ACT5CH10 - THE JAGUAR AND THE THORN

To the Heir who dares bear the weight of our name — know this.

We were not born of Albion’s soil. We are not children of these damp, green lands. We are the mortal bearers of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, the Jaguar of Midnight, the Trial by Shadow, from lands where blood once fed the gods. 

When Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, cast down our god, we who bore His mark fled the burning pyramids, the broken temples,  the blood-washed stones of Tenochtitlan. We became the Blackened Ones, the exiled. We crossed the sea by night, guided by obsidian stars, seeking a land where Shadow might rise again.

In the wild northern isles of the Corpse of Albion, we found the right chaos. Saelwynne’s scattered frost-binders. Ros’iar’s blood-hedges. Nhoat’s infernal scribes. Lestrançe’s mirage-weavers. Borcq’s relic-dealers. Shafīq’s desert starscryers. Brísingr-Amen’s druids. We found Argyrwaith, aloof and unbindable, engrossed in silverworking, forging, and playing with Death’s shadow of the line of Peverell.

We offered them unity. We offered them structure. We offered them Binding.

Through the Pact of Hollowmere, we drew twelve Houses into covenant. Through Saelwynne’s line, we birthed the Frost. Cortez, the conquistador. We showed him the cracks, the paths to the Serpent’s priests, the weapons that could shatter their barriers. Blood flowed down rivers, and the last vestiges of the Feathered Serpent’s line were extinguished.

Thus, vengeance was served.

Through the Debt of Anchors, we shackled the destructive currents threatening to tear this land apart. Brísingr-Amen became Greengrass. Argyrwaith became Potter. The others slowly changed their names, but we Blacks remained, true to our title that is as black as the magic we practice. 

Through the Eightfold Compact, we wove our Jaguar into the very heart of their leylines. The Miraculum Operarius — the miracle engine, the lattice of enchantment that sustains the Wizengamot, the Ministry, and the Isles’ magical stability — is not a gift of Britain.

It is the chain of Tezcatlipoca.

The Jaguar’s Binding does not obey mortal vote or decree. It is a god’s shackle, a divine bargain, older than Albion’s corpse. If the heir — the true vessel — raises his voice and names betrayal, the Jaguar will rise. It will rip its chains from the hearts of the Anchored Houses. The protections braided into the Wizengamot will shatter. Vaults will collapse. Blood magics will twist. Secrets will unveil. Darkness long leashed will surge wild.

The Miraculum Operarius itself will rupture.

Wards over the Vault of Veils will weaken. The gates of the Arcana Cabana will falter. The leyline weave will convulse and snap, severing the Ministry’s own arteries. Magic will spiral toward chaos, and Albion will remember what it was to drown in shadow.

We are Black. We bind. We break. And when the Binding calls, even gods hold their breath.

….

An excerpt from the Obsidian Testament, scribed by Arcturus Sirius Black, Fourteenth Lord of the Blackened Line, Keeper of the Jaguar’s Oath.

....

....

Albus Dumbledore remembered the next few moments the same way a man would remember being caught in the center of the raging storm.

Surrounded from all sides, assaulted at every angle, his brain had shut down and reverted to the most basic levels of self-preservation and defence. It was a testament to his skill in the psychic arts that he was simultaneously able to keep track of what Harry was doing, versus what the others were dealing with, to ensure that people were unhurt.

An easier thing to say than to do.

And it all started with the moment Nott yelled at the aurors to capture Harry Potter.

Albus felt it pulse through his shoes, up his spine: the heartbeat of something vast, something ancient, something he’d never dared to confront. Details were lost amidst a swirl of imagery, with solid information washed over by a sea of blurred pictures, and in the middle of it, he could hear Harry’s chanting which beckoned the arrival of something utterly, utterly terrible.

“THE BLOODBORNE, THE PROTECTED, THE SAVED, THE CURSED.”

Ripples were tearing across the chamber, the golden lamps flickering, bursting, transfiguring into a multitude of shapes that made no sense and probably defied geometry. Shadows were twisting into serpentine forms, warping the magic around the courtroom and shattering them like glass.

Aurors raised their wands, shouting incantations —

A dozen stunners barely crossed midway before twisting and unravelling into themselves, disintegrating into motes of liquid light. Others were more successful, and got dissipated by the swirling mist of grey that wove around Harry’s cloak. Shields imploded, crumbling inward, and sent one particular Auror hurling against the wall, before dumping him to the floor.

He did not move again.

“THE MARKED, THE SWAYED, THE TOOLS AND THE FOOLS.”

The walls groaned. The wardlines over the court began cracking, glowing hot, pulsing with inverted power. Sound twisted; voices rose and fell like echoes underwater; light warped in flickering waves. The chairs rattled violently, cracking, bending, some of them even hurling away by an absent wind; and in the middle of it, a strange discordant hum was coming from everywhere and nowhere and slowly increasing in volume, as if it were the herald of something terrible.

Something was waking.

“LISTEN TO MY CALL. MY ORDER. MY COMMAND. MY PRAYER.”

The gavel in Albus’s grip splintered.  The basalt floor beneath their feet crackled and hissed, and several chairs sunk into the floor. Arabella Brown was bodily hurled off her seat as her chair developed two arms, and hurled itself to the ceiling, crashing against the glass, and escaping out.

“HARRY!” He all but yelled. “STOP THIS!”

But Harry wasn’t listening. Even if he did, he could not stop now. Not in the middle of an evocation.

“MY WILL IS THE WILL OF THE HOUSE OF BLACK. TOUJOURS PUR,”

“FOR I AM HARRY, HEIR OF SIRIUS ORION, THE LAST TRUE LORD OF BLACK.”

This wasn’t just Harry’s voice. This was Sirius Orion’s oath, Arcturus Sirius Black’s echo, the chain of vessels stretching back to the shores of Mesoamerica.

“PROTEGO MAXIMA DUO!” yelled Albus, raising shields that attempted to cover as much area as possible, to protect from the falling debris from the fractured ceiling. One of the shields latched on to the torches on the wall, and shattered like glass, somehow submerging the room in darkness. And in that darkness, a terrible, feral growl made itself known.

The jaguar was awakening.

“SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!” Mulciber was yelling.

“SOMEBODY ARREST POTTER!” yelled Nott.

It was in vain. The Aurors themselves were facing issues with their own wands, their own spells, to even try to attack Harry. The floating candles overhead transfigured themselves into snarling strands of liquid light, grabbing Nott by his left foot and lifting him upside down.

“HELP ME!” yelled the man, who had long lost his wand. “GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

“Help you?” snapped Burke. “Your ancestor wronged mine in the eighteenth century, and justice has yet to be met in an honor duel!”

“EVERYONE, GET OUT OF THIS ROOM, RIGHT NOW!” yelled Amelia, already on her feet, grabbing for her niece.

“JOSHUA!” Dumbledore yelled, noting him attempting to cast a Protego to protect himself and his daughter, only for the spell to falter midway. Whatever was happening, it was severely affecting all magic within the courtroom. Clearly, the name BINDING wasn’t just metaphorical.

Dumbledore’s eyes went wide as a large chunk of plaster fell from above and would have smashed Daphne’s head, only for a sudden flare of fire to erupt between them, and devour the debris whole.

“MISS GREENGRASS! TELL HIM TO STOP!”

“HOW?” Daphne yelled back.

“YOU ARE THE SINEW THAT LACES THESE STONES,

THE FANGS SUNK INTO THESE BONES,”

“AEGIS TOTALIS!” yelled Bones, and a dome of burnished steel-blue magic snapped into existence over half the chamber — already sizzling at the edges where unraveling spells scraped against it.
Aurors surged to her side, reinforcing, patching, layering smaller shields, like bees instinctively clustering around a hive’s cracked wall.

Albus spun on the other flank. His wand drew a vast sigil in the air, layers upon layers of glowing runes folding outward like blooming flowers —

“MORALIS AETERNUM! STABILIS PRINCIPIA!”

The chamber’s own ancient foundations, those last-gasp stabilizing charms buried in the Ministry’s bones — responded.

He could feel it, feel the reluctance, the way the spells wanted to collapse, and wanted to surrender to the larger current. 

But Albus Dumbledore was not a man who asked magic to obey. He commanded it. 

With a grunt, with a surge of will that left sparks bursting in his vision, he forced the stabilizers upright again, pinning the walls back into proper alignment — 

—for a moment.

Joshua Greengrass was at Harry’s side now, trying to reach him, trying to grab the boy’s wrist,
but the Black Family magic refused him, a sheer sheet of force pressing him back.

“THE HUNGER THEY CAGED IN OATHS,

THE BINDING THESE FOOLS ENFORCE….”

Dumbledore saw Archibald Smith snap his wand upward, shouting at two others, weaving together a silver net meant to catch the disintegrating oaths still snapping off the Wizengamot lattice. He saw three Aurors — very young, very brave — surround a shaking seam along the floor, their combined spells knitting desperately over the fissures threatening to crawl outward.

And still the chaos rolled.

Spells warped mid-cast. 

A conjured shield became a spear. 

A mending charm bloomed into a gout of flame.

A portkey flickered open — and shut — and spun — vomiting its target out five feet off the ground before slamming the man back to earth.

“JAGUAR OF MIDNIGHT, BREAKER OF FALSE THRONES.

THEY HAVE TURNED BACK ON YOU”

Dumbledore staggered for half a second, sweat sliding down his neck. He pulled again at the leyline threads, holding, knitting, binding.

His magic rippled outward in patterns few wizards alive could even name, let alone control. He carved, forced, and drove them into the larger storm, setting patches, slowing collapse, buying seconds.

“AMELIA!” he shouted again, hoarse. “CONTAIN THE NORTHERN ARCH! IF THAT BREAKS, WE LOSE THE ENTIRE DOME!”

She turned to him, pale, but resolute. “I’m on it!”

With a sweep of her wand, three Aurors followed her, raising a segmented set of counterwards, trying to contain the crumbling geometry of the ancient chamber.

From outside the sealed doors, the groan of the larger Ministry echoed. There were bursts of colored light — streaks of curses, wild magic, shattered ward-backlash — bleeding into the deeper tunnels, shaking stonework. Somewhere in the upper levels, a ceiling beam collapsed with a crash, sending faint rumbling down to where they stood.

And Harry — Harry still stood at the center, arms slightly spread, eyes blazing.

“UNBIND, TEAR, RUIN, SHATTER —”

The Wizengamot was unraveling.

Albus gritted his teeth. He poured another surge of magic into the chamber’s base, his body shuddering slightly under the strain — Merlin, he hadn’t had to channel at this scale in decades, and realized, faintly, that even he couldn’t hold it much longer.

He saw Amelia, pale as bone, her mouth opening to shout—but the air tore her voice into ribbons. He saw Daphne Greengrass, standing silently, fists clenched, mouth tight with grief and awe.

And Harry, at the center, raising his fist slowly.

DISAVOWED US THEY HAVE, SO SHALL WE TOO.”

The backlash covered anything and everything, lapped over the floor like flowing water, carpeting it with its wrath. The Wizengamot courtroom represented a warzone, as if an obscurial had just rampaged through it. Half the walls had crashed, and a quarter of the chairs blown inside out by the immense, suffocating force from the mere evocation.

All by just manifesting. One manifestation, one decision to tear past the bindings of the Miraculum Operarius had turned the entire courtroom into an ocean of chaos.

Such was the nature of the Jaguar, of Tezcatlipoca. Such was the power of the Black Family Magic if allowed to manifest. Such was the danger of this entity if allowed to let loose.

For a brief, staggering moment, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore felt something he had not truly felt in over fifty years.

Powerlessness.

He could taste the crackling ozone of ruptured wards in the back of his throat, feel the shudder of the Ministry’s bones vibrating up through his boots, hear the desperate yells of Aurors slipping into echoes as if sound itself had begun to tear at the seams.

But none of it — none of it — matched the voice that spoke out of Harry’s lips next.

“You Are, All Of You, Vermin. Cowering. Scampering. Mewling. Screaming.”

Albus’s blood ran cold. His hands clenched tighter on his wand, even as the web of stabilizing charms he’d poured into the chamber walls strained, shuddered, began to buckle. His heartbeat hammered in his ears, but his mind — sharp, old, tired but still diamond-hard — fought to catalogue what was happening.

Albus’s heart clenched painfully.

For a flicker of an instant, he remembered Grindelwald’s laughter. Voldemort’s cruel smile. His own terrified face reflected in the Mirror of Erised. 

He remembered what it was to stand in the face of something so vast, so destructive, so certain of its right to tear the world down — and to realize you were, at best, a delaying force.

Harry was the Gatekeeper. He was supposed to be the defender of the realm from the other side. And if he himself was possessed by the Family Magic, what chance did the world have?

For the first time in his life, Albus Dumbledore realized it was too much. Everything. The attack. The magic. He had seen too much.

Lost too much.

That was when he broke.

He didn’t feel scared, or angry, or upset anymore. Instead, it was like being a bystander, a member of the audience. He could see everything happened all around, as if it didn’t really involve him any longer.

His world was falling.

And there wasn’t anything he could do. He couldn’t even lift a wand to make a dramatic gesture, since they would all unravel before Binding itself.

He had been through a lot in his time. But he knew an ending when he saw it.

The god — Tezcatlipoca — had won. In his anger, in his frustration, pushed past the limits of his acceptance, Harry had turned to something that he didn’t fully understand. Albus didn’t know if it was because he underestimated the Black Family Magic, or he believed that Death should shield him, or if he was simply manipulated by the Elder Wand like it did all its wielders before….

In the end, it didn’t matter.

A hideous grin formed on his features that definitely didn’t belong to Harry Potter.

“Fragile Pests That Sought Our Skein. Where Are Your Bold Declarations Now?”

He met Harry’s gaze, and in that moment, he knew that he probably wasn’t even going to be aware of it when he died. There was no chance at all that he could even See the power infused into Harry and keep his mind intact.

He would die mad.

Only, it didn’t happen.

And Albus saw a truth even more hideous.

It didn’t take the power of Sight to see the being’s nature. It was all around him. The sheer desire for ruin and destruction, to rip and claw and tear everything apart had already manifested in the courtroom around them, and perhaps throughout the Ministry itself. This was what would happen if Tezcatlipoca remained in control. Terror, death, blood, destruction, senseless chaos — that was what it was.

Blood was its art. Screams were its music. Horror was its faith.

No mortal could stand before this. And as much as Albus hated to admit it, the truth was right in front of his eyes.

And… 

And then…

And then Daphne Greengrass stepped up.

The girl wasn’t an impressive figure under the best of circumstances. Standing in front of Harry Potter, she looked even less impressive. 

She looked small.

Dirty.

Weak.

Frightened.

She glanced at Albus, her face sick and pale. And then she turned to face the God.

“Lost,” she said. “Defeated. Mewling like vermin, like you put it. Not that it makes much of a difference, given you’re yourself little more than a parasite.”

Albus instantly raised his wand, ready to stop whatever affliction the being would inflict on her. To his surprise, it — Harry just titled his head.

“You are Marked. I can see it. Weak. Trapped. But present. A scar on your soul.”

“Yes, well, one of the Blacks in the past cursed my ancestor, and I’m dealing with it,” said Daphne unflinchingly. “Who are you, and what have you done to my fiance?”

“Who am… I?”

An intense purple light radiated out of Harry’s entire form.

“I am the Jaguar of Midnight.”

The air around him shimmered, rippling like heat over stone. Shadows folded inward, thickening, sharpening, twisting into a shape that was neither beast nor man. A low growl rumbled, not from Harry’s throat — but from around him, as if the very space he occupied was exhaling.

“The Smoking Mirror, the Shadow between worlds.”

Behind him — no, through him — a jaguar’s massive silhouette began to take form. Ethereal, black as obsidian, speckled with flickers of gold light like dying stars. Its massive head curved downward, jaws parting slowly, showing teeth that were less animal and more knife, mirror, fate.

“I am unborn of flesh. The Black wind that toppled the first great stone,

I am the jagged tooth in the night, the crack in every crown.”

A slow, amused breath stirred the air, as if unseen lungs were inhaling the tension. Harry’s body, though still standing, seemed tiny within it, cradled by the enormous spectral ribcage. His skin shimmered faintly, veins pulsing with a strange purple-gold glow, as though something ancient was coiling through his very blood.

“War, Chaos, Binding and Fate, I am the hunter that tests the strong,

The shadow that Binds Light to the Dark, and laughs at its misery,”

The voice continued speaking in that smooth, deep, terrible tone. 

Smiling with a mouth full of teeth.

I bind what must be bound, I tear what grows proud,

I was there when your world first dreamed; and I’ll be there to see it ruined.”

The massive spectre’s head turned slightly, jagged golden eyes fixing on Daphne, though Harry’s own gaze remained half-lidded, his body caught in the storm.

“And now,” the jaguar purred through Harry’s lips. “I wear this one’s blood and bones like a cloak, and through him, I will test the world once more.”

For a heartbeat, the chamber seemed to hold its breath.

Even the crackling debris and warped magic paused, the walls trembling but frozen, as if the world itself was waiting to see what would happen.

Albus, chest heaving, sweat trailing down his spine, watched Daphne with wide, stunned eyes.
This pale, narrow-shouldered girl, barely more than a slip of a young witch — was standing before the colossal shadow of the Jaguar God, her wand at her side, her voice steady.

“Give me my Harry back.”

The jaguar’s grin stretched wider, sharp as blades, hungry with amusement. “You are brave, little thorn,” it purred, voice smooth as molten gold. “You have borne my affliction since birth. You think it has strengthened you, prepared you for this.”

“You are wrong.”

The jaguar’s form rippled.

“What you think of as pain is only a shadow. Pain has a face. Allow me to show it to you. I... Am... Pain.”

Daphne staggered and fell to her knees, a hoarse gasp ripping from her throat as something twisted inside her —her fingers contorting, skin blanching, black streaks spidering up her arms as though burned from within. Her knees buckled; she fell face-first, the tips of her fingers cracked and smoked, the old curse buried in her line surging up under the jaguar’s touch, tearing, unraveling, feeding.

Albus lurched forward instinctively —

“NO—!”

—but the wave of binding force repelled him, slammed him back against the wardline, his magic scattering uselessly across the crackling dome.

But the girl — the girl didn’t give up.

Trembling, sweating, teeth clenched so hard blood bloomed at the corners of her mouth — but still defiant.

“You think—” she gasped, her voice ragged, “you think you can break me—” 

Her hands shook violently, blackening at the fingertips, the skin around her wrists burning, rotting, twisting. 

But she lifted her chin anyway.

“I have lived with this pain. I was born with it. I — I lost my mother to it.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, she tried to stand up. 

And failed.

“But you know what?”

She tried again, resting on one hand. Shaking.

“This pain also brought me Harry Potter.”

Another hand.

“So yes, I know what you are. A nihilistic thought, a terror that wants to swallow everything.”

She pushed her upper body up.

“But you can’t.”

Harry titled his head. “Can’t I?”

“No. Because Harry Potter will stop you.”

“I am currently wearing Harry Potter,” it said, grinning. 

“Maybe,” Daphne said, lurching and falling almost, but steadying herself against her knee. “But guess who came out of everything in life, this world, the Anima, and even gods like you threw at him? Harry Potter!”

Almost up now.

Harry’s face faltered, and for the briefest flicker, Albus saw something like fury in it.

“I bind what I touch,” it hissed. “I tear what dares resist!”

Daphne let out a choking, bitter laugh, half a sob, half a growl.

“He’s not yours to bind.”

She took a step forward.

“Harry is the Boy-Who-Lived. The symbol of hopes and dreams of those that fought — that fight the good fight. He is the belief that lies in the heart of every soldier that fought against the darkness. The faith they clench in their hearts as they lay down their lives to protect their loved ones. The hope that their sacrifice wouldn’t go down in vain.

Her knees trembled. 

Her shoulders shook.

And still, she took one more step forward, ruined hands curling at her sides, face twisted in agony, but her eyes locked on Harry’s.

“Death claimed him. Fate stalks him. And you.., you shackle him. But you’ll fail. For he’s Defiance. He’s Freedom. He’s the Owl, and he is what stands at the Gate and holds it close. He looks at the Abyss and tells it NO!”

Another step.

“You think you own him?” Daphne demanded fiercely. “Even if Death erased everything about him, even if he was destined to be its Vessel and bring forth the End, it didn’t stop him from trying. Because nothing in this world, not even Death, could pierce his hope for a better future. The hope to be united with his loved ones.”

Another step. She was now standing right in front of him —

“The hope that no matter how deep and impenetrable the darkness might appear, it would always tremble, it would always dissipate —”

“ — IN THE LIGHT!”

She thrust her hand and grabbed Harry’s hand.

Albus felt it.

A pulse.

A spark.

A whisper.

And then, like a volcano, something erupted from within the girl. 

The curse twisting through her arms froze.

The blackened veins shuddered — and then blazed, as if sunlight had speared through the cracks, ripping the darkness apart.

And in that light, Albus heard a phoenix sing.

His breath hitched, as Daphne’s eyes widened, and her entire body burned golden.

Radiant.

A rush of fire poured out of her, coating her limbs, knitting bone, mending flesh, weaving thorn and rose and sunlight into her very blood. The smell of charred flesh reversed, turned to blooming wildflowers, to golden wheat, to green, thrumming life.

“Begone from this body, Jaguar,” said Daphne, her voice quiet, mellow, resonant, and yet, unlike a human voice at all. Though the volume never lifted, it could be heard all across the chamber. “The Gatekeeper is not for you. Claw down into the cracks of his soul if you must, but the owl must soar free.”

The jaguar’s head snapped at her, Harry’s expression resembling a thundercloud, his lips twisting into a snarl of pure hate. “Do not dare to command me, tresspasser. You are no more powerful than your instrument.”

“Perhaps you speak the truth, but she is not my sole instrument. Just like Binding grips his body, so does Summer.” 

 Golden light swirled, blooming around Daphne’s shoulders, coiling up her arms, wrapping her cracked fingers in bands of radiant flame. For a heartbeat, a silhouette flared behind her —  a woman crowned with flowers, a cloak of sunlight on her shoulders, eyes like a summer storm, smiling with the strength of a thousand harvests.

And behind her, a spectral bison roared.

Freyja.

The goddess’s presence, flickering through Daphne, burned back the shadows curling from Tezcatlipoca, driving the curse to heel. The jaguar hissed, teeth bared, claws flexing, but the air around Harry wavered — as if the Binding itself was trembling, peeling back.

“You sought to break this girl,” Freyja’s voice rang, soft and fierce, “but you forgot — summer does not die. The seasons turn and turn.”

Daphne’s eyes blazed gold. She stepped forward, her ruined hand whole again, golden fire licking her fingertips.

“Harry,” she whispered, her own voice threading back in, layered over the goddess’s, “come home.”

And she reached out — through the flame, through the warding shadows, through the god’s grasp and pulled his hand. The golden fire surged, flooding through Harry’s arm, his chest, his heart, burning through the jaguar’s coils, slicing through the Binding like molten sunlight cutting through mist.