He’d been summoned here for a reason he didn’t understand. A smoldering piece of parchment had appeared on his breakfast plate that morning, bearing only three words: RUN EUtil.DLL .

As he watched, a new line corrupted itself. Piertotum Locomotor —the spell that animated the suits of armor—was being re-written. LOOP: WHILE intruder.exists: ATTACK. ELSE: SLEEP became LOOP: WHILE ANYONE.exists: ATTACK .

Professor McGonagall was standing over him, her eyes sharp. “Mr. Juniper. The gargoyle reported an ‘unauthorized emotional override.’ Care to explain?”

Leo raised his wand. He wasn't a coder. He was a wizard. But he realized now that magic had always been code—just messy, emotional, glorious code. He didn't need a keyboard. He needed a counter-spell.

He wasn't in the office anymore. He was in the foundations. Not the brick-and-mortar cellars, but the source code of Hogwarts itself. He stood on a platform of pure logic, surrounded by floating lines of magical instruction—thousands of them, written in a language that was half Ancient Runes, half binary. The air hummed with the sound of a thousand whispers, each one a spell waiting to be called.