the garden path. You must close all of them."
Salazar instructed Marcus to build his first mental room—a simple, empty chamber within his mind, a space that could serve as a vestibule for surface thoughts.
"It will be painful," said the portrait. "At first, you will see every stray feeling and memory jostling for dominance. Order will not come naturally."
Marcus closed his eyes, controlling his breathing the way he'd learned during wandless practice. At first, he saw flickers—snapshots of fear, pain, happiness: his mother's voice, his first duel, the cold stone of his empty house in Hogsmeade.
He fought to push them aside—not with force, but structure. He mentally placed them into silvery threads, coiling them around invisible spindles. Slowly, the chaos lessened.
And then came the silence.
When he opened his eyes, Salazar was watching with a rare, appraising smile. "You built the door. Now you must learn to keep it locked."
Over the following days, Marcus balanced his schoolwork with the meticulous practices of Occlumency. He refined his magical "castle" with runic locks drawn from his advanced studies, adding arithmantic failsafes that made emotional leakage more detectable.
Canonically, Occlumency shields are passive, but the most advanced Occlumens—Snape, Dumbledore—crafted reactive constructs that could counter a probe mid-entry. Salazar confirmed this too had ancient roots: using the Draconian tongue to encode certain memories meant that even if read, they were unintelligible.
One evening, Marcus wrote:
Memory Core 3A: First combat training with Dumbledore. Encoded in Seryx-formula. Requires internal translation key to access. Secured in Vault III.
By the week's end, Marcus was drained.
Holding magical structure in the mind was taxing—even more than silent spellwork. He found himself sleeping less, but dreaming more vividly. Sometimes, he'd wake hearing whispering echoes of the Draconian language—Zakar'dan… Valthurak…
Yet he pressed on.
He would master Occlumency, not only to protect himself, but to remember freely, to command his own mind in a world where secrets had power and memories could kill.
In his single dorm room that night, Marcus sat beside his desk, quill in hand, writing his daily journal entry in the fireproof notebook Elizabeth had given him:
March 31st, 1935 — Week One: Occlumency. Initial success with memory structuring and emotional dampening. Salazar recommends second-tier shielding by Beltane. No interruptions, no lapses. I can feel the depth of magic in the mind, more than even wandless spells. This is not just defense. It is clarity. It is mastery.
He paused, drew a deep breath, and closed his eyes.
The invisible castle in his mind stood tall in the moonlight. Silent. Ready.
Few weeks later.
The morning fog lay thick across the moor. Distant crows croaked from skeletal trees, and dew clung to the old stone ruins like silver breath.
Marcus Starborn stood at the edge of the grass-covered clearing, wand loose in his right hand, eyes closed—still blind, still training—listening to the wind.
Across from him stood Albus Dumbledore, tall, commanding, and silent. His auburn hair and beard shimmered with faint strands of grey. He looked neither amused nor stern—only ready.
"Today," said Dumbledore calmly, "you'll give me everything."
Marcus nodded once. "Except one thing."
Dumbledore didn't need clarification. He respected secrets that had power.
The air shimmered.
A breath later, the duel began.
Marcus moved first—nonverbally.
"Expulso!"
The grass between them detonated into fire and smoke. But Dumbledore had already vanished with a whisper of a "Caecus Vapor"—a mist cloaking spell of his own design. He reappeared behind Marcus with a snap of Incarcerous—ropes of flame that slithered toward Marcus like vipers.
Marcus spun, wand slashing down with "Diffindo Maxima!". The ropes split midair, evaporating in smoke. He launched a volley:
• "Confringo!"
• "Glacialis Ventus!"
• "Fulmen Trahere!"
Fire, frost, and lightning raged forward—but Dumbledore didn't block them. He redirected them, sculpting Marcus's spells into harmless trails of flame and wind that veered wide or were absorbed by the environment with precision Transfiguration and wind-breaking wards.
"You're leading with raw power," Dumbledore called across the battlefield. "Let's see your control."
Marcus dashed behind a ruined pillar and vanished beneath a Disillusionment Charm, trying to circle the field.
Dumbledore closed his eyes briefly and whispered, "Auris Serpentia."
His ears extended like the frills of a cobra—hearing every heartbeat.
A blast of silent Petrificus Totalus cracked the air, aimed at Marcus's last location—but Marcus had anticipated it. From the shadows, he struck:
• "Stupefy. Reducto. Everte Statum!"
Each spell was silent, fast, tight. Dumbledore blocked two and sidestepped the third—but Marcus was already moving, conjuring a swarm of blinding butterflies that exploded into light as he darted in close.
Transfiguration into pressure wards.
Wand extended behind the back.
Leg sweep charm embedded into the next bolt.
Dumbledore grunted, forced to conjure a stone wave to regain distance.
Marcus had managed to force him back.
Halfway through the duel now. Both were breathing hard. Marcus's shirt clung to him with sweat.
He launched a feint—"Flagrare Serpens", a flaming serpent—and wove a secondary silent spell inside it: Legilimens.
Dumbledore's eyes narrowed. His mental walls were as vast as mountains. But Marcus caught a flicker—just a hint of where the next spell would come from.
He spun and blocked it before it was cast.
Dumbledore smiled.
"Good. But never assume one thread reveals the whole tapestry."
Then the world exploded.
"Tempestas Devastare!"
A whirlwind of cutting air and spinning stone lifted Marcus off his feet. He roared a Featherfall, followed by Protego Maxima to shield himself, then embedded Freezing Fog into the whirlwind to slow it.
It worked—for five seconds.
Then came the real attack: A narrow bolt of light that curved around Marcus's shield like a snake and slammed into his ribs.
He tumbled, coughed, rolled, barely standing.
Marcus raised both hands. Runes shimmered up his forearms—his own invention. He wasn't going to win, but he'd make this the hardest Dumbledore had worked all year.
He conjured:
• Three mirrors of himself, all firing decoy spells.
• A reflective field that bent light and sound.
• A circular flame ward that acted as both defense and smoke screen.
Then, he vanished.
Dumbledore stood in the center, eyes half-closed, listening.
A flicker. A spark. Marcus came in from above using a gravity-bending hex, driving down a multi-layered curse.
• "Volucris Corpus!" — to featherlight his body.
• "Percutio Magna!" — a combat-focused battering spell.
• And three cutting arcs to follow.
It was elegant, silent, and deadly.
Dumbledore caught Marcus mid-air with "Carcer Umbrae!" — a shadow-bind spell that pulled him to the earth, pinned in dark tendrils of rope-like force.
It was over.
Half an hour had passed.
Dumbledore stood over him, breathing calmly.
"Impressive. Very impressive."
Marcus sat up, brushing dust off his sleeves. "You still won."
"I've had decades more practice," Dumbledore said gently, offering a hand. "But your foundations are solid. Now let us discuss your mistakes."
They sat by a stone slab, and Marcus summoned his fireproof notebook.
Dumbledore began, his voice firm but kind:
1. "You favor power over precision when pressured. Your early attacks were needlessly loud."
2. "You underestimated me during your Legilimency attempt. One glimpse does not give full clarity."
3. "Your mirror strategy was clever, but your flame screen gave away your movement patterns."
4. "You need more experience layering counter-charms—there were moments where you could've neutralized my transfigured hazards."
5. "Finally, don't forget… every spell makes a rhythm. A good duelist can hear when you're about to break pattern."
Marcus wrote each line down in his notebook, nodding slowly. He etched one last thing under the final point:
"Victory in battle lies not only in firepower, but in tempo, perception, and response."
As the sun climbed above the trees, lighting the broken stones with a golden hue, Marcus stood, wiping his forehead.
He'd lost.
But he was better than ever.
And somewhere deep inside, beneath the Occlumency vaults and the whispering Draconian language, he knew he had not shown everything.
Not yet.
The final week of April brought with it a hush over the castle, as students prepared for the impending examinations. Yet, for Marcus Starborn, the true test lay not in parchment and ink, but within the recesses of his own mind.
Each evening, Marcus secluded himself in his dormitory, the curtains drawn tight, the ambient noise of the castle fading into the background. He sat cross-legged on his bed, focusing inward.
He had progressed beyond the initial stages of Occlumency, where one merely cleared the mind of emotion. Now, he was constructing intricate mental defenses—memory palaces—compartmentalizing thoughts and emotions into distinct chambers, each guarded by symbolic sentinels.
These mental constructs allowed him to not only shield his thoughts from external intrusion but also to manage his internal responses, ensuring that even under duress, his mind remained an impenetrable fortress.
Parallel to his Occlumency training, Marcus delved into the theoretical aspects of translating powerful combat spells into the Draconian tongue—a language he had been reconstructing from ancient texts and his own insights.
He focused on spells such as:
• Confringo: The Blasting Curse, known for causing explosions upon impact.
• Bombarda: The Exploding Charm, used to create small explosions, often to blast open doors or barriers.
Understanding that the Draconian language could amplify the potency of spells, Marcus theorized that translating these incantations would result in significantly more powerful effects. However, he also recognized the risks involved.
He meticulously documented his translations and theoretical applications in his fireproof, self-organizing notebook, noting the potential energy requirements and the dangers of casting such enhanced spells without proper precautions.
Grimoire of Draconian Invocation: Volume II
At the culmination of his studies, Marcus compiled his findings into the second volume of his personal compendium: Grimoire of Draconian Invocation: Volume II. This tome contained:
• Detailed translations of combat spells into Draconian.
• Theoretical analyses of their amplified effects.
• Notes on the integration of Occlumency techniques to manage the mental strain of casting such potent spells.
He concluded the volume with a personal reflection:
"Power, when sought without understanding, leads to ruin. Only through discipline and knowledge can one wield the flames without being consumed."