A Week of Pages and Pawprints
Void read the way some people breathe.
He stacked the books in the order they would make sense to him—A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration beside The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1), then Magical Drafts and Potions, A History of Magic, and the thin, severe pamphlets: Hogwarts: A Charter and By-Laws, Regulations & Sanctions: A Student's Companion, An Introduction to Wizarding Law, Old Houses and Their Holdings, The Ministry and You, On Dark Lords: A Historical Survey, and a Primer on Goblin Etiquette. He did not mark pages, bend spines, or write a single note. After each chapter he simply closed his eyes for a breath, and whatever he'd read went quiet and orderly—shelved behind them, as if a door had clicked softly shut.
By the second morning Margaret had stopped pretending surprise and simply set out bigger breakfasts. Richard peered in once, found A History of Magic open to a chapter on medieval councils, and retreated with the air of a man who had accidentally walked into a university.
Luna drifted in and out, sitting cross-legged on the floor with Yue in her lap, plaiting daisies into a collar the cat tolerated with regal resignation. Yue tolerated little else. She accepted Void's hand, pressed her face into Luna's fingers, and presented her back for exactly three authoritative strokes. Anyone else was beneath notice—or within batting range.
Which is how the twins discovered their summer's new sport.
They arrived the way weather arrives: suddenly, loudly, and in duplicate, bearing Chocolate Frogs and the latest slander against de-gnoming as an actual discipline.
"You're going to read yourself into Ravenclaw," Fred said, scandalised and impressed.
"Imagine the shame," George gasped. "Mum will tell everyone we know a clever person."
Void closed a book and set it square on the stack. "Terrifying."
"Come outside," Luna suggested dreamily. "Yue wants to practise not being caught."
"That a challenge?" Fred brightened.
"It was a warning," George said, already rolling up his sleeves.
They took the garden—lawn, lilac, a hedgerow that knew secrets. Yue flowed under the bench, reappeared twelve feet away without crossing the space between, and sat with her tail wrapped perfectly round her paws. Fred extended a cautious hand. Yue tapped it once, precisely, with unsheathed but gentlemanly claws.
"Ow," he observed, delighted.
"She's established boundaries," Luna said. "She says your aura is too shouty."
"We can whisper," George promised in a stage whisper that made a rook three houses over comment rudely.
"Bribery?" Fred offered, producing a string. Yue watched it with deep disdain, swatted it into a bush, and went to find something with a brain.
The game arranged itself: the twins would attempt to pet Yue, and Yue would not be petted. She led them a merry chase—a white flicker between rose canes, up onto the low wall and down again, under the birdbath, across the stepping stones, tail flagging like a tiny, contemptuous pennant. When they closed in, she sprang vertically, landed beyond their reach, and—just once—bat-bat-batted Fred's shoelace in what might, might, have been mercy.
"Admit it," Richard called from the back step, trying not to laugh. "You're being out-manoeuvred by eight pounds of fluff."
"Eight?" George panted. "She fights like ten."
"She's letting you live," Luna said serenely.
By tea, the score stood at Yue: infinity, Weasleys: one (a single sanctioned pat while Luna presided and declared the terms). The twins called this "progress," vowed to win Yue's favour by September, and immediately tried again. Yue tapped their knuckles with unerring precision and glided back to Void's chair as if to confirm her allegiances.
Inside, Void turned pages with the same quiet cadence. He didn't mutter incantations or sketch wand diagrams; he let the shapes of spells settle where they belonged and moved on. He finished The Standard Book of Spells on the third evening, Transfiguration on the fourth, and sat with By-Laws and Regulations & Sanctions on the fifth, brows very slightly drawn, as if the rules themselves had offended his sense of design. On the sixth, he read On Dark Lords with a stillness that made Margaret bring him tea without speaking. On the seventh, he re-read the early chapters of A History of Magic and then closed the cover, unruffled—like a pond that keeps every stone it's given and shows none.
"See?" Fred said on the last afternoon, keeping one eye on Yue. "He's going to Ravenclaw. He's not even writing things down."
"Hats are very suggestible," Luna said, stroking Yue's cheek. "If you bring biscuits, they're kinder."
"Is that—" George began, then decided he didn't want to know whether bribes applied to Sorting Hats.
"If I end up in Gryffindor," Void said mildly, "you'll owe Yue an apology."
"For underestimating her training regimen?" Fred guessed.
"For assuming reading is a house," Void answered.
They considered this and, to their credit, nodded.
Yue stretched along the windowsill, white as moonlight in clover, and flicked her tail once in agreement. She permitted Void to scratch the exact spot behind her ear that meant you have acted as expected. When Margaret came to try again (gently, hopeful), Yue slipped like water off the sill and vanished under Void's chair, leaving only the faintest purr as proof she had not dissolved.
"Someday," Margaret told the chair with dignity. "I'm very patient."
"She knows," Luna assured her. "She likes patience."
That night, Void stacked the last finished book on the sill. The rooks in the oak counted the house and found the number right. Downstairs, Richard set out a biscuit tin for morning and Margaret wrote "labels" on a shopping list in a hand that tried not to tremble. In his room, Yue bounded once onto the bed, circled, and settled by his ankle like a small, certain promise.
Void lay back, eyes open to the dark a moment, and let a week of pages settle where they belonged—behind closed doors, in quiet corridors, everything in its place. Outside, the stream kept speaking in its small, exact voice. Inside, the cottage breathed, and, for now, everything was where it meant to be.
The Call
The phone rang just after tea—that bell the Wiltons had come to call "the midnight number," even in daylight.
Margaret wiped her hands and reached it first. "Wiltons' cottage," she said, then paused. "Void? It's for you."
He took the receiver. Yue, asleep on the back of the sofa, opened one eye and shut it again.
"It's time," Red said, his voice low and steady. "We need to finish preparations before term. Once you're at school, I'll be at arm's length—unless we show our hand, which we will not."
"Understood," Void said.
"Pack light and quiet: ticket, wand, ring. Leave your trunk. We'll work and you'll be back before the first. If anyone asks, you're with your grandfather. Keep your face still, your answers simpler than your thoughts, and your thoughts behind the door we practised."
Void's hand rested on the table, still as a drawn line. "All right."
"And Void—no letters from school unless you must. Use the Wiltons or the Lovegoods as cover if you need to send word. I'll be listening without being seen."
"I know," Void said. "I'll say my goodbyes."
"Do," Red said. "You've chosen good friends."
The line clicked softly to dial tone.
Richard looked up from the paper. "Everything… all right?"
"Yes," Void said. "My grandfather's coming. I may be away until school starts."
Margaret's mouth tightened and then softened, the way it did when she'd already decided to be brave. "We'll keep your room ready," she said. "And feed the cat you pretend you don't let on the table."
Yue, who was absolutely not on the table, purred.
The Stream
Luna was already on the bank when he came down through the hedgerow, knees muddy and hair full of burrs, tossing pebbles so they hopped exactly three times before sinking.
"Hello," she said. "The rooks said you were coming."
The twins barrelled out of the willow with the grace of summer thunderstorms. "Excellent," said one. "We were about to—"
"—invent a game where the loser has to let Yue pat them," finished the other.
"My grandfather's coming," Void said. "I may be away until term."
Luna didn't blink; she just nodded as if she'd been waiting to hear the sentence. "We'll see you when the station walls sing," she said. "Platforms like to hum."
The twins' grins thinned into something like a proper line. "All right," George said, for once not teasing.
"We'll keep your seat on the train," Fred added. "Middle of the carriage. Best escape routes."
"And we'll absolutely not prank you before you're sorted," George promised, then spoiled it by adding, "Much."
Void tipped his head. "If I'm in Gryffindor, you'll owe Yue an apology."
"For underestimating her training regimen," Fred said gravely.
"Yes," Void said.
Luna flicked the last pebble; it hopped four times and sank exactly where she meant it to. "We'll bring biscuits for the Hat," she said conversationally. "Just in case."
"Is that—" George began, then decided some mysteries could wait.
"September first," Fred said, sticking out his hand. "Ten forty-five at the barrier."
Void shook it. "I'll be there."
Luna stepped in and tapped her forehead lightly to his shoulder, the way she sometimes greeted Yue. "Mind like a quiet room," she murmured, and smiled.
Packing Quiet
Back at the cottage, Void set out what Red had named: ticket, wand (still wrapped), ring. He left the books on the sill, the trunk under the bed, Yue's dish full.
Margaret packed three sandwiches and didn't fuss. "If you're not back before Sunday," she said, "we'll send a blanket to the stream so Luna doesn't sit on wet grass."
Richard cleared his throat. "Grandfathers are good for stories," he said—which, in Wilton, meant be safe.
Void slid the ticket into his inner pocket. Yue followed him to the door, tail held like a small white standard. She accepted one slow stroke along the back of her head, then sprang to the windowsill as if to say she would keep the house counted.
There was a knock—one, then two, then a pause like a heartbeat. Void opened the door.
Red stood there with his coat cut to shadows and the old cane in his hand. "Ready?" he asked.
Void nodded once. "Ready."
"Then let's finish what we started," Red said, and the evening folded around them as they stepped into it—the cottage breathing behind them and the stream carrying their reflections away without a ripple.
The Outer Manor
They left Devon under a sky the colour of pewter and drove until lanes forgot names. Red did not take the obvious turnings; he took the ones hedges hid, the ones maps omitted. At the last stile he set a palm to thin air, and a fence that wasn't there decided to let them pass.
"Many have tried to find this place," Red said as they crested a low rise and the manor came into view—stone laid before memory, gables like folded wings, windows dark and watchful. "Treasure-hunters. Broken men with bright ideas. A few with Potter blood, convinced a drop was a key. Some brought sacrifices into the fields, thinking old stone would be flattered. The house allowed them to knock themselves senseless on its skirts. Those who forced their way to the threshold were… corrected. Beaten back. Expelled with their follies still clinging."
Void looked at the house and felt it looking back.
Red's cane clicked once on the flags as he led him through an arch that smelled of rain and rosemary. "I can bring you to the threshold," he said, "and down to the core. After that, only the heir proceeds. The binding isn't only for the manor." His eyes flicked to Void's face. "It will examine you. Mind, body, and soul—what's been done to you, what you've survived. It will mend what can be mended and burn out what cannot. Marks remain even when chains are broken." His voice gentled without softening. "You know the ones I mean."
"I do," Void said.
They went down. Stone cooled to older stone; the air grew dense, then very clean. At the stair's end a door waited that looked plain and was not—ironwood banded with runes that refused to be read if you weren't meant to.
Red stopped there. "From here, you go alone. The house will test and bind. Endure."
Void nodded once, set his hand to the latch, and the door admitted him as if it had been waiting.
The Core
He stepped into a cave lit by its own certainty. Water ticked somewhere deep; the air tasted of granite and something green. In the centre stood a stone bed, simple as a word. On either side, two statues watched: a man and a woman. Their features were blurred—like faces in a dream you aren't allowed to remember yet.
On the bed lay a square of parchment. He lifted it and read words that felt spoken as much as written:
Blood on the circlet. Lie back. Endure.
At the head of the slab a shallow circle had been carved into the stone, smooth with age. Void pricked his finger, let a few drops fall. The stone drank.
He lay down.
The Trials Body
The first blow was heat—clean, absolute—followed by a cold so sharp it made the heat seem merciful. His muscles seized; his lungs forgot their task; the world narrowed to pulse and pressure and the bright knife-edge between them. Then it started again.
He was broken and rebuilt in cycles, as methodical as tides and as cruel: bones softened to chalk and were packed back to density; tendons twanged and knit; joints were unseated and set true. His spine became a ladder taken apart rung by rung and screwed back in place with a better angle. Nerves rang like plucked wire—note after note—until each string was tuned or snapped and replaced.
It didn't happen once. It happened until counting lost meaning. Each time the light took him apart, it found some smaller imperfection to correct, some hairline carryover of what had been done to him—traces of draughts that dulled, restraints that taught his body to make itself small. It burned them out. It sanded scar into memory and memory into nothing that could pull him crooked later.
More than once he almost let go. Each almost was a door that would not open. Rage kept his hand on the handle. Not rage flailing—rage remembered. The cane in lamplight. The cold, precise ritual that called itself protection. The years stolen by someone else's plan. The knowledge—from a life that had only been words on a page—that this was the shape of their kindness.
No, he told the light each time it asked him to be quiet. Not like that.
When the light finally receded, what remained was not larger or louder. It was correct. The body answered itself cleanly; breath moved through undamaged halls; and the ache that remained was the good ache of a forge, not a rack. He had not been made older. He had been set right.
Mind
The second trial did not strike; it insinuated. Static rose—fine, pervasive, the kind that makes you doubt your own hearing—and with it a sweet, flattening fog. Thoughts stuck. Names slipped.
A hook slid in under memory and tugged.
He lost Luna first. Two heartbeats, and the space where she sat in his idea of the world went smooth as glass. Then the twins—laugh reduced to noise, faces to a colour. The Wiltons blurred at the edges like wet ink. It would have been so easy to accept the fog's version of quiet.
He did not fight by flailing. He fought by sorting.
He made a room—his room—faster than the fog could flood it. Walls first. A door that closed. Shelves to put things on: names; voices; the exact weight of a hand on his shoulder that meant we chose you. He placed each where it belonged and barred entry to anything that tried to come in wearing their shapes. When a false Petunia in his head offered pity, he labelled it trap and set it outside. When the fog tried to sell him a Dumbledore without a shadow, he did not argue; he catalogued: impossible—returns only as lesson.
The assault learned his method and changed tactics. It stopped tugging and started smashing. Rooms went dark; shelves buckled; the door splintered. He built a second door behind the first and a third behind that, each one plainer and stronger. He strung a line through the halls—a thin red thread that was simply I will not be kept—and when the lights went, he followed it.
Then came the loop: the same hour repeated until meaning wore thin. Over and over he woke in the orphanage chair, heavy-limbed, and watched the ritual begin. Over and over he failed to stop it. Over and over the mind tried to learn surrender.
Rage kept him sane. Not the kind that howls—the kind that refuses to call poison tea. He chose, each time, to bear witness to what had been done and to walk back to the room that was his. The loop broke on the choice, not on the effort.
After the loop, the trial tried kindness. It offered him a life without edges: no magic, no danger; warm breakfasts and a name that never caught in anyone's throat. He stood very still and let the offer put its hands on his shoulders. Under the softness he felt the absence where self should be. He stepped away.
The building began then. Not his building—the house's. It took the room he had made and braced it. Doors were not thickened; they were tempered. Shelves weren't nailed down; they were hung on brackets that flexed and did not bend. The walls learned to give and return. Influence slid off. Thoughts could move without leaving tracks. The room stayed his even when something knocked.
When the static cut, his head felt like a clear pool with a key under the surface. He knew exactly where it was and did not need to show anyone.
Soul
The last trial did not push. It unmade.
He felt himself dissolve— not into pain, but into a kind of emptiness that lied about what emptiness is. Edges lost meaning. The sense of I thinned like smoke.
It came with bargains. One voice offered safety in exchange for obedience; another offered greatness in exchange for anger that never cooled. A third promised rest if he would only set down his name.
He said no without speaking. Not once; not decisively, like a bookend. Again. Each time the dissolve took more; each time he retrieved it. The nos were not shouted. They were the quiet click of a lock set on the inside.
Then came breaking—not of plans or rooms, but of the filament that tied him to himself. It snapped. He gathered it. It snapped again. He gathered shorter and tied the ends; the knot held; the next break found the knot and failed. He lost count. He did not need the count.
He thought of the moment beneath the ritual when he had said I will not be kept and meant it so completely it left a mark on the world. He thought of the head bent over a stone bed in a cave he had chosen to enter. He thought of Luna tapping her forehead to his shoulder, of the Wiltons setting a place because they had decided there would be one, of a serpent that promised—once—safe, always.
The dissolving changed flavour. It became solvent in the hands of a careful craftsperson: lifting what shouldn't be there, leaving what must remain. Where the chain had bitten, the dent eased and was not forgotten but no longer ruled. Where old potions had left films, they burned away and air touched places that had not breathed in years.
Then came the forge again, but different: not for flesh—for will. Heat without light. Pressure without weight. He was hammered—not flatter, but truer. Each strike asked a single question: Are you still you? Each time, he answered by existing.
He broke again. He refused to be a creature that had broken. He existed harder.
At the end, the filament did not grow thicker. It grew clean. It held the way music holds a note when the room is right.
The trial withdrew.
He lay on stone that held the memory of his shape. The cave air smelled of rain on dust. The statues were no longer insults to his eyes; they were simply patient, withholding their faces until the next time was the right time.
He slid off the bed and sat a moment with his palms on the cool edge, counting nothing. His body was a good instrument, tuned. His mind was a room with a door only he could open. His soul was a line drawn once and then etched until it would not fade.
He stood.
The rage that had kept him did not own him. It banked—coals under ash, heat ready if the wind turned. What remained above it was quieter and more dangerous: a will that had been asked, again and again, to answer—and had learned how to say no without burning the house down.
He went to the door that had only ever admitted him and laid his hand on it. It knew him now. It opened.