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It was already late into the night. Normally, by this hour, Harry and Ron would have been fast asleep, snoring away beneath their covers. But tonight was different — strangely and utterly different. Not even the slightest trace of drowsiness could be found between the two of them. It was as if sleep itself had been scared off.
It felt like they had each downed ten cups of the strongest coffee in existence. Four eyes stared up into the darkness, round and wide like twin pairs of glowing bulbs, fixed unblinking on the black void of the ceiling above.
"…Do you think we've been cursed?" Ron's voice drifted into the stillness, oddly weightless yet sharp against the silence. His body was so rigid it looked like someone had hit him with a full-body Petrificus Totalus. Only his eyeballs remained active, flicking restlessly about. "I feel like I'm energetic enough to attend ten History of Magic classes in a row right now!"
"I think it might've been… one of Hermione's little 'masterpieces,'" Harry said uncertainly, his voice low. "When we got up this morning, I'm pretty sure she muttered some kind of spell at us… something about… sleep evaporation?"
"Did she?" Ron frowned in confusion. "Wasn't that a spell Professor Greengrass gave us? I thought she was just trying to scare us or something…"
"No wonder she said, 'You'll find out tonight,'" Harry murmured bitterly, recalling her ominous tone. "What do we do now? We've got to do something, right?"
Without a moment's hesitation, Ron sat bolt upright in bed. The sudden, fluid movement didn't suit him at all. It was unnervingly sharp for someone usually so sluggish. "Let's play a game of wizard chess!"
And so, at precisely half past one in the morning, the Gryffindor common room played reluctant host to two abnormally wide-awake chess players, their energy levels far beyond reasonable.
The dying embers in the fireplace gave off just enough light to sketch out their faces — alert, flushed, and far too lively for this hour. The flickering shadows made their bright eyes seem almost feverish with energy.
Their chess pieces were throwing themselves into battle with dramatic flair, clashing and shouting with far more enthusiasm than necessary. In the dead of night, the shrill cries and clattering of tiny warriors sounded absurdly loud, like a miniature war being waged in plastic. Loud, intense, and filled with entirely fabricated hatred.
When Hermione stepped into the common room, cradling her newly acquired copy of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection in her arms, she was greeted by this exact scene. Her two housemates were practically glowing with vitality as they animatedly ordered around armies of chessmen, their faces flushed and full of manic delight.
A bolt of pure anger shot straight up through Hermione's spine, hitting her like a jolt of lightning to the crown of her head. Her curls even frizzed up a little, crackling faintly as if charged with static electricity.
She marched across the room in long, decisive strides, stopping just short of poking a finger right between their noses. "Is this what Professor Greengrass taught you those spells for? So the two of you could be in here at half past one in the morning, acting like a couple of Confundus-struck trolls in the middle of some ridiculous midnight chess championship?!"
Her voice was sharp with fury. "After everything you've been through, I honestly thought you'd grown up a little. But clearly, I was wrong. So this is your idea of progress? Playing wizard chess in the dead of night like a pair of sleep-deprived maniacs?"
"Er… calm down, Hermione!" Ron's face broke into a sheepish smile, a crooked mix of flattery and guilt, as he instinctively rubbed his hands together in front of him. "This is just… just a test run. Yeah! We were testing the spell's effects. Of course we were! And, you know, we were also waiting for you!"
He added this last bit in a rush, eyes widening as he tried to look as earnest as humanly possible. "After all, you're the top student in our year, the shining beacon of wisdom. Not like us, poor souls who can barely hold our wands straight. If we want to study, we don't even know where to start. We'd probably try lifting the wrong stone!"
"That's right, Hermione," Harry chimed in immediately, nodding along with great enthusiasm. He tried his best to make his green eyes look as innocent and sincere as possible. "We've done a lot of thinking, and in the vast ocean of knowledge, you're like our lifeboat… or… or at least a map, maybe? Either way, we desperately need to hear your guidance!"
As he finished, even Harry felt a wave of secondhand embarrassment from just how shameless that sounded.
"What's a lifeboat?" Ron muttered under his breath, only for Harry to shoot him a warning look that shut him up at once.
"Really?" Hermione crossed her arms, her eyes narrowing with undisguised suspicion.
"Absolutely true!" Ron thumped his chest so hard he nearly knocked the wind out of himself. His voice turned solemn, as if he were swearing an oath before Merlin's own tomb. "I swear on Headmaster Dumbledore's gleaming silver soul, if there's even a single word of a lie in what I said, then let me… no, let Scabbers die a horrible death!"
"What does Scabbers have to do with any of this?" Even Harry couldn't help but look horrified at how far Ron was willing to go with that.
"And what about you, Harry?" Hermione's cold gaze shifted toward him, sharp as a needle and just as unforgiving.
"Me?" Harry's mind kicked into overdrive, scrambling to find some slightly less outrageous foothold near the gaping pit Ron had just dug.
Then, with a flicker of inspiration, or perhaps sheer desperation, he blurted out, "I… I swear on Hagrid's good name that every word I said is true!"
And the moment the words left his mouth, Harry silently apologized in his heart to the kind, unsuspecting gamekeeper who had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.
"Hmph…" Hermione's curls frizzed up a little more, puffing out like tiny clouds of indignation. "Professor Greengrass taught us those two spells so that we'd have ample time to study. I expect both of you to understand that fully, immediately, and completely!"
She shot the two of them a stern glare, her eyes sharp with the unmistakable authority of someone who would not be questioned.
"Of course, Hermione," Harry seized the moment to change the subject before she could explode again. "So… have you already mastered both of them?"
"No!" the young witch shook her head with a serious expression, her voice firm. "I've only got the hang of the Sleep Banishment spell. The other one, Waking Requiem, involves knowledge about the soul. I need to be extremely careful with it."
"Well, I think just one spell works perfectly fine!" Ron chimed in, for once speaking without a hint of sarcasm or flattery. He actually sounded sincere… if a little hopeful.
"If the professor taught us two spells, there must be a reason for it," Hermione replied matter-of-factly, bending down to pull out a sheet of parchment tucked between the pages of her book. It was covered top to bottom in detailed notes and explanations about the spells.
"Listen up," she said with conviction, holding the parchment high. "Starting tonight, within the next seven days, we must master both spells completely!"
As soon as she finished speaking, there was a sharp swish as she drew her wand in one smooth motion and pointed it directly at Ron. "You. Sit properly."
It was like an invisible string yanked Ron by the spine. He shifted instantly, sliding over without protest and sitting as upright as he could manage, at least enough to look somewhat respectable.
And so the Gryffindor common room, still dimly lit in the hours past midnight, began to echo softly with the low murmur of voices. Three young witches and wizards sat huddled together beneath the gentle glow of the fireplace, reciting incantations in soft tones. Some were earnest, some tentative, and some carried a trace of weary resignation, as if they were whispering spells into the darkness itself, hoping for a spark of understanding to catch.
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Meanwhile, far away, high above the British Isles, Kestrel soared aimlessly through the night sky, her mood noticeably dim. She hadn't returned home for Christmas, and the Howler that came in her place had nearly blown the roof off her tent. Her grandfather's voice had boomed through the enchanted letter, scolding her in no uncertain terms for wasting her life, wandering the world like some ghost with nowhere to go.
In truth, she had secretly consulted her crystal ball about it. The prophecy had been vague, offering only the faintest hint of direction, like smoke in the wind. She had followed that whispering guidance for days, flying through clouds and winter gusts, but never quite uncovering what this so-called "job" mentioned in the vision was supposed to be… or where it was meant to lead her.
That is, until she laid eyes on the ancient castle nestled beneath a blanket of white snow.
In that moment, Kestrel was so overwhelmed with excitement she nearly forgot how to fly. Without a second thought, she steeply dived, plunging straight toward the castle grounds and finally landing beside the mist-shrouded surface of a vast, frozen lake.
There on the snowy shore stood a man in silver robes, his long beard drifting in the cold wind. He looked as though he had been waiting for her all along.
"Good evening, my child," said Dumbledore gently, his voice carrying the warmth of a hearthfire, even through the frost in the air. Behind the crescent-shaped spectacles, his blue eyes sparkled with quiet amusement. "Would you be so kind as to tell me what brings you to Hogwarts tonight?"
"You're Dumbledore?!" the Kestrel blurted out, not answering the question at all. Her eyes flew wide with delight, lighting up like twin lanterns. "Haha! So this really is Hogwarts?! That's amazing!"
"I am indeed Albus Dumbledore," the old man replied with calm patience, his tone as kind as ever. "But how did you manage to find this place? And now that you're here… would you mind telling me what your intentions are?"
"Oh, dear! That's a long story!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air, her whole face alight with the promise of mischief and excitement.
And so, under the starlit sky beside the frozen lake, with snow falling gently around them and the great castle standing watch in the distance, her story, strange and unfinished, was just about to begin.
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[Chapter End's]
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