Harry Potter : Cael Vale’s journey to Hogwarts

The Ravenclaw common room, with its star-spangled dome and moonlight-washed marble floor, was far quieter than Gryffindor's. The only sounds were the gentle rustle of Penelope Clearwater's robes as she sank into the velvet armchair, and the soft purring of wind against the stained-glass windows.

Well—not purring.

That sound was not coming from the black cat with glacial-blue eyes, who sat very stiffly on her lap.

Cael kept his tail from twitching with extreme effort. He had endured wand duels, cursed doorways, and furious Aurors with more dignity than this lap-nuzzling nonsense. Still, he endured. After all, he was in the Ravenclaw common room—uninvited, unseen, and precisely where he needed to be.

"Oh, you're such a comfort," Penelope murmured as she gently ran her fingers between his ears.

Don't purr. Don't you dare purr.

She sighed, letting her head lean back against the chair. "I wish everything were as simple as you. Just eat, nap, and sneak around the castle…"

She's not wrong, Cael mused dryly.

But then her tone shifted. Soft. Conflicted.

"I'm really worried," she whispered. "Everyone's talking about the Ministry—how they're barely hiring Muggle-borns anymore. 'Security protocols,' they say. It's rubbish. They're just cutting us out."

Cael tilted his head in her lap, watching her face.

"My mum's a dentist. My dad sells cars. I can't exactly fall back on the family business, can I?" she said, laughing bitterly. "They don't even know what I do here. Can't tell them half of it. And now I might graduate Hogwarts and end up jobless, not because I'm unqualified, but because of bloodline."

Cael blinked slowly. That hit closer than he'd expected.

"I thought Percy might be different," she continued, her voice lowering. "For a while, anyway. I thought, maybe, a pureblood who's not like the rest. He was ambitious, sure, but polite. Intelligent. We used to study together sometimes, and he talked about making change from inside the system."

She shook her head. "But then… I don't know. The more I got to know him, the more it felt like… everything he does is for appearances. Everything's about his future career, his image, his ambition. Not people."

She sighed again, stroking Cael's fur absentmindedly.

"And now he won't stop pestering me. As if I'd ever say yes after last year's incident. A singing howler declaring his love? In the Great Hall? I wanted to vanish into the floor. And now he thinks I should date him because I'll 'benefit' from it?" She scowled. "What kind of offer is that?"

Cael internally winced. Definitely not one you put on a love letter.

Penelope smiled down at him suddenly. "You're a good listener, you know that?"

He blinked again. Slowly. Carefully noncommittal.

"Maybe I should take you with me to bed, hmm?" she teased, scratching behind his ears. "Could use someone to curl up with tonight."

Nope.

Cael tensed as she stood up, cat still in arms.

"No?" she asked as he squirmed lightly. "Don't want to sleep at the foot of my bed?"

He bolted.

In a flash of silent paws and shadow, he leapt from her grasp, landed gracefully on the stone floor, and dashed behind a sofa.

Penelope blinked, then laughed. "Oh, I see. You're that kind of cat."

She crouched and gave him one final fond pat on the head. "Goodnight then, mystery cat. Try not to knock over the ink."

With that, she disappeared up the spiral staircase to the girls' dormitory, her footsteps fading like retreating raindrops.

The room fell silent.

Cael waited until he heard the door click shut upstairs before stepping out from his hiding place.

Now, it was time.

⸻

He padded across the floor, ears alert, gaze flicking between the bookshelves. There were dozens—some low and open, others behind enchanted glass. He sniffed around for any wards or detection charms, but none were obvious. Of course, this was Ravenclaw. Their security wasn't brute force—it was subtle. Likely encoded into riddles or clever enchantments.

At the far side of the common room, a narrow spiral staircase wound upward. He padded to the base, then bounded up the steps two at a time.

The second floor was darker but had a more elegant touch on it .

He paused at the threshold.

There it is.

A long gallery stretched before him—lined wall-to-wall with ancient bookshelves, locked glass cabinets, and polished tables covered in parchments. A celestial model of the solar system floated in the air above, orbiting silently. This… was no ordinary study area.

This was Ravenclaw's private archive for her and her students .

He transformed in a whisper of magic, black fur melting away to reveal a boy cloaked in shadow. Cael stood in silence, breathing in the scent of ancient parchment and wax.

He drew his wand. "Lumos."

The light cast a small golden glow ahead of him as he began to scan the shelves. No catalogue. No index. Just silent rows of tomes and titles.

He moved slowly, reading each spine.

The Language of Stone.

Runes of the Forgotten Realms.

Script Before Sound: The Silent Runes of Lost Cultures.

Finally.

Cael's pulse quickened. He reached for the last title and gently opened the heavy cover.

The inside was dense—text interwoven with hand-drawn symbols, footnotes scribbled in margins. Many of these symbols bore a resemblance to the ones on the Door Key. Not a perfect match—but closer than anything else he'd seen.

He quickly flipped to the index. No luck. The book was unstructured, likely compiled by an eccentric Ravenclaw scholar centuries ago.

But one phrase caught his eye on the third page:

"These runes predate all standardized magic. Their meanings shift with context, intention, and lineage. They are not read—they are felt."

Cael leaned in. His eyes glowed with focus.

For the next hour, he pored over the book, comparing shapes, deciphering layers, and marking potential connections. Every now and then, something clicked. A flicker of familiarity. A symbol whose purpose felt tantalizingly close.

A few hours passed in near silence, save for the occasional creak of the tower settling under the weight of night. The dim glow from Cael's wand flickered across the pages as he carefully turned each one. His eyes scanned with surgical precision, mind whirring behind his calm expression.

Then—he found it.

A hand-drawn sketch filled the entire page, aged and faint but still decipherable. It was a disc-shaped object, ringed with symbols that made Cael's breath catch. The structure was near-identical to the Door Key—six concentric rings, exactly one hundred and fifty-three runes arranged in a complex spiral.

He leaned closer, heart pounding. His fingers lightly traced the symbols along the outer edge.

It was so close.

But as he compared the markings to the ones etched on the relic hidden in his lab, a creeping realization settled over him.

They weren't the same.

At first glance, they appeared identical. But subtle differences emerged on closer inspection: a curve angled too sharply here, a central dot missing there. The rune language was of the same family—but not the exact dialect. Like comparing two versions of the same word in different ancient tongues.

He muttered under his breath. "Variant runes…"

Cael flipped to the next page.

And the next.

One by one, he uncovered more fragments. No explanations—just diagrams, rune clusters, theoretical incantations, and sketches of mysterious devices and gateways. The text accompanying them was vague at best, often speculating more than explaining.

Still, it was the closest he'd come so far.

He stood, eyes scanning the surrounding shelves with renewed urgency. Dozens of books lined the archive walls—half of them just as ancient and promising. His gaze sharpened.

I need these.

He grabbed the first book, then a second, a third. Tucking them under his arm, he moved silently back toward the staircase.

But as his foot touched the top step—

fwip.

The book vanished from under his arm, reappearing with a soft shimmer back in its original place on the shelf.

Cael blinked, then looked down at the others in his arms—just in time to watch them evaporate in motes of blue light and re-materialize behind him on the bookcases.

"Of course," he muttered.

The enchantment was clever—subtle. The books weren't warded against being read… just against being removed. A classic Ravenclaw defense. Knowledge could be shared—but not stolen.

Cael exhaled slowly through his nose and looked around the moonlit room, resigned.

"Well, it's not like I don't enjoy midnight field trips…"

He returned to the nearest table and pulled out a small enchanted notebook from his inner robe pocket—one of his own inventions, imbued with a self-writing quill linked to his dictation.

"If the books won't come to me," he whispered, "I'll come to them."

From that moment on, his plan crystallized.

Each night, after curfew, he would sneak back into Ravenclaw Tower in his Animagus form. There, by candlelight, he would pore over the texts and copy every rune, every diagram, every fragment worth keeping. It would take weeks—maybe months.

But it was the only way.

Because the runes on the Door Key were ancient, lost, and fragmented—but now, finally, not alone.

And somewhere in these forgotten books, Cael would find the thread that connected it all.