INTERLUDE
They did not speak again.
Not in Charms, where she slid her chair one seat over before he could sit beside her. Not in the Great Hall, where she sat with her back to him and never once turned around. In the Gryffindor common room, where she rose and left every time he walked in, her steps were quiet but final.
It was not anger. Anger had heat, had friction, had life. This was something colder. Something still and surgical. She had not cried, not once. But the silence she carried with her weighted a scream that refused to come out.
Harry didn't try to stop her. What would he say? That he miss her? That he hadn't meant for it to happen like that? That it hadn't just been the magic, not really, but also something in her eyes, in the way her voice had broken when she whispered his name?
No. None of it would help.
So he stayed quiet and let her walk away, over and over again, and in the gaps she left behind, he relived the tower. Not just the heat of her skin or the breathless cries against his mouth, not just the way her legs trembled around his shoulders when she came, but the shaking that came after. The way she had looked at him like he had touched something inside her that shouldn't have been touched, like something had broken open between her ribs and now she didn't know how to close it again.
There had been no accusations. After coming to this timeline, Harry truly felt alone once again.
And then, like some cruel echo of that vanishing, Garlick disappeared.
Her greenhouse was locked. The door was bolted from the inside. The Venustus Ivy, once blooming and feral with life, now lay wilted against the glass, its vines curled like a creature recoiling from light.
No announcement came. No professor filled in her lessons. Not even a whisper passed between the staff. It was as if she had never existed at all.
But Harry knew.
He remembered the way her voice had broken when she whispered his name. The way her body had trembled as she came undone under him, wrapped in vines, breathless and wide-eyed, saying she had never felt anything like that in her life.
She had kissed him one last time and told him he had changed something in her. Then she had left.
Now, Natty had said almost the same thing, and she was gone too.
Both of them had looked at him like they saw something they weren't supposed to.
He passed the greenhouse every day after lunch. Not out of routine, but a need. It was the last place where something had felt real. Even if that realness had been twisted, desperate, laced with magic he still didn't understand.
Once, he paused and placed his palm flat against the glass. The cold bit into his skin.
Inside, the Ivy twitched.
Not much. Just a slow curl of a vine, a ripple through its base like it had felt him too. It wasn't dead. It wasn't dormant. It was waiting.
Something had bloomed inside him during that night with her, and it had not gone quiet since.
He stood there a while, magic pulsing under his skin like a second heartbeat. It throbbed in time with something older than spells. Then he stepped back and walked away, knowing the Ivy was still moving behind him.
And something else was too.
He started noticing her in the corners again.
Anne.
Not exactly trying to get his attention. Not exactly hiding either. Just... present.
It began in the library, a glimpse over the edge of a tall stack of books. Then again, in the courtyard, where she sat with an open book, she never turned a page of it. In the stairwells, they crossed paths more than once. She didn't avoid him like Natty did. But she didn't approach, either.
Once, in the south stairwell, she brushed past him too closely. Her sleeve touched his arm. Her breath caught. Her steps faltered. She looked back but with that same storm-heavy stare, like something inside her had just shifted and she didn't know if she wanted it to stop.
Harry watched her go. Something was building behind her silence, something unfinished. She looked like she wanted to speak. Or scream. Or run toward him. But whatever it was, it stayed caged behind her lips.
And he could feel it. That hum. That pulse.
It wasn't just Natty anymore.
Whatever was leaking from him, it was spreading.
He noticed it in the smallest places, whispers that paused when he entered, footsteps that slowed when he passed. The air around him seemed to stretch, taut and brittle. He wasn't doing anything. But somehow, everything around him was starting to react like he was.
Except Poppy.
She was the only one who hadn't changed. At least not at first.
She still smiled when she saw him. Still laughed when the Kneazles clawed at her robes in the paddock or when he muttered under his breath about classmates too afraid to approach a puffskein. But her smiles lingered a little longer than they used to. Her laughter faded more slowly.
And her touch, when it came, did not retreat.
During Beast class, she stood beside him at the fence, arms brushing. She leaned a little too close as the creatures played in the sun, her shoulder against his like it belonged there.
"You're getting that wild look again," she said, eyes forward, voice easy.
He glanced at her. "What look?"
"Like you might hex the trees for looking at you wrong."
He gave a soft breath that might have been a chuckle. She smiled but didn't move away.
And for the first time in days, he didn't pull back.
He let her stay.
It was small. A single moment shared in the open air. But something inside him shifted, just enough to notice. Just enough to realize how long it had been since anyone had touched him without flinching. Without fear.
He didn't want to need it. But he did.
Nights became a refuge. Not for rest, but for control.
He had stopped sleeping properly. His body jolted at odd hours, sometimes drenched in sweat, sometimes humming with magic that refused to quiet. So he stopped pretending.
He took his wand and left the dormitory after curfew, slipping into the forgotten corners of the castle like a ghost seeking absolution. In the disused classrooms near the old Astronomy hall, he practiced until his muscles ached and his thoughts bled raw.
Expelliarmus, cast without words. Levioso, held until the chair trembled in midair. Protego Maxima, raised against imaginary spells that he flinched from anyway.
He pushed further. Tried wandless disarms. Controlled explosions. He whispered to his magic like it could be reasoned with, as if repetition might dull the edge. When that failed, he whispered to himself.
He attempted Legilimency once, focusing on the mind of a passing classmate. The backlash left him vomiting behind a tapestry, his ears ringing and his lungs fighting for air.
Still, he returned the next night. And the next.
In the Restricted Section, he moved like smoke beneath his Disillusionment charm, slipping past the gatekeeper portraits and finding texts no fifth-year should have touched.
By candlelight, he studied soul magic, emotional resonance, magical compulsion, and something older. Something no longer taught in classrooms.
One line struck him harder than any spell had.
"Magic born from emotion is never still. It either finds direction… or finds a way to escape. Into people. Into places. Or back into the witch or wizard who tried to contain it."
Harry read it again. Then again. The words sat heavy in his chest like a truth he had always known but never said aloud.
He did not sleep that night.
The next day, he disarmed a seventh-year in Defense Against the Dark Arts without speaking.
One moment, the older boy had a wand. Next, it was in Harry's hand. The room fell silent.
It reminded him, almost absurdly, of that moment when Snape had flicked Lockhart's wand away across the dueling stage. Same simplicity and finality. Except there had been laughter back then, a few gasps, some scattered applause. This time, no one made a sound.
Professor Hecat watched from the far wall, her arms folded, face unreadable. When the students turned to collect themselves, she murmured beneath her breath.
"He casts like someone who's already crossed a line."
She didn't mean for him to hear it. But he did.
He saw Fig that same afternoon in the corridor. The man said nothing, only paused mid-stride and watched as Harry levitated his bag without looking. A moment later, Fig pulled out a leather-bound journal and made a note.
Harry kept walking.
Whatever was happening to him, the professors had begun to see it too.
And it wasn't subtle anymore.
He didn't mean to react. He didn't mean to push magic outward.
But it happened again.
In the corridor outside Arithmancy, Anne brushed past him.
She didn't even touch him. Not really. Their sleeves only barely met, a passing flicker of fabric and warmth. But something in his shoulder twitched like a muscle he hadn't moved, and then came the pulse.
The torch behind him flared. Flames surged up the stone wall, casting sharp heat down the corridor in a rush. The light stretched long shadows between them.
Anne stumbled back, eyes wide. Her breath caught audibly, too loud in the sudden hush. Her chest rose and fell in quick bursts, and she didn't move. Her eyes stayed locked on him, pupils dilated, lips parted like she meant to speak but couldn't quite remember how.
Then, faintly, she let out a sound. Barely a moan, more breath than voice, but unmistakably real. Her gaze flicked briefly down his body, then returned to his face with a sharp intensity that hadn't been there before.
She didn't flee.
Harry turned slowly, first toward the flame, then toward her. The torchlight danced across her skin, catching the flush rising along her throat. Her hands trembled at her sides, not in fear.
He hadn't cast anything.
But something inside him had.
And whatever it was, she had felt it too.
And it was waking up faster than he could learn how to stop it.
The first time it happened, he barely made it to the bathroom.
Protego Maxima cracked against the empty air like a thunderclap, splitting the silence of the abandoned classroom where he'd trained each night. It didn't rebound. It didn't fail. It just hit too hard. Too fast.
By the time he dropped his wand, his vision was pulsing, and his knees were buckling. He stumbled into the Gryffindor bathroom, bracing himself against the cold marble as he vomited behind the sinks. The sickness came not from pain, but from overload.
His magic was pushing too hard. Too fast. Like it was trying to expand beyond the body that housed it.
That night, when he stared at his reflection, the boy in the mirror looked flushed and wild. His skin glowed faintly at the edges. Not visibly. Not in a way anyone else would notice. But Harry saw it. A heat beneath the surface. A quiet shimmer beneath his throat.
His breath shortened when someone stood too close. His fingers twitched during concentration. And more than once, he felt something buzzing behind his teeth, as if his mouth had begun holding back more than words.
His body was no longer his own. It was a wand now, humming with a current he didn't understand, too powerful for any one spell to contain.
And others had started noticing.
In the library, a Ravenclaw girl he barely knew paused mid-sentence while talking to a friend. Her words died in her throat as he passed, her head turning sharply like she'd just forgotten where she was. Her eyes lingered on his back.
In the Great Hall, two Hufflepuff girls dropped their forks when he walked behind them. They didn't pick them up until he was gone.
Beasts bowed. Not dramatically, but subtly. Kneazles stopped mid-grooming their fur with their tongues. Hippogriffs gave small nods of the head as he passed them on the path behind the paddock.
Even the portraits had begun to whisper.
They didn't speak directly to him. But the moment he passed, their eyes tracked him with cautious curiosity, their conversations muttering just beyond the range of his hearing. One painting of a medieval duelist crossed himself when Harry turned a corner, as if warding off a storm.
The Venustus Ivy, sealed behind the greenhouse's glass walls, twitched when he came near. It should have been dormant. It shouldn't have been able to remember him. But it still knew him. Even through the stone.
And he was beginning to understand why.
They weren't drawn to him.
They were drawn to what was inside him.
And he didn't know how to turn it off. Or if he even wanted to.
It wasn't only people.
It was magic itself that had started to answer him.
He saw it at the edge of the Forbidden Forest one evening, just before dinner. A rustle in the trees that wasn't wind. A flicker of motion just beyond the line where the light faded into dusk.
A shape stepped forward.
Not a person. A gazelle, tall and lean and still, its body lit with the dying gold of the sun. It stood perfectly still. Not grazing. Not blinking. Its eyes met his.
It didn't feel like an animal. It felt quite humane.
Harry's magic stirred. Just a pulse. Enough to tighten his chest.
Then the gazelle turned and disappeared into the trees without a sound.
He did not chase it. But he didn't forget.
The next day, in Beast class, Poppy's smile lingered a little longer than it should have. She leaned close when they fed the Thestrals. Her fingers brushed his wrist while passing him a strip of meat. She laughed softly when one of the beasts nudged her arm, but the laughter didn't reach her eyes.
There was a question there. A weight she hadn't put into words.
Something had changed.
She didn't know what. But she couldn't stay away.
That evening, when the sun was bleeding out across the hills and the sky turned the color of bruised amber, Harry sat alone behind the paddock fence, slumped and soaked with sweat. His shirt stuck to his back. His fingers twitched from spell fatigue. The grass beneath him felt damp even though it hadn't rained.
He didn't hear her approach.
Poppy sat beside him without asking.
For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then, without looking at him, she spoke.
"You look like a wounded creature pretending not to bleed."
He didn't respond right away. He let the words hang between them, caught on the dying light.
Finally, he exhaled. "You know a cure?"
"Maybe," she said softly. "Sometimes the forest shows you what you need before you know it yourself. Want to see something beautiful?"
He turned his head toward her, not answering with words.
Then he stood.
She stood too.
They walked toward the forest together, steps quiet, breath even, shadows long behind them. The wind didn't whisper.
It thrummed.
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Thanks for reading.
This fic will run for seven chapters, carrying the Hogwarts Legacy AU all the way through to Voldemort's end. Expect angst. Expect smut. Each chapter will run a minimum of 10k words.
Chapter 3 will be (Harry x Poppy x Natty), and Chapter 4 (Harry x Poppy x Natty x Anne) is already live on P*treon and Ko*fi. If you want early access, you can support the story there.
Commissions and prompts are open. You can reach me on Discord at omni_nymph.
Chapter 3 will be uploaded publicly in 2 days.