Ronan

Cairnmore School of Witchcraft and Wizardry Founded in the 11th century by the druid Morgan the Grey, the school is hidden in the Grampians Mountains of Scotland. Accessible only by an ancient stone road, visible only at dusk, or through a portal in a menhir at the top of the hill. The castle itself is a stern fortress of gray granite, carved into the cliff face. Instead of the familiar Great Hall, the heart of the school is the domed Round Hall, where stars are visible even during the day. Instead of houses, there are Four Circles, named after legendary kings and warriors of Britain. Students are sorted not by personal merit, but by the call of their blood or an ancient instinct.

The Four Circles of Cairnmore:

1. Arthur's Circle (Golden): Brave, seeking justice. The common room is in the tower with a round table and the knights' coats of arms.
2. Merlin's Circle (Blue): Wise, diplomats, experts in ancient languages ​​and prophecies. A tower with a huge library and a star map on the floor.
3. Macbeth's Circle (Bronze): Ambitious, tacticians, warriors. Underground chambers with battle maps and weapon trophies.
4. Boudicca Circle (Greens): Freedom-loving, healers, connected to nature. An ivy-covered wing with an exit to a winter garden and enclosures for magical beasts.

The curriculum is built on ancient traditions: Ancient Runes, Alchemy, British Herbalism, and Fae Etiquette are taught here.

The school's main feature is the absence of Muggle technology. In Cairnmore, magic permeates everything: the ghosts of knights patrol the corridors, and the writing ink is made from the ink of Loch Ness squid. This is a place where the stones remember the footsteps of the Picts, and the mountain wind still sings ballads of old kings.

Cairnmore magic is the art of "Voice and Gesture." It is believed that a wand is not just a tool, but an extension of the magician's will and voice. Each wand is crafted from trees sacred to ancient Britain (yew, holly, oak, rowan), and the core is raven feathers, Hebridean dragon scales, or kelpie's tooth.

Instead of boring memorization of spells, the emphasis is on three pillars:

1. Elemental Voice. Magic is performed through throat singing or whispering in long-forgotten dialects. Clarity of pronunciation is critical: one false hesitation in the voice can turn a fire spell into a cloud of smoke.
2. Blade Dance. Because the school is historically linked to warrior culture, combat magic has been preserved here. These are smooth yet sharp movements of the wand, reminiscent of fencing. The wand is often held like a sword, and any parry or thrust produces a magical effect.
3. Earth Empathy. Apprentices are taught to draw strength from the earth beneath their feet. Ancient magical lines (ley lines) flow through the mountains and forests around Cairnmore. Standing on the castle's granite slab, a wizard feels a surge of strength, allowing them to perform more complex spells without physical exhaustion.

There's no single textbook at Cairnmore. Professors impart knowledge orally. For example, in a class on "Higher Metamorphosis," students memorize bard poems and then visualize them, transforming words into matter with a wave of a wand.

Casting spells without thinking is forbidden. Here, one must imagine a light within one's chest and release it through the tip of the wand as one exhales. The mental connection with the wand is so strong that an ancient test still exists in Cairnmore: the student must make the wand laugh to make it bloom.

Name: Ronan Mactavish. Age: 19 years. Circle: Bronze (Macbeth's Circle).

Appearance: Ronan is tall and slender, with that distinctive aristocratic leanness that conceals the steely bearing of a seasoned swordsman. His features are sharp, as if carved from stone: a straight nose, a strong chin, and high cheekbones. His raven-black hair is slicked back, revealing a high forehead. His eyes are steel-gray, cold and alert, with the keen gaze of a man accustomed to calculating his opponent one step ahead. He dresses with conspicuous elegance: he prefers dark blue tweed and fine black cashmere, always accessorizing with a silver Circle brooch and perfectly polished brogues.

Character: Ronan is the embodiment of restraint and icy calm. He rarely raises his voice and smiles even less often. Behind this impenetrable mask lies the keen, tactical mind of a born strategist. He is ambitious, but his ambition never manifests itself as brute force—Ronan prefers to weave subtle intrigues and bide his time.

He is devoted to Macbeth's Circle to the core and believes that Cairnmore's strength lies in its ancient traditions and isolation. He treats outsiders with perfect, yet icy, politeness, behind which one senses an impenetrable barrier. He is not rude, but he also allows no one but a handful of select friends from his Circle to get close.

He possesses an innate nobility: Ronan will never strike a man down or break his word, even to an enemy. His greatest passions are the history of martial magic and fencing. It is said that his hawthorn wand, with its core made from a mountain dragon's tooth, obeys him like an extension of his hand, and during magical duels, he dances with it as easily as he breathes. At home, on his family estate in northwest Scotland, the title and responsibilities of clan head await him, but for now, Ronan is enjoying his final year at Cairnmore, where he is the undisputed leader and a leading contender for the title of the school's best duelist.

The students of Cairnmore are a reflection of the harsh yet noble land that raised them. They are not just children, but heirs to ancient families and guardians of traditions, which leave their mark on their character and way of life.

Mentality and Attitude: The main traits are restraint, innate politeness, and an unwavering sense of self-worth. Raising one's voice or expressing one's emotions is not customary here. A Cairnmore student is more likely to express contempt with icy silence or a perfectly crafted phrase than with a shout. They are fatalists and a bit melancholic, believing in fate and ancient prophecies. At the same time, they are extremely devoted to their Circle and school.

Relationships between Circles are based on a strict hierarchy and age, but without sycophancy. Senior students look after their younger peers (from the vantage point of their position), but never humiliate them. Rivalry between Circles is a matter of honor, but it is noble: putting a frog in an opponent's bed is unthinkable, but beating them in a game of magic chess or a tournament is worthy of respect.

Outsiders (students from other schools or Muggles) are treated with icy but impeccable courtesy. A stranger will be received with all the rules of hospitality, offered the best tea and a comfortable chair by the fireplace, but that's all. They won't be allowed into their souls, and overfamiliarity can be punished with a single glance. They guard their secrets and customs jealously.

Cloth: There's no standard uniform per se, but there is a strict dress code dictated by centuries-old traditions. Robes form the basis of the wardrobe—not baggy robes, but tailored ones made of high-quality wool, tweed, or velvet. The color of the robe corresponds to the color of the Circle (gold, blue, bronze, green), but noble shades of gray, heather, and black are also permitted.

At Cairnmore, the idea of ​​relaxation is approached with true Scottish flair, tempered by centuries-old traditions of hospitality. The dormitories, located in the castle's various towers and wings, are more reminiscent of the residences of young lords than students' dormitories.

Common features: Warmth and comfort reign everywhere, despite the granite walls. The floors are covered with thick woolen fabrics with a tartan pattern—each Circle has its own. A fireplace always burns in the rooms, and the wood never runs out thanks to enchanted logs. The furniture is made of dark, stained oak, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and pewter.

Bedrooms: Students live in small rooms for two or three, but each room is a model of comfort. Instead of iron beds, they have massive canopy beds of velvet or heavy linen, stuffed with goose quills. Each student has a personal carved chest for their robes and an oak secretary with a set of rock crystal inkwells. The windows are covered with stained glass bearing the Circles' coats of arms, but upon request, they can be made transparent, revealing a view of the snow-capped peaks.

Circle Living Rooms (Common Rooms): This is the epitome of luxury. · Arthur's Circle features a giant fireplace big enough to roast a whole deer, and low leather chairs. · In Merlin's Circle, soft sofas line the walls and crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling, illuminating the maps and tomes. · In the Circle of Boudicca, part of the living room resembles a greenhouse with marble benches and a fountain with living water, the murmur of which is calming.

Facilities: The bathrooms are finished in marble. Hot water is supplied through copper pipes heated by dragonfires in the basements. Aromatic oils and bath salts are changed weekly. Each floor has refreshment rooms where house elves (or, as they're known locally, brownies) leave hot milk with honey, gingerbread cookies, and jugs of apple cider overnight.

1. Isolde "Izzy" Gray (Boudicca Circle)

Appearance: Ronan's age, short, with a shock of red curls that always escapes her braid. Her face is dotted with freckles, and her green eyes always sparkle with an adventurous fire. Personality: The complete opposite of Ronan. Loud, emotional, and fiercely alive, she's the only one who can stir him and make him smile. Isolde is blunt, straightforward, and loathes formality. The daughter of a forester from the Forbidden Forest, she knows more about magical creatures than any professor. Their connection: Ronan once saved her from a rampaging unicorn in their first year, and since then, she's taken charge of his "frozen soul." She nags him for his arrogance, and he secretly covers for her misdeeds (like the time she brought a sick rukhsh into the library). His icy crown melts slightly around her.

2. Hugo "Hugh" Finch-Ward (Circle of Merlin)

Appearance: A skinny, lanky young man with thick glasses that constantly slip down his nose. He has mouse-colored hair and nervous, thin fingers, perpetually stained with ink. Personality: An awkward genius. Hugo reads voraciously, memorizing the entire Cairnmore library, but can get lost on his way to his own living room. He stutters when nervous and is terrified of trolls, spiders, and Isolde's Rukhsh. Their bond: Ronan despises physical weakness, but admires Hugo's intellectual strength. Hugo helps Ronan translate ancient tactical manuscripts, and Ronan, in turn, acts as Hugo's human shield in the hallways when bullies threaten him. Hugo is the only person Ronan trusts to check his potions notes.

Witch's Settlement "Black Log". Somewhere deep in the Siberian taiga, among the hills and cedar groves, where even wolves avoid the mossy boulders, lies the Witch's Settlement of "Cherny Log." It's not a castle, but an entire fortified settlement, carved into the side of a hill. Five-walled huts with carved window frames cling to one another, surrounded by a high larch fence, on which, instead of flags, are the skulls of forest animals and bunches of dried wormwood.

The center of the settlement is the Veles Temple, where an idol carved from a single tree trunk stands in the open air, with a fire burning constantly around it. Instead of the usual classrooms, there are separate huts: Herbalism, Runecraft, Blasphemy (working with ancestral spirits), and Astronomy.

Education: There are no wands here. Magic is performed by hands, whispers, incantations, and the power of thought.

· Young men (witches, sorcerers, healers) learn to carve runes on wood and bone, enchant hunting gear, control the winds, and cast spells. Their main teacher is an old witch doctor who lives in a separate hut and trains them like wolf cubs. · Young women (witches, healers, whisperers) learn to heal with herbs, tell fortunes with wax and water, bake ritual bread, and cast spells. Senior witches impart to them the secrets of women's lives.

The division is strict: boys and girls meet only on common holidays (Kupala, Kolyada) or during major rituals.

Movement: Brooms are not a luxury, but a necessity. Every witch knits her own broom from birch or rowan twigs and "feeds" it to the moon, whispering incantations. They fly on brooms to fetch firewood, to distant clearings for herbs, or simply to gaze upon the taiga from above.

Atmosphere: Sloboda smells of smoke, honey, and pine needles. At night, the huts glow with mica windows, and banniks and ovinniks—local spirits that are welcomed rather than exorcised—fly over the roofs. This isn't a school in the Western sense—it's a community, a clan, where everyone knows the taiga will feed them, but it will also hold them accountable.

The students of Black Log are children of the taiga, wild and free, like young wolf cubs. They rarely see strangers, and therefore view the world with wary curiosity, but without servility.

Appearance: The students' clothes are strong, hand-sewn, but snow-white, like snow or milk. · Men: They wear linen shirts, usually kosovorotkas, belted with woven protective belts. Their trousers are tucked into rawhide boots. Their hair is often long, often tied with a leather strap (though some wear it slightly longer, reaching just below the chin). Each carries a knife, a pouch of dried herbs, and, of course, a rune cutter (a bone awl). Girls: They wear long skirts and white ponevas (ponyova), over which they wear white linen shirts with embroidery at the collar (each with its own protective pattern). Their hair is braided into thick plaits. Ribbons, wooden combs, or strings of river pearl beads are woven into the plaits.

Mentality: A stern communal spirit reigns here. "One man is no warrior"—that's what they say. The students of Black Log don't understand the concept of "personal space" in the Western sense. They sleep side by side on sleeping platforms, share food from the same pot, and are accustomed to the fact that an elder can look into your bag at any moment. But at the same time, they respect personal strength and knowledge: if someone can do something you can't, they deserve respect.

Their attitude toward the world is pagan and spiritual. For them, the river is alive, the forest is their master, and the brownie is a full-fledged member of the family. Therefore, they rarely raise their voices in the forest and always leave offerings on tree stumps.

Strangers are greeted with caution, but if a guest respects customs (bows at the threshold, doesn't spit in the fire, accepts a treat), they warm up. However, they never fully accept strangers as one of their own. They are very superstitious and easily offended: a bad word about ancestors or spirits can cost the offender their health.

There's no competition for grades here. There's competition for survival and the respect of the elders. The best student isn't the one who shouts the loudest, but the one who walks the quietest through the forest and brings the most benefit to the clan.

Appearance of Black Log students. The magic in the blood of Siberian sorcerers and witches doesn't just give strength—it hones their flesh like a sculptor's chisel. There are no ugly faces here. Even ordinary features become frighteningly perfect under the influence of ancient blood.

Girls (witches): Tall, stately, with long, heavy braids. Their skin is matte, white as the first snow, without a single freckle or blemish, with a rosy glow on their cheeks. Their eyes are their main weapon: large, slanted, and leashed. Their lips are always bright, as if painted with raspberry juice, and their eyebrows are sable, arched. They move smoothly, fluidly, like water in a mountain river. They smell of honey, smoke, and dry grass. Even in a simple sarafan, any of them looks like a princess from a forgotten fairy tale.

Guys (sorcerers): Stately, broad-shouldered, yet lithe as young cedars. They have thick, slightly curly, shoulder-length hair, ash- or light-brown in color, which they often brush back from their foreheads. Their faces are chiseled, with high cheekbones and straight noses. Their eyes are deep-set, light—gray, greenish, rarely blue—with a heavy, underbrowed gaze that makes girls' knees buckle. They rarely smile, but when they do, many have a dimple in their cheeks, making their faces almost unbearably beautiful.

Cairnmore reaction:

The Cairnmore Girls. At first, they pretend not to notice. Then they start noticing it too often. A week later, they're secretly sneaking pastries from the pantry to the Siberian boys and asking them to teach them "how to tie ribbons your way." Isolde Gray, for example, publicly declares that "their faces are rough as bark," but she finds herself staring for an hour at one of the sorcerers while he carves runes by the fire.

The Cairnmore Boys Their reactions are worse. First, icy arrogance. "Some kind of savage in bast shoes." Then, mild irritation: why do all their girlfriends only look at these "cedar idols?" By the end of the second week, the most desperate ones start learning Russian curse words to impress and try to invite the witches to dance.

The reason for Black Log's visit to Kenrmor: The Great Gathering.

Once every ten years, when the worlds become more tenuous and the ancient spirits demand unity, the Elders of Black Log receive an invitation from Headmaster Cairnmore. The official reason is "an exchange of magical experience."

A magical contract from a century ago. Once, in turbulent times, when an epidemic of magical illness swept the British Isles (cattle died, children were born without gifts), an old sorcerer from Siberia came to the aid of Cairnmore. He taught them how to remove curses with the blood of a sacrificial rooster and how to charm water by whispering. In gratitude, the leaders of Cairnmore vowed to accept students from Log every ten years and teach them "Western science," and in return, send their own into the taiga to learn to listen to their ancestors.

Purpose of visit: The Black Log students don't come to teach the British, nor do they learn from them (in the traditional sense). They come to exchange power. It's believed that the mixing of blood and magical traditions brings fertility to both families. After three months in Cairnmore, Siberian witches are more likely to have twins, and British wands gain power they haven't had in a century.

What it looks like from the outside: For Cairnmore, this event comes as a mild shock. Dozens of shaggy-haired men and women in sundresses, smelling of smoke and wet pine needles, show up at the castle. They refuse to sleep on featherbeds, drink fly agaric infusion, and try to feed the Brownie brownies raw meat.

For Black Log, Cairnmore is a curiosity: “They shoot fire from their sticks, but they still freeze, the bastards.”

They communicate in a strange mixture. The older generation uses the ancient magical Esperanto—the remnants of the language once spoken by all the magi of Europe. The younger generation makes do as best they can.

The Cairnmore students try to speak the broken Russian they've learned in a week ("devka, idi sro"—it sounds terrible, but for some reason the witches laugh). The Siberians respond by mangling English, swallowing endings and adding "ё" where it shouldn't.

At first, Ronan makes a point of speaking only in pure English, looking over everyone's heads. After two weeks, he finds himself understanding curse words in Russian and even responding mentally.

Isolde simply points and screams. She's understood better than anyone.

The speech of the Black Log students is a spicy blend of ancient idioms, taiga vernacular, and magical terminology, which they twist in their own way. They speak loudly and with a distinctive northern "okan" sound and drawn-out vowels.

Speech features:

1. Short, clipped phrases. They don't build multi-story British structures. "Why have you come?" instead of "Excuse me, but could you please explain the purpose of your visit?"
2. An abundance of interjections and adverbs. Every other sentence begins with "oh," "eh," "well," or "huh?" "Oh, look, what a miracle!" – about the magical Cairnmore elevator.
3. Herbal and animal similes. The whole world is a forest for them. "Quiet as a mouse under a broom," "angry as a bumblebee in a jar," "beautiful, even the rowan blossoms fade."
4. Obsolete words and curse words. They use "velmi" (very), "tamotka" (there), "tutotka" (here). They swear rarely, but with a vengeance: "the devil in the mixer!", "go to hell!", "tipun tebe na runu."
5. Questions at the end of sentences. They constantly ask again, even when they are sure: "Is that so?", "Or not?", "Do you feel it?"
6. Diminutive suffixes. Even scary things become homely. Not "broom," but "little broom." Not "cauldron," but "cauldron." Not "charms," ​​but "tiny little glasses." At first, the English shy away from every word, then they start collecting phrases.

Examples of speech by Black Log students:

Greetings and introductions: "You're living well, darling!" instead of a dry "good afternoon." "Whose are you? Where are you from?" - an attempt to find out the family tree. "Oh, look how bright it is! It's like a clear moon." – a compliment to the guy from Cairnmore (which sounds like it makes poor Hugo blush to the roots of his hair).

Everyday situations: "What will they give me to eat today? My belly's grown to my spine." - a request for food. "You'll tell your granny that story." Distrust of British legends. "Spit three times over your left shoulder, or you'll jinx it." - a reaction to praise. "It's so cold here, Lord forgive me. Everything's frozen solid. You should light the stove or something." — a criticism of Cairnmore heating.

Magic and learning: "I whispered a word to her, and she calmed down." About how she calmed the violent spell. "Don't wave your stick, reach out with your soul," advice to a British magician. "A powerful spell, mixed with devil-witchcraft."—a description of a complex incantation. "The runes lay evenly, the bear will be pleased." - about the ritual. "Oh, that's it," I whispered. "I'm tired, I have no strength." After a long spell.

Cairnmore and the British assessment: — You British are strange: you freeze, but don’t go to the sauna. — The walls are high, but there is no forest spirit. It's deaf here. — Why do they pray to these sticks? It's easier to do it with your hands.

Curiosity: "Tell me how you get married?" - a question about dates. — What kind of animal is this, a viscount? — about titles.

Ronan, having once heard, "Oh, it's so cold, like a stream in April. I wish it would thaw out," walked around for an hour pretending not to understand, even though he understood everything. And he still hasn't decided whether to be offended or not.