He woke slowly, consciousness returning in layers. First came warmth—the soft embrace of a bed beneath him, sheets itching faintly against skin that felt too heavy, too foreign. Then smell, strange and sharp, medicinal, stinging his nose with bitter herbs and disinfecting charmwork. Touch crawled back in muted waves: muscles screaming protests, skin prickling alive, the sunlight cutting through half-drawn curtains to burn across his closed eyelids.
He squinted, his eyes twitching against the merciless light as irises fumbled to adjust, photons stabbing like tiny blades into tender nerves.
An unfamiliar ceiling loomed above him—vaulted, pale stone, crisscrossed with faint charm-marks he didn't recognize. The sheets, the smells, even the weight of this body—it was all wrong. His form felt both familiar and alien, like wearing a skin that wasn't meant to be his but had been stapled onto him all the same.
Then it hit him, without warning, without mercy.
A surge of memories, a torrent crashing, bursting through a locked dam. Entire reels of another life forced open, unspooled directly into his skull. Years of thoughts not his own, emotions that belonged to someone else, flooding into his consciousness until he could hardly breathe.
A life. Another life, foreign but intimately familiar—an existence in a far-off, mundane world, faceless yet rich in all its trivial details. A boy grown in suburbia. A man nameless but alive. His soul, his essence—poured in like a film reel on fast-forward, with no pause, no rewind, no control.
"What the hell….?" His throat rasped rough from disuse. "I am Nolan? No… I was? Am? Who—?" His inner thoughts tangled, fraying into incoherent threads that he struggled to clutch tight. There was no anchor, only the crushing overlap of two selves.
Before panic could take root, a voice cut sharp into his haze.
"Aah, Mr. Voss, you've regained consciousness. Good. How are you feeling?"
The familiarity startled him, Madam Pomfrey.
"I feel like a brick," he croaked, forcing the words out jaggedly. "Can't move without every inch of me hurting like hell."
She stepped closer, expression tight but not unkind, eyes clicking over his condition like she was scanning an obvious checklist. "Any pain in your head when you stay still?"
"No." His jaw clenched faintly. "Only when I try to do… well, anything. Even twitch."
"That will pass." Pomfrey's tone carried that air of authority that dared no contradiction. "You're out of immediate danger. Rest, Mr. Voss, and drink this."
She thrust a goblet toward him.
The liquid inside was vile—disgusting green-gray, gurgling faintly as smoke rose with a stench of sour molasses and mold. It was a potion designed to repel the taste buds in all the world. But Nolan, leaning back on double consciousness, knew better than to test the patience of Hogwarts' she-devil healer. He swallowed without complaint. Gagged, retched, but swallowed nonetheless.
The burn slid down his throat like boiling tar. The bitterness stayed etched onto his tongue long after.
For days—no, two weeks—time passed in careful, careful layers. Healing was never glamorous. It was monotony, repetition, slow dragging hours broken only by occasional checks from Pomfrey and endless thinking. Thinking—plotting.
He pieced the truth together. Harry Potter. Fourth year. Triwizard Tournament. The first task—the dragon. He remembered the roar, the chaos, the fear that had made him retreat, skulk away like a coward from the stadiums and the noise. He'd been walking alone when the crash came.
Debris.
The fractured tower, loose stone brought down by the dragon, slammed into him, crushed bone and blood. A freak accident. Not even noble, not even dramatic. A coward's escape turned into another coffin.
Only—not yet. Not when the necklace his mother had given him—the only legacy she had left—flared, a runic amulet humming as it sustained his life, pulse fluttering erratic through his veins until he was discovered, breathing shallow a whole day later.
He should have died. By all accounts, Nolan Voss—a background Slytherin, easy target of Malfoy's group, hospital-wing regular—should never have opened his eyes again.
But now he carried another man's mind. Or perhaps another man's ghost fused into him.
No one visited him. Not a soul. Not even out of pity.
By the time two weeks had withered away, Nolan wore fresh robes in Slytherin green and silver, the serpent stitched like quiet judgment against his chest. He walked the stone halls with light steps, a phantom traversing familiar paths with hollow ease. He knew the corridors—he had walked them a hundred times alone, head down, voice silent. The sort of boy who existed only between glares and cruel laughter, who left no ripple on the surface of Hogwarts life.
Perfect.
The common room opened under his password, walls alive with torchlight burning green below the lake's pressing waters. Shadow clung to every surface. Students crowded in cliques, but Nolan ghosted past them, invisible as always. Silence was his oldest habit.
Behind his door, he locked himself in.
For hours, the new Nolan took root fully. He sat like a man possessed, scribbling scraps into parchment, stacking notes of paranoia and strategy. Voldemort would return. History was inked already. Anyone not a main character, anyone without armor of plot, was expendable. Nolan's life was not written. This made him fragile.
But fragility was a weapon if honed with intent.
Combat magic. Defensive spells. Charms and hexes beyond the standard. Transfiguration wielded as blade and shield. Dueling that bent rules to shatter opponents. Mastery, not mediocrity. No more cowardice. No more background character.
The beating heart of his plan? The Room of Requirement.
Two weeks of quills scratching parchment created an entire blueprint—a life bent into war-preparedness.
Morning came with gray light. He cracked open the schedule. First class: Potions.
Severus Snape had no mercy. The man cut into him with caustic rage, sneering at his excuses. His sickness, his broken limbs, his hospital sentence—they mattered nothing.
Nolan felt his chest tighten, cold fury burning. But he let it numb him. He let the insult fester silent and walked away without snapping back.
Steel was hammered silent, after all.
He drifted to the library. Hogwarts' cathedral of silence, filled with mountains of parchment and worlds pressed between brittle covers. No professor could snarl him into shame here.
And that was when he saw her.
Hermione Granger.
Brilliant. Rigid. Hair wild in defiance to control, curls haloing as she hunched over a spread of tomes twice her size. Candlelight played against her cheeks. Every motion precise—quill scratching sharp, lips moving faintly as she devoured knowledge faster than most could breathe.
The brightest witch of her generation.
The old Nolan had admired her secretly, shy from the edges where he existed unseen. The new Nolan felt those feelings deepen. Not love—but recognition. She was a burning force.
And someone else had noticed her too.
Victor Krum. Durmstrang champion. His hawk gaze fell heavy across the room.
Nolan didn't flinch. He walked forward, heartbeat steady.
"Hello."
Hermione's head snapped up, brown eyes narrowing faintly. Annoyance flickered across her face—at being interrupted, at someone daring to pierce her studious shield. "Hi," she said politely, her voice steady though clipped. "Is there something I can help you with?"
Nolan exhaled slowly. "I was wondering if you could help me catch up with classes. The professors thought it best, given my… accident." His mouth twisted faintly. "I'd be grateful if you agreed."
Recognition gleamed in her glance—yes, she remembered agreeing to assist when asked by the staff. But mingled in was a shock too.
His lips curved faint, steady. "Surprised? That a Slytherin came for help? Pride isn't all there is. Resourcefulness matters too. And I'd be wasting the chance to learn from the brightest witch of her age."
Hermione blinked. The compliment caught her. An involuntary twitch of a smile grazed her lips, though she masked it under a raised brow. "Fair enough. Take a seat. Where do you want to begin?"
Her quill danced. Nolan sat across, spreading his parchment. For the first time in—forever—the library whispered not of loneliness, but of focus.
Hours breathed by. She taught sharp, crisp, patient. He absorbed like steel devouring flame. For a moment, her eyes softened as she realized he listened—truly listened—unlike his housemates.
But across the library, a shadow glared.
Victor Krum. His gaze burned with irritation, teeth clenched behind a rigid expression. His plans to approach her cracked quietly into splinters as the unwanted weight of another boy edged himself between.
A champion, undone by a quiet snake's intrusion.