The Forbidden Annex was colder tonight.
Seraphine sat cross-legged on the stone floor, her wand floating above her palm, spinning slowly in the air. Around her, scraps of parchment formed a ragged circle—each a page torn from different sources, copied from cursed books and forgotten tomes. Some pulsed faintly, like they remembered being alive.
In the center of it all lay a single phrase, written in thick, black ink:
"To call the unseen, you must first bleed for its name."
She whispered it aloud, tasting each syllable.
"Vocare absconditum… per sanguinem, per veritatem."
The words stirred the air like oil dropped in water. Her wand sparked, just once.
She drew a thin dagger from her boot—silver, etched with runes—and sliced a shallow cut across her palm. The pain was sharp, cleansing.
Her blood hit the floor.
The ink writhed.
From behind her, the air shifted.
"I knew you were up to something."
Seraphine didn't flinch.
She turned slowly, eyes narrowing at the figure standing in the crawlspace entry.
"Potter."
Harry stepped forward, ducking under the low stone arch. His wand was already out. His gaze swept the room, lingering on the dagger, the parchment, and the blood between them.
"What the hell is this?"
"A library," she said calmly. "Technically."
"You broke into a sealed section."
"You make it sound so illicit."
"It is illicit."
She raised a brow. "And yet here you are."
Harry's jaw clenched. "You've been sneaking off every night. Hermione said maybe we were being paranoid—but I've seen you, Seraphine. You disappear for hours. What are you doing?"
She tilted her head. "Learning."
"Learning what?"
"Truths they don't teach in classes." She stood, brushing off her robes. "The kind of knowledge that requires… sacrifice."
Harry's grip on his wand tightened. "Dark magic?"
"Only because someone decided it was."
"That 'someone' was usually right," he said, stepping closer. "You don't get to rewrite the rules just because you don't like them."
She stared at him for a long moment, eyes unreadable.
"I'm not trying to rewrite anything," she said softly. "I'm trying to uncover what was erased."
A beat passed between them, heavy and electric.
Then the parchment nearest the blood twitched.
Both turned to look.
A shadow slithered across the page, moving like smoke beneath glass. Seraphine stepped forward, whispering quickly in a language Harry didn't recognize. The ink pooled, lifted, and coalesced in the air like a black tendril.
It struck toward Harry.
He ducked, rolled sideways, and sent a jet of blue light across the room—"Protego!"—but the spell passed through the shadow like mist. The thing writhed, hissed, and turned back toward Seraphine.
"No!" she snapped. "I called you—I own you!"
The shadow trembled, then burst apart, raining down in black droplets that sizzled against the stone.
Silence.
Seraphine lowered her wand slowly.
Harry stood, breathing hard. "What. Was that?"
"A spell gone wrong."
"That wasn't a spell—that was alive."
"Not quite."
Harry stared at her.
"You're dangerous."
She looked tired now, more than anything else. "So are you."
"I don't hurt people to chase power."
"No," she said. "You hurt people to protect what you love. I do the same. We just love different things."
The words landed harder than he expected.
She turned away, gathering her parchment.
"You should leave."
"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "You think I'm just going to let you keep playing with things like that? What happens next time? You lose control and someone dies?"
She paused.
Then turned back to him, slowly.
"I haven't lost control yet."
"That shadow—"
"—was my responsibility. Not yours. Not Dumbledore's. Mine."
Harry hesitated.
She stepped closer.
"Tell me, Potter—how many rules did you break to get into the Department of Mysteries? How many people did you endanger chasing answers you weren't ready for?"
His expression darkened.
"You don't get to talk about that."
"Oh, I think I do. You danced with death. You heard the Veil whisper. You watched people die to reach something you couldn't even touch."
Her eyes gleamed now, cold and furious.
"I've touched it."
The words fell like a stone between them.
"What?" he breathed.
"I've touched what lies beyond. The Veil doesn't just separate life from death. It stores things. Secrets. Memories. Echoes. The Key I carry is a shard of that gate—and it speaks."
Harry was silent.
Seraphine stepped back, gathering her notes.
"I don't expect you to understand. You were never meant to. But don't pretend your hands are clean."
She began walking toward the exit.
Harry blocked her path.
"You think I'll let you keep going? I'll tell Dumbledore. Snape. Hell, I'll drag you in front of the whole school if I have to."
Seraphine didn't stop.
She raised her eyes to his.
And for the first time, there was no anger. Just sadness.
"You're still playing chess, Harry. But I'm already at the bottom of the board."
She brushed past him and vanished into the corridor.
Later That Night – Gryffindor Common Room
"She's insane," Ron said.
"No," Hermione said quietly. "She's smart. And that's worse."
Harry sat by the fire, turning the events over and over in his mind.
"She said she touched the Veil."
Hermione frowned. "That's not possible. The Veil is... it's not something you can 'touch.' The Unspeakables won't even go near it."
"She has a piece of it," Harry muttered. "A shard. That's how she got into whatever's hidden under the school."
Hermione's head snapped up.
"What do you mean, under the school?"
"She found a sealed chamber. Past the dungeons. There was a basin. A ritual. She used blood magic."
Even Ron paled.
"Mate," he said, "you have to tell someone."
"I will. But I don't think anyone's going to believe me yet."
Hermione bit her lip. "We need to find proof."
Harry looked up. "Then we start with the Chamber."
Ron choked on his pumpkin juice. "That Chamber?"
"If Salazar Slytherin left one secret door in this castle," Harry said, "he might've left more. And if she's using Parseltongue to open things, she might've found one the rest of us can't."
Hermione stood. "I'll start with the library. The real one."
Ron groaned. "And I'll… keep watch? I guess?"
But Harry was already heading toward the portrait hole.
Meanwhile – The Hidden Stairwell
Seraphine walked slowly through the re-sealed stone arch, down the staircase she now knew by heart.
The blood spell had worked.
It had shown her fragments of something lost: names half-erased, voices whispering from behind the Veil. And in the center of it all—a door.
Not the kind made of wood or stone.
A threshold.
And a guardian.
She stepped into the underground chamber, torchlight flickering now in sconces she hadn't lit herself. The basin was gone.
In its place stood a mirror.
Old. Cracked.
And alive.
The surface shimmered with shadow.
She stepped closer, and a voice like wind in a tomb whispered:
"You've come far, child of silence."
She didn't answer.
"You carry a shard of what cannot be broken."
Still she waited.
"Will you open the final gate?"
She took a breath. "Not yet."
A pause.
"Why do you hesitate?"
"Because I know what it takes."
The mirror flickered, and her own reflection shifted—eyes dark as pitch, hands soaked in blood, a trail of bodies behind her.
"Then you are ready."
Seraphine turned away.
Her hand trembled slightly as she touched the pouch where the Key rested.
She whispered one final word to the mirror before leaving:
"Soon."