Morning reached Hogwarts before it reached me.
The castle woke in stages, like a body testing its own weight. Stone warming. Corridors stretching. Doors sighing open. Sound gathered slowly. Footsteps. A chair scraping.
The low murmur of voices carrying the shape of routine. I moved through it without announcing myself, coat closed, case at my hip, breath measured to the rhythm of the place.
I had learned long ago how to walk without being noticed. It was a skill that stayed useful.
Light slid through the high windows in pale strips. Dust hung where it always had, catching and releasing it. The castle didn't flinch at my presence. That, more than anything, told me how little it needed me.
I felt him before I saw him. The pressure in my chest came first. Then the familiar narrowing behind my eyes, the instinct to slow.
Potions classroom. Door ajar. The smell reached me in layers: bitter, sharp, clean beneath it. He stood at the centre, black sleeves rolled to the forearms, posture straight without stiffness. He didn't pace. He didn't need to. The students leaned in without realising they were doing it.
He corrected with economy. Two words. A precise adjustment of a wrist. A wand lifted and lowered. A cauldron shifted colour, obedient. The student's shoulders eased. No praise followed. None was required.
Efficient. Controlled. Alive in the way of someone who had learned how to endure.
I stayed in the shadowed stretch of corridor and watched. Not because I wanted to be seen. Because I needed to know.
He didn't look at me.
Not once.
The absence landed harder than any glare. Hostility would have meant attention. This was something else. He moved as if the space I occupied had no weight at all. As if I were already accounted for and dismissed.
My throat tightened. I adjusted my grip on the case until my fingers stopped threatening to curl.
He lived without me.
The thought settled with a quiet finality I hadn't expected. He taught. He corrected. He was respected. The room responded to him.
The castle carried on.
I turned away before the ache could sharpen into something less manageable.
Hogwarts continued its morning around me. Staircases aligned and misaligned with the lazy confidence of habit. Portraits yawned. Students rushed past with damp hair and half-fastened robes. Someone laughed. The sound skidded along the stone and disappeared.
I crossed the courtyard as the sun crested the towers. The cold bit through my coat. I welcomed it. It kept me anchored in my body instead of my head.
McGonagall found me near the Charms corridor, her stride brisk, her expression already set.
"The western stairwell," she said. "It's been slow to respond since the repairs. Your opinion."
No preamble. No welcome back. An assumption of competence.
I followed her without comment. The stair groaned underfoot, delayed, then shifted with a tired complaint. I knelt, palm to stone. The magic there felt strained, like muscle worked past its limit. Not corrupted. Mismanaged.
"They forced the alignment," I said. "It needs rest. And a different anchor. This one's been pulling against the grain."
She nodded once. That was it.
Later, I saw a maintenance crew rerouting the runes exactly as I'd indicated. No one looked at me. No one needed to. The work spoke.
A Ravenclaw held a door without meeting my eyes. A Hufflepuff murmured thanks when I steadied a desk and stopped a flickering ward from biting. A professor adjusted their spell mid-cast after watching me recalibrate a sensor charm. Small gestures. Practical. Unremarkable.
My shoulders eased by degrees. My breath deepened. Not relief. Function. Belonging that didn't ask permission.
I passed him again near the Great Hall. He stood with Flitwick, head inclined, hands clasped behind his back. Flitwick smiled.
Snape listened. He didn't smile back. He didn't look at me.
I kept walking.
The first fault announced itself before it showed. Pressure behind the eyes. A wrongness in the air, subtle but insistent. I stopped two steps before the stair turned. The magic coiled and slipped. The steps pivoted away from where they should have gone. A student stumbled, swore softly.
He was there before the echo finished. Wand out. Correction clean. The stair settled, chastened.
Our eyes met. Once.
Recognition. Technical. An unspoken acknowledgment of shared understanding.
Then he turned away.
The tapestry outside the old Starfall Siege rippled without wind an hour later. I felt it in my teeth, a low hum that set my nerves on edge. The magic tugged, testing boundaries. I lifted my wand. He was already casting, a restraint charm that soothed rather than suppressed. The threads stilled.
"Report it," he said, voice level, gaze fixed on the tapestry.
"I was going to."
"Submit it in writing."
That was all.
The silence that followed pressed harder than any rebuke. He didn't linger. I stood there a beat too long, then inclined my head and moved on. My pulse took its time settling.
Cassian Vale introduced himself that afternoon.
Ministry cut. Clean lines. Robes tailored to move rather than impress. He stood just inside my personal space without crossing it, posture open, eyes attentive in a way that felt practiced.
"You're the specialist," he said. "I've read your work."
I acknowledged it with a nod. He asked questions that skirted answers, interest precise, calibrated. He listened more than he spoke. When he smiled, it didn't reach his eyes.
I felt evaluated. Catalogued. A resource being weighed.
Across the hall, Snape passed without pause. Did not look. Did not slow.
That night, alone in a side chamber with stone walls that held the day's warmth, the memory came in fragments. Not a scene. Not a narrative. Words. Sensible voices.
Careful advice. Lily's name spoken gently, like a blade wrapped in cloth. Warnings about futures and sacrifices and inevitabilities.
I had listened.
I had left.
Not because I didn't love him.
Because I was persuaded to believe love would never choose me.
The thought lodged under my ribs and stayed there.
The castle shifted. A deeper vibration ran through the floor, subtle but unmistakable. I steadied myself, palm to the wall. The stone felt alive, aware. Somewhere nearby, a presence paused.
"You should rest," he said from the shadows.
Not kindness. Instinct.
Before I could answer, the light went wrong. The floor shuddered. Pain lanced through my chest, sharp and brief, like a warning delivered through bone. The castle remembered.
Down the corridor, he stood still, black against stone, as if he felt it too.
And I knew then that Hogwarts did not react to spells alone.
It reacted to us.