The remainder of the winter holidays at Malfoy Manor passed in a haze of indulgent comfort and rigorous self-study. While Draco spent his days terrorizing the peacocks with his new Training Snitch or complaining about the cold, Orion retreated into the quiet corners of the estate.
His primary focus was the heavy, ominous piece of furniture sitting in the East Wing storage room.
Orion treated the Vanishing Cabinet not as a magical artifact, but as a complex circuit board. He spent hours with quill and parchment, carefully tracing the faded runes etched into the dark wood. He cross-referenced them with the books he had bought, identifying sequences for Spatial Displacement, Harmonic Linking, and Safe Passage.
"It's a receiver," Orion mumbled one afternoon, his fingers stained with ink. "The one at Hogwarts is the transmitter. Or maybe they are transceivers? The runic loop suggests a two-way flow, but the anchor sequence on the bottom right is damaged."
He carefully packed his notes and several heavy volumes on Runic Arithmancy into his shrunken trunk. He wasn't going to fix it yet—he lacked the skill—but he was gathering the blueprints.
When he wasn't playing magical engineer, he was practicing his "God of Life."
The Avis spell had become a daily ritual. Following McGonagall's advice, Orion had stopped trying to create life and started trying to create a convincing counterfeit.
He stood in the middle of his room, the Hawthorn wand warm in his hand. He visualized a canary. Not the cells, not the heartbeat, just the form. The softness of the feathers, the sharp curve of the beak, the bright yellow pigment.
"Avis."
A soft pop echoed in the room.
From the tip of his wand, a bird materialized. It didn't look like a rubber duck this time. It didn't have a trumpet for a mouth. It was, visually, a perfect yellow canary. The feathers looked soft; the eyes glinted like black beads.
It hovered in the air for a fraction of a second, carried by the momentum of the spell, floating for a while.
And then... gravity took over.
Plop.
The bird hit the floor with a soft thud. It didn't flutter. It didn't chirp. It didn't try to right itself. It just lay there on its side, stiff as a board, looking for all the world like an exquisite taxidermy specimen that had fallen off a shelf.
Orion walked over and picked it up. It was rigid to a fault.
"A statue," Orion sighed, turning the bird over in his hands. "A perfect, feathery statue."
"It looks real," Sparkle offered encouragingly. "Until you poke it and it falls over."
"I have the form," Orion analyzed, banishing the bird into nothingness. "But I lack the animation. I'm building the car, but I haven't figured out how to turn on the engine. Maybe, It needs a charm layered into the conjuration, or perhaps a localized animation loop."
He holstered his wand. It was progress. He had moved from cartoons to statues. The next step—movement—would come with time.
The final night of the holidays arrived with a heavy snowfall that blanketed the manor in silence. Orion sat on his bed, his trunk packed and placed in one corner, his mind already miles away in the Scottish Highlands.
He stared at the calendar on his wall.
January. February. March. April. May. June.
"The board has changed," Orion whispered to the empty room.
"How so?" Sparkle asked, her blue light dim and soothing.
"Quirrell is gone," Orion listed, ticking off points on his fingers. "The immediate threat to the Stone is neutralized. But the Stone is still there. And the protections are still active."
He frowned, his eyes narrowing.
"Voldemort is a wraith. He is bodiless, desperate, and vindictive. He won't just float in the woods for six months waiting for summer. He needs a host. And the Christmas holidays... the time when students and staff are away, visiting families, mingling with the world... that is the perfect window for possession."
"So we have a mystery guest," Sparkle surmised. "Who is it? A student? A teacher? A random Ministry official?"
"That is Task Number One," Orion said grimly. "Identify the variable. Find the new host. If I can do that, I can predict the endgame."
Then there was the Dragon.
"May," Orion muttered. "In the original timeline, Hagrid wins a dragon egg from a hooded stranger in a pub. That stranger was Quirrell. But Quirrell is dead. So, will the egg still find its way to Hagrid?"
"Voldemort still needs to get past Fluffy," Sparkle pointed out. "He still needs to know how to put the dog to sleep. Hagrid is the only one who knows. So, the interrogation in the pub is likely still on the schedule, just with a different interrogator."
"Which means Norbert—or Norberta—is still a probable event," Orion nodded. "And that means midnight wanderings, detention in the Forbidden Forest, and chaos."
And finally... the End Game.
Orion leaned back against his pillows, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"June," he whispered. "The night the Trio goes down the trapdoor."
He didn't know if Harry would still go. Without Quirrell's actions, pain in the scar, without the broom incident (since Harry was not a seeker this year), without the direct antagonism... would Harry still suspect Snape? Would he still try to play hero?
"I can't rely on Potter," Orion decided. "I have to assume that someone will try for the Stone. And if someone goes down there..."
He closed his eyes, visualizing the gauntlet. The Devil's Snare. The Keys. The Chessboard. The Troll (unless it will be replaced by something else). The Potions. The Mirror.
"I need a plan," Orion murmured. "Not just a reaction. A proactive strategy."
He had a framework in his mind. It was complex. It required precise timing, specific items he didn't have yet, and a level of magical competence he was currently grinding toward.
"Two months," Orion calculated. "I need until the end of March to gather the materials. I need to perfect a few charms. And I need to have a serious conversation with a certain house elf, though that can wait."
"Sounds like a lot of work," Sparkle yawned. "Do we have a Plan B?"
"Plan B is explosives," Orion deadpanned.
"And Plan C?"
"Plan C is Killing curse. On every person involved."
"I like Plan C," Sparkle admitted. "It's the best one, ever."
"Anyways, jokes aside," Orion sighed. "We have a lot of work planned ahead."
He pulled the duvet up, the warmth of the bed settling over him.
The vacation was over. Orion was now flying blind into the second half of the year.
"Perfect," Orion smiled into the darkness. "I hate boring stories anyway."
He closed his eyes and let the sleep take him, his dreams filled with ticking clocks and shadowed figures.