The echo of his voice—…Hermione?—lingered in her mind, a ghost of a sound that was more real than anything in the physical world. He had heard her. The shock in that single, mental whisper was a validation that sent a jolt of pure, undiluted hope through her veins.
But then, silence.
She stayed in the library for hours, her hands pressed against the folio, trying to recreate the connection. She poured every ounce of her focus, her longing, her regret into the pages. She recalled the feeling of his magic, the unique texture of it she had felt during the probe—a combination of sharp intellect and deep, intuitive empathy. She imagined that feeling flowing through the book, a homing beacon aimed directly at his heart.
The pages remained stubbornly inert. The golden light did not return. The empathic bridge, it seemed, was a fragile thing, not a permanent road. She had managed a single, desperate shout across a vast canyon, and all she had gotten back was a startled echo.
Fatigue eventually drove her home. The hope of the afternoon curdled into a gnawing anxiety. What if she had startled him? What if, upon hearing her, his first instinct was to reinforce his walls, to retreat further? The man who valued control above all else had just received an unsolicited, deeply intimate message directly into his mind. He would not have taken it lightly.
The next day was a lesson in agony. She went through the motions at the Ministry, her body present but her spirit elsewhere, straining for a sign, a feeling, an owl—anything. Every time her office door opened, her heart leapt into her throat, only to crash back down when it was a colleague with a memo or a request for a signature.
She returned to the library after work, trying again. Nothing.
On the third day, a different kind of dread set in. The silence was no longer just an absence; it was an answer. He had heard her, and he had chosen not to respond. Her beacon had been seen, and extinguished.
That evening, wrapped in a blanket on her sofa despite the warm weather, she let the despair wash over her. She had tried. She had used every tool at her disposal—logic, research, and finally, a raw, magical vulnerability she hadn't known she possessed. And it hadn't been enough. He had built his fortress too well.
A soft, almost imperceptible tapping sound came from her window.
She ignored it. It was probably just a branch, or a bird.
The tapping came again, a little more insistently.
Sighing, she untangled herself from the blanket and shuffled to the window. Perched on the sill was not an owl, but a small, paper bird, intricately folded from what looked like a page of a textbook. It tapped its delicate paper beak against the glass once more.
Her breath caught. This was not a Ministry owl. This was… something else.
She opened the window, and the paper bird fluttered inside, landing gracefully on her coffee table. It sat there, perfectly still.
With trembling fingers, she reached for it. As she picked it up, it unfolded itself in her palm, the paper smoothing out to reveal a single line of familiar, sharp script.
It wasn't an address. It wasn't an explanation.
It was a time and a place.
Midnight. The Chamber.
Her knees went weak. She sank onto the sofa, the piece of paper clutched in her hand like a lifeline. He wasn't sending a letter. He wasn't offering a conversation through safe, distant means. He was asking her to meet him at the source of it all. The place where they had fought, where they had shared a sorrow, where everything had fallen apart.
It was the most Cassian Thorne response imaginable. No words. Just a time and a place, laden with all the history and meaning they both understood.
The silent vigil was over. He had answered. And now, she had until midnight to prepare for a reckoning she both longed for and feared.