Older than the stones, the spires, the chapels, the columns, the pinnacles and every courtyard he'd ever known was the ground before his heels and the knots near his toes when Harry slipped from his trainers and abandoned them near the road.
Where the gravel turned to dirt and to grass sprawled below it — and like a carpet down the hillside to The Great Lake at the horizon, it caught his every footfall as he fumbled down the length. And the hoofprints of his signature led him directly to the vein of a river flowing inward and nourishing at this frame.
That at first, it was cloudy and rifled to his notice. And then, it cleared from the bottom and Harry found himself staring.
With nothing more than the collar and the buttons of his shirt, wrinkled with how he had it and rolled to his elbows; his slacks were uneven, with his right hitched higher when he slid when he fumbled before he caught himself at his left; and his tie and his spectacles were looser on his skin.
The latter laid crooked down the edge of his nose while the former was like this and loosened just so — with the knot at his heart and it dangled with every breath.
It bobbled along as he walked and was barefoot to the earth, tick-ticking on his chest as Harry took all of this in.
All of the magic interwoven and like a heartbeat with where he was, and how it caressed him to his spine with every saunter that led him here.
Because older than the stones that the Founders broke here, than the spire-like peaks jutting through the air, than the chapels of the weird and the strange and mystique, than the pinnacles obscured when before they were seen and every courtyard he'd ever known and had marked with his feet was the ancient rhythm of the grounds and it buzzed with agency.
That it tempted something wild and he pawed upon instinct — and he struck at the earth like a buck when it was autumn.
Digging farther into the soil until his soles were painted of it, until his toes were as blackened as the bark in the nearing trees, and until he could feel what he could feel from the wind — at his feet.
Every stroke of wild magic and the breath of something timeless: that was like a whisper in the castle, like a hum in the greenhouses, a song near the hut overlooking the Forbidden Forest, and now a play where he himself could be a character and hark back the conversations he had felt, but was mute because he lacked the very words to this language and the buzz on his skin.
He could stand here for a long time and unwind with where he is.