Warmth.
Not the warmth of fire or sunlight — something quieter than that. A warmth that went all the way down.
Kevin opened his eyes.
White. The kind of white that wasn't a colour so much as the absence of anything else — no walls, no ceiling, no horizon. He was lying on his back on a flat white surface that felt solid without feeling like anything specific.
He sat up carefully. Checked himself over. No wounds. No residual pain. His clothes were exactly what he'd been wearing in the valley.
I just took a Killing Curse to the chest.
He turned the thought over with the detachment of someone assessing a situation rather than having feelings about it. The system notification had been mid-sentence when everything went dark. Host vital signs have ceased. System initiating disconnect —
So. Was he dead?
He clenched his fist. No magic responded. His muscles moved fine, but there was nothing behind them — the deep hum of power that had been part of him since first year was simply absent.
He stood.
In the distance — or what felt like distance in a place without landmarks — he could hear something. A voice. Then two. He couldn't make out the words.
He walked toward them.
The voices resolved slowly, in fragments, the way a radio found a signal.
"Hello, I'm Cade. You must be the third-year girl from the library?"
"Hello. I'm Vivienne. And you've been following me for a week, so let's skip the introduction."
A pause.
"Fair."
Kevin stopped walking. The voices continued — older now, different in pitch and tone, a long skipping record of a life lived fast and full. Argument and reconciliation. A wedding. A small house that was apparently very cold in winter and neither of them minded. And then —
"Honey, it's bad. They've found us. Go to the usual place — now." His voice, stripped of everything except urgency.
"Cade —"
"Go."
A gap.
"Kevin, my sweet boy. Grow up well. Make good friends. Find someone who loves you for exactly what you are. Your mum and dad will always love you."
Kevin stood very still.
Then he started walking faster.
The white gave way — gradually, then all at once — to a field. The flowers were the kind that didn't exist anywhere particular, thick and fragrant and moving in a wind he couldn't feel. At the centre of the field was a house. Small, neat, the kind of house that looked like it had been imagined by someone who had always lived in drafty rented rooms.
He slowed as he approached it.
Voices inside, now. Current. Present tense.
He stood at the door for a moment.
Then knocked.
The voices cut off. Footsteps — quick, light. The door swung open.
A woman with long blonde hair, early thirties, her eyes wide and her hand flying up to cover her mouth. Behind her, a man with dark hair and a face that looked like Kevin's own reflection had been put through twenty years more of living. The same jaw. The same set to the shoulders.
All three of them stood in the doorway.
"Kevin?" Her voice came out small. Testing the word. "Is that — Kevin?"
He looked at her. At both of them.
"Dad," he said. "Mum." He stopped, tried again. "I'm home."
That broke her. The tears came all at once, and she launched forward with her arms out —
And then her hand came down on the back of his head with a sharp, decisive crack.
Kevin staggered. "What —"
"'I'm home'?!" She grabbed his ear. "You died! You come here and that's what you say?! Do you have any idea how hard it was —" She was crying and furious and hitting him rhythmically on the shoulder with the other hand. "Unfilial little brat! I carried you for nine months! Nine months!"
"Mum —"
"Don't Mum me! You're supposed to outlive me, that's the deal, that's how it works —"
"Ow — I'm not actually dead, I'm —"
She froze. Both hands stopped.
Kevin rubbed his ear, somewhat undignified. "I said I'm not actually dead. I can feel pain. So — fairly convinced I'm still here."
She turned to his father.
Cade Croft had been standing in the doorway the entire time with one hand over his mouth and his shoulders shaking. When she turned to look at him, tears streaming down her face with an expression of dawning mortification, he lost the last of his composure completely and folded in half laughing.
"Hahaha — Vivienne, you just — hahahaha —"
She straightened up. Smoothed her hair. Turned back to Kevin with a smile of such transparent, rapid reconstitution that he could see every gear clicking back into place.
"Well," she said. "You've grown. Let me look at you."
She cupped his face in both hands.
Behind her, his father was still howling.
She pivoted and kicked him neatly across the ankles. He went down. She didn't look back.