M1E1 : The Letter on Friday the 13th
The sea outside the cottage woke before Corvus did. It threw itself at the shale shore in strobes of white, and wind shook the eaves until they creaked like an old ship turning in its sleep. Somewhere beyond the garden gate, gulls screamed curses at one another in voices that sounded suspiciously like Latin verbs.
Corvus lay on his stomach, elbows sunk into the soft mattress, a quill hovering obediently above a page. The quill wrote when he stared hard enough—slow, scratchy letters that clicked into neat lines because he willed them to. The title at the top of the page read, in careful capitals: MYSTERY LOG, VOL. I. Underneath, he'd begun a list.
1. Why do the gulls sound like amo, amas, amat when the wind is out of the east?
2. Why does the kettle whistle two seconds before the fire is lit?
3. Why, when I think of the word chaos, does ink behave?
At that exact moment, the bottle of black ink beside the quill bubbled. A slim, glossy ribbon arched up like a sea serpent and looped back down with a splash, spattering the page in tiny commas. Corvus smiled into his sleeve. "Partial confirmation," he murmured, and flicked his fingers. The droplets gathered themselves shakily and slid back into the bottle as if embarrassed to have escaped.
A knuckle rapped the door. "Up, starling," called his mother. Samantha Smith's voice had the kind of warmth that made cold rooms feel like secrets rather than punishments. "It's your day—even the frying pan's dressed for it."
"My funeral or my feast?" Corvus rolled off the bed, hair a dark curtain around his face, the tips sun-paled to a casual gold from hours spent on cliff paths he wasn't supposed to know. In the mirror, his eyes changed with the light, the blue-green hazel tilting toward seawater when clouds moved and toward warm whiskey when the sun bit through. He pushed the hair back and failed to tidy it. He rarely fought the natural order of things unless it would be entertaining.
In the kitchen, the pan sizzled with eggs shaped almost like hearts. The almost was important. The cottage liked to try, and sometimes it got the details wrong on purpose, just to see if he'd notice. Samantha handed him a plate and kissed his temple. She wasn't tall, but the room shifted around her like a compass turning toward north. There was flour on one cheekbone, and a quill behind her ear like a forgetful feather.
"Happy birthday," she said, as if the day needed reminding. "Eleven is very dignified. Do your best not to set anything on fire unless it deserves it."
"Define deserves," Corvus said, and Samantha's mouth did the quick tuck at the corner it always did when he was trying to make her laugh and also confess at the same time.
"Ah," she said, and tapped the frying pan with her wand; steam curled into the shape of a bow. "That is a conversation for later."
As if the weather had been listening for a cue, the wind pushed the window open with a bang. An owl arrowed in—brown, blunt-faced, eyes like gold coins—and thunked onto the table beside the jam. It looked at Corvus, looked at Samantha, and extended one leg. A heavy letter dangled from it, sealed with a wax crest he knew from borrowed books and a dozen secret daydreams.
Corvus didn't touch it. Not yet. He took one breath in, salt and sugar wrestling in the air, and then another. He watched his mother instead.
Samantha didn't flinch. She set down the pan, wiped her hands on a towel that had been a Ravenclaw scarf in a previous life, and rounded the table as if approaching a skittish cat. She eased the letter from the owl with fingers that were steady, and the owl—evidently satisfied that decorum had been observed—stole a triangle of toast and launched itself out again, leaving the window to slam shut with a smug little shiver.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The sea did. Corvus felt the tide inside his chest, coming in, going out.
Samantha turned the envelope over. The addressed script was an elegant, prickly hand:
Mr. C. A. Black
The Eaves-Beam Bedroom
Second Floor
Greycap Cottage
Whitby, North Yorkshire
The surname looked like a secret being said out loud.
"Shall I?" Samantha asked.
Corvus reached. "Please."
The wax cracked with a clean, expensive sound. Inside, the parchment smelled like old forests after rain. The first line swam for a heartbeat: HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY, then Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore, then the ordinary miracle of invitation.
He read it once. He read it twice. On the third pass, words began to take on flavors, and he tasted possibility like burnt sugar.
"It's real," he said, though none of them needed it stated.
"It was always going to be," Samantha said, very gently. "Magic belongs to you, Corvus. Not because of anyone else. Because of you."
His eyes slid to the surname again. Black. He had written it a thousand times in the Mystery Log, tipping it into different lights, asking it to be a fact without becoming a cage.
He could feel Samantha watching him like one watches a kettle right before it whistles. "We were going to talk today, anyway," she said. "Eleven is a good age for a certain kind of truth. But I hoped—" She stopped, then smiled with her mouth not her eyes. "I hoped we could put a little buffer of cake between us and it."
Corvus folded the letter along the crease it already wanted to have. "If the truth is what I think it is," he said, "cake will not make it smaller. It will merely make it stickier."
Samantha laughed despite herself. She reached out and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead the way she had when he was five and had decided gravity was optional for teacups. "Come," she said. "Bring your breakfast. And your Mystery Log. We'll need it."
They went to the small sitting room where the sea filled the window and the mantel wore the quiet trophies of their life: a jar of shells that hummed when you put your ear to it, a photograph of Samantha at seventeen, her hair half a bird's nest, her tie raven-blue and silver. The photograph moved, of course; young Samantha was laughing at whoever had taken it, her nose crinkled, her eyes as fierce as spring.
On the lowest shelf of the bookcase sat a locked wooden box no bigger than a loaf. Samantha crouched, touched her wand to it, and whispered a word Corvus didn't know, which meant it was old and private. The lock sighed and turned.
"I kept this for you," she said, lifting out a small stack of letters. "In case you wanted to know him from his own hand, not just from mine."
Corvus didn't move to take them. He waited.
"Regulus Arcturus Black," Samantha said, and the room seemed to inhale with the name. "Your father. A pure-blood from a very old house. Brilliant. Terrible at apologizing. Better at learning how not to need to."
When she sat, her knees knocked his, and she didn't move them away. "I met him in March of '79," she went on, voice a little far-off, rinsed in memory. "We were young and arrogant and thought we could make institutions behave if we argued at them hard enough. We married in secret because the world we lived in wasn't kind to the combination we presented. Muggle-born girl. Black heir. War like weather. We had a month that felt like a spell no one else knew."
"And then?" Corvus asked, softly, though he knew the date already; his Mystery Log had a whole page of numbers about it.
"And then the war wanted him," Samantha said. "And he—" She looked toward the window, but it was only the gray water staring back. "He made a choice. The right one. The kind that doesn't come with applause. He went to unmake a thing he'd helped make, because he realized he had been wrong. He did not come back."
The kettle whistled in the kitchen though no one had lit the fire. Corvus noticed the timing and filed it away for later, the way he always did when the world chose a drumbeat. He reached for the letters and held them by their edges. The topmost one was addressed to Samantha and smelled faintly of smoke.
"He wrote about you," Samantha said, and now her smile did reach her eyes, though it wobbled like a table with one short leg. "He wrote about the way you kicked before you were born whenever I said the word books. He wrote that Black could mean something besides what it had meant before him."
Corvus gusted a breath out between teeth. "He named me after the sky," he said after a moment. "After the bird that looks like night but steals the sun."
"He named you after a constellation that never loses its way," Samantha said. "And after his middle name, because he was sentimental in secret and thought I didn't know. I always knew." She put her hand over his, warm, flour-scented. "It is your choice what you do with it."
For a long few heartbeats, there was only surf and gulls and the quiet scratch of ink drying on the Mystery Log. Corvus flipped it open, found a clean page, and wrote:
4. The name Black is not a lock. It is a door.
4a. Doors are for going through.
He looked back up. "We should send an owl," he said. "Headmaster Dumbledore will want to know that I accept. If that's something he doesn't already know."
Samantha blinked, once. "You sound like him," she said. "Not Dumbledore. Regulus. When he was trying to sound older than his courage." She stood, set her wand on the mantel, and smoothed the front of her jumper. "We will send an owl. And—Corvus—there's one more thing. Because of who you are, and because of who he was… we may get a visitor. I asked for it, in fact."
Corvus tipped his head. "Visitor?"
"From Hogwarts. Someone I trusted, once. He was my Charms professor. He is… kinder than he first appears."
There was a knock on the cottage door as if the world had been listening for its cue again and was delighted to hit the mark. Three bright knocks, brisk as a metronome.
Samantha stared at the door, then at Corvus. "All right," she said, exhaling. "Earlier than I thought."
Corvus stood. He wasn't tall yet, but the room seemed to make space for him in a new way. He tucked the Hogwarts letter into the back of his Mystery Log, slid both under his arm, and went with his mother to the door.
Samantha opened it on a breath and a spell.
The man on the step was very small and very tidy, wrapped in a cloak the precise gray of disciplined rain. His hair was white, his ears a little pointed, his eyes bright as clock hands. He took off his hat with a flourish that suggested a stage, and he bowed—a real one, perfectly calibrated to acknowledge that he was entering someone else's home and also that he was faintly delighted by the fact.
"Professor Flitwick," Samantha said, warmth breaking across her face like sun through cloud.
"Miss Smith—pardon me—Ms. Smith," Professor Flitwick said. His voice was quicksilver and bells. "How good to see you not buried in a tower of essays. And this must be the young gentleman I have been looking forward to meeting for… oh, quite a while."
Corvus had already decided on the kind of first impression to make. He made it. He bowed back, a fraction lower, the corners of his mouth refusing to behave. "Corvus Arcturus Black," he said. "At your service, when it amuses me."
Flitwick's mustache twitched. "Excellent," he said. "A sense of occasion and an honest declaration of priorities. Hogwarts will suit you like a wand suits a wizard."
They brought him in and gave him tea that brewed itself and a plate that refilled its own biscuits only when you weren't looking. Flitwick sat on the edge of the sofa and, without fuss, set a tiny, comforting bubble of privacy over the room. The noise of the sea spun itself into a more distant ribbon. Corvus's ears popped pleasantly.
"I came in person," Flitwick said, resting his teacup on his knee as if it trusted him. "Because letters are imprecise instruments when addressing precise lives. And because your mother asked that I be the one."
Samantha's hand found Corvus's shoulder. She didn't grip; she simply rested there like a lighthouse you could carry with you. "He should have a teacher's voice to answer his questions," she said. "Not only mine."
"Questions," Flitwick repeated, twinkling. "Are the truest spells. Cast enough of them, and the world must reply." His gaze sharpened just a touch. "You will have some, Mr. Black. May I prepare, or shall I let them fall on me like confetti?"
Corvus flipped open the Mystery Log and arranged his quill. The quill twitched, game. "First," he said, and watched Flitwick the way one watches a card trick, "how many students attend Hogwarts who have surnames with… weight?"
Flitwick's smile suggested that this was not the first time he had walked the hallway of that question. "Enough to make history a subject best taught with tact," he said. "And not enough to keep the future from being written by those who show up for it."
Corvus wrote that down.
"Second," he said, "does the Headmaster know who I am?" He meant what he meant: not just my name.
Flitwick placed his teacup on the saucer with a small chime. "Albus Dumbledore knows what he needs to know in order to keep his promises," he said. "He knows of your father's last intentions. He knows who your mother is. He knows you will require, on occasion, a space to think without fear that your thoughts will be interpreted for you by others. He has asked me to see that such a space exists."
Samantha let out a breath that trembled as it left her. Corvus did not write that down, but he filed it in a more private ledger.
"And third," he said, because he couldn't help himself, "do staircases at Hogwarts move?"
At that, Flitwick laughed in a way that filled the privacy bubble with sparkles you couldn't see but could feel on the back of your teeth. "They do," he said. "They have opinions. It is best to treat them as you would an elderly aunt: with respect, but not with fear. They like to be surprised."
Corvus underlined like to be surprised twice.
Flitwick's gaze softened. "There is also this," he said, and reached into his cloak. He drew out a small, battered box—about the size of a snitch—and held it in his palm. "A thing your father left with me to keep safe, should the day come. He knew I was sentimental in secret." The professor winked at Samantha. "He was right."
The box was old black wood bound in tarnished silver wire. Corvus didn't reach for it. He let the quiet approach first. "May I?" he asked.
"You may," Flitwick said. "But not yet. Not all truths like to arrive at once. This one is a promise: you will open it when you step into Hogwarts proper. It is a key, of sorts, and a question you will have to answer with your behavior rather than with your voice."
Samantha's hand tightened just slightly. "Filius—"
"It is safe," Flitwick said, and the firmness in his tone was a different metal entirely. "Danger has its own scent. This is—legacy." He looked back at Corvus. "Do you understand the difference?"
Corvus thought of locks and doors, of names that could be used as cages or as invitations, of a man he had never met making a choice in a tunnel no one would ever cheer. He nodded. "Yes," he said. "One is something I carry. The other is something I get to build."
"Very good," Flitwick murmured.
They spoke then of books (a list as long as the jetty), of term dates, of how the train comes from a station that pretends not to exist. They discussed house points and how they are, in Corvus's opinion, an awful mechanic for incentivizing anything except petty rivalries and creative accounting; Flitwick coughed into his hand to hide a smile. They did not talk about Voldemort. They did not talk about the war, except in the way all grown-ups do when children are in the room: by carefully placing their words on saucers and passing them around, fragile and steaming.
When Flitwick rose to go, the rain had softened to a salt lace. He took Samantha's hands in both of his, then Corvus's in one.
"Mr. Black," he said, and Corvus didn't flinch—a small victory he would tuck away for later. "Hogwarts is a place that rewards proper mischief. You strike me as a boy who understands the difference between cruelty and cleverness. Keep to the cleverness."
Corvus tilted his head. "And if cleverness is occasionally inconvenient to the status quo?"
"Then I would be disappointed if you did not apply it," Flitwick said cheerfully. "With documentation. I am very fond of footnotes."
The privacy bubble broke with a small pop; the sea rushed back in with all its voices. Flitwick bowed once more and stepped out into the damp light, smaller than the sky and also somehow exactly the size of it. Samantha shut the door gently and stood with her forehead against the wood for a long second. When she turned, she was smiling the way people smile when they have made it to shore and are surprised to find sand under their feet.
"Well," she said. "Shall we buy your books? Or shall we have cake and fear nothing for an hour?"
Corvus held up the Hogwarts letter. "Both," he said. "In that order. But first—" He crossed to the mantel, lifted the silver raven brooch Samantha had kept folded in a velvet pouch, and pinned it above his heart where the name he carried sometimes felt too heavy. The brooch warmed against him like a small, live thing.
He went back to his Mystery Log and, under #4a, wrote:
4b. When the door opens, be the draft that makes the candles dance.
He shut the book. "I accept," he told the room, the sea, the name, the future, himself. "I accept."
Outside, the wind changed direction. The gulls conjugated a different verb. And somewhere very far away, a castle stirred a little in its sleep, as if amused that the boy it had been expecting for years had finally said the magic word.
The Wand That Hummed
The week after the letter felt like a test Hogwarts had started before he'd even arrived.
Wind took on moods. The kettle refused to whistle unless Corvus guessed its song first. Books he'd left shut woke up open.
On Tuesday morning, an owl landed on the windowsill with a note from Professor Flitwick in handwriting so small it could have been written by moonlight:
> My dear Mr. Black,
Your acceptance has been noted and delighted in. I will meet you in Diagon Alley this Saturday to assist with your supplies. 11 a.m. at Flourish & Blotts—look for the stack of misbehaving dictionaries.
Yours in charms,
F. Flitwick
Corvus smiled, folding the parchment until it hummed between his fingers. "Mum," he called, "the dictionaries are already misbehaving."
---
The Alley of Whispers
London was louder than he remembered. Samantha's hand was firm in his, the other clutching a small, bulging coin purse that jingled like it had stage fright. They passed through the Leaky Cauldron—Corvus loved it instantly. The bar smelled of toasted wood and tired miracles. Tom the barman winked when Samantha ordered hot chocolate for the boy and Firewhisky for herself.
Then: the wall.
Bricks shifted under Flitwick's wand like gears in an invisible clock. The gap widened, spilling gold light and the collective heartbeat of centuries of shopping.
"Welcome," said Flitwick, sweeping an arm, "to Diagon Alley."
Corvus couldn't decide what to look at first. Owls, robes, the shimmering display of self-stirring cauldrons that belched polite smoke rings. Somewhere, a goblin hawked newspapers about Quidditch injuries as if selling scandal itself.
"Remember," Samantha murmured, "the Black name still carries weight here. Keep your smile mysterious—it confuses them."
Corvus obeyed.
---
The Vault and the Locket
At Gringotts, marble columns climbed toward dragons carved into the ceiling. Goblins eyed them the way mathematicians eye unsolved equations.
A key glinted in Samantha's palm.
"Vault 713 for school funds," Flitwick told the goblin, "and Vault 512 for private estate matters."
Corvus raised an eyebrow. "Estate matters?"
"Your father," Samantha said quietly, "left something behind that was... overlooked."
The cart ride was a thunderstorm in metal form. When it stopped, the goblin inserted the key and stepped back.
Inside the vault lay a modest pile of Galleons, a few books bound in dragonhide, and a small silver box identical to the one Flitwick had given him—but simpler, cleaner, as if it were a younger sibling.
He picked it up. The box thrummed faintly, almost alive. Inside, on a chain, rested a locket engraved with a single letter R.
Samantha's voice softened. "Your father's last gift. He meant it for you."
Corvus didn't open it. The hum against his skin was enough. "Mystery for later," he said, pocketing it carefully.
---
Wand and Whisper
Ollivanders smelled of dust and thunder. Wands jutted from every shelf, each box labeled in looping script. The shopkeeper appeared like a ghost conjured by curiosity itself.
"Ah," he breathed, eyes bright as candle-flame, "Mr. Black. I wondered when I'd see you."
He measured Corvus's arm, shoulders, fingers, muttering numbers that sounded more like prophecies. The first wand—yew and unicorn hair—shot blue sparks that singed a curtain. The second sneezed. The third whined.
Then Ollivander handed him one of blackthorn wood, twelve and three-quarters inches, phoenix-feather core.
"Try this," he said, stepping back.
Corvus lifted it. The air changed temperature. Wind coiled inside the shop like a cat waking from sleep. Shelves rattled; the candle flames bent toward him instead of away.
A low hum filled the space, sweet and dangerous, as if the wand recognized a twin long missing.
Ollivander's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Curious. Very curious."
"Because of my father?" Corvus asked.
"In part," Ollivander said. "But more because of you. Blackthorn favors those who meet danger with humor. You'll need that."
Corvus turned the wand in his fingers, and for a moment it felt like holding lightning. "We'll get along fine."
---
Controlled Variables Begin
By midday, he owned robes that fitted themselves, a cauldron that complained when empty, and an owl he named Paradox.
At Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, Flitwick paid for sundaes while Samantha read his school list for the tenth time.
"So," Flitwick said, spooning chocolate like a scientist, "what are you most looking forward to, Mr. Black?"
"Not dying of boredom," Corvus said promptly. "And experimenting. If knowledge is chaos in order, I'd like to reverse it occasionally."
Flitwick's laugh drew stares. "Then Ravenclaw will fit you splendidly."
---
Return to the Sea
That night, back in Whitby, Corvus sat at his desk under a window silvered by moonlight. The new wand lay beside him, humming softly, occasionally making the ink ripple.
He opened his Mystery Log again.
> 5. The wand hums when I think of possibilities.
5a. Either it's alive, or it likes my ideas.
Samantha knocked, carrying a slice of cake and two forks. "Did you enjoy your day?"
He nodded. "The world feels bigger now. Like it's finally started speaking my language."
She set the plate down, brushed her thumb across the locket's outline beneath his shirt. "Then promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"When the world starts answering, listen. Even when it whispers something you don't want to hear."
Corvus looked out at the horizon, where lightning danced faintly between clouds over the sea.
"I will," he said. "But I might argue back."
"Good."
They ate in companionable silence until the candles burned low. When Samantha left, Corvus raised the wand one more time. The tip glowed faintly—not gold, not blue, but a shifting hue between both, as if uncertain which world to belong to.
He whispered, "Here's to mysteries."
The light flickered once, twice, then settled.
Far away, deep inside the stones of Hogwarts, a faint pulse answered—an echo welcoming a new variable into its ancient experiment.