#2

Chapter 2: First Signs

At five namedays old, Jon sat in the corner of Winterfell's library, surrounded by dusty tomes about the First Men. Old Nan had caught him there twice already, but instead of shooing him away, she'd simply smiled that knowing smile of hers.

"The old powers," she'd whispered, "they have a way of coming back when they're needed most."

Today, he was attempting to read a particularly ancient text about weirwood when Robb came bursting in, wooden sword in hand.

"Jon! Come play knights with me!"

Looking at his brother – cousin, really, though that knowledge would have to stay buried for years to come – Jon felt the familiar ache of his dual memories. In one life, he'd grown up adoring and envying Robb in equal measure. In another, he'd never had a brother at all.

"Coming," Jon said, carefully replacing the book.

They were crossing the courtyard when Theon Greyjoy appeared, that familiar smirk on his young face. "Look, it's Lord Stark's little bastard, playing at being a knight."

Jon felt the anger rise – not just from his current self, but from memories of Harry Potter being bullied by Dudley. The magic surged before he could control it. Theon's boots suddenly froze to the ground, a thin layer of ice spreading from where he stood.

"What in the seven hells?" Theon yelped, trying to free himself.

Robb laughed, thinking it just another strange occurrence of Winterfell's unpredictable weather. But Jon saw Maester Luwin watching from the balcony, his expression thoughtful.

That night, Jon dreamed of a three-eyed raven.

By his sixth nameday, Jon knew he needed a proper wand. Wandless magic was possible but draining, and he could feel how much more focused his power would be with the right tool.

The solution came to him during another of Old Nan's stories about weirwoods and heart trees. The wood would have to come from a weirwood – there was no substitute for that kind of power. But what of the core?

He spent weeks gathering materials in secret: a strand of unicorn hair from the glass gardens where the old histories said the magical creatures once roamed, a feather from a raven that seemed too clever by half, even a scale from a long-dead dragon that he'd found deep in Winterfell's crypts.

But nothing felt right until Ghost came along.

The small albino direwolf pup, found the same day and place as in his previous life, seemed to recognize him instantly. That night, as Ghost slept beside his bed, Jon carefully collected one of the pup's shed hairs.

The crafting took place in the godswood, under a full moon. Jon had spent months practicing the wandmaking spells he remembered from Ollivander's memories, adapting them to work with the old magic of the North.

He carved the weirwood branch with a dragonglass dagger, whispering spells in a mixture of Latin and the Old Tongue. When he finally inserted Ghost's hair into the carefully hollowed core, the wand pulsed with a light that matched the direwolf's red eyes.

The first spell he cast with it turned the falling snow into a flock of glowing white ravens.

"Again," seven-year-old Jon instructed, watching Arya try to balance the feather on her palm.

His little sister's face scrunched in concentration. The feather wobbled, rose an inch, then fell. "I can't do it!" she huffed.

"You can," Jon assured her. "The magic's in your blood, same as mine. Same as all the Starks."

He'd made the decision to teach Arya after catching her trying to replicate one of his secret practices. Of all his siblings, she was the most likely to keep the secret and the most in need of this kind of power.

"Show me again?" she asked, grey eyes wide with wonder.

Jon smiled and raised his wand. The feather danced through the air, transforming into a tiny wolf that ran circles around Arya's head before becoming a feather again.

In the doorway, unseen by either of them, Ned Stark watched with an unreadable expression.

"The records speak of skinchangers and greenseers," Maester Luwin said carefully, laying out ancient scrolls before eight-year-old Jon. "But what you can do... it's something else entirely."

Jon had known this conversation would come eventually. The maester was too observant not to notice the strange occurrences around him – the books that floated back to their shelves when Jon studied late at night, the training dummies that moved on their own during his secret practice sessions.

"It's magic," Jon said simply. "Not just the old powers, but something new. Or perhaps something so old it's been forgotten."

Luwin touched his maester's chain, fingers lingering on the Valyrian steel link. "Show me," he whispered.

Jon drew his wand and transformed the maester's inkwell into a glass crow that took flight around the room before returning to its original form.

"The possibilities," Luwin breathed, eyes shining. "The knowledge we could recover..."

And so began Jon's formal magical education, combining what he remembered from Hogwarts with the ancient lore of Westeros.

At nine, Jon convinced Ned to let him accompany a ranging party to the Wolfswood. His father was reluctant but eventually agreed, likely hoping the experience would temper what he saw as Jon's increasing fascination with "fairy stories."

Instead, deep in the ancient forest, Jon found exactly what he was looking for – the children of the forest.

They appeared to him while he was gathering firewood away from the camp, drawn by the magic that radiated from his wand.

"Twice-born," they called him in the Old Tongue. "Bridge-walker. Magic-changer."

They taught him things that neither of his past lives had known – how to hear the whispers of the weirwoods, how to fold space between heart trees, how to sing the songs that made the earth remember its old powers.

When he returned to Winterfell a week later, his magic had evolved once again, becoming something that was neither purely wizard nor purely of the First Men, but rather a bridge between worlds.