Chapter 1: First contact

Bran was definitely going to get himself killed when he got home. But he was just so bored, and the Castle, for all its mystery, seemed pretty harmless. Bran knew some small folk who had climbed the wall until the end to be then immediately transported back to their starting point, and he wanted to try it too. And it was now or never, the King would soon arrive so he wouldn't be able to escape, and there were fewer soldiers, only a handful, which won't be the case when the King's army would arrive. With renewed resolve, he quickly began his ascension, and it was only when he was in the middle that a soldier found him and recognize him, quickly alerting his superior. But now it was too late for them to force him down. Bran briefly thought of the punishment which would await him, but it was the chance of a lifetime, and he would be later able to brag about it especially to Arya, he snickered a bit at the thought, his sister had wanted since the beginning to go to the Castle, but her Septa and their mother kept a firm eyes on her. She would be so jealous! He finally arrived at the top of the wall, and if the stories were right, it was at this moment he was supposed to be teleported, Bran waited with bated breath, eyes closed as he waited for the magic to happen. He was quickly disappointed as nothing happened, he opened his eyes and look at the ground where soldiers were waiting for him to be teleported back. At his position he could finally see how magnificent the Castle was, it just seemed ethereal, the architecture was nothing like he had ever seen. Should he come down? Or try to explore the Castle? He could hear a voice sounding strangely like Arya, telling him to go for it, it would be now or never as after this stunt he would be grounded for life, and if the Castle was truly lived, maybe he could find out if they were dangerous, like a real knight on a mission! He felt like one of the knight in Sansa's stories, going to an unknown castle, saving the princess from the monsters! He didn't need more to convince himself to climb down the wall on the opposite side.

Bran had succeeded in infiltrating the Castle, and was now walking in its hallway. He was nervous, but also so excited.
- " Young man, what are you doing lingering in the hallway, you should hurry up and go to class!"
Bran jumped at the voice, turning around to see who had talked.
- " First year, muggle born? Here on the wall."
He followed the instruction, and was greeted with a talking painting? He muffled a scream, was someone imprisoned in it? Will he have the same fate?
The lady in the painting squinted his eyes at him, widen in suprise, and before Bran could react or gag her (how do you even gag a portrait), she screech:
- " An intruder!"
The other painting which he had thought depicted sleeping persons, woke up at her shout and began to alert others themselves. Without waiting another second, Bran ran away, he could already hear voices approaching, and he wouldn't have the time to go back to the wall to escape, maybe he should hide himself somewhere until thing calmed down and then try to sneak outside. He run through the hallways, trying to open every door he come across until one opened, Bran swiftly jumped in and grab a chair to block the door, before collapsing against a wall. He had never felt his heart beating so fast, the adrenaline was still pumping in his blood and he could hardly calm himself, his senses had never been this heightened.
- "The boy is here!" Alerted someone
Bran jumped from his position, he had made sure that there were no painting in the room! And not every hallways had one too, how did they find him, and how did they get in? The room was dark beside a ray of light between the curtains, Bran scanned the room, searching the man. He saw a flash of silver and jumped at it, to suddenly crash the floor.
- "Nice try boy! But no human can touch a ghost!"
His view from the floor allowed the young Stark to see that the silver man was floating a few centimeter from the floor, and Bran felt fain when he realised that he could see through the floating man. Was he getting mad? Before he had more time to question his sanity, the door slammed open, crashing the chair on the wall, the man then pointed his stick on him, and a red light shot him on the chest.

Bran woke up with a startled, he was laid down on a couch in the same room with the man who had knock him down and a red haired woman.
- "Hello young man, I apologize for my friend's manner, he has the tendency to overkill."
Bran stared warily at them.
- "I am the headmistress of this school, Hariel Potter, and this is Professor Robin Mateus. And who are you?"
- "Bran Stark, my lady." She at least felt like one, the one used to be in control and obeyed.
- "Bran, why are you here? And how did you get past the wall."
They didn't feel like they wanted to harm him, the man didn't even have a sword, but he didn't need it with his magic stick, Bran thought, and if they wanted to harm him he couldn't do anything. He has no other choice than to cooperate.
- "I was curious about the Castle, so I climbed the walls."
- "Even if you succeeded to climb up the walls, it is charmed to teleport muggles away, or magical people with bad intentions. Well, there was an anti-climbing charm too, but it was damaged, but this one was working well."
- "So the boy is a wizard?"
- "Maybe, have something strange ever happened to you? Object exploding? Appearing?"
- " No, my lady", a wizard, so magic had really came back in Westeros!
- " Let's try something."
The headmistress went to one of the many shelves covering the walls, and picked a ratty hat, she put it on her head for a few moments and then come back to where he was waiting.
- " This is the Sorting hat, usually it is used to sort our students into houses, but we'll use it to determine if you are truly a wizard." Potter explained before putting the pointy hat on his head.
- " Well, well, well, Miss Potter will never fail to surprise me."
Bran flinched, the voice was resigning directly in his head.
- " Don't be scared, I don't bite, I am the sorting hat. Miss Potter know that I can detect if my wearer is magical, so here I am. I see a lot of courage and sense of adventure, you want to be a knight? Interesting, I would have thought we had time traveled but our worlds are truly different."
Worlds? And Bran had thought the day couldn't be crazier.
- " Before I forget, you should tell Hariel that the King is preparing for war." added the Sorting Hat before crying ou loud " Gryffindor!"
- " Well, now we are sure that he is magical." said Potter satisfied, taking back the hat to put it back on his shelf.
- " We should probably send you back before you parents begin to worry. The last thing we want is to be accused of kidnapping. Mateus, sent him back by the main gate.ยป
- " My Lady! Your people should talk with my father! The King has heard that magic was coming back and people are preparing for war!"
The red haired woman contemplated his words a few minutes, before sighing.
- " Mateus, I am going too. I would have prefer to have this conversation later but it seems that we have to hurry and sort this mess."

Jory Cassel was a dead man walking. He was one of the men on guard duty around the mysterious Castle, Jory had only taken his eyes for one minute from it to debrief some of his men, and the next thing he knows, Bran Stark was on the wall, crawling like a spider. He barked at one went to hurry to Winterfell and alert Lord Stark and his wife, preparing himself for his punishment for allowing the lordling to climb the walls. They couldn't force him to come down for fear to accidentally make him fall, and he could only stare from the ground, waiting for the boy to be teleported back. But life could never go easy on him, as the lordling wasn't reappearing on the ground, but had began to climb down the wall on the other side. Why did the magic fail for this one! Why not one of the soldiers? Jory ordered another man to inform his lord of the unwelcome development, before climbing up, naturally magic decided to function back and sent him back on the ground. Twenty minutes later, while he was despairing from trying to find a way to force his way in, the gate, which had remained firmly shut despite all the water hammer, had opened itself, revealing the missing lordling accompanied by a woman and two other men. The three of them were dressed in black cloak which hide their clothes, strangely enough, the red haired lady seemed to be the leader of the trio, one of her hands were on Bran's shoulder, and Jory would have thought she was a threat to her charge if the child didn't had a sheepish smile on his face, he seemed more anxious of his punishment then in terrible danger.

- "My Lord!" Jory cried out in relief. The red haired woman lift an eyebrow as if surprised by the title, sending a pointed look at the boy who only laughed sheepishly.
The surrounding soldiers readied their sword at the trio of strangers, preparing to attack at the first sign of hostility to protect their charge, the woman didn't seemed impress, a calm smile on her face.
- "Please put down your sword, we are coming in peace." Her eyes, the greenest he had ever seen and which he would have appreciated if the circumstance were different, twinkled as if they were sharing an inside joke. Strangely enough, between the muscular man on her side and the younger man with lean muscle, the woman appeared to be the leader of the trio. She may not look like anything different from the lady he had seen, beautiful and used to be respected and obeyed, but she reminded him more of his Lord. Her calm confidence seemed out of place from her youthful face, she didn't have the brash confidence of the young one, it instantly put him on his guard. She wasn't someone they wanted to antagonize and even less cross. Jory put his hand away from the handle of his sword, but let it lay close enough to be able to draw it at the first sign of danger, signing his men to put their sword back in their scabbard.
- "Thanks you. Now I believe we have something that is yours. We found him snooping around and thought it would be better to sent him back home before being accused of kidnapping." she chuckled.
- "Lord Stark will appreciate it." he responded with a strain smile.
The woman slightly pushed the boy toward the soldiers.
- "I will also take the occasion to ask for a meeting with your Lord." she smiled as if not noticing how the men tensed. "As you may have noticed, our castle has appeared in his land, and we find ourselves in the impossibility to move it away for the time being." She laughed sheepishly as if she was talking about a stubborn animal and not a magical castle. "I wish to rent this land or even buy it, and we also have some skills that I believe you may find useful. Maybe we could form a beneficial partnership for the time of our stay." - "And what type of skill, if I may ask."
The smile he saw flashing through her face was definitely mischievous, she wiped out a seemingly innocent stick and transformed a nearby rock into a dog.
Jory will deny until his last breath to have screech like a little girl at the feat of god.

I should be studying, but I wanted to post a new chapter before throwing myself in my studies. The next chapter should be at the very least next week, maybe longer. I have a slight idea of how I'll write the Stark's reaction, but if you have suggestion about the Stark or the other families, it is more than welcome as I haven't watch the show past the first episode. (shame on me, but it is too long).

famnmnable : You guessed well! In my fic Hariel is the headmistress, so she is quite older than Jon even if she will look younger because she is a witch and the master of death. The pairing is undecided, and I'm not even sure if romance will have a big place as I don't think I would be able to write it well, Jon may be a possibility but only later as Hariel have student older than him and would feel like a pedophile if she tried anything with him.

ZodiacsKlaroline: Hariel won't have dragons but I'm thinking of incorporating other magical creature which could have been in the premise of Hogwarts.

SupergodzillaSailorCosmos : Hariel is in her mid-thirties and looks like her mother. I'm trying to write her as more mature and jaded.

Thanks for thunder18's review, so glad you enjoyed it

EDIT 14/09/2018: Hey guys, I was preparing the next chapter, and I wanted to ask your opinion in the house Jojen Reed and Jon Snow should be, and well other characters if you are inspired