Recaps

Ian repeatedly fought an Ancient Dragon emerging from the Bronze Door, but its resurrection and the door’s resistance to his magic defied his understanding. After the dragon fled, an unseen boundary aged it to dust and the door began bringing it back again, leading Ian to suspect the phenomenon involved Destiny and Death.

• Ian killed the Ancient Dragon again with Fiendfyre and Shadowless Storm, and its body vanished as before.
• Ian tried to destroy the Bronze Door with Shadowless Storm, fel energy, and Fiendfyre, but it remained unharmed and dissolved the flames.
• When the dragon emerged again and charged him, Ian controlled gravity to pin it down and used Fel Energy Burst and Soul Annihilation to kill it.
• The dragon reappeared with its soul restored, then fled from Ian in fear, but an invisible boundary rapidly aged it into dust.
• Ian saw the Bronze Door begin to release the dragon again and noticed runes representing Death, suspecting the cycle was connected to Destiny.

Ian investigated the enormous Bronze Door exposed in a shattered valley in the Forbidden Forest, discovering that the valley had been built as a complex magical containment system. After the Dragon repeatedly emerged and died beyond the Door’s protective boundary, Ian accidentally triggered the Door’s suction and was pulled inside.

• Ian tested the Bronze Door with Dark Magic and Transfiguration, but his spells had no effect on it.
• Ian explored the split valley and found extensive magical inscriptions that formed a sealing or preservation system around the Door.
• The Ancient Dragon emerged repeatedly and turned to ashes whenever it crossed the boundary around the Bronze Door.
• Ian copied the valley’s runes and noticed several connected to Death, leading him to wonder whether Death had made the Door.
• When Ian blasted the Dragon back into the vortex, the Bronze Door activated a powerful suction that shattered his spells and dragged him inside.

Dumbledore, Snape, and Hermione reached the Bronze Door and encountered a version of Dumbledore from within it, who attacked them. After defeating him, Dumbledore concluded that the figure was one of his possible selves and admitted he could not be certain whether he had emerged from the door himself.

• Dumbledore led Snape and Hermione through the devastated Forbidden Forest to the Bronze Door, where he sensed Ian’s lingering magical traces.
• Dumbledore explained that the Forbidden Forest’s distortions involved altered reality and said the forest predated Hogwarts and the Four Founders.
• The Bronze Door’s vortex revealed a second Albus Dumbledore, who emerged and attacked the group with powerful spells.
• The real Dumbledore fought the intruder while protecting Snape and Hermione, then turned the intruder’s Avada Kedavra back on him and destroyed him.
• Dumbledore told Snape and Hermione that the intruder was a version of him annihilated by Destiny, but admitted he could not be sure he had not come from the door himself.

Hermione and Snape watched the real Dumbledore confront another version of himself emerging from the Bronze Door, who explained that the door caused convergence and collection. After invading Hermione and Snape’s minds to learn how they became Legends, the other Dumbledore returned through the door and warned that the real Dumbledore could be discarded too.

• Another Dumbledore emerged from the Bronze Door, but he and the real Dumbledore agreed not to fight.
• The two Dumbledores exchanged questions, and the newcomer described the door’s process as “convergence” and “collection.”
• The newcomer asked how the real Dumbledore had become a Legend, and the real Dumbledore attributed it to people and events diverting Destiny.
• The newcomer invaded Hermione and Snape’s minds to learn why they became Legends, prompting Snape to angrily accuse him of intrusion.
• The real Dumbledore warned the newcomer that his invasion had gone too far, and the newcomer apologized before warning that the real Dumbledore could be discarded and absorbed into their group.
• The newcomer walked back through the Bronze Door, which fell silent, and the real Dumbledore thanked him for reducing future trouble.

After Dumbledore explained that the Bronze Door gathered rejected possibilities into alternate selves, Snape worried that Ian had entered it. Ian found himself in a prehistoric world where black-robed wizards hunted a dragon, and he realized the so-called gods might once have been wizards.

• Dumbledore explained that the Bronze Door manifested possibilities that he and other living beings had rejected, while Snape asked whether Ian had gone inside.
• Ian woke in a prehistoric landscape filled with enormous plants, insects, and dinosaurs, then watched an Ancient Dragon kill a Tyrannosaurus rex.
• Rune meteors and chains attacked the Ancient Dragon, and a giant magical hand hurled it into a ravine.
• More than a dozen black-robed figures killed the Dragon and vanished with it before Ian could identify them.
• Ian recalled that Medivh would travel to the Age of Gods and suspected the black-robed Dragon hunters were gods who had originally been wizards.

Ian explored the ancient world after being swept through time, concluding that the Black Robe Wizards might be the origin of the gods. He found a floating steel city where the wizards gathered, but an alarm sounded and someone called out about a Raven.

• Ian watched magical rain restore the burned landscape and create life, strengthening his suspicion that the Black Robe Wizards would become gods.
• Ian flew through a prehistoric wilderness, killed a pterosaur and an attacking striped python, and cooked their meat while observing unfamiliar Fantastic Beasts.
• Ian spotted a mysterious steel city floating above the ancient world and identified it as the wizards' gathering place.
• A pale blue barrier rose around the city as an alarm sounded, and a voice shouted that Raven had arrived.

Ian approached the Steel City, whose Black Robe Wizards mistook him for a terrifying Raven and unleashed metal beasts against him. After his spells failed against their runic defenses, Ian transformed into a giant Raven and charged at the city’s protective barrier, prompting the wizards to panic over what they called its second phase.

• Ian approached the Steel City and found its Black Robe Wizards reacting to him with fear and hostility.
• Ian tried to communicate and probe the city’s protective barrier, but it repelled his Mental Power.
• The Black Robe Wizards deployed metal beasts against Ian, whose spells were absorbed or deflected by their runes.
• Ian recognized that the beasts were made of the same metal as the Bronze Door and was injured while dodging their attacks.
• Ian transformed into a giant Raven and flew toward the city’s barrier as the Black Robe Wizards shouted that its second phase had begun.

Ian transformed into a Raven and overwhelmed the Black Robe Wizards’ defenses in Castle in the Sky, forcing them to flee. After he spared a woman carrying a baby, he discovered the child could gather sunlight in her hand and realized she was the Sun God’s daughter.

• Ian’s Raven transformation darkened the sky, and he shattered the Metal Giant Beasts sent against him.
• The Black Robe Wizards cast the Annihilation Torrent, but Ian’s Magic Immunity left him unharmed.
• Ian repeatedly struck Castle in the Sky’s energy shield until it broke and he crashed into the city.
• The Black Robe Wizards fled, and Ian pursued a slower woman carrying a baby rather than attacking the others.
• Ian transformed back into human form and saw sunlight gather in the baby’s hand, recognizing her as the Sun God’s daughter.

Ian recognized the baby as the future Reckless Goddess and tried to reassure her mother, but their language barrier forced him to learn her language through magic. As he began to communicate, Flesh and Blood Giants emerged from beneath the Castle in the Sky, and the woman cried out that the Titan had been released.

• Ian recognized the baby as the future Reckless Goddess and approached her and her frightened mother.
• The woman shielded the baby and offered her own life, while Ian tried unsuccessfully to calm her and communicate through gestures.
• Ian used Legilimency, encountered the woman's innate Mental Barrier, and then entered her memories with another spell to learn her language and discover how ancient wizards' innate magic worked.
• Ian withdrew from the woman's memories and spoke in her language, just as the Castle in the Sky shook violently.
• Several enormous Flesh and Blood Giants crawled out from beneath the city, and the woman cried, "Why would they release the Titan?!"

Ian discovered that the Titans imprisoned beneath the Castle in the Sky powered the city, then learned from the Black-robed woman that they were immortal creators of the gods. The Titans broke free and targeted Ian, who tested their resistance to magic and began using the power of paradox against them.

• Ian used Piercing Vision to see that the Castle in the Sky’s chained Titans powered the floating city by supplying it with energy.
• The Black-robed woman told Ian that the Titans were eternal creators and that the ancient wizards’ creations could not reliably control them.
• The Titans fully escaped their cages and fixed their attention on Ian, while the Titan God-King mocked him and the Black-robed wizards.
• Ian struck the Titan God-King with Avada Kedavra and burned another Titan with blue flames, discovering that they could be injured but rapidly healed.
• Ian reasoned that the Titans must have been destroyed in the future and began manifesting the power of paradox against them.

Ian used the Paradox Authority to strip the Titans of their immortality, then destroyed them with Fiendfyre as Castle in the Sky collapsed. The Black Robe Wizards watched from a hidden spatial rift and suspected Ian’s power was the final form of their magic.

• The Titan God-King mocked Ian and advanced on him while the Titans laughed at his magic.
• Ian invoked the Paradox Authority, severing the Titans’ connection to the world and causing their immortality and regeneration to fail.
• Ian used curses and the Petrification Charm against the now-vulnerable Titans, while the Black Robe Wizards fled.
• Ian unleashed Fiendfyre, and the flames consumed the Titans as they struggled to fight back.
• The Titan God-King charged Ian and detonated his remaining strength, but Ian transformed into a Raven and escaped the blast.
• The last Titans died as Castle in the Sky collapsed, while the Black Robe Wizards watched from a spatial rift and Zeus identified Ian’s power as possibly the final form of their magic.

Ian destroyed the Titans, causing Castle in the Sky to collapse, then followed a magical thread toward the Reckless Goddess’s child form in search of a way home. At Hogwarts, Dumbledore remained unable to open the sealed Bronze Door, while Snape and Dumbledore warned Hermione away from dangerous knowledge.

• Ian’s Fiendfyre killed the Titans after Paradox Divine Authority briefly severed their immortality, ending the Titan Dynasty.
• With the Titans gone, Castle in the Sky lost its power and broke apart, crashing into the forest below.
• Ian used Contract Manifestation to follow the Reckless Goddess’s connection southeast toward her child form, while hidden ancient wizards panicked at his approach.
• In the Forbidden Forest, Dumbledore studied the sealed Bronze Door and its ancient books but found no way to open it.
• Hermione asked Snape about the books and suggested helping, but Snape warned her that some knowledge could corrupt her; Dumbledore agreed and told her to judge carefully before opening doors.

Dumbledore opened the Bronze Door and entered its vortex in search of Ian, leaving Snape and Hermione behind in the strange forest. After they encountered Rirym, he overpowered Snape and sent both him and Hermione back to Hogwarts.

• Snape stopped Hermione from interfering as Dumbledore prepared to enter the Bronze Door, and Dumbledore asked Snape to take his books and keep the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor under watch.
• Dumbledore used the Elder Wand to activate the Bronze Door and stepped into its vortex, which vanished behind him.
• Snape and Hermione searched the forest and encountered Rirym, whom Snape suspected was not really a student.
• Rirym redirected Snape's spell, left him hanging upside down, and told Hermione he would guard the forest.
• Rirym transported Hermione and the upside-down Snape to Hogwarts Castle, where Snape shouted for Hermione to free him.

Hermione and Snape were transported from the Forbidden Forest into Hogwarts, where Snape remained trapped upside down by a powerful spell. Unable to undo it, they reached Snape’s office before dawn, leaving him furious and determined to discover who had cursed him.

• Hermione and Snape appeared in a Hogwarts corridor, and Snape ordered her to help free him from the Inverted Golden Bell spell.
• Snape taught Hermione the countercurse, Golden Bell Fall, but neither his attempts nor hers affected the spell.
• As dawn approached, Snape told Hermione to use a rope to drag him to his office.
• Hermione pulled Snape through the corridors and accidentally slammed his forehead into a basement doorframe while escaping Peeves.
• Hermione got Snape into his office, where he remained hanging upside down and vowed to find the person responsible.

Snape kept Hermione in his office after Rirym left him hanging upside down, and made her take a private Potions lesson while he waited for Dumbledore. The lesson was interrupted by McGonagall reporting that Dumbledore’s Phoenix had gone missing, leaving Snape still trapped and Hermione still with him.

• Snape concluded that Rirym was Grindelwald in disguise, and stopped Hermione from seeking help from the other professors.
• Snape forced Hermione to stay in his office and taught her Potions while hanging upside down.
• Hermione softened Snape’s rock-hard biscuits with Potion Ingredients, earning a rare word of approval.
• McGonagall knocked and told Snape that Dumbledore’s Phoenix had vanished in front of her.
• Snape pretended to be ill until McGonagall left, then ordered Hermione to continue brewing.

Ron and Neville noticed Hermione was missing from class and learned she was assisting Snape with potion research. Convinced Snape had put her in a cauldron, Ron confronted him, and Snape reacted with apparent unease.

• Ron and Neville noticed Hermione was absent from breakfast and Charms Class, then worried that something had happened to her.
• Professor Flitwick explained that Hermione was helping Snape with a special potion research project and would miss his class.
• Ron decided Snape had stewed Hermione into a potion and dragged Neville to the Potions classroom to rescue her.
• Ron confronted Snape and demanded that he hand Hermione over, while Snape looked panicked and asked what Hermione he meant.

Hermione impersonated Snape and taught his Potions class while the real Snape remained hidden, but Ron and Neville suspected that Snape had turned Hermione into a potion. After Hermione escaped a suspicious encounter with Lockhart, Aurora recognized her disguise.

• Ron and Neville confronted Snape, accused him of brewing Hermione into a potion, and then decided to search his office when he sent them to class.
• Snape entered the Potions classroom and taught the second-year students by mechanically reading from notes, arousing their suspicions with his unusually mild behavior.
• Hermione revealed that Snape had persuaded her to impersonate him and teach the class while he stayed hidden.
• Hermione ran into Lockhart in the corridor, accidentally greeted him too warmly, and fled when he noticed her strange voice.
• Lockhart, who was actually Aurora, identified the disguised Hermione as Hermione Granger.

Hermione impersonated Snape and taught his Potions classes for a day, discovering how thoroughly he had prepared for his students’ mistakes. She returned to find Ron and Neville captured in Snape’s office, swallowed Snape’s supposed antidote, and then heard Lockhart arrive to discuss something interesting.

• Hermione disguised herself as Snape and taught Potions to younger students, then grew nervous when she faced the upper years.
• Hermione relied on Snape’s detailed notebook to teach students across the years and learned that it recorded their likely mistakes and habits.
• After classes, Hermione found Snape hanging upside down and Ron and Neville bound and gagged in his office after they had broken in.
• Snape asked Hermione whether she had revealed anything, then gave her a jelly bean he claimed was an antidote, which she swallowed.
• Lockhart knocked on the office door and said he wanted to discuss some interesting matters with Snape.

Hermione impersonated Snape to keep Lockhart from discovering the captives in Snape's office, relying on Snape's whispered help to answer Lockhart's potion questions. Lockhart left after slipping Hermione a note, and she wondered whether he was in love with Snape.

• Lockhart knocked at Snape's office, and Snape told Hermione to answer while keeping the door shut.
• Snape knocked Ron unconscious after Ron tried to attract Lockhart's attention, and Neville pretended to be dead.
• Hermione opened the door only a crack and, guided by Snape, gave Lockhart instructions for the Nightshade Draught and a Love Potion.
• Lockhart asked about adding Sniffleweed, and Hermione repeated Snape's warning that it would make him fall in love with someone of the same sex.
• Lockhart shook Hermione's hand, left a note in her palm, and departed; Hermione wondered whether he liked Snape.

Hermione Granger was taken to Lockhart’s office, where Grindelwald revealed himself and demanded to know where Ian Prince and Albus Dumbledore had gone. Meanwhile, Rirym awakened the Bronze Door and began fighting an old wizard who claimed to be the real one and the future King of All Worlds.

• Lockhart confronted Hermione in the corridor and led her to his office, where he asked where Ian Prince was.
• Hermione denied knowing, but Lockhart tried to blur her will before another Lockhart entered and warned him against it.
• The seated Lockhart transformed into Grindelwald, who ordered Hermione to forget what happened and tell him where Ian Prince and Albus Dumbledore had gone.
• Rirym waited by the Bronze Door in the Forbidden Forest, then activated it when no one came.
• An old wizard emerged from the door and claimed to be the real one who would become the King of All Worlds, and Rirym fought him with Ancient Magic.

Rirym battled an alternate version of himself in the Forbidden Forest, while Dumbledore passed through the Bronze Door into a recreation of Godric's Hollow in 1899. The chapter ended as Dumbledore watched his younger self reject Ariana.

• Rirym and the old wizard who called himself the King of All Worlds exchanged powerful spells around the Bronze Door.
• Rirym unleashed the Four Symbols Sealing Array and reversed the old wizard's attempt to reflect it with Raven's Art of Entropy Reversal.
• The old wizard summoned the River Styx, and Rirym questioned whether his opponent was an abandoned version of himself or the Merlin he had imagined becoming.
• The battle devastated the Strange Domain, while Hogwarts and the world outside remained unaware of it.
• Dumbledore emerged from the Bronze Door into Godric's Hollow in 1899 and recognized the scene as a recreation rather than the past.
• Ariana appeared beneath the apple tree, and Dumbledore saw his younger self raise his wand and tell her to stop bothering him.

Dumbledore faced memories of his worst choices and tempting visions of a glorious life, recognizing that the ideal future was a clumsy illusion. He approached the Bronze Door seeking a fate he still longed for, and fell into another vision in which he promised Ariana a cure at the cost of one million souls.

• Young Dumbledore killed Ariana and Aberforth, while elderly Dumbledore watched helplessly.
• A vision showed Dumbledore defeating Grindelwald and enjoying fame, family, and a peaceful life.
• Dumbledore rejected the flawless future as a temptation and shattered its illusion, exposing the celebrated version of himself as a tyrant.
• Dumbledore approached the Bronze Door to search for a hoped-for fate and fell into another vision.
• In the new vision, young Dumbledore offered Ariana a way to overcome the Obscurus in exchange for one million souls.

The Bronze Door showed Dumbledore a possible timeline in which he traded a million souls to save Ariana and became bound to Death. As the vision ended with the elderly Dumbledore trying to destroy it, Ian found the group he had been seeking.

• Young Albus agreed to Death's demand for one million souls in exchange for Ariana's life, despite Aberforth's protest.
• Over the next ten years, Albus became a Hogwarts professor and secretly searched for ways to harvest souls while Death reminded him of his debt.
• Albus collected souls from dying soldiers on a battlefield, and Grindelwald later confronted him over his killing of innocents.
• Albus killed Grindelwald, whose soul became the millionth sacrifice, and Death claimed both Ariana and Albus under the contract.
• The elderly Dumbledore watched the vision reveal Ariana's prolonged suffering and raised the Elder Wand against the Bronze Door, while Ian found the group he had been looking for.

Ian contained the fire caused by Castle in the Sky's fall, then opened the Black Robe Wizards' hidden spatial rift and confronted them. The wizards mistook him for the Raven of the Dead Kingdom, but Zeus agreed to talk after a silver-haired woman confirmed Ian carried her daughter's aura.

• Ian stopped the wildfire from spreading, though many creatures had already died and the Castle in the Sky wreckage remained dangerous.
• Ian found the Black Robe Wizards' hidden rift and forced it open with magic fused with Alohomora.
• The Black Robe Wizards recoiled from Ian, and their leader Zeus warned him not to push them too far.
• Ian denied being the Raven and claimed he was a future traveler contaminated by the Raven's corpse.
• The silver-haired woman confirmed Ian carried her daughter's aura, and Ian recognized Zeus as the future God-King.
• Zeus accepted that Ian might have come from the future, and Ian asked the wizards to explain what the Raven was.

Ian questioned Zeus about Raven and learned that the Titans created the wizards to develop alchemy weapons against it, but the wizards rebelled and imprisoned the Titans. Zeus could not help Ian find a Bronze Door to the future, so he sent him toward the Titans’ original homeland.

• Zeus explained that the Titans feared Raven and created the wizards to research alchemy as a way to oppose it.
• Zeus said the wizards built Castle in the Sky and the Metal Giant Beasts, then followed Prometheus in overthrowing and imprisoning the Titans.
• Zeus revealed that the wizards had repeatedly simulated a confrontation with Raven and failed, despite never having seen it themselves.
• Ian asked whether the wizards had forged a Bronze Door that could return him to his era, and Zeus said they had not.
• Zeus gave Ian a shell marked with directions to the Titans’ original homeland as a possible place to search for the door.