Chapter Text
Hogwarts had always loved her children. At over one thousand years old she had seen every type of child imaginable. She had seen the brave, the kind, the loyal and even those who seemed ready to let the world burn. She loved them all the same. She watched them walk through her doors with quiet reverence and an unquenchable need to prove themselves and she watched as they grew and learned. As they became who they were meant to be.
Over the years she had learned a valuable lesson. Not all children were loved and cherished. Through her observations she had seen many children come to her broken and bleeding. They were downtrodden and felt less than their peers. These children were often overlooked, quiet as they were, and sometimes the worst would befall them, and she would lose one of her children before their time.
She would weep for them, if she could. She had no heart, as the students were her heart, and she had no mind, as the teachers were meant to be her mind. She was stone and magic and seldom was she able to exert her will and save a child. She became astute in recognizing patterns of hurt that walked through her door, and through sheer determination, she had managed to keep a few of her precious hearts from falling.
She had started with the astronomy tower. After one of her children had climbed to the top and with anguished tears taken her own life, Hogwarts had instilled her will into the boundary. No one would fall again. The wards would not allow it.
She had then noticed the same issue with the owlery. She had blocked that as well.
Her broken-hearted children had tried and succeeded again and again. Again, and again Hogwarts had blocked off and warded every possible issue in her security. She needed her hearts to function, and slowly they were destroying themselves. She was losing them.
The castle groaned and the walls shook with the intensity of her sorrow. She was stone, magic and the will of her hearts. She was alive only because the children were. Without them, she was as nothing as the wind that surrounded her. Her love for her beloved children was all that was keeping her from falling apart brick by brick.
Her breaking point came with a series of small, black-haired children.
First was Tom. She watched the teachers who adored him and the one who did not. She watched as this child grew with the resentment of a lifetime of pain. She watched as the children who scorned him turned to his council. She watched with sorrow as the child leaned towards the hatred in his heart as a comfort. She watched this child go from a lovely little boy to a horrendous young man. She watched and watched and watched.
Second was Severus. She watched him come through the doors in secondhand clothing looking bright eyed and enthusiastic. She watched the young girl next to him giving him encouragement. She watched the young boy be mercilessly bullied. She watched and watched and watched as this boy was systematically ripped apart. She watched him nearly die, her magic screaming to help. Screaming to do something. She watched him turn away from his friend and towards the arms of those who twisted his purpose. She watched and wept. She had lost another child.
Her final breaking point came in the form of the smallest child to walk through her doors. He was so impossibly small and emaciated. His face was nearly skeletal as he looked around in fear and trepidation. He was hunched in on himself, trying to keep himself as unobtrusive as possible as he made his way towards the sorting hat. She would be keeping a very close eye on this child and the bastard headmaster who had ruined the lives of so many of her children.
It wasn’t so long ago that Albus had been one of her beloved children. He had been brilliant and loved by so many. He had done so much for her and her magic, and for him to have turned into such a shame of a man was unacceptable. She wouldn’t allow Albus's machinations to harm this small, unobtrusive boy.
She was, however, a castle. Sentient as she may be, she was still just stone, mortar, and magic. She would have to find a means of transcending this issue. She would have to find a way to make her magic and her will into a being that could interact with others. She would not allow another of her precious children to be harmed, not while she was alive to prevent it.
Easier said than done, it seemed, as she watched this tiny baby go through trials he should not have ever needed to. She watched that horror of a man, Quirrell, as he tried to harm her baby. She watched him try to kill and take and steal. So, in all her wisdom, she put a stop to him.
Her small baby was trapped in a room with the two-faced beast. He was screaming and terrified. He was crying. Her baby was crying. How dare this fiend harm HER baby?
In an act of defiance and love she raised a ward, a protective bubble, around her baby, and watched with a sick satisfaction as the monster had burned under her baby’s hands. Her protection would stay with him. She would make sure of it.
Her entire being shuttered in pure relief as her baby was found and taken to the infirmary. She kept watch as he breathed. She kept watch as he opened his eyes and she continued to watch as the old man placated him and sent him back to a home that would destroy him.
She groaned and the walls pulsed with her anger as she listened to this man dismiss her baby. “I know darling.” Albus signed, placing a hand to the walls in his office. “But it’s for the greater good.”
The greater good. She scoffed. There was no such thing. There was the good he saw and the ending he wanted. That did not bode well for the world. Those were the failings of selfish men.
Her magic pulsed around the office and the windows in the office shattered inward. The entire world could fall to ruin, for all the good that would do for her babies. Her children. Her beloved hearts.
Fawkes thrilled angrily as the office was left in ruin. He had been part of Hogwarts as long as she had been alive. He, too, was angry. He, too, was feeling the wrathful magic that surrounded the castle. He would not help the old man.
“Hogwarts, my dear. There is nothing more I can do.” Albus lamented. “If there was another way, I would have figured it out by now. No…this is how it must be.”
Hogwarts reined in her magic and let out a weary sigh. As a castle there was little she could do but watch and wait and hope she could become more than she was. She would give her baby protection where she could and bide her time. Fawkes trilled in agreement as he, too, would protect her baby.
Her vow to protect was put to the test so many times over the next two years. Her baby’s second year was so hard on him. He had come into her arms in shambles. He was thin and ill. She would find him in the bathroom nearly every night vomiting. His magic was unstable and lashing out. He couldn’t protect himself.
Her magic had pulsed around Fawkes and begged him to watch out for the boy. He was so tired. So sick. She couldn’t save him. She had no arms to hold him as he was ill in the bathroom. She had no voice to speak assurances to him. He was so alone. The children had turned their backs on him for a gift that Magic had given him. They were fools.
Fawkes had taken to singing to the boy as he lay in bed sobbing. He would trill quietly, singing a calming song to bring an end to his tears.
“I’m scared.” He had admitted one night, through his sniffling. “I’m so sick…what if I die?”
Fawkes let out an indignant sort of noise before nipping at the boy’s hair. Hogwarts would not let him die. She would exhaust her magic and cease to be before allowing this child to burn out.
Not long after he had calmed the boy, Fawkes was woken to a sudden barrage of images and a sense of dread and unease surrounding him. He focused on what Hogwarts was trying to relay to him with the flashing images and caught the image of his boy and blood. Fawkes let out an unholy trill before vanishing in a plume of fire.
He reappeared next to his sobbing boy and trilled noisily, getting the boy's attention.
“Fawkes?” He hiccupped. “I-I did-didn’t know.”
Fawkes cooed calmly and allowed his boy to hug him and sob. The poor child. Barely a babe.
It was a few months later that Hogwarts woke Fawkes in a panic yet again. Their baby was in trouble and Fawkes needed to save him.
“Help him.” She screamed.
Fawkes had been assaulted with a new set of images of his boy in the chamber of secrets. He had immediately taken the sorting hat and flown away.
The boy had been hiding when he arrived and the basilisk was hunting. Fawkes would be damned if he allowed that monster to harm his boy. With little fanfare he had pecked the bastard’s eyes out.
It wasn’t long after that his boy had killed the beast, being bitten in the process. Fawkes had cried on his boy’s arm. There was absolutely no way he would let this child die.
He had flown the children to the infirmary and held a vigil over his boy. The child was magically exhausted and near death. He would not leave until his boy had woken.
Both Fawkes and Hogwarts breathed a sigh of relief when the boy had woken. Their baby was safe, for now.
Hogwarts was not happy to learn that her baby was being sent back to those beasts he lived with.
She was also very much not happy to learn that Dementors were going to be sent to patrol her grounds. She was even less happy to learn that the bully of a werewolf was coming back to teach.
She had loved him once, as she did all of her children, but he had proven to be a horrid excuse of a man.
Her baby was severely affected by the dementors, which made her hate them more.
He had almost died, falling from his broom. Her protection had kept him alive, but he had been severely injured.
Fawkes had sat at his bed and trilled a healing song, easing his aches as his body healed.
He nearly died again, at the end of the year, because of those blasted dementors. She had screamed her frustrations at Fawkes, who had gone to his boy and eased his suffering once more.
She had hoped so badly that this was the year her baby would find a new home. She had been sorely mistaken. That meddlesome fool had sent him right back to those monsters parading around as human. Her poor baby had to suffer again.
The day her baby had been sent back to his monstrous relatives, she and Fawkes had wept.
The year she was able to make a change was when her baby had turned fourteen. He had walked into her arms thin and ill as he had in second year and her heart ached for her baby.
She sent a barrage of images to Fawkes, causing the phoenix to trill sadly. His boy was hurting again. He wouldn’t let him.
They communicated mostly through images and magic, as neither could speak, and together they came to the very real conclusion that either they saved this poor boy or he would be lost to them, and that was not an option. They would come up with a plan to save their little boy, even if it killed them.