The castle hadn't yet decided whether to wake or keep dreaming. Mist pressed soft against the high windows of the Entrance Hall, and the pale light that filtered through turned the floor to sheets of dull silver. The Goblet of Fire burned in the center like an altar flame, steady, blue-white, alive. Around it, Dumbledore's Age Line gleamed faintly gold, drawn into a perfect circle on the stone: ten feet of invisible promise.
The smell in the air was strange: old parchment, damp robes, and a faint crackle of ozone that prickled the skin. Students drifted in pairs and trios, still in half-buttoned uniforms and sleep-rumpled hair, clutching toast or parchment slips as if they might bite one before the other.
Alden arrived with the Slytherins: Draco, sharp and pale with excitement; Theo, looking as though he'd already read the morning from cover to cover; Daphne, quiet, watchful; and the lumbering shadows of Crabbe and Goyle, whose whispers were mostly echoes of Draco's own.
They stopped at the edge of the crowd. The Goblet's flame pulsed once, its color deepening from icy blue to white, then back again as though it had taken a breath.
Draco leaned close, voice a conspiratorial whisper.
"It's choosing already, you know. Sorting through names as we speak. Bet Durmstrang's all in Krum, especially. But they're nothing we couldn't handle."
Theo snorted under his breath.
"We? You're not old enough to sneeze at it without growing a beard."
"That's what Aging Potions are for," Draco shot back, too quickly. "And Dreyse here," He gestured with his chin. "If anyone could fool Dumbledore's line, it's him."
A few nearby heads turned at the name. The air seemed to hold its breath.
Alden said nothing. His eyes tracked the flame as it bent slightly toward movement, how it licked the air as if tasting it. The reflection painted his face in spectral light, green-grey eyes catching blue.
Theo folded his arms.
"You realize that line's not just age-locked. It's alive. Step over it, and it'll throw you harder than a Bludger."
"You don't know that," Draco pressed. "Everything Dumbledore does has a loophole. He loves tests, and Alden loves answers."
A smirk, half amusement, touched Alden's mouth but didn't reach his eyes.
"You mistake interest for intent," he murmured.
Before Draco could argue, a deeper voice cut through the calm, unimpressed.
"Drop it, Malfoy."
Cassius Warrington, broad-shouldered and bleary-eyed, had come up behind them, his green tie loose and his hands stuffed in his pockets. He looked more annoyed at being awake than impressed by the Goblet.
"We all know Dreyse has talent. That doesn't make him Dumbledore's equal."He glanced at Alden, something like respect flickering before indifference settled back in."You'd need more than a clever charm to break that. Half the staff couldn't. So unless one of you plans to outwit a century-old enchantment before breakfast," he gave Draco a pointed look, "save the heroics."
Draco's mouth snapped shut. Theo's smirk deepened. Daphne tilted her head, studying Alden rather than the argument.
"It's not heroics he's after," she said softly. "He's watching the rhythm."
Alden didn't deny it. The Goblet's flame rose, shivered, then steadied. There was a rhythm, a pulse beneath the magic, a logic in its breathing. Each time someone shifted too close, the flame curved toward them like an eye-catching motion. Curious. Measuring.
"It moves when people move," Theo noticed."No," Alden said quietly, eyes never leaving it. "It listens when they do."
The words hung between them, heavier than the morning chill. The others fell silent, following his gaze toward the dancing light. Outside, the first bell of the day tolled softly anddistantly, and the spell of stillness broke. Students began to murmur again, their voices rising, the hum of curiosity returning.
Draco exhaled sharply through his nose, trying to reclaim his swagger.
"Fine," he muttered. "But when he finds a way in, don't say I didn't call it first."
Theo rolled his eyes.
"When he finds a way in, we'll all be too busy ducking Dumbledore's wrath to care who called it."
Alden's lips curved slightly, something that might have been amusement, or the memory of it. He said nothing more. The Goblet flickered again, and for a moment, the flame seemed to lean toward him, as if listening back.
By mid-morning,g the Entrance Hall was awake.
Sunlight cut through the mist outside, turning the Goblet's blue flame into a prism of shifting hues. Dozens of students crowded around the golden ring, voices tumbling over one another in disbelief, wagers, and speculation. Toast crumbs littered the steps. The air smelled of parchment dust, perfume, and something faintly metallic, the signature of raw enchantment.
Alden stood near the edge of the crowd, half-shadowed beneath a pillar. Theo leaned on the opposite side of the archway, arms folded. Draco hovered closer to the action, smirking, his excitement too loud for the hour.
"It's just an age ward," Draco muttered, mostly to himself. "Weasleys probably think it's clever to cheat a line."
"They think everything is clever," Theo replied, deadpan.
Then came the unmistakable rhythm of Weasley footsteps three at once, unbothered by decorum, like a marching band tuned to chaos.
Fred, George, and Lee Jordan stormed down the marble staircase, whispering like conspirators but smiling like kings. Students parted for them instinctively.
"Done it," Fred hissed to a cluster of Gryffindors, brandishing a stoppered vial. "Taken it!"
"The Aging Potion, dung brains," George clarified, holding up his own. "One drop each. We're technically of age, give or take a few months."
"Months and moral flexibility," Lee added with a grin.
Laughter rippled through the Hall. Even some of the professors loitering near the doors turned to see.
"We're going to split the thousand Galleons if one of us wins," George declared.
"You'll split detention," came Hermione's dry voice from somewhere near the Gryffindor table.
They ignored her.
Fred rolled his shoulders, exhaled dramatically, and stepped to the edge of the glowing ring. The air hummed. The Goblet flickered in acknowledgment.
"All right, lads," Fred said, voice theatrical. "For glory, gold, and ginger pride."
He stepped forward.
For a heartbeat, it seemed to work; his outline shimmered inside the circle. Then the air snapped. A sizzling sound cracked through the hall like a thunderclap in miniature. Fred flew backward, hitting the floor hard.
"Fred!" George shouted then, without thought, leapt after him.
The ward met him with the same force as two identical redheads thrown backward like rag dolls, landing in a heap of limbs and robes. A puff of pale smoke rose. When it cleared, laughter erupted.
Both twins now sported spectacular white beards, long enough to braid.
The crowd doubled over. Even Fred and George, once they'd regained breath, joined in.
"Not bad," Fred said, fingering the curls. "Think it suits me."
"Dumbledore's improving my image," George replied. "I feel wiser already."
A voice, deep and amused, rolled across the hall.
"I did warn you," said Dumbledore, emerging from the Great Hall like the morning itself. His eyes twinkled. "I suggest you both visit Madam Pomfrey. She's already tending to Miss Fawcett and Mr. Summers, who also believed they could negotiate with time."
He paused, surveying the pair's snowy chins. "Though I must say, neither of their beards is quite so distinguished."
Even the portraits chuckled. The laughter swelled, echoing against the rafters.
Draco was nearly doubled over, tears in his eyes. "Idiots. Absolute idiots."
Theo cracked a faint smile. "Bold ones, though."
Daphne covered her mouth to hide her laugh. "I suppose that's one way to meet the Headmaster before breakfast."
Alden hadn't moved. His eyes stayed on the shimmering air where the twins had crossed. The faint residue of the magic still vibrated asafterimages burned onto sight.
He murmured, mostly to himself,
"It didn't throw them for being too young. It threw them for pretending not to be."
Theo glanced at him. "Meaning?"
Alden's gaze sharpened, tracing the residual glyphs in the air as they faded.
"Deception triggers reflection. Dumbledore's not guarding the line. He's listening through it."
Theo frowned, trying to follow. "So it reacts to intent?"
"To truth," Alden said softly. "He built a mirror, not a wall."
The Goblet flared once more as if in response, light running along the gold inlaid line, a pulse like a heartbeat. The laughter continued around Fred, bowing exaggeratedly as Dumbledore waved them off toward the hospital wing, but Alden was already elsewhere, his mind sketching unseen runes across the floor.
"A mirror," he repeated under his breath. "Then it can be answered."
The blue flame twisted, reflected in his eyes, cold, precise, and thoughtful. And though the hall remained full of laughter, a quiet kind of awe crept into the space around him.
It was the look of someone who had stopped seeing spectacle and started seeing the pattern.
The laughter from the Weasley twins hadn't quite faded. It lingered in the rafters, drifting like the smoke from their failed triumph.
The Entrance Hall had become a theatre now, every staircase spilling students toward the glowing center. The Goblet's flame burned brighter in the daylight, blue sharpening to white at its core, casting the air in shifting bands of frost-colored light.
Alden stood where he had before, a calm silhouette amid the noise. Draco pressed in at his shoulder, voice low and rapid, words tumbling like coins from a pocket.
"See? It's not impossible. They just botched the dosage. You could brew something cleaner. I bet you already know how."
Daphne, on his other side, reached up absently and squeezed his shoulder alf-comfort, half-warning.
"Ignore him," she murmured. "You'd sooner burn the Goblet itself than drink anything brewed by the Weasleys."
"I'm only saying," Draco went on, undeterred, "you've beaten half the seventh-years in Defence already. You could"
"Draco." Theo's voice cut through, quiet but firm. "Let him think."
Alden's eyes stayed fixed on the fire. It wasn't a simple flame; he saw layers: a lattice of runes weaving in and out of the air, threads of gold under the blue, flickering whenever someone drew near. The light slid over his face like water over stone.
"It's not about age," he said softly, almost to himself. "It's about truth."
Daphne's grip tightened a little.
"And what truth would it want from you?"
"The same it asks of everyone," Alden replied. "Whether we know why we want power before we reach for it."
Draco blinked, then scoffed, uncomfortable with how heavy the words landed.
"You sound like Dumbledore."
Alden's gaze didn't move.
"Perhaps he's the only one asking the right question."
Cut to the Great Hall
The double doors were open, letting the noise of the Entrance Hall spill into thebreakfast arear, cheers, and the murmur of names being speculated. The Hall gleamed under floating pumpkins and a thousand candles. Bats wheeled lazily in the rafters.
At the Gryffindor table, Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat with half-finished plates, glancing repeatedly toward the doors.
"There's a rumor Warrington already put his name in," Dean was saying nearby.
"Can't have a Slytherin champion," Ron muttered automatically, then squinted toward the Entrance Hall. "Look, Dreyse is there again. Been standing there all morning."
Hermione followed his gaze. Through the doorway, Alden was visible at the edge of the crowd, still and deliberate among the motion. The blue-white fire painted him ghostlike.
"He's just watching," she said. "He wouldn't try."
"Wouldn't he?" Ron asked. "He's the one who blocked Moody's spell last week."
"He's fourteen," Hermione said firmly, though her voice carried a flicker of doubt. "He's clever, not reckless."
Harry frowned, remembering the unflinching calm in Alden's eyes during Moody's class.
"Sometimes clever's worse," he said quietly. "Means he'd figure out how before he figured out why."
Hermione's fork paused mid-air.
"Even so," she said finally, "Dumbledore's line won't let him. It can't."
A cheer rose from the hall as Angelina Johnson entered, beaming as she told friends she'd just put her name in. The noise swallowed their conversation for a moment, a wave of applause and shouted bets.
Hermione smiled faintly. "At least someone's brave and qualified."
Harry chuckled, but his eyes lingered on the doorway of the still figure beyond the firelight.
"Yeah," he murmured. "Qualified."
Back to the Entrance Hall
The cheer died down. Alden hadn't moved. The flicker of the Goblet reflected in his eyes, twin flames steady as breath.
"They're all so eager," Daphne said softly beside him. "Running toward it like moths."
"And you?" he asked.
"I prefer not to burn," she said.
A small, dry smile crossed his face.
"Perhaps that's what makes you cleverer than most."
Draco rolled his eyes.
"You're both mad. Standing here all day like monks at a funeral."
"Then go eat, Draco," Theo said mildly. "Leave the heretics to their religion."
Draco huffed, but didn't move. The flame pulsed again, throwing long shadows across their shoes. The murmurs of the hall swirled into a single restless hum e of tement, envy, and fear, and Alden felt all of it pressing at the edges of the circle, begging to be chosen.
He, alone, did not beg.
He only watched, listening to the Goblet breathe.
The castle was nearly asleep.
Candles guttered low in their sconces, dripping wax that gleamed like tears along the walls. Outside, the wind pressed faintly at the windows, carrying the scent of rain. The Entrance Hall, so loud through the day, had fallen into a vast, echoing silence.
The Goblet still burned. Its lightis no longer blue, but a muted silver, flickering slowly and patiently, like it too was breathing before rest.
Alden sat cross-legged on the lower marble step, a book closed beside him, his wand balanced across his knees. The pages around him were scrawled with symbols and sketches, concentric circles, runes layered in faint charcoal. Each line mirrored the golden arc carved into the floor.
He'd been there since morning.
Theo Nott lingered a few paces away, arms folded, trying to look unbothered and failing. His voice broke the quiet first.
"You do realize," he said, "curfew's not a suggestion. Even prefects have gone to bed."
Alden didn't look up.
"Then you should join them."
Theo sighed, stepping closer, his shoes scuffing softly on the stone.
"I'm serious. Snape will skin us both if"
"He won't," Alden murmured. "He already knows I'm here."
Theo frowned.
"How could he"?
Alden glanced up, finally. "He always knows."
The Goblet's flame rippled, reflecting across his eyes. The Age Line shimmered faintly, thin runes humming beneath the surface soft enough that Theo could not hear, but Alden felt the vibration through the floor, thrumming through his bones like a pulse.
He rose slowly, wand still in hand, and approached the line.
"Alden," Theo warned, his voice dropping, "don't".
Alden crouched beside the golden circle, close enough that its faint warmth brushed his fingertips. The symbols were ancient, not defensive, but inquisitive. He could feel the question embedded in them: Who are you, truly?
He extended one hand, hovering just above the line. The air hummed in response, a resonance like a plucked string. His magic stirred, sensing the boundary's structure as a layered weave of truth and recognition.
"It doesn't repel magic," he murmured. "It reads it. It looks for discord between intent and form."
Theo swallowed.
"And if it doesn't like what it finds?"
Alden's lips curved faintly.
"Then it teaches you what you are."
Before Theo could answer, the soft tap of footsteps echoed from the corridor beyond.
The sound carried a kind of music, obes brushing stone, measured, unhurried. Then the faint glow of a candle preceded Dumbledore, its flame reflecting in his half-moon glasses.
"Mr. Dreyse," he said, voice quiet but full. "You have been here all day."
Alden straightened, the gold light spilling over his silver hair. Theo stiffened beside him, murmuring something like a greeting.
Dumbledore stopped a few feet away, his gaze drifting past them to the Goblet. The flame seemed to bow subtly, as if even magic recognized its maker.
"An impressive vigil," he said. "Most young witches and wizards have long since exhausted their curiosity."
"I was studying," Alden replied evenly.
Dumbledore smiled.
"So I gathered. Though I might advise rest before curiosity turns to obsession. It has a way of blurring what we wish to see clearly."
"I see clearly," Alden said, almost too quickly.
"Do you?"
The Headmaster's tone was not accusatory ly gently wondering. He moved closer to the Goblet, its light washing across his face, deepening every line of age and kindness.
"You know," he continued, "there are enchantments even I might struggle to circumvent, and yet" his eyes glinted "I would be… most impressed if someone managed to find a way through that one."
Theo's eyebrows shot up.
"You're encouraging him?"
Dumbledore chuckled softly.
"Merely observing, Mr. Nott. Curiosity is the spark of progress, though, like fire, it can either warm or consume. What truly matters is not whether one crosses a boundary, but what one hopes to find beyond it."
His gaze returned to Alden. For a moment, the hall seemed to shrink until it was only the two of them and the slow whisper of the flame.
"The Triwizard Tournament," Dumbledore said quietly, "has a way of revealing not what we are but who we have always been. The tasks do not shape character; they unveil it."
The words fell like stones into still water. Theo shifted uneasily, glancing between them.
"Headmaster, should we?"
"Go," Dumbledore said kindly. "Sleep, both of you. The Goblet will still be here in the morning."
He turned to leave, his candle trailing a small arc of gold through the air. But as his footsteps receded, his voice drifted back, soft as a spell.
"Some boundaries are there to keep us safe," he said. "Others are there to see if we will dare to understand them."
The doors closed behind him with a gentle echo.
Silence returned. The Goblet flared once, briefly, a shimmer like breath against glass.
Theo let out a long exhale.
"He knows you're thinking about it."
Alden didn't answer. He had crouched again beside the Age Line, eyes wide, watching as one of the runes shimmered and rotatedeverr so slightlyf acknowledging him.
Theo saw nothing but faint light on the floor.
"Alden?"
No response. His mind was already elsewhere ecing the pattern, aligning thought and intent. The rune pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, answering him, just once, before fading.
He understood then not how to step across, but why he would.
The Goblet's silver light filled his vision, calm and absolute. For the first time all day, he smiled, sure, inevitable.
It doesn't test worthiness, he thought. ItItsests will.
The flame flickered as if it had heard.
And Alden Dreyse knew, with perfect clarity, what he would do before dawn.