Snow fell in a hush that muffled every footstep, every voice. By midwinter, the land around Potter Castle had transformed into something Harry hadn't fully intended but could no longer ignore: a haven.
Four cabins now stood in a neat arc just beyond the castle's stone wall. Each was built of thick gray stone quarried by the Flint Foot men, their corners mortared carefully under Harry's supervision. But unlike any wildling hut or crude tent, these cabins had details drawn from another world—arched lintels over the doors, smooth floors sealed against the cold, stout fireplaces with polished hearthstones.
And each had a marvel the new settlers never tired of remarking upon: a small attached chamber with a tiled floor and a clever pipe that drained waste away from the living space.
"Like something the Andals might build," Borren said one morning as he showed three new arrivals around. "But better."
Ragni snorted. "You just like the privy."
"I do," Borren said firmly. "I'm too old to squat in a drift."
Lyanna stood with Harry as they watched the first of the new families carry their belongings into a freshly finished cabin. She folded her arms over her belly, her expression soft.
"They look so… relieved," she murmured.
"They are," Harry said.
"They keep calling you 'the great sorcerer.'"
His mouth pulled into a wry half-smile. "That wasn't part of the plan."
"But you are," she teased. "Aren't you?"
He sighed. "That depends on who's asking."
In truth, he was no king, no lord. But every few days, another ragged band of wildlings appeared—some sent by word of mouth, others drawn by rumor.
One late afternoon, as the sun died behind the ridge, a hunting party trudged up to the main gate carrying a skinny reindeer carcass. At their head was a wiry man with black hair streaked in gray.
He stopped when he saw Harry waiting by the palisade.
"You the one they call Griffindor?" the man asked.
"That's right," Harry said calmly.
"They say you're a sorcerer. That you built this place in a week, with just your hands and your magic."
Harry lifted his eyebrows. "Most of it was stonework and sweat. The magic only helps."
The man grunted, glancing back at the others. "We heard there was room here. Safe walls. Food."
"There is," Harry said. "But you should know: if you stay, you'll be asked to help build and tend this place. No raiding. No thieving. We look after each other here."
The man rubbed a hand over his bearded chin, thinking. Then he nodded once.
"Better than starving in the snow."
"Then you're welcome."
Over the next days, more came. A pair of sisters with four children between them. Two old men who'd survived a failed trek to the Skirling Pass. A woman with hair white as frost who carried a bundle of dried herbs and asked shyly if she could help tend the sick.
Harry tried not to think of himself as their leader, but the truth was harder to deny each time someone knocked at the gate.
One evening, Lyanna found him on the watchtower, arms folded over the parapet as he watched the distant flickering lights of cooking fires.
"You look troubled," she said, coming to stand beside him.
He didn't answer right away. The cold wind tugged her hair loose around her face.
"I wanted to help," he said finally. "But I didn't think… it would become this."
"A home?" she asked softly.
"A village," he corrected. "With all the hopes and fears that come with it."
She laid her hand over his. "It needed someone to start it."
He turned his head to look at her. "I'm no lord."
"No," she agreed. "But maybe that's why it works."
Inside the hall, the newcomers were gathered near the hearth, bowls of hot stew in their hands. The children were already drowsy, their faces sticky with broth.
Borren came up to Harry with a measuring look.
"They asked," Borren began, "whether they should offer you tribute."
Harry blinked. "Tribute?"
"For letting them stay."
"No." His voice was firm. "No tribute. They'll help build, hunt, and fish. That's enough."
Borren grinned, showing the gap in his front teeth. "Told them you'd say so."
He clapped Harry on the shoulder and went back to the fire.
Over the following weeks, the rhythm of Potter Castle became the rhythm of the settlement.
At dawn, men and women took up tools and walked to the quarry. Others checked the traps near the river or fished through holes cut in the ice.
Lyanna began organizing the women to tend the sheep, mend clothes, and teach the children their letters in the evenings.
And every few days, Harry met with the heads of each little family by the hearth to ask what they needed and how things were faring.
One evening, Ragni and Borren waited by the long table, where Harry was sketching a plan for another cabin.
"You should name it," Borren said abruptly.
Harry looked up. "Name what?"
"This place."
Ragni nodded. "The castle has a name. But the village doesn't."
He sat back in his chair, frowning thoughtfully.
"What would you call it?" he asked them.
Borren scratched his beard. "Something that means hope."
Ragni lifted her chin. "Or something that means free."
Harry was quiet a long moment. His gaze drifted to the window, where snow fell in drifting curtains.
Then he smiled faintly.
"We'll call it Narnia," he said.
Lyanna, who had been listening in the doorway, smiled back.
By the end of that month, the word had spread up and down the frozen rivers:
A sorcerer had raised a stronghold in the land beyond the Wall.
And there—if you were willing to work—you could find warmth, bread, and peace.
For the first time in many lifetimes, something new was being built beyond the Wall.
It happened so gradually that even Harry barely noticed it at first.
The cabins multiplied—four became six, then eight, each built of quarried stone with fireplaces and tiled floors. The land that had once been an empty sweep of snow and pine began to show paths trampled flat by dozens of feet, the outlines of kitchen gardens marked by split-rail fences, and the glint of drying fish hung on long wooden racks.
Every dawn, the smoke of many hearths rose in thin gray ribbons into the pale sky.
One evening, as Harry stood on the watchtower with Lyanna, he realized it at last.
"What is it?" she asked, seeing the faraway look on his face.
He turned to her slowly. "It's a village," he said. His voice was low and a little astonished. "A real one."
Lyanna's smile was gentle. "It's more than that. It's a home."
But with so many souls gathered in one place, Harry knew the danger had only grown. One ambitious chieftain, one ruthless warband, one lord south of the Wall looking to earn renown—any of them might one day turn their eyes here.
And so, reluctantly but resolutely, Harry began the work of warding the land.
On a morning when the sun was a cold white coin in the sky, he walked the perimeter with his staff in hand. Borren and Ragni watched from a distance, their breaths steaming in the air.
Lyanna had asked him once why he did not teach the Narnians—she used that word now, as did they—about the full extent of his magic.
He had thought a long time before answering.
"Because if they think I am all-powerful," he said, "they will never learn to stand for themselves. And if they fear me, they'll never trust me."
But this magic he would not hide.
He set the wards carefully, line by line, stone by stone. A net of enchantments woven into the bones of the land itself—wards to cloak the settlement from those who bore hatred or hunger for conquest. Any with such intent would find their steps turning away, their minds fogged and aimless.
And to any who came with honest need, the path would remain clear.
When he returned to the hall that night, Lyanna was waiting by the fire.
"Will it hold?" she asked softly.
He looked into the flames.
"It will hold," he said.
Each day he studied.
The Black family grimoires lay open across the long trestle table, their cracked bindings and iron clasps gleaming dully in the firelight.
Lyanna sometimes watched as he turned the brittle pages, lips moving soundlessly over incantations and runes that no other soul in this world had ever read.
Some were dark, even by the standards of his old life. Rituals that bound a person's life to a single purpose, that reshaped flesh and bone, that bent the natural order like soft clay.
But he was not tempted by their promises of dominion.
He looked only for what could help—spells to ward, to heal, to strengthen.
Late one night, Lyanna came upon him in the little library he had claimed for study. The candles had burned low, their light catching the worn hollows beneath his eyes.
"You should sleep," she murmured.
He looked up from the grimoire, exhaustion and something brighter mingled in his gaze.
"I can't," he said quietly. "Not yet. If I am to protect them—all of them—I have to be more than I was."
A week later, in a clearing behind Potter Castle, he drew a circle in the snow and stepped into it alone.
He had found what he needed: a rite that would lend his body speed, strength, and resilience beyond any ordinary man's.
It required sacrifice.
He slit his palm and let the blood spatter into the runes. A sudden wind rose around him, scattering the snow in whirling gusts.
He whispered the words.
When it was done, he fell to his knees, gasping, his heart hammering like a war drum. His veins felt alight with fire. But when he rose at last, he felt stronger—more capable.
It would have to be enough.
Winter watched all of this from afar.
The white dragon had taken to spending his days in the hidden cave Harry had built. He had stopped hunting mammoths—Harry suspected the creatures had learned to avoid the valley entirely—and now he stalked the frozen sea to the north.
Sometimes, near dawn, Winter would return with the half-shredded corpse of a whale clutched in his claws, laying it in the snow near Potter Castle as though offering tribute.
The first time it happened, Borren had turned white as chalk.
"Gods," he whispered hoarsely. "A leviathan."
Harry had only sighed, rubbing his temple.
"I suppose," he muttered, "we'll need to salt it."
And so the great whales became part of the settlement's life.
Ragni and the other women learned to cut the blubber into manageable slabs. The men carved enormous ribs to dry into shelters or simple fences.
At the evening meal, a stew of whale meat and onions simmered in a pot the size of a cartwheel.
Lyanna looked around the hall that night—at the firelight glinting on all those watchful faces—and felt an ache she could not quite name.
These were people who had never known anything but hunger and fear. And here, in this place Harry had built, they were becoming something else:
Neighbors.
Families.
Narnians.
One morning, a delegation approached Potter Castle—three men and a woman wrapped in patched furs.
They knelt at the gate as Harry came out to meet them, Lyanna beside him.
"My lord," said the woman, her voice rough from travel. "They say you are the sorcerer who makes a place where no raider's hand reaches."
Harry glanced at Lyanna, then back at them.
"There is no lord here," he said. "Only people willing to work, and share, and keep each other safe."
"Then let us stay," she whispered. "We have nowhere else."
He studied their weary faces.
"Welcome to Narnia," he said at last.
And Lyanna thought: Perhaps this is what the world was always meant to be.
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