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Chapter Text

Autumn always found a way of making Hogwarts feel eternal.

The lake breathed mist like a great animal at rest, its edges blurred into the curling fog. The beeches along the shore wore their copper coats proudly, tossing leaves into the water as though daring the ripples to carry them away. The air was cool enough to sting the nose, sweet enough to promise frost, and full of the kind of golden light that made even the stones of the castle look like they were on fire.

Estelle stood ankle-deep in grass at the water’s edge, a basket looped over her arm. The stems inside rattled softly whenever she shifted her weight: knotgrass, starwort, sprigs of asphodel still damp with dew. She breathed it all in—green, earthy, sharp—and let the sound of distant laughter ride the air down from the Quidditch pitch. Someone had scored in practice; she could hear the Hufflepuff captain’s voice, triumphant and unmistakable even half a field away.

She felt, for one rare moment, unburdened. The world was bright and too large to fit inside her chest.

“Oi, Black!” James’s voice rang across the bank, a grin carried in every syllable. He came striding toward her with stones clutched in one hand, Sirius close behind, hair flying in the wind, a dare in every step. Remus trailed them with a book tucked under his arm, already exasperated and already amused, while Peter puffed along at the rear, red-cheeked but determined to keep up.

Their presence broke the stillness like a spell shattering. James immediately sent a stone skimming across the lake, counting the skips aloud as though the water might argue back. Sirius sprawled in the grass with a long-suffering sigh, announcing he was too handsome for manual labor. Remus muttered something about wasted ink and unhelpful friends while reaching for her basket of plants, examining the leaves with the care of a scholar cataloging the world. Peter hovered, anxious but eager, his eyes darting between them all.

Estelle felt the corners of her mouth tug upward. They were reckless, ridiculous, unstoppable. The kind of friends who could turn a quiet afternoon into a memory so bright it seared the air.

And yet—beneath it, like the steady hum under a song—there was something heavier. The sense that all this light had edges, that the laughter was too sharp, too golden, almost brittle. It was the feeling of glass waiting to crack.

Estelle ignored it. She had to.

The basket shifted against her hip. James shouted another challenge. Sirius rolled his eyes. Remus scribbled something in his notebook without looking up.

And for a while, it felt like nothing could touch them.

Autumn at Hogwarts had put a polish on everything: the Black Lake wearing a thin skin of silver where the wind combed it; the beeches tossing their copper hair; the castle windows burning like small hearths as the sun tipped toward evening. And so Estelle stood knee-deep in the grass on the western shore with the wicker basket hooked in the crook of her arm, the stems of knotgrass and starwort peeking over the rim like gossiping quills. A skein of geese ripped the sky to ribbons above them, the V flaring and stitching itself again. Somewhere behind, a whistle blew on the Quidditch pitch and the crowd of Gryffindors practicing whooped so loudly the sound bounced off the water and came back twice.

“Sixth year’s treating you soft,” James Potter declared, skipping a flat stone so it kissed the lake seven times, each touch making a ring ripple across the water’s surface. “If you were a proper tyrant, you’d make us carry that basket.”

“It’s already full of your opinions,” Estelle said, squinting at the ripples. “Too heavy to risk your wrists.”

Sirius threw himself backward into the grass with a theatrical groan, arms flung wide, black hair like a spill of ink on moss. “The betrayal. By my own sister. I shall never recover. Remus, remember me fondly.”

Remus did not look up from the small notebook balanced on his knee. “I’ve already written your eulogy. Twice. The third draft will require an additional footnote about your habit of dramatic fainting. Hand me the sprig of wood avens.”

Peter rooted obligingly in Estelle’s basket and produced the sprig like a magician relieved the trick had worked. “Here,” he said, and he glanced at her with the quick puppyish hope that never stopped tugging something tender in her chest. “Is that the right one?”

“It is,” Estelle said. “And Remus, if you edit his eulogy the way you edit my essays, we’ll be at the funeral until NEWTs.”

“You’re both cruel,” Sirius said, eyes closed, one hand flopped over his heart. “James, defend me.”

“I’m busy,” James said, though the corner of his mouth betrayed him. He turned, cupped his hands, and bellowed at the distant specks over the pitch, “EVANS! YOUR FOOTWORK IS POETRY!”

Across the water, a broom swerved. The distant figure of Lily—small but unmistakable—lifted a hand in salute without a backward glance, ponytail a red flag in the wind.

“You’re a menace,” Estelle said, but her mouth softened around it.

“Flirting is a noble art,” James replied. “And Quidditch is its liturgy.”

Remus’s pencil scratched. “There will be a test, Mr. Potter. Define liturgy.”

“Lily taught me,” James said. “Means the bit where she pretends she isn’t impressed.”

Sirius cracked one eye. “You are going to die. And I shall have to haunt your broom.”

“Fine by me,” James said. “We’ll get better air.”

Estelle lowered the basket to the grass and sank beside Sirius. The ground was cool through the soles of her shoes; the day smelled of leaf-rot and something clean—river rock and glass and mist. On the far bank, Hagrid’s pumpkin patch glowed like a row of captive suns. She tipped her head back and looked up, the sky so briskly blue it made her teeth ache. The wind lifted a curl in front of her ear and set it wandering.

“Tell me the list,” Remus said, not looking up.

“What list?” Estelle said.

“Your list,” he replied mildly. “The one you carry in your head with twelve items and three contingencies, each separated by ticks. Go on. I wish to admire it.”

She made a face and reached for the basket again, trimming the goldylocks she’d collected into neater sprigs. “Greenhouse three: re-stake the spiked nettles. Write Slughorn about the bibotuber surplus. Speak to Sprout about the heat charms for the Abyssinian shrivelfigs. Bribe Peeves not to pour treacle on the lion’s head again. Pretend to be sympathetic when Sirius gets detentions he deserves.”

Sirius pressed a hand to the grass as though to steady the earth. “Defamation.”

“Truth,” Estelle said.

Remus’s pencil stopped. He shaded the corner of the page with the flat of the lead, thoughtful. “Add one more.”

“What?”

“Remember to sit down by the lake the next time the light is like this,” he said softly, finally looking up to meet her eyes. “And do nothing at all.”

For a moment, the sound of the far-off practice thinned. Estelle absorbed the instruction like a charm layering over her skin. A muscle in her throat worked. “All right,” she said.

Peter had wandered to the edge where mud squished underfoot. “We could rehearse for the Halloween match,” he offered. “I mean—cheers. Chants. We could—” He faltered, cheeks coloring.

“Wormy,” Sirius said, tone gentler, rolling to his side to look at him, “tonight we rehearse being unbearably handsome and devastatingly clever. It’s much harder than cheers.”

“Speak for yourself,” James said, rocketing to his feet. “I was born rehearsed.”

“Does that mean we’re not working on the thing?” Peter asked, voice shrinking, his eyes darting briefly to Remus and away, the word thing heavy with secrecy.

“The map can survive one hour,” Remus said mildly, sliding the notebook shut with a thumb and shaking the stiffness from his fingers. “We’ve added a corridor and three quite rude annotations. The castle isn’t going anywhere.”

“Yet,” Sirius added under his breath, and Estelle would have missed it if she hadn’t known the sound of his mischief so well. But the word snagged in her: yet. She let it dissolve on her tongue like a sugar shard.

James stepped to the shoreline and performed a ridiculous bow to his own reflection, which obligingly distorted him into a princeling gone wrong. “Come on, then. If we hover along the forest edge, we can make it to the ridge before curfew. The moon won’t gumboot us. Moony is merely Moony tonight and not… Moony Moony.” He flapped a hand.

Remus’s mouth slid sideways. “Your grasp of astronomy is breathtaking.”

“Thank you,” James said.

They loitered as only sixteen-year-olds can, with the innocence of people who believe the hour will continue to lengthen if they laugh at it. Estelle gathered her basket, the handle fitting her palm like an old friend, and together they cut round the lake toward the shadow of the pitch. Their shoes thudded the wooden bridge; the boards answered like drumheads. Beneath, water shouldered shingle and hissed.

On the rise, the stands threw long ribs of shadow that striped the grass. The Hufflepuff team was just landing: faces red from the bite of air, hair wind-gnarled, the last of the day nicked into their cheeks with delight. Lily jogged past and brushed James’s shoulder with the back of her hand, very accidentally, and didn’t look back. James looked as though someone had draped him in tinsel.

“You’re insufferable,” Estelle said.

“And yet,” James said serenely, “I am invited.”

They cut under the stands where the light went green and thin. Dust floated like uncommitted thoughts. A trio of Slytherins—seventh years—leaned against a support pillar, cigarette charms floating like fireflies around their heads, one of them laughing without heat. The other two watched the world the way cats watch birds they do not need. One of them—tall, narrow, elegant—cut his eyes toward Estelle and then away with practiced boredom. She felt the look like it had edges. Sirius’s shoulder brushed hers, casual and deliberate. They didn’t speak.

“Come on,” he said, light again. “There’s a wind up by the beech walk. If we climb we can stand in it.”

They climbed. The castle loomed to their right, shouldering the sky. The beech walk let out onto the high slope where the grass kept shorter for reasons only the grass knew. The wind did indeed stand there like something with weight. Estelle leaned into it and felt it hold her. A feeling like flying without leaving ground.

“Poe?” James said, shoving his glasses higher, watching her with already-scheming eyes.

“Don’t call me that up here,” Estelle said, running a hand through her hair. “You’ll tempt me.”

“Temptation is my ministry,” Sirius announced.

“Head of Department,” Remus said.

“Promote me to Undersecretary,” James added.

“You’re all wrong,” Peter said, and the joy in him made Estelle’s throat ache again for reasons she did not and would not name.

They walked until the shreds of sun were caught only in the tops of the oaks and the castle windows had bruised into gold. Somewhere behind, the dinner bell tolled. It made the air shiver in ropes.

“Race you back,” James said, always the first to put a match to anything.

“No,” Remus said at once, but he was laughing, and so was Estelle, and so was Sirius, and then the four of them were running like every story they’d been told about themselves was true, Peter panting behind and shouting that he would hex their knees, the slope unspooling under their feet like ribbon.

They crashed into the Entrance Hall with decorum only in theory. Their laughter rang the rafters. A gargoyle narrowed its eyes. Mrs. Norris slid along a wall like a blade.

“Five points from Gryffindor for existing too loudly!” Filch announced from a pocket of shadow, materializing like mildew.

Sirius clapped a hand to his heart. “Sir, I exist at precisely the volume the ancient magic requests.”

Filch bared a mossy grin. “Ten more points for cheek.”

Remus sighed, already calculating whether they could earn them back before Sunday.

They fell into the river of students through the doors of the Great Hall and the light hit them like a tide. Candles swam under the enchanted ceiling and dripped nothing. The sky overhead was a blue that wouldn’t admit stars yet—too early, too stubborn. Platters were already steaming. The noise was a pleasant machine.

They took their usual place halfway down the Gryffindor table. Lily sat with Mary and Marlene and raised one eyebrow at James with such precision it should have been a NEWT subject. James pretended to ignore it so convincingly that even the saltcellar seemed amused. Sirius stole an extra roast potato by sleight of hand and slipped it onto Peter’s plate with a flourish that made Peter look briefly taller. Remus poured pumpkin juice so carefully the pitcher’s spout blushed.

“Look,” Peter whispered suddenly, his fork suspended as though unsure how to continue.

At the far end of the hall, a cup sat on a plinth. It was not large, not ostentatious. It had the plain loveliness of objects that do not need anyone to clap for them. For a second—no more—the light within it bared its teeth in a small blue flicker, as if a match had been struck inside its metal. Estelle blinked and it was simply a cup again: sober, empty, a clever bit of silverwork the staff had set out for some unimportant ceremony that would no doubt require speeches.

“Shiny,” James said, already uninterested because Lily had reached for the gravy and he wished to be integral to that narrative.

Sirius, though, had also seen the blue. He tilted his head, made a small noise in his throat, and then shrugged as if dismissing his own superstition. “Everything’s dramatic this week,” he said lightly, but his eyes, when they met Estelle’s, held the smallest fragile question: Did you—?

I saw, she didn’t say. She speared a carrot, felt the tines bite.

Laughter poured, a river finding its old stone bed. Prefects circulated like blood cells, ferrying injunctions and indulgences. Across at the staff table, Dumbledore spoke into McGonagall’s ear and she pursed her mouth in a way that made Estelle sit up straighter automatically. Slughorn refilled his own glass twice and told a story that grew as he drank. Hagrid wiped a forearm across his brow and a candle fled his beard in terror.

Estelle’s fork hovered in a pause no one else could hear. For just a breath the great hall hushed around the edges, as if something had inhaled sharply. There in the cup again—no, not possible; she must have imagined—the light licked blue, then was gone, as untraceable as a thought abandoned midway. The ceiling shuddered a thin veil of cloud, or perhaps only a trick of the candles.

“Eat,” Remus said softly to her, not looking, not needing to, an old kindness that never announced itself. She ate. The muscle in her throat remembered how. The map of the hall resumed.

Later, when the plates had cleared themselves politely and the pudding had braved the tables and the noise had made its nest in the beams and slept there, they drifted out again together, unwilling to go back to common room noise yet, unwilling to admit they ever did anything as tedious as homework. A corridor peeled off where torches dreamed. James flicked his wand and a tiny golden snitch bobbed into being, harmless, domestic, like a pet they could love only for ten minutes before it evaporated. They watched it orbit Sirius’s head as if he had his own universe.

“I want to try something,” Estelle said suddenly, the impulse bubbling up so quickly it startled her.

“Oh?” Sirius said, grin immediate because he trusted her recklessness like he trusted the ground.

She looked down the hallway—empty. The suits of armor along the wall went politely deaf. Her bones loosened and then tightened in the old, sweet pattern, and then she wasn’t walking at all; her feet were other feet, her balance a different mathematics. The corridor lifted into a cathedral of air. She dropped—cleanly, perfectly—into the glossy certainty of wings.

The raven skimmed the line of torches, a black scrap of night torn and flying. Air slid under her, the physics of it an old hymn. Her eyes—that sharp, coin-cut clarity—caught everything: the seam in the flagstone, the scuff on Remus’s shoe, the way Peter’s head tipped back to follow her with something that wasn’t envy. Sirius laughed with something like relief. James clapped once, soft, a cheer scaled for corridors.

She arrowed back and alighted on Remus’s shoulder, claws tender on wool. He smelled of paper and mint and a foreign, faraway rain. He lifted a hand to her breastbone and she felt the little double drum of both their hearts.

“Show-off,” he murmured, and she felt the compliment more than heard it.

She let the change take her again, the drawstring tug, the old arranging of bones, and there she was on two legs with hair mussed beyond dignity. Sirius patted the top of her head to punish the chaos and she swatted him away.

“Your turn, Padfoot,” James said, gleaming.

Sirius went in a grin and came out a dog, black as an oath someone would keep even if it hurt. He shook himself so hard his ears smacked, then set off with his long, joyful lollop down the corridor. The snitch bobbed and he sneezed at it. Peter laughed so hard he had to put a hand on the wall. Remus leaned against the same wall but for different reasons.

“Careful,” Estelle said, even as she was grinning. “Filch will think a pack of strays broke in.”

“Let him,” James said, already trotting after the dog, and for a snatched handful of minutes the corridor belonged only to them: a stag in the thought, a dog at their heels, a raven in their ribs, a map unrolling underfoot that said: we know the way.

On the landing above, a window remembered the lake and let some of it in. Estelle paused there—just a pulse-beat—and through the glass she swore she saw, far over the pitch, a crowd that could not be there yet. Torches ringed a bowl of earth. Flags flamed every color a throat could carry. The invisible shout of it struck the window and made the old lead hum. She blinked and it was only night, and the small, moving, ordinary stars, and the lake lucid as a closed eye.

“What?” Remus asked, following the hitch in her breath.

“Nothing,” she said, too quickly, and then more slowly, because she would not teach herself to lie to him, “A feeling. Like a door opening. Or a cup filling.”

He studied her face a second longer than comfort would usually allow and then nodded once, accepting both the truth and the part she hadn’t found yet.

They wound up the tower steps for no reason except that height felt like proof you could choose your own direction. The Astronomy Tower tasted of stone. Wind threaded the gaps in the parapet. The night lay down at their feet as if asking to be petted. From here the Quidditch hoops made three small moons. The air had a new edge to it, iron and apple peel.

“Promise me we will always climb towers for no good reason,” James said into the dark.

“Yes,” Estelle said.

“Promise we’ll be ridiculous at fifty,” Sirius said, human again and wiping his hands on his trousers as if humiliation could stain.

“Yes,” Estelle said.

“Promise we’ll never stop finding doors that weren’t there,” Peter said, voice small but steadfast.

“Yes,” Estelle said, even as something in her bristled like a horse feeling a corner it could not see around.

Remus did not ask a promise. He slid his hand along the parapet stones until his fingers found hers and rested there, as if to say: do not promise the future anything except that you will meet it alive.

Below them, the Great Hall windows paled at the edges as though some invisible light had carried a secret through the bones of the castle. If Estelle looked with the corner of her eye, the cup on its plinth seemed to throw off, very faintly, very briefly, a feather of blue. When she looked directly, there was nothing to see but stone and glass behaving perfectly.

“Bed,” Remus said at last, gentle but wielding authority like someone who had learned to be kind with a backbone.

They took the stairs down at a pace that admitted the day had been good enough not to be rushed past. In the corridor outside the common room, somebody had chalked a perfect circle on the flagstones and written LUCK inside it; someone else had smudged it with a shoe, proving a point to no one who needed proving. The Fat Lady had wrapped herself in a fox-fur and insisted on a song before she’d open, so they sang; Sirius sang scandalously off-key on purpose, James harmonized with a trumpet, Remus hummed with a neatness that kept the whole thing from tipping over, Peter mouthed the words with passion. The painting swung open. The common room breathed velvet, fire, tea leaves, plans.

They stood in the doorway a heartbeat longer than needed. Estelle felt the moment hold, longer, longer—like a note a singer keeps because the air in their lungs seems endless—and then the door’s hinge said enough, and released.

She stepped through.

The world broke and rearranged itself.

A clock somewhere struck midnight with a noise like a cauldron lid settling. A draft peeled under a door and stank of old damp and polish. The candle beside her gave a feeble cough of flame and settled to a stingy thread. The woven Gryffindor rug underfoot became worn runner; the velvet sofa became a hard kitchen chair; the tower stones became walls that had swallowed their own light a long time ago.

Estelle’s hand was still braced for the curve of the common room door and found only the edge of a scarred workbench.

A ribbon of pale steam uncurled from the cauldron with a patient hiss. Ink dried in a furious web across an open page. A quill lay spent beside it like a bird who’d flown into a window.

Icarus, set like carved amber on the molting windowsill above the sink, watched her with old-god eyes.

The dream—no, the memory, no, the betrayal the night plays—folded itself and slid back into the dark like a knife into a sleeve.

Estelle stood very still. Her heart completed the journey back from the tower. The taste of wind left the room reluctantly.

“Right,” she said into the kitchen that belonged to no one and nothing but its own age. “Right.”

She reached for the ladle, stirred the near-silent cauldron, and the pale surface lapped once, twice, as if deciding whether to behave.

Grimmauld Place did not breathe. It watched.

Even after twelve years of tenancy, Estelle still felt the weight of the house bearing down on her bones, as if every darkened portrait and every moth-eaten drapery were listening for a misstep. The house had a way of clutching at you, dragging you down into its spine until your lungs forgot the taste of air.

She had grown used to it, as much as anyone could. But she never called it home.

Not anymore.

The kitchen was where she found the most solace, if only because it was the only room she had wrestled back into submission. The great iron range had been scrubbed of its soot, the counters polished by her own hand until the grain of the old oak ran smooth beneath her fingers. Cauldrons hung like moons from the racks overhead, their brass and pewter bodies catching the flickering light of the lamps she had charmed to burn warmer than the rest of the house dared.

It smelled of herbs and metal tonight, sharp and damp and utterly alive in a way the rest of Grimmauld Place never was.

The workbench was chaos—a chaos of her own making.

Jars lined up in mismatched rows: dried aconite, powdered bicorn horn, a scattering of bezoars. Vials of tinctures labeled in a sharp, slanted hand. Open tomes stacked three deep, the oldest one cracked at the spine, its pages curled from decades of steam. A notebook lay open in the middle of it all, its parchment littered with lines crossed through so furiously that the ink had bled. The quill beside it had snapped its nib hours ago. She’d simply pulled another from the jar.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Her quill scratched across the page again, darkly scoring through a line that read dried wolfsbane, five scruples — test solubility in ethanol base.

The ink bled like a wound.

Estelle muttered under her breath, flicked her wand, and shifted the cauldron’s heat to a simmer. Pale smoke coiled upward in slow, viscous swirls. The color was wrong. Too green when it should have been the silver of stormlight. She leaned over, sniffed, grimaced. The stench of copper and mildew seared her nose.

“Damn it,” she hissed, slamming her notebook shut.

A puff of smoke rose in protest.

She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose, and counted backward from ten the way she had taught herself to do when the fury threatened to spill.

It didn’t help much.

The truth was simple: she was running herself into the ground. Weeks of late nights, days swallowed whole by experiments, her fingertips stained with powders that wouldn’t scrub off no matter how she tried. She had always been meticulous, methodical, but lately there was a wildness to it, a desperation she could not seem to corral. Every failed draft drove her harder into the next. Every miscalculation left her ticking the notebook with increasing violence, as though sheer force of ink might erase the mistake.

She should stop. She knew that.

But stopping meant thinking.

And thinking meant remembering.

The clock in the hallway struck midnight, the chime echoing up through the stairwells like a knell. Estelle lifted her head, listening to the way the sound clung to the corners of the house. She had once thought it lonely. Now it felt like the only heartbeat she could count on.

Icarus arrived then.

The horned owl slipped in through the narrow window above the sink, wings whispering against the air, feathers gold and tan like dry wheat at harvest. He landed on the counter with the imperiousness only an owl could muster, scattering a neat pile of dried dittany leaves to the floor. His amber eyes pinned her with judgment.

“You’re late,” Estelle muttered, brushing leaves from her sleeve.

Icarus gave a low, disapproving hoot and stuck out his leg. A roll of parchment was tied to it with green ribbon.

Estelle wiped her ink-stained fingers on a rag before untying the scroll. The ribbon snapped loose easily, curling in her palm like a snake. She unfurled the parchment, expecting—what? Another letter from the apothecary guild reminding her of unpaid dues? A summons from the Ministry’s Committee of Herbological Affairs asking yet again why she had refused to attend their symposium?

But it was neither.

She stared at the heading, her brows furrowing.

The Quidditch World Cup, 1994 — Official Invitation.

The emblem glimmered faintly in the lamplight, enchanted ink shimmering in gold and green. The words below flowed in cheerful, overwrought script: You are cordially invited to attend the Final of the Four-Hundred-and-Twenty-Second Quidditch World Cup, Ireland vs. Bulgaria…

Her lips parted, then pressed into a thin line.

Quidditch.

Of all things.

She almost laughed. The sound caught in her throat, strange and sharp. She had not set foot in a Quidditch stadium of that caliber in years. Not since…

Her hand tightened around the parchment until it crackled.

Not since James.

Not since Sirius, laughing in the stands, daring gravity to unseat him as he perched on railings. Not since the world had been bright enough that flying felt like freedom instead of memory.

She swallowed hard, forced her hand to ease, and smoothed the parchment against the counter.

Icarus clicked his beak expectantly, eyes gleaming as if he knew precisely what the letter was.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Estelle said. Her voice came out rougher than she intended. “It’s not as though I asked for this.”

Another hoot, insistent.

She exhaled through her nose and looked back down at the invitation. There was a second sheet tucked into the roll, and she pulled it free.

This one was shorter, hand-written, the ink slightly smudged as though in haste.

Estelle—

Arthur Weasley has secured tickets for a group. He insisted you be included. The boys will be there, and Hermione, too. Thought you might like the chance to breathe fresher air for once. Don’t argue. Consider it mandatory.

—Albus Dumbledore

Estelle blinked. Of course it was him. Only Albus Dumbledore could make an invitation sound like a decree wrapped in kindness.

She set the parchment down and braced her hands on the counter, staring into the simmering cauldron. Silver-green smoke wafted upward, curling around her face. She didn’t even bother adjusting it. The potion was ruined anyway.

For a long moment, she stood motionless, listening to the house breathe its silent, heavy non-breath around her.

Then, with a sharp flick of her wand, she extinguished the flame.

The cauldron hissed. The smoke thinned. The potion stilled.

Icarus ruffled his feathers as though in triumph.

“Fine,” Estelle said at last, voice flat. “Fine. I’ll go.”

She grabbed her quill, yanked the notebook open again, and scrawled a final note across the ruined page: Abandoned. Insufficient base. Begin again after Cup.

The ink bled into the parchment, stark and merciless.

She shut the book, tied the ribbon around the invitation, and pushed it aside. For the first time in weeks, she let herself sink into the chair at the workbench, elbows braced on her knees, head bowed.

The house was still.

And somewhere in that stillness, she thought—just perhaps—she heard the faint echo of laughter, the roar of a crowd, the beating of wings.

Quidditch.

The world would not let her forget.

She did not sleep. Not really.

Instead, she cleaned. She scrubbed every jar and vial, polished every cauldron until the brass shone in the dim light, reordered every shelf in a way that was less about utility and more about fighting the quiet.

Her mind kept circling back to the parchment. To the careless green ribbon. To Dumbledore’s knowing scrawl.

Mandatory, he had written.

And perhaps it was.

By dawn, the kitchen looked immaculate. Her hands ached. Her back protested. But the restlessness still gnawed at her ribs. She stood at the window, arms crossed, and watched as the first thin light broke across Grimmauld Place.

Icarus perched on the sill beside her, his head cocked, eyes bright.

“Happy now?” Estelle asked.

The owl hooted once, sharp and satisfied.

Estelle huffed a laugh despite herself.

“Fine,” she said again. “Fine.”

And for the first time in years, she wondered if perhaps there was still a piece of her that could bear the roar of a crowd, the sweep of color across a pitch, the feeling of a storm in her veins.

Chapter Text

Dawn was the color of old pewter when they set off across the fields—mist low to the ground, damp clinging to hems and laces, the grass beaded with cold that soaked through socks no matter how many warming charms you muttered at your boots. Crows heckled from a hedgerow. Somewhere distant, a dog barked, indignant at the hour.

Mr. Weasley led the procession with the joyful determination of a man who’d been awake since three and was now high on the fumes of his own enthusiasm. Behind him, Ron trudged while eating a heel of bread, Fred and George jostled like two malfunctioning wands set to “mischief,” and Ginny yawned so wide Estelle briefly worried she might swallow the morning. Percy had perfected a brisk, officious pace that said he alone carried the weight of the Ministry on his narrow shoulders. Hermione’s hair had annexed the surrounding air into its empire. Harry walked beside Estelle, adjusting his glasses every few steps as though they were to blame for the dampness.

“Cold?” Estelle asked.

“A bit,” Harry said, which meant yes.

She flicked her wand once, quick and discreet, and the charm stitched warmth into the fabric of his jumper. He tried not to look relieved and failed spectacularly.

“Thanks,” he said, soft.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she replied. “Mr. Weasley’s route looks ambitious.”

“His ‘route’ is a straight line over three hills and through a bramble patch,” Hermione called back, consulting a folded schedule as if the earth were late to its own appointment.

“Very efficient,” Percy said, approving of anything that sounded like it might cause suffering in the name of order.

They reached a fence line, the kind that looked like it had been hammered into the ground around the time wizards stopped wearing ruffs. Estelle put a hand to the top rail, vaulted, and landed lightly on the other side. Harry copied her, less elegantly but with equal success. The twins followed with needless flourishes. Ron negotiated the fence like a boy who had made peace with gravity and usually lost.

“Keep up! It’s just over this way,” called Mr. Weasley, pointing toward a bald hill shivering under the thin light.

Stoatshead Hill—though Estelle didn’t know its Muggle name—hunched out of the earth like the kneecap of a giant. The climb was longer than it looked. The path narrowed to a thin smear of brown through the frost-brittle grass. By the time they reached the crown, everyone was breathing in white puffs. The wind up here had teeth.

“Right on time,” Mr. Weasley said, peering at a battered watch with a crack across the face. “We’re to meet the Diggorys at five past. There—look.”

Two figures waited at the far side of the hilltop, outlined against the pale sky—one tall and broad-shouldered, the other taller still in that new, expanded way boys get in sixth year, all limbs and promise. As they drew closer, Estelle saw the father’s open, weathered face, cap pulled low, coat that might once have been respectable but had surrendered to fieldwork years ago; and the son—hands tucked into the pockets of a well-mended jacket, hair the color of summer wheat, posture that somehow balanced ease with readiness.

“Arthur!” the older wizard boomed, voice kind and bright with the particular pride some fathers wore like a well-loved cloak. “Thought you’d have to levitate that brood the last hundred yards.”

“Amos!” Mr. Weasley beamed. “Perfect timing, as ever.”

“Only when Quidditch is involved,” Amos Diggory replied, eyes twinkling.

He had the sort of face Estelle trusted instinctively—lined by weather and laughter, nothing mean lingering in the corners. He shook Mr. Weasley’s hand the way farmers did, wrist firm, palm solid, approving of effort and mud in equal measure. His gaze skimmed the group, landing on Harry (a flicker of recognition), on Percy (who stood taller), and finally on Estelle.

Amos’s eyebrows shot up. “Well now—Professor Black, isn’t it? Heard Hufflepuff sings your praises in the greenhouses.”

“Some of them can carry a tune,” Estelle said. Her smile was small, but it warmed her face. “Good to see you, Mr. Diggory.”

“And this lanky scarecrow here—Cedric,” Amos went on, turning with unabashed pride, “hasn’t stopped talking about how the dragonwort cuttings took root after your spring lesson.”

Cedric laughed, sheepish. “Not sure I talked that much, Dad.”

“Talked enough,” Amos said, then to Estelle, sotto voce and entirely theatrically, “He’s modest. It’s infuriating.”

“Cedric,” Estelle said, offering her hand. “Good to see you outside the Herbology beds.”

He shook it, grip warm and steady. Up close, the boy carried that golden, impossible sheen some teenagers have—the kind that looks like it might be charm but is really just kindness unafraid to stand upright. “You too, Professor. Your charm for taming the Shrivelfigs saved my entire practical.”

“Saved you from admitting you watered them with a Laughing Draught,” Estelle teased, and Cedric’s ears went pink as the twins snickered.

Harry stood half a step behind her, hands in his pockets. Cedric’s gaze flicked to him—quick, not avoiding, not challenging. Estelle felt the air tighten, just a thread. The echo of last season’s match trembled in the space between boys too conscious of fairness and luck.

“Harry,” Cedric said, and there was no triumph in it, only genuine pleasure. “You coming all the way to the top with us?”

“That’s the plan,” Harry answered, voice light, grin crooked. “If I don’t freeze first.”

“Borrow my hat,” Cedric said, already tugging his off.

Harry blinked. “I’m fine—”

“Take it,” Cedric insisted, grinning. “Bad omen to watch a match with cold ears.”

“True,” Estelle said gravely. “All professionals cover their ears.”

Amos chuckled, rummaging in his coat. “Right, then—down to business. We’ve got a Ministry-approved artefact up here somewhere. Muggle-repelling charms on the site, but we don’t linger. Arthur? Schedule says five past for our group.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Weasley said, fussing with the cracked watch as though he could coax more seconds from it. “Everyone, keep your fingers to yourselves for a minute—no odd hexes, no dramatic flourishes—Fred.”

“I wasn’t—” Fred began.

“You were,” George said helpfully.

They fanned out over the summit, scanning the scrubby grass for something that didn’t belong. Portkeys—the legal ones—always felt like jokes left behind by distracted gods: a boot, a rope, a dented teapot. Estelle’s eyes slipped automatically into the ways she’d been taught to see—edges, densities, the slight shimmer that clung to objects fat with spellwork.

“There,” she said, nodding toward a collapsed leather satchel whose handle stuck out of the turf like a bone. “That?”

Amos squinted, then bent and brushed away grass. “Ah! Knew it was a good month when I spotted this. Everyone gather—hands on, elbows in. You’d think we were taking a family portrait.” He paused, frowned. “Where’s Percy?”

“Counting rules in his head,” Fred murmured.

“I’m right here,” Percy said, appearing at Estelle’s elbow, attempting nonchalance and missing by a country mile.

They arranged themselves around the satchel: Mr. Weasley with Amos, the twins shoulder to shoulder like a dare, Ginny and Hermione on either side of Ron, Percy poised to remind the cosmos he took punctuality personally. Harry’s fingers brushed Estelle’s on the worn leather handle; his knuckles were chilled, the skin over them mapped with the soft geography of someone who still grew in fits.

“First time?” Cedric asked him quietly.

“With a Portkey?” Harry said. “Not… successfully.”

Cedric’s mouth tipped. “Lean into it. If you fight the pull, you’ll retch.”

“Wonderful,” Hermione muttered. “Inspiring counsel.”

Estelle tightened her grip and, out of an old, almost-forgotten habit, fixed a point in her mind—an anchor. The greenhouse at dusk. The smell of warm loam. The way light collected in glass like honey.

“Five—four—” Amos intoned, rich as a bell.

A sliver of sun pushed itself over the horizon.

“Three—two—one.”

The world hooked its finger just behind Estelle’s navel and yanked.

Air became a rope. The sky inverted. The ground gave up any pretense of being trustworthy. Her stomach tried to climb into her throat while the wind roared down her sleeves. She felt Harry’s hand tighten involuntarily against hers, felt the precise moment when Percy thought better of dignity. For a heartbeat there was only motion, the wrongness of being flung without falling, the punch of speed that scoured tears from the corners of her eyes.

They landed with a thump and a stumbling skid that knocked Estelle directly into Cedric, who laughed and righted them both with a hand at her elbow as if catching tumbling professors after violent international teleportation were a standard courtesy.

“Graceful as ever,” Estelle said, breathless, and Cedric blinked once before realizing she was teasing and laughing again.

“Welcome to the campgrounds!” Amos announced, unnecessarily, as the soundscape surged around them—voices overlapping in a dozen languages, fire snapping in half-built pits, tent flaps slapping like flags, a kettle singing somewhere to their left. Magic hummed here, thick as pollen.

What stretched out beyond the landing point was a town that had sprung up overnight and fully intended to wring the day for every drop of joy: fields receding in swells and hollows, tents in every size and color pitched in geometric optimism, lanes stamped down by early arrivals, strings of pennants already caught in a quarrel with the morning breeze. The air smelled of peat smoke, frying batter, wet canvas, wool, and the faint metallic tang of a thousand spells settling at once.

A Ministry reception point had been erected at the nearest crossroads: a wooden stand with handwritten signs hammered to it in a hurry—CAMP FEES / NO EXPLODABLES / KEEP WANDS HOLSTERED / PLEASE BE NICE TO MUGGLES—and a man in a wide-brimmed hat attempting to conduct three queues simultaneously. Behind him, two witches levitated stacks of pamphlets that drifted down like sleepy birds into waiting hands: SAFETY CHARM GUIDELINES, HOW TO NOT ALARM THE NON-MAGICAL, and—Estelle snorted—A SHORT HISTORY OF QUIDDITCH ETIQUETTE (“Don’t set fire to rival flags” was underlined thrice).

“Glorious,” Mr. Weasley breathed, and the word was none too strong.

A team of broomsmiths had already set up a tidy row of glossy models roped off with velvet. A boy hardly taller than the display placard pressed his nose to the Connemara 7 like a pilgrim at a reliquary. Somewhere to their right, a group in emerald cloaks burst into a song that contained only three notes and at least seven swear words. Across the path, a cluster of crimson-robed Bulgarians practiced a chant under their breath like a storm brewing.

“Remember,” Percy said, whirling on them, finger up. “We are representatives of the British Ministry by proximity—”

“No,” Ginny said.

“—and must not,” Percy continued, raising his voice to drown out dissent, “draw attention to ourselves with irresponsible displays.”

“Define irresponsible,” Fred said.

“Don’t define irresponsible,” Mr. Weasley said, eyes on a vendor assembling a pyramid of hand-carved Omnioculars. “Just… behave.”

Amos set his hands on his hips, surveying the field like a man checking weather and fence lines. “We’re pitched in Meadow Twelve, lane three. The Irish took the far ridge last night—good lads; they were singing at two. Bulgarians nearer the woods. Someone’s released shamrock confetti that refuses to obey gravity.”

“‘Refuses to obey gravity’ is possibly the most Irish sentence I’ve ever heard,” Estelle said, swatting away a glittering green fleck that, insulted, swerved and attached to Percy’s lapel instead.

They threaded into the flow of people. If Hogwarts was a living castle, this was a living market—every tent a different heartbeat. Some were little more than canvas triangles staked at the corners, kettles already steaming outside on clever collapsible tripods. Others rose like transplanted manor houses—striped pavilions with eaves and scalloped valances, telescoping porches, polite little front gardens cheerfully at war with their potted hedges. One tent resembled a lighthouse, complete with turning beacon that periodically bisected the morning with a sigh of light. Another unfurled itself as they passed, revealing inside a parquet floor and an upright piano already playing itself into a charm.

“Is that legal?” Hermione asked, squinting at the piano as if it were personally responsible for the Blind Eye of the Statute of Secrecy.

“Technically?” Amos said. “No. Pragmatically? Yes.”

“How very Ministry,” Estelle murmured.

“Watch your step,” Cedric said, steering them around a collapsible pond that had been conjured beside a tent with tottering ivy-topped columns. In the shallow water, a tiny fleet of toy broomsticks ferried sugar quills from one side to the other under the supervision of a toddler in a knitted hat shaped like a Snitch.

A woman in saffron robes thrust a skewered pasty toward them. “Hand pies! Leek! Cheese! Possibly dragon—labels fell off!”

“Sold,” Fred said, because of course.

Estelle bought one too, more for the warmth in her hands than anything else, and took a bite that scalded the roof of her mouth in a way that felt like a tradition.

They passed the fee stand, where Mr. Weasley made an earnest and harrowing attempt to pay in Muggle coins, which promptly leapt off the counter, offended. Estelle slid forward, murmured a smoothing charm over the pile, and exchanged a pouch of proper Galleons while Mr. Weasley explained the beauty of bus timetables to a clerk who nodded the way one nods at a neighbor’s photogenic pet.

“Bless you,” he whispered to Estelle as they moved on.

“I’ll invoice you in a tale of plug sockets at dinner,” she said.

The lanes narrowed as Meadow Twelve drew near. The grass here had already given up and lay flat as a well-behaved carpet. Their tent—one of Mr. Weasley’s—waited as a humble wedge of patched khaki. Estelle could feel the magic tucked into its seams from three strides away; someone (not Arthur) had layered the interior charms elegantly.

“Well then!” Mr. Weasley said, giddy. “Shall we see if it still remembers how to hold a kitchen?”

Inside, the tent was, of course, impossible: standing room for an entire Quidditch team, a small stove with dented kettle, a pair of bunks draped with spare blankets, a table scavenged from another life. A vase on the counter held an optimistic sprig of something that might have been heather if heather had ideas above its station. Estelle ran her palm lightly along the nearest pole and felt the settling happen—space accepting occupants, air agreeing to be home for a little while.

“Boys to the right, girls to the left,” Mr. Weasley said, and then, catching Estelle’s look, amended hastily, “—and professors, er, wherever they want.”

“I’ll hover like a bad omen,” she said agreeably, dropping her bag beside the door to serve as both trip hazard and territorial claim.

They stowed bedrolls. Hermione organized. Fred and George unorganized. Percy sighed at the universe. Ginny found hooks and turned them into an argument with string. Amos ducked in, approved, ducked back out because fathers at festivals are like tides. Cedric lingered in the doorway with Harry for a moment while the twins performed an interpretive dance involving two pillows and a tragic end.

“How long are you on the grounds?” Estelle asked Cedric.

“All day,” he said. “Dad’s volunteering at the creature gates. I promised to help with the signage. Last time the Kneazles got into the Puffskeins.”

“Inter-house diplomacy at its finest,” Estelle said. “If you see the Irish trainer with the shamrock-eating goats, tell her her parsley substitute worked.”

Cedric brightened. “That was yours? They stopped chewing the pennants within ten minutes.”

“Flattery will get you a passing mark on your next pruning practical,” she said, deadpan.

“Noted.” He glanced to Harry. “Heading to the market before the queues take on lives of their own?”

“Professor says it’s tradition to scald your mouth before noon,” Harry said.

“Reliable source,” Cedric replied, and then he and Amos were gone back into the river of bodies, swallowed by the green tide cresting from the far ridge.

“Ready?” Mr. Weasley said, nearly vibrating with delight. “We should get a look at the souvenirs before the counterfeiters make it interesting.”

“Arthur,” Percy hissed, “you can’t say ‘counterfeiters’ in a crowd.”

“Fine! Before the… entrepreneurial enthusiasts,” Mr. Weasley amended.

Estelle pushed the tent flap aside and paused, letting the day strike her full in the chest. It did not disappoint.

Everything sang. Flags cracked like spells overhead—emerald and gold, scarlet and black—threads of enchantment flashing down their seams as they snapped. A witch on stilts charmed a cloud of tiny broomsticks to orbit her like impatient birds. A wizard in a wool cap spun Omnioculars in his hands and insisted to anyone within earshot that his were calibrated to “the precise wobble of the Snitch.” Children raced with pennants longer than they were tall, tripping, squealing, recovering with that whipcord resiliency of people who haven’t learned caution yet. Laughter came in gusts, rising and falling, stitched with the low thunder of a hundred conversations in every shape of accent.

Harry stuck a step closer to Estelle as the flow caught them and carried them forward, his shoulder brushing her sleeve in a way that felt like habit more than fear.

“Keep your feet,” she said, tilting her head toward the traffic. “This is a river. You swim or you let it take you. Don’t stand still.”

“I thought we were walking.”

“We are,” she said. “But today has other ideas.”

A vendor swept a tray of enamel badges under their noses. “Collectable clackers! Leprechaun laughs! Durmstrang Dragons—oops, not for today, don’t look at those—”

“Two Ireland badges, please,” Hermione said decisively, paying in exact coin like a challenge.

“Traitor,” Fred said, simultaneously purchasing three Bulgaria scarves and an Irish hat that sang a rude song when you touched the brim.

Estelle bought nothing yet. She liked to walk through once and let the shape of the place settle against her ribs before deciding which single, exact thing should come home and haunt a drawer.

They turned up a set of wooden steps that had sprung into existence that morning along a rise. Somewhere beyond, the pitch waited, a heart beating high and loud enough to be felt even here—not yet visible, but palpable as a future you’ve already chosen. The path was bottlenecked by a zealous troupe of bagpipers attempting an Irish reel with variable success. Estelle felt the press of bodies change—shoulder to shoulder, elbows tucked. On reflex, she reached back and touched the sleeve of Harry’s jumper; he made a brief, grateful sound and stayed close.

A burst of emerald sparks went off ahead, drawing a cheer. Estelle didn’t duck. She tilted her head and watched them part around a charm she’d woven unconsciously above her crown, the way one learns to walk with an umbrella in a city that has opinions about rain.

“Estelle?” Harry said.

“Yes?”

“This is… a lot.”

“It is,” she agreed. “Breathe anyway.”

He did.

They crested the rise, which was only a rise in the way the sea is a puddle, and the world opened.

Below them: more people. More color. A churning, ordered chaos that felt like a blessing shouted between hills. Somewhere far ahead—beyond tents and flags and steam and light—something impossibly large sat cupped in the earth, waiting.

“Finally!” Hermione called from up the steps where she stood on a crate, map in hand, hair declaring independence. “You were gone ages!”

“We were avoiding pickled Kneazle tails,” Estelle said, guiding Harry down the last few steps.

Ron made a face. “I think Fred bought one.”

“Fred will eat anything,” George said. “He once licked a cauldron in first-year Potions. Said it tasted like regret.”

“Did not,” Fred protested, rolling his eyes.

Mr. Weasley beamed, drawing them in with a sweep of his arm that pulled threads of Weasley together like a knitter mid-row. “Everyone ready?”

Estelle raised an eyebrow. “Ready for what?”

But they were already moving—up, up, and further up.

And the day kept unfurling.

Estelle weaved through the crowd, her boots crunching over dried grass and stray bits of gravel, the scent of woodsmoke and roasted something-or-other trailing on the breeze. Her eyes flicked from face to face, catching flashes of pointed hats, robes stitched with glittering sigils, small children hoisting miniature flags, and vendors yelling over each other about butterbeer, Omnioculars, and enchanted pennants that changed color mid-cheer.

The air thrummed with something electric.

Magic, yes—but something else too. Anticipation. Restlessness.

Excitement that had teeth.

Beside her, Harry walked with a nervous sort of confidence, ducking between taller wizards and tossing grins at the chaos around them. He was taller than he’d been last spring. Just a bit. His hair was still an untamable mess, of course. But there was something different in his face—something sharper behind the grin. A summer’s worth of change.

“You all right?” Estelle asked, her voice raised above the din.

Harry nodded quickly. “Yeah—just… it’s loud.”

“It’s always loud,” Estelle said, dodging a floating flag. “That’s half the fun.”

They passed a tent that looked like a dragon hide shop from the outside but clearly smelled like sausages and fried onions from within. A small witch with four toddlers in matching Ireland jerseys nearly collided with Estelle’s knees.

Someone let off a spell nearby that sent emerald sparks crackling overhead.

Harry ducked.

Estelle didn’t.

She had forgotten how much she missed this chaos.

They crested a rise in the hill, and there—on the other side—was the rest of their group.

Hermione stood with one foot on a wooden crate, hair frizzing madly around her head, holding a battered parchment map and looking entirely done with the world.

Ron leaned over her shoulder, unhelpfully pointing at something upside-down.

Ginny, Fred, George, and Mr. Weasley were gathered nearby—shouting, teasing, laughing. Percy was a few paces away, arms crossed, clearly pretending not to know any of them.

“Finally!” Hermione called as Estelle and Harry approached. “You were gone ages!”

“I was avoiding flag salesmen and whatever that guy was selling that looked like pickled Kneazle tails,” Estelle replied.

Ron made a face. “I think Fred bought one.”

“Fred will eat anything,” George said. “He once licked a cauldron during first-year Potions. Said it tasted like ‘regret.’”

“Did not,” Fred retorted.

Mr. Weasley beamed. “Everyone ready?”

Estelle raised an eyebrow. “Ready for what?”

No one answered her.

They were already moving—climbing the wooden steps that led up, up, and further up, the crowd funneling tighter with every level. The stands groaned and shivered beneath them. Children clutched Omnioculars like sacred relics. Foreign wizards argued in ten different languages.

And still, Estelle didn’t quite know where they were going.

She followed anyway.

Up the final stairwell, onto a narrow platform of seats high in the air, and then—

She saw it.

The pitch opened before her like a living creature. Vast and green and carved into the heart of a hollowed hill. Banners flapped in the wind. Gold and green and maroon and silver shimmered in midair. The stadium stretched into the clouds, layered with magic, pulsing with noise.

The Quidditch World Cup.

Of course.

Estelle exhaled.

And smiled.

She found her seat beside Harry.

The game hadn’t begun.

But the world had.But Estelle still felt the echo of Lucius Malfoy’s smirk in the marrow of her bones. And she smiled, thin and cold, at the thought that her words had cut deep enough to leave him silent.

She had no intention of letting old ghosts walk unchallenged.

Not here. Not ever.

The stadium did not simply hum with excitement—it thundered with it, as if every plank of wood, every nail and bolt, every spell woven into its seams had begun to vibrate under the anticipation of eighty thousand witches and wizards leaning forward at once. The air shimmered with color, banners flashing, lights flickering, bursts of magic darting across the pitch like restless meteors.

Estelle sat, legs crossed neatly, though her heart was thrumming in time with the crowd’s pulse. Beside her, Harry had nearly folded himself over the railing, craning for a better view of the still-empty pitch. His knuckles were white on the wood, his eyes alight in a way that made her chest ache with a sudden, sharp tenderness.

“You’ll fall if you lean any farther,” Estelle said, nudging him lightly with her elbow.

Harry grinned, eyes never leaving the pitch. “It’s worth the risk. You’ve never seen anything like this, have you?”

“I have,” Estelle said softly. “But not for a very long time.”

He glanced at her then, curiosity flickering across his face, but she gave him only the smallest of smiles and looked back at the field. There were stories she would not tell him yet—of sneaking into matches during her Hogwarts years, of James’s shouts echoing across the stands, of Sirius balancing on railings with reckless abandon. Those belonged to another time. Tonight belonged to Harry.

A few seats down, Hermione was still poring over the battered program she’d bought from a vendor at the entrance. The parchment was already creased and smudged, her handwriting filling the margins with notes, dates, and historical footnotes.

“Honestly, it’s astonishing,” she muttered, flipping pages. “This is the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup. Do you realize how many times they’ve had to adjust the rules to stop fatalities? And look at this—” she tapped at a column with her finger, “—seven separate attempts at banning broom enchantments during matches, and still people cheat. It’s a wonder anyone survives at all.”

Ron groaned from the seat beside her. “Hermione, can you not? You’re making it sound like we’re about to watch a funeral, not a match.”

“It might be both,” Hermione retorted. “There was a player in 1809 who disappeared mid-game and never came back down. Still missing. That’s in the official records.”

Fred leaned across Estelle, grinning like a fiend. “So if a Chaser vanishes mid-pass tonight, you’re saying we’ve witnessed history?”

“Exactly!” George crowed from the other side. “We’ll write the book. Vanishing Victories: A History of Players Who Never Touched the Ground Again.”

Ron chuckled, then straightened with indignation. “I want naming rights if it happens. Ron’s Vanished Player Guide. Has a ring to it.”

Hermione snapped the program shut with a sigh. “You’re all impossible.”

Estelle reached over, plucked the program gently from Hermione’s hands, and handed it to Ron. “Better give it to him before he decides to publish.”

Hermione rolled her eyes but smiled despite herself.

Cedric appeared then, weaving down the aisle with the tall, easy grace of someone who had already spotted them. He slid into the empty seat beside Estelle, his cheeks faintly flushed from the climb and his hair windswept in a way that looked suspiciously intentional.

“Professor,” he greeted warmly. “Didn’t expect to find you sitting front row for the chaos.”

“Chaos is the only reason to come,” Estelle said dryly.

Cedric laughed. “Fair enough.” He leaned forward to glance past Estelle at Harry, offering him a friendly nod. “Biggest game in the world, Harry. Hope you’re ready.”

Harry grinned back, some of the tension sliding from his shoulders. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Fred immediately cut in. “What about you, Diggory? Feeling smug about your cushy seat while the rest of us peasants balance on splinters?”

Cedric raised his brows. “These splinters are perfectly comfortable, thanks.”

George nudged Fred. “Careful. If you complain too much, Professor might start a splinter count. You’ll lose.”

Estelle smirked faintly. “I already am. Forty-two, if you’re interested.”

Harry barked a laugh. Even Hermione cracked a grin.

As the minutes stretched on, the noise around them rose and fell like tides, waves of chanting rolling across the stands—Ire-land! Ire-land! countered by deep, guttural Bulgarian cries of Krum! Krum!

Ron clutched his miniature Irish flag like it was a talisman. “Krum’s good,” he admitted, almost reluctantly. “But Ireland’s got the better team overall. Everyone knows it.”

“Not everyone,” Fred teased, pointing toward a knot of Bulgarians already setting off firecrackers in the stands opposite.

George leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Twenty Galleons says Ireland wins but Krum gets the Snitch.”

Ron gawked at him. “That’s not even—wait, is that actually what people are betting?”

“Of course it is,” Fred said cheerfully. “That’s the safest bet on the board.”

Estelle lifted a brow. “How many Galleons have you already sunk into it?”

Fred and George exchanged identical grins, wide and utterly shameless.

“Enough,” Fred said.

“Too much,” George added.

“Possibly all of it,” Fred finished, and the two collapsed into laughter.

“Idiots,” Ron muttered, though he was grinning too.

Hermione, predictably, sniffed. “It’s ridiculous, gambling on something like this.”

Estelle turned to her, voice calm. “It’s not about the gold. It’s about being right.”

Hermione frowned, then reluctantly said, “Well, that’s hardly better.”

But Harry caught Estelle’s eye, and the two of them shared a smile—because she was right, and they both knew it.

The crowd surged to its feet as a ripple of magic swept through the stadium. The goal hoops shone brighter, igniting like enormous rings of fire without heat. Flags unfurled from invisible rafters high above, streaming in the enchanted breeze. The pitch below shimmered as if waking, the grass greener, the lines stark and perfect.

A team of wizards in official robes strode across the field, their voices magnified by Sonorus charms as they prepared for the formal announcements.

“Here we go,” Cedric murmured, sitting forward.

Ron was bouncing in his seat now, unable to keep still. Harry gripped the rail again, knuckles white, his face pale with anticipation and joy. Hermione pursed her lips but her eyes were alight, betraying her excitement despite her skepticism.

Fred and George had already begun a chant that was not entirely appropriate for polite company but carried well enough that the row behind them joined in with glee.

Estelle sat back, letting the sound crash over her like a wave. Her eyes moved across the group—Harry on the brink of wonder, Ron vibrating like a broom tail, Hermione fighting the urge to grin, Cedric calm but glowing, Fred and George wild, Ginny wide-eyed—and she thought, not for the first time, that this was why she had come.

Not for the game. Not for the grandeur. But for this: the way joy and youth and anticipation bound them all together for a moment.

Harry turned suddenly, leaning closer so she could hear him over the roar. “What’s it like?” he asked.

Estelle tilted her head. “What’s what like?”

“Playing,” Harry said. “In front of this many people. Feeling them all shouting for you.”

The question caught her off guard, tugging at memory. She swallowed once, then said, “It feels like flying through a storm with lightning in your veins. Like every mistake could break you, but every triumph could carry you higher than the sky. It feels like being seen—by everyone, all at once.”

Harry’s breath caught. His eyes shone. “Sounds terrifying.”

“It is,” Estelle admitted. Then she leaned closer, voice almost lost in the din. “That’s what makes it worth it.”

Ron broke in, waving his flag wildly. “Less talking, more cheering! They’re coming out!”

The crowd exploded into a roar as the mascots prepared to take the field. Music thundered, fireworks split the sky, and the air shook with magic.

Estelle looked down at the pitch, then back at the faces around her, and felt the moment gather like a held breath.

The match was about to begin.

Chapter Text

The climb toward the higher tiers of the Quidditch World Cup stadium was a pilgrimage of its own: up endless wooden staircases that trembled under the weight of the thousands who ascended them, up through shouts and laughter and the glow of enchanted lanterns that swung without wind, up into air so sharp with anticipation it felt like knives of joy in the chest.

Estelle walked near the front of their little knot—Arthur urging them on with the unflagging energy of a man born to love contraptions and chaos—Harry close by her shoulder, Hermione navigating, Ron grumbling but climbing anyway. The twins darted ahead, scouting as if the stairs might suddenly sprout broom handles and fly away without them. Cedric and Amos followed amiably, their long strides steady, Ginny trailing them with Percy solemn as a church bell at her side.

The noise swelled the higher they went. Vendors shouted in twenty tongues. Flares of green and scarlet light arced from wands, hissing sparks that dissipated against the charmed canopy that covered the stadium tiers. The air was filled with the scents of spiced mead, singed fireworks, fried onions, and damp wool.

Estelle’s pulse thrummed with it all—until a voice like cold silk slid into the tumult.

“Well, well.”

They froze on the landing.

Leaning against the rail as if it had been carved for his particular posture stood Lucius Malfoy. His pale hair caught the torchlight like spun glass, immaculate as ever, the serpent-headed cane in his hand more for theatre than need. Beside him, Narcissa lingered—poised, gloved, her beauty the sort that cut like a mirror shard. Draco trailed at their side, chin lifted but mouth set in a line that looked borrowed from his father, not quite natural on his young face.

Arthur faltered, his expression tightening as though he’d stepped in something unmentionable. “Lucius.”

“Arthur,” Lucius returned, inclining his head with the sort of politeness one extended to an under-butler. “What a… large gathering.” His eyes skimmed the group like an appraising crow. “I imagine the Ministry has provided you with an entire row? Or is this more of a—family picnic arrangement?”

Fred snorted under his breath. George coughed something that sounded like “peasant chic.”

Narcissa’s gaze drifted past the Weasleys, past Harry, and landed on Estelle. For a moment, the sisters-in-law stared at one another—both Black, both carved from the same ancestry, but worlds apart. Narcissa’s lips curved, faint as the edge of a knife.

“Estelle,” she murmured. “How… unexpected.”

Estelle met her look with one of her own, dark and cool as ink left to dry in winter. “Cousin,” she said softly, though there was no warmth in the word. “Still clinging to the ghost of respectability, I see.”

Lucius’s eyes sharpened. “Professor Black,” he said, dragging out the title as though it were a borrowed robe that didn’t fit. “A curious post, Hogwarts Herbology. One wonders if the school has lowered its standards or merely its expectations.”

Estelle tilted her head, smile slow and glacial. “One wonders how low one must fall to crawl into another man’s service and call it power. Tell me, Lucius—how does servitude taste on your tongue? Bitter? Or have you convinced yourself it’s vintage?”

Arthur coughed into his fist, Percy went rigid with alarm, and the twins looked ready to pay her in gold for every syllable.

Lucius’s expression didn’t flicker—he was too practiced for that—but Narcissa’s hand tightened imperceptibly on his arm. Draco, however, looked abruptly interested in the scuffed boards of the staircase.

“You presume much,” Lucius said at last, voice smooth as mercury.

“I presume nothing,” Estelle replied. “I remember.”

The silence between them was taut as a bowstring. Then Narcissa, ever the strategist, stepped in with a tone like ice over still water. “We shouldn’t delay the crowd. Come, Draco.”

Draco shifted uneasily, his grey eyes darting once—only once—to Estelle, then to Harry. There was no malice in the glance, only something weary, something young. But he said nothing, only followed his parents as they drifted up the stairs like a tide pulling out.

“Odious man,” Amos muttered once the Malfoys were gone. “Always was.”

“Odious,” Estelle repeated under her breath, the word tasting almost pleasant in her mouth. “And predictable.” She flicked a speck of imaginary dust from her sleeve as if dismissing the encounter.

Harry looked up at her, green eyes narrowed in curiosity. “You don’t like him.”

“I don’t like Death Eaters who launder their sins in coin and courtesy,” Estelle said plainly. “I like them least of all.”

Arthur cleared his throat, anxious to recover momentum. “Right then—best keep moving or we’ll lose our spots!”

They moved on, though the air around them carried a lingering chill, as though Lucius had left a shadow behind.

The climb resumed, the group pressed closer now, their earlier chatter muted in the wake of the encounter. Estelle felt the weight of Narcissa’s gaze still clinging to her, though the woman was long gone. It was a look from the past—a reminder of a house she had abandoned, of a bloodline she had scorched from her name in choice if not in body.

She didn’t regret the coldness. Lucius Malfoy deserved worse. But she caught Draco’s expression again in memory, the discomfort in his young jaw. And for a breath she thought—not pity, never pity—but recognition. She had once worn that same mask, standing at family gatherings, trying to shape her mouth to a heritage she did not believe in.

Her steps quickened, as though she could outpace the thought.

The stadium grew louder, each level they climbed adding a new layer of sound: chanting in Bulgarian, singing in Irish, whistles, drums, an accordion that appeared to be dueling a bagpipe. Banners of green and gold hung like rivers across the railings, interwoven with crimson and black so dark it gleamed. The stands swayed with bodies, thousands upon thousands of witches and wizards pressing in for the greatest match of the decade.

Finally, at the topmost tier, a steward in bright yellow robes checked their tickets with the air of a saint enduring sinners. “Row K, Section 371,” he announced, pointing down a narrow gangway.

They filed in, one by one, squeezing past knees and elbows, stepping over dropped tankards of butterbeer, murmuring apologies that vanished into the roar.

Estelle found her seat at last, high and dizzying above the pitch. The sight of it struck her breathless—an ocean of green turf cupped in the belly of the earth, goal hoops glinting like silver moons, the stadium walls rising dizzyingly around them, alive with banners and movement.

Beside her, Harry leaned forward, glasses sliding down his nose, eyes huge with wonder.

“Merlin,” he whispered.

“Yes,” Estelle said, her own voice low. “Merlin.”

As they settled, Fred leaned across Estelle, grinning. “That was brilliant, what you said to Malfoy. The bit about servitude—perfect.”

George nodded. “We’d have paid you for another round.”

Estelle smirked faintly. “Careful. I charge in galleons, not Sickles.”

Ron was still scowling. “Can’t believe they just—show up like they own everything.”

“They think they do,” Estelle said. “The trick is never letting them see you bend. Not an inch.”

Harry nodded, his eyes still fixed on the pitch. “You didn’t bend.”

“No,” Estelle said quietly, her gaze on the horizon where banners rippled like restless seas. “And I won’t.”

The drums thundered louder now, signaling the match’s nearness. Across the stands, Bulgarian supporters lit crimson flares that bled sparks into the sky. Irish fans countered with conjured leprechauns dancing across the railings, scattering gold that vanished before it could be pocketed.

The world was about to erupt.

Chapter Text

The roar of eighty thousand witches and wizards did not feel like noise; it felt like a tide. The stands swayed beneath it, a living creature made of lungs and throats and fists pounding against the wood. Banners flashed green and gold in one corner, crimson and black in another, clashing like armies with every gust of conjured wind. Sparks popped overhead, charms whizzed by, the air thick with the shimmer of enchantments colliding.

Estelle leaned back against her seat, arms folded, allowing the vibration to pass through her bones. It reminded her of thunderstorms in her childhood, when lightning had hit the streetlamps of Grimmauld Place and left them buzzing with an almost-human hum. The kind of power you could not reason with—only witness.

Harry was nearly hanging over the railing, his eyes enormous behind his glasses. Ron flapped his Irish flag so hard that the pole bent. Hermione tried to correct his grip, citing leverage as though she had just given a lecture in Charms. Percy pursed his lips and muttered something about “decorum.”

And then Fred and George leaned in on either side of Estelle like wolves scenting blood.

“So,” Fred began, stretching the word like treacle.

“A fine night for gambling,” George finished smoothly.

Estelle didn’t move. “I don’t gamble.”

Both twins gasped in unison, clutching at their chests. “Sacrilege.”

“Blasphemy.”

“Absolute treason against the spirit of sport.”

Estelle’s lips twitched. “I don’t gamble,” she repeated, “unless I know I’ll win.”

“Ah,” Fred said, narrowing his eyes.

George mirrored him. “Confidence.”

“Arrogance,” Fred corrected.

“Knowledge,” Estelle said flatly, finally turning her head to look at them. “Ireland has the better team, and you both know it. Krum may be dazzling, but Bulgaria is counting on one man. Ireland’s coordination is leagues ahead. The Cup is theirs.”

Fred exchanged a look with George.

George leaned in closer. “Twenty galleons says Krum gets the Snitch.”

Estelle arched a brow. “I’m not betting against that. Everyone knows he will. The question is timing. He’ll catch it, but Ireland will already be too far ahead.”

“Ahh,” Fred breathed.

“She does understand,” George sighed, as though relieved.

“Still doesn’t make her one of us,” Fred muttered.

Estelle smirked. “If I win, you’re both running my greenhouse maintenance for a month. Weeding, re-potting, pruning, the lot.”

Both twins blanched as if she’d cursed them.

“Merlin’s beard—manual labor?”

“With dirt?”

“And earthworms?”

“Don’t forget the puffapods,” Estelle said sweetly. “They explode if you mishandle them.”

The twins exchanged a silent conversation that passed like electricity between them, ending in identical wicked grins.

“Done,” they said together, shaking her hands like she’d just signed her soul away.

---

The drums shifted suddenly, the rhythm quickening, the crowd leaping to its feet in an oceanic wave. A whistle pierced the night.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” a booming voice rang out, magnified by charms until it rattled Estelle’s teeth. “The mascots!”

The Irish contingent erupted first. Green light spilled across the pitch, dazzling and bright, and from the far end a river of gold coins cascaded into existence. It glittered in the torchlight, tumbling end over end until it seemed the entire field was awash in treasure. Then—laughing, tumbling, capering—came the leprechauns.

Hundreds of them, dancing in the air, tossing hats, cartwheeling through sparks. They spread across the stadium in arcs of light, raining down glitter that vanished just before it could be caught. A small boy in front of them dove desperately for a handful, only to close his fist on air. The leprechauns cackled louder.

Estelle couldn’t help it—she laughed, too. The sheer irreverence of it was infectious. Even Hermione, though muttering about “pointless theatrics,” had her eyes locked on the spectacle.

Then the air shifted.

The Bulgarians had their answer.

At first, it was only a shimmer—heat in the night air, though the wind had teeth. Then the shimmer became a flame, and out of it stepped the Veela.

They moved like liquid fire, their hair streaming behind them, eyes gleaming with otherworldly light. The entire stadium seemed to hush in their presence, as though the crowd itself had forgotten how to breathe. Their dance began in silence—hips swaying, hands unfurling like silk—and then the magic struck.

Half the men in the stands immediately began shouting, cheering, leaning over railings as though bewitched. Estelle watched Fred start to climb onto the ledge of their row before George yanked him down by the collar. Ron’s face had gone slack, his flag forgotten in his lap. Even Harry looked dazed, his fingers twitching on the railing.

Estelle reached over and clapped her hands sharply in front of his face. “Focus, Potter.”

Harry blinked hard, color flooding his cheeks. “Right—sorry—I—” He shoved his glasses up his nose and forced his eyes back to the pitch.

The Veela twirled, spun, lifted into the air, and the stadium roared as though they had already won. Then, with one last whip of flame, they dissolved into sparks and were gone.

The silence they left behind was deafening.

Until the announcer bellowed: “AND NOW…THE TEAMS!”

Green smoke billowed at the far end of the pitch, and the Irish team shot out of it one by one to wild applause.

“Connolly!”

“Quigley!”

“Ryan!”

Each name rolled like thunder as the players soared across the field, their brooms cutting arcs through the night. Estelle stood and cheered with the rest, her throat raw already. She didn’t care.

Then the Bulgarians burst forth—scarlet streaks slicing the air, their captain at the front: Viktor Krum.

The name alone drew a roar, half adulation, half challenge. Krum was young—shockingly young for a player at this level—but his face was set with the grim determination of a veteran. He leaned low over his broom, all sharp edges and intent.

Harry gasped audibly beside her. “That’s him.”

Estelle followed his gaze. Krum was unmistakable. He flew not like a man, but like something bred for the sky. Dangerous. Focused. Alone.

“Yes,” Estelle said softly. “That’s him.”

The referee strode to the center of the pitch, a whistle at her lips, the chest containing the Quaffle and Bludgers waiting at her feet. The Snitch was already a flicker of gold in the shadows, restless as a thought.

“On my mark!”

The players leaned forward.

The crowd leaned forward.

Even the stars seemed to lean closer.

The whistle shrieked—

And the match exploded.

The Quaffle shot into the air, seized immediately by Troy, who rocketed down the field with the speed of a man fleeing hellfire. Bludgers cracked after him, Bulgaria’s Beaters swinging with ruthless force, but Ireland was fluid—seamless. Moran snatched the pass, Ryan intercepted a block, and within seconds the ball was streaking through the hoop.

“Ten to zero, Ireland!” the announcer howled, voice breaking.

The Irish section of the stands erupted into chaos. Flags whipped. Songs broke out with no regard for melody. Green sparks stormed the sky.

Estelle clapped hard, grinning. “What did I tell you?” she shouted at Fred and George.

“Early days!” Fred yelled back, though he looked a touch less confident.

George cupped his hands to his mouth. “Krum will turn it!”

But Estelle shook her head. She could already see the pattern forming. Ireland was everywhere at once—passing faster than the eye could follow, ducking Bludgers, weaving through scarlet uniforms like they weren’t even there.

Harry’s knuckles were white on the railing. “They’re brilliant.”

“They’re art,” Estelle corrected.

The match surged forward—goals scored, fouls called, Bludgers howling through the air like cannon fire. Every moment was louder than the last. Ron screamed himself hoarse every time Ireland scored, which was often. Percy tried to keep a dignified air but leapt to his feet at least twice. Hermione jotted anxious notes in the margin of her program.

Fred and George heckled every Bulgarian move with gleeful cruelty. Estelle joined in once or twice, unable to resist, her voice cutting through theirs with surgical precision.

When Ireland hit fifty points to Bulgaria’s zero, she leaned over and said sweetly, “Shall I start drawing up your greenhouse schedules now?”

Fred groaned. George buried his face in his scarf.

But the game wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

For all Ireland’s dominance, Krum was still in the air.

He circled like a hawk, his eyes locked on nothing and everything. Estelle felt the hair on her arms prickle when she looked at him—there was something relentless about the way he moved, as though time itself couldn’t make him tire.

Harry noticed too. He leaned close, voice hushed. “He’s not watching the game at all. He’s only looking for the Snitch.”

“Yes,” Estelle murmured. “And he’ll find it. But the question is when.”

There was something chilling in the certainty of it.

As the match blazed on—score after score, Ireland pulling further ahead—the sky above them seemed darker than it should have been, as though storm clouds were massing far out of sight. The noise of the crowd was joy, was fury, was celebration, but beneath it Estelle felt the faintest tug of unease. A whisper in the bones: nothing this bright lasts forever.

The match raged on. Goals, cheers, fouls, fire.

Ireland soared. Bulgaria fought.

And still, Krum hunted.

Ireland carved the sky with green light, their Chasers weaving in dazzling arcs that blurred into a single, fluid motion. Troy to Moran, Moran to Quigley—every pass so quick it seemed like sleight of hand, the Quaffle a gleam of red darting between their palms. The Bulgarians were fast, brutal, their Beaters swinging clubs with the kind of force that might have felled trees. But they were always a step behind, always reacting to plays that had already passed them by.

The scoreboard flared: Ireland, 30 — Bulgaria, 0.

Ron was shrieking like a banshee, waving his flag until the fabric began to shred along the seams. Beside him, Harry gripped the railing so tightly Estelle wondered if splinters might embed themselves in his palms. Hermione muttered under her breath about “incredible coordination” and “statistical improbability,” but her eyes never left the pitch.

Fred leaned close to Estelle, his voice pitched above the roar. “Don’t look so smug, Professor. Still plenty of time for Bulgaria to pull it back.”

“Plenty of time for you to get used to re-potting Mandrakes,” Estelle replied, dry as bone.

George groaned. “You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“Immensely,” she said.

Another goal. Another eruption of green sparks into the night. The leprechauns returned in force, swooping through the stands in a dizzying dance that scattered illusory gold by the fistful. A child lunged for it, toppled into his father’s lap, and came up laughing even as the coins dissolved into nothing.

Then the Bulgarians answered. One of their Chasers—Volkov—snatched the Quaffle from midair, tucking it close as he dove like a spear hurled by the gods. He swerved past Quigley, avoided a Bludger by inches, and hurled the ball through the rightmost hoop with such velocity the Keeper nearly fell off his broom.

The Bulgarian supporters roared, crimson flares streaking across the sky, and the Veela reappeared at the sideline. They danced, their hair aflame with unnatural light, their movements liquid enough to make the heart stutter.

Ron’s flag drooped. His jaw went slack. Half the men in their section leaned over the railings, shouting declarations of love that dissolved into the din. Fred began to climb onto his seat, dazed, and George yanked him back by the hood.

Estelle rolled her eyes and clapped her hands sharply in front of Ron’s face. “Focus, Weasley.”

He jolted, cheeks flaming. “Right. Right!” He began to wave the flag again with double the effort, as though to compensate for the lapse.

The scoreboard updated: Ireland, 30 — Bulgaria, 10.

Harry frowned, eyes tracking Krum. “He’s not even looking at the Quaffle. He hasn’t all match.”

Estelle followed his gaze. Krum hovered at the periphery, alone, his dark eyes locked on the void where the Snitch might be. His broom twitched with subtle adjustments, his posture so intent it seemed carved from stone. He did not flinch at Bludgers, did not cheer with the crowd, did not break his hunt for even a breath.

“No,” Estelle said softly. “He won’t. His job is the end, not the middle.”

The words curled in her chest like smoke.

The Irish Chasers resumed their dance, slicing through the Bulgarian defense as though it were made of mist. Troy scored again, then Moran. Quigley attempted an over-the-shoulder shot that skimmed just outside the hoop, but the momentum was still theirs.

The scoreboard glowed brighter, pushing Ireland further ahead: Ireland, 50 — Bulgaria, 10.

The Irish supporters erupted into song, hundreds of voices joining into a raucous chant that had no verses, only the name of their team shouted in varying pitches. Fireworks burst overhead, green shamrocks scattering like meteors.

Fred tried to drown them out with his own chant for Bulgaria, but his heart wasn’t in it. George shook his head, resigned.

“You’re digging your own graves,” Estelle said, grinning.

“Graves smell better than Puffapods,” Fred grumbled.

“Depends on the grave,” Estelle replied.

Harry barked a laugh, his eyes never leaving the pitch.

Below them, the Bulgarians fought with mounting desperation. Their Beaters targeted Moran viciously, driving Bludgers at him so hard the crack of wood against iron echoed like thunder. Moran dodged two, swerved to avoid a third, but the fourth clipped the edge of his broom and spun him into a dizzying spiral. The crowd gasped as he dropped thirty feet before righting himself, clutching his arm with a grimace.

A foul was called. The referee blew her whistle, furious, gesturing at the Bulgarian Beaters.

Ron booed at the top of his lungs, joined by half their section. Hermione cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted something that sounded suspiciously like “READ THE RULEBOOK!”

Estelle leaned forward, heart hammering despite her cool exterior. Quidditch was chaos, yes, but it was also fragile. One wrong move, one cruel strike, and brilliance could be broken.

The foul gave Ireland a penalty shot. Ryan executed it flawlessly, sending the Quaffle through the left hoop before the Bulgarian Keeper could even twitch.

Ireland, 60 — Bulgaria, 10.

The tide was set.

The leprechauns and Veela clashed next, their antics nearly overshadowing the game itself.

At one end of the pitch, leprechauns dove into synchronized formations, spelling “IRELAND” in glittering gold letters that shimmered for a heartbeat before collapsing into laughter. At the other, the Veela whirled with such ferocity their beauty became sharp, dangerous, their features twisting into something nearer to harpies than angels.

When a group of leprechauns swooped too close, the Veela retaliated with a shriek that sent sparks crackling through the air. The referee had to intervene, blasting a barrier of light between them. The crowd howled with delight at the spectacle.

“I don’t know who’s fighting harder,” Estelle muttered. “The mascots or the teams.”

Fred wiped sweat from his brow. “Don’t care who wins that fight, as long as we don’t get caught in the crossfire.”

George nodded. “Still—if the Veela tear the leprechauns to shreds, does that mean the gold’s ours to keep?”

“Ask again when you’re not about to weed Bubotubers.”

Then, without warning, Krum moved.

He shot downward like an arrow loosed from a bow, broom angled so steeply it looked suicidal. The crowd screamed, thousands rising to their feet at once.

Harry grabbed Estelle’s arm instinctively. “He sees it!”

Estelle narrowed her eyes, scanning the pitch. A flicker of gold glinted near the ground, darting through the grass.

But at the last possible second, Krum pulled up, empty-handed. The Snitch was gone. The Irish Seeker—Aidan Lynch—had followed him into the dive, slower, less precise, and ended up plowing headfirst into the turf.

The stands erupted in laughter, the Irish supporters booing their own Seeker even as Healers rushed onto the field.

Estelle exhaled through her nose. “Clever. False dive. He’ll use it again.”

Harry’s face was pale. “But Lynch nearly killed himself.”

“That’s the game,” Estelle said. “The Snitch doesn’t forgive mistakes.”

While Lynch was being revived with smelling salts, the Irish Chasers used the distraction to score three consecutive goals.

Ireland, 90 — Bulgaria, 10.

The crowd went feral. Green smoke filled the air, fireworks detonated, and the leprechauns returned to spell out “HA HA HA” across the stadium.

Ron was beside himself, screaming hoarsely until his voice cracked. Hermione clapped her hands over her ears but couldn’t stop smiling. Percy, red-faced, tried to lecture everyone around him about “sportsmanship,” but no one heard him over the din.

Fred and George slumped dramatically in their seats. Estelle patted them on the shoulders with mock sympathy.

“Start thinking about whether you want gloves for the re-potting,” she said. “It gets messy.”

“You’re cruel,” Fred muttered.

“You’re brilliant,” George corrected.

Estelle smirked. “Both.”

But Bulgaria refused to yield. Their Chasers tightened formation, moving like a spear rather than scattered arrows. Volkov and Vulchanov executed a rapid-fire series of passes that left the Irish Keeper spinning. Within moments, they scored twice in quick succession.

Ireland, 90 — Bulgaria, 30.

The Bulgarian supporters roared, crimson smoke flooding the sky. The Veela danced again, their hair whipping like fire, their beauty so sharp it made the eyes water.

Harry swayed forward, his pupils dilated. Estelle snapped her fingers sharply in front of his face. “Breathe, Harry. It’s just a game.”

He blinked, shook himself. “Right. Sorry.”

She gave him a sideways look. “You’ll learn.”

The next twenty minutes were a blur of chaos.

Bludgers screamed past, forcing Chasers into dizzying evasions. Moran scored twice more, Quigley once, and Ryan executed a near-impossible backward throw that had the crowd roaring. But Bulgaria answered each with ruthless speed, clawing back points whenever Ireland faltered.

The scoreboard climbed: Ireland, 130 — Bulgaria, 50.

Fred and George perked up. “See?” Fred shouted. “Momentum’s shifting!”

Estelle raised a brow. “Shifting? They’re still eighty points behind.”

George grinned. “That’s nothing with Krum on the pitch.”

Estelle followed Krum’s flight. He hovered like a shadow, watching, waiting. The Snitch had not shown itself again, but he was relentless.

And then—

He moved again.

Another steep plummet, sharper than the last, his body pressed flat to his broom. The stadium screamed as Lynch, revived but still woozy, followed.

This time the Snitch was there, flashing gold near the grass. Krum’s fingers stretched, reaching—

And then the Bludger hit.

Irish Beaters Connolly and Ryan had targeted him with ruthless precision, slamming the iron ball into Krum’s shoulder. He jerked, lost his line, and the Snitch vanished again.

The crowd howled, half in outrage, half in triumph.

Krum straightened, grimacing, his face pale but unreadable. Blood trickled from his nose, but his eyes never wavered.

Harry gasped. “They hit him!”

Estelle’s stomach twisted. “That’s Quidditch,” she said, though her voice was quieter now.

The Irish crowd sang louder than ever.

Ireland took advantage of Krum’s stumble, scoring twice more in rapid succession.

Ireland, 150 — Bulgaria, 50.

The gap was nearly insurmountable.

Fred and George tried to look confident, but their voices cracked when they shouted. Estelle leaned between them with a grin sharp enough to cut.

“You’re going to look lovely in dragonhide gloves,” she said.

They groaned in unison.

And then the moment came.

The Snitch reappeared—high above the pitch this time, darting like a shard of sunlight. Both Seekers lunged, the stadium erupting into a frenzy of sound so loud Estelle thought the stands might collapse.

Krum was faster. Always faster. He streaked through the air like a missile, Lynch trailing, wobbling, already hopeless.

The Irish Chasers scored again in the chaos—another ten points, pushing their lead further.

Krum’s hand closed around the Snitch.

The whistle blew.

The stadium detonated.

The scoreboard blazed: Ireland, 170 — Bulgaria, 160.

Ireland had won.

The Irish supporters exploded into celebration, green fire raining from the sky, leprechauns spelling out triumphant curses across the stands. The Bulgarians howled in frustration, the Veela vanishing in a wave of flame.

Estelle clapped until her palms stung, her grin wide. She turned to the twins, who sat slumped in despair.

“Greenhouse starts Monday,” she said sweetly.

Harry was on his feet, shouting with Ron, their joy boundless. Hermione laughed, clutching her program to her chest. Percy even cheered once before catching himself.

The stadium was a storm of triumph and fury, light and smoke, laughter and curses.

And somewhere in Estelle’s chest, beneath the joy, that whisper of unease lingered. The feeling of glass waiting to crack.

The stadium was still roaring long after the whistle blew, but Arthur gathered them up like a shepherd with an unruly flock. “Come on, come on,” he urged, his voice strained with both delight and the desire to avoid being trampled by the exodus of eighty thousand euphoric fans.

The climb down was a blur of laughter, songs, and drunken Irishmen conjuring fireworks out of their sleeves. A leprechaun landed on Fred’s shoulder, kissed his cheek, and vanished in a spray of sparks. Fred staggered, dazed.

George pounced. “Looks like even magical mascots pity you after a lost bet.”

Fred shoved him. “Better than losing and getting kissed by one of them. The glitter doesn’t wash out for days.”

Estelle smirked, brushing ash off her sleeve. “I’ll make sure you both have fresh sets of robes for weeding duty.”

“We demand a rematch!” Fred cried.

“In Quidditch?” Estelle asked. “Or Puffapods?”

“In dignity!” George declared.

“You’d lose that, too,” Estelle said.

The group spilled down the last of the staircases into the night, where the campgrounds were a forest of torches and banners. Voices rang in dozens of accents, music floated from conjured fiddles and flutes, and the air smelled of ale and roasted meat. Ireland’s colors shone brightest, green fire still dancing across the clouds above.

Their tent was tucked into the edge of the field, one of the magically expanded ones Arthur had fussed over earlier in the day. From the outside, it looked barely large enough to hold three cots. Inside, however, it stretched into a cozy warren of rooms and rugs, complete with a crackling hearth and battered old armchairs. The moment they ducked inside, the noise of the crowd dulled into something almost pleasant.

Ron burst through first, waving his flag like a victorious knight. “Did you see that? Did you see?!”

“Yes, Ron, we saw all seventy minutes of it,” Ginny muttered, though her cheeks were flushed from cheering.

Percy straightened his robes primly, though even he couldn’t hide the gleam of excitement in his eyes. “A historic match. Ireland’s coordination was unparalleled. They’ll be studying those formations for decades.”

“Not if we patent them first,” Fred said, collapsing dramatically onto one of the armchairs.

“Patent Quidditch moves?” George said. “Brilliant. We’ll charge for the rights every time someone tries to pass a Quaffle.”

“Except you’d be broke after paying Estelle for greenhouse labor,” Ginny reminded them.

Estelle hung up her cloak, her lips twitching at the chaos. “Don’t worry. You’ll learn to love puffapods. They squeal when they’re watered incorrectly.”

The twins groaned in unison and flopped into exaggerated heaps of despair.

Hermione perched on a chair near the fire, eyes still alight. “It was incredible. I mean—the coordination, the reflexes, the sheer stamina. But it was also a bit terrifying. Did you see how Krum—how he kept diving even when he was injured?”

Harry sat beside her, quiet, still riding the storm of it all. “Yeah. He looked like… like nothing else mattered. Just the Snitch.”

“That’s because nothing else did,” Estelle said softly. “Some players play the game. Some chase the end.”

There was a silence at that, the kind that carried a faint chill even in victory. But Ron broke it a second later, waving his flag again. “Doesn’t matter! Ireland won! That’s what counts!”

Arthur bustled about, setting up a tray of mugs that filled themselves with butterbeer. “Hear, hear!” he said warmly. “A brilliant match—one for the ages.” He raised his mug high. “To Ireland!”

“To Ireland!” they chorused, clinking mugs.

The first sip was sweet, frothy, warming all the way down. Estelle leaned back, letting the laughter and chatter wash over her. For once, Grimmauld Place felt far away. The heaviness of her work, the sleepless nights bent over ruined brews, the gnawing weight of old memories—it all seemed to dissolve in the crackle of fire and the company of voices too young to know how easily joy could break.

The twins soon recovered enough spirit to begin reenacting their favorite plays from the match, nearly breaking the table when George leapt onto it to mimic a Bludger swing. Hermione yelped, Ron howled with laughter, and Percy tried to scold them while mopping butterbeer off the rug. Ginny dared Harry to try the dive Krum had made, and Harry, half embarrassed but glowing with exhilaration, actually did, tumbling onto the cushions with his glasses askew. Estelle laughed until her ribs ached.

It felt—for a dangerous, precious moment—like the world might hold this light forever.

The celebrations outside went on without pause. Distant songs drifted in—lilting Irish reels, the steady boom of drums, laughter bubbling over like fountains. Fireworks burst again and again, shaking the tent walls with light. Someone conjured a giant shamrock that marched drunkenly across the campground before collapsing into sparks.

“Merlin,” Fred said, peeking out of the tent flap. “They’ll be at it all night.”

“Good,” Ron said. “Let them. They deserve it.”

Arthur chuckled, settling into a chair with his mug. “It isn’t every day Ireland wins the Cup. Let them have their joy.”

The warmth of it filled the tent like summer. Butterbeer flowed, the laughter rang, the fire snapped cheerfully in the grate. For a little while longer, Estelle allowed herself to believe this night might last.

Then the first bang shook the ground.

It rattled through the tent poles, sharp and booming. A second followed, louder, closer. The mugs on the table clattered.

Fred grinned. “Listen to that! They’re trying to outdo the leprechauns.”

“Bit reckless,” George said. “But I respect it.”

Ron pushed back the flap to peer outside, his eyes wide. “It’s still green fireworks. Must be Ireland keeping the party going.”

Another bang split the air, deeper, more resonant. The fire flickered in the grate. Hermione frowned, setting down her mug. “That didn’t sound like fireworks.”

“It’s just the Irish,” Ron insisted. “They’re celebrating.”

Estelle tilted her head, listening. She’d spent enough nights in places where celebration turned into chaos to recognize the change in tone. The rhythm wasn’t right. The sound didn’t echo like magic meant for joy. It cracked too sharp, too violent, leaving the air unsettled.

Her stomach tightened.

Arthur burst into the tent, his face white as bone. His hair was disheveled, his eyes frantic. “Out,” he said, his voice cutting through the laughter like a blade. “All of you. Now.”

The tent fell silent. Fred set his mug down slowly. George blinked. Ron froze, mouth half-open.

Arthur’s hands shook as he grabbed his cloak. “It isn’t the Irish. It isn’t fireworks. We need to leave. Immediately.”

Outside, another bang echoed, followed by distant screams.

The warmth of the fire seemed to die all at once.

Estelle rose to her feet, her heart thudding hard against her ribs. “What is it?” she demanded.

Arthur looked at her, fear naked in his eyes. “Death Eaters.”

The word dropped into the silence like a curse.

For one breath, the tent seemed to hold its air, waiting. Then chaos roared outside—screams, spells, the thunder of running feet.

Arthur pointed to the flap, his voice firm despite the tremor beneath it. “Go. Now.”

Chapter Text

The night collapsed.

Where moments ago the air had been thick with music, laughter, and emerald light, it was now shredded by screams. The tent flap burst open on a scene that looked torn from nightmare: fire blooming against the sky, spells streaking like lightning, people running in every direction with wands raised or hands clutching children. Banners burned. Sparks rained.

Arthur’s voice cut through the din. “Stay together! Stay together!”

They spilled out into the maelstrom, a tangle of cloaks and flags and pounding hearts. Fred and George grabbed Ginny between them, dragging her along when she stumbled. Percy shoved Ron forward with unusual force. Hermione clutched Harry’s sleeve, eyes wide, breath ragged. Estelle brought up the rear, her wand already in her hand, scanning the shadows.

The campgrounds that had felt like a festival now resembled a battlefield. Tents blazed with unnatural fire, their canvas curling like paper. Stalls that had sold butterbeer and souvenirs were overturned, their contents scattered, trampled, smashed. Above it all, voices howled—not joyous, not drunken, but cruel. Masked figures moved through the crowd like wolves, spells flashing from their wands, laughter sharp and merciless.

“Death Eaters,” Estelle muttered, her stomach twisting.

Arthur’s face was grim as he shoved them onward. “Keep running! To the woods—move!”

They barreled down a trampled lane between tents, dodging panicked witches and wizards. A child shrieked as his toy broom caught fire; his mother scooped him up, stumbling through the crush. A man tripped over a discarded cauldron and vanished under the tide of fleeing bodies.

The ground shook with another explosion. Green fire lit the sky, not the joyous shade of Ireland’s victory but something darker, seething.

Fred shouted over the roar. “Where are the Ministry?”

“Fighting,” Arthur snapped. “Now move!”

They ran harder, lungs burning, hearts hammering. The forest loomed ahead, a black mass that promised at least cover from the spells. But the press of bodies made it impossible to move quickly; people surged, shoved, tripped, rose again.

Then the crowd split apart, and Estelle saw them—four towering shapes marching through the camp, their faces hidden behind masks, their wands raised. They had captured a family of Muggles—two parents and their children—and were levitating them high above the ground, dangling them like puppets, spinning them helplessly in the air.

The crowd jeered, half in terror, half in perverse delight. Sparks and curses streaked upward, bursting around the screaming family.

Hermione gasped, her hand clamping on Estelle’s arm. Harry’s face twisted, pale with rage. Ron swore violently under his breath.

“Don’t look!” Arthur barked, shoving them toward the trees. “Move!”

The twins looked back anyway, their faces pale but furious. Ginny hid her face against Fred’s sleeve. Percy muttered, “Unconscionable,” though his voice trembled.

Estelle forced her eyes forward, though bile rose in her throat. It was too familiar. This was what darkness looked like—mockery, spectacle, cruelty for sport. She had grown up in rooms where whispers promised this very thing. Seeing it made flesh clawed at her chest.

The forest was closer now, the line of trees almost within reach. Estelle shoved Ron forward, shouting above the noise, “Don’t stop—just go!”

But then the press of bodies surged sideways, splitting them apart. A crowd fleeing from another lane smashed into them, scattering their group. Hermione screamed Harry’s name as she was shoved toward the trees. Ron grabbed Ginny, hauling her along. Fred and George were swept another way entirely.

Estelle spun, searching, but the crush pressed hard, cutting her off. She caught one last glimpse of Arthur, his face stricken as he was dragged with Percy toward the forest.

Then the tide carried her in the opposite direction.

“Harry!” she shouted, but her voice vanished in the storm, words lost to the whipping wind.

The crowd shoved her down an alley of burning tents. The heat licked at her face, smoke clawing at her throat. She staggered, coughing, trying to push back against the press. For one dizzy moment she thought she might be crushed underfoot.

Then the pressure eased, the crowd spilling out into an open stretch of trampled grass. She stumbled free, gasping, and found herself suddenly alone.

Almost alone.

“Lost, cousin?”

The voice was velvet over steel.

Estelle froze, her stomach plummeting.

Lucius Malfoy stepped from the shadows between two smoldering tents, wand in hand, mask discarded but arrogance intact. His pale hair gleamed in the firelight, his eyes sharp and cold.

“You,” Estelle hissed.

Lucius smiled faintly, tilting his head. “What a curious coincidence. A Black who thinks herself above her name, wandering unguarded through the dark. Fitting, isn’t it?”

Estelle lifted her wand, her grip steady despite the thrum of adrenaline. “Try me.”

Lucius circled slowly, serpent-cane tapping the ground even here in chaos. “You should never have come back into this world. You pretend at respectability, teaching children plants, hiding in dirt. But blood tells, Estelle. Blood always tells.”

She bared her teeth in a smile that was all ice. “You’re right. It tells me you’re a coward who hides behind masks.”

His eyes narrowed. “Careful.”

“No,” Estelle said, her voice low and sharp. “You be careful.”

He flicked his wand, fast as a striking snake. “Cruc—”

Her hex hit him first.

Blue light burst from her wand, slamming into his chest and hurling him backward into the side of a burning tent. He staggered, choking, his spell sputtering unfinished. Canvas collapsed around him, flames licking upward.

Estelle didn’t wait. She spun on her heel and ran.

The campgrounds were chaos incarnate. Fire roared, spells cracked, shadows lunged and fell. She darted between burning tents, dodging curses that seared the air. A masked figure lunged at her; she slashed her wand, sending them spinning into the dirt. She didn’t look back.

The forest loomed ahead again, closer now, its dark edge promising cover. She shoved through panicked witches, ducked past a flying cauldron, leapt over a toppled cart. Smoke seared her lungs, sparks rained down, her ears rang with screams.

Behind her, laughter rolled—cold, triumphant, merciless. Death Eaters, reveling in the havoc.

Estelle’s heart hammered as she pushed harder, her boots pounding the dirt. She had to find the others. She had to.

A spell cracked overhead, splitting the air. Another bang shook the ground. Figures screamed, fell, vanished into smoke.

The world was collapsing, burning, breaking.

And Estelle ran through it, alone, the weight of her name like a brand on her skin.

The ground sloped away under Estelle’s feet, slick with trampled grass and spilled ale, the air so thick with smoke it felt like another crowd pressing at her from all sides. She ran with her head low and her wand up, lungs burning, ears full of the raw animal sound of panic—shouts, sobbing, laughter that had been joy an hour ago but now had teeth. A man barreled past her, clutching two children to his chest; a woman stumbled after him with a bleeding scalp and a silver shoe still in her hand as if that detail were the one thread keeping the world from unraveling.

A streak of red cut across the night and smashed into a tent pole ahead; the canvas went up with a boom and a whoosh, flame leaping like it had been waiting for an excuse. Estelle slashed her wand, yanked the fire sideways and collapsed it into a hiss of steam that soaked her boots. The spell’s recoil buzzed through her forearm. She didn’t slow.

“Mind out!” someone yelled, and a crate of Omnioculars tumbled, rattling underfoot like spilled bones. She hurdled it and nearly collided with a masked figure stepping out from between two tents, wand already rising. She moved first, a wordless, hammer-hard stunner that caught them under the ribs and flung them into a stack of folding chairs. Metal clanged. The mask skittered. Estelle didn’t look to see who it was. She turned and ran.

The creature pens. Amos had said he’d be volunteering at the gates. If the Ministry had any order left, it would be there—in fences and lists and someone shouting names against the wind. She angled left, past the souvenir alley where wooden team badges lay scattered like fallen leaves. A shamrock pennant, trampled and half-burning, stuck to her boot; she scraped it off with the side of her other shoe and kept going.

More tents, more smoke, a wave of people shoving hard enough to lift her off her feet for a sick heartbeat and carry her like driftwood. She dug in and pushed back, shoulders set, the old city instinct of moving through crowds returning to her body as if it had just been waiting for a summons. A woman fell flat in front of her; Estelle hauled her up by the back of her robes and shoved her toward the path. “Forest!” she shouted into the woman’s ear. “Go!”

A boy of seven or eight stood alone by a brazier, crying in that hiccupping way children do when they’ve reached the end of their breath. Estelle skidded, scooped him under the elbows, and shoved him bodily into a passing family. “Yours?” They stared, wild-eyed, then the mother grabbed the boy and he vanished into their knot like he’d always been there. Estelle swallowed the relief dry and kept running.

She broke into a cross path and nearly collided with a silver-haired wizard she recognized as one of the Bulgarian officials; he clutched a ledger like a shield and shouted something in a language she didn’t speak. His sleeve was on fire from elbow to cuff. Estelle flicked her wand, snuffed it, and was gone before he could thank her.

There—beyond a line of stalls where sugar quills had melted into a viscous rainbow—she saw the fencing: a low run of iron rails and rope, the sort of temporary boundary the Ministry loved to pretend was permanent. Inside it, pens stood black and gaping where mooncalves had been tethered earlier in the day. Shapes moved along the fence—robes, wands, someone signaling with a light charm. The gate.

“Cedric!” she shouted, because hope is not sensible at the best of times and tonight it had decided to be reckless too.

At first it was only the mess answering her: the torn roar of the crowd, the slam and sizzle of spells, the dull, gut-deep thump of explosions somewhere behind the rise. Then, cutting across all that, a voice she knew.

“Professor!”

He was taller at a run than at a walk, somehow; his height worked differently when he was moving swiftly. Cedric slid down the slight embankment on the far side of the pen, boots carving the damp grass, wand up, eyes blown wide in the firelight. He had a cut along one cheekbone that looked clean and narrow, like a piece of the night had decided to stay on his face, and there was blood drying at his temple. Amos came behind him, broader, breathing hard, his cap gone, his hair a wild fringe. Relief kicked Estelle so hard in the ribs it almost toppled her.

“Where are they?” Cedric demanded, closing the last distance and catching her elbow in case her legs decided to fold, because he was that sort of boy.

“Forest—Arthur—he was herding them,” she said, the words arriving on their own, too fast. Smoke scratched her throat raw. “We were split. I lost them. Death Eaters by the central lanes. Luc—” She swallowed the name. Not now. “We need to get off the grounds.”

Amos nodded, grim. “The wards are a patchwork. They’ve thrown up anti-Disapparation jinxes round the main bowl and the Muggle car parks, but they left the outer meadows loose to keep traffic moving. We can make the hedgerow by South Meadow. Past that we can go.”

A flare of green light lifted above the crest of the hill behind them, fat and obscene, bursting into sparks that rained down with a hiss. The shape of the cheering had changed; it had a sneer in it now. Estelle reached automatically—touching Cedric’s sleeve, brief, grounding, the way you grab a doorframe in a shifting house.

“Take anyone you can hold,” Amos said, and his voice was the voice he used with skittish animals—low, even, very certain. He snagged the sleeve of a witch stumbling past. “South Meadow! This way!” He gestured her through the gate and into the penned lane that ran along the fence; it would be clearer there, at least for a few yards.

Cedric pivoted, saw a pair of boys trying to drag their father between them, and was gone in three strides to shoulder part of the weight without asking. Estelle fell into place on the flank, her wand up, watching the angles like she was back on a broom, looking for lines instead of openings.

They ran the fence line, boots thudding the packed earth, a makeshift convoy forming without anyone deciding it should. A witch with scorch marks up her arms. A wizard with his robe half torn away. A family whose children were loud with the insistence of terror. Amos at the front. Cedric darting back and forth like the best Beaters do, not to smash things but to make people feel covered. Estelle at the rear, turning slashes of light aside with wrist-flicks that felt like stories she had learned and not forgotten: fold the energy, no unnecessary flourish, keep the recoil out of your fingers, don’t look at the spell—look at the caster’s shoulder.

They cut across a lane where the stalls had burned down to skeletal frames. A masked pair stepped out ahead and raised their wands. Estelle was already moving—two quick hexes, one to the knee (a lesson from an Auror she’d dated for a winter), one to the wrist. Both figures twisted, miscast, and fell sideways into the ashes. She didn’t let herself enjoy it, not even a little. She was too busy counting heads.

“Mind the cart!” Cedric shouted, and he meant the one that was rolling unstoppably toward them, the axle broken but the weight still keen on movement. Amos snapped his wand and the cart hopped sideways mid-roll like a frog, clattering into the fence instead of the children in front. The youngest started crying; Amos’s mouth tightened and he kept going, because there wasn’t time to comfort properly and also because his face was the kind that made children believe him when he said “You’re safe,” even when it was a promise he couldn’t keep yet.

They hit a bottle-neck where two massive tents had collapsed toward each other and made a canvas throat. Estelle threaded the group through, slashing the weighted ropes that had become snares, dragging a grandmother by her wrist because she wouldn’t let go of her bag. The air inside the canvas throat tasted like iron. Outside, the noise seemed louder for the moment of constriction: it rushed back in, greedy.

At the end of the lane the ground climbed. Beyond it lay a smear of dark that read as hedgerow and, past that, the softer nothing of farmers’ fields, the kind that had accepted sheep and rain for so many centuries they knew better than to fight either. They were only a hundred yards from the boundary.

The sky changed.

It was as though someone had rung a bell only Estelle’s bones could hear. The soundless shock hit the air; the hairs along her forearms stood up. Her feet kept moving because training does that to you—your body will obey even when your mind is asking foolish questions such as ‘what did you just feel?’

Every conversation within earshot dropped half a note. Spells faltered. Even the howling laughter stuttered. And then a green too rich to be leaf rose like a bruise blooming—up, up, coiling, unfurling above the line of trees.

A skull and a snake.

So simple, the idea of it. A drawing a child could make and yet never would. Its mouth gaped, its eye sockets were voids not of shadow but of intention, and from its lips unrolled a serpent—not coiled around it, not adjacent to it, not stitched to it like a banner—coming out of it, the rope of it tongue and body both. The serpent seemed to move even though it was only light, and the light seemed to think even though it was only a sign. Her house animal. The snake.

Someone screamed a name that wasn’t a name; it was a fact, large and old and heavy.

Estelle stopped without deciding to. The hedge was ten paces away. Cedric’s hand landed flat and hard between her shoulder blades and shoved. “Go,” he said, the word threaded with something like apology and something like command. She went, because there was nothing to be gained by standing and letting old terror pour itself into her skull.

Behind them, there were pops—Ministry Apparitions firing like corks, Ministerial colors flashing, voices cracking commands shaped like questions. Ahead, the hedge, proper English hawthorn, old and thorn-boned, the kind of hedge that makes its own spine. Amos shoved two small boys through a gap, then their mother, then a wizard who tried to argue with him about something as if a debate were appropriate. “Argue in the lane,” Amos said without heat. “Move your feet now.”

Estelle squeezed through the gap last, her cloak tearing, thorn scratching a neat line along the back of her hand. She tasted the copper of it and ignored the useless thought that it would stain before wiping it on her pants. The field beyond opened with the quiet that only pasture knows. A barbed-wire fence glittered faintly three fields down like a constellation come to ground. There were stars above the green horror, pinpricked and faithful. They looked further away than they had a minute ago.

“Wards end at that stile,” Amos said, pointing to a blunted step set into the hedge after the next two paddocks, his voice as steady as it had been when he explained to Estelle in June that he’d built a new gate for the hens. It steadied them because he was pretending it was an ordinary instruction. “Once past, you take my arm,” he told Estelle without waiting to see if Cedric would argue. “Diggory farm is clean of visitors and clean of talk.”

“Harry, Hermione—” Estelle began, the words coming out thin, too thin for the shape of the fear behind them.

“We’ll find them,” Cedric said. He meant it like a map, not like a prayer. “The Weasleys are half the Ministry by weight. No one loses those people without losing a fight.”

They ran the hedgerow. The field smelled of damp soil and crushed clover and sheep; smoke threaded it, sour. Behind them, the Mark hung and did not dim. It made its own weather.

The stile. Amos went over in a long step like a man who has been crossing boundaries his whole life. The knot of stragglers they’d collected followed—awkward, quick, apologizing to each other with their bodies. Cedric offered his hand to a witch in a ruined hat; she took it and went pink-cheeked with the effort of pretending none of this was happening. Estelle stepped down and steadied a boy whose shoe had come off at the last moment.

“Take my arm,” Amos said again when they’d pushed to the far side. His sleeve was singed, his forearm freckled with ash. Estelle set her hand there and had the absurd thought that the Diggorys always felt like earth—ground under the fingernails, soil under the skin.

“On my count,” he said. “One. Two—”

They turned on the spot. The field squeezed. The world narrowed to a pipe and she pulled herself through it by something that was both will and mathematics. There was the little tug behind the navel she’d learned not to dread, the clutch at the bones, the *pop* that wasn’t a sound but a relief.

They arrived in a kitchen.

If she hadn’t been to a thousand English kitchens, she would have known anyway what this was. The table dominated it, scarred oak, corners softened by generations of hips. The chairs didn’t match but none of them minded. Boots lived under a bench. The door latch had that particular slant to it of a thing that had been mended five times and would be a delight to mend a sixth. The clock on the wall was one of those practical faces with numbers big enough to scold. A horseshoe on a nail above the door, iron gone soft with the years.

It was dark until Amos flicked the lamps with his wand and then it was warm, not in temperature only but in intention: kettle, mugs, the square tin where biscuits had lived since 1976, a plant on the sill that someone loved absent-mindedly because it was thriving despite itself.

Estelle realized her hands were shaking once she could see them properly. She set them flat to the table to stop it. It didn’t stop. Cedric shut the door with his heel and leaned against it for a second, eyes closed, throat working. The cut on his cheek had started to tack up at the edges but it still looked wrong on his face, like punctuation where none was needed.

Amos went to the sink like a man walking to prayer. He filled the kettle from the tap, set it on the hob, lit the flame with a little tick of his wand. The sound of water thinking about boiling was suddenly the most central thing in the room. Estelle’s lungs looked for a pace to match.

“Sit,” Amos said, and there was so much father in it that Estelle didn’t think to argue. She sat. The chair creaked in relief at getting to be a chair again, not a barricade or a weapon or a platform for reenacting match goals.

Cedric eased onto the bench opposite her and then changed his mind and sat next to her instead. His shoulder brushed hers; he left it there. “You’re bleeding,” he said, because he had eyes.

“Tidy line,” she said, looking at the scratch on her hand like it belonged to someone else. “Hedge’s signature.”

He dug in a drawer for a tea towel and the tin of salve that all British kitchens with gardens seem to have, rubbed a bit on the cut with a touch that was careful but not tentative. “It’ll sting.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t. Nothing was fine. But the sting, when it came, was clean—like someone had drawn a boundary around the pain and told it to behave.

The kettle clicked its readiness. Amos poured, set three mugs down in that farmer’s way that makes even tea feel like a plan. “Strong,” he said, apologetic but not actually sorry. “Sugar’s in the tin. Milk’s in the door.”

Estelle stared at the steam. The first time she tried to lift the mug her hands didn’t coordinate; the tremor made the liquid slap the side. Cedric closed his fingers around the body of the mug and steadied it for her without looking at her. She let him. They breathed the tea for a moment together. She drank. It landed in her chest with a weight that was mercy.

The kitchen windows were black; their reflection hung in them like a ghost family. The green from the mark wasn’t visible here—too many hedges, too much Englishness between them and the event—but it felt like it had stained the night for miles.

“What did you see?” Amos asked after a while, voice low.

Estelle set the mug down so quietly even the table was surprised. “Enough.” She rubbed her thumb over the rim. “They had Muggles in the air. Laughing while they spun them. Not because of anything. Just because they could.”

Amos’s mouth flattened into a line that had ploughed fields in all weathers. “I tried to stop one like that,” he said. “Fifty yards and a forest between us. Shouted myself hoarse. Didn’t matter.”

Cedric’s jaw clicked. “We got three kids through the boundary by the creature pens,” he said. “The smallest wouldn’t let go of the eldest’s sleeve. Kept saying he’d been told to hold tight. I don’t think he knew what he was holding tight to.”

Estelle pressed her fingertips to the bone just below her eye and held it there, the pressure a thing to think about. “I ran into a Mal—” She stopped, rolled the word back down her tongue. “Never mind. He’s not the point.”

“Is he breathing?” Cedric asked, not looking up from the way his hands had started to shake now that there was nothing for them to do. His voice was level. It was a kindness.

“For now,” Estelle said. Her mouth tried to turn that into a smile and failed. “Canvas fell on him. It went alight. By accident, of course. He was a bit singed when I left.”

“A shame,” Amos said, and the dryness in the words would have made Estelle laugh if the part of her that laughs hadn’t been put somewhere safe and locked for later.

They drank. The kitchen clicked and sighed, the way old houses do when they realize you didn’t leave them for good. Somewhere on the back step a hedgehog rattled a leaf. There was the faint, comforting smell of something baked hours earlier and left covered on the counter in case someone came home hungry.

The silence fractured on a thought that had been collecting weight since the hill.

“That mark,” Cedric said, and even the way he didn’t name it was a naming. “They haven’t dared that in—”

“—thirteen years,” Amos finished. He sounded like his own father’s voice had just spoken through him. “Not once. Not like that.”

Estelle curled her cold hands around the mug again until the shaking dirtied the surface with little rings. She’d felt the soundless bell in her bones before it rose. Not the image of it—the intention. She had not allowed herself to be a person who feels omens since she was twenty and decided the price of that habit was too high. Tonight had not asked her permission to bring it back.

“He’s coming back,” she said. There was no drama in it, only weather. She didn’t say ‘I think’ or ‘maybe.’The kitchen didn’t give her the option. “Not just the stragglers who never stopped loving cruelty. Not just the cowards who will switch sides mid-battle and pretend they were always on yours. Him.”

Amos’s breath went out, slow. He looked at the clock because men like him like to look at something practical when the world stops being that. “We don’t know—” he began, and then stopped, because he’s not a liar and also because denial is an expensive luxury in his line of work. He shifted the sentence. “We’ll prepare as if.”

Cedric’s hands had stopped shaking; the steadiness had been paid for by something in his face going a little older. He stared at the table a long heartbeat and then lifted his eyes to Estelle. “Harry’ll be in the middle of it,” he said, and even the quiet of the statement was an oath inside itself.

“Yes,” Estelle said. The word tasted like copper and gravity. “And I’ll be between him and anything that tries to take him.”

“You won’t be able to be between him and everything,” Amos said, because he doesn’t coddle the truth.

“I know,” Estelle said. She had always known. The knowledge didn’t make the vow smaller. “I’ll be as between as I can.”

A clock in some other room chimed the half hour, small and sensible. Outside, the hedgehog decided to move on, the crisp little footfalls mapping the back step. The kettle, having been emptied, made one last tick like a contented animal.

“Do you want toast?” Amos asked abruptly, as if he’d just remembered a part of hospitality that might anchor them. “There’s bread. And jam from Mrs. Hayward next door. Damson. Good for steadiness.”

“Please,” Estelle said, and then surprised herself, because the word ‘please’ felt like a peculiar mercy. He put bread in. The pop of it was such a domestic sound she could have put her head on the table and wept for a week.

Cedric stood, restless, and went to the sink to rinse the cloth he’d used on her hand. He washed it with the care of someone doing a job to keep the rest of his mind from going where it wants to go. He wrung it out and set it neatly over the tap to dry. When he turned, his eyes were that clear, open grey they were in daylight when he was thinking about tactics or plants. There was dirt on his cheek where the blood had scabbed. He looked very much like both a boy and the man he would be in the same shape of a person.

“You can have my room,” he said. “Dad snores. Stay. There’s a storm of owls coming to every house with a school-aged witch or wizard before dawn. It’ll find you here fine as anywhere.”

Estelle nodded once. The thought of Grimmauld Place felt like cold brick and the sound of her own feet crossing a corridor that hadn’t earned their echo yet. “Thank you,” she said. “For the bed. For the tea. For—” She gestured helplessly to the whole of the kitchen. “This.”

Amos slid the toast onto plates and put the jam jar in the middle without bothering with a spoon; some people are allowed to put knives in jars in their own houses and not be scolded by anyone. He poured a little more milk into her tea, which he’d noticed she needed without having to be told twice. “You’ll tell Dumbledore?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“As soon as the owls stop frightening themselves to death,” she said. “He probably knows already. He’s the sort of man who feels the shape of a thing when it’s still a rumor.”

“Good,” Amos said simply. “Good.”

They ate. It tasted like the kind of food you can digest even when the rest of your insides don’t remember how—sweet, plain, an argument for the practicality of staying alive long enough to be useful tomorrow.

At some point Cedric fetched a blanket from the sitting room and put it round her shoulders like it was part of making tea. She let it be. The wool smelled faintly of summer—sun on line-dried cloth, something green that had been crushed underfoot on a day when no one was running.

When the worst of the shaking had left her hands and gone somewhere she didn’t need to chase it, Estelle stood. “I’m going to write,” she said, meaning to the headmaster, meaning to the Weasleys if the owls would bear it, meaning to the parts of herself that misbehave unless told what to do. “And then I will sleep before I decide not to.”

“I’ll put a kettle upstairs in case you wake,” Amos said. “The stairs creak on the third, so step quick, and the hot tap in the bathroom needs coaxing to believe in itself. Left turn at the top. The window sticks; don’t fight it. It wins when you fight it.”

The advice was so perfectly ordinary and so exactly what she needed to be given that she could have loved him for it if she were a woman who went round loving men for telling her where their taps lived. Instead she set her palm flat on the table again, once, to thank the house, then gathered the blanket tight and went to the little writing desk in the corner by the telephone no one used.

The quill scratched. She didn’t dramatize; there was no point. She put the facts down: the riot, the cruelty, the mark, the way the air had changed before it rose. She did not list the ways one can tell a night from a beginning, but she suspected the man she was writing to would read them between the lines.

When she lifted her head, the clock had marched a handful of small, kind minutes onward. The room had settled from shock into tiredness. The first quiet, questioning birds of very late night (or very early morning) ticked once in the hedge.

Estelle folded the letter and left it on the sill for Icarus or the post to find her when the sky felt brave. She picked up the second mug of tea Amos had made without asking and carried it upstairs past the third step that creaked, stepping quick like she’d been told.

In the spare room the bed had a patchwork quilt and a bedside lamp with a shade that had been recovered by hands that loved fabric without taking it too seriously. She set the mug down, pulled her boots off, and sat. The window stuck, and she did not fight it. She didn’t need air from outside. The night had given her enough of itself.

When she closed her eyes, she could still see the green hanging above a field, pinning the sky like a cruel brooch. She could also see Cedric’s hand on a stranger’s sleeve, Amos’s solid shape cutting through the hedge, a boy in a knit hat who had held his brother’s sleeve because someone had told him to. Small, stubborn refusals of the world’s worst ideas. She let those pictures sit beside the other one. They did not cancel it. They made room around it.

She lay down. The blanket smelled of sun. Her body remembered how to be the size of a bed. In the edge-time before sleep found her, the thought came again that had been speaking all night in a voice she had not wanted to recognize: he is coming back.

“Then so are we,” she whispered into the quiet kitchen-smelling dark, and the house, being a Diggory house, made no fuss and simply agreed to hold her until the morning.

It took longer than it should have for her hands to stop shaking.

The Diggory kitchen had gone quiet in the way only country rooms manage—lamps dimmed to a warmer hum, the kettle’s last tick like a sigh after a long day, the smell of toast retreating into the wood of the table. Amos had tended to the practicals he could reach: wiped the crumbs with the side of his hand into the sink, turned the latch on the back door to keep the hedgehog from wandering in, checked the fire in the small sitting room so it wouldn’t sulk into smoke and set the alarms howling. Cedric had coaxed the stubborn bathroom tap into believing in itself and set a folded towel on the rail like the future might still have manners.

Estelle had tried to sleep in the spare room and managed sixteen minutes that felt like truce and not rest. When she opened her eyes the dark was exactly the same—thick and awake and full of questions that didn’t respect beds. She sat up with the blanket dragged around her shoulders and listened to a fox bark twice at the edge of the hedgerow and to the tiny, incredulous chirp of a robin who had mistaken the hour and now had to pretend it meant to sing in the middle of the night.

On the little writing desk beside the lamp, the letter to Dumbledore lay folded and addressed. The ink had dried true. The quill, for once, hadn’t split its nib in protest. If she waited here, an owl would find it soon enough. If she slept, morning would come and with it another set of decisions arranged in a list that would let her breathe.

But she wasn’t going to sleep. The thought of that lopsided house she’d only ever heard about in jokes and letters tugged at her like a sleeve.

She dressed again—pulled her boots on silently, tucked her hair back with ruthless fingers, slipped her cloak over the blanket and then thought better of it and set the blanket down. The room smelled of lavender from a bag someone had hung on the bedpost. She wanted to take it with her and didn’t; it wasn’t hers.

The floorboard on the third step creaked because steps always remember what men warn you about. She stepped quickly like she’d been told and the old wood forgave her. In the kitchen Amos was sitting at the table with his head bowed into his hands, not sleeping but resting the way farmers do—by remembering their weight and letting it return to them slow. He lifted his head before she reached the doorway because people who live on hedgerows hear people before doors do.

“You were meant to be sleeping,” he said gently, like he didn’t believe in scolding and also like he wouldn’t mind being wrong.

“Sleeping is staging a protest,” Estelle said. The cup beside his elbow still steamed faintly—a top-up he hadn’t yet drunk. “I can’t stay. I need to go to the Weasleys. I don’t think I’ll sleep until I know they made it out alright. And maybe even then…”

Amos’s mouth tugged, not disapproving—only considering. “If they’ve made it home, Molly’ll be pacing ruts into her floorboards, even at this hour.”

“I have their address.” Estelle smoothed the folded parchment she took from the inside pocket of her cloak as if smoothing it would make the night less tattered. Harry’s hand had scrawled it crookedly in July at the bottom of a note that had otherwise been all jokes about Dudley and a question about whether basilisk venom could be used to degrease a bike chain (she had not dignified that with an answer). The address gleamed plain as a spell: The Burrow, Ottery St Catchpole, Devon.

“Apparate to the lane,” Amos said immediately, practical mind already laying the stepping stones. “Not to their door. They keep a ward net about the garden that shouts like hens. If you hit the hedge instead of the stile you’ll lose an eyebrow and the good opinion of a very awake mother.”

“Sound advice,” Estelle said, managing the shape of a smile and feeling it fit, just barely. “Thank you.”

Cedric stood in the doorway to the little sitting room, hair sleep-ruined and eyes not even pretending to have been closed. He’d pulled a jumper on wrong-side-out and hadn’t noticed. The cut on his cheek had already scabbed to a thin rust line. He looked like a boy who had gone to a war by accident and had decided to behave as though he’d meant to.

“You’ll tell them we’re all right?” he asked, and she realized how young he still was and how much of that would get spent this year.

“I will,” Estelle said. “And I’ll tell them you made the hedgerow move out of the way.”

Cedric huffed. “It was hardly—”

“Heroic as advertised,” she said, and because she could hear the argument he was about to have with humility, she cut it off with, “Good luck this year, Cedric Diggory. Keep your head out of hallways when Seers start saying nonsense and your feet off the Quidditch hoops.”

He rolled his eyes at the last, but the first part hit home; he sobered and nodded. “Good luck to you too, Professor.”

Amos pushed back his chair. “I’ll walk you to the end of the lane.”

“You won’t,” Estelle said. “You’ll sit here and drink that tea while it’s warm and still of any use and keep the door locked, in case some poor soul comes by and remembers they’re supposed to knock.”

Amos’s eyes warmed with something like amusement and approval in the same breath. “You’ve been a farmer without owning a field,” he said.

“I own a few very stubborn greenhouses,” Estelle said. “It counts.”

She moved to go and then stopped and put her hand flat on the table like she had earlier, a gesture that felt almost like superstition and almost like thanks. “For pulling me out,” she said simply. “For the tea. For the hedgerow. For being the sort of house that puts jam on the table without asking questions first.”

Amos shrugged, the way men do when they have been useful and do not know yet how to wear the praise without wrinkling their own faces. “Come round when there isn’t a riot on,” he said. “We’ll show you the thing the goats do when you play them the wireless.”

“I will,” Estelle said, and she meant the absurd promise as if it were a lifeline.

She crossed the yard in the pause between the fox’s third bark and a neighbor’s window creaking. The stars looked tired and stubborn. The night had that thin-toothed bite it gets just before dawn thinks about what it wants to be. She felt for the shape of the road in the way the land held itself and then folded and stepped.

Apparition out of a warm kitchen and into hedgerows is like diving into a pool that remembers you’re not water. Her lungs tightened on the pop, her ears adjusted, and there it was: a narrow Devon lane bunched between banks shouldering ferns, the hedges high and grown heavy with summer’s last idiot insistences. In the distance a cockerel got the hour wrong and told a lie to the farm across the way.

Estelle held still for a moment and let her balance catch up. The lane smelled of wet earth and old diesel and honeysuckle committing a crime in a ditch. Far off, something with small sharp feet rustled through dry grass. The sky toward the east was a fraction less black than the other three sides—just the faintest loosening where morning was fingers on a knot.

She tucked Harry’s letter back into her pocket with two fingers, reflex checking the address as though it might have run about in the night when she wasn’t looking. Ottery St Catchpole was the kind of name a child would choose for a place in a game; it made her mouth want to be less cross with the world. She set off with her wand down and her shoulders not quite squared. It was nearer four than three; the kind of hour that asks for passwords and gives none.

The path from the lane curled like a thought across a field that had been cut weeks ago. In the dark, the stubble whispered against her boots. A low fence took two steps and a lunge; she landed with a thud a sparrow might disapprove of. As she climbed the small rise beyond it, the outline of the house arrived.

It did not so much stand as arrange itself upward in defiance of physics and sensible builders. The lower portion might once have been a tidy cottage, but the rest of the structure had accreted in successive acts of optimism and shrugging—another room here, a lean-to there, a stair that climbed up outside and persuaded a door to appear where no door ought to be. Chimneys argued with one another at angles. A weathervane spun slowly despite the stillness. The whole thing leaned as if listening very hard to the field. Every stretch of it said: someone put love here and didn’t worry about the edges.

Even in the dark, the Burrow had a color to it—paint that had been repainted, brick that remembered being red before weather and laughter rubbed it into a gentler shade. The garden in front made a brave, shaggy stand of cabbages and something tall that might have been beans; gnomes crouched like criminals in various attitudes of being discovered. Someone had left a pair of boots near the back door. A hen, woken rudely by the wrong hour, muttered deep in her throat like a woman who had learned not to trust clocks.

Lights were on in the kitchen. Not bright—just the steadiness of people holding wake with their own courage. The window threw a square onto the grass where it made the dew confess itself. She stood for a moment at the edge of that square and watched the shadows shape themselves along the walls inside, felt the feel of that particular light—a Weasley light—on her face, and a surprising, painful tightness caught in her chest. She had never been here, and yet every story Harry ever told that had the word home in it smelled like this square of light on dark grass.

She kept her wand down as she crossed the last bit of yard. It wasn’t the kind of night to startle a mother. The front door had a particular sag to it that made the lower hinge grumble even before she reached for the knocker. She didn’t use the knocker. She tapped once with the backs of her knuckles, quiet.

The door yanked open like a spell exploding.

The flash of light was bright enough to bleach the world into bones—blue-white and immediate, the hex already formed and launched before the door was fully ajar. Estelle’s wand moved without her permission; she folded the curse with a small, neat turn of her wrist and let it splash into the ground at her feet where it hissed and made the grass smell briefly sweet, like burned sugar.

“Don’t move!” a woman’s voice snapped, fierce and ringing and worn raw. “Hands where I can see them!”

Estelle raised both hands, palms out, wand between two fingers the way Aurors teach children in the corridor. “Molly,” she said softly, because shouting at a woman with her back to the night like this one felt like bad manners.

Molly Weasley stood framed in the doorway with her hair half out of its bun and her robe tied with the ferocity of someone who has tied up worse things than cloth. A second “Lumos” from her wand point threw new light across Estelle’s face and then across the yard, trying to unmake the dark by will alone. Her expression wasn’t suspicion so much as refusal—that this house, this light, these small seconds of safety, would be taken without being argued with.

“Arthur!” she called without looking away. “Arthur, NOW!”

Mr. Weasley arrived with a speed that suggested he had already been halfway down the hall. His hair stuck up in three directions; his glasses were on; his wand was out. He took one look and the set of his jaw softened, but only a fraction. He and Molly moved together with the ease of people who have stood at their own threshold between two centuries more than once. He took her forearm gently as if his fingers could lower the temperature of her fear one degree.

“Estelle?” he asked, and even the question was protective. “Say something I’ll regret to recognize.”

Estelle’s mouth twisted because humor is a contraband she smuggles even to front steps after riots. “If the Ministry’s listening, Arthur, I must say your explanation of bus timetables remains the most subversive thing I heard all week.”

His laugh rode out of him on a breath he’d been holding since before the door opened. Molly didn’t laugh, not yet. She was not done being the wall.

Arthur’s eyes flicked to Molly, the nod so small the porch didn’t even get to see it. “Let’s be careful,” he murmured. “Ask her.”

Molly’s wand didn’t dip a single inch. “If you are Estelle Black,” she said, crisp as a chopping board, “tell me what you said to Lucius Malfoy on the stairs tonight.”

Estelle didn’t have to remember; the words lived still on her tongue like a taste she had not washed away. “I asked how servitude tastes on his tongue,” she said, careful and cool, “and whether he had convinced himself it was vintage.”

Arthur made a noise that might have been a chuckle in a different house at a different hour. In this one, at this hour, it was just a man remembering a moment with relief that it had happened at all. Molly’s gaze flicked to him. He nodded once, properly, and her shoulders dropped half an inch.

“And what was our Portkey on Stoatshead Hill?” Arthur added, because a good man learns to stack the proofs when the night has been long.

“A collapsed leather satchel with a broken handle,” Estelle said. “Cedric saw it first; Amos took credit; Fred denied looking shifty and succeeded only in looking shifty himself.”

Molly’s wand lowered then. Not all the way. Enough. She took one step forward and then another and then the last and put her free hand on Estelle’s forearm the way women do when they are not sure if they are going to hug you or shake you and want the option to change their minds midstream. Up close, the weariness in her face showed like bruises that were not of fists. Behind the worry, there was that core of iron everyone who’d ever met Molly Weasley trusted without remembering to say so aloud.

“Come in,” she said, and the words had more meanings than the dictionary allowed. “Quickly.”

Arthur stepped back to let them pass, his hand brushing Estelle’s shoulder in the small, human apology of a man who has just almost hexed someone he likes at his own front door. “We’ve only just come in ourselves,” he said in a rush, explaining the hour like the hour needed it, “and the children—well, they’re everywhere. Upstairs. Down. Some asleep, some pretending. Percy’s writing reports for people who aren’t awake. Fred and George are—” He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling where the twins’ laughter had been stored for years. Tonight the ceiling did not give it back.

The kitchen smelled of onions that had been chopped for soup and abandoned when soup became a ridiculous idea, and of tea that had been poured and reheated and poured again. The Weasley clock on the wall was a chaos of hands all stubbornly stuck on HOME or TRAVELING or IN MORTAL PERIL (someone had written the last with a biro in a fit of black humor; apparently today the hand had taken it too literally and had not moved off since twelve-thirty). A tea towel had been wrung so hard it was a rope on the draining board. A scatter of gnome hats had somehow collected in a bowl on the table, as if the hats had run away first and were waiting for their owners to remember manners.

Molly closed the door behind them with her hip and set both locks with quick movements. Then she turned, saw Estelle properly—blood on the back of one hand, ash in her hair, night still clinging to her cloak like burrs—and something in Molly’s face that had been braced since dusk softened, not because danger had gone but because the house had done the thing houses do when they refuse to let the outside through their skin.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, reaching for the injured hand before Estelle could lie about it.

“Hedge,” Estelle said. “Signature scratch. I’ve had worse from Mandrakes who didn’t want to be potted.”

Molly clucked, a sound that belonged to hens and mothers and women who have seen the inside of hospitals and kitchens both. “Sit. Arthur, kettle. No—kettle was five minutes ago. Boil it again; it tastes of whatever Percy called ‘righteous indignation.’”

Estelle sat because she had been told to by a woman who had earned the right to tell anyone to sit. The chair welcomed her the way chairs do in households that use them for more than show. The heat from the old stove soaked the stiffness out of her knees. Her eyes went unwillingly to the window. It was still dark enough that her reflection sat faint and pale in the glass with the kitchen behind her like a painting. Somewhere on the second floor a floorboard answered someone’s step with a sigh; a door farther along the passage made a little throat noise as if to say you’re late but I forgive you.

“Harry?” Estelle asked, and the name tasted wrong and fuzzy on her tongue in the small kitchen.

“Upstairs,” Molly said, and in the single word there were three more: safe, asleep, finally. “Ginny is with him for now. Hermione’s across the hall. Ron is pretending he is writing in his match book but last I saw he was sleeping on it. The twins—” Her mouth twitched. “—are vowing to start a constabulary at dawn and arrest the concept of evil.”

Arthur set the kettle to rumbling. He glanced at Estelle over the top of his glasses, gratitude and apology and a hundred other untidy emotions crowding each other on his face. “Thank you for finding us when you did earlier,” he said. “You and Amos—well. There are nights when the Ministry feels like a barn full of cats; tonight it felt like a cat without a barn. We needed hedgerows more than desks.”

“Amos needed a better fence,” Estelle said, and the joke landed between them like a gentle thing. It was the sort of joke you tell when you are trying to teach your body that humor still exists and will come when called.

Molly put a mug in front of her that could have served a small soup and filled it with a tea so strong it practically introduced itself. She added milk as if Estelle had asked; Estelle hadn’t, but Molly had the look of someone who knew this kitchen better than the back of her hand and wasn’t going to let a guest commit a tea crime on her watch.

“I nearly hexed your eyebrows off,” Molly said abruptly, half horrified, half fierce, the aftershock of fear making her blunt. “At my own door. I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Estelle said. “You were right to. Ask forgiveness of the grass instead.”

Molly tried not to smile and failed a little. “I won’t apologize to grass. It never apologizes to me.”

Arthur sat, then stood, then sat again because his body did not know yet what to do when not moving forward. He folded his long fingers around his own mug like it might keep him from vibrating out of himself. The clock’s hand labeled ARTHUR twitched and then admitted it was still at HOME. Finally out of mortal peril.

“We’ll have questions in the morning,” he said, voice low so the ceiling would not carry him to the upstairs rooms. “So will the Ministry. For now—eat something and sleep. We’ll make up the camp bed or you can have Bill’s old room; the gnome traps are under the bed but they haven’t sprung in ages.”

“Camp bed,” Estelle said. The thought of climbing their stairs felt like an intrusion into a dream she hadn’t earned. “And I’ll be gone before the boys are up. I simply needed to see the light on your threshold and know it was yours.”

Molly’s throat worked once. “You’re staying long enough for toast and the good jam,” she said, not a suggestion. “And long enough to write whoever you need to write, in our kitchen where the ink won’t let a letter lie.”

Estelle nodded, and for the hundredth time since the skull had unfolded over the meadow she felt that odd, double sensation of being younger and older than she had been the hour before. She sipped the tea and it scalded in a way that told the truth and then soothed it.

Outside, at the edge of a field that was honest about dew and dishonest about what day it intended to be, a cockerel lied again, quietly, as if embarrassed. Somewhere on the lane a car went by—one of those slow, respectful cars that understands country roads and knows who is boss. The sky to the east loosened its fist a fraction. The darkness did not lift. It made a list and began to look through it.

“How did it look?” Molly asked after a span of silence that tasted of breathing and cups and the old house learning Estelle’s sitting weight like a new story it intended to tell later. She didn’t say the Mark. She didn’t need to.

“Like a promise made by a man who keeps only the ones that hurt,” Estelle said, and then, because she could put brave words in a straight line once and she wasn’t willing to let the sentence stand alone in this kitchen with its clock and its jam and its chair that knew her backside now, she added, “And like a challenge. We heard it.”

Molly reached across the table and set her hand on Estelle’s scratch-marked one. “Good,” she said. “We’ve never been much for taking challenges kindly in this family.”

Arthur smiled, small and tired and real. “We do prefer a plug to a curse,” he said, “but we know how to hold a line.”

Estelle let the warmth from their ordinary, miraculous kitchen climb into her fingers. “I know,” she said. “How very Gryffindor.”

The kettle huffed as if gratified to be included in the conversation. Arthur fussed pointlessly with the tin of biscuits, metal clinking softly. Molly stared at the door like she could see through it to the knob on the outside and forgive it for being asked to hold all the night back on its own. The clock ticked in that way that makes you want to apologize for giving it so much work. 

Four o’clock was not on any of the hands. Four o’clock lived nowhere and everywhere—the hour people start to come home in their heads if they’ve been wandering too far for too long.

Estelle finished her tea and pushed the mug away with a gentle nudge like she was reassuring it she’d be back. Molly stood and went to fetch blankets without asking and came back with an armful that smelled of soap and wood smoke and childhood. Arthur dragged a camp bed from a cupboard that should not reasonably have fit it, apologized to the chair he banged, apologized to the leg he stubbed, apologized to the concept of noise, and set the bed up with the quietest possible series of metal protests.

“Welcome to the Burrow,” he said, trying out the sentence to see if it could carry what he meant. It could. “Please ignore any ghoul noises from the attic. That’s… our ghoul.”

Molly snorted softly. “If he tries anything I’ll make him sweep. I’ve had to do it before. The bloke dreads it.”

“I could teach him to weed,” Estelle said, and the tiny thread of laughter that went through all three of them then felt like a spell that laid itself gently over the marks the night had left and said: not today.

They didn’t speak more. There would be words later—Do you remember when? Did you see? Will you?—but not now. Now the house put its hands on the backs of their shoulders and pressed down just enough to remind them of chairs and beds and the fact that morning, however inadequate, is a legal obligation even for nights like this.

Molly turned the lock again, not because she doubted it but because women who have answered doors at four in the morning earn the right to double-check. Arthur blew out the candle he had not actually lit. Estelle lowered herself to the camp bed and lay on her side facing the stove, because there are few better things to look at when you are trying to convince your body that the world has not ended.

She closed her eyes and listened to the house listen back. Above, a board murmured under a Weasley’s foot as that Weasley turned over in sleep and punched a pillow for nerve. Somewhere down the lane an owl argued briefly with a branch. The clock ticked. The kettle forgot to mind its own business and minded theirs instead. The Burrow breathed.

And at the door where she had almost been hexed by a mother who would hex her own shadow if it tried to steal one of hers, the last draft slid under and gave up, deciding it couldn’t get past this threshold tonight.

“Thank you,” Estelle murmured into the blanket—she wasn’t sure whether to the house or to Molly or to the field for letting the house stand. It didn’t matter. All three accepted, the way good magic does, without needing clarification.

Chapter Text

The first thing Estelle noticed was the smell.

Not smoke, not panic—the Burrow’s kitchen smelled like browned butter and onion skins, like damp wool trying to remember it was allowed to dry, like a lid lifted on a pot that had kept a family warm since before the word family knew its job. The camp bed had conspired with the floorboards to let her sleep only in shallow, pocketed drifts; every time she surfaced, the house was still there, breathing quietly. When the sky began to pale like a bruise easing, she stopped pretending.

It should be comforting. The smells should surround her; envelop Estelle in onion and oak and browned butter.

Someone had been up all night. The kettle had the harried, saintly look of a kettle overused; a tea towel spiraled wrong on the rail, wrung to a rope and then chastened flat. The Weasley clock—impossible, comforting, a domestic prophecy—had its hands in a tantrum: ARTHUR at HOME (twitching toward WORK like a needle toward a magnet), MOLLY at HOME (stubborn, defiant), FRED GEORGE RON GINNY HARRY HERMIONE in a chorus of HOME that felt like a charm. One hand—PERCY—was wedged between HOME and WORK as if unwilling to commit to either. Someone—Molly—had strapped a scrap of parchment under the glass where a new word had been inked in neat, unfrightened letters: SAFE.

Estelle sat up, spine complaining mildly, blanket falling to her lap in a sigh of wool. Morning had not bothered to settle properly yet; the east window held a gray that promised either rain or courage. She swung her feet to the floor and let the boards tell her where she was—knot there, nail there, the third plank with the soft spot you feel and accept because houses are allowed their weaknesses. As she stood, she heard Molly humming something that was probably a hymn and might have been a threat; either way, it had kept this room stitched together through worse than last night.

“Tea,” Molly said by way of greeting, already pouring, already adding milk the exact moment the stream shifted color from stern to friendly. “Sit. Before you fall. Toast?”

“Yes,” Estelle said. She felt an irrational, childish urge to show her palms, as if returning from the dark required a proof of emptiness.

Molly’s hair had escaped its bun and was pinioned with a knitting needle. Her robe bore flour like medals. There was ash smudged at one temple, unnoticed. She moved with a precise, generous economy, the way people move who have done a thing a thousand times and never intend to confess how it keeps them alive. On the table lay a stack of letters addressed in various hands; a corner of the Daily Prophet peeped out from beneath them like an eavesdropping cat. The headline, Estelle could tell from a distance, was shouting; the photograph underneath gleamed with green.

“Arthur only got back an hour ago,” Molly said, losing the battle with the newspaper for a second and then pinning it under her elbow. “Wash-roomed and then went straight back out because a Minister has to be seen—” this said with a scorn that would have peeled paint—“but he’ll be home again in time to collapse on the rug and pretend he was never gone. He said you were… Estelle, dear, are you sure you won’t lie down again?”

Estelle wrapped her hands around the mug like she could instruct the tremor in her fingers to be tea instead. “If I sleep now, my bones will think it’s surrender.”

Molly’s mouth twitched painfully—amused, or the ghost of it. “Very well. You can surrender after breakfast.”

The back door cracked and in leaned Arthur, hair more rebellious than usual, tie knotted with the belligerent optimism of a man who had spoken too many sentences in a row and was pretending a strip of cloth could hold his day together. He smelled of damp wool and late night. He took one look at Estelle and managed to fit apology, gratitude, and a small, ordinary hope into the little bow he made. “Didn’t scare you off with my wife’s hospitality then?”

“On the contrary,” Estelle said. “It appears to be the only known antidote to last night.”

He laughed, but the corners of his eyes were sore. Molly gave him a mug that could fell an ox; he drank, shivered, then let the warmth chase the chill round his ribs where the worry had built a nest. He kissed Molly’s temple in passing; her hand found his sleeve and squeezed back once, hard.

“Kids?” Estelle asked.

“Alive. Asleep, mostly. Harry woke twice,” Molly said, quieter, “and tried to apologize to the washing up. I told him to stop before I hexed his manners into him.”

“Ginny kicked a ghoul in her dream and the ghoul apologised,” Arthur added with wonder. “Fred and George are drafting a statement on moral outrage. Percy is drafting a statement on the proper length of statements. Hermione made a list and fell asleep on it.”

“Good,” Estelle said. The word tasted like a stone set where it should be.

Molly turned to the pan with the authority of nations. “Eat. Then pack. Arthur, you’ll mend the third latch on Ron’s trunk; I won’t have that thing hexing my floorboards again. Estelle—if you feel up to it—would you glance at the girls’ booklist? Hermione claims Flourish & Blotts sent the wrong edition of Intermediate Transfiguration and I lack the patience to argue with a commercial entity before eight o’clock.”

“Gladly,” Estelle said. She could fight three Death Eaters before she could fight a bookseller without crying; Molly’s delegation felt like a kindness disguised as an errand.

“And de-gnome the garden,” Molly continued, her voice brightening for the first time. “I gave up yesterday because the gnomes were unionising and I didn’t have the heart.”

“I will help with that,” Estelle said. “I have a technique that unsettles them without bruising their egos.”

“You are welcome to their egos,” Molly said.

They ate in a quiet that owed more to exhaustion than solemnity. Estelle’s toast was thick with damson jam (Amos would be pleased) and tasted like something that understood soil and sugar both. When the first pair of feet stumbled in—Ginny, hair a declaration of intent, sleep shirt half untucked—Molly wiped her face with a corner of her own sleeve as if the child were still five. Ginny grumbled and endured and then stole Estelle’s crust and said “morning” like a challenge.

“Morning,” Estelle echoed, and passed her the jam.

Within half an hour the kitchen filled with the knitted noise of a Weasley morning. Ron arrived like a weather pattern bringing socks; Hermione followed with an armful of scrolls and an apology for breathing too loud; Fred and George awakened as if spring-loaded and immediately started three arguments and a very small fire. Harry came last, quiet, soft-footed, the way children come into rooms when they’re still learning that “here” is a place that will remember them kindly. He was washed and determined; his hair never learned. He caught Estelle’s eye, and some part of his mouth remembered how to smile for no reason.

“Eat,” Molly ordered, which covered all of them and all questions. She put eggs on plates the way generals distribute maps. The stove clicked in approval. Arthur attempted to leave and was yanked back by the back of his jumper as if he were one of his own plug sockets; he sat, chastened, and buttered his toast with attention.

The Daily Prophet lay folded but loud. Harry’s glance snagged on the green. Hermione’s chin set. Ron knocked his knee against Harry’s under the table in a little idiot promise. Molly saw all of it and said, too brightly, “Who wants to look at Professor Black’s clever book list while I find the good quills?”

“Me,” Hermione said immediately. “Please.” Her gratitude for a task was almost tender.

Estelle took the list from her, scanned it, and exhaled a breath that should have been a laugh. “You’re right. Flourish & Blotts sent Volume Two, Revised—Revised, which is the edition where they ‘simplified’ the Vanished-Object Reconstitution chapter to appeal to ‘modern attention spans.’ It’s the literary equivalent of replacing a dragon with a lizard and saying it’s safer for indoor use.” She flipped to the herbology section. “Good: Sprout’s assigned Wattlewax & Other Warnings. Bad: they’ve included a pamphlet on a ‘New Wonder Bulb’ which is actually a turnip with delusions of grandeur. Toss it.”

Hermione looked half-relieved, half-delightedly indignant. “I knew it!”

“You always do,” Estelle said, softer, and Hermione flushed the sort of pleased that sits like a lantern on a windowsill.

“Right,” Molly said briskly, clapping her hands once. “Boys—trunks. Ginny—socks. Hermione—if you’ll help me with the labels. Arthur—don’t pretend you can’t read my mind; fetch the travel cloaks from the back of the pantry. Estelle—”

“Garden,” Estelle said, already standing. She felt steadier than she had any right to feel. The kitchen caught her elbow once and let go.

Outside, the yard had decided to be bravely ordinary. Dew thickened the grass; a small breeze made a thinking sound in the apple tree; the vegetable beds soldiered on, marigolds glaring furiously at the slugs of the world. A gnome peered at Estelle from under the squash leaves, hatless, hair like an idea no one had encouraged. It hesitated, then made a tiny rude gesture and vanished behind a brick.

“Charming,” Estelle said dryly.

“Professor!” Two red heads popped out of the back door. “You’re not starting without us,” Fred said, scandalised.

“We owe you a month of soil,” George added, as if making a donation.

“Consider this the down payment,” Estelle said. “No throwing. No spinning. No experimental punt-kicking. We persuade. We relocate. We do not traumatize.”

Fred looked aggrieved. “You take all the artistry out of the sport.”

“Sport?” Molly’s voice from the doorway. “If I see a single gnome fly past my washing line, I’ll string you up by your own ears.”

“Persuade,” George echoed meekly. “Relocate.”

Estelle crouched by the squash bed and reached, not with her hand, but with a thread of fancy. It was a small, harmless charm, one she used with shy first-years and nervous puffapods—I see you; you are not an enemy; let us agree on directions. The leaves trembled. A gnome’s nose appeared. It sniffed, suspicious.

“There you are,” Estelle said, calm as tea. “Terrible night, wasn’t it? How about you make yourself grand heroes and move to the hedgerow for the day so no one with heavy feet steps on your toes?”

The gnome blinked. Then, incredibly, it stood up, dusted its knees, and began to trudge toward the hedge with the put-upon dignity of a civil servant stuck on a Saturday rota.

Fred and George watched, twin astonishment turning identical mouths round. “Magic,” Fred breathed.

“Shh,” Estelle said. “Don’t ruin the theatre.”

They spent an hour at it, which was to say, Estelle coaxed; the twins, once they remembered how hands can be gentle, lifted gnomes like squirming teapots and set them softly at the hedge; Molly shouted from the doorway whenever she suspected mischief (she was right three times out of five); Ginny appeared with a basket of clothespins and, with absolutely no warning, produced the best gnome-soothing hum Estelle had ever heard. The gnomes, unnerved, obeyed. The sun shouldered itself another arm’s length above the horizon. The Burrow warmed.

When the last gnome had taken up a position behind a nettle and glared at them with melancholy rancor, Estelle dusted her hands. “Very good. Fred, George—tomorrow the greenhouses. I’ll see you bright and early.”

“So early we’ll be night,” George said tragically.

“Bring gloves,” Estelle said mercilessly. “The bubotubers bear grudges.”

They trooped back in with the victorious air of men returning from a very small, very dignified war. The kitchen yawned its welcome again; the kettle, rehabilitated, sang; the clock ticked a beat steadier. Hermione and Molly had turned the table into a sorting station: books stacked by subject, quills aligned with both military and aesthetic precision, labels spelled to adhere but not quite stick to cat hair (Crookshanks had opinions). Ron sat in front of his trunk with the blank expression of someone watching a dragon asking to borrow a hat. Harry polished his glasses and tried not to be in anyone’s way; he failed to be invisible in the pleasant way of things that are always more noticeable when they try to hide.

“Let me,” Estelle said, and knelt by Ron’s trunk. It murmured unhappily at her. “Hush,” she told it, not to silence it but to reassure it that it was seen. “I know you’ve seen more socks than any sentient object deserves. I know you aren’t appreciated.” The trunk sniffed. (It did. There are magics that make furniture behave like pets and magics that make pets behave like furniture; the Weasley trunk had absorbed both.) Estelle flicked her wand, tuned the latch’s temper, and settled its springs. The trunk sighed, an entire unhappy poem upended into relief.

“Brilliant,” Ron said, as if she had given him a broom.

“Bribery,” Estelle said. “Feed it one chocolate frog a term and it will never bite you again.”

“Are you serious?” Ron asked, scandalized and delighted.

“No,” Estelle said. “But I want to see if you try.”

Hermione snorted into her sleeve; Harry grinned, the tiredness in his face easing a degree.

There was packing, then the kind that is half inventory and half trial. Molly wielded a quill like a conductor: “Scourgify your shoes; no, the other pair; where did you put your black jumper—I don’t care which black jumper, the one that fits you five minutes a day.” Arthur drifted in and out, trying to pretend he wasn’t sneaking glimpses at the Prophet under the breadbin; Molly glared him back to reality when necessary. Every so often they all froze as if a gust had moved through the house and looked at the window. It was habit now, and a new one. They practiced not flinching.

Near eleven, owls came.

They came in a rush like letters had learned to travel in schools: tawny, barn, eagle, a ridiculous tiny Scops with a letter larger than its head. They skidded and jostled and landed on the table, on Molly’s arm, on the chair backs. The room was suddenly full of feathers, dignified hoots, impudent chatter. Molly distributed post with the expertise of a barmaid on market day. Estelle’s name appeared in Albus’s neat hand on one—Received. Hold fast. See you in the morning.—and below it, in Minerva’s sharper script, Do not let Arthur talk you into explaining to me what a “fuse” is. I haven’t the patience. Estelle smiled despite the night that was still crouched in her bones.

Harry took his letter from Sirius—short, affectionate, a dog’s honest promise hidden between the lines—and the way he held it made Estelle look away, privacy respected, grief and grace both allowed to breathe. Hermione read a note from her parents and sniffed loudly. Fred and George crowed over a pamphlet for a joke shop supplier and hid it under a cushion when Molly turned.

A gray owl with an offended expression landed next to Estelle and offered her the Prophet with a disdain that suggested it would have preferred a different career. The headline was worse close up; the picture worse than that. The green swallowed the frame, the skull implacable, the serpent finding its eternal way. A Ministry official’s mouth moved and moved and said nothing. Estelle folded the paper slowly, tucked it under a pile of socks, and put her hand flat on the table like she had at the Diggorys’. Molly saw. Molly nodded once, as if to say: later.

By midday, the house had found its busy. Arthur had mended the latch; Molly had coaxed a stew into believing in itself; Hermione had charmed Ginny’s books to sigh pleasantly when opened (only slightly alarming); Ron had found his missing chess piece in the teapot; Fred and George had been put to shelling peas under Estelle’s supervision and had, astonishingly, not hexed a single legume. Harry and Estelle had been sent to fetch apples and had spent ten minutes in the orchard doing nothing but breathing. The sun didn’t insist; it offered.

“Were you frightened?” Harry asked suddenly, a boy’s confession camouflaged as a question.

“Yes,” Estelle said, because boys deserve that kind of honesty. “And angry.”

“Me too,” he said, very quietly. He flicked a leaf off a branch and watched it helicopter to the ground. “I thought it was over.”

“So did everyone who wanted it to be,” Estelle said. She let the thought rest a second, then: “When a storm comes back, we don’t stop building roofs. We just learn to listen better to the weather.”

He squinted at her. “Is that a Herbology thing or a you thing?”

“Yes,” Estelle said, and he laughed, a real one.

Afternoon unrolled like bandage—slow, necessary. Estelle mended a torn strap on Harry’s trunk (Hogwarts stickers had been peeled and reattached so many times they were translucent). She labeled vials for Hermione—ginger root tincture, pepperup, headache draught—and packed them in a tin with cotton around them like the fragile things soldiers carry. She sat with Molly while Molly pretended not to need to sit, and they talked about nothing for ten minutes with an intimacy that only women who have measured nights in kettles share. Arthur pressed a plug into her palm and said “for luck” with a completely straight face. She put it in her cloak pocket, amused, surprised by her own gratitude.

There were small kindnesses like stepping stones: Percy apologized stiffly to Estelle for not recognizing her at the door; she told him it had been half-dark and the hour ridiculous. Ginny asked Estelle whether Mandrakes really do sing if they like you; Estelle said no, but they do stop screaming; Ginny nodded as if this were wisdom worth writing on a wall. Fred proposed, with absolute seriousness, a gnome-led cooperative to manage the Burrow’s perimeter security; Estelle promised him a pamphlet. George tried to bribe Estelle into moving their greenhouse shift to “more heroic hours,” and Estelle, with equal seriousness, told him heroism starts at dawn.

As the light slanted toward evening, tiredness roosted like birds along their shoulders. Dinner was noisy in the way that hides things cleverly. Arthur told a story about a colleague who had mistaken a Muggle’s battery charger for a Dark Detector and nearly resigned out of shame. Molly threatened to put the twins’ Omnioculars in the stew if they didn’t stop adjusting the flavor. Hermione suggested a new timetable for washing cauldrons. Ron suggested a new timetable for doing nothing. Harry suggested nothing and smiled into his plate when Estelle stole a potato from him with a fork and then put it back.

After, as the house exhaled and the twilight performed its ancient quiet trick, Estelle found herself on the back step with Arthur, the kind of pause that happens between people who like each other and don’t need to pretend they don’t. The hedgerow wore a black lace. Far away, down in the valley, a dog barked twice and then reconsidered. Arthur rolled a plug between his fingers, the way some men roll cigarettes or worry beads.

“I can’t say some of it to Molly,” he said. “She reads my face like a billboard. If I tell it to you, perhaps it will stop trying to climb out through my eyes.”

“Tell it,” Estelle said.

“They’re not organized,” he said, words heavy. “That should comfort me. It doesn’t. It means last night wasn’t a plan, just a possibility that noticed itself. And when possibilities learn how to find one another, plans aren’t far behind.”

Estelle could feel, in the place behind her ribs where good teachers keep their reserve, the silhouette of the skull and snake. “He’s coming,” she said.

Arthur nodded, a small, unwilling bow to the fact. “But so are we,” he said, in exactly the tone of voice that had made her trust him the first time they met.

“So are we,” Estelle echoed. They sat in the gray a while longer, letting the night eavesdrop and do nothing with what it heard.

When she went back inside, the kitchen had reorganized for morning. Stacks by the door—trunks, packages, a bag of sandwiches Molly’s magic had already kept fresh for twelve hours. On the table, letters ready for the morning owls. The clock’s hands had edged nearer to TRAVELLING as if they could smell Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on the wind.

Molly pressed a small wrapped thing into Estelle’s hand. It was the size of a plum and heavier than that, tied with red string. “For later,” she said. “Do not argue. It strengthens friendship and bones.”

Estelle tucked it into the interior pocket of her cloak where she kept charms and foolish courage. “Yes, Molly.”

“Camp bed stays out,” Molly said, already bustling, already making tomorrow talk to today. “We keep it ready now. Just in case.”

Estelle nodded. She knew.

She went up to the small room where she had laid her cloak and, at last, allowed herself to sit on the edge of a bed that was not “hers” and yet had made the shape of her body correctly all the same. She unpinned her hair, shook out the ash memory had wound into it, and leaned her head briefly against the cool glass of the window. The orchard stood like a small choir. The stars had returned, undecided but present. The horizon had the faintest ghost of a blush; dawn had begun whispering to itself about schedules.

Tomorrow they would go: trunk-laden, sleepy, crackling with the odd electricity of new term and aftershock both. There would be the platform’s steam and the train’s call and the moment when the door of the carriage lifts you out of one year and sets you down in another. There would be laughter in compartments and plans patched together and a school that had learned to keep a thousand children alive for a thousand years. There would be, if she was right (and she was), a year that asked the living to be braver than they had planned.

Estelle lay back, fully clothed, and closed her eyes. The house listened. The Burrow held.

In the softest gray that comes before real light, an owl somewhere clicked its beak, alert and satisfied. The sky lifted its chin. The clock’s hands twitched toward TRAVELLING.

And far away, a whistle practiced being a beginning.

Chapter Text

The morning of departure dawned heavy with mist, the kind that clung to the earth and swallowed every outline of tree, fence, and chimney in a pale blur. The Burrow seemed to hover in that haze like something enchanted—a crooked tower of brick and timber whose windows glowed dim with candlelight. A rooster crowed, muffled by fog. From somewhere inside came the clatter of pans and Molly’s voice, brisk as a conductor’s baton, urging the house into motion.

Estelle had barely slept. The Burrow was warm, too warm after years in the cold gloom of Grimmauld Place, and the heat made her restless. But it was more than the air. It was the house itself—alive in a way she wasn’t accustomed to. Floors creaked constantly, as though the house was listening. Doors opened and closed with a mind of their own. Somewhere in the walls, gnomes scratched and rustled. The voices of half a dozen children drifted up and down the staircase at all hours. It was chaos—but not the cold chaos of her own ancestral home. It was chaos made of love, stitched with laughter and irritation and ordinary need. She had forgotten what that felt like.

By the time she rose, the Weasley household was already halfway to pandemonium. Crookshanks—the great, squashed-faced cat Hermione had acquired—slunk between ankles, tail twitching with disdain as trunks thumped down stairs. Ginny’s shrill protests about Ron stealing her quills rang through the sitting room. Fred and George were conducting some sort of whispered experiment involving a suspiciously smoking parcel in the corner, only to have Molly swoop down on them like a hawk and confiscate it with a cry of, “Not before breakfast!”

Arthur sat at the table with a cup of tea, spectacles sliding down his nose as he read the Prophet. His hair was more disheveled than usual, and he looked worn from the ordeal of the World Cup, though his eyes still twinkled when he glanced up and greeted Estelle with a tired but genuine, “Good morning, my dear. You survived the night, then? Not too overwhelmed by the Burrow’s… eccentricities?”

Estelle managed a faint smile as she sat opposite him. “It’s… different,” she admitted. “Lively.”

“Lively’s one word for it,” Arthur chuckled, as Ginny and Ron burst through the kitchen in a scuffle that ended with Ron tripping over Crookshanks and nearly upending a basket of muffins. Molly scolded, waving her wooden spoon like a general directing troops, and the twins slipped by unnoticed, snickering.

Harry appeared next, hair sticking up more wildly than usual, glasses askew, hauling his trunk with both hands. He looked half exhilarated, half exhausted, but when his eyes landed on Estelle, something like relief passed through them. She wondered if, for him, this house too felt like a miracle. A place of belonging, however chaotic.

Hermione followed, her own trunk neatly packed, Crookshanks trotting behind like an obedient dog despite his usual disdain for anyone’s authority. She adjusted her jumper and surveyed the table as though already calculating how best to help Molly sort the crowd. “Morning,” she said with a small smile, sliding into a seat beside Harry.

Breakfast was served in intervals, Molly summoning plates with practiced flicks of her wand, the food vanishing almost as quickly as it appeared. Eggs, sausages, toast dripping with butter, a mountain of fried tomatoes. The smell alone seemed to fortify the room. Estelle ate little, mostly sipping her tea and watching the storm of family unfold. She felt like a foreigner on hospitable soil, still uncertain of her place but warmed all the same.

It was only when Molly set a plate before her directly, laying a hand on her shoulder as she did so, that Estelle realized how quiet she had been. “Eat, dear,” Molly said firmly, her tone brooking no refusal. “You’ll need your strength for today. First days are never easy, no matter how old you are.”

Estelle inclined her head, murmuring thanks, though part of her bristled at the maternal tone. It had been years since anyone had spoken to her like that—years since anyone had cared whether she ate or not. The feeling was strange, almost unwelcome in its tenderness. But she obeyed.

By midmorning, the house was in uproar. Trunks were being dragged toward the door, owls hooted in protest from their cages, and Molly’s voice rose over it all, sharp with last-minute reminders.

“Ron, your prefect badge—no, don’t you dare tell me you’ve lost it already! Ginny, your books! Fred, George—where’s your sister’s cauldron? Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young men—”

Estelle found herself helping where she could, shrinking Crookshanks’ basket to fit neatly atop Hermione’s trunk, levitating a stack of textbooks that threatened to topple over Harry, charming Ginny’s quills to stop snapping. It was easier to fall into the rhythm of work than to stand idle, and in a strange way, it steadied her. She had never belonged to a family like this, but in the mechanics of helping she found a fleeting sense of place.

Finally, Arthur clapped his hands, ushering them toward the door. “Right! Everyone ready? Portkey to the station’s waiting. Molly, have you got the tickets?”

“Of course I have the tickets,” Molly snapped, tucking them into her cardigan pocket. “I’d sooner forget my own wand than tickets.”

Estelle was swept along with the rest as they filed out into the yard, the mist burning off now into sunlight. A battered old kettle sat in the grass—today’s Portkey, by the look of it. Estelle raised a brow but said nothing. She had seen stranger methods of travel. One by one, they clustered around it, hands overlapping. Harry’s knuckles brushed hers, a flicker of warmth in the press of bodies. Then Arthur counted down, and the world lurched.

King’s Cross was as frenzied as ever on September first. Muggle commuters bustled past, oblivious to the peculiar congregation of robed figures clustered near the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Owls screeched in cages, trunks bumped over cobblestones, children darted to and fro in last-minute scrambles.

Estelle held back slightly as the Weasleys maneuvered the crowd, watching with faint amusement as Fred and George made an over-dramatic display of pretending to crash into the barrier before vanishing smoothly through. Ginny followed, then Ron with Hermione in tow, both bickering even as they disappeared. Harry lingered, glancing back at Estelle.

“You go,” she said softly. “I’ll be right behind.”

He hesitated, then nodded, slipping through the barrier in a blink. Estelle exhaled, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward. The sensation was as she remembered—an odd rush of magic like slipping through a curtain of water, and then the world opened.

Platform Nine and Three-Quarters exploded into view. The scarlet train hissed and gleamed, steam billowing in thick clouds that wrapped the platform in shifting fog. The air rang with shouts, laughter, and the shrill whistle of the Express preparing for its journey. Banners waved, parents shouted last goodbyes, children scrambled for compartments.

Estelle stopped dead for a moment, the sight crashing over her like a wave. She had not stood here in years. Memories clung to the platform like ghosts—her own younger self in Slytherin robes, Sirius with his easy grin, James flicking his wand to levitate luggage, Lily adjusting her Prefect badge, Severus lurking at the edges with books hugged close. The past layered itself over the present so vividly she almost reached for them.

But the steam shifted, and the ghosts dissolved. Only the Weasleys stood waiting ahead, bright and solid in the haze.

She forced herself forward.

Loading the luggage was a spectacle in itself, Arthur fumbling with Muggle straps while Fred and George attempted to levitate trunks through already-crowded windows. Molly bustled about hugging each child at least three times, fussing with cloaks and hair, tucking sandwiches into pockets no matter how loudly the twins protested. Estelle kept a discreet distance, though Molly tried to draw her into the circle more than once. She managed a small smile when Molly pressed a wrapped pasty into her hand. “For later, dear. Don’t you dare go hungry.”

Harry, Hermione, and Ron clustered together, and Estelle caught fragments of their chatter—their plans for the train ride, whispered speculation about new classes, the excitement of another year. Ginny drifted nearby, clearly wishing she could join but too proud to ask. Estelle leaned down slightly, murmuring, “You’ll have your own stories by the end of the year. Trust me.”

Ginny blinked at her, startled, then smiled—a shy, flickering thing but real.

The whistle blew sharp, echoing across the platform. Parents surged forward with last embraces. Arthur clapped Harry on the shoulder, murmured something low and kind. Molly kissed Ron until he squirmed, kissed Ginny until she laughed, kissed Fred and George despite their protests. Then she turned, unexpectedly, to Estelle. For a moment, Estelle stiffened—unused to the gesture—but Molly only squeezed her hands.

“You’ll look after them,” Molly said softly, more statement than question. “And yourself.”

Estelle hesitated, then inclined her head. “I will.”

The whistle shrieked again. Conductors called warnings. Students scrambled aboard. Estelle climbed the steps last, pausing at the doorway. She glanced back once—at Molly waving fiercely, at Arthur smiling through his weariness, at the Burrow’s brood clustered on the platform. Something twisted in her chest, something like longing and something like grief. Then the train jolted, steam billowed, and the platform slid away.

Inside, the corridor was a madhouse of trunks, cats, and children jostling for compartments. Estelle guided Harry, Hermione, and Ron down the narrow passage, finally locating an empty cabin halfway down. They tumbled in, Crookshanks immediately claiming a seat, Hedwig hooting in mild protest from her cage. Estelle set her own satchel down carefully, then took the seat by the window.

As the train pulled from the station, the countryside unrolled in a blur of green and gold. The children chattered around her, laughter bubbling despite the heaviness of what they’d left behind at the World Cup. For a moment, Estelle let herself breathe. Hogwarts awaited. Another year. Another chance, however fragile, to set things right.

The Hogwarts Express had a particular rhythm—an old, steady clatter that sank into the bones as soon as the train picked up speed. Estelle felt it immediately, the wheels’ percussion running beneath her ribs like a half-forgotten heartbeat. She leaned back in her seat, watching the landscape blur by through the window. Fields, hedgerows, the faint glimmer of rivers—familiar, all of it, yet far away, as though glimpsed through glass in another lifetime.

The compartment had filled quickly. Harry, Ron, and Hermione occupied the opposite seats, Crookshanks stretched over Hermione’s knees, Hedwig’s snowy feathers ruffled in her cage. Ginny had slipped in as well, pressed against the door to avoid tripping over trunks. Estelle, folded neatly in the corner by the window, found herself something of an anchor for the group—silent, present, half-listening as their conversation lapped around her.

“—I still can’t believe it,” Ron was saying, voice rising with indignation. “A mark in the sky like that—after all these years? And Dad said the Ministry was useless, didn’t he, Hermione? Just standing about—”

“They weren’t useless,” Hermione countered, a frown creasing her brow. “They were overwhelmed, Ron. People were panicking. And if what happened really was what it looked like…” She trailed off, eyes flicking toward Harry, careful.

Harry said nothing. His hand traced the window glass, knuckles pale, jaw set.

Estelle studied him a moment—the boy’s silence spoke louder than words. The way his shoulders carried weight beyond his years. She recognized it too well.

“Speculation won’t change what’s happened,” she murmured at last, surprising herself with the break in her own quiet. The students looked toward her, startled. Estelle met their eyes in turn. “What matters now is vigilance. These are dangerous days.”

Her voice settled like a stone in the compartment. Ginny shifted uncomfortably. Ron opened his mouth, then shut it again. Hermione studied Estelle as though committing her words to memory.

Harry only nodded once, a faint jerk of his chin, as though grateful that someone had said aloud what he already felt.

The hours wound on, the countryside passing in a blur. The trolley witch came by with her cart of sweets, and for a blessed while the children forgot their burdens, tearing into Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. Ron pulled a face at a particularly foul one, and laughter filled the cabin.

Estelle allowed herself a faint smile. She remembered that laughter—the way a train compartment could become a sanctuary, a cocoon of safety between one world and another. She had laughed once, here, surrounded by Sirius and James, Lily’s eyes bright with scolding and Remus’s patient sighs. Even Severus, when he’d joined them, had seemed a little lighter in the hum of the Express.

Memory pressed close, so vivid she almost smelled the smoke of Sirius’s illicit firecrackers, felt the brush of her robes against James’s sprawled knees. She looked away, back to the rolling countryside, before the ache hollowed her chest entirely.

The conversation shifted to classes—Hermione’s meticulous plans for study, Ron’s groans about double Potions, Harry’s relief at the thought of Quidditch. Ginny chimed in now and again, though her eyes drifted toward the door often, perhaps half-hoping to glimpse friends from her own year.

At one point, Neville poked his head in, plant in hand, babbling about his gran and the newest gift she’d given him. Estelle watched the awkward warmth between the children, her heart tugged strangely. They were all bound together by threads they couldn’t see—threads that wound back years before their births, into histories written in blood and betrayal. She alone sat in both worlds, past and present, remembering the stories behind their parents’ faces.

She kept silent. Some truths weren’t ready for daylight.

The train rattled on into the afternoon, the sky paling into the slate gray of late summer. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon, and rain streaked the windows as dusk fell. Lamps flickered on in the corridor, turning the glass into shifting mirrors.

Estelle rose once to stretch her legs, stepping into the narrow passage. Students leaned out of compartments, voices spilling like water down the corridor. She caught snippets—excitement about Hogsmeade weekends, gripes about summer homework, whispered gossip about the World Cup disaster. Every voice reminded her of a different year, a different set of faces. For a moment she felt disoriented, caught between then and now.

“Professor Black,” a voice called tentatively—one of the twins, she couldn’t tell which, leaning out of a compartment with a grin. “Care to join us for a game of Exploding Snap?”

She arched a brow, lips twitching. “Tempting. But I think your idea of rules and mine differ rather dramatically.”

The boy laughed, ducking back into the cabin, and Estelle shook her head with a sigh. The students—so brash, so young. And yet in them she glimpsed flickers of the friends she had lost.

She returned to her own compartment just as the first streaks of lightning cut the sky. Harry had fallen quiet again, chin propped on his hand, gaze fixed on the storm. Hermione and Ron argued in low tones about homework schedules, Ginny listening with half an ear. Estelle settled back into her seat, letting the rhythm of the train lull her into a fragile calm.

By the time the train shrieked into Hogsmeade Station, night had fully descended. Rain lashed down in sheets, hissing against the roof, soaking students the moment they stepped onto the platform. Torches blazed, smoke curled, and the familiar booming voice carried across the din:

“Firs’-years! Firs’-years this way!”

Hagrid loomed over the crowd, lantern held high, his shaggy beard dripping with water. Estelle felt a faint pang at the sight—Hagrid, unchanged, still shepherding new students into the unknown. Some things, at least, remained constant.

“Come on, Harry!” Hermione tugged at his sleeve, pulling him toward the carriages. Ron and Ginny followed, trunks bumping behind. For a moment Estelle kept pace, shepherding them as though they were her own charges. But at the line of thestral-drawn carriages, she slowed.

“Go on,” she said quietly. “You’ll find your seats. I’ll see you at the castle.”

Harry glanced back, hesitation in his eyes. “You’re not riding with us?”

Estelle shook her head. “Staff have other arrangements.”

The words felt heavier than they should. For a heartbeat she wanted to climb in beside them, to listen to their chatter and let the past fade into the rattle of carriage wheels. But she was not a student anymore, nor merely a guardian. She was staff. A professor. Bound by duty to the castle’s walls.

“See you soon,” Hermione said gently, her tone carrying an understanding beyond her years.

Estelle inclined her head, then stepped back as the students clambered into the carriages. Wheels churned through mud, lanterns swung, and one by one the carriages rolled toward the gates of Hogwarts.

She stood a moment longer in the rain, letting it soak her hair, her robes. Then she turned, following the path reserved for staff.

The castle loomed in the distance, windows ablaze, rain streaming down its stone shoulders. Lightning lit the turrets in stark white flashes, thunder echoing across the grounds. Estelle’s steps slowed as she crossed the bridge, the sight tightening her chest. Hogwarts had not changed. Its towers pierced the same sky, its doors glowed with the same welcome. Yet she was not the same girl who had once walked these paths.

Inside, the castle enveloped her in warmth and candlelight. The hum of magic was immediate, wrapping around her like an old cloak. Her footsteps echoed as she passed the Great Hall, pausing only briefly to glimpse the flood of students spilling inside. Voices rose, laughter mingled with awe. The Sorting was moments away.

She did not linger. Instead, she turned down the side corridor, past familiar portraits who stirred in surprise. Some called greetings—“Back again, Professor Black?”—while others whispered among themselves. Estelle moved steadily, heart pounding with an odd mixture of dread and relief.

The staff hallway was quiet, its torches burning low. Her chambers lay at the far end, door framed by ivy carved into stone. She pressed her palm to the wood, and the wards recognized her instantly, flaring with a soft hum before unlocking.

The door creaked open.

Inside, everything was precisely as she had left it before summer. Books stacked neatly on the desk, quills sharpened, parchments aligned in ordered piles. Her robes hung in the wardrobe, her bed made with precision. A faint trace of lavender lingered in the air—an old charm she had set before leaving.

Estelle stepped inside and closed the door softly behind her. The silence settled thick, different from the Burrow’s chaos, different from the train’s hum. Here was solitude—familiar, heavy, unyielding.

She set her satchel down, removed her damp cloak, and ran a hand over the back of the chair at her desk. Every object felt like an anchor, tying her again to this role, this place. The castle had held its breath in her absence, waiting.

Now it exhaled.

Estelle sat slowly on the edge of her bed, listening to the muffled roar of the feast down the corridor. She should be there, she knew—meeting her colleagues, facing the Sorting, showing her presence as co-head of Slytherin. But for one moment more, she allowed herself this—returning to her chamber, alone, reclaiming her space.

The year stretched ahead like an uncharted map. Outside, thunder rumbled. Inside, she folded her hands in her lap and let the walls close around her once more.

Chapter Text

The feast had dwindled into laughter and echoes, the Sorting completed, the hallways thrumming with the rush of students sent to their dormitories. Estelle had not attended—she’d lingered in her chambers, too restless to sit at the staff table under the blaze of candles and the scrutiny of eyes. The quiet of her rooms wrapped around her like a balm, but it wasn’t enough. The castle hummed with life again, and after a summer of silence, it called to her.

She moved through her chambers slowly, reacquainting herself with the space as though it might have shifted in her absence. Her desk still bore the careful stack of parchment she had left in June, a list of cuttings to be taken from the mandrakes before term’s end. The wardrobe still carried the faint scent of crushed sage where she’d tucked sprigs between robes to ward off moths. On the mantel above the hearth, a single framed photograph remained where she had placed it a year ago: a younger Estelle, barely out of school, caught in motion as she held a handful of blooming dittany. The plant had gleamed with life, her expression one of cautious pride. She had no memory of who had taken the photograph, but she had kept it all the same.

With a flick of her wand, she lit the lamps, casting warm pools of light across the stone walls. Shadows gathered in the corners like loyal companions. For a moment, she stood in the center of the room, letting the familiarity sink into her bones. This was her domain now, as much as the greenhouses were. Here, she was not a daughter of the House of Black or a figure in someone else’s war. Here, she was Professor Black—keeper of plants, guardian of knowledge, co-head of Slytherin.

And yet unease stirred. The events of the World Cup clung to her still, shadows stretching from the smoke and screams. The Dark Mark had burned above the treetops, undeniable, and she had felt it in her marrow: the sense of something long-dormant stirring again.

Restless, she shrugged on a cloak and left her chambers.

The castle was quieter now, students tucked away in their common rooms. Torches guttered low in their sconces, staircases creaked, portraits whispered among themselves. Estelle’s footsteps carried her down familiar paths until the air grew damp and tinged with earth.

The doors to the greenhouses opened at her touch. She inhaled deeply—the sharp sweetness of soil, the tang of sap and leaf, the faint musk of compost. The glass panes rattled gently in the evening wind, but inside the heat clung close, thick and humid. Rows of plants stood waiting, vibrant even in lamplight: puffapods with their faintly glowing seed-pods, venomous tentacula curling drowsily in their pots, flutterby bushes shifting their leaves as if to greet her.

She moved among them, her hand trailing lightly over leaves, stems, petals. She whispered to them out of habit, small reassurances in a voice only the plants knew. They responded in kind: the puffapods pulsed more brightly, the flutterbys stretched toward her. Even the tentacula stilled its twitching tendrils.

A summer of absence always left the greenhouses strange, tended by assistants but lacking her particular touch. She noted what had been neglected, what thrived, what sulked. A patch of shrivelfig looked pale, and she crouched to inspect it, murmuring a charm to revive the soil’s richness. The work steadied her hands, anchored her thoughts. Here, at least, she could mend what was broken.

Her rounds took time. By the end of it, her hair was damp with humidity, her robes smudged faintly with earth, and her shoulders eased from their earlier tension. Yet the unease had not vanished. The castle outside still thrummed with whispers of the world beyond—whispers she could not silence with soil and sunlight alone.

She left the greenhouses reluctantly, pausing to lock the doors with a charm known only to her and the caretaker.

The path back to her chambers should have been the obvious choice. Yet her steps turned downward instead, drawn by instinct more than decision.

The air cooled as she descended. The torches burned with greenish light, casting long shadows against stone walls slick with damp. The dungeons had always felt like a place apart—darker, heavier, secretive. To most, it was unwelcoming, foreboding. To Estelle, it was familiar. She had grown up in spaces like this, cloaked in shadow and silence. She knew how to walk without echoing, how to let her presence seep into the stone until the walls themselves seemed to recognize her.

Her destination was no mystery.

Severus.

She had not seen him since before the summer, save for the briefest glimpses at the staff meeting earlier that evening. Their exchange had been a nod, a flicker of recognition, nothing more. But now, with the castle alive again and the storm of the world pressing close, she felt the tug of old bonds.

She turned a corner, passing portraits too dim to stir, suits of armor that gleamed faintly in torchlight. The air grew cooler still, carrying with it the faint tang of potions—acrid, sharp, lingering.

The Potions classroom loomed ahead, door shut, light glowing faintly from beneath. Estelle paused, listening. No voices, only the faint clink of glass, the soft sigh of liquid poured. He was there, working, as he always did.

For a long moment she stood outside, hand hovering near the wood, memories pressing in. A younger Severus, sharp-eyed, guarded, always half in shadow. A man who had chosen darkness once but whose path had twisted into something far more complicated. She had never trusted easily, but with him… trust was not the right word. It was recognition. They had known each other in ways others could not.

Finally, she lifted her hand and knocked—softly, once.

Inside, the sound of glass stilled. Silence. Then footsteps, deliberate.

The door creaked open.

And there he stood: pale, lean, black robes falling in sharp lines, eyes as dark as the dungeons themselves. His expression was unreadable, as always.

“Estelle,” he said, voice low, smooth, carrying her name like both acknowledgment and question.

She inclined her head. “Severus.”

For a heartbeat, they only looked at one another, two shadows in the half-light. The castle held its breath around them.

The threshold stood between them both literal and unspoken, the weight of the year ahead pressing heavy in the silence.

Estelle exhaled slowly. “It’s begun again.”

His eyes flickered, just once, before settling back into their usual calm. He stepped aside, wordlessly inviting her in.

The chamber smelled of damp stone, of potion fumes and faint smoke. Vials lined the shelves, neat and meticulous, labels angled with precision. A cauldron simmered quietly in the far corner, steam curling upward in lazy tendrils. Severus turned back toward it without a word, as though he had merely allowed a breeze to pass through his doorway and was already prepared to forget her.

Estelle stepped inside, shutting the door behind her with a soft click. The sound carried too loudly in the stillness.

“I didn’t expect you to be working tonight,” she said, voice careful, breaking the silence that pressed at her ears.

Severus adjusted the flame beneath his cauldron, the gesture deliberate. “Potions do not pause for my convenience.” His tone was even, but not unkind.

Estelle’s mouth curved faintly, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “You haven’t changed.”

He turned his head, just enough to look at her. His gaze, dark and cutting, lingered longer than it should have. “Nor have you.”

It was awkward. Painfully so. Not the comfortable silence of two people who had once known each other down to the marrow, but the brittle, unfamiliar quiet of strangers in borrowed skins.

She moved toward the desk, brushing her fingers lightly over a stack of parchment covered in Severus’s precise script. Ingredients lists, brewing times, diagrams of chemical bonds—all neat, orderly, as if control could be carved from chaos with ink alone.

“You replied to my letters,” she murmured, almost to herself.

His back stiffened slightly. “I did.”

“You didn’t have to.”

A beat of silence. Then, without looking at her: “Neither did you.”

She let out a breath that felt almost like a laugh, but there was no humor in it. “We’re both very dutiful, then.”

Finally, he turned, robes sweeping like wings, and leaned against the edge of his desk. His arms crossed, his eyes fixed on her with unnerving intensity. “Why are you here, Estelle?”

The question was sharper than it should have been. She flinched, though only faintly. “Because,” she said slowly, “I wasn’t certain whether the man I wrote to this summer actually existed. Or whether he was just ink on parchment.”

That gave him pause. His face shifted—not softened, but cracked, briefly, into something less guarded. “And what is your conclusion?”

She met his gaze, steady despite the heat crawling up her throat. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Something flickered in his eyes, quick as lightning, gone before she could name it. Amusement? Pain? Hope?

The silence stretched again, heavy, awkward, charged with everything they had not said in their letters.

They had written, yes. Estelle had sent cautious missives after the Cup, words cloaked in propriety but edged with urgency. He had responded, terse but consistent, his hand unmistakable on the parchment. They had spoken of neutral things: brewing notes, the Ministry’s incompetence, vague acknowledgments of “unsettling events.” And beneath it all, the unspoken weight: the Dark Mark, the nights both of them lay awake waiting for the world to split open again.

But letters were safe. Letters allowed distance.

Here, in the damp heart of the castle, there was no distance.

“Severus,” she said at last, voice quiet, “do you ever think about what we are?”

His eyes narrowed, but not in anger. “Define ‘we.’”

She shook her head. “That’s the problem. I can’t.”

The cauldron behind him hissed, releasing a puff of steam that curled between them like a serpent.

He did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was flat. “Friends is not the word.”

“No,” she agreed.

“Enemies would be inaccurate.”

“Also true.”

His gaze held hers, unwavering. “Lovers?”

The word landed like a spark in dry grass. Estelle inhaled sharply, the air suddenly too thin. Memories tugged at her—half-forgotten nights of stolen closeness, shared confessions whispered like secrets too fragile for day. But had it ever been that? Or merely two broken souls clutching at each other in the dark?

Her voice emerged low, careful. “Perhaps once. Perhaps never. I can’t say.”

His mouth curved, the barest flicker of a smirk that did not reach his eyes. “Then we are nothing at all.”

“No,” she said, too quickly. She stepped closer, the words catching like thorns in her throat. “Not nothing. Never nothing. If we were nothing, I wouldn’t be here.”

Silence fell, taut as a bowstring.

He studied her, every line of his face carved in shadow and lamplight. “And yet,” he murmured, “you still don’t know what I am to you.”

“No,” she whispered. “And you don’t know either.”

He did not deny it.

The air between them thickened with things unspoken. Letters folded in drawers. Memories half-buried. The shared knowledge of darkness creeping back into the world.

Finally, Severus turned, striding back to his cauldron. He stirred it once, precise, and the tension in his shoulders betrayed him. “Whatever we are, Estelle, it is irrelevant. The world is changing again. You saw it.”

Her mouth tightened. “I did.”

“The Mark was not a prank,” he said flatly. “It was a summons. A warning.”

Cold crawled into her bones. She had known it, of course—had felt it in her marrow the moment the green skull had blazed across the sky. But hearing it in his voice made it undeniable.

“Then it’s true,” she whispered. “He’s coming back.”

Severus’s silence was answer enough.

She crossed her arms, hugging herself though the chamber was not cold. “And we’re here, playing at professors, while the world sharpens its knives.”

His hand stilled over the cauldron. “Do you believe teaching is play?”

She winced. “No. That’s not what I meant.”

“You meant that you feel powerless.”

Her laugh was brittle. “You always were too perceptive.”

He finally looked at her again, and his gaze softened by a degree. “We are not powerless. Not yet.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that tending greenhouses and guiding students could matter in the face of shadows rising again. But all she could see was fire and smoke, the twisting bodies of Muggles in the sky, the look on Harry’s face as he stared at that Mark.

“Severus,” she said softly, “if it comes to it… where will you stand?”

His jaw tightened, the faintest flicker of something haunted in his eyes. “You already know.”

She did. But hearing it was another thing entirely.

The conversation faltered after that, slipping into silence heavy enough to smother. Estelle moved restlessly through the chamber, trailing fingers over shelves of potion jars, inhaling the bitter tang of ingredients she had not smelled all summer. Severus returned to his work, but his hands were not as steady as they should have been.

Every so often their eyes would meet, and something would flicker there—recognition, longing, fear, none of it given voice.

At last, Estelle turned toward the door. Her hand lingered on the handle, her throat tight. “We’ll need to talk again,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Severus murmured, not looking up from his cauldron. “We will.”

She hesitated. “And until then?”

His pause was long enough to make her chest ache. Finally, he said, “Until then, we do what we must.”

It was not comfort. But it was truth.

Estelle nodded once, then slipped into the corridor.

The door closed behind her with a soft click.

And in the silence of the dungeons, she realized that whatever Severus was to her—friend, lover, ghost—it was something she could not, and would not, abandon.

Chapter Text

The castle had settled into its rhythm again: classes beginning, staircases shifting with familiar obstinacy, owls flooding the rafters of the Great Hall at breakfast. For the students, the strangeness of summer faded into the ordinary cadence of lessons and homework. For the staff, though, there was an undercurrent. Estelle could feel it in the corridors, in the hurried conversations between portraits, in the way Minerva McGonagall’s mouth seemed set more sternly than usual. Something was coming.

Her suspicion was confirmed three nights into the term. A slip of parchment, delivered to her desk by a school elf just after dinner, bore the Headmaster’s familiar looping hand: Staff meeting, eight o’clock. My office. Required attendance.

Required.

Estelle tucked the note into her robes and made her way up through the castle’s spiraling staircases. The halls were quiet, students confined to their common rooms, only the soft whispers of ghosts drifting by. She passed the stone gargoyle guarding Dumbledore’s office and gave the password provided. It leapt aside with a clank, revealing the moving staircase.

The office glowed with lamplight and the faint sparkle of curious objects that whirred and clicked on every surface. Fawkes the phoenix dozed on his perch, tail feathers glowing faintly in the shadows. The Pensieve gleamed faintly on its pedestal, swirling with silver mist. Estelle’s eyes lingered on it only briefly before turning toward the gathering staff.

Most of them were already there. Minerva, seated stiffly, glasses glinting, her lips pursed in anticipation. Flitwick perched on a high chair, feet dangling, his expression bright but curious. Sinestra, earthy and kind as ever, gave Estelle a nod of greeting. Madam Hooch stood by the window, arms crossed, her hawkish eyes scanning the room.

And Severus.

He leaned against the far wall, arms folded, face half in shadow, his eyes fixed on nothing. He glanced up only once as Estelle entered, their gazes colliding for a flicker of a second before he looked away again.

Estelle chose a seat near Sinestra, her robes whispering against the chair. A hush fell as the door opened once more and Albus Dumbledore swept in. His robes were deep midnight blue tonight, embroidered with tiny golden stars that shimmered as he moved. His beard was as silver as moonlight, his eyes bright, though Estelle thought she saw lines of weariness deeper than last year.

“Good evening, my friends,” he said, settling into the great chair behind his desk. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. I apologize for interrupting your evenings, but what I must tell you could not wait.”

The silence sharpened, everyone leaning forward. Even Severus’s head lifted a fraction.

Dumbledore folded his hands atop the desk, his voice steady but carrying weight. “This year, Hogwarts will host a most distinguished event. After much deliberation, the Ministry has granted us the honor of holding the Triwizard Tournament.”

Gasps and murmurs rippled through the room. Flitwick nearly tumbled from his chair, eyes shining. Madam Hooch let out a low whistle. Even Pomona sat straighter, eyebrows arched.

Minerva’s lips thinned dangerously. “Albus,” she said sharply, “you cannot be serious. That tournament was banned for centuries. Students died.”

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said quietly. His blue eyes softened with understanding. “And it is precisely because of those tragedies that new safety measures have been devised. The Ministry assures me precautions are in place to prevent further loss.”

“Precautions?” Severus’s voice cut through the murmurs like a blade. He stepped forward slightly, his expression unreadable but his tone laced with venom. “The Ministry’s assurances are worth less than a knut. Do you truly expect us to believe that they can tame the dangers of such a contest?”

Dumbledore’s gaze flicked to him, calm, unwavering. “I expect you to trust that I would not permit such an event if I believed our students would be at undue risk.”

“Undue risk?” Estelle found her own voice before she realized it, sharper than intended. All eyes turned toward her, and she forced herself to meet them, though her stomach tightened. “Albus, forgive me, but a tournament that has historically killed champions cannot be dressed as safe simply because the Ministry declares it so. What risk do you deem… due?”

A heavy silence followed. Severus’s eyes darted to her briefly, unreadable.

Dumbledore inclined his head. “Your concern is valid, Estelle. All of you. I will not deny the danger inherent in this event. But I believe the benefits—alliances renewed, connections forged, the strengthening of ties between schools—outweigh those dangers. We live in uncertain times. Unity is no small gift.”

“Unity,” Minerva repeated, her voice tight. “And at what cost?”

Flitwick piped up, his voice enthusiastic despite the tension. “It will be extraordinary! Think of the educational opportunities! The magic we shall witness—the skills, the ingenuity—it will inspire generations!”

Sinestra gave a cautious smile. “And it would be good for the students to see beyond their own walls. To meet peers from Beauxbatons, Durmstrang…”

“Durmstrang.” Severus’s lip curled faintly. “Yes, let us welcome those who openly celebrate the Dark Arts. What could possibly go wrong?”

“Severus,” Dumbledore said, his tone calm but firm. “They are not our enemies. They are children, as our own are.”

Severus said nothing more, but the silence around him crackled.

Estelle sat rigid, her fingers curled against the arm of her chair. The Dark Mark at the Cup still burned in her memory, its shadow stretching long. “Headmaster,” she said softly, though her voice carried, “forgive me. But these are not ordinary uncertain times. The world is stirring. Old shadows rise again. Are we truly wise to tempt fate by bringing strangers—champions, magic, spectacle—into these walls? It feels… like an invitation.”

The murmurs surged again, some staff nodding, others shaking their heads.

Dumbledore’s gaze rested on her, and for a moment she thought she glimpsed weariness, sorrow. But his voice was steady. “You are right to fear, Estelle. All of you are. I will not diminish that. Yet Hogwarts must remain a place of learning, of hope. If we surrender to fear, we grant victory to those shadows before a battle is fought. I will not see that happen.”

The room fell quiet. Even Severus did not speak.

Finally, Minerva exhaled, long and slow. “Very well. If it is decided, then we must prepare.”

“It is decided,” Dumbledore confirmed. His eyes swept the staff, his voice carrying warmth again. “I trust you all to help make this year one of greatness, not tragedy. We will show our students, and our guests, that Hogwarts remains strong.”

The meeting continued with practicalities—dates, arrangements for visiting schools, security measures. Filch grumbled about corridors to patrol, Madam Pomfrey demanded detailed safety protocols, Hagrid beamed at the mention of dragons (to the collective alarm of the staff).

But Estelle only half-heard. Her mind was elsewhere, the echo of Dumbledore’s words clashing with the memory of green light in the sky. Unity. Hope. Or folly?

Beside the window, Severus stood in shadow, his arms crossed tightly, his expression carved from stone. When she caught his eye, he looked away first.

The meeting adjourned at last. Chairs scraped, voices rose in hushed conversation, footsteps echoed as staff filed out into the night. Estelle lingered, slow to rise, her hands tense in her lap.

Severus passed her without a word, his robes trailing like smoke, but she felt the brush of his presence, the unspoken agreement in his silence: This is madness.

Estelle looked to Dumbledore one last time. The Headmaster sat alone now, stroking Fawkes’s scarlet feathers, his gaze distant. For all his talk of hope, he looked impossibly lost. Somewhere the rest of us were not.

And in that moment Estelle wondered if he truly believed what he had told them, or if even Albus Dumbledore feared the storm ahead.

The staff dispersed into the castle’s darkened corridors, their voices echoing away until the air grew still again. Estelle lingered in the shadow of the gargoyle staircase, her footsteps unwilling to take her toward her chambers. The words of the meeting pressed heavy on her chest, buzzing in her mind like restless hornets: unity, hope, safety. Words that felt fragile, breakable, when weighed against memory.

She heard the rustle of robes before she saw him.

Severus emerged from the shadows of the corridor, moving with his usual deliberate stride. He did not look at her at first, though she knew he was aware of her presence—he always was. Only when he reached her did he pause, dark eyes flicking sideways.

“You stayed behind,” she said quietly.

His mouth twitched, humorless. “So did you.”

The silence between them stretched, as taut as a rope pulled too tightly.

“Tea?” he said at last, his tone flat, as though the offer had cost him effort.

Estelle’s lips quirked faintly. “That depends. Is it actual tea, or one of your bitter potions disguised as hospitality?”

Something that might have been the ghost of a smirk touched his mouth. “Come and find out.”

He didn’t wait for her reply, only turned and moved down the corridor toward the dungeons. She hesitated a breath before following, her boots clicking softly against the stone.

Severus’s chambers were tucked behind a narrow door off the Potions corridor, hidden unless one knew where to look. The air inside was cool, faintly scented with herbs and parchment, steadier and warmer than she expected. Shelves lined the walls, not only with potions ingredients but also with books—rows and rows of them, their spines well-worn. A fire burned low in the grate, filling the room with a faint glow.

It was not a comfortable space in the conventional sense—no rugs or cushions, no unnecessary ornaments—but it was unmistakably his. Sparse, orderly, unyielding.

And yet Estelle felt something stir in her chest the moment she stepped inside. Not comfort, exactly, but a sense of… recognition. As though she had been here a hundred times before, even if she hadn’t.

Severus gestured curtly toward a chair by the fire. She took it, folding her cloak neatly over the arm, while he moved toward a small cabinet. With practiced efficiency, he retrieved a teapot, a pair of cups, and a tin of loose leaves. The motions were precise, careful—the movements of a man who found control in ritual.

“I would have thought you turned into a coffee drinker over break,” Estelle said as he set the pot to steep with a charm.

“I continue to drink what keeps me alive,” he replied, sitting opposite her, one long leg crossed over the other. “Tonight, that happens to be tea.”

The teapot whistled softly, steam curling upward. Severus poured with unerring steadiness, sliding a cup toward her across the low table. Estelle lifted it, inhaling the sharp, smoky aroma before taking a sip. The warmth unfurled in her chest, grounding her in a way she hadn’t expected.

“Better than I imagined,” she admitted.

“I aim to exceed low expectations,” he said dryly.

She almost laughed—almost. Instead, she cradled the cup in her hands, staring into the fire. The silence stretched again, but it was different here—less brittle, more laden with unspoken things.

“It’s madness,” she said finally, her voice low. “The Tournament.”

Severus’s eyes flicked toward her, gleaming in the firelight. “Of course it is.”

“They’ll say it’s safe. That precautions will be enough. But we both know—” She broke off, shaking her head. “There’s no such thing as safe. Not with this.”

His mouth tightened. “Precautions are lies we tell ourselves to endure inevitability.”

Estelle tilted her head, studying him over the rim of her cup. “You sound more cynical than usual.”

“I’m a realist,” he said sharply, though his gaze dropped back to the fire. “And reality, Estelle, is that we are inviting danger into these walls. Danger with Ministry approval, no less.”

She set her cup down, leaning back in her chair. “Do you think Dumbledore truly believes it? That this tournament will bring unity?”

Severus was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “I think Dumbledore believes what he must to keep fighting. Whether it is true is irrelevant.”

That, more than anything, unsettled her. Because she had seen the same flicker in Dumbledore’s eyes that Severus must have: weariness, the weight of too many choices.

Estelle rubbed at her temple, the tea forgotten. “Unity, hope—fine words, but I can’t shake the feeling that we’re baiting something. That the Mark in the sky was a warning, and this tournament will be the spark that lights it all.”

Severus’s voice dropped, softer than usual. “It already has.”

She glanced up sharply. “You mean—”

He did not finish the thought, but the silence between them was answer enough. He meant the world had already shifted, the moment that green skull blazed above the Cup. They were no longer in the shadow of the last war—they were standing at the edge of the next.

They spoke little after that, sipping their tea in uneasy silence. The fire cracked softly, shadows stretching long across the chamber. Estelle found herself watching Severus in the flickering light—the way the lines of his face sharpened, the way his gaze seemed fixed on something only he could see.

Finally, she set her cup down. “Do you ever grow tired of being right?”

His brow furrowed faintly, not following.

“You warned them. You spoke against it. You’ll be ignored, and then, when it unravels, they’ll look to you as though you should have stopped it.”

His mouth twisted. “I am accustomed to being ignored.”

She hesitated, then said quietly, “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t wound.”

His eyes flicked toward her sharply, unreadable. “And what would you know of wounds?”

“Too much,” she said simply.

The fire popped. Their gazes locked, and for a breath the air between them was too heavy to bear.

Severus looked away first, refilling his cup. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Do you want me to leave?” she asked, her tone careful, not accusing.

He did not answer immediately. His hand hovered over the teapot, stilling. “No,” he said at last, so softly she almost didn’t hear.

Something eased in her chest, though it left her unsettled.

They lingered like that, talking in circles, lapsing into silences that said more than words. The conversation drifted from the Tournament to other things: her greenhouse repairs, his advanced classes, the quiet absurdities of teaching children who thought themselves immortal. For a while, the weight of the world outside lessened.

Estelle leaned back in her chair, the warmth of the fire and the tea sinking into her bones. It felt—strange, but true—like home. Not the Burrow, not Grimmauld Place, not the sterile comfort of her chambers. But here, in the quiet of Severus’s dungeons, with the scent of tea and potions smoke, she felt… anchored.

And yet.

Uncertainty gnawed at the edges. What were they? Friends? Allies? Something closer, something older? The letters of summer still echoed between them, unspoken. The air was thick with what might have been and what could never be.

When she finally rose to leave, the clock chiming softly past midnight, Severus stood as well. He did not offer a farewell, only watched as she gathered her cloak.

At the door, she paused. “Thank you. For the tea.”

He inclined his head, the faintest gesture.

Her hand lingered on the handle. “Severus… we may not know what we are. But I know we’re not nothing.”

His expression flickered—too quick to name—before smoothing again. “Go, Estelle,” he said quietly.

She did.

But as the door closed behind her, she realized she carried the warmth of that fire with her, lodged somewhere deep, where even the darkest shadows could not reach.

Chapter Text

The castle breathed around her.

Estelle walked the length of the corridor outside the Great Hall with the slow, deliberate stride of someone trying to outrun their own pulse. The candles overhead guttered as she passed—no draft, no door, just the familiar way Hogwarts liked to announce it was paying attention.

Dumbledore had dismissed her gently from their late-night discussion, speaking in that soft, lulling tone that made even awful truths feel like wool laid over a wound. But once she’d stepped into the hall, once the heavy oak doors had shut behind her, everything in her felt too loud.

Her heartbeat.
Her breathing.
Her thoughts—knife-tipped, spiraling.

Sirius had written again. Or someone had written in his name. That should have been the entire story. The only story.

And yet her mind looped relentlessly back to one image:
Severus’s face when she admitted she hadn’t destroyed the note.

Not fury. Not smugness.
Fear.

The kind he covered badly with disdain.

She rubbed a hand across her forehead, trying to ease the pounding there. Midnight crept close; the corridors bent into quiet. Her nerves thrummed like bowstrings.

She needed her greenhouses. Needed the comfort of soil and roots and things that stayed exactly what they were supposed to be.

But she didn’t make it that far.

A shape detached itself from the shadows at the far end of the hall.

“Black.”

She didn’t need to see his face to recognize him. His voice curled through the dark like smoke—dry, demanding, unmistakable.

“Severus.” She stopped. “You gave me a fright.”

His footfalls were nearly silent as he approached, robes whispering over stone. “You’ve been out rather late.”

“I could say the same.”

“Hm.”

The silence stretched, taut as wire. She could feel him watching her—taking inventory of every tic, every tremor she tried to smooth away.

“You spoke with the Headmaster,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“And?”

Estelle exhaled slowly. “And nothing. And everything. He doesn’t know how Sirius got a message to me. He isn’t sure anyone knows.”

Severus’s eyes, black and depthless in the lamplight, flicked briefly over her face. “Dumbledore rarely admits uncertainty. I see he’s made an exception for you.”

“That’s not—”

“Did you give him the note?”

She hesitated.

“Estelle,” he said, voice low, taut, “did you give him the note?”

Her fingers curled. “I did not.”

For a moment—just one—some emotion she couldn’t name flashed through his expression. Not triumph. Not annoyance.

Something softer.

Then it was gone, shuttered behind that impenetrable calm.

“You should have,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“And yet you didn’t.”

“No.”

Severus’s jaw flexed. “You are intelligent. You are not reckless. When you ignore a direct order from the headmaster, there is a reason.”

“There is.”

“And are you going to share it?”

“No.”

A muscle twitched beneath his eye—more reaction than she usually got out of him. But he didn’t press. Didn’t sneer or scold or reach for the easiest cruelty.

Instead:

“I assume you have decided to shoulder this burden alone.”

“I’m used to shouldering things alone.”

He studied her. “You needn’t be.”

Her breath caught. Only for a second, but enough for him to notice. His gaze flicked away, as though annoyed with himself for saying it.

She swallowed. “If I tell the Ministry I received a letter from Sirius, they’ll bring me in for questioning. Veritaserum. Possibly worse.”

“Yes,” Severus said. “They will.”

“And if I give Dumbledore the letter, he’ll keep it quiet, but he’ll watch me.”

“Yes.”

“And if I tell you…”

He stepped closer. Her breath stilled.

“If you tell me,” he said softly, “I will not betray you. But I will be forced to act. Forced to choose.” A pause. “And I am tired of choosing between my vows.”

Estelle looked away. “Sirius is still my brother.”

“And he is still wanted for murder.” His voice didn’t harshen—it dropped, almost gentle. “That truth makes fools of both of us.”

She let out an unsteady breath. “You know what Veritaserum would reveal.”

“Yes.”

“You know what I’ve lived with for years.”

“I do.”

“And what it would cost.”

“Estelle.” Something like frustration cracked through his composure. “I have lied to the Dark Lord. I have lied to Death Eaters. I have lied to the Ministry. I have lied to Dumbledore. But even I cannot lie to Veritaserum.”

The thought sent a cold lance down her spine. “Neither can I.”

He went still.

“Is there,” he said slowly, “something you are afraid they would see?”

Her heart slammed. A spike of fear. Of grief. Of memories with teeth.

She breathed once, twice, steadying the tremor in her hands. “Everyone has something they don’t want laid bare.”

“Yes,” Severus said. “But your evasiveness is… impressive even by your standards.”

She glared. “I’m not being evasive.”

“You are practically dancing around your secrets.”

“Better dancing than spilling them.”

“Estelle—”

“Severus—”

The snap of their voices echoed over the stone. A moment later, she laughed—short, humorless. He didn’t.

“I meant,” he said, carefully, “that you do not need to fear me.”

“I don’t.” Her voice was soft. “Fear isn’t the word.”

“Then what is?”

She didn’t answer.

The corridor hummed gently with late-night magic. A draft stirred the torches. Downstairs, something clattered—Peeves, most likely, terrorizing armor again.

Severus stepped closer. Barely a foot between them. “You have that look again.”

“What look?”

“The one that suggests you’re debating whether to run or fight.”

She smirked weakly. “A habit I developed around Slytherins.”

“Most people develop it because of you.”

She didn’t expect the faint warmth in the words. Didn’t expect how it threaded through her ribs like a spell.

Her voice dropped. “Tell me the truth. What would you fear them seeing?”

His expression shuttered instantly.

“Nothing,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Yes.”

“Severus.”

“No.”

“Come on—”

“I said no.”

She folded her arms. “You asked me a question.”

“And I regret it.”

“Well, now I’m asking you one.”

His eyes met hers—flat, boarding up every window. “You wish to know what I fear being revealed under Veritaserum?”

“Yes.”

“You.”
His voice was low. Barely shaped. Barely sound at all.

The breath caught in her throat so sharply she nearly choked on it.

“Me?” she whispered.

He seemed to hate himself for confirming it. His nostrils flared. His shoulders tightened.

“You,” he repeated. “My… opinions. My—” He faltered, jaw clenching hard. “My loyalties are already under strain. You complicate them.”

She stared. “I complicate your—Severus, what are you saying?”

He did not look at her.

“I am saying,” he said stiffly, “that potions are simpler.”

“Severus—”

“No.” His voice sharpened. “If I begin down this road, I will not be able to stop. And I cannot afford that.”

Her chest ached. Physically ached. Like muscle tearing around bone.

She swallowed. “I don’t want you to stop.”

His eyes flicked up so fast she almost stepped back. Almost.

The space between them thrummed. Not warm. Not safe.
Charged.

He took in a breath that shook just slightly.

“You should sleep,” he said. “You look exhausted.”

She huffed. “Thank you, ever the charmer.”

“Estelle.”

“What now?”

“Promise me you will tell no one else about the note.”

“I promise.”

“Promise me you will not go looking for him.”

Something bitter twisted inside her. “I don’t have to look for him. He’s already found me.”

Severus went still. The air around him changed—tightened, electrified.

“Do not,” he said quietly, dangerously, “let him draw you into whatever game he is playing.”

“It isn’t—”

“It is.” His voice was low, fierce. “Sirius Black does not do anything without purpose. If he is reaching out to you now, it is not sentiment. It is strategy.”

“And what if it isn’t?”

“Then it’s worse.”

She blinked. “Worse?”

“Because then he knows exactly what you are willing to risk.”

The words cut something open inside her.

She stood very still. He stood even stiller.

“Goodnight, Severus,” she whispered.

His jaw flexed. “Goodnight.”

She turned first. Made it twenty paces down the corridor before she let herself breathe again. Before her pulse steadied. Before she felt the tremor break through her limbs.

Behind her, Severus remained in the torchlight, unmoving, a stone cast too deep into the lake to retrieve.

But she didn’t need to see him to feel the weight of what he hadn’t said.

And what she had almost said back.

The castle hummed around her, aware, listening.

Outside, the night pressed cold against the windows.

And somewhere—far beyond the wards, the trees, the villages—
a black dog moved through the dark with purpose.

And Estelle could not shake the feeling that everything—
everything—was beginning again.

Chapter Text

The castle had always sounded different when students weren’t in it.

On ordinary term days, Hogwarts hummed—voices in the distance, footsteps layered over one another, the flutter of owls, the occasional shriek from a portrait taking offense. But on this particular Friday afternoon, with three days until classes and two until the foreign schools arrived, the sound was… off.

Quieter, yes. But also sharper.

Every noise seemed to echo a little longer than it should. The creak of a stairwell. The distant thump of a trunk being dragged along a corridor. The murmur of house-elves conferring in the kitchens. It was as though the castle had drawn in a breath and was now holding it, waiting.

Estelle felt it in the stone under her boots.

It followed her all the way from her chambers to the staff room.

A slip of parchment had arrived with her tea tray at midday:

Staff Meeting, three o’clock. Staff room. Preparations for visiting schools.

Dumbledore’s looping script had been its usual courteous self, but the last words carried weight. Preparations. Visiting schools. As though the tournament were a party to be hosted, rather than a live match played over a minefield.

She remembered the first meeting, just days ago. Dumbledore’s calm announcement that Hogwarts would host the Triwizard Tournament, the spike of fear that went through her like a hex. Unity, he’d said then. Hope. Words that sounded clean until you remembered how easily blood stained them. 

Now, apparently, came the part where they were meant to make it look easy.

The staff room door stood half-open, lamplight spilling onto the corridor. Estelle took a steadying breath and stepped through.

Most of the staff were already there. Minerva stood by the fireplace with arms folded, mouth pressed in that familiar hard line that meant she was being very professional about not shouting. Flitwick perched on the arm of an armchair, feet swinging, eyes alight with the thinly controlled glee of someone who had read too many accounts of legendary tournaments and not enough of their casualty lists. Madam Hooch leaned against the mantel, hawk eyes bright; Vector was at the sideboard, pouring herself tea as though it might be the only thing standing between her and catastrophe.

Sinistra sat near the window, gaze tipped toward the gray daylight beyond, fingers drumming an absent constellation on the arm of her chair. Madam Pomfrey was by the table, a thick notebook open before her and a quill already poised as if to take offense in writing. Filch lurked near the door, looking sour even by his standards.

There was no sign of Sprout, of course. Estelle hadn’t expected any—Pomona’s letters from South America still arrived twice a month, edges smudged with soil and enthusiasm, full of sketches of monstrous orchids and parasitic vines. It would be her second year away. Estelle still wasn’t sure whether she should feel honored or tricked.

She slipped into an empty chair along the wall, smoothing her robes. A moment later, the air shifted; the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

Severus slid into the seat beside her without comment, robes whispering as he sat. He smelled faintly of smoke and something bitter and clean—hospital corners and simmering potions. His profile was all harsh angles in the dim light, but there was a tension in his shoulders that had nothing to do with posture.

“Late,” she murmured.

“Busy,” he replied.

“With what?”

“Ensuring my classroom will not explode at the first whiff of foreign teenagers.”

“Ambitious.”

A fleeting quirk pulled at the corner of his mouth—there and gone. Before she could press the advantage, the door swung fully open.

Dumbledore entered with his usual unhurried grace, robes a deep violet today, embroidered with little silver threads that winked like distant stars. He looked, Estelle thought, more tired than he had at the World Cup, where green light had torn open the sky and turned the evening to memory. But his eyes still held their peculiar warmth—the one that made you feel both seen and gently maneuvered.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said, closing the door with a flick of his wand. The room settled around him. “I apologize for pulling you from your preparations, but as you know, we are now two days from the arrival of our guests. There are a few… logistical matters we must address.”

“‘A few,’” Minerva muttered under her breath.

Dumbledore’s eyes crinkled. “Quite. Let us begin.”

He conjured a floating diagram in the center of the room—a glowing three-dimensional model of the castle and some of the grounds, rendered in pale blue light. The towers spun slowly, the lake a smooth, hovering slab of shadow, the greenhouses like little glass teeth along the edge.

Estelle felt a strange tug of affection at the sight. She’d walked these halls as a girl and now again as a professor. Seeing the castle shrunk to a model made her chest tighten, the same way it did when she saw a childhood photograph of herself: smaller, yes, but full of ghosts the older version could not ignore.

“As you are aware,” Dumbledore began, “our visitors from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will arrive on Sunday evening. Our own students will arrive the following morning, in time for classes to begin Monday.”

Flitwick leaned forward. “The arrival methods are confirmed, then?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said, his gaze flicking briefly toward Hagrid. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You may expect a bit of spectacle on the lake… and from the sky.”

Hagrid’s beard split in a grin so wide it threatened structural integrity. “Yeh won’t believe it,” he rumbled, voice low with poorly contained excitement.

“I’d rather not be surprised by anything flying at my Astronomy Tower,” Sinistra murmured dryly.

“None of it will hit your tower, Aurora,” Dumbledore assured her. “I promise. Now.” He gestured, and the model zoomed in on the dungeons, the lower levels of the castle sliding to prominence.

“Durmstrang will be housed below,” he said. “We have expanded a set of chambers adjacent to the Slytherin dormitories and common room. Wards are in place to distinguish their spaces from ours, but the proximity should encourage… camaraderie.”

The silence that followed was not encouraging.

Estelle felt Severus go rigid beside her.

Their eyes met over the floating map.

“Camaraderie,” she echoed, voice just loud enough for him to hear. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”

“Inter-institutional exchange,” he muttered back. “Or, more accurately, my worst nightmare.”

Despite herself, she snorted softly.

Across the room, Minerva’s eyes narrowed. “How adjacent, Albus?”

“Not quite sharing walls,” he said. “But they will share an entrance corridor. Argus, I trust you and the house-elves will have the floors ready?”

Filch sniffed. “Already scrubbed twice over. No need to bring more Dark Arts dirt into the castle, if yeh ask me.”

“No one did,” Severus muttered, without looking at him.

Dumbledore’s eyes slid toward Severus, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Our Durmstrang guests will be under the same rules as our own students,” he continued. “Curfew hours will apply. Wands are to remain holstered outside of class and tournament functions. I would remind everyone that they are, first and foremost, children.”

“Some of them are seventeen,” Madam Pomfrey pointed out, quill scratching across her notes. “And if they’re anything like our seventh years, they may consider themselves indestructible.”

“Which is why your presence is invaluable, Poppy,” Dumbledore said gently. “I am counting on you to keep them all in one piece.”

She huffed, but Estelle could see the way her shoulders squared at the responsibility.

The glowing model shifted upward, sliding to focus on the upper floors.

“As for Beauxbatons,” Dumbledore said, “they will be housed in expanded dormitories adjacent to the Ravenclaw tower. They value their privacy,” he added with a small smile, “but I have no doubt we will see a great deal of them at meals, in classes, and in the corridors.”

Estelle imagined pale stone, blue silk, polished shoes tapping along Hogwarts’ more drafty floors. Beauxbatons had always struck her as a place that smelled like perfume and glass; Hogwarts, by contrast, smelled of chalk, dust, and occasionally singed robes. The combination would be interesting.

Beside her, Severus made a low, disgruntled sound.

“Problem?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said. “Several dozen.”

“You’d prefer them in the dungeons with you, then?”

“I’d prefer them at Beauxbatons.”

She smiled sideways. “Too close for comfort?”

His mouth tightened. “Something like that.”

Dumbledore went on. “Professor Flitwick,” he said, “I believe you and Professor McGonagall are coordinating the charms required to maintain Beauxbatons’ additional quarters?”

“Quite right, Headmaster,” Flitwick said, eyes bright. “We’ve already woven the space-expansion and climate charms. They should feel perfectly at home. I’ve even adjusted the windows to mimic their usual night sky.”

“Of course you have,” Sinistra said, half exasperated, half impressed.

“Professor Black,” Dumbledore said, turning toward Estelle, “I would like to ask your assistance with the grounds. The visiting schools’ carriages and vessels will require specific landing and mooring areas. I believe you are uniquely suited to ensuring our flora survives the intrusion.”

Estelle straightened. “Of course. I’ll reinforce the turf near the lake and the meadow below the east side of the castle. I can also charm the root systems to absorb shock.”

“Excellent,” he said, eyes warm. “Your greenhouses will no doubt be of great interest to our guests as well.”

“They’re not a tourist attraction,” she said automatically, then softened. “But they’ll be ready. I’ll show them the best we have, as long as they don’t go near the venomous tentacula without supervision.”

“I’ll add that to the list of safety notices,” Pomfrey muttered, quill flying.

The model swiveled again, giving a brief glimpse of the grounds: the Black Lake, the Forbidden Forest, the pitch.

“Now,” Dumbledore said, and the room quieted instinctively, “as for the tournament itself.”

The blue light dimmed slightly, leaving his face half-shadowed. Estelle felt the old familiar prickle of dread along her spine.

“There will be three tasks,” he said. “As tradition dictates. The first will take place at the end of November.”

Madam Hooch whistled softly. “Gives the champions time to settle, at least.”

“And time for whoever wants to harm them to plan,” Severus murmured.

Estelle’s fingers tightened around the arm of her chair.

Flitwick raised his hand, as though in class. “Headmaster, will we be informed of the nature of these tasks? For preparation purposes?”

Dumbledore hesitated. Just for a moment. Estelle saw it.

“I’m afraid, Filius, that most details must remain confidential,” he said. “An impartial tournament depends upon secrecy. The champions must face the unknown.”

Minerva’s lips thinned to an almost superhuman degree. “Surely the staff are entitled to some knowledge, if we are to protect them.”

“You will know enough to protect,” Dumbledore said. “I promise you that. But the tasks themselves are being designed in cooperation with the Ministry. Some elements are… not yet final.”

“Not yet final,” Severus repeated, voice like acid. “Or not yet disclosed?”

“Both,” Dumbledore said, and that, at least, was honest.

Hagrid shifted his weight, the chair beneath him groaning. “S’gonna be brilliant,” he said under his breath, eyes shining. “Real proper magic, tha’ is. Nothin’ like seein’ young witches and wizards tested—”

“Tested, not maimed, Hagrid,” Pomfrey snapped.

“’Course, ’course,” he said hastily, but Estelle saw the way his hands flexed, like they were remembering the weight of something huge and scaled tugging at a chain.

Her stomach turned. Dragons. She could feel the word circling the room, even unspoken.

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “Whatever shape the tasks take, we will ensure the castle and grounds are prepared. I ask that you all remain vigilant. Report any unusual occurrences in the coming weeks, particularly after our guests arrive.”

“Unusual occurrences?” Sinistra echoed. “Albus, this is Hogwarts. These walls bleed unusual.”

“More than usual, then,” he amended, a twinkle flickering faintly. “That will suffice.”

Vector peered over her spectacles. “What of the age restriction? I understand from the Ministry’s brief that only students of seventeen or older are to participate.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said. “An Age Line will be placed around the Goblet of Fire. No student under seventeen will be able to cross it.”

Estelle thought, inevitably, of James and Sirius at seventeen—full of schemes, full of charm, full of a desperate desire to prove themselves. She doubted very much that a glowing line on the floor would have stopped them from trying.

She could almost feel Sirius’s ghostly indignation at the idea of being told “no.”

Her throat tightened.

“We will make that clear to the students at the feast,” Dumbledore continued. “I trust you all to reinforce it in your classes. This is not a game. Not truly. It cannot be treated as such.”

“Will there be additional security?” Minerva asked. “Aurors?”

“Aurors will be present at key events,” Dumbledore confirmed. “Our own protections will be… layered. The Ministry is eager to make a show of their vigilance.”

“Marvelous,” Severus said flatly. “Nothing inspires confidence like the Ministry eager for spectacle.”

“Severus.” Dumbledore’s tone was a gentle warning.

He subsided, but Estelle could feel the fume of his displeasure beside her like heat.

Filch cleared his throat. “Beggin’ your pardon, Headmaster, but what about the corridors? Extra students dashing about, foreign troublemakers—”

“Children,” Dumbledore corrected mildly.

“—children,” Filch amended sourly, “runnin’ in the halls, hidin’ in cupboards… It’ll be chaos.”

“It will be an opportunity,” Dumbledore said. “To demonstrate who we are. To show kindness. To make connections that may one day save lives.” He paused. “And yes, Argus, to award detentions when necessary.”

Filch brightened marginally. “Right, then.”

Estelle’s fingers loosened their grip. The words save lives hung in the air longer than she liked.

Dumbledore clapped his hands gently, and the floating model dissolved into silver sparks. “We’ve a great deal to do,” he said. “I won’t detain you much longer. Are there any final concerns?”

A low murmur rustled through the room—questions about meal arrangements, class schedules, where the visiting staff would sit at the high table. Madam Hooch volunteered to coordinate any joint practices on the pitch. Vector volunteered absolutely nothing, but sighed in a way that suggested she’d be teaching impromptu Arithmancy to overeager Beauxbatons students before the week was out.

When the last question had been answered and the last worry half-soothed, Dumbledore nodded. “Very well. Thank you. Please continue your preparations. I trust in each of you.” His gaze lingered on Estelle for a fraction longer than it did on the others. “We will navigate this together.”

Chairs scraped back. Conversations broke off into clusters as staff filtered toward the door.

Severus didn’t move.

Neither did Estelle.

For a few seconds, they sat side by side in the thinning noise. Minerva swept past them with a curt nod; Flitwick tipped his head, already chattering to Pomfrey about warding the Hospital Wing. Hagrid trundled out last, humming something that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby for something very large and very dangerous.

“You look like you’ve swallowed a Bludger,” Estelle said finally.

“Do I,” Severus replied, sounding oddly hollow.

“Durmstrang next door?”

“Durmstrang next door,” he repeated grimly. “Karkaroff in my dungeons. A parade of unfamiliar students who think curses are party tricks. What more could a man ask for?”

“A stiff drink,” she offered.

He gave her a sideways glance. “Tempting.”

“You could always hide in my greenhouses.”

“The humidity would ruin my hair.”

She smiled despite herself. “A tragedy for the ages.”

His mouth twitched. “What of you? Durmstrang and Beauxbatons both on your doorstep. Entire schools of delicate sensibilities and brutish oafs trampling your flowerbeds.”

“I’ll hex their shoes to squeak if they do,” she said. “They’ll think it’s the British climate.”

That earned her a soft huff—almost a laugh. It felt like a small victory in a room that still smelled faintly of tension.

“Are you… all right?” he asked eventually, the words stiff with disuse. “Another year. Another circus.”

She thought about it. About the ancient stone, the shifting staircases, the tunnels beneath the castle and the sky above it. About the World Cup and the Dark Mark and the way Dumbledore’s face had looked tonight, older than she remembered, grief threaded with stubbornness.

And then about the greenhouses—the soil under her nails, the warm, damp air, the steady patient growth of things no one believed could survive.

“Yes,” she said, surprised to find that she mostly meant it. “I’m glad to be here.”

Severus studied her profile, eyes darker than the room. “Even with… all of this?”

“Especially with all of this.” She met his gaze. “If the world is going to unravel, I’d rather be somewhere I can do something about it.”

He inclined his head, slow and thoughtful. “Then perhaps you and I are more alike than I care to admit.”

“You care to admit a great many things,” she said lightly. “And yet you don’t.”

“That is, I believe, part of my mysterious charm.”

“Debatable,” Estelle murmured with a roll of her stormy grey eyes.

The corner of his mouth lifted again, a small, private expression. It warmed her more than she liked.

“Go to your plants,” he said. “Before the castle invents a reason for another meeting.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with mock deference, rising. “Try not to hex any foreign diplomats before Sunday.”

He gave her a bland look. “I make no promises.”

She laughed once and slipped out into the corridor.

The air in the greenhouses was different from the air in the rest of the castle—warmer, wetter, dense with chlorophyll and earth. As soon as Estelle stepped through the door of Greenhouse Two, her shoulders dropped a fraction, the invisible weight of stone and politics easing under the familiar press of humidity.

Lanterns swung gently overhead, their light catching on leaves and glass. The dragon-hide gloves hung from their hooks, fingers curled like they were waiting for a hand. Rows of pots lined the benches, some bristling with bright, experimental growth; others bare, waiting.

She inhaled deeply.

Here, at least, the world obeyed rules she understood.

She shrugged off her outer robes, hanging them on the peg by the door, and rolled up her sleeves. Her wand flicked almost automatically—opening vents, adjusting misters, coaxing a stubborn puffapod into blooming. Pale, luminescent flowers unfurled in response, scattering soft, glowing spores into the air.

“Show-off,” she murmured fondly.

A rustle by the far table made her turn.

A pair of wide, tennis-ball eyes blinked up at her from between the pots of knotgrass.

“Professor Black, ma’am,” a small, tremulous voice said. “Minky is sorry to startle—Minky is only checking the watering schedule, ma’am.”

Estelle’s features softened. “No need to apologize, Minky. You’re a lifesaver. If those shrivelfigs dry out again, I might cry.”

Minky’s ears flushed pink with pride. “Minky will never let shrivelfigs dry, ma’am. Not while guests are coming to Hogwarts.”

“Yes,” Estelle said, looking around the greenhouse, suddenly seeing it through unfamiliar eyes. “Guests.”

She could almost picture it: Beauxbatons students drifting in, noses wrinkling delicately at the smell of compost; Durmstrang students standing at the threshold, arms folded, pretending the wilder plants didn’t make them nervous. Her own students watching them, measuring them, sizing up their wands and their laughter and their scars.

Chaos, certainly.

But also possibility.

“If you can,” Estelle said to Minky, “let the other elves know I’ll be reinforcing the northern beds tomorrow. No one should walk there without me for a day or two. The soil’s going to be… temperamental.”

“Yes, Professor,” Minky said, ears flopping earnestly. “Minky will tell them, ma’am.” With a small pop, the elf vanished.

Estelle moved through the rows, fingers trailing over leaves. She checked the binding vines, tightened the supports on a row of delicate flowering saplings, nudged a clump of stubborn snargaluff pods with her wand until they retreated with offended squelches.

In the corner, a Fireseed bush crackled quietly, its tiny ember-bright berries pulsing with warmth. She paused there, extending her hands to the heat.

If someone had told her, ten years ago, that she’d be standing in a Hogwarts greenhouse worrying about international politics and Triwizard logistics, she would have laughed in their face.

If they’d told her she’d be grateful for it, she might have hexed them.

Yet here she was. Still breathing. Still teaching. Still finding a way to coax life from soil even as the world sharpened around her.

The Dark Mark over the World Cup refused to fade from her memory; Sirius’s note still sat hidden where no one would think to look. Severus’s admission—You complicate my loyalties—echoed somewhere under her ribs like a second heartbeat.

But for the first time since the sky had split green that night in the campsite, she felt something other than dread at what came next.

She felt… steadiness.

Her hands knew how to do this: prepare, mend, build. Create spaces where things could grow and survive, even in hostile weather.

Maybe that was enough, for now.

She knelt by a patch of resilient groundcover and began weaving a quiet charm through the roots, strengthening them against impact, against trampling feet and sudden weight. Magic slid through her fingers and into the soil, sinking deep.

“You will hold,” she whispered. “When they land, you will hold.”

The earth answered with a faint, thrumming hum.

Above, the light mellowed from gold to copper as the sun tilted toward evening. The castle beyond the glass shifted in shadow, its towers etched against a sky that promised storms and stars in equal measure.

Estelle sat back on her heels, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt.

“Another year,” she said softly, to the plants, to the glass, to herself. “Let’s see what we make of it.”

The greenhouses rustled around her—leaves whispering, stems creaking, glass pinging as the temperature dipped. Somewhere deep in the stone, the castle adjusted itself, opening rooms that hadn’t existed yesterday, stretching corridors to make space for strangers.

Preparations had begun.

Fault lines, too.

But Estelle Ophelia Black was still here, hands in the soil, spine straight, eyes sharp.

If Hogwarts was going to open its doors to the world again, she intended to make sure it survived what walked through them.

And so did she.

Chapter Text

Saturday morning felt wrong.

Not in the way of immediate danger—no Dark Marks burning the sky, no panicked owls smashing into windows—but wrong in the subtler, prickling way of a storm humming somewhere beyond the horizon.

The castle should have been half-empty, echoing in that particular off-key way it did over holidays. Instead, Hogwarts already thrummed with students. Most of them had arrived days before: trunks dragged up staircases, cats and toads protesting from their cages, first-years trailing after harried prefects like slightly bewildered ducklings.

Now they were loose.

Estelle could hear them from the moment she stepped into the corridor outside her chambers. Laughter bounced off stone. The babble of voices drifted up from the Entrance Hall. Somewhere above her, a group of second-years shrieked as something (likely Peeves, possibly Fred and George) detonated a phantom firework.

She sighed and set off toward the staffroom, boots tapping a steady rhythm along the flagstones. The air was sharp and cool, the kind that hinted at a crisp autumn not far off. Sunlight slanted through the high windows in bright bars, catching dust and owl feathers.

She passed a knot of fifth-years arguing about whether Durmstrang students were allowed to duel in class.

“I heard they learn the Cruciatus as a warm-up,” one Hufflepuff whispered, eyes wide.

“That’s ridiculous,” their friend said. “You can’t cast unforgivables as a warm-up. They’d get… arrested. Wouldn’t they?”

The third looked unconvinced.

Estelle kept walking.

Another pair of Ravenclaws hurried past her, hands full of books already.

“Beauxbatons students have to wear silk gloves to handle basic potion ingredients,” one said, scandalized. “Silk. In a lab.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It’s in Witch Weekly.”

“Exactly.”

Their voices faded as they turned the corner.

Rumor, as always, had made the first arrival.

The real ones would follow tomorrow.

Estelle threaded her way carefully through a gaggle of third-years who were simultaneously trying to pet a hyperactive terrier and not get knocked over by it.

“Slow down,” she advised the dog mildly. It ignored her, which felt metaphorical.

By the time she reached the staffroom, she’d overheard at least four wildly inaccurate versions of the Triwizard Tournament rules. She was willing to bet that by dinner, someone would have claimed the champions were going to be put in a pit and forced to fight a basilisk bare-handed.

Which, knowing the Ministry, was only marginally more absurd than whatever they actually had planned.

She pushed the staffroom door open and stepped into the comfortable clutter: mismatched armchairs, a perpetually grumpy tea set, a large chessboard that reset itself with the self-satisfied air of something that always won.

Minerva stood by the window, staring out at the grounds with the expression of someone mentally calculating points to deduct for crimes not yet committed. A copy of the Daily Prophet was folded under her arm; Estelle caught a glimpse of a headline: MINISTRY PROMISES “SPECTACLE AND SAFETY”—words that did not belong so close together.

“There you are,” Minerva said. “Survived the first morning?”

“Barely.” Estelle filled herself a cup of tea from the pot that had decided to tolerate her. It slopped only a little. “They’re already talking about Durmstrang curses and Beauxbatons etiquette classes.”

“Yes, well.” Minerva’s mouth thinned. “Our students are about to discover that the world is larger than the House tables. I can’t decide whether that will humble them or make them unbearable.”

“Why not both?” Estelle suggested.

Minerva hummed in agreement.

“Albus will make the announcement about Quidditch at dinner,” she said after a moment.

Estelle winced. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Enjoy the next few hours, then,” Minerva said dryly. “It’s the last peace you’ll know for some time.”

Quidditch. Cancelled.

She could already hear the outraged howls. Half the Gryffindor table would revolt on the spot. The Slytherin team, denied their chance at glory, would sulk with the concentrated venom of a hundred unplayed matches. Even the Hufflepuffs might rise up; Estelle had seen Cedric Diggory fly. He took it seriously enough that losing a year would sting.

But there was no getting around it. Hosting the Triwizard Tournament meant sacrificing the schedule of ordinary school life. The pitch would belong to dragons—no, she corrected herself, tasks—and officials and whatever the Ministry thought passed for good press.

Still. She hated to see the joy drained from students’ faces. Quidditch wasn’t just a game here. It was identity. An outlet. A release valve.

“At least there’s an age limit,” she said aloud, more to herself than to Minerva.

“Hm?”

“Seventeen,” Estelle said. “For the tournament. It’s something.”

Minerva’s gaze softened almost imperceptibly. “Yes. It is.”

Seventeen was old enough to vote in the Wizard’s Council. Old enough to take certain Ministry posts. Old enough to sit exams that would shape the rest of a life. Old enough, Dumbledore had argued, to understand risk.

Not old enough to fight a war.

But she supposed they weren’t calling it that. Not yet.

Estelle sipped her tea, thinking of faces—Cedric, yes; serious-eyed seventh-year Ravenclaws who already spoke in the clipped, professional tones of future bureaucrats; scrappy Gryffindor Beaters who’d cheerfully fly directly into a storm if you promised them glory on the other side.

She thought, too, of her older Slytherins: calculating, clever, proud. Ambition with sharp edges. Some of them would see the tournament as a stage they’d been waiting their whole lives to walk onto.

Please let them be as afraid as they are excited, she thought. Just enough to hesitate.

“Penny for them?” Minerva asked.

“You can’t afford my thoughts,” Estelle said lightly.

“On the contrary,” Minerva replied. “I may soon need them. Along with your ability to get Slytherins to listen when they think no one else is watching.”

Estelle grimaced. “I’m not a miracle worker.”

“You’re closer than most.” Minerva glanced at the clock over the mantel. “Teaching schedules go up this afternoon. Try to enjoy your last free morning.”

“Enjoy it doing what?” Estelle asked.

Minerva’s lips twitched. “Avoiding children.”

Which was how Estelle found herself climbing the spiral staircase to the Astronomy Tower an hour later, hoping—against all odds—that the students would be busy exploring and the tower would be relatively quiet.

The climb was familiar. The air grew thinner and cooler as she rose. Stone wound around her in a long, patient spiral. Halfway up she passed a pair of giggling fourth-years who froze guiltily when they saw her, as though she’d caught them mid-heist instead of mid-flirt.

“Stairs are for walking, not snogging,” she said mildly.

They turned scarlet.

“Yes, Professor.”

She didn’t bother taking points. Let them be flustered and find somewhere less drafty.

At the top, she pushed through the heavy door and stepped out into the wide circular space of the tower.

The world opened.

The sky was a pale, washed blue, thin clouds smudged across it. The grounds spread below like a rough tapestry: the lake a sheet of slate, the Forbidden Forest a dark, bristling fringe, the Quidditch pitch a tall skeleton of goalposts.

And there, near the base of the tower, the stretch of wall that now housed the expanded dormitories.

“Aurora?”

Professor Sinistra stood near the parapet, a stack of celestial charts tucked under one arm, her usual calm, inward-turned expression tugged off-center.

She looked… frazzled.

Estelle almost stopped in her tracks.

“I didn’t think anyone else would flee this high,” Estelle said. “I’m sorry, I can come back—”

“No, no.” Sinistra shook her head, dark curls shifting. “Stay. Please. I could do with someone who understands what it’s like to have one’s workspace invaded.”

Estelle stepped forward, resting her hands on the cool stone of the parapet. “The Beauxbatons dorms?”

Aurora let out a breath that was dangerously close to a groan. “McGonagall and Flitwick did most of the heavy lifting with the expansion charms. I’m grateful. Truly. But it means half my tower landing has turned into what I can only describe as a very tasteful siege.”

Estelle laughed softly. “Silk and embroidery at the gates?”

“And trunks,” Aurora said. “So many trunks. And they’re not even here yet. McGonagall insists we be prepared for every contingency. She’s set aside extra space in case they bring their own staff, their own supplies… possibly their own weather.” A beat. “She may not be wrong on that last count.”

Estelle glanced toward the curved wall that separated the tower proper from the new corridor. The stone there shimmered faintly with recent magic, the edges of the archway still humming as though the castle were adjusting to a new limb.

“You look worried,” Estelle said.

Aurora hesitated. That, more than anything, made Estelle pay attention.

“I have mapped skies from a hundred angles,” Sinistra said slowly. “I have plotted the movements of comets and watched the slow drift of constellations over centuries. I can tell you exactly how the night in Marseille differs from one in Hogsmeade.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” Estelle said gently.

“But,” Aurora said, “I have never been responsible for making a foreign school feel welcome in my tower. It’s one thing to point through a telescope and say, ‘Look. There is Orion from your home.’ It is another to bring the sky itself to them.”

Estelle’s brows rose. “You’ve been working on something.”

Aurora’s eyes flicked sideways, almost shy. “Come,” she said abruptly. “Tell me if I’ve gone too far.”

She led Estelle through the new archway.

The temperature shifted subtly as they passed under the charm—just a degree warmer, the air tinged with a faint floral note that reminded Estelle of some delicate perfume she’d once smelled at a Black family gathering and promptly decided was wasted on people who never stepped outside.

The corridor opened into what had been a rather plain antechamber. Now, it was full of light.

Beds—narrower than Hogwarts’ own but draped with soft blue coverings—lined the walls, each with a small trunk stand at the foot. High windows had been widened and charmed; they showed a view Estelle knew could not possibly be outside, unless the castle had decided to move itself a few hundred miles south.

Golden light spilled over distant hills dotted with olive groves. A line of pale mountains sat blue on the horizon. The sky above them was a deeper, richer shade than today’s Scottish pallor.

But it was the ceiling that made Estelle stop.

Instead of the bare stone that had been there on Thursday, the ceiling now held a night sky in miniature. Not Hogwarts’ sky, though. The familiar circlet of the Big Dipper had shifted; the angle of Orion was wrong for this latitude. The band of the Milky Way cut the darkness at a slightly altered tilt.

“This is…” Estelle said, at a rare loss for words.

Aurora swallowed, watching her. “From near Marseille,” she said. “I adjusted the projection based on Beauxbatons’ approximate location. When they look up at night, it should feel… similar. Not identical—magic has its limits—but close enough that they won’t feel entirely unmoored.”

She shifted, suddenly self-conscious. “Is it too much? McGonagall already muttered something about ‘coddling’ under her breath, and I’m not entirely certain she was wrong.”

Estelle stood beneath the illusory sky, letting it wrap around her. The air here felt different: an echo of warmth, a suggestion of cicadas that never quite resolved into sound.

She thought of arriving at Hogwarts for the first time at eleven: terrified, brittle, carrying a name that felt like a curse and a future she didn’t want. How the dungeons’ chill had bitten through her robes, making her feel smaller. How the Slytherin common room had seemed so foreign and dark compared to the Black family home that she’d needed weeks to stop flinching every time the walls shifted.

If someone had put a fragment of her familiar sky overhead then—if she’d looked up and seen something she recognized—that first week might have felt less like drowning.

“No,” Estelle said quietly. “It isn’t too much.”

Aurora’s shoulders eased a fraction.

“It’s… kind,” Estelle added. “And gods know we could use a bit more of that this year.”

Aurora huffed a small, surprised laugh. “Coming from a Slytherin, that means something.”

“We do occasionally dabble in compassion,” Estelle said. “In between bouts of scheming.”

“I’ve noticed,” Aurora murmured.

They walked slowly through the transformed dormitory. Aurora pointed out the subtle wards she’d layered—sound-dampening charms that could be activated if the tower got too loud, gentle darkening spells for students unused to Hogwarts’ sometimes restless nights.

“I know we can’t stop them from feeling out of place,” Aurora said. “But if I can give them a sky that looks like home when they can’t sleep…”

“It may be the only thing that does,” Estelle finished.

Aurora nodded. “Something like that.”

They stood together for a moment under the enchanted sky. A shooting star flickered across the false firmament—just once, timed perfectly, unnecessary and lovely.

“You’ve done a beautiful job,” Estelle said.

“You’re sure it isn’t coddling?”

“Even if it is,” Estelle replied, “this castle has coddled worse.”

Aurora’s mouth tugged upward. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

On her way out, Estelle touched the stone archway lightly, feeling the faint hum of Sinistra’s work. It was good magic. Thoughtful magic. The kind that made a place feel, if not like home, then at least like a place one might safely sleep.

She took the spiral stairs down with a different kind of weight in her chest.

If Aurora was bending the sky to meet Beauxbatons halfway, Estelle supposed she could risk a small gesture for Durmstrang.

The dungeons were familiar in a way the tower never would be.

The air thickened as she descended, temperatures dropping by degrees until the chill licked at the edges of her ankles. Torches burned with a steady, sullen light along the walls, throwing long shadows that had once been the backdrop of her entire adolescence.

She passed the entrance to the Slytherin common room, its stone arch carved with the faint suggestion of serpents and shields. Voices leaked faintly from within—her Slytherins, already claiming their corners, already building this year’s hierarchies.

Just beyond, a new corridor yawned.

Durmstrang’s future territory.

The stone here looked older, somehow, despite being charmed into place only days ago. The walls were a shade darker, veined with subtle reds and browns like dried bloodstone. Iron sconces held squat, heavy candles that burned with a deeper, more orange flame than Hogwarts’ usual torches.

Estelle stepped through and felt the faintest resistance—the wards recognizing that she was permitted, then letting her pass.

The Durmstrang dormitory entrance had been modeled, she suspected, in consultation with someone who had once called the school home. The doors were tall and thick, metal-bound wood etched with angular runes. Inside, the space had been carved into a series of chambers: a main common room with a low, central hearth and long, sturdy benches; narrower side rooms that would hold their beds.

Greys, browns, reds.

Functional. Stark.

A place built to withstand winters, not to comfort children.

Estelle walked the perimeter slowly, fingertips trailing along stone.

It wasn’t… unwelcoming, exactly. But it was not the dungeons she knew. Hogwarts’ dungeons, for all their cold, held memory in their walls—centuries of students, secrets, whispered conversations. This space felt newer. Thinner. A set of clothes that hadn’t yet been worn.

And into that, they were going to pour an entire school of young witches and wizards who, if rumor was even halfway accurate, had been taught to distrust softness as weakness.

She paused by what would evidently be a small kitchen alcove: shelves, currently empty; a stone counter; a squat stove charmed to draw in heat from the main hearth.

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

Tea.

It was ridiculous. It was small. It was exactly the sort of thing purebloods snickered about in the privacy of their own parlors: British and their tea, what could be more provincial, more dull?

But it was also… an offering.

Or a provocation. Perhaps both. Very Slytherin.

Estelle twitched her wand.

Half a dozen stout wooden crates popped into existence on the counter, labeled in neat, looping script: ASSORTED BLACK TEAS – HOGWARTS HOSPITALITY.

Inside each box, packets organized themselves: English breakfast, Earl Grey, Darjeeling, lapsang souchong, herbal blends for sleep and for nerves and for headaches. Self-warming kettles slotted themselves into a lower shelf, gleaming brass. A small pile of chipped but clean mugs marked themselves with a subtle charm to keep them from burning fingers.

She stepped back and surveyed her work.

It was absolutely unnecessary.

It was also absolutely petty.

“Welcome to Britain,” she murmured. “We weaponize comfort.”

She giggled. An honest, slightly wicked sound that echoed off the stone.

If Durmstrang students wanted to sneer at British tea, they were welcome to do so. But she suspected that after a week in the damp, some of them might find themselves standing bleary-eyed at this counter at odd hours, hands wrapped around mugs they would never admit they needed.

She could live with that.

On her way out, she laid one more charm: a small, discreet sigil on the inside of a cabinet door. If any student tried to poison the tea, the liquid would turn a vivid shade of purple and taste like pureed Brussels sprouts.

Safety, Slytherin-style.

She let herself out, the heavy door thudding closed behind her, and climbed back toward her own chambers.

By late afternoon, the castle’s energy had shifted from exploratory chaos to the restless, hungry buzz that always preceded the first real meal of term. Students had found their dormitories, argued over bed placement, begun forming new alliances and resenting new roommates.

Teaching schedules had gone up. Estelle had caught at least three groups of students groaning over double Potions on Monday morning.

She dressed slowly for dinner, letting the familiar routine settle her.

Dark robes—her usual teaching set, the ones with reinforced cuffs for cauldron splashes and soil. She cinched them at the waist, fingers pausing briefly where her wand holster pressed against her wrist. Her hair went up in a loose knot; a few stubborn curls escaped, as always, to frame her face.

In the small mirror near her bookcase, her reflection gazed back: older than the girl who’d once sat at these tables, younger than she often felt. Lines at the corners of her eyes that came from both laughter and strain. Sirius’s cheekbones; Regulus’s mouth when she was thinking too hard; something entirely her own in the way her gaze did not flinch from its own scrutiny.

“Don’t start any fights you can’t finish,” she told herself conversationally.

The mirror did not argue.

By the time she reached the Great Hall, the noise had climbed into a familiar roar.

Candles floated beneath the enchanted ceiling, which displayed a soft, early-evening violet streaked with high, thin clouds. The four House tables were crowded; first-years sat stiff and wide-eyed, older students lounged with the easy sprawl of people who’d already picked their corners of the social battlefield.

Estelle slipped into her place up at the staff table between Sinistra and Vector. Severus was a seat down, beside Hagrid; Pomfrey sat beyond him, already watching the Hall like it might start producing injuries at any moment.

“Nice sky,” Estelle murmured to Aurora.

Aurora’s gaze flicked up, then to Estelle, a private smile touching her lips for a heartbeat. “Thought I’d keep this one local,” she said. “We’ll have enough foreign skies soon.”

Plates filled themselves. Food appeared with its usual lavishness. Conversation swelled. For a brief, strange moment, it felt—almost—like any other start-of-term dinner.

Then Dumbledore rose.

It did not get immediately quiet. It never did. Silence spread outward from him like ripples; the students near the front stopped speaking first, then the ones beyond, until eventually even the Weasley twins at the far end of the Gryffindor table realized it was happening and shut their mouths mid-joke.

“Welcome,” Dumbledore said, voice warm, carrying effortlessly to the farthest corners of the Hall. “To another year at Hogwarts.”

A cheer rolled through the room and died quickly under his raised hand.

“As you may have heard,” he continued, eyes twinkling faintly, “this year will not be… entirely ordinary.”

Estelle felt her shoulders tighten. Here we go.

“There will be classes, certainly. Homework, no doubt.” A ripple of groans. “Examinations, essays, the occasional detention—”

He glanced toward Filch, who smiled with alarming enthusiasm.

“—but this year, Hogwarts will also host an event not seen for many generations.”

The Hall vibrated with curiosity. Even the first-years leaned forward.

“As I mentioned earlier to some of your professors,” Dumbledore said, “we have been chosen to host the Triwizard Tournament.”

The word hit the Hall like a dropped stone.

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then the place exploded.

Students shouted over one another, some cheering, some gasping, some demanding, “What’s that?” and receiving, in return, five conflicting explanations.

Estelle watched the reaction roll through the tables.

Gryffindor: practically out of their seats with excitement, faces lit with the peculiar glow of people who had just heard the words danger and glory in the same sentence.

Slytherin: eyes narrowing, expressions warring between intrigue and calculation. Her older snakes looked particularly predatory.

Hufflepuff: whispers, glances, Cedric Diggory’s level gaze fixed on Dumbledore with sharp attention.

Ravenclaw: already, some of them were trying to remember everything they’d ever read about previous tournaments, lips moving as they ticked through lists in their heads.

Dumbledore let the uproar run for a few seconds, then raised his arms. Slowly, the noise ebbed into a simmer.

“As you may not know,” he said, “the Triwizard Tournament is a competition between three schools: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, and Durmstrang Institute. Each school selects a champion to face three tasks that test magical ability, courage, and resourcefulness.”

Estelle eyed the older students. At the words courage and resourcefulness, several of them straightened.

“Tomorrow evening,” Dumbledore continued, “Hogwarts will welcome delegations from both Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. They will share our lessons, our meals, and our hospitality.”

A buzz went through the Hall—excited, nervous.

“Now,” Dumbledore said, and his voice shifted, becoming the sort of gentle that warned of hard truths coming, “there is one matter I must address which concerns many of you quite dearly.”

Estelle braced herself. Beside her, Sinistra actually winced, as though anticipating physical impact.

“As host of the Tournament,” Dumbledore said, “Hogwarts must ensure that its schedule and grounds can accommodate the tasks and our guests. Some parts of our usual routine must, therefore, be surrendered for the greater event.”

He paused.

“You may have heard rumors,” he said. “I am here to confirm one of them. This year, Hogwarts will not be hosting inter-House Quidditch.”

For half a second, there was silence—the stunned kind.

Then every Quidditch player in the castle seemed to erupt simultaneously.

“What?”
“You can’t do that!”
“But the Cup—”
“WE WERE GOING TO WIN THIS YEAR!”

Someone at the Gryffindor table actually stood on the bench. Estelle was fairly sure it was one of the Weasley twins, though it was hard to tell from this angle.

Fred—or George—cupped his hands around his mouth. “YOU CAN’T CANCEL JOY, PROFESSOR!”

The Hall broke into laughter that sounded perilously close to mutiny.

Dumbledore waited it out, hands folded, expression one of mild sympathy.

“I realize this is disappointing,” he said when he could be heard again. “For some of you, perhaps extremely so. However, I assure you that what the Triwizard Tournament lacks in Quaffles and goalposts, it makes up for in spectacle.”

“That’s supposed to make it better?” Estelle muttered.

Severus leaned slightly toward her. “Personally, I find the idea of a year without Quidditch injuries to be extremely soothing.”

“You’re alone in that,” she said.

“That has never bothered me.”

Down at the Hufflepuff table, Cedric had one hand on the arm of a dismayed Chaser, speaking low and steady. His expression was disappointed but not outraged. He absorbed the information, then seemed to tuck it away somewhere purposefully.

Estelle watched him, a faint coil of unease settling in her gut.

He had the look of someone who understood the difference between a game and a test.

“And now,” Dumbledore said, “I must address the question currently burning in many of your minds.”

“What question is that?” Vector murmured.

“‘Can I enter?’” Sinistra said, deadpan.

“Exactly that,” Dumbledore said, as though he’d heard her. “The champions will not be chosen yet. In several weeks’ time, the Goblet of Fire will be brought into this Hall. Those who wish to submit their names will be able to do so then.”

Another murmur. Eager, anticipatory.

“However,” Dumbledore went on, and his voice firmed, “for reasons of safety, the Ministry has insisted—and I agree—that only witches and wizards who are of age may put their names forward. That is to say: you must be seventeen to enter.”

The reaction this time was mixed.

Groans from the younger years, loud protest from fourth and fifth-years who had convinced themselves they were ready for anything. Julius Nott, a pale Slytherin sixth-year, looked like someone had just stolen his birthday.

At the Gryffindor table, a second-year slumped dramatically onto the table. “By the time I’m seventeen everything will be boring again,” she wailed.

“By the time you’re seventeen, you’ll be too sensible to want to do it,” her friend replied.

Estelle snorted. She doubted that very much.

Fred and George Weasley, she noted, were exchanging a look that could only be described as plotting. Their younger sister Ginny seemed to be giving them a lecture with her eyebrows.

At least the first-years looked vaguely relieved.

Estelle breathed out slowly.

Seventeen.

It wasn’t a perfect safeguard. But it was something.

“How many do you think will try anyway?” Aurora murmured at her elbow. “Age Line or no?”

“Every Gryffindor with a death wish,” Estelle said. “Half the Slytherins with a point to prove. Maybe one or two Ravenclaws who want to test the limits of theoretical magic.”

“And the Hufflepuffs?”

“Will think about the consequences, and then do it anyway for their friends.”

Aurora’s mouth curved. “Fair assessment.”

“At least they can’t say they weren’t warned,” Estelle said.

Dumbledore wrapped up his explanation with a few more reassurances: classes would continue as usual; visiting students would be expected to follow Hogwarts rules; anyone attempting to hex a foreign guest would find themselves facing the combined wrath of their Head of House, Madam Pomfrey, and possibly an international incident.

“Now,” he finished, “eat, and enjoy your evening. Tomorrow, Hogwarts opens her doors a little wider.”

The Hall returned to its food with a vengeance. Conversation swelled again, now threaded with heated speculation about Beauxbatons uniforms and Durmstrang dueling techniques and which Hogwarts seventh-years were likely to try for champion.

Estelle ate mechanically.

Her gaze drifted over the tables, cataloguing.

There, a tall Ravenclaw boy with sharp cheekbones and a habit of raising his hand before he fully knew the answer. There, a Hufflepuff girl with calloused Quidditch hands and a laugh like a bell. The Slytherin seventh-year prefect, cool-eyed and poised, whose essays on magical ethics had been both impressive and deeply unsettling.

Faces she might see reflected in the blue-white light of the Goblet of Fire.

Faces she might see, later, in the Hospital Wing—or not at all.

A shiver chased itself down her spine.

“Cold?” Severus asked.

“Premonition,” she said.

“Those are rarely accurate.”

She gave him a look. “Spoken like a man who has never had one.”

He did not answer.

When the plates finally cleared themselves, students began to drift away in clusters—some up to their dormitories; others, the older ones, lingering on the pretense of needing to walk off dinner but really just wanting a few more minutes to buzz with their friends.

Estelle remained seated for a while, watching them go.

“So,” Aurora said softly, eyes following the line of returning students, “tomorrow we put on our best faces and play host.”

“Yes,” Estelle murmured. “And hope very much that’s all we are asked to play.”

Aurora glanced at her. “Too late to back out?”

“Far too late.”

They rose together and left the Hall with the rest of the staff.

In the Entrance Hall, the giant hourglasses that measured House points stood mostly empty—clean, clear, waiting. By tomorrow night, they’d hold the first drops of this year’s triumphs and mischief.

Estelle paused at the foot of the Grand Staircase, looking up.

The enchanted ceiling above the Hall showed a single star blinking faintly through the clouds, defiant.

“Another year,” she murmured.

Behind her, the gargoyles shifted, stone wings scraping faintly.

Tomorrow, the castle would welcome ships and carriages, new accents, new tempers, new histories.

Tonight, for a few hours more, it was only theirs.

Estelle drew a steadying breath and turned toward the dungeons, toward the greenhouses, toward whatever small preparations she could still make before the world arrived on Hogwarts’ doorstep.

She’d seen what happened when magic and spectacle collided without care.

This time, she would be ready.

Or she would die trying.

Chapter Text

Estelle woke to the strange, specific silence that meant the castle was waiting for something.

For a few long seconds, she floated in the warm, weightless space between sleep and waking. Her bed was a small island in the dimness: sheets tangled around her hips, one bare foot hooked out from under the duvet, the pillow cool beneath her cheek.

Then awareness slid back in.

Sunday.

Her eyes opened to the half-light of her chambers. Gray—soft, filtered, the color of the sky before rain decided what it wanted to be. The curtains at her small window breathed with the morning breeze; beyond them, she could hear the faint clatter of owls leaving the Owlery, distant voices, the creak and shift of ancient stone bones.

And underneath it, quiet as a held breath: the knowledge that by tonight, Hogwarts would no longer belong only to itself.

Durmstrang. Beauxbatons.

The names settled into her chest like stones dropped into a pond, sending slow, spreading ripples.

She lay still, staring at the ceiling.

Her hair had escaped its loose braid in the night. Black strands fanned across the pillow in a dark halo, some curls kinked from sleep, others straightened where she’d rolled over them. It made her skin look paler, she knew; made her gray eyes—when she finally dragged them toward the small mirror across the room—seem sharper, ringed in the faint shadows that had taken up permanent residence beneath them.

Once, those shadows had been from too many nights spent laughing in common rooms and sneaking through corridors. Now they came from other kinds of wandering.

She exhaled slowly.

“Today,” she told the empty room, “we invite the rest of the world in to have a look.”

The room did not argue.

She shifted, stretching her legs under the covers, feeling that fleeting, delicious pull of muscles waking. Her nightshirt—an old thing, soft from years of washing, cuffs frayed—had twisted around her torso; she tugged it straight, eyes still on the ceiling.

It would be easy, she thought, to stay here.

Cocooned.

Let the castle handle its own performance. Let Minerva worry about sorting out French etiquette with Hogwarts table manners; let Severus glower on behalf of the dungeons; let Dumbledore turn on that serene, impenetrable gaze for the visiting staff while the Ministry preened in the background.

She could stay in bed. Listen to the distant rumble of carriage and prow from behind her walls. Pretend, for an hour more, that she was just a Herbology professor with a long day of lesson planning ahead.

The thought was so tempting it felt almost like a spell.

But she knew better.

She had lived through a war where too many people had stayed in bed, figuratively and literally. Too many had looked away and told themselves someone else would handle it.

She rolled onto her side, hair flopping across her face. Pushed it back with a huff. Her gray eyes caught a sliver of her reflection in the glass of a framed print—cheek pillow-creased, mouth soft with sleep, something steely already waking behind her expression.

“Up,” she muttered at herself. “You’re not a teenager anymore.”

The castle did not care what she felt like. The day was happening with or without her.

Still, she allowed herself a few more minutes.

Thinking.

The year stretched in front of her, not as a neat line but as a series of looming shapes: the arrival tonight; the Goblet of Fire, blue flame licking secrets out of paper; the first task at the end of November, like a shadow she could feel even now at the edge of her thoughts.

And threaded through all of it, like a darker cord: Sirius.

He should not have been part of this year’s calculus at all. He should have been… anywhere else. Dead, the Ministry claimed once, and then wrong, and now furious about being wrong.

Alive. Escaped. Loose.

Her twin. Her other half, once, before time and war and Azkaban had put oceans between them without moving them an inch on a map.

The note he’d sent at the tail end of summer still seemed to hum faintly wherever she’d hidden it.

She closed her eyes again, just for a breath.

Elle, it had begun, in the slanting, impatient hand she knew as well as her own. Before you hex this, it isn’t a trap…

She didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not with foreign schools en route and Dumbledore watching and Severus’s words—You complicate my loyalties—still echoing in the back of her mind.

She shoved the thoughts away, mentally, the way she might push an overgrown vine to one side of a path.

Her stomach growled.

Right. Breakfast.

Or not.

The prospect of facing the Great Hall this morning—students buzzing about the arrivals, older ones already strategizing about how to impress visiting students, Quidditch players still grieving the cancelled season—made her want to crawl under the bed instead.

She could practically hear the overlapping questions now: Do you think they’re bringing their own brooms? Is it true Durmstrang teaches Dark Arts? Do you think Beauxbatons uniforms are actually enchanted with slimming charms?

She wasn’t ready.

What she was ready for, she realized, was dirt.

Earth under her nails. Familiar rows of plants. The quiet, diligent company of things that did not care about international diplomacy, as long as they got enough light.

The decision settled over her with a solid, comforting weight.

She threw back the duvet and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The flagstones were cold under her feet, a little shock that drove the last remnants of sleep away. She sat there a moment longer, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, hair falling forward till its black curtain hid her face.

Then she straightened and got on with it.

Her morning routine was quick today. No point in fussing with her hair; she dragged it into a loose plait down her back, knowing the greenhouse humidity would undo it anyway. She pulled on a clean shirt, her worn work robes, boots that could handle mud. The familiar weight of her wand slid into her sleeve, nestling against the inside of her wrist.

In the small mirror, she paused just long enough to register herself properly.

Gray eyes, clear despite the sleep-creases. Black hair tamed for now. A faint, pale scar along her jaw where a piece of glass had once decided to dislike her. Lines at the corners of her eyes that deepened when she smiled; she wasn’t, at the moment.

“You look like a professor,” she told herself. “Mildly worried, intermittently competent, under-caffeinated.”

The mirror, to its credit, did not offer an opinion.

She grabbed an apple from the bowl on her sideboard—courtesy of the house-elves, who had long ago learned she rarely made it to breakfast on Sundays—and bit into it on her way out, the crisp sweetness cutting through the dryness in her mouth.

The corridors were quieter than yesterday. Most students were still at breakfast; the echoes of their voices leaked faintly up the stairwells, muffled by stone. A few loners wandered in the opposite direction—one Ravenclaw with his nose already in a book, a Hufflepuff girl with her hair still damp from an early shower, a Slytherin sixth-year who had the shifty look of someone already casing potential hiding spots.

“Professor,” they murmured as she passed.

“Try not to hex anything important,” she said out of habit.

Their guilty flinch suggested it had, in fact, been on the agenda.

By the time she reached the side door that led down toward the greenhouses, the noise of the castle had faded, replaced by the outdoor world. The morning air was cool, damp with the promise of recent fog, the sky a low pebble-gray that pressed gently on the horizon.

The greenhouses sat where they always had: a row of glass spines along the edge of the grounds, backs against the slope, fronts facing the lake. Their panes reflected the muted sky, the shapes of trees, the faint glimmer of water beyond.

Estelle’s shoulders loosened at the sight.

Home, almost as much as the dungeons. More, sometimes.

As she approached, she noticed small signs of recent industry.

Paths had been freshly swept; the gravel between beds lay in tidy lines. A new stack of clean pots waited by the door of Greenhouse Three. The compost bins had been emptied and refilled, lids neatly charmed against the curiosity of creatures with too many teeth and not enough sense.

Inside, the air steamed gently against the glass.

She stepped into Greenhouse Two and drew a breath that tasted of chlorophyll and peat and faintly of dragon manure. It filled her lungs more cleanly than anything she’d breathed in days.

The rows were immaculate.

Leaves wiped free of dust. Dead fronds trimmed and removed. Labels rewritten in careful, looping script she recognized—house-elves, likely Minky’s work, the “y”s still a little over-enthusiastic.

“Show-offs,” Estelle murmured, fond.

On the central table, someone had left a tray with a clean set of dragon-hide gloves, a pair of pruning shears, and a coil of twine.

There was also a folded note, in tiny neat handwriting:

Professor Black, ma’am,
Minky and the others has weeded and watered. Plants are ready for you, ma’am.
Please be careful of the bitey ones.
– Minky

“Sound advice,” Estelle said to the empty greenhouse.

Her gaze slid, inexorably, toward the far corner.

The bitey ones.

They’d started as a single specimen—one Fanged Geranium cutting she’d kept from an order Sprout had made years ago. Over time, with the stubborn persistence of things that liked it here, the plant had multiplied. The bed now held a small, densely packed colony: clumps of glossy green leaves, each nestled around a central bud that looked innocuous until it opened to reveal a neat ring of small, sharp teeth.

Beautiful, in their own way. Utterly ridiculous in another.

And currently overgrown.

Left alone, they had a tendency to reach over the path and snap at the ankles of unwary students. For the sake of first-years and the continued sanity of Madam Pomfrey, the patch needed trimming.

“All right, you little nightmares,” Estelle said, rolling up her sleeves. “Let’s try not to maim each other today.”

She pulled on the dragon-hide gloves, flexing her fingers to get used to the slightly stiff feel. The pruning shears nestled comfortably in her hand. She made her way to the geranium bed and stood at its edge, regarding it like an opponent in a match.

The plants rustled faintly, mouths opening and closing in lazy, testing snaps.

“Good morning,” she told them. “We’re going to establish some boundaries. You will stay on your side of the path. I will keep you alive, watered, and harvested. In return, you will refrain from removing any of my digits. Deal?”

One of the buds peeped open, teeth glinting like tiny pearls, then shut again with what she chose to interpret as reluctant acceptance.

“Excellent,” she said. “Let’s begin.”

There was a rhythm to this kind of work.

Move carefully. Approach from the side. Never let your fingers linger near the mouth of a particularly lively plant. Trim the outer leaves first, where they were less sensitive, then slowly work inward, coaxing each stalk away from its neighbor. Speak to them as you went. Plants responded to tone, if not words.

She lost herself in it.

The first half-hour went smoothly.

She hummed as she worked, some tuneless thread of a song she couldn’t quite place. The shears made a satisfying snip with each cut; leaves fell in soft piles at her feet, their scent sharp and peppery. Every so often a small head would dart toward her glove, teeth closing with a muted click against the dragon hide.

“Nice try,” she told them. “You had your chance when I was a student.”

Her mind wandered in the safe way it sometimes did when her hands knew what to do without needing supervision.

She thought of lesson plans—ways to incorporate Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students into practical Herbology without causing an international incident. She thought of extra batches of healing salves, of stocking up on antidote ingredients just in case the tournament tasks involved anything living and with claws.

Her thoughts drifted upward, to the tower where Aurora’s foreign sky waited for the French students. Downward, to the dungeons where her petty offering of tea sat in Durmstrang’s cupboards, poised between hospitality and mischief.

All of it fragile, in its way.

She finished one section of the bed and straightened, bones clicking faintly.

“Halfway,” she told the geraniums. “You’re behaving beautifully. I’m almost proud of you.”

They rustled, unimpressed.

The light shifted subtly as a cloud passed over the sun. The greenhouse glass pinged faintly in response, metal fittings expanding and contracting.

Estelle pushed a curl off her forehead with the back of her wrist, then moved to the next clump. These were slightly older; their stalks thicker, mouths a fraction larger.

“Behave,” she warned them, and bent back to work.

She managed another fifteen minutes before her mind betrayed her.

It wasn’t intentional.

One moment she was focused entirely on the clean line she wanted to carve along the bed’s edge. The next, her mind snagged—catching on an image that had been lying in wait under the surface of her thoughts.

A different night. A different greenhouse. Sirius’s shadow in the doorway, long and thin and so familiar it hurt.

I came home, he’d said once, voice raw.

Only home had not wanted him. Not then. Not yet. Hogwarts had been safety and danger both, a place where he might be shot on sight or forgiven depending on whose wand was quicker.

He wasn’t here now.

He was somewhere else. Out there.

The shears hesitated in her hand.

She saw it too clearly: him moving through some nameless forest, hair longer now, beard rough on his jaw, shoulders narrower than they’d been before Azkaban. The way he might slip between trees like Padfoot—black shape in a blacker night—watching lights on distant hills and thinking of all the places he couldn’t go.

Elle, before you hex this…

Her chest tightened.

Where was he this morning? What sky was over his head? Did he know Hogwarts was about to host a tournament, throw its doors open to strangers and danger and Ministry scrutiny? Did he care? Did he want to?

Was he close enough to see the castle if he climbed a ridge and squinted?

The geranium leaves brushed her wrist.

She didn’t feel it at first.

Her thoughts slid to Severus for a moment, unbidden—his face in the torchlight outside the staffroom, the way he’d said you complicate my loyalties as though the words offended him and relieved him in equal measure.

If the Ministry came with Veritaserum, if they dragged her in a second time—

Her ring finger brushed the inner edge of a bud’s mouth.

She realized what she had done a fraction of a second too late.

The plant moved faster than it had any right to.

The small green head lunged, teeth snapping forward in a blur. For an instant, she saw every sharp little point, white and gleaming, descending toward her exposed skin.

Pain hit like a curse.

It was bright, shocking, all-consuming—a hot, electric bite that tore through the pad of her finger and sank deep, right where the bone met flesh. She heard the wet, horrible crunch of teeth closing over joint, felt the bite reverberate all the way up her arm.

The world telescoped.

The greenhouse, the rows of plants, the soft hiss of misters—all of it shrank to the point where those teeth met her skin.

For a heartbeat, she didn’t make a sound.

Then it ripped out of her, raw and unpretty.

“Fuck—!”

The geranium clamped down harder, tiny jaws grinding with determined, vicious enthusiasm. It shook its head—her finger still trapped in its mouth—as though trying to worry a piece of meat off a bone.

Red rushed into her vision. Her knees nearly gave.

Instinct kicked in.

Her left hand seized the plant just below its head, dragon-hide glove scrabbling for purchase on slick stalk. With her right, she wrenched backward, trying to pull free.

The teeth tore instead.

She felt each one that let go, a popping series of agony as flesh parted. Hot wetness spilled down over her knuckle, over her palm, splattering across the front of her robes.

For a second she thought she might vomit.

Her wand was in her sleeve; she fumbled for it with her left hand and managed a jagged, half-formed spell.

“Stupe—“

The charm came out crooked, but it was enough.

The plant shuddered, went limp, jaws slackening. Her finger pulled free with a sickening, sucking sensation.

She staggered back, cradling her hand against her chest.

Blood welled in bright, obscene pulses from the ragged half-circle of punctures that now ringed her ring finger. Some of the wounds were shallow; others were deep, tooth-marks sunk near to the bone. One in particular gaped open, edges pale and shocked. She could see, horribly, the glimmer of something white beneath the mess where the plant had torn more than it should have.

Her stomach flipped.

“Fuck,” she whispered again, breathless. Her voice sounded far away to her own ears.

The pain roared, then sharpened, becoming distinct—each throb a hammer blow behind her nail, each heartbeat squeezing fresh red between the broken skin.

Dragon-hide gloves were supposed to protect against this sort of thing. Of course it was the one finger she’d left bare—glove pushed back slightly for dexterity, stupid, what had she been thinking—

She wasn’t. That was the problem.

The room tilted a fraction. She leaned her uninjured hand on the edge of the table, forcing herself to breathe.

In, out. In, out.

Blood dripped steadily onto the flagstones, fat red drops that splashed and spread.

Her mind, ever treacherous, offered a clinical assessment beneath the adrenaline: the outer edges could be sealed with a simple Episkey and a salve, perhaps. But the deeper bite—nearest the joint, where the plant had crushed and torn—would need more. Stitches, even. Magical ones, certainly, but still.

Her ring finger—unadorned, but not untouched—throbbed so hard she thought the bone might be trying to escape.

“For Merlin’s sake,” she muttered, teeth clenched against a whimper as the next wave of pain hit. “Pomfrey is going to have my head.”

She clamped her uninjured hand tight around the ruined finger, pressing hard, trying to stem the flow even as fresh warmth trickled between her gloved fingers.

The geranium bed rustled behind her, leaves whispering.

For the first time since coming down to the greenhouses that morning, Estelle felt something very like panic trying to claw its way up her throat.

Outside, unaware, the castle went on preparing to welcome the world.

Inside the greenhouse, Estelle Black stared at the blood blooming between her fingers and knew, with a clarity as bright as the pain, that this was going to require more than a quick healing charm and a bandage.

Her ring finger was going to need stitches.

The pain came in waves.

Estelle clenched her hand harder around the mangled finger, feeling warm blood seep between her gloved fingers despite the pressure. The greenhouse swam in and out of focus; the edges of her vision fuzzed with gray.

“All right,” she breathed, talking to the air, to herself, to the stupid vicious plant that now hung stunned and drooping in front of her. “All right. Think.”

Hospital Wing?

Too far, and she’d leave half a trail through the corridors. Pomfrey would fuss, then scold, then insist on sending a report to Dumbledore. Professor Black nearly removed her own finger while gardening, yes, very reassuring, we’re completely prepared to host foreign schools and a lethal tournament.

No.

She needed someone faster. Closer. Someone whose hands didn’t shake when things got bloody.

Her heart gave a single, reluctant thud at the realization.

Severus.

Of course.

“Merlin save me from my own good sense,” she muttered, shifting her grip just enough to free her wand hand.

Pain flared bright and white-hot at the movement. It took her breath; she pressed her injured hand harder against her chest, curled forward protectively, and for a moment she tasted iron on the back of her tongue.

“Okay,” she whispered when the world steadied. “Okay, okay.”

Her wand slid down from her sleeve into her bloody palm, slick against her skin. She clenched her fingers around it, ignoring the fresh spike of agony that shot through the ring finger.

Patronus.

It wasn’t the easiest spell to cast under the best of circumstances. It demanded focus, joy, something bright and clear to push back against the dark.

Right now, joy felt like something she’d misplaced in another decade.

Still. She had learned long ago that you could wring a Patronus out of other things if you had to—stubbornness, memory, the sheer bloody-minded refusal to let the dark have the last word.

She closed her eyes.

Behind the pain, behind the taste of copper and the smell of earth and the faint, singed-pepper scent of the geranium bed, she reached backward.

To a different morning: wind in her hair, broom under her feet, James’s laugh ringing across the pitch as she pulled out of a dive. The weightless moment at the top of a climb when the whole world dropped away and it was just her and sky and the fierce, terrifying joy of being alive.

She clung to that.

Her wand shook. She lifted it anyway.

“Expecto Patronum.”

The word tore out of her like something dragged through brambles.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then light bloomed at the wand tip—thin at first, hesitant, a wisp of silver smoke. It swelled as she poured what remained of her focus into it, teeth gritted, lungs burning.

The silver condensed, bones knitting out of light, feathers unfurling.

A raven burst from the wand, sleek and bright and made entirely of moonlit silver. It beat its wings once, twice, hovering before her for an instant, head cocked as though assessing her with its tiny, luminous eyes.

It looked, Estelle thought dimly, more annoyed than worried.

“Severus,” she gasped. “Go to Severus. Tell him—tell him to come to Greenhouse Two. Now. I’ve been bitten. It’s—bad.”

The Patronus tilted its head, as if listening, then launched itself forward, streaming through the glass like fog, vanishing in a streak of light toward the castle.

As soon as it went, the effort hit her.

Her knees buckled.

She sank down onto the nearest bench hard enough to rattle the pots stacked beneath it, the impact sending fresh agony through her hand. She swallowed a cry and pressed the injured finger tighter, feeling the hot pulse of blood against her palm.

Five minutes, she told herself. Less, if he was already awake and in his dungeon. More, if he was in the staffroom, or the Great Hall, or engaged in some elaborate mental preparation for tolerating Karkaroff.

“Don’t faint,” she muttered. “Pomfrey will never let you live it down.”

She forced herself to move, just a little.

With her uninjured hand, she flicked her wand weakly at the geranium bed. “Incarcerous.”

Ropes snapped into existence, coiling around the stunned plant and its nearest neighbors, binding them to their stakes. Even unconscious, some of the heads twitched, teeth clicking feebly. She added a quick freezing charm to the air immediately over the bed, bringing the temperature down sharply.

“Time-out,” she told them through gritted teeth. “You’ve lost your gardening privileges.”

The quip came out thin, but it was still a quip. That had to count for something.

Her vision pulsed in time with her heartbeat. The world seemed to narrow—greenhouse, table, her own blood-slick hand. Outside, the light shifted as the morning adjusted itself; a faint breeze rattled the glass.

She focused on breathing. In, out. In through her nose, out through her mouth, counting silently.

She hated waiting.

Especially like this, trapped between action and helplessness, reduced to sitting while blood dripped steadily from between her fingers to form an increasingly impressive pool on the flagstones.

“Severus Snape,” she muttered. “If you ignore a Patronus in the throes of a Triwizard year, I will—”

The greenhouse door banged open so hard it slammed into the wall.

She jerked, head snapping up.

Severus stood in the doorway, wand already out, eyes black and blazing.

For a second, he didn’t see her.

He saw the blood.

It spread in a wide, irregular pool on the floor near the geranium bed, glistening darkly in the diffuse light. Drops speckled the path leading toward her; more had spattered across the table.

His whole body altered.

Every line of him went from guarded to lethal in a breath. Wand up, stance low, he swept his gaze across the greenhouse with the cold, precise intention of someone expecting an enemy.

“Who—?” His voice was sharp enough to cut. “Show yourself.”

Despite the pain, Estelle let out a startled, breathy chuckle that came out half like a groan.

“Easy,” she said. “The villain is horticultural.”

His head snapped toward her.

For a heartbeat, his expression didn’t change—still all edged alertness, still every muscle braced.

Then he saw her properly: sitting on the bench, hair stuck to her forehead with sweat, robes splattered, her left hand clamped white-knuckled around her right, blood dripping steadily from between gloved fingers.

“Estelle.”

Her name in his mouth was low and rough and carried more than she wanted to think about.

The force in him reoriented instantly, target changed. He strode toward her, wand still up but now aiming at the floor, at the plants, at anything that might move in the wrong way.

“What happened?” he demanded. His eyes flicked over her, checking shoulders, throat, torso, thighs, as if expecting to find some hidden mortal wound.

She tried to smile. It felt like cracking dry paint.

“I lost an argument,” she said. “With a Fanged Geranium.”

If anything, that made him more furious.

“Where?” he snapped.

She peeled her blood-slick hand away from her right.

It took effort. The sticky, half-clotted mess made a soft, disgusting sound as her fingers separated. Fresh blood surged up with a vengeance, eager to reclaim the ground it had temporarily ceded.

Her ring finger looked like something from a particularly didactic medical textbook. The semicircle of punctures stood out in angry red; one gash near the base gaped open, meat and white glimmer beneath, as though the plant had attempted to uncap the bone.

Severus hissed out a breath through his teeth.

“Of course you chose today to maim yourself,” he said, but the brittle anger was a thin shell over something else: fierce, focused worry.

She swallowed.

“I thought I’d get it out of the way before the children start,” she managed.

He ignored that.

“Why didn’t you go to Pomfrey?”

“I need stitches,” she said. “I trust your hands more than anyone else’s.”

The words slipped out before she could censor them.

For a moment, something in his face faltered.

It was gone almost instantly, buried under a fresh layer of professional composure.

“Idiot,” he said, voice oddly gentle. “Sit still.”

She almost said I am sitting, but decided she had annoyed him enough for the moment.

He holstered his wand in one smooth motion and drew in a breath, centering himself in a way she recognized from Potions demonstrations: that slight, almost imperceptible settling of shoulders, the sharpening of attention that meant the rest of the world had been deemed irrelevant.

“Hand,” he said, holding out his own.

She offered it.

The movement made her hiss through her teeth as pain flared.

He took her wrist, fingers firm but careful, and turned her hand this way and that, assessing the damage. His touch was warm and steady; the contrast with the throbbing, cold-hot agony in her finger made her dizzy.

“Any plant toxins in their saliva?” he asked curtly.

“No,” she said. “Just teeth.”

“Just,” he repeated. “Your ‘just’ worries me.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t get yourself torn apart this year unless absolutely necessary.”

“I don’t recall agreeing,” she said, voice faint.

“Consider this a retroactive contract.”

If he was making jokes, even acidic ones, she told herself, he couldn’t be too panicked.

Without letting go of her wrist, he flicked his other hand in a sharp, practiced gesture. A small folding table appeared beside them with a muted pop, its surface immediately filling with supplies that had clearly been conjured from habit before: a shallow ceramic bowl, a bottle of clear antiseptic solution, rolls of sterile gauze, a slender, curved needle threaded with very fine, gleaming suture string, silver instruments lined up with almost obsessive precision.

“Merlin,” she muttered. “Do you keep a traveling surgery kit in your sleeve at all times?”

“You’d be surprised what this castle requires on a weekly basis,” he said. “Do not move.”

He released her wrist just long enough to summon a second stool; it slid across the flagstones to land in front of her. He sat, knees between hers, close enough that she could see the faint flecks of lighter brown in his irises.

He took her hand again, cradling it in his palm.

“Try not to bleed on my boots,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“I’ll do my best,” she said, though she suspected his boots were already a lost cause.

He raised his wand with his free hand and cast a series of quick, precise charms over the wound. Cool silver light washed over her finger—first numbing, then stabilizing, the wild, jagged pain flattening into a dull, insistent throb.

She let out an involuntary sigh.

“That will not last forever,” he warned. “I am limiting the anesthetic effect. You need to feel enough for me to know if I am causing further damage.”

“Oh, wonderful,” she said faintly. “I always wanted to participate in my own surgery.”

“Stop talking.”

He cleansed the wound with the antiseptic, the solution stinging in a way that cut through the spell’s numbness. Then he picked up the needle.

It glinted in the greenhouse light. Estelle had seen him wield knives and blades in the Potions classroom—with the same careful, surgical intent. This felt different. Somehow more intimate.

He glanced up at her once, as if to say now, then bent over her hand.

The first stitch tugged.

She felt it, a sharp, tight pull that stitched not only flesh but something in her chest. She winced, breath catching.

“Hold still,” he murmured. “You’re doing this to yourself.”

“Comforting,” she said through her teeth.

He worked in silence.

The greenhouse was suddenly very loud: the whir of the misters cycling, the faint trickle of water in the irrigation lines, the snuffle and creak of other plants shifting in their pots. Somewhere a pod burst with a soft plop, releasing a puff of spores that drifted lazily toward the ceiling.

The world narrowed to the circle of light around them, the clean, precise sound of the needle passing through skin, the gentle tug of the thread cinching the torn edges together.

His hands did not shake.

Of course they didn’t. These were the hands that brewed the most volatile potions in the castle, that diced lacewing flies to exacting specifications, that had, she knew, stitched worse wounds than this on himself and others in darker places than a sunlit greenhouse.

She watched his face as much as her finger.

His brow was furrowed in concentration, mouth pressed into a thin line. A strand of black hair had fallen forward; he ignored it, the tip brushing his cheek with each slight movement. His eyes tracked the needle with laser focus, every stitch placed with the kind of care that might have been mistaken for arrogance if she didn’t know better.

It wasn’t arrogance.

It was refusal.

Refusal to be imprecise when precision could be the difference between healing and damage. Refusal to be careless with someone else’s body when so many had been careless with his.

“You’re frowning,” she said softly, because silence between them had never stayed simple for long.

“So are you,” he replied without looking up.

“I’m the one being sewn back together. I’m allowed.”

“Is that a rule?” he murmured.

“Yes. I just made it.”

“Of course you did.”

Another stitch. Another neat, efficient pull.

She winced.

“Hurts?”

“Some.”

“Good.”

She blinked. “Good?”

“I need you conscious and honest,” he said. “If you pass out, you become significantly more inconvenient.”

“You have a terrible bedside manner.”

“I am not a Healer.”

“You could have been,” she said before she could stop herself.

His hands paused minutely.

He did not look up.

“It did cross my mind once,” he said after a moment. “Briefly. Before other… opportunities presented themselves.”

Death Eater opportunities. Spy opportunities. The sort of work that required knowing how to break a body more than how to mend it.

She swallowed.

“You would have been a terrifying Healer,” she said. “Terrifyingly competent, I mean.”

“A high compliment,” he said dryly, setting the needle again. “Hold still.”

She did, as best she could.

The thread tugged her skin together, knitting her into something approximating wholeness again. The sight was both nauseating and weirdly fascinating.

She realized, as the minutes stretched, that he still hadn’t asked why she’d sent for him instead of anyone else.

Which meant he knew.

He knew she trusted him.

He knew he didn’t deserve it, in his own estimation.

He stitched anyway.

“Severus,” she said quietly, after the eighth or ninth careful pass.

He made a noncommittal noise.

“I’m… sorry I scared you.”

His fingers tightened infinitesimally on her wrist.

“I did not say you scared me,” he said.

“You didn’t have to.” She tried to smile. “You came in here like you were about to hex someone into next week.”

“If there had been someone to hex,” he said, “I would have. Thoroughly.”

“All this fuss,” she murmured. “Over one finger.”

“It is not ‘one finger.’ It is your finger.” His voice sharpened, just a little. “You require all of them. You are already missing enough… pieces.”

The last word came out softer than the rest.

Her throat constricted.

He meant scars. He meant the things she’d told him in fragments on darker nights, about betrothals and Death Eaters and what it had cost to be a Black who had said no.

He meant, too, the things she hadn’t said, but he’d guessed: nights broken by nightmares, mornings held together by sheer will.

“I’m not going to fall apart over this,” she said. “I promise.”

“See that you don’t,” he replied.

Another stitch. He finished the last row with meticulous care, then tied off the thread with a tiny, neat knot that vanished with a twist of his wand.

He sat back slightly, still bracing her hand in his.

The worst of the blood had been wiped away; her finger was now an angry thing, swollen and discolored, but held together by tiny, almost invisible silver sutures that glinted faintly in the greenhouse light. It looked fragile and fierce at once.

“There,” he said briskly, though the word carried a thread of relief. “You will live.”

“Disappointed?” she asked weakly.

“On the contrary. I have invested far too much time in you for you to die by geranium.”

She let out a breath that was half laugh, half tremor.

He raised his wand, murmured a final charm; a faint, cool tingling spread over the injury as the sutures sealed further under a thin lattice of healing magic.

“Keep it clean,” he instructed. “No soil, no pond water, no experimental salves until tomorrow at the earliest. I will not have you undermining my work out of impatience.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said, exaggerating the title on purpose.

He narrowed his eyes. “Do not make me conjure a sling. I will.”

“You would not.”

“You have no idea what I would or would not do when presented with a stubborn patient.”

He finally released her wrist, but his hand did not move far. It hovered just below hers, as if ready to catch it if gravity or clumsiness decided to have another go at her.

Without thinking too much about it, she let her injured hand rest lightly in his palm again.

The pressure was minimal; the gesture was not.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, equally soft.

Their eyes met, and for a breath the greenhouse seemed to fade around them—the plants, the steam, the smear of blood on the floor all dropping into the periphery.

He had always had a talent for looking at her like she was both a problem to solve and a theorem he had never quite stopped loving.

“You sent for me,” he said after a moment, as though only now allowing himself to address it.

“Yes.”

“You could have sent for Pomfrey. Or Dumbledore.”

“I could have.”

“Yet you didn’t.”

She held his gaze. “I told you. I trust your hands.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked.

“That is… unwise,” he said.

“I am often unwise where you are concerned,” she replied. “You may as well get used to it.”

Something flickered across his face—exasperation, affection, fear, all tangled up until she couldn’t tease them apart.

“Do not make a habit of nearly bleeding out alone in greenhouses,” he said. “We have enough to contend with this year.”

“I’ll put it on the list,” she murmured. “Just under ‘don’t antagonize visiting schools’ and above ‘don’t hex Ministry officials.’”

“Do not pretend you will abide by any of those rules,” he said.

“I abided by one,” she pointed out. “I called you.”

He swallowed.

“You did,” he said.

His thumb brushed, very lightly, against the uninjured side of her hand. Barely a touch; more of a suggestion of one. It sent a small, inexplicable shiver up her arm.

“You realize,” he went on, voice lower now, “that if your Patronus ever arrives like that again, sounding like you’re about to die, I will hex the next ten things I see on principle.”

“Even if they’re potted plants?” she asked.

“Especially if they’re potted plants,” he said. “The world can do with fewer that bite you.”

She smiled, for real this time, despite the ache.

“I’ll try to limit my maimings,” she said. “For your sake.”

“See that you do,” he replied.

For a moment longer, they stayed as they were—her hand in his, the greenhouse air thick and warm around them, the quiet between them not empty but full, humming with all the words they weren’t yet saying.

Outside, unseen, the day moved on.

Somewhere across the lake, the water shifted in preparation for a ship that would rise from its depths. Far above, air currents twisted in anticipation of a carriage drawn by winged horses.

Hogwarts breathed in, opening itself to the oncoming storm.

In Greenhouse Two, Severus Snape cradled Estelle Black’s stitched hand as if it were something irreplaceable.

“Come,” he said at last, voice gentler than she’d heard it in weeks. “Let us bandage this properly before you decide to test its durability on yet another lethal plant.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and didn’t pull her hand away.

Not yet.

For now, it was enough to sit in the warm, damp light, her pulse slowly steadying, while the man who terrified half the school held together one small, bitten piece of her.

The world would arrive soon enough.

She would meet it with all ten fingers intact.

Thanks to him.

Chapter Text

By the time Estelle reached her chambers, the pain in her finger had settled into a hot, throbbing thud in time with her heartbeat.

Severus’s sutures held—she trusted those more than she trusted half the Ministry—but the skin around them pulsed angrily beneath the bandage, each flex of her hand reminding her that she had, in fact, been bitten by a plant like a first-year with more enthusiasm than sense.

She shut the door behind her with her good hand and leaned her forehead briefly against the wood.

For a moment she listened.

The castle was not quiet.

Distant shouts from the grounds floated in through the small, high window; the low, constant murmur of hundreds of voices rose faintly from somewhere below, like the sea under a shell. Somewhere in the distance, Peeves cackled—then there was a muffled explosion and a chorus of shrieks.

All the ordinary chaos of a Sunday afternoon at Hogwarts.

And beneath it, a different kind of hum: anticipatory, electric. Word had spread, she knew. Even those who had spent the summer in remote corners of the wizarding world had now heard: They’re coming tonight. Two whole schools. Real foreign schools, not cousins from the next county.

Estelle pushed herself away from the door and crossed to the small settee near her fireplace. She sank down carefully, cradling her injured hand in her lap.

The bandage was neat and white, the work under it fine as embroidery. Severus had wrapped it with ruthless efficiency, minimizing bulk while ensuring she would have to work very hard to ruin his stitching. Her ring finger looked thicker than usual, encased; when she flexed it experimentally, pain lanced sharp enough to make her hiss.

“Don’t be dramatic,” she muttered at it. “You’re not the only one who’s been chewed on this week.”

Still, she allowed herself to lean back and close her eyes.

For the first time since the bite, the immediate crisis had passed. The adrenaline that had fueled her Patronus and kept her upright in the greenhouse began to ebb, leaving a familiar hollow ache in its wake.

She thought of Severus.

Not in the abstract, not as the snarling, robe-billowing specter her students whispered about, but as he had been an hour ago: sleeves pushed up, brows drawn together, knuckles pale where he’d gripped her wrist to keep her hand steady.

She could still feel the ghost of his thumb’s pressure on the inside of her wrist, anchoring her to the present.

You sent for me, he’d said. Like it surprised him. Like he couldn’t quite believe she had chosen him.

I trust your hands, she had told him.

And she meant it. That was the trouble.

It shouldn’t have been complicated.

On parchment, they made a kind of sense: two former Slytherins who had survived the same war in different ways and somehow ended up teaching in the same castle a dozen years later; two people with more ghosts than friends, both adept at slipping between roles, both more comfortable with potions and plants than people.

But parchment didn’t record how he looked at her, sometimes, when he thought she wasn’t paying attention—sharp, searching, as if he were testing the weight of his choices all over again.

It didn’t record the way her chest tightened when he said you complicate my loyalties, like she was proud and furious and terrified in equal measure.

It didn’t record the late-night conversations in his quarters or hers, when the castle slept and they sat with mugs of tea or glasses of something stronger and talked in half-sentences, circling old wounds without quite naming them.

Complicated didn’t begin to cover it.

She and Severus Snape had been friends once, children in the same House, noses in the same books, both craning their necks toward a future that had seemed like it might, just might, be kinder than their homes.

Then had come Lily and James and Sirius and Regulus and the Dark Mark and every choice after that; years when their paths had diverged so violently she hadn’t known if they were even on the same map anymore.

And now—now they lived down the corridor from each other, co-heads of Slytherin, partners in a Herbology–Potions curriculum project, a pair of adults who should have been beyond the age of making a mess of their own feelings and yet seemed entirely committed to doing exactly that.

She flexed her hand again, wincing.

Of course he’d scolded her. Of course he’d called her an idiot in the same breath as your finger. Of course his first instinct upon seeing her blood had been to look for an attacker.

He was a man who expected violence.

He was also a man who had dropped everything and sprinted to a greenhouse because her silver raven had told him she was hurt.

Her stomach did an unpleasant, fluttering twist.

“Hopeless,” she informed the ceiling. “Absolutely hopeless.”

If she’d had the luxury, she might have stayed on the settee until her thoughts untangled themselves—or at least until the bandage stopped throbbing like a tiny, furious heart.

But the light was changing.

Shadows lengthened across her rug. The air coming in through the window cooled by degrees until she could feel the promise of evening in it. A bell tolled somewhere deep in the castle’s guts—one of the older, less-used ones, the kind that marked the passing of an hour rather than the start of a class.

Dinner was coming.

Tonight’s dinner was not just a meal. It was an event. Hogwarts would be performing.

Dumbledore would expect his staff at the table, standing behind him as a united front in front of two entire foreign schools and however many Ministry officials had decided their evening would be better spent basking in reflected importance.

She didn’t have the luxury of hiding.

With a low groan, she pushed herself to her feet.

Her work robes, spattered with blood and soil, were not fit for the high table. She stripped them off and tossed them into the laundry basket with a mental apology to whichever long-suffering house-elf drew the short straw next.

From her wardrobe she pulled one of her better sets of teaching robes—the dark green ones, cut neatly, with subtle embroidery at the cuffs in silver thread. Appropriate for a night like this: formal enough for company, practical enough for fleeing if everything went sideways.

She hesitated over her gloves.

Dragon-hide, again. She slid the left one on without problem. The right was trickier; she had to ease it carefully over the bandaged finger, gritting her teeth as the leather pulled, then settled. Severus’s wrapping held.

“There,” she muttered. “Armored.”

In the mirror, she took stock.

Black hair braided down her back, a few strands escaping around her face in defiance. Gray eyes steady, for now. Paler than she’d like, a little drawn, but that might pass for professorial intensity if she carried herself correctly.

“You can manage one feast,” she told herself. “You’ve survived worse than foreign teenagers and Ministry speeches.”

Her reflection did not look entirely convinced, but it nodded anyway.

She stepped out into the corridor just as other professors were doing the same.

Minerva emerged from her rooms in tartan-trimmed robes, mouth already set in the thin line that said she was prepared to be both hospitable and terrifying. Aurora came up from the tower end of the hall, straightening the cuffs of her own dark robes, ink-stains faint on one hand. Flitwick toddled along, a stack of parchment under one arm as if he planned to mark essays between courses.

Severus stepped out ahead of her, his own robes billowing slightly as he moved. His hair, for once, looked like he’d actually run a comb through it recently. He glanced back as if sensing her, dark eyes flicking over her in a quick assessment that lingered for a half-second on the hand in the glove.

“You’re late,” he murmured when she drew level with him.

“You’re punctual,” she replied. “It’s suspicious.”

He snorted, very softly.

“How’s your finger?” he asked, sotto voce, as they fell into step with the rest of the staff.

“Still attached. Still sulking.”

“Good,” he said. “Tell it I expect better of it.”

“I’ll pass that along,” she said. “I’m sure it will be chastened.”

His mouth twitched. The brief warmth that stirred in her chest at the expression annoyed her and steadied her in equal measure.

They walked down to the Great Hall together, part of the tide of black-robed adults moving toward the performance space.

The Hall doors stood open. Inside, the ceiling showed an early dusk—deepening blue, first stars pricking through. Candles floated in their usual constellations. The four House tables gleamed with empty plates and goblets, the golden cutlery lined up like tiny soldiers.

Students filled the benches, a restless sea of house colors. Their voices rolled and crashed against each other, nervous, excited, impatient.

The staff took their places at the high table.

Estelle slid into her chair between Sinistra and Madam Pomfrey. Severus took the seat beyond Pomfrey, putting just enough distance between them that she didn’t have to worry about whether their shoulders might bump if she breathed too deeply.

“Ready for your tower guests?” Estelle murmured to Aurora.

“As I’ll ever be,” Aurora replied. “If they complain about the sky, I reserve the right to push them off the parapet.”

Pomfrey snorted, then leaned past Estelle to skewer Severus with a look.

“I heard someone decided to handle a bite wound himself instead of sending his patient to me,” she said.

Severus did not look remotely contrite. “The patient was already in my vicinity. I exercised my professional judgment.”

“Next time your professional judgment can escort her to the Hospital Wing,” Pomfrey said sternly. “You may have done a decent job, but I still expect to see that finger before lights-out.”

Estelle held up both hands in surrender. “I’m going,” she said. “After the theatrics.”

“Which ones?” Aurora asked. “The Ministries’ or the schools’?”

“Both,” Estelle said.

They didn’t have to wait long.

Dumbledore rose from his central seat, drawing immediate attention. The low roar of conversation ebbed, then quieted entirely as he lifted his hands.

He had chosen particularly theatrical robes tonight—deep midnight blue with a pattern of faintly glowing runes that shifted when he moved, like reflections on water. His beard was impeccably groomed. His eyes, as always, missed very little.

“Good evening,” he said, voice warm, carrying easily. “Welcome—or welcome back—to Hogwarts.”

A murmur of acknowledgment rippled through the Hall.

“As many of you know,” Dumbledore continued, “this is no ordinary year.”

Estelle felt the words like a bell tolling. Here we go again.

“Mere days ago,” he went on, “I stood in this Hall and told many of you that Hogwarts has been selected to host a venerable and historic event: the Triwizard Tournament.”

The younger students, hearing it for the first time, gasped. The older ones, hearing it again, buzzed with fresh energy—the news still too new to have settled into their bones.

“For centuries,” Dumbledore said, “the Triwizard Tournament has been a symbol of unity between three great institutions of magical learning: Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, Durmstrang Institute, and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is a chance for us to learn from one another, to challenge ourselves, and, yes, to test the limits of our courage and skill.”

Estelle glanced along the tables, noting the way some students leaned forward at courage, others at skill. A few—very few—looked more wary than eager.

“Tonight,” Dumbledore said, “we welcome our guests.”

A ripple.

“But before we do,” he added, and his tone shifted slightly, “there are practical matters to address.”

Here came the part where he poked the wasp’s nest.

“As host of the Tournament,” he said, “Hogwarts must make certain… adjustments to accommodate both our guests and the tasks themselves. Chief among these”—he paused, letting the silence stretch just enough—“is Quidditch.”

A low, preemptive groan rolled through the Hall.

“I regret,” Dumbledore said, sounding genuinely regretful, “that we cannot safely maintain our full Quidditch schedule this year. The pitch and surrounding grounds will be needed for the tournament tasks and the accommodations of our guests. Therefore, there will be no inter-House Quidditch Cup this year.”

The explosion of outrage this time made last night’s protests sound polite.

Cries of “You’re joking!” and “You can’t!” and “What about the Cup?” rang from all four tables. Even the usually mild-mannered Hufflepuffs looked deeply put out. At the Gryffindor table, Angelina Johnson looked personally betrayed; Alicia Spinnet had her head in her hands.

Fred Weasley—all but vibrating with indignation—stood up on the bench. “This is an abuse of power!” he shouted. “We demand compensation!”

“WE WAS GONNA WIN!” his twin added, hands cupped around his mouth for maximum volume.

“Language,” Dumbledore said mildly, though his eyes twinkled. “And I seem to recall Gryffindor saying that every year.”

A ripple of laughter broke through the outrage.

“At least now you can take a year off from injuring yourselves in increasingly creative ways,” Madam Pomfrey muttered beside Estelle.

“Think of the free time,” Estelle said. “You could take up a hobby.”

“They are my hobby,” Pomfrey replied darkly.

Dumbledore held up his hand again.

“I assure you,” he said, “that though Quidditch is dear to my heart—and to many of yours—the Triwizard Tournament will offer more than enough excitement to satisfy even the most ardent Seeker.”

George Weasley shouted something that sounded suspiciously like, “We seek justice, actually!” before Lee Jordan dragged him back down.

Dumbledore let the protests crest and ebb.

“Now,” he continued, “a word about the Tournament itself. As I have said, three champions will be chosen—one from each school—to face three tasks over the course of the year. These tasks will test not only magical ability but also ingenuity, courage, and resourcefulness.”

Her gaze sought Cedric Diggory automatically. He sat tall at the Hufflepuff table, listening intently, expression serious, hands folded in front of him. A Hufflepuff with Quidditch taken from him, offered another kind of challenge instead.

She did not like how neatly that fit.

“The champions,” Dumbledore went on, “will be chosen by an impartial judge: the Goblet of Fire. In a week’s time, the Goblet will be placed in this Hall. Those who wish to submit their names may do so then.”

A tremor of excitement ran through the sixth- and seventh-years.

“However,” Dumbledore said, and his voice hardened, a steel thread through the velvet, “there is an age restriction.”

Groans preempted him.

“For reasons of safety—reasons with which I wholly agree—only witches and wizards who are of age may submit their names. That is to say: you must be seventeen or older.”

The second-years looked crushed. The thirds and fourths erupted in protest. A fifth-year Slytherin at the far end of the table shouted, “We’re as good as any seventeen-year-old!” and was promptly elbowed by his neighbor.

The Weasley twins exchanged a pointed look that screamed *challenge accepted.*

“Don’t even think about it,” Ginny hissed at them, audible even at the staff table.

Dumbledore continued over the racket.

“To ensure this,” he said, “the Goblet will be encircled by an Age Line. No one under seventeen will be able to cross it.”

Someone at the Ravenclaw table muttered, “Watch us,” under their breath.

Estelle stifled a snort.

She risked a sideways glance at Severus.

His expression was unreadable, but she could see the flicker in his eyes as he mentally compiled a list of students most likely to test the Age Line and began planning detentions in advance.

“Now,” Dumbledore said, his tone gentling again, “we will have plenty of time to discuss the Goblet and its rules in the days to come. For now—”

He lifted his arms wide.

“—let us welcome our guests.”

The Hall held its breath, students swiveling toward the great double doors with the kind of synchronized anticipation normally reserved for Firewhisky-laced pudding.

For one suspended heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then a distant rumble vibrated through the stone.

It came from below, from the direction of the lake.

Some of the older students—those who had been at the Quidditch World Cup—flinched reflexively, eyes darting toward the windows as if expecting green light.

Estelle’s shoulders tensed before she could stop them.

“Outside, if you please,” Dumbledore said, smiling as though the castle itself hadn’t just trembled. “I believe our guests deserve a proper welcome.”

The benches scraped back. The Great Hall emptied in a rush of robes and whispers, students pouring out through the doors into the cool evening air. The staff rose more sedately, following.

The sky outside had deepened to full dusky blue. The first real stars were out, sharp and white; the crescent moon hung low over the Forbidden Forest, a thin silver hook.

The grounds were alive.

Students spilled down the steps from the Entrance Hall, spreading across the lawn that sloped toward the Black Lake. Their breath puffed in faint clouds; scarves appeared around necks, some in House colors, some plain.

“Stick together,” Estelle called automatically as a cluster of her Slytherins surged past. “No shoving anyone into the lake before they’ve even introduced themselves.”

One of the sixth-years—Nott again—rolled his eyes but subsided.

The staff gathered at the front of the crowd near Dumbledore, forming a loose line.

“Eyes to the lake,” he said pleasantly, as though announcing a fireworks display rather than the sudden emergence of a foreign magical vessel from depths that normal boats avoided.

The rumbling deepened.

The surface of the Black Lake shivered, then bulged, like something massive was pushing up from beneath.

A few first-years squeaked.

Slowly, majestically, the bow of a ship broke through.

It rose from the water like some sea-monster shaking off an old story: a huge, shadowy hulk of dark wood slick with lake water, barnacle-crusted in places, lanterns dripping from its sides like hanging fireflies. The hull’s ancient planks gleamed in the torchlight; iron fittings glinted. The mast climbed up into the dark, sails furled, rigging dripping.

Water cascaded off in sheets, raining back into the lake with a roar.

The ship settled on the surface, rocking gently, as if it had simply risen to see what all the fuss was about.

“Durmstrang,” Aurora murmured at Estelle’s elbow.

Estelle nodded, throat tight.

She could almost taste the magic on the air—old, cold, unfamiliar. Durmstrang had never been a place she’d expected to see. Karkaroff and his ilk were ghosts from old war briefings to her; now their students would be climbing up onto Hogwarts’ lawns.

A narrow gangplank extended itself from the ship’s side, dropping with a heavy thud onto the shore.

For a second, no one moved.

Then a tall, thin figure in heavy fur-lined robes stepped onto the plank and walked toward them.

Igor Karkaroff looked much as the old Order reports had described him, though time had etched new lines into his face. His hair and beard were more silver than black now; his eyes were pale, sharp, and just a shade too bright. His goatee narrowed to a point like the tip of a quill dipped in something poisonous.

He smiled as he approached Dumbledore, and the expression sat ill on his face, as though it were an affectation he hadn’t practiced enough.

“Albus,” he said, voice smooth as oil, arms opening as if for an embrace. “My dear friend.”

“Welcome, Igor,” Dumbledore replied, extending a hand. “We are delighted you could join us.”

They shook hands. Estelle watched Karkaroff’s fingers, saw the way they twitched—just once, in the direction of his own left forearm, before he suppressed it.

Her bandaged finger pulsed in sympathy.

Behind him, Durmstrang students began to disembark.

They came in a file at first, then in small clusters—bundled in heavy cloaks and fur-lined uniforms, the red and black of their school colors muted in the dim light. Many of them wore tall boots; more than a few scanned the grounds with the wary, assessing gaze of people unused to lowering their guard.

Estelle noted scars, confident stances, the way some hands hovered near wands even in this supposedly safe space.

“Don’t glare too hard,” Severus murmured from her other side, so low only she could hear. “They’re children.”

“Well-armed children,” she replied.

“Most children with wands are,” he said dryly.

Karkaroff turned to his students with a flourish.

“Remember what I have said,” he told them. “You represent Durmstrang. You will show these Hogwarts students what true discipline looks like.”

A few of them straightened further, chins lifting.

Estelle suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

“At least the tea will be good,” she muttered, thinking of the stocked cabinets in their new quarters.

As Durmstrang fanned out onto the lawn, grouping near the front steps under the watchful gaze of Filch and a cluster of prefects, a new sound cut through the night.

A deep, rhythmic beating.

Wings.

“Up,” Dumbledore said cheerfully, pointing toward the sky. “Eyes up, if you please.”

The Durmstrang students craned their necks along with everyone else.

At first, Estelle saw nothing but the stars.

Then a darker shape blotted them out.

It descended slowly, enormous even against the vastness of the night: a great, powder-blue carriage the size of a small house, drawn through the air by a team of gigantic winged horses.

The Abraxans were breathtaking up close—massive, veined wings beating with the slow, deliberate power of creatures that knew they were beautiful and unafraid. Their coats shone pale gold in the torchlight; their breath steamed white. Each toss of a mane sent a ripple of light through the air.

The carriage itself gleamed—a confection of polished wood and gilded edges, windows curtained in rich fabric that fluttered as the vehicle descended. The Beauxbatons coat of arms glimmered on the door, delicate and precise.

Around Estelle, several students made the kind of awed noises usually reserved for Quidditch finals and dragon sightings.

“Show-offs,” she said under her breath, but there was no real bite in it. If you were going to arrive at Hogwarts, she supposed, arriving from the sky in a flying palace was one way to do it.

The Abraxans circled once, hooves striking sparks off thin air, then descended.

They landed with a heavy, muffled thud on the lawn near the Durmstrang cluster, wings folding with a rustle like sails in a quiet harbor. The carriage rocked, then stilled.

For a moment, nothing moved.

Then the carriage door swung open.

A girl stepped out first—tall, blonde, willowy, wrapped in a silken cloak that matched the carriage’s blue. Her hair caught the torchlight like spun sugar. She took the steps with a dancer’s ease, gaze sweeping the grounds. Even from a distance, Estelle could see the slightly pinched look on her face as a cool breeze caught her.

“Fleur Delacour,” Aurora murmured. “Beauxbatons seventh-year. There were articles.”

“She looks like she expects us to applaud,” Estelle replied.

A second girl followed, then a third, each elegant in their own way, though none quite as luminous as the first. Then more: boys in pale uniforms, girls in long coats, all moving with a deliberate grace that spoke of drilled deportment classes and a school culture that cared deeply about the impression one made.

Finally, the carriage creaked again, the steps groaned, and Madam Maxime emerged.

She was enormous in a way that made Hagrid look almost modest—at least in height. She wore flowing black satin that billowed around her like a storm cloud. Jewels glittered at her ears and throat. Her hair was pulled back in an elaborate twist.

She descended the steps with careful dignity, each movement controlled.

“Dumbledore,” she called, voice rich and deep with a faint French lilt. “’Ow are you, my old friend?”

“Enchanté, Olympe,” Dumbledore replied, bowing slightly as he stepped forward to greet her. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

He took her hand and kissed it with old-fashioned charm. She inclined her head.

Behind Estelle, a Gryffindor whispered, “She’s as big as Hagrid!” and received a sharp elbow in the ribs from a friend.

Hagrid himself stood near the edge of the staff cluster, eyes wide and shining as he stared at her. Estelle didn’t need Legilimency to see the way his heart had just leapt up and done something foolish in his chest.

“Oh, this year is going to be noisy,” she murmured.

Dumbledore turned back toward the assembled students.

“Students of Hogwarts,” he said, his voice magically amplified now to reach the farthest edges of the crowd, “please join me in welcoming our guests from Durmstrang Institute and Beauxbatons Academy of Magic.”

Applause rolled across the lawn—eager in some quarters, polite in others, begrudging from the corners where Slytherins and a few suspicious Ravenclaws stood.

The Beauxbatons students looked around, expressions ranging from delighted to delicately dismayed at the chill. The Durmstrang students generally appeared trying not to look impressed, though one or two darted quick, curious glances toward the Forbidden Forest and the castle towers.

Estelle’s eyes flicked up toward the Astronomy Tower.

She thought of the foreign sky waiting there, courtesy of Aurora’s careful magic. Of the tea sitting in Durmstrang cupboards, courtesy of her own backhandedly generous mischief.

Two schools, two constellations. One castle between them, its stones full of secrets and scars.

Dumbledore lowered his arms.

“Now that we are all assembled,” he said, “let us go inside and eat. I find we all perform better on a full stomach.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

The procession turned back toward the castle.

Beauxbatons swept forward first in a pale wave of fabric and perfume; Durmstrang followed, boots heavy on the steps, cloaks brushing against Hogwarts robes. For a moment the flow of students jammed at the doors—languages overlapping, accents bumping into each other.

Estelle watched carefully as her Slytherins encountered Durmstrang up close for the first time. There were measuring looks, a few nods of polite acknowledgement, one near-miss as a sharp-elbowed fourth-year almost collided with a stony-faced Durmstrang boy and thought better of saying anything.

She catalogued faces out of habit. Allies, potential troublemakers, the ones who hung back on the edges.

“Busy year,” Severus murmured.

“Understatement,” she replied.

They moved inside with the rest.

Back in the Great Hall, the atmosphere had changed.

The enchanted ceiling now showed a scatter of thin clouds moving across the stars, lit from below by the warm glow of candles. The House tables had been expanded, now flanked by two additional tables running lengthwise: one set with delicate glassware and slender cutlery for Beauxbatons; the other simpler and more compact for Durmstrang.

As the visiting students took their places, the hum of conversation swelled into something richer, more complex—a dozen accents, laughter that rose and fell on different rhythms.

Estelle took her seat again, flexing her bandaged finger under the glove. It throbbed, but less insistently now; Severus’s work, plus the distraction of all this spectacle, was doing their job.

Dumbledore remained standing.

“Tonight,” he said, when the Hall had quieted again, “we begin something old and something new. Old in tradition, new in context. The world beyond these walls is changing. We are changing with it. Let this year be a testament not only to skill, but to cooperation. To the possibility that, even after wars and losses and fear, we can still gather under one roof and choose to make something together.”

Estelle felt the words land in her chest like a stone dropped into deep water.

*After wars and losses and fear.*

He knew. Of course he knew. Dumbledore always knew.

“Eat,” he finished, eyes twinkling. “You will need your strength.”

The platters appeared.

Conversation broke out anew, punctuated by the clatter of serving spoons and the clink of goblets.

Estelle reached—carefully—for a dish of roasted potatoes, passing it down to Pomfrey with a murmured, “Here.”

Across the table, Severus caught her eye briefly.

There was a question there, unspoken: All right?

She gave the smallest nod.

For tonight, she thought, it was enough.

Her finger hurt. Her relationship with Severus was a tangle of loyalties and history and newly bared nerves. The castle was about to become the center ring of a tournament designed by people who had never bled for this place the way she had.

But she was here.

At Hogwarts.

With both hands, more or less intact.

And when the world arrived on their doorstep, she had not run.

Tomorrow, the real work would begin.

Tonight, she would watch, and listen, and memorize the faces of those who might, willingly or not, be pulled into the story that was already unfolding.

Estelle lifted her goblet, the candlelight catching in the red surface of the pumpkin juice, and took a steady swallow.

“Welcome to the circus,” she murmured.

The castle hummed in response, stone and magic and memory all tightening around them as Beauxbatons and Durmstrang settled into their places at the table.

The year had begun.

Dinner arrived in shimmering waves of steam and clatter. Silver platters floated in, laden with roasted meats, herb-glazed vegetables, candied squash, and a glorious array of pastries that Beauxbatons students eyed with immediate approval and Durmstrang students eyed with deep suspicion. Dumbledore had insisted the menu reflect all three schools—meaning there were French dishes with names Estelle couldn’t pronounce, thickly spiced stews that Durmstrang students pounced on like starving wolves, and good old-fashioned Hogwarts fare to anchor it all.

Students dove in with the vigor of those who had spent an hour outside in the cold and had not been fed since lunchtime.

Conversation swelled again—loud, multilingual, unpredictable. Estelle heard French to her left, deep Slavic consonants to her right, and the distinctive babble of excited Hogwarts students filling every space between.

She ate slowly, careful with the cutlery in her right hand, though every touch made the bandaged finger throb. She reached for her goblet, and in doing so, glanced across the staff table.

Severus hadn’t touched his food.

His goblet sat full. His fork lay untouched on the edge of his plate. His posture was rigid—shoulders pulled taut, chin tilted down in a way she recognized as bracing. Most telling of all: his gaze kept drifting left, toward the Durmstrang table.

More precisely: toward Igor Karkaroff.

Karkaroff sat with an ease that looked performative. His hands moved elegantly as he spoke to Madam Maxime and Professor Flitwick, his laughter rolling rich and oily over the Hall. Every so often, he glanced toward the Hogwarts staff table—and Severus’s shoulders tightened.

Estelle’s memory pricked.

He will not come here unless he has something to lose.

Severus had said it the night before last. He hadn’t elaborated. She had let it go then; she had been too tired, too full of other fears.

Now, watching Severus watch Karkaroff, she felt the question rise again.

What history lay between them? What past wrong or promise or betrayal?

She opened her mouth slightly—

And shut it.

Not here. Not at dinner. Not while the Hall buzzed and the visiting schools appraised each other like rival prides of lions. Not while Karkaroff’s eyes slid lazily toward the staff table again, calculating something Estelle couldn’t entirely read.

She stabbed a roasted carrot instead.

Severus’s gaze flicked toward her, just for a moment. His expression was blank. His eyes were anything but.

She let it go.

For now.

The meal dragged on for almost an hour. Course after course appeared; the dessert selection nearly caused the Weasley twins to weep with joy. French students floated toward the pastry-laden platters like moths to flame; Durmstrang students lodged themselves near the spiced berry tarts with grave seriousness.

Estelle forced herself to eat enough to pass Pomfrey’s silent approval test. She kept her injured hand close to her chest when the ache flared. She engaged in light conversation with Aurora and Minerva when spoken to. She even managed a smile when Hagrid loudly asked Madam Maxime if she liked treacle pudding and she replied, “But of course, ‘Ogwarts always makes ze best.”

But the whole time, her mind stayed partially anchored to that rigid line of Severus’s shoulders. That stillness. That unmistakable watchfulness.

When dinner finally ended and Dumbledore rose again, the Hall quieted with a mix of anticipation and exhaustion.

“We will have a brief orientation for our guests,” Dumbledore announced. “After which, you may retire for the night. The Triwizard Tournament schedule will be formally posted tomorrow.”

The Hall stirred. Students began standing, ready to be shepherded off to their respective floors.

“Professors,” Dumbledore said, turning to the staff, “if you would kindly assist our Durmstrang and Beauxbatons colleagues in settling into their accommodations.”

Estelle stifled a sigh. Her finger chose that moment to throb sharply. Perfect.

She rose with the rest, adjusting her dragon-hide glove.

Severus was already on his feet, robes sweeping around him like a living shadow. Karkaroff stood as well, smile plastered on like fresh paint.

The professors clustered at the base of the high table.

“Durmstrang will follow Professors Snape and Black,” Dumbledore said, smiling pleasantly. “Beauxbatons will accompany Professors McGonagall and Vector.”

Maxime nodded graciously. Karkaroff gave a small bow—as if this were a royal procession rather than a logistical chore in an overcrowded castle.

Severus turned sharply on his heel and stalked toward the side doors.

Estelle let out a breath, squared her shoulders, and followed.

Durmstrang students formed a loose, bristling cluster around them as they left the Great Hall. Their boots echoed heavily on the stone floor. A few whispered among themselves in low tones, glancing at the walls with that wary look Estelle recognized in anyone arriving in a place thick with old magic.

The corridor turned downward, toward the dungeons.

Estelle kept to Severus’s right, matching his stride.

“Are you all right?” she asked quietly.

A humorless scoff. “Perfectly.”

“You’re walking like you want to kick someone.”

“Perhaps I do.”

She bit back a retort.

The Durmstrang group followed them deeper into the castle. The air cooled. Torches flickered in iron sconces. The student chatter behind them dimmed; Durmstrang students, she noted, did not fill silence for the sake of filling it.

At last they reached the section of corridor that had been charmed and expanded earlier in the week. The entrance to Durmstrang’s new dormitory lay where there had previously been nothing but a blank wall. Now heavy carved doors—dark wood, reinforced with iron—stood open. Beyond them, Estelle glimpsed stone floors, dark draped bunks, the tea she had placed in cabinets earlier…and cold.

Lots of cold.

Karkaroff swept in with a flourish, appraising the space like a man judging the accommodations of a prison cell.

“It will do,” he said, with the air of granting a favor.

Severus’s jaw tightened.

Estelle stepped forward, offering what she hoped was a neutral smile.

“These rooms have been expanded with additional wards for privacy and fire protection,” she explained. “Hot water taps are charmed to adjust to your students’ preferences—though please advise them not to attempt to bathe creatures inside them. That has been an issue here in the past.”

A few Durmstrang boys snorted quietly.

“And the temperature enchantments,” she added, “are set slightly cooler than Hogwarts norms. If you prefer it colder or warmer—”

“Colder,” Karkaroff said immediately. “Durmstrang students are accustomed to… harsher climates.”

“Easily adjusted,” Estelle said.

Severus barely glanced at her. He was looking at Karkaroff. Or through him. Hard to tell.

The tension tightened like a rope between them.

Karkaroff approached Severus with a smooth, oily gait.

“Severus,” he purred. “It has been… far too long.”

Severus inclined his head barely an inch. “Not long enough.”

Karkaroff’s smile twitched. “Still the same dry wit.”

“Still the same questionable taste in outerwear,” Severus replied evenly, nodding toward the other man’s fur-trimmed cloak.

A low mutter passed through the Durmstrang students.

Estelle shot Severus a look that said Please don’t provoke the visiting headmaster on the first night, but Severus did not seem inclined to receive that message.

Karkaroff’s eyes narrowed faintly. “I trust,” he said softly, “that we will find plenty of… opportunities to talk this year. Privately.”

Severus’s voice was glacial. “I rather doubt we have much to discuss.”

“Oh,” Karkaroff replied, almost sing-song, “I think we both know that is not true.”

Estelle stepped forward quickly, intercepting the direction the conversation was heading.

“Headmaster Karkaroff,” she said, “if your staff have any questions about the facilities or schedule, you’re welcome to send word directly to me.”

Karkaroff turned toward her as though only now remembering she existed.

“Ah. Yes. Professor…” His eyes slid over her face, hunting for a name. “Black. How interesting.”

Her spine snapped a bit straighter. “I assure you,” she said coolly, “I am not that Black.”

Karkaroff’s brows lifted in surprise before smoothing into feigned politeness. “My apologies. There are many families with… complicated branches.”

Severus bristled beside her. She sensed the rising tension like static charge.

She cleared her throat deliberately.

“If there’s nothing else, we’ll let your students get settled.”

Karkaroff inclined his head again—a shallow bow with no humility behind it.

“Of course. We appreciate Hogwarts’ hospitality.”

The words were shaped like gratitude. The tone behind them was not.

Severus turned on his heel before Karkaroff even finished the sentence.

Estelle followed him out into the corridor, bracing herself for whatever version of him she was about to encounter.

The moment they were alone, she spoke.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Severus said shortly.

“Nothing?” she echoed. “You glared at him like you were deciding whether to stab him or hand him a cursed potion.”

“Don’t be melodramatic.”

“I’m not—”

“I said it’s nothing.”

His voice cracked like a wand-snap.

Estelle stopped walking.

Severus took two more strides before he realized she wasn’t beside him. He turned sharply.

His face was closed. Not cold. Not cruel.

Just shut.

That particular shut-ness that she had seen before—in the darkest days, when he was hiding inside himself so thoroughly that even her attempts to reach him had slipped off the armor he’d built.

“This isn’t the time,” he said.

“Then when?” she demanded, frustration boiling over. “You clearly have history with him. I’m not an idiot.”

“Never said you were.”

“You didn’t have to. I can see it.”

He inhaled sharply, as though bracing.

“It’s ancient,” he said. “Irrelevant. Leave it.”

“It’s not irrelevant if you’re looking at him like you expect him to hex you in the corridor.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Estelle,” he said, low and sharp, “not now.”

Something inside her snapped.

“You know what? Fine.”

She yanked her injured hand closer to her chest, suddenly aware of the ache, suddenly furious that she’d spent the afternoon letting him stitch her together and now he was retreating into walls thick enough to block the whole castle out.

“You want your privacy?” she said. “Have it. I’m done prying.”

She turned on her heel, much as he had minutes ago, and started down the corridor toward her chambers.

Behind her, footsteps shifted, then stilled.

“Estelle,” Severus said.

She did not stop.

“Goodnight,” she called over her shoulder, voice firm, each syllable a small shield.

She rounded the corner without looking back.

The dungeons were cool and dim, the torches flickering in long pools of shadow. The farther she walked, the more the tension drained into something heavier, colder.

She reached her chambers, shut the door with more force than necessary, and stood with her back pressed against it, breathing hard.

Her finger throbbed. Her head throbbed. Her heart thudded painfully.

She dragged herself toward the bed, pulled off her robes one-handed, and sat heavily on the mattress.

Anger fluttered in her stomach, sharp-edged at first, then softer, shifting into something she didn’t want to name.

She lay back, staring at the ceiling through strands of loose black hair.

Complicated.

It was always complicated with him.

She exhaled a long, shaky breath and turned onto her uninjured side, pulling the blanket up with her good hand.

Outside, the castle murmured with new voices and new magic. The world had arrived.

Inside her chambers, Estelle Black closed her eyes.

Sleep found her slowly, and not gently.

Tomorrow would demand more.

But for now, she let the dark take her.

Chapter Text

Monday dawned gray and bright at once.

The sky over Hogwarts was a flat, uncommitted silver when Estelle woke, light pressing through her curtains like a hand over a curtain of gauze. Her first conscious sensation was not the chill in the air or the murmur of distant footsteps from the corridor, but the throb in her right hand.

Her ring finger pulsed beneath its bandage, a small, insistent heartbeat all its own.

“Still with us, are you?” she muttered at it, rolling onto her back.

The ceiling stared down, unchanged, as if the world hadn’t shifted overnight.

It had.

Durmstrang and Beauxbatons were in the castle now. She could *feel* them, like a new layer of magic laid over the old foundations—an unfamiliar accent in the hum of the walls. She wondered if the castle minded. Hogwarts liked its oddities, but it could be prickly when asked to make room.

Like some people she knew.

She pushed the thought of Severus away before it could drag the rest of her mood in its wake. That was a knot she did not have the time nor energy to untangle this morning—not with four classes ahead of her and three sets of foreign students to fold into them without causing an incident.

She dressed quickly, choosing the same green robes from the night before—they’d survived dinner unscathed, and she didn’t trust herself not to ruin another pair today. The dragon-hide glove went on with care; she hissed as it tugged over the swollen finger but felt steadier with it in place. Her wand slid into its usual holster along her wrist.

For a moment, she considered going up to breakfast.

Then she pictured the Great Hall: the tangle of languages, the foreign students clumping together for comfort, the Hogwarts students craning their necks to stare, the staff pretending not to notice. Severus at the high table, not looking at her.

Her stomach knotted.

She grabbed a slice of slightly stale toast from last night’s wrapped plate, chewed it as she walked, and made for the greenhouses instead.

The morning air bit her cheeks, sharp and clean. Mist clung to the grass, beading on the edges of her boots. The lake lay a dull pewter, the Durmstrang ship a moored shadow on its surface; the Beauxbatons carriage, tucked beside the forest, glinted pale through the trees.

The greenhouses glowed gently in the gray, lanterns inside still lit from early chores. Condensation fogged the panes; silhouettes of plants blurred behind them—shapes familiar, grounding.

Inside, the warmth wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl.

The house-elves had been busy again. Benches were clear. Tools were cleaned and arranged. On one central table, a row of potted specimens waited—soft-looking plants with delicate fronds and closed buds, their labels written in Minky’s round hand.

“Thank you,” Estelle murmured to no one in particular, setting down her satchel. Her first class would be here in less than half an hour: first-years, mostly Hufflepuffs, plus their Durmstrang and Beauxbatons counterparts—whatever their houses were called. A good place to start: small hands, big eyes, simple magic.

She walked the rows, checking each station, each plant. Along the way, she paused at the Fanged Geranium bed.

They were still bound up, ropes criss-crossed over their stalks like a net. The heads twitched faintly in the cool air, teeth clicking with impotent irritation.

“Don’t even think about it,” she told them. “You got one good bite this week. That’s your quota.”

A few leaves rustled, unimpressed.

She checked the bandage again. No seepage, the edges dry. Severus’s sutures held. She flexed her fingers experimentally—painful, but functional.

“Right,” she told her hand. “Let’s see if we can keep the children in one piece.”

She’d taught first days before. The trick was to strike the right balance between welcome and warning. Comfort them enough that they didn’t freeze; scare them enough that they didn’t maim themselves.

The bell in the castle tower tolled the hour.

First period.

She heard them long before she saw them.

A babble of high voices spilled down the slope from the castle—Hogwarts first-years, all nervous chatter and new robes still a bit too long. Layered amid the English, Estelle caught a drift of French—lighter, musical—and deeper consonants that had to be Durmstrang’s language.

She stepped to the greenhouse door as the first group rounded the curve of the path.

They were so small.

Eleven-year-olds always were, but something about seeing them in mixed clusters made them seem even more fragile. Yellow-and-black scarves bobbed next to unfamiliar uniforms: Beauxbatons blue, crisp and pristine; Durmstrang dark, heavier and more severe.

“Good morning,” Estelle called.

They quieted, more from surprise than obedience.

“I’m Professor Black,” she said, letting her voice fill the space without shouting. “Welcome to Greenhouse Two. This is Herbology. This year, that means two things: you will learn how to keep plants alive, and you will learn how to keep yourselves alive *around* plants. Both are important. At least one is non-negotiable.”

A few nervous giggles.

A Hufflepuff girl near the front—round cheeks, hair escaping her plait in wild frizz—raised a hand cautiously. “Professor? Are all the plants dangerous?”

Estelle considered. “All plants are dangerous,” she said conversationally. “If you annoy them enough. Fortunately, we’re starting with the sort that only complain a little.”

She gestured them in. “Come inside, find a table. You’ll be sharing with students from the other schools today. Think of it as… botanical diplomacy.”

They filed in, wide-eyed.

She watched their groupings with interest. The Hufflepuffs, true to form, made the earliest and easiest bridges: one boy in a slightly too-large jumper beamed at a Beauxbatons girl and said, “Hi, I’m Owen, do you like mandrakes?” as though that were a perfectly normal conversation starter.

Her translated, hesitant “Je ne sais pas… I do not know yet,” made him grin wider.

The Durmstrang first-years were more reserved. They clustered in threes and fours, watching with wary curiosity. One boy with close-cropped hair and a small scar on his chin took the station nearest the door, eyes flicking to Estelle with something like challenge.

She met his gaze evenly. “Name?”

“Stellan,” he said after a beat, his accent thick but his English careful.

“Stellan,” she repeated. “Good. That is your station. That plant is not going to bite you.”

He looked at the soft, fern-like specimen in front of him, then back at her, as if not entirely convinced.

“Probably,” she added.

A ripple of laughter spread through the nearest cluster. Stellan’s mouth twitched, just once.

She let the moment sit, then clapped her hands softly.

“Today,” Estelle said, “we’re beginning with something gentle. This”—she lifted one of the pots so they could see—“is a Whisperfern. If you treat it well, it will grow for you, and it may occasionally tell you if you’re about to do something catastrophically foolish. For now, however, your task is simple: repotting.”

She walked them through the steps, demonstrating slowly.

“First, we respect the roots,” she said, easing the plant from its current pot with careful fingers. “No yanking. No tearing. Gentle pressure.”

She turned the soil, exposing the pale root system beneath.

“See these?” she pointed. “These are the lifelines. You damage too many, the plant will sulk. Or die. The latter is worse. The former can be louder.”

A Hufflepuff boy raised his hand. “Professor, you said they talk?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Estelle said. “They respond to tone and intent. You won’t hear them the way you hear each other, but if you pay attention—” she tapped her temple “—you’ll know when you’ve annoyed them.”

The Beauxbatons girl from earlier frowned delicately. “They… read our minds?”

“No,” Estelle said. “They read your *hands.* And the way you hold them.”

She guided them through the repotting: loosening soil, placing the fern in fresh earth, tamping it down.

Those who rushed it soon learned what she meant. When a boy from Durmstrang shoved his plant roughly into place, the Whisperfern’s fronds stiffened. A faint, high-pitched whine vibrated against his fingers.

He flinched.

“Gentle,” Estelle called from across the room. “Apologize.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Tell the plant you’re sorry,” she said.

He glanced at his tablemates, clearly thinking this was some bizarre British joke. But under her steady gaze, he leaned down, muttered something in his own language, and adjusted his grip.

The fern softened.

“Better,” Estelle said. “Remember: you’re not forcing magic on these plants. You’re working *with* them. If you get that right, they make your life easier. If you get it wrong…”

She thought briefly of her bandaged finger.

“…they don’t.”

She walked the rows, offering guidance: here, a hand on a Hufflepuff’s wrist to correct the angle of their trowel; there, a nod to a boy whose careful touch had already coaxed his Whisperfern into perkier fronds. The Beauxbatons students were generally precise, hands delicate. The Durmstrang children were cautious but strong, used to rougher work.

“Professor?” a timid voice piped up near the back.

She turned to see a tiny girl in Beauxbatons blue frowning at her pot. “Mine, she is…drooping.”

Estelle approached.

The fern’s fronds sagged; its soil was soggy.

“How much water did you give it?” Estelle asked.

The girl’s cheeks flushed. “Ah. I… did not know when to stop.”

“An excellent problem to have,” Estelle said. “You’re generous. That’s good. Let’s show you how to be generous without drowning things.”

She knelt, ignoring the pull in her hand, and demonstrated the charm to draw excess water back up through the soil. The girl watched with wide eyes, then tried the wand movement herself.

“Très bien,” Estelle said, and the girl’s smile blossomed like the fern’s revived fronds.

By the end of the lesson, every student had repotted at least one Whisperfern. Some had managed to charm the plants into an almost imperceptible shiver when danger approached—Estelle had tiptoed up behind one boy only for his plant to stiffen and emit a soft *pssst*, earning him a pleased mark.

As the bell for the end of first period rang, she raised her voice over the scrape of chairs.

“For homework,” she said, “I want you to write three observations about your plant. Not from books. From watching. How did it react to you? How did it react to your tablemates? Think of it as making a new friend who doesn’t speak your language.”

A few Durmstrang faces brightened at the phrasing. She tucked that away.

First period emptied, leaving behind overturned soil and the faint, uncertain whispers of a dozen new plants.

Estelle took five minutes to breathe.

She leaned back against a bench, flexing her hand, letting the ache roll through her. The air in the greenhouse felt tighter now—not oppressive, exactly, but buzzing.

Second period would be different: older students, sharper minds. Ravenclaws, mostly, plus their counterparts—a test of whether she could keep the curious ones from burning holes in themselves with too much fervor.

Right on time, the second-years arrived.

Ravenclaws were easy to spot: alert, notebooks already half out of their bags, some looking as though they’d like to sit at the front and the back simultaneously if only they could split.

Among them moved Beauxbatons students with neat satchels, quills tucked into hair, and Durmstrang students with expressions that said *we have seen worse than this humid box, impress us.*

“Welcome back,” Estelle said. “This year, we’re moving from plants that mostly whine when offended to plants that will… take a more active stance. Today, however, we’re starting with something that will suit your House reputation, Ravenclaws.”

She tapped the covered trays on the tables. “Focus.”

She lifted the cloth from the nearest tray, revealing a row of plants that looked like small, translucent anemones. Their tentacles waved slowly in the air, shimmering faintly.

“These are Thoughtvines,” she said. “They respond to surface thoughts. Harmless if handled properly, useful in certain potions and meditative practices, and absolutely excellent at embarrassing you if you get too cocky.”

A Ravenclaw boy in the front row leaned forward, eyes lit. “Do they read, like, everything?” he asked. “Or just what you’re thinking about them?”

“Surface thoughts,” Estelle said. “Whatever is loudest in your mind when you touch them. They don’t understand language, exactly. They read… emotional volume.”

“Emotional volume,” a Beauxbatons boy repeated thoughtfully, accent curling around the words.

“Yes,” Estelle said. “If you touch one while thinking of how much you regret not revising your last essay, it might respond with a tightening of the tentacles. If you touch it while thinking of how much you want to hex the person next to you, it might slap you.”

A Durmstrang girl snorted.

“Does it hurt?” someone asked.

“Only your pride,” Estelle said. “Mostly.”

She demonstrated: placing her gloved fingertips gently on one Thoughtvine’s central bulb, she let her mind clear. No fear, no irritation—just a mild, calm awareness.

The tentacles curled around her fingers lightly, then relaxed. The plant glowed faintly blue.

“Blue indicates a quiet mind,” Estelle said. “It’s rare in teenagers. Your turn.”

They dove in.

Or, more accurately, the Ravenclaws dove in and the Durmstrang students approached like they were considering whether the plants might explode.

Predictably, the first yelp came from a boy who couldn’t resist trying to be funny.

He slapped both hands on his plant with a grin and, Estelle could practically *feel*, the thought *this is going to be so cool, I bet it does nothing.*

The Thoughtvine’s tentacles stiffened, turned bright red, and smacked his hands with a wet *slap.*

“Ow!”

“That,” Estelle said, “was arrogance. It doesn’t care for it.”

The French students were more cautious, hands elegant and precise. One girl in particular—a dark-haired Beauxbatons student with a sharp nose and sharper eyes—managed a gentle touch and a faint purple glow.

“You were thinking of something complicated,” Estelle said.

“Of my… arithmancy problem,” the girl admitted. “I cannot solve it.”

The plant’s tentacles vibrated sympathetically.

“Keep that one,” Estelle said. “It might help.”

She moved through the rows, guiding, correcting. A Durmstrang girl with braids down her back glared at her Thoughtvine as if daring it to misbehave. When she finally touched it, her jaw clenched, the plant briefly flared green—jealousy, Estelle knew from experience, or protective instincts—before settling.

“You don’t have to out-stare it,” Estelle said quietly as she passed. “It’s not judging you.”

The girl gave the smallest of nods, but some of the tension in her shoulders eased.

By the end of the period, every student had coaxed at least one color response from their plant. The Ravenclaws had started theorizing in hushed clusters about correlations between color and thought content; the Beauxbatons students discussed how such plants might be used in charms; the Durmstrang second-years, having realized the vines weren’t going to attack them outright, began experimenting with gentler touches.

“Homework,” Estelle called as the bell rang, “is simple: one-page reflection. What did your plant show you about your own mind that surprised you? If the answer is ‘nothing,’ write two pages about why you’re wrong.”

Groans. Eye-rolls. A few smiles.

Second period emptied.

She had just enough time to grab a cup of tea—it hurt to curl her bandaged finger around the handle, but the warmth helped—before the seventh-year Slytherins arrived.

This class, she knew, would be… fraught.

Seventh-year Slytherins alone were one thing: ambitious, prickly, keenly aware of the weight of their N.E.W.T.s and the Triwizard Tournament looming over their final year. Adding Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students of the same age into that mix was like tossing three different kinds of predator into the same enclosure and telling them to share the best sunning rock.

They filed in with markedly less chatter than the earlier classes.

Hogwarts Slytherins were easy to pick out: green-trimmed robes, carefully composed expressions, glances that slid over everything and everyone. A few nodded to Estelle—respectful, but wary. They knew her now. Knew her temper, her standards, her capacity for both mercy and sharpness.

Among them were Beauxbatons seventh-years: tall, polished, smelling faintly of expensive soap and confidence. Fleur Delacour herself was there, hair gleaming like a curtain of pale gold, chin tipped just slightly upward. Beside her walked other French students—some clearly from her circle, some slightly outside it, faces less complacent.

And then the Durmstrang seventh-years: heavier cloaks, a certain thickness of muscle, faces that looked older than seventeen should. Estelle’s gaze snagged, against her will, on one particular figure near the back.

Viktor Krum.

Even in a school uniform instead of Quidditch robes, he carried himself like someone used to stadiums. His shoulders sloped, as if he wanted to take up less space than the world insisted he fill. His brow furrowed in permanent concentration. He took in the greenhouse in one slow sweep, dark eyes missing nothing.

“Good afternoon,” Estelle said, letting the title hang in the warm air.

A few muttered greetings. Mostly watching.

“This is N.E.W.T.-level Herbology,” she said. “Which means I will not be holding your hand. I will, however, do my best to ensure you keep all your fingers. Learn from my mistakes.”

She lifted her right hand, flexing it so the bandaged finger was visible through the glove. A few eyebrows rose.

“Fanged Geranium got the better of me yesterday,” she said. “If anyone thinks they don’t need to pay attention to safety rules, you’re welcome to look at the scar when it’s healed.”

A small ripple of amusement, quickly smoothed over.

“Today,” she went on, “we’re starting with something appropriate for seventh-years: hazard assessment and control. Or, in plainer terms: how to approach a plant that wants to kill you and make it do something useful instead.”

She gestured to the far side of the greenhouse, where a section had been cordoned off with high, sturdy barriers.

Behind them, a Venomous Tentacula sprawled.

Its thick, spiked vines coiled and uncoiled restlessly, leaves trembling in some internal wind. Occasionally, a tendril snapped against the barrier with a thwack that made the nearest students flinch.

“Today’s subject,” Estelle said. “You won’t be handling it directly yet. Today is about observation, analysis, and spell strategy. We will work in mixed groups. Yes, mixed. I am not letting each school cluster in a corner and pretend the others don’t exist. You’re here to learn from each other, not glare across the room.”

A few Slytherins looked mildly affronted at having their internal plans read so plainly.

She split them deliberately: each group of four included at least one Hogwarts Slytherin, one Durmstrang, and one Beauxbatons student. To Fleur’s visible annoyance, Estelle placed her with a Durmstrang girl whose scowl could have cut stone and a quiet Slytherin boy who rarely spoke in class but turned in impeccable essays.

In each group, she assigned roles.

“You,” she said, nodding to a pale Slytherin girl with a sharp jaw, “are observation lead. You’ll describe exactly what you see the plant doing—nothing more, nothing less. No assumptions.”

“You,” to a Durmstrang boy with a burn scar on his hand, “are defense strategist. Which charms would you use to keep yourself and your group alive if this barrier failed? Think holistically: shields, bindings, emergency exits.”

“And you,” to a Beauxbatons boy with gold-rimmed spectacles, “are control theorist. How do we get from ‘plant trying to eat us’ to ‘plant cooperatively providing ingredients’?”

“This is not just about the Tentacula,” she told them all. “It’s about how you approach a problem. If the only thing you know how to do is hex the danger until it’s dead, you will miss the usefulness in it—and that is a very Slytherin sort of waste I will not tolerate.”

The slight, sharp satisfaction of seeing some of her Slytherins straighten at that warmed her chest.

They set to work.

Estelle moved among the groups, listening.

In one corner, Viktor Krum stood with his arms folded, eyes narrowed at the Tentacula. His group—a Beauxbatons girl with dark, serious eyes and a lanky Slytherin boy taking perfunctory notes—watched him.

“What do you see, Krum?” Estelle asked, stopping at their table.

He didn’t startle at the use of his name. He tilted his head slightly, considering.

“It is… restless,” he said in thickly accented English. “Not wild. Used to… barrier. Vines move in pattern. There is always…this one that tests the edge.” He pointed to a thicker vine that repeatedly thudded against the barrier, feeling for weakness.

“Good,” Estelle said. “Patterns matter. If you can predict behavior, you’re halfway to controlling it. Defense?”

The Beauxbatons girl spoke up. “I would begin with a shield charm layered at angles,” she said. “To redirect the vines away, not only block them. Perhaps also a stunning charm targeted at the base of the main stems?”

“And risk rupturing venom sacs,” the Slytherin boy said, frowning. “We don’t know how much pressure it can take.”

Krum nodded slowly. “Better to bind,” he said. “Root to ground first. Then… prune.”

“Excellent,” Estelle said. “You’re thinking in steps. Remember that when you face things outside these walls.”

She left them arguing quietly about the merits of different binding spells.

At another group, Fleur’s patience was visibly fraying.

“These plants,” she was saying, “we ‘ave similar, but smaller, in ze Beauxbatons green’ouses. They are not so… violent.”

“That’s because you probably feed them things that don’t fight back,” the Durmstrang girl replied dryly.

“Our plants thrive,” Fleur shot back. “We treat them well.”

“So do we,” the Slytherin boy interjected, “they just bite us anyway.”

Estelle stepped in before Fleur’s nostrils could flare further.

“Remember,” she said mildly, “environment shapes behavior. A Tentacula grown in a tightly controlled space behaves differently than one that’s had centuries to sink its roots into Hogwarts’ eccentric soil. You’re not wrong, any of you. You’re just looking at different phases of the same temperament.”

Fleur’s brow furrowed, but she nodded.

By the end of the period, each group had produced a rough plan: layered shield charms, root-binding spells, distraction tactics involving decoy dummies charmed to smell like meat. Some ideas were clever. Some were terrifying. A few were both.

She dismissed them with a heavier assignment: draft a full hazard-control strategy, including spell diagrams and fail-safes. Due next week.

The seventh-years filed out in clusters, no one entirely comfortable enough to walk alone. Viktor Krum lingered for a moment, eyes flicking to the Fanged Geranium bed. His gaze snagged on her gloved hand.

He said nothing. But he nodded once, as if to a fellow player walking off a different kind of pitch.

She nodded back.

Lunch came and went in a blur of sandwiches at her desk. She did not brave the Great Hall. Her hand ached; her voice was a little hoarse; soil had already found a way into her boot.

One more class.

Fourth period, mercifully, she had free. She used it to rearrange tables, reset supplies, and sit for five solid minutes in the empty greenhouse, eyes closed, listening to the soft creak and sigh of stems stretching toward the light.

Fifth period would bring the fourth-year Gryffindors.

And with them, Potter.

Her chest tightened preemptively.

The Gryffindors arrived with their usual lack of subtlety.

Laughter echoed down the path before they even reached the door. Ron Weasley’s voice carried easily, grumbling about “bloody homework already.” Hermione Granger’s sharper tones overlapped, likely reminding him that they were at school to learn, actually. Harry’s quieter presence threaded between them—less noisy, but somehow the axis around which the others spun.

Behind them moved the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang fourth-years, their rhythms out of sync with the Gryffindor cadence.

Estelle straightened.

“Afternoon,” she said as they crowded in. “Welcome back to Greenhouse Three, Gryffindor. You have the honor of being my last class of the day. Do try not to finish me off.”

A few chuckles.

Harry slipped into a station near the middle, flanked by Ron and Hermione. His eyes flicked briefly to her, curious, then away. He still didn’t know.

Beauxbatons fourth-years drifted to open spots with elegant steps, noses wrinkling slightly at the more pungent Hogwarts soil. Durmstrang fourth-years took heavier stances, boots scratching on the floor.

“All right,” Estelle said, voice rising. “Today we’re working with plants that respond to intent, not touch. You’ll be working in mixed groups again. Yes, again. Consider it practice for the rest of this year.”

On the tables lay small, squat plants with thick leaves and tiny, jewel-bright flowers. They looked almost boring.

“These,” she said, “are Tempermints. Leaves used in calming draughts, memory tonics, and occasionally in desserts if you’re feeling reckless. They also respond very strongly to how you approach them. If you’re impatient, they wilt. If you’re focused, they open. If you’re an idiot, they snap shut on your fingers and you lose the leaf you need.”

She demonstrated: standing at one plant, she let her mind settle, thinking of nothing but the steady, slow trickle of water through roots. The plant’s leaves relaxed. A tiny flower unfurled, releasing a clean, sharp scent of mint.

Then she slammed her hand down in front of another plant, thinking briefly of Karkaroff.

The Tempermint’s leaves clenched. A flower snapped shut like a mouth.

“See?” she said. “Intent. Not touch. Your task is to coax your plant into full bloom, then harvest leaves without triggering a shut-down response.”

She set them loose.

Hermione was, unsurprisingly, the first to make hers open fully.

Estelle watched her from the corner of her eye: the way the girl narrowed her gaze, breath slowing, hands hovering just above the plant. Hermione’s mind, Estelle suspected, was a forest of thoughts at any given moment. Yet here, she channeled it: focusing all that restless energy into a clear line.

The Tempermint rewarded her with not one but three opening flowers, scent filling the air.

“Very good, Miss Granger,” Estelle said. “You’d make an excellent potion ingredient farmer if this whole ‘saving the world via academic excellence’ thing falls through.”

Hermione flushed with pleasure and embarrassment, glancing sideways at Harry, who grinned.

Ron, meanwhile, scowled in concentration at his plant, which stubbornly refused to do anything.

“What if it just hates me?” he muttered.

“Plants rarely hate,” Estelle said, coming up beside him. “They mostly misunderstand.”

He frowned. “How do I make it understand that I really, really want it to open so I can get this over with?”

“Stop thinking about getting it over with,” Estelle said. “Think about what it needs. You’ve been told it responds to calm, focused intent. So give it that. One thing at a time.”

He had the decency to look sheepish.

Harry’s plant, she noticed, had begun to loosen.

He hadn’t done much yet—just watched, green eyes narrowed, hands resting on the table. There was something about the way he held himself: ready to move, but not moving. Like a flyer waiting for the right gust of wind.

“That’s it,” she murmured as she passed. “Don’t rush it. Potters are not known for their patience, but plants don’t need to know that.”

He blinked at her, startled, then let out a short laugh.

At the far end of the table, a Beauxbatons boy had taken a different approach entirely. Standing very straight, he had placed both hands formally at his sides and was simply… talking to his plant.

“In our greenhouse,” he said with a slight pout, “they respond better to music. Zey like ze harp.”

The Tempermint twitched, unimpressed by the lack of harp.

“Try humming,” Estelle suggested.

He shot her a doubtful look, but after a moment, hummed a thin, warbling tune. To everyone’s mild astonishment, the plant’s leaves trembled and one flower began to open.

“You see?” she said. “No harp necessary. They just want your attention. Like some students I know.”

The Durmstrang fourth-years approached the exercise like they were preparing for battle: brows furrowed, hands balled into fists beside the pots. Their plants, picking up on the tension, stayed tightly shut.

“Imagine you are not about to duel,” Estelle told one boy, whose Tempermint was practically recoiling. “Imagine you are… fishing. Or reading. Something you’ve done that makes your shoulders drop.”

He stared at her as if she’d suggested he sprout wings.

After a moment, though, he inhaled, exhaled, and deliberately loosened his fists. The change was small but real.

The Tempermint responded.

A leaf unfurled, ember-green in the humid light.

He stared.

“Good,” Estelle said. “Now keep it up or it’ll sulk again.”

Watching them, she felt something she hadn’t had all summer: a genuine, quiet thread of hope.

They were learning—not just how to wrangle plants, but how to notice themselves.

The class continued with small successes and minor disasters. One Tempermint snapped shut on a Gryffindor’s finger after an ill-timed joke about “stupid foliage,” earning the boy an extra foot of essay on respect and a string of snickers from his tablemates.

As the period drew to a close, Estelle leaned against the central table, bandaged finger throbbing in time with the hum of the greenhouse.

“Homework,” she announced, “is to write a short paragraph—yes, *short,* Ron Weasley, I see your face—on what emotion made your plant respond most strongly today. No lying. If it only opened when you were thinking about how much you hate your siblings, write that.”

Weasley turned beet red. Fred and George weren’t even in the class, but she felt their spirits cackle somewhere in the castle.

The bell rang.

Students began packing up, some bottling a few Tempermint leaves for practice, others scribbling last-second notes. The foreign students moved more easily among the Gryffindors now than they had at the start of the lesson—conversations about Quidditch and French desserts and Durmstrang’s winter storms overlapping.

Harry lingered for a moment, glancing at the Fanged Geranium bed, at her bandaged glove.

“Professor?” he said.

She looked up, heart stuttering in that now-familiar way around him.

“Yes?”

“Is your hand okay?” he asked, nodding toward the glove. “Ron said—you said you got bitten?”

She smiled. “It’ll be fine. Plants have good aim when they’re annoyed.”

He grinned a little. “Guess that’s one more thing to watch out for this year.”

“Plants, foreign students, homicidal tournaments,” Estelle said lightly. “Plenty to keep you busy.”

Hermione called his name from the door. Harry glanced back at his friends, then at her, as if he felt there was something more he should say and didn’t know what it was.

“See you next class, Professor,” he said instead.

“See you, Potter,” she replied.

When the greenhouse finally emptied, the quiet that followed felt not empty, but full.

Full of overlapping languages and tentative collaboration. Full of small acts of curiosity and care. Full of possibility and the shadow of danger both.

Estelle let herself sag against a bench.

Her hand ached fiercely now. Her throat felt raw. Her head throbbed at the temples.

But she was, undeniably, alive.

The first day of classes with three schools under one glass roof had not ended in disaster.

That counted as a win.

She glanced at her bandaged finger.

“Don’t get smug,” she told it. “This is only day one.”

The plants rustled in agreement—or warning.

Outside, the castle bell tolled the hour. Upstairs, in corridors now filled with a braid of languages, students would be spilling out of their classrooms, buzzing over new professors, strange classmates, and the looming promise of the Goblet of Fire.

Down here, in the warm, damp light of the greenhouse, Estelle Black straightened, rolled her shoulders, and began resetting tables for tomorrow.

The world had come to Hogwarts.

She would meet it one lesson at a time.

By the time Estelle locked the greenhouse door behind her, the sky had cooled to a darker sort of gray. Evening hadn’t quite taken hold yet, but the light had gone flat and tired, like the end of a long day in the Hospital Wing.

Her body agreed.

Her shoulders ached from hours of leaning over benches. Her spine complained as she straightened fully. Her throat felt raw from explaining, redirecting, teasing answers out of three different languages worth of teenagers. Her hand—especially her hand—throbbed in a steady, resentful rhythm inside the glove.

The path back to the castle felt longer than usual.

Students trickled around her on the lawns, some heading toward dinner, others clustering in little knots to point and stare at the Durmstrang ship and the Beauxbatons carriage as if they might transform again just for the spectacle. She caught fragments of conversation—French vowels soaring over British consonants, Durmstrang’s harsher sounds knitting themselves into the background hum.

“—he has a dragon reserve at home—”

“—no, they really do eat reindeer in winter, she swore—”

“—Potter’s going to put his name in, isn’t he—”

She let it roll over her like wind. She didn’t have the patience to correct them. Not tonight. Let them build their theories; the Goblet would sort fact from fantasy soon enough.

Inside, the castle was a little too loud.

First-day energy bounced off the stone, multiplied by the presence of two additional schools. A pair of Beauxbatons girls hurried past with their arms linked, chattering about the Astronomy dorm’s enchanted ceiling. Two Durmstrang boys leaned against a pillar, evaluating a moving tapestry with identical, unimpressed expressions. A trio of second-year Hufflepuffs waved at her from the base of a staircase, hands still faintly green-stained from Whisperfern soil.

“Good work today,” she called automatically, even as her feet kept moving.

She could have gone up to the Great Hall. She could have found her seat at the staff table, poured herself a goblet of pumpkin juice, endured the polite inquiries and the less polite gossip.

Instead, she turned down toward the dungeons, away from the growing clamor.

The air cooled with each step.

Down here, the castle sounded different. The corridors swallowed noise rather than amplifying it; voices became muffled echoes. Torches burned steadier; the stones held the day’s warmth in slow pulses.

She passed the turn that led deeper toward the Durmstrang quarters.

For one wild second, she considered veering that way—to listen, perhaps, outside their common room, to hear how they talked when they thought the castle couldn’t understand them.

But she had no real claim there. That was Severus’s territory tonight, whether he liked it or not.

“Not my circus,” she murmured, “not my frozen Eastern European brutes.”

Her chambers waited, the familiar door a quiet punctuation mark in the dim corridor.

She let herself in, shut the door with her heel, and immediately sagged back against it.

Silence wrapped around her like a blanket.

It wasn’t complete—she could still feel the deep, distant murmur of the castle, the faint rush of water in pipes somewhere beyond the wall, the occasional thud of steps overhead—but compared to the greenhouses and corridors, it was blessedly still.

She exhaled.

Her finger throbbed, reminding her it existed. She lifted her hand and flexed it once. The tug of stiffened skin under the bandage felt wrong enough to sharpen her focus.

“All right,” she muttered. “Let’s see what today’s damage tally is.”

First, tea.

She set water to boil with a small wand flick, then crossed to her narrow desk, fishing a small jar from the top drawer. Salve from Pomfrey, given specifically for preventing scar tissue from tightening too much around new sutures. She’d promised to pop by the Hospital Wing after dinner.

Technically, it wasn’t dinner yet.

Technicalities, she decided, could be tomorrow’s problem.

The kettle whistled; she poured, added a spoonful of honey, and let the mug sit on the bedside table to cool. Her fingers were too clumsy for hot ceramic at the moment.

She perched on the edge of the bed and began peeling away the glove.

It stuck slightly.

The inside was damp with sweat; she winced as the leather tugged at her bandage. Inch by careful inch, she worked it off, using her good hand to ease the fabric away from the swollen finger.

When it finally came free, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

The bandage itself was no longer the crisp white Severus had left it. The outer layers had picked up smudges of soil and the faintest marks of seeped fluid—not alarming, but not ideal.

“Not bad,” she told it, because talking to injuries was easier than talking to people some days. “Could be worse.”

Though the image made her feel faintly ill.

She shook it off and reached for the end of the wrapping.

The cloth unspooled under her fingers, layer by layer, revealing the skin beneath.

There it was.

Her ring finger looked like it belonged to someone else—swollen, tinged an ugly mix of purplish-red and yellow along the knuckle. The semicircle of puncture wounds had been pulled neatly together, each one closed by a tiny, precise stitch of silver thread. A faint shimmer of healing magic lay over the line like a spider’s web, barely visible unless the light hit it just so.

She inhaled slowly.

Severus’s work.

She’d seen his handwriting on essays for years now—sharp, angular, unforgiving—but there was something about seeing his precision rendered on her skin that made her throat tighten.

The sutures were almost too neat.

He’d given her the best work he had, as if he were daring the wound to misbehave.

She turned her hand slightly, bringing it closer to her face.

The finger trembled, the weight of its own swelling almost too much. The skin between the bites was paler, hair-fine lines of dried blood still faintly visible where he’d cleaned it earlier.

She remembered the way he’d sat in front of her, knees between hers, brow furrowed, hair falling forward as he bent over her hand. The quiet hiss of him drawing breath when he’d first seen the damage. The warm, firm grip of his fingers around her wrist, anchoring her while he stitched.

“You sent for me,” he’d said, like a man trying not to ask ‘why.’

She’d told him.

I trust your hands.

Her chest felt tight again.

“Idiot,” she told herself softly, not sure whether she meant him or her.

Probably both.

She set her wand on the mattress beside her, then held her hand carefully over a small ceramic bowl she’d conjured. With slow, practiced motions, she siphoned away the last of the dried blood and salve residue with a mild cleansing charm, taking care not to disturb the stitches.

The skin tingled, then cooled.

She dabbed a thin line of Pomfrey’s salve along the outside of each suture, thinking of how the matron had raised an eyebrow when Estelle had asked for it.

“And how did you get bitten?” Pomfrey had demanded.

“Carelessly,” Estelle had answered.

She’d gotten away with it. For now.

She capped the jar and set it aside. Her finger looked angrier than it had that morning, but no red streaks crept up her hand, no excess heat radiated beyond the injury itself. It was healing. Slowly, stubbornly.

Like everything else worth keeping.

She studied the stitches again, unable to stop herself.

They really were infuriatingly elegant.

It shouldn’t have been comforting to see his work on her. It shouldn’t make her feel… steadier, somehow. As though a part of him had stayed in the room proxy through those little silver marks, holding her together even when he was busy erecting walls between them in conversation.

“Hopeless,” she muttered again.

She thought of him in his classroom now—or rather, a few hours ago, at roughly the same time she’d been guiding Tempermints into blooming.

How had his first day gone?

She pictured it easily: the Potions classroom colder than most rooms, cupboards full of jars glinting like captured storms. A Durmstrang boy at the front, eyeing him with cautious respect. A Beauxbatons girl in the second row, already taking meticulous notes. A handful of Gryffindors in the back, pretending they weren’t unnerved and failing.

Severus at the front, talk of proper cauldron-stirring and ingredient preparation wrapped around barbed humor. His voice low, cutting through chatter.

Had he called out foreign students more harshly than his own, or had he been scrupulously even?

Had Karkaroff hovered in his wake like a bad memory, or had he kept his mind tightly on the simmering cauldrons in front of him?

She could see his mouth twisting as he warned them not to treat Potions as a recipe book. Could almost hear him say, “You are not baking cakes; you are handling liquid magic and volatile compounds. Treat this classroom like a Quidditch pitch at your peril.”

The thought made her smile, despite herself.

Part of her wanted to go knock on his door and ask.

Knock once, step into the familiar cool of his quarters, lean against his mantel and say, “So. How many new students did you terrify today?”

He might’ve scowled and said, “Not nearly enough.” Or he might have surprised her by admitting one of the Durmstrang seventh-years had asked an intelligent question.

She might have told him about Viktor Krum watching the Tentacula with a strategist’s eye, about a Durmstrang boy learning to unclench his fists around a Tempermint, about Fleur Delacour being forced to share a table and survive it.

They might have laughed. Or argued. Or both.

They might have talked about Karkaroff.

Her mouth pressed into a line.

“You said you were done prying,” she reminded herself.

Last night’s hallway exchange still sat wrong in her chest—unfinished, like a sentence cut in half. He’d shut her out with a sharp not now and she’d walked away with a brittle, angry sort of dignity that had felt good in the moment and sour in hindsight.

He’d still come running to the greenhouse when she called.

She still didn’t know what, exactly, Karkaroff had over him.

She rewrapped the finger slowly, letting the clean bandage wind around the joint in careful spirals. The motion reminded her of his nimble fingers working, the way he’d bracketed her hand in his, muttering about her being an idiot as though the word itself were a kind of protection.

“There,” she said softly when the bandage covered the sutures again. “Good as new-ish.”

The wrapped finger was thicker now, cushioned. It would still hurt when she bent it but less sharply. She flexed it lightly—just enough to test the give.

A dull ache. Manageable.

She slid the glove back on, more for protection than warmth, then reached for her tea.

It had cooled to a pleasant temperature. She cupped the mug in both hands—the warmth seeping through the ceramic soothed more than just her fingers.

Her mind skittered back, as it always did, to Sirius for a bare moment. What would he say if he could see her now? Sitting in Hogwarts, a Herbology professor, rewrapping a bandage from a plant bite, thinking about the man who had once stood on the other side of a war from them.

He’d have a remark ready. He always did.

Trusting Snivellus with your fingers now, Elle? That’s a new one.

She closed her eyes briefly.

“I’m so tired of ghosts,” she whispered.

She drank the tea down to the dregs and set the mug aside.

Her body had moved past exhaustion into that odd, floaty space where every movement felt like pushing through thick water. Bed called to her with insistent gravity.

She changed into an old nightshirt—soft, gray, worn nearly transparent at the seams. The familiar fabric fell around her like memory. She pulled her braid loose, hair tumbling over her shoulders in a dark spill.

As she slid between the sheets, the cool linen against her skin made her shiver.

The room dimmed when she flicked her wand at the lamps. Only the faintest glow from the small window remained—moonlight filtered through high glass, just enough to sketch the outline of the chair, the wardrobe, the closed door.

She lay on her side, facing the wall.

Her injured hand she placed carefully on the pillow beside her head, elevated, like Pomfrey would have insisted. The bandage looked almost stark in the low light.

“Stupid plant,” she murmured. “Stupid year. Stupid… feelings.”

The last word came out muffled by fabric.

Her mind tried, as it always did at night, to spool back through the day: first-years learning to apologize to ferns; Thoughtvines showing Ravenclaws their own mental noise; seventh-years watching a Venomous Tentacula with three different kinds of suspicion; Harry’s plant slowly opening under his quiet attention.

Durmstrang boys trying to be gentle. Beauxbatons girls humming to Tempermints like lullabies.

Severus’s hands.

Karkaroff’s smile.

A ship in the lake. A carriage in the sky.

It was too much to hold, and yet she couldn’t help turning it over in her mind like a series of stones, checking each for hidden fissures.

Somewhere above, footsteps passed in the corridor, then faded. Somewhere far off, Peeves let out a gleeful shriek, muffled swiftly by Filch’s roar. The castle settled, inch by inch, into its night rhythms.

Estelle’s eyelids grew heavy.

She wondered, in the last lucid sliver before sleep, what Severus was doing at that exact moment.

Sitting at his desk, parsing through first-year essays and marking them with ruthless accuracy? Standing at his window, looking toward the lake where the Durmstrang ship sat dark and patient? Lying awake in his own narrow bed, staring at his ceiling, thinking of a war that hadn’t finished with him yet?

She would not know. Not tonight.

“Don’t lock me out forever, Severus,” she thought, not sending it anywhere, just letting the wish exist in the quiet space between one breath and the next.

Her thoughts blurred at the edges.

The bandaged finger pulsed, gentler now, more a reminder than a reprimand. Her body loosened, muscles unwinding one by one. The last coherent thing she noticed was the faint scent of earth still clinging to her hair—a greenhouse smell, damp and green and alive.

It followed her down into sleep.

Outside her chambers, the castle kept its uneven vigil over three schools, one tournament, and all the complicated hearts beating under its roof.

Inside, Estelle Black finally rested.

Chapter Text

The rest of the night passed in fragments—half-dreams filled with shifting greenhouse lights and foreign accents drifting through the corridors like drafts of cold air. When Estelle finally woke on Tuesday morning, her mind felt wrung out but strangely steady, as though the rhythm of the castle had woven itself into her sleep.

Her hand, however, protested the very idea of movement.

The bandaged finger throbbed the way it always did first thing in the morning, the pulse sharp and insistent beneath the clean wrappings she’d applied the night before. She held it against her chest for a moment, breathing until it stopped feeling like a second heartbeat trying to claw its way out.

“Stop whining,” she told it.
The finger, predictably, did not respond.

The corridors outside were a mess.

Not a chaotic mess—not yet—but the quiet hum of foreign magic was unmistakable now that the students had settled. Durmstrang boys tromped in clusters down the stairwells, their accents carving the morning like small, sharp knives. Beauxbatons girls glided like moonlit water, already looking more at ease than the day before. A few Hogwarts students stared openly, others pretended not to.

As Estelle stepped into the corridor, a pair of Durmstrang second-years nearly collided with her.

The taller of the two—broad-shouldered, blond hair pulled back in a short tail—stopped dead and blurted something in rapid, flustered Russian-sounding syllables.

His friend snorted. “He means sorry,” the second boy translated in stiff English, tapping his own chest. “He does not know… the British words yet.”

“It’s all right,” Estelle said, smiling. “I’ve been bumped into by far worse things. Students included.”

Both boys flushed but smiled back.

“Greenhouse is this way?” the translator asked, gesturing vaguely down a hall that was absolutely not the right direction.

“No,” Estelle said gently. “That’s the way to the kitchens. Unless your class is baking an Herbology-themed soufflé, you want to go that way.” She pointed.

Understanding dawned on their faces.
“Thank you, Professora,” the first boy said, testing the word cautiously.

“It’s Professor here,” she corrected lightly. “But close.”

They thundered off with enthusiastic gratitude—and absolutely no sense of volume control. Estelle shook her head. Durmstrang hadn’t even been here two full days, and she was already growing suspicious that the school itself encouraged stomping as a form of communication.

Her second class of the day was fourth-year mixed houses—Gryffindors, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons—and Estelle braced herself for the chaos before she even opened the greenhouse door.

She barely made it three steps inside before a voice rang out:

“Professor Black!”

Neville Longbottom barreled toward her, clutching something wrapped in a thick towel.

He tripped over an upturned pot.
Stumbled.
Recovered.
Almost tripped again.
Then finally skidded to a stop at her feet, panting.

Estelle blinked. “…Neville?”

“It’s spitting!” Neville gasped.

“What is?”

He held up the towel.

Something hissed inside it—wet, angry, and disturbingly familiar.

“Please tell me that’s not a Mimbulus mimbletonia,” Estelle said.

Neville brightened proudly and unwrapped the first corner. “It is!”

The plant immediately spat Stinksap in a perfect arc that hit a Durmstrang boy directly in the chest.

The boy froze. Looked down.
Looked up.

Neville’s eyes went so wide it looked painful.

“I—I’m so sorry—it does that when it’s happy—”

There was a moment where Estelle thought she might have to step in and prevent an international incident.

Then the Durmstrang boy sniffed the front of his robes, wrinkled his nose, muttered something in his native language, shrugged, and said, “In my village, goats do worse.”

Neville sagged with relief so quickly he nearly dropped the towel.

Estelle caught it with her good hand, guided him toward a workstation, and, with utmost seriousness, said:

“Neville, darling, let’s agree that your plant stays over here today.”

Neville nodded vigorously. “Yes, Professor.”

The Mimbulus mimbletonia spit again.

She conjured a shield charm around it.
Neville mouthed thank you.

The Beauxbatons students were, predictably, less amused.

A blonde girl with perfect posture glared at the plant as though it had personally insulted her lineage.

“This school,” she said to her friend in French, “is very strange.”

“Oui,” her friend replied. “But the professor is kind.”

Estelle pretended not to hear that part.
She did, however, raise an eyebrow when the first girl’s Tempermint plant opened immediately with a soft minty burst of fragrance.

“Interesting,” Estelle murmured.
“Pardon?” the girl said coolly.

“Nothing,” Estelle said lightly. “Just a thought that plants sometimes like people who don’t like them back.”

Neville snorted. Then looked horrified he had snorted.

She gave him a subtle wink.

Midway through the lesson, one of the Durmstrang boys—Stellan, the chin-scarred one from yesterday—attempted to harvest a Tempermint leaf *too decisively.*

The plant snapped shut on his finger.

He yelped, more out of surprise than pain.

Estelle was beside him in seconds.

“It didn’t mean it,” she said gently, prying the plant open with two fingers and rescuing the leaf. “You startled it.”

Stellan glared at the plant.
The plant wilted apologetically.

“You see?” she said. “It likes you.”

Stellan, to her astonishment, blushed.

By Wednesday, the initial novelty had faded—not just for the visiting schools, but for Hogwarts itself. The castle was adjusting, in its own stubborn way. Doors that previously opened with a gentle touch now paused before swinging, almost as if asking, *Which accent are you?* The staircases behaved better for some than others; the portrait of Sir Cadogan had already picked three duels with particularly bewildered Beauxbatons boys.

Breakfast buzzed with predictions for the Triwizard tasks—most of them wildly incorrect. Estelle managed to drink a full cup of tea before Harry nearly ran into her.

“Sorry, Professor!” he said, steadying himself.

“Must we attempt to collide every other day?” she asked.

He flushed. “Sorry. Ron said something about inferi and I wasn’t listening where I was going.”

“Never listen to Ron before breakfast,” Estelle said without pause. “That is my only wisdom for the week.”

Ron spluttered behind him. Hermione smirked.

Her third-year class on Wednesday included a handful of Beauxbatons students who entered the greenhouse looking distinctly uncomfortable with the humidity.

One girl dabbed her forehead with a lace-edged handkerchief.

“It is like being inside a mouth,” she declared.

Estelle laughed. “Wait until June. Then it feels like being swallowed.”

The class stared at her.

“Joke,” she said. “Mostly.”

Harry grinned widely.
Ron looked horrified.
Hermione patted Ron’s shoulder as if preparing him for an unfortunate truth.

Later that period, a tall Durmstrang boy raised his hand.

“Yes?” Estelle said.

“You are Black,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
More like a fact he wasn’t sure he wanted to believe.

Estelle stiffened.

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“Any relation to… the Sirius Black?” His tone was cautious—not reverent, not fearful. Just… curious.

She felt her throat tighten.

“I once had a brother,” she said. “His name was Sirius.”

Harry’s eyes shot toward her, sharp and searching.
Hermione looked stricken.
Ron mouthed, Blimey.

The Durmstrang boy nodded solemnly.

“He is famous in my country,” he said. “There are stories.”

“Stories,” Estelle repeated carefully, “are not always truths.”

“Of course,” the boy said. Then—softly—“But some truths hide in stories too.”

She had no answer for that.

By Thursday morning, Estelle had reached the point in the week where she couldn’t tell which aches came from plant work and which came from teaching three schools’ worth of hormonal teenagers.

Her finger was at least healing well. The stitches held; the swelling had gone down. She still couldn’t grip with it, but she could flex it without wanting to curse the entire greenhouse, which counted as improvement.

Before her second class, she encountered Draco Malfoy standing at the edge of the greenhouse path, arms crossed, glaring at a group of Durmstrang boys who were pretending not to glare back.

“Problem?” Estelle asked.

Draco straightened instantly, brushing imaginary dust from his robes. “Not at all, Professor.”

“You’re staring at them like you want to duel.”

“I was not!” Draco protested. Then—lower—“They were talking about Viktor Krum. Loudly.”

“And…?”

“And saying he’s the greatest wizard under eighteen,” Draco said with indignation. “That’s ridiculous.”

“He *is* quite good,” Estelle said.

Draco looked betrayed.

“But,” she added, “confidence is admirable. And misplaced confidence is entertaining.”

Draco perked up.
“See that you take notes in class,” she added.

He wilted slightly. “Yes, Professor.”

That afternoon, Estelle worked with third-year Ravenclaws and their foreign peers on pruning Shrake Bushes—plants that hissed sparks when snipped properly.

One Beauxbatons student—a boy with silver-blonde hair and the posture of someone raised in rooms full of crystal chandeliers—approached his plant as though approaching a temperamental duchess.

He leaned down. Whispered something in French.

The Shrake bush fluttered. Actually fluttered. Its sparks turned soft gold.

Estelle paused mid-stride.

“What exactly did you say to it?” she asked.

He looked smug.
“I told her she was the most radiant plant I ‘ave ever worked with.”

The bush practically preened.

The entire greenhouse erupted in laughter.

Even the Durmstrang students cracked smiles.

By Friday morning, Hogwarts felt like a cauldron that had learned to simmer rather than boil.

The students walked together more naturally now—Beauxbatons girls chatting with Hufflepuffs about charms work, Durmstrang boys nodding at Gryffindors in grudging mutual respect. Even Draco was tolerating the exchange students without audible sneers, which Estelle considered a triumph.

Between her second and third classes, the Weasley twins cornered her by Greenhouse Four.

Fred grinned. “Professor! Quick question.”

George added, “Do you know if the Beauxbatons boys are allowed to compete in the Tournament?”

Estelle narrowed her eyes. “You’re not flirting with them, are you?”

Fred gasped. “Professor!”

George clutched his heart. “We would never!”

A pause.

“…unless it works.”

Estelle smacked both of them lightly on the head with her good hand.

“Behave,” she said.

“No promises.”

They disappeared into the corridor cackling like identical demons.

Her fifth-period class brought another highlight.

Neville—poor, sweet, perpetually terrified Neville—managed something extraordinary.

He made a Shrivelfig blossom.

They didn’t blossom.
It was not in their nature or their magical construction.

But Neville held one carefully in both hands, murmured something under his breath (a gentler version of the coaxing charm Estelle had taught), and the fig… opened. Soft purple petals unfurled around it like a shy flower.

The entire class stared.

Neville looked up at Estelle, horrified.
“I—I didn’t mean to—”

“That—” Estelle said slowly, reverently, “—is the single most impressive Shrivelfig interaction I have ever seen.”

Neville turned bright red.

A Durmstrang girl beside him murmured, “Is good. You have gift.”

Neville made a tiny choking noise.

Estelle made a mental note to send a letter to Augusta Longbottom. Perhaps with a less formal phrasing than: Your grandson is a botanical prodigy, tell him immediately before he panics himself into fainting.

By the time Friday’s last class ended, Estelle’s knees ached, her finger throbbed in a dull, exhausted way, and her mind felt wrapped in a fog of mint, soil, and adolescent chaos.

She dismissed her final group—seventh-year Slytherins and their mixed-school peers—and leaned back against her workbench.

For a long moment, she allowed herself to simply breathe.

The greenhouse swelled with heat. Leaves rustled. Distantly, she could hear the castle bell ringing the dinner hour, the deep toll echoing across the grounds.

She had made it.

Four days.
Three schools.
No casualties.
Minimal property damage.

A miracle by every metric.

She gathered her satchel slowly, slung it over her shoulder, and extinguished the lanterns.

As she stepped outside, dusk hovered over the castle in shades of lavender and gold. Students streamed toward the Great Hall, weaving through one another with a growing camaraderie that made something warm uncurl in her chest.

Durmstrang boys joked loudly with Gryffindors.
Beauxbatons girls taught Ravenclaws how to braid ribbons into their hair.
Hufflepuffs offered snacks to absolutely everyone.

The Tournament loomed. Chaos was inevitable.

But for now?

Hogwarts breathed.
And so did she.

Estelle Black walked toward the castle—tired, sore, a little overwhelmed, and strangely, deeply content with the week behind her.

The weekend, she knew, would not stay calm for long.

But she would take the quiet while it lasted.

Chapter Text

Saturday arrived with a silver-blue sky and cold, restless air that blew straight off the lake. The forecast promised rain by nightfall, but for now sunlight glinted off every windowpane and turned the grass into a rippling green-gold sheet. The castle practically hummed beneath Estelle’s feet as she crossed the courtyard after breakfast.

It was going to be a beautiful, tense, chaotic, unforgettable day.

Six days remained until the choosing of the Triwizard champions.

One week from yesterday, three students would step forward—one from each school—and the entire year would change shape.

Estelle rubbed her temples and exhaled slowly as she walked. She felt it in the air already: a pressure, a gathering. The students were buzzing more each day, their glances sharper, their whispers more intense. Beauxbatons students clustered in whisper-hushed groups, eyes flicking toward Hogwarts students with blended curiosity and rivalry. Durmstrang boys—already competitive among themselves—had begun sizing up every Gryffindor with a vaguely athletic build. Hogwarts students had developed sudden, intense self-confidence or intense fear depending on which table they hailed from.

She stepped inside the greenhouse to grab a pair of shears she’d forgotten the previous day, intending to return to her quarters afterward. But she found the greenhouse door slightly ajar.

Strange.

She pushed inside.

A few Whisperferns rustled, sensing her approach. The air was warm and thick. Light filtered through misty glass in soft ribbons.

A sudden burst of chaotic movement made her flinch.

“Oh! Professor!”

Neville Longbottom’s head popped up from behind a row of Puffapods, hair disheveled, face streaked with dirt, and eyes wide.

“Neville?” Estelle said, blinking. “What are you doing here? It’s Saturday.”

“I—um—I left my Mimbulus mimbletonia here by accident yesterday,” Neville said, holding up a pot wrapped in an oversized scarf. “I didn’t want anyone to, you know, step on him.”

“I think he could defend himself,” Estelle said dryly.

Neville nodded solemnly. “He spat at a Ravenclaw fourth-year when she tried to touch him, so yes. Yes, he can.”

Estelle couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sure he’ll be quite content back in your dormitory.”

Neville hesitated, glancing at her hand. “How’s your finger?”

“Recovering,” she said. “Though it complains more than necessary.”

“Mine would too,” Neville said with gentle sincerity, as if fingers had emotional opinions.

“Go on,” Estelle said softly. “Before your plant decides to redecorate the hallway in Stinksap.”

Neville scampered out, pot wobbling dangerously but faithfully held.

Estelle shook her head affectionately and retrieved her shears. She considered staying to tidy a few tables—but no. Today she needed the quiet of her chambers. She needed a moment to think without voices, footfalls, laughter, or multilingual chatter ringing in her ears.

The castle was buzzing like a beehive preparing for migration.

Even Estelle felt the humming beneath her ribs.

Her chambers were dim when she entered, curtains half-drawn. She closed the door behind her and leaned back against it, letting the cool wood press into her spine.

She breathed.

She had survived the week. Barely, but she had.

Her hand throbbed dully, but the swelling was down. She removed her glove and carefully unwound the bandage. The stitches gleamed faintly where the morning light hit them.

“Not bad,” she murmured, touching the skin lightly. “Hold yourself together.”

If only everything were so easily stitched.

Thoughts of Severus crept in uninvited. He’d been coolly civil since the greenhouse incident—colder than before, even. Their interactions were limited to clipped comments at staff meetings and brief nods in passing.

If she were being honest, she’d snap at him again if given the chance.

If she were being more honest, she wondered if he’d avoided her deliberately.

But she didn’t want to examine that too closely. Not today.

She rewrapped her finger, tugged the glove back on, and tore herself out of her spiral.

No. Not today.

Today was for preparation, anticipation, and anchoring herself before the castle erupted into true Tournament frenzy.

By noon, Estelle found herself walking the corridors simply to absorb the way Hogwarts had shifted.

Beauxbatons girls lined the windowsills along the staircases, speaking in melodious French, their soft blues a blur of serene elegance. A few practiced wand movements—light charms, levitation flicks, conjured butterflies that danced between their fingers.

Durmstrang boys gathered in knots beside tapestries, exchanging phrasebook translations and comparing wand calluses. They carried themselves like coiled springs—even in how they leaned against walls.

The Hogwarts students fit awkwardly in the middle: trying to appear unfazed, trying to appear competent, trying to appear not at all jealous of the beauty and mystery these foreign schools brought.

Estelle smiled ruefully as she saw Fred and George Weasley attempting to teach a group of Durmstrang boys how to say “butterbeer” without sounding like they were cursing the beverage.

“Booh-ter-birr,” Fred said earnestly.

“Boot-air-bearr,” George corrected, adopting a faux-French accent.

“Boor-ter-bur,” one Durmstrang boy repeated proudly.

“…Close enough,” Fred declared.

The Beauxbatons girls nearby giggled behind delicate fingers.

Estelle kept walking.

Up ahead, Hermione Granger approached with an armful of books so tall Estelle wondered how she could see over them.

“Professor Black!” Hermione chirped.

Estelle smiled. “Quite the stack you’ve got there.”

Hermione flushed. “I’m trying to read up on the Tournament. There aren’t many books, though. And the ones that exist are either ridiculously outdated or hopelessly biased.”

“Everything about the Tournament is a little biased,” Estelle said. “Magic likes to cling to stories. Humans like to cling to drama.”

Hermione nodded briskly. “Yes, exactly! And I told Harry that—Harry, come on—”

Harry and Ron followed behind her, engaged in an enthusiastic whisper-fight.

“I’m telling you,” Ron hissed, “Fred and George are entering.”

“They’re not allowed,” Hermione snapped automatically.

“I didn’t say they’re allowed,” Ron said. “I said they’re entering.”

Harry grinned.

Estelle coughed lightly.

All three jumped.

“We weren’t talking about anything forbidden,” Ron blurted.

Estelle raised an eyebrow. “I would hope not. You haven’t been given detention yet and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

Harry snorted.
Hermione looked horrified at the yet.

“Go on,” Estelle said gently, “before you get trampled by an international stampede of teenagers.”

They hurried on.

Estelle watched them go, warmth blooming in her chest despite the shadows the Tournament cast.

Later that afternoon, Estelle was passing through the Entrance Hall when she spotted a lone figure leaning against a pillar.

Not a student. Not staff.

Viktor Krum.

He seemed entirely out of place—towering, solitary, brows drawn low—but somehow also perfectly at home in the castle’s vast stone expanse. His Durmstrang robes, heavy and dark, made him look like a portrait come to life.

He was watching the front doors.

“For the love of Merlin,” Estelle said as she approached, “tell me you’re not about to bolt back to the ship.”

Krum turned his head slightly. He blinked at her once, slow.

“No,” he said in his thick, low voice. “Just thinking.”

“About escaping?” she teased.

“About the Tournament.”

Ah.

“Thinking of entering?” she asked gently.

He shook his head. “No. I am… tired of competing.”

Estelle understood that more deeply than she wanted to.

“Then don’t,” she said softly. “Let someone else have the glory for once.”

Krum gave a faint, humorless smile.

“Da,” he murmured. “Let someone else.”

She left him then, but the heaviness in his posture followed her down the hall.

By evening, whispers had become a tangible current in the Great Hall.

The entire castle seemed to thrum with something electric.

Estelle took her seat at the staff table, ignoring the quick glance Severus cast in her direction. She focused instead on the students below—on the multicolored sea of robes, on the restless excitement vibrating through the air.

Dumbledore rose, arms spread wide.

The hall quieted at once.

“Welcome,” he said, beaming in a way that made even the stormiest Durmstrang student sit straighter. “Welcome to the first Saturday feast of our year—and our first feast with our esteemed guests from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and the Durmstrang Institute!”

Applause exploded.

Beauxbatons students smiled gracefully; Durmstrang students nodded stiffly but respectfully.

“You will find,” Dumbledore continued, “that Hogwarts has prepared a year like no other. A year of unity. A year of challenge. And, I hope, a year of growth.”

A ripple of murmurs.
Estelle watched the Hufflepuffs beam with the word unity, the Ravenclaws lean forward at challenge, and the Slytherins narrow their eyes at growth.

Dumbledore raised a hand.

“And tonight,” he said grandly, “I am pleased to unveil something of great significance.”

The lights in the hall dimmed.

A quiet sweep of magic passed through the air like a long exhale.

And then—
With a deep, resonant hum—

A pedestal rose from the center of the staff dais.

Upon it sat a magnificent object.

Tall.
Silver.
Radiant.

The Triwizard Cup.

Gasps rippled through the hall.

The Cup glowed with internal light, reflecting swirling, shifting shadows in the carved etchings around its rim. Sparks of blue and white danced along its handles like captured stars. The air around it vibrated faintly, as though it was breathing.

Estelle felt her heart thrum with the same rhythm.

“We present,” Dumbledore intoned, “the Triwizard Cup—awarded to the school whose Champion triumphs in the Tournament.”

Hogwarts roared.
Durmstrang roared louder.
Beauxbatons trilled a symphony of delighted gasps.

Dumbledore raised a second hand for silence.

“And as for our selection of Champions…” He paused, twinkle sharp. “The Goblet of Fire will be revealed next Friday evening. Submissions will open briefly. Only students aged seventeen or older may enter.”

Estelle heard the Weasley twins groan even before she picked them out in the crowd.

“I implore you,” Dumbledore continued, “to consider carefully. The Tournament is not designed for glory—but for endurance, wisdom, and courage.”

The room had gone quieter now. More thoughtful.
More afraid.

Severus shifted beside her, his gaze fixed intensely on the Cup.
Madam Maxime looked proud.
Karkaroff wore a smile that looked like it had teeth.

Dumbledore clapped his hands.

“Now! Let us celebrate the calm before the storm. Dinner is served.”

The tables filled instantly with food—platter after platter, bowls steaming with soups, breads, roasted meats, vegetables glazed with oils and herbs.

Estelle ate sparingly, her stomach fluttering.

One week.

The castle would be different in a week.

She glanced sideways.

Severus was staring at the Cup again.

His jaw was set.

His eyes… darker.

He could sense it too—the shadow moving under the surface of this grand tradition.

She wanted to ask him what he saw.
She wanted to ask him what part of his past was stirring again because of Karkaroff’s arrival.

But before she could gather her courage—

A student’s laughter rang out.
The hall erupted again in noise.
And Severus stood abruptly, robes flaring.

He muttered something to Dumbledore, nodded, and swept out of the hall.

Estelle’s chest clenched.

She forced herself to breathe.
To eat one more bite.
To smile at Minerva and Aurora.
To answer Pomona’s note passed discreetly along the table via a charmed napkin.

But her eyes kept drifting toward the doorway where Severus had vanished.

As the feast wound down, the Triwizard Cup continued to glow in the dimming hall—cold, beautiful, humming with power.

Students lingered, mesmerized.

Estelle rose with the staff and made her way to the entrance.

She paused.

Turned.

Looked at the Cup again.

It felt like staring down a tunnel and seeing the glint of something dangerous moving toward her.

Heat flickered in her chest.

Fear.
Hope.
Anticipation.

All tangled into one.

She exhaled.

“Well,” she said softly, “let the storm come, then.”

And with the hum of foreign magic vibrating through her bones, she left the Great Hall behind her.

The Tournament had begun.

Chapter Text

Estelle’s Sunday began without urgency.

For the first time in weeks, she woke not to the shrill harangue of an alarm, nor to the mental tally of upcoming classes and missing supplies, but to quiet.

Soft, easy quiet.

The light through her curtains was pale and gentle, the sort of light that belonged to late morning rather than dawn. Her bandaged finger didn’t ache as sharply as usual. Her back complained a little when she pushed herself upright, but in a low, grumbling way rather than the outraged screech she’d grown used to.

She sat there for a moment, hair tangled, mind blessedly blank.

Then the castle’s awareness slid in around the edges of her thoughts—soft at first, then stronger. Three schools. One looming selection. One Cup glinting in the Great Hall. Dozens of students mentally rehearsing their reasons for why they should be Champion.

She exhaled.

“All right,” she told the room. “Let’s not think about that yet.”

She didn’t go to breakfast. She drank tea on the small sofa by her fire instead, feet tucked under her, a book open on her knees more for comfort than concentration. Every now and then, voices drifted up from the courtyard outside her window—bursts of French laughter, clipped Durmstrang consonants, a Gryffindor’s shout of, “No, you’re holding the broom wrong—”

Estelle smiled faintly. Let it wash past.

She took a walk after lunch.

Not a purposeful patrol, not a greenhouse dash, but a slow, aimless wander around the grounds. The air was crisp and cool enough to bite. The Durmstrang ship sat black and heavy on the lake, like an enormous beetle half-submerged in pewter. The Beauxbatons carriage gleamed near the edge of the forest, doors shut, Abraxans cropping grass with sharp, efficient bites.

Everywhere she turned, little groups clustered—students spread like constellations across the grounds. A trio of Hufflepuffs teaching a Durmstrang boy how to skip stones. A pack of Beauxbatons girls in cloaks and gloves, drifting along the lakeshore and complaining about the damp. Two Slytherin seventh-years standing with arms folded, assessing everyone with cool eyes like they were pricing them for auction.

She avoided Severus all day with hardly any effort. It helped that he seemed intent on avoiding everyone.

By evening, she’d looped back to the greenhouses, checked on the more temperamental residents, and gone to bed with her finger freshly wrapped and her nerves less frayed than they’d been in months.

It was, all things considered, a remarkably quiet day.

Which meant the castle was almost certainly saving up its chaos for later.

The week that followed unfurled in a series of increasingly tense days, threaded through with ordinary lessons.

Monday: first-years still whispering to their Whisperferns, Tempermints reacting dramatically to adolescent moods, seventh-year Slytherins pretending not to care about the Cup glowing in the Great Hall.

Tuesday: a Beauxbatons boy nearly fainting when a Shrake bush spat sparks too close to his hair, a Durmstrang girl startling herself into giggles when a Thoughtvine flashed an ugly shade of red at her first attempt.

Wednesday: The Age Line.

The Goblet of Fire appeared that morning in the Entrance Hall, placed reverently in the center of a newly cleared space, perched on a simple wooden stool inside a golden shimmering circle.

The Age Line.

Dumbledore had explained it at breakfast. Seventeen and up only. Age Line around the Goblet. Anyone underage who tried to cross it would be thrown back. Possibly singed.

He’d said it with that little twinkle in his eye that meant: I know some of you are going to test this anyway, and I’ve made my peace with that.

Estelle had watched students file past the Goblet all day, eyes wide, expressions hungry. Some kept a deliberate, measured distance from the Age Line. Others edged closer, eyes narrowed in speculation. A few Ravenclaws scribbled notes, as if they could calculate its radius with enough precision to find a weakness.

Classes passed in a blur of restless energy. Even the most diligent students had trouble focusing on root structures when the possibility of being magically selected to face mortal peril dangled in front of them.

By late afternoon, the Goblet had already accepted several names—one from Beauxbatons, two from Durmstrang, three from Hogwarts. The parchment slips burned into blue flames when dropped in, disappearing with satisfying theatricality.

Estelle had just dismissed a second-year class and was halfway back to the staff room for tea when she heard the commotion.

Shouting.
Laughter.
A shriek of, “WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?”

She pivoted and headed for the Entrance Hall at a brisk pace.

The scene that greeted her was, even by Hogwarts standards, impressive.

A crowd had gathered in a loose ring around the Goblet. At its center, just inside the Age Line, two elderly men were grappling on the floor—thin red hair, wrinkled faces, beards stuck to their chests, voices cracking with outrage.

They were also wearing Gryffindor ties and Weasley jumpers.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Estelle muttered.

Fred and George, or George and Fred—it was difficult to tell at the best of times, and the abrupt aging had not helped—were wrestling like overexcited pensioners, groaning and wheezing and occasionally losing track of which one of them was complaining about whose hip.

“My back!” one cried.

“My knees!” the other protested. “You landed on my knees—”

“You landed on my face, you wrinkled git—”

“You’re wrinkled too!”

Students were howling with laughter. A few Beauxbatons boys looked deeply offended by the entire spectacle. Durmstrang students watched with politely horrified interest, like visitors at an eccentric museum exhibit.

Estelle pushed through, her robes swishing.

“All right,” she said sharply. “Move aside. Give them some air before one of them realizes he’s brittle.”

The circle parted enough for her to step over the Age Line’s glowing boundary and into the cleared space by the Goblet. Magic tingled unpleasantly across her skin as she crossed it—a warning, not meant for her.

Fred—or George—managed to twist himself so he could peer up at her through bushy white eyebrows.

“Professor Black,” he croaked, “we can explain—”

“Oh, can you?” Estelle said. “Because from here it looks like you two geniuses tried to fool an ancient, highly advanced Age Line with a charm you probably nicked from a back page of Practical Pranks for the Profoundly Thick.”

The other twin wheezed. “We prefer ‘creative.’”

“You two are about as creative as bubotuber pus,” Estelle said coolly. “Less useful, though.”

A snort of laughter came from somewhere in the crowd.

Both twins pouted. On their aged faces, it was almost impressive.

“We would have managed it,” the left twin said indignantly, “if the line hadn’t—”

“Thrown you both backward,” Estelle finished. “And aged you considerably in the process?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

The Goblet’s blue flames flickered, as if amused.

“On your feet,” Estelle said, offering neither hand nor sympathy.

They struggled up, joints complaining in loud creaks, one of them grabbing the other’s sleeve for balance.

It looked like watching someone help his own grandfather stand.

“Professor,” one said, breathless and affronted, “you can’t possibly blame us for testing the boundaries of magical innovation—”

“I absolutely can,” Estelle said. “And I will.”

She turned to face the assembled students. Her voice shifted from dry to clipped—professor voice, with a sharper edge.

“Twenty points from Gryffindor,” she said. “Ten each. For flagrantly ignoring explicit instructions, attempting to undermine a clearly stated age restriction, and providing the rest of the student body with a live demonstration of what not to do.”

The collective gasp of the Gryffindor table felt almost physical.

“Twenty?” one of the twins squeaked, voice cracking higher than their current apparent age allowed.

“Yes,” Estelle said. “You’re lucky it’s not more. If you’d actually tampered with the Age Line, you’d be spending the rest of the month cleaning cauldrons by hand in the Potions dungeon.”

Both twins looked appropriately horrified.

From somewhere behind them, Lee Jordan muttered, “Not worth it,” under his breath.

The twins, briefly unified in loyalty to their House, scowled at Estelle with identical ferocity.

“This charm,” she added, looking them over, “will allegedly wear off in a few hours.”

“Allegedly?” the right twin repeated, suddenly nervous.

“Magic doesn’t always behave the way you want when you throw it against a barrier that’s older, stronger, and better at rules than you are,” Estelle said. “Next time you get bright, Gryffindor ideas, remember that.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the Hufflepuffs. Some of the Ravenclaws nodded thoughtfully; the Durmstrang contingent looked grudgingly impressed by her delivery.

“As for you two,” Estelle said, turning back to the twins, “I strongly advise you to stay out of trouble until the effects wear off. No running. No jumping from staircases. No testing how elastic your new joints are. If you fall and break a hip while looking like that, Madam Pomfrey will kill us all.”

“But—” one started.

“Out,” Estelle said firmly. “To your tower. Slowly. With dignity. Pretend you know what that is.”

They shuffled toward the stairs, bickering the entire way, walking like two grandfathers who’d just realized their grandchildren were watching.

Once they were gone, the crowd began to disperse, buzzing.

Estelle let out a slow breath.

“Age Line: one, Weasley twins: zero,” she muttered.

The Goblet crackled softly behind her, its blue light flickering across the stones.

She gave it a long, measuring look before stepping back across the Age Line and heading for the doors.

That, she thought, was as much drama as she could handle for one afternoon.

Time to find something genuinely dangerous and predictable.

The greenhouses smelled like damp soil and safety.

It was an illusion, of course. Half the plants out here were just as capable of maiming her as any curse if she mishandled them. But they were honest about it. Plants didn’t pretend. Plants didn’t smile with too many teeth and speak in soft, oily voices about unity while calculating how much they could get away with.

Plants didn’t look at Severus like an old accomplice.

She shrugged that thought off and ducked into Greenhouse Five—the one she used for more complex brewing work. Cauldrons here were set higher up, away from the most mischief-prone roots; a series of thick charms kept stray spores out of open potions.

On the central bench, she set a black iron cauldron and filled it with water from her wand.

Wolfsbane first.

Logically, she knew Remus had plenty at home. She'd brewed ahead the last time they’d seen each other. He’d checked the vials so carefully, fingers tracing the seams, before tucking them into his bag.

But logic didn’t have much sway over her tonight.

Brewing calmed her. Wolfsbane, especially. It was difficult enough to demand her full attention, intricate enough to quiet the rest of her thoughts.

She lit the fire under the cauldron, watching blue flames lick at the iron. The water began to warm, steam curling.

From her satchel, she pulled out her ingredients.

Dried aconite, crushed to a precise grit. Carefully sliced moonflower petals. Powdered asphodel root. A jar of silvery, viscous fluid marked lunar infusion—previous cycle.

She set them out in order, her bandaged finger moving more easily now, the stiffness familiar.

As she worked, her shoulders began to loosen.

She chopped, weighed, added. Stirred clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then a precise figure-eight whenever the potion thickened too fast.

The smell that filled the greenhouse was unlike her usual earth and sap—sharper, metallic at the edges, but underpinned by something cool and strangely clean, like late winter air.

Her mind drifted to a shabby sitting room years ago, a younger Remus sitting hunched over a chipped mug, looking at the first Wolfsbane she’d brewed for him with eyes too bright to be entirely human.

“You don’t have to keep doing this,” he’d said.

“I want to,” she’d replied.

“I don’t want you to feel obliged.”

“Remus,” she’d said gently, “I want you to feel like yourself.”

She stirred the potion now with that same stubborn intention.

Half an hour later, the Wolfsbane was approaching its most delicate phase. The color had deepened to a muted violet-gray. Wisps of pale steam curled from the surface, forming almost patterns before dissolving.

She reached for the next ingredient without looking.

Her fingers closed on empty air.

Estelle frowned.

The small jar that should have been there—labelled crushed valerian, double-dried—was conspicuously absent.

She checked the other side of the bench. Nothing.

“Of course,” she muttered. “Of course you’d choose tonight to run out.”

Wolfsbane could technically be brewed without that particular reinforcement, but she didn’t like to. The stabilizing effect of double-dried valerian late in the process made the final potion smoother, easier on Remus’s system. Less likely to spike his temperatures or send his heart racing.

She wasn’t about to skip it.

Which meant—

She exhaled, long and slow.

She’d have to get it from Severus.

Just like last year.

The memory flashed: standing in his storeroom, the two of them surrounded by shelf upon shelf of bottled ingredients. The way he’d raised an eyebrow, then sighed, and said, “If you insist on brewing it yourself, the least I can do is ensure you do not blow a hole in the castle.”

The way they’d worked together in cool, sniping companionship, ghosts pressed tight against their ribs.

“Brilliant,” she told the empty greenhouse. “Really brilliant, Estelle. You pick this brew, this evening, and expect it to go smoothly.”

The potion bubbled, offended at the delay.

She checked the heat, muttered a stasis charm that would hold it in its current state for a short while, and extinguished the fire beneath the cauldron.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she told it. “And don’t curdle. I mean it.”

The Wolfsbane did not respond, but the steam slowed, holding its shimmering pattern like a held breath.

Estelle shrugged on her outer robes, tugged them straight, and flexed her fingers once.

They trembled very slightly.

It was ridiculous, she told herself, to feel this nervous about walking down one corridor to a storeroom she’d been in a dozen times.

Ridiculous to feel like she needed to rehearse something as simple as, “I’m brewing Wolfsbane. I need double-dried valerian. May I borrow some?”

Ridiculous to think of his face when he looked up at her, sharp and guarded and maybe, somewhere under it all, relieved.

She snorted softly.

“Get over yourself,” she said aloud.

Then she left the greenhouses, letting the door swing shut behind her, and made her way toward the dungeons.

The castle was quieter at this hour. Most students were in the Great Hall, at dinner, voices echoing faintly upward. The corridors down toward the dungeon level held cool, still air.

Her boots clicked softly on the stone.

She passed the turn that led toward the Slytherin common room, where the green glow from the lake filtered through the slimy window slits. A murmur of voices drifted from behind the wall—a blend of English and the clipped, unfamiliar consonants of Durmstrang.

Slytherin and Durmstrang. That would be… interesting.

She kept going.

Severus’s personal storeroom lay just beyond his quarters—a thick, iron-banded door set into the wall, marked only with a delicate locking rune that pulsed faintly when she approached.

She paused in front of it.

The air here felt different than the rest of the dungeon. Cooler, somehow, and denser, like the space itself had been compressed, folded around too many secrets.

His chamber door was a few steps away, closed.

A thin slit of lamplight glowed at the bottom.

He was in.

Her heartbeat ticked up a notch.

She stood there for a full three breaths, arms hanging at her sides, staring at the dark grain of his door.

You can always turn around, a small, traitorous voice suggested. Go back. Use a substitute ingredient. Pretend you never needed anything from him.

She looked down at her gloved hand.

At the faint, familiar ache beneath the wrapping where his sutures still held her together.

“No,” she whispered.

She turned fully toward the storeroom door and lifted her hand.

Her knuckles hovered for a second over the wood between that door and his, suspended between one choice and another.

Then, with a small exhale, Estelle knocked.

The sound of her knuckles against the wood was absurdly loud in the hushed corridor.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then: a rustle of fabric from the other side. A chair scraping. The faint clink of glass.

“Who is it?” Severus called, voice muffled by the door and thicker than usual—like he hadn’t spoken in hours.

“Estelle,” she said.

There was a pause. Not long, but loaded.

She could picture him on the other side—eyes closing briefly, weighing whether to pretend he wasn’t in, whether to send a curt dismissal through the door, whether to open it at all.

The bolt slid back.

The door opened a fraction and then fully, revealing Severus framed in the doorway: robes open over a black shirt and trousers, sleeves rolled to the elbows, hair slightly more disordered than usual. The lamplight behind him painted the lines of his face in sharper relief. There were new shadows beneath his eyes, bruised-looking and deep.

“Estelle,” he said, neutral. “To what do I owe the… intrusion?”

“Flattery will get you nothing,” she said lightly, because if she didn’t lean on banter she’d lean on something far less safe. “I need valerian. Double-dried root. I’m brewing Wolfsbane.”

His eyebrows rose, just as she’d expected. A quick flash of something complicated crossed his face—annoyance, respect, resignation, all jostling for position.

“You still insist on brewing it yourself,” he said.

“I still insist on Remus not dropping dead in a transformation, yes,” she replied. “I ran out. You have the good stock. I came to ask before I start gnawing it off your shelves like a depraved rabbit.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost.

“Merlin forbid anyone touch my organization system,” he murmured. He stepped back from the door. “Come in.”

She slipped past him, the familiar chill of his quarters wrapping around her shoulders.

The room was lit only by a few low lamps and the glow from a fire in the grate. The walls were lined with shelves of books and small, neatly labeled bottles. The desk was buried under papers in intimidatingly tidy stacks. A small armchair sat angled toward the fire, its cushion slightly indented, as if he’d been sitting there recently.

And on a side table near the hearth, a squat pewter cauldron simmered over a carefully controlled blue flame.

Steam rose from it in slow coils, carrying a faintly sweet, medicinal scent. The color of the potion inside was a pale, pearly blue—slightly too cloudy for a simple Dreamless Sleep draught, richer than a basic Restorative.

Estelle’s nose wrinkled automatically, mind slotting ingredients together.

“Not a nerve tonic,” she observed. “Too much asphodel. And not Dreamless Sleep either—wrong hue, unless you’ve decided lavender is a bold new interpretation.”

He looked at her, expression unreadable, then back at the cauldron.

“A stabilized somnolence draught,” he said. “Intermediate potency, extended release. And yes, I am aware the color is imperfect. The batch is incomplete.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she said, stepping closer. “Your base is too thin. You’ll get a spike of drowsiness and then a hard crash. Whoever takes that will be awake again in two hours with a headache.”

“Thank you,” he said sharply, “I am fully capable of diagnosing—”

He stopped.

She stopped.

The air between them tightened. They hung there for a beat, staring at each other over the curl of steam.

Something in his posture sagged—not visibly to anyone who didn’t know him, but enough for her to see it. The straight line of his shoulders eased. The fight went out of his mouth.

“I am… aware,” he said more quietly.

She studied him.

The exhaustion sat on him like an extra layer of robes. His cheeks were a little more hollow than they had been at the start of term. The shadows under his eyes weren’t the usual faint smudges of a man who worked too late; they were deep, almost bruised, a testament to too many nights spent awake under the weight of ghosts and obligations.

“You’re not sleeping,” she said softly.

“What an astute observation,” he muttered, but without much bite.

“Severus.”

He stirred the potion once, counterclockwise, more for something to do with his hands than because it needed it.

“Between supervising a third of the castle’s curriculum,” he said, “pretending to play hospitable host to an old… acquaintance, and monitoring the security of an international tournament designed to maim glory-seeking idiots, I have found my schedule somewhat… congested.”

“You’re making a sleeping draught wrong on purpose,” she pointed out.

He glanced at her sharply. “I am not—”

“You are,” she insisted. “You know exactly how to brew one properly. You’re sabotaging your own potion.”

He stiffened, lips flattening.

“If I wished a therapist,” he said, “I would not be speaking to a Herbologist.”

“If you wished a therapist,” she replied, “you wouldn’t be you. I think that therapist would need a therapist after a session with you.”

Silence stretched. Severus chose to ignore the latter comment.

The potion bubbled softly, throwing light over the planes of his face.

Estelle exhaled.

“All right,” she said, letting the argument go as easily as she could. “If you’re determined to half-sleep yourself into an early grave, that’s your business. But if you are going to brew, at least do it correctly.”

She stepped closer to the cauldron, careful not to crowd him.

“You added the asphodel too early,” she said simply. “It’s grounding the mix, but you don’t have enough warmth in the base to hold it. You need either more marjoram or a trace of lion’s tail to anchor the second stage. Otherwise your potency curve is all wrong.”

He stared at her for a moment like a man realizing he’d left a door unlocked.

“Lion’s tail,” he murmured, looking at the potion.

“You have some,” she said. “Third shelf in your personal stores. You used it last year on that pain draught for Minerva’s hip.”

His eyes flickered briefly. “You remember that.”

“I remember Minerva being able to walk down the stairs without swearing at every step,” Estelle said. “That tends to stick.”

He was still watching her with that intense, assessing gaze, as though trying to decide what to do with the information that she remembered small details about his brewing.

After a moment, his shoulders dropped a fraction.

“Marjoram would lighten the sedation curve too much,” he conceded. “Lion’s tail would… extend the plateau without increasing risk of physiological dependency.”

“Exactly,” she said. “You want rest, not sedation.”

He huffed, very softly. It might almost have been a self-deprecating laugh if it had any more air in it.

“You give sound advice for someone recklessly maiming herself with plants,” he said.

“Occupational hazard,” she replied.

He stared into the cauldron for another heartbeat, then flicked his wand. The flame lowered to a whisper.

“I will adjust the base later,” he said. “In the meantime, you came here for valerian, not to supervise my brewing.”

“Yes, well,” she said. “The night is young. I can do both.”

“Of course you can,” he said dryly.

For a moment, they stood in companionable near-silence. The fire cracked. The potion sighed in the cauldron.

Then he turned away from the brew and gestured toward the back of the room.

“Come,” he said. “Let us rescue your brew before you turn Remus into a corpse.”

“Always so optimistic,” she muttered.

He led the way to the inner storeroom door, drawing out his wand to tap the locking rune. It flared faintly, then dimmed; the wards softened, allowing the door to swing inward with a faint creak.

The storeroom was exactly as she remembered: narrow and high-ceilinged, shelves lining every wall from floor to near the arching stone ceiling. Jars, vials, boxes, all labeled in Severus’s precise, spidery handwriting. The air smelled of dust and sharp herbs and something metallic underneath it all.

He stepped in first. She followed carefully, robe brushing against the hanging bundles of dried plants.

“The valerian is on the left, third shelf, alphabetical grouping,” he said, moving with easy familiarity. “I don’t keep the double-dried root with the common stock. Too many dunderheads who can’t read the difference between one strike and two.”

“Because the symbol for double isn’t that obvious,” Estelle said, rolling her eyes. “Heaven forbid anyone learn to count beyond ten fingers.”

He snorted softly.

He reached up to a higher shelf she would’ve had to stretch for, fingers closing around a slim, frosted vial labeled in tight script: VALERIAN RADIX—DOUBLE-DRIED—POTENCY TESTED.

He turned and held it out.

She took it with her right hand.

His gaze flicked down at the contact.

The glove didn’t fully hide the stiffness of her movements. She cupped the vial too carefully, as if guarding against an invisible jolt of pain. She tried to keep her face straight.

“Give me your hand,” he said abruptly.

She blinked. “What?”

“Your hand,” he repeated, impatience creeping back into his tone. “The injured one. Show it to me.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “You already—”

“Your capacity for self-deception is impressive,” he cut in. “I saw you wince picking up that vial. You’re flexing your hand less than you did two days ago. Either you’ve discovered a newfound respect for your own fragility—which I seriously doubt—or it’s worse.”

Her jaw tightened.

“It’s just sore,” she said. “Healing hurts.”

“Estelle,” he said quietly, and there was something in the way he said her name—worn, familiar, edged with worry—that cut through her defenses more effectively than any sharp remark.

She swallowed.

“Let me see,” he said, holing out his hand, palm up, expectedly.

She hesitated, then slowly extended her right hand.

He took it gently, gloved fingers bracing around her wrist. With his free hand, he peeled back the cuff of her own glove, hooking a finger under the edge and working it off.

The leather dragged against the bandage; she hissed involuntarily.

“Hold still,” he murmured. “You’re making it worse.”

“You always say that,” she muttered.

“Because you always do that,” he replied.

When the glove finally came free, he set it aside and turned his attention to the bandage. The outer layers looked relatively clean—she had, after all, changed them religiously—but a faint yellowish stain had seeped through in one spot, and the fabric clung more than it should.

His mouth flattened.

“How long,” he asked, voice very calm, “has it been doing that?”

Estelle swallowed. “It looked a little… off… this morning.”

“And you did not think to visit Madam Pomfrey?”

“I was going to after I finished the brew,” she said, though she had no intention.

A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“Of course you were,” he said, seeing right through her. “Why treat the infection when you can simply ignore it until your hand falls off into the cauldron while you brew?”

“You are being melodramatic.”

“And you,” he said, “are being an idiot.”

There it was—the bite she knew.

But under it, a tremor of genuine concern.

He began unwinding the bandage with practiced care, his fingers steady. As the layers peeled back, the smell hit first—faint but unmistakable: that sour, inflamed scent of angry tissue.

Estelle’s stomach dipped.

The sutured crescent of puncture wounds was redder than it had been the last time she’d inspected it. The skin around the bites was inflamed, glossy, and there was a small, raised area along one edge where pus had clearly built up beneath the surface.

“Brilliant,” Severus said flatly. “You’ve managed to get an infection from a Fanged Geranium. Do you have any idea how many creatures in this castle would envy that level of incompetence?”

“It’s not that bad,” she protested weakly.

He shot her a look that could have curdled milk.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“How much?”

“Enough,” she conceded.

“Good,” he said. “If you’d said ‘not at all,’ I’d have assumed delirium as well.”

He reached into an inner pocket and withdrew a slender, silver-bladed knife—clean, gleaming, too elegant to be anything but a healer’s tool, despite the menacing gleam of it.

She stared at it.

“That better be for someone else,” she said.

“Hold still,” he replied.

“Severus—”

“If I do not drain it,” he said, patient in that dangerous way he reserved for particularly dense students, “it will worsen. You will end up with systemic infection and Pomfrey will confine you to the Hospital Wing. I, in turn, will be forced to brew antibiotics at three in the morning while listening to you complain. Let us circumvent that future for both our sakes. Please.”

She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

“Fine,” she muttered. “Do it.”

He guided her hand so the injured finger rested over a small glass dish he’d summoned with a flick of his wand. His touch was firm but careful, supporting her wrist, angling her finger for the best access.

“This will hurt,” he said.

“I know.”

“No,” he said quietly. “You don’t. So I’m warning you.”

She swallowed. Nodded.

He pressed the blade very lightly against the swollen edge of the wound.

The pain was sharp and bright, as if the infection itself were a knot of fire under the skin. Pressure released, ugly and immediate. She bit back a curse, breath hissing through her teeth.

“Breathe,” he said.

She glared at him but obeyed, pulling air in through her nose, out through her mouth. Warmth trickled down, gathering in the dish. The smell intensified briefly, then dissipated as he muttered a vanishing charm over the collected fluid.

“There,” he murmured, blade already moving away. “The worst is done.”

The throbbing shifted from deep, pressurized ache to raw, stinging burn.

He set the knife aside and reached for a small, stoppered bottle on a nearby shelf. The liquid inside was a clear, faintly green-tinged solution—mildly luminous.

“Antiseptic infusion,” he said, almost absently, as if narrating for a class. “Stings less than Murtlap essence. Works faster.”

He uncorked it and dipped a small square of gauze into the liquid, then dabbed it carefully along the opened area.

It did sting—but compared to the earlier agony, it was almost pleasant in its sharpness, like the difference between a burning building and a brisk wind.

She watched his face as he worked.

Every line of concentration was there, the same as when he brewed—brow furrowed, eyes narrowed, mouth set. But there was a softness at the corners of his mouth that didn’t appear when correcting essays or chastising students. This was the face he wore, she realized, when he allowed that he might actually care whether something fragile stayed whole.

He examined the drained wound, then the surrounding tissue. Some of the tension in his shoulders eased.

“It has not spread significantly,” he said. “You’re fortunate. A day or two more and we’d have had a problem.”

“Not sure I’d call any of this fortunate,” she muttered.

“Fortunate relative to the outcome of your choices,” he clarified.

“Ah,” she said dryly. “When you put it that way, I feel much more reassured.”

He shot her a look that was almost fond.

“Hold still,” he said again.

She obeyed.

He picked up his wand, murmured a low, complex incantation, and slowly traced the tip along the line of the sutures. The silver stitches glowed, loosened, and two of them unhooked themselves, sliding free of the puncture marks with a faint, silken pull.

She watched, fascinated despite herself.

“You’re not taking them all out?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Only the ones compromised by the infection. I’ll reinforce the others and replace what is necessary.”

“Ah,” she said. “Patchwork.”

“More or less.”

He cleaned the opened skin again, then with deft, almost delicate motions, re-applied fresh silver threads with his wand. They sank into place with quiet precision, drawing the split edges together again. It hurt—sharp, pinching pain—but not as badly as the draining had.

When he finished, he sat back slightly, still holding her wrist.

The angry red flush had faded to a ruddier pink. The swelling had gone down already by a fraction; the skin looked less taut, less shiny.

“That,” he said, “should heal properly now. Provided you do not continue to manhandle hostile flora without a partner present.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You volunteering?”

“Hardly,” he said. “But if you insist on getting yourself bitten to pieces, I would prefer it happen within reach of my wand.”

Her throat tightened.

“Severus,” she said quietly, “that might be the closest thing to ‘I’d miss you’ I’ve heard from you in twenty years.”

He scowled, but color rose faintly in his sallow cheeks.

“Do not make me reconsider tending to this,” he said, releasing her hand long enough to reach for a fresh roll of bandage.

She smiled, small but genuine.

He wound the bandage around her finger with the same precise care he’d shown the first time, but somehow even gentler now, as if aware of each fiber’s tug against the newly opened skin. When he was done, he anchored it with a subtle charm, smoothing his thumb once over the secured edge.

“Keep it dry for the next few hours,” he said. “No immersion in water. Do not pick at it. If it throbs more than mildly tomorrow, go to Pomfrey. Do not wait a week.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said, mocking.

“I mean it, Estelle.”

“I know.”

Their eyes met.

For a brief, fragile second, the cluttered storeroom faded. It was just the two of them: two tired people with too many scars, too many ghosts, and one ridiculous finger between them.

“Thank you,” she said, sincere now, without embellishment.

He exhaled through his nose. “You’re welcome,” he said.

The words were simple, but from him, they landed with more weight than an apology or a speech.

He picked up the vial of valerian root from where she’d set it aside and pressed it back into her palm, curling her fingers around it carefully.

“Go,” he said. “Before your Wolfsbane congeals into something unusable and I have to listen to Remus complain about your incompetence instead of his own.”

“Remus doesn’t complain,” she said.

“Not to you,” Severus muttered. “He saves it for those of us he knows won’t pat his hand and ply him with tea.”

She snorted. “You say that like tea isn’t medicinal.”

“It is not a substitute for responsibility,” he said.

“Neither is a half-brewed sleeping draught,” she shot back, tipping her head toward the outer room.

He gave her a thin, exasperated look.

“I will adjust it,” he said.

“Good,” she replied. “Because as much as I’d enjoy seeing you finally get a full night’s sleep, I don’t want you dependent on anything that comes in a bottle.”

“I could say the same for you,” he said, eyes flicking pointedly to her hand.

“That’s different,” she said.

“It’s not,” he replied quietly.

They stood there, on the edge of an old argument they’d never properly had.

Then, slowly, she nodded.

“I should go,” she said. “Stasis charm or not, the Wolfsbane won’t wait forever.”

“No,” he agreed. “It rarely does.”

She stepped back toward the doorway, flexing her hand experimentally. The pain was still there, but cleaner now—less infected throb, more straightforward sore.

“Severus,” she said, pausing on the threshold.

He looked up.

“Yes?”

“If you… get the base right,” she said, nodding toward his cauldron, “and you decide to actually take the draught… make sure you’re in bed when you do. Not asleep over your desk.”

“How did you—”

“Because I know you,” she said. “And you sleep in your chair like a gargoyle.”

He sniffed. “You come into my quarters once and suddenly you think you’re an authority.”

“I’ve been in your quarters more than once,” she said softly.

That silenced him.

For a moment, the air grew heavy between them with all the years they’d shared and not shared.

“Goodnight, Severus,” she said, breaking the tension gently.

“Goodnight, Estelle,” he replied.

She slipped out into the cooler air of the corridor, pulling the door shut behind her with a quiet click.

For a few steps, she just walked.

The vial of valerian weighed warm and solid in her palm. Her finger throbbed, but less viciously. Her chest felt… unsettled, but not entirely in a bad way.

By the time she reached the greenhouses again, the sky had deepened into proper night. Stars pricked through thin cloud, cool and distant.

Inside Greenhouse Five, the stasis charm held steady over the Wolfsbane. The potion waited, its surface still, color unchanged.

Estelle moved automatically, the brewing motions soothing after the emotional knot of the dungeons. She uncorked the valerian vial, measured out the precise amount for the late-stage addition, and sprinkled it into the cauldron in a slow, deliberate arc.

The potion shivered, then deepened in shade, smoothing from a murky violet-gray to a clearer, cooler hue. Steam rose in a gentler, more even curl.

She stirred, counting under her breath.

When the final figure-eight pattern was complete and the potion held at its correct viscosity and sheen, she let the spoon rest.

Despite everything—the infection, the Weasley twins, the Goblet of Fire humming in the hall, Severus and his half-brewed self-sabotage—the Wolfsbane was perfect.

She decanted it into vials, stoppering each one carefully, sealing them with a tiny, satisfied flick of her wand.

On the last vial, she hesitated, thumb resting over the glass.

She thought of Remus. Of full moons and shack creaks and the sound of bone shifting. Of how he’d looked when he realized he could keep his mind through the worst of it.

She thought of Severus, standing in his lamplit quarters over a cauldron of blue, brewing something meant to hold the nightmares at bay.

“Here’s to sleep,” she murmured. “For the stubborn and the haunted.”

She set the vials in a padded crate, then extinguished the lamps one by one.

Outside, the castle was settling toward curfew.

Inside, Estelle Black stepped into the night with a box of Wolfsbane, a freshly bandaged hand, and the faint, tentative feeling that some wounds—old and new—might actually be healing.

Slowly. Messily.

But healing all the same.

Chapter Text

The rain started sometime before dawn on Thursday.

Estelle woke to the sound of it needling the windowpanes, a fine, persistent hiss that threaded itself through the last tatters of sleep. For a moment she lay still, half-dreaming that she was back in Greenhouse Three, listening to the irrigation charms cycle through their pattern. When she blinked her eyes open, the dim light and the blurred shape of the glass told a different story.

It was going to be one of those days.

Her hand throbbed a dull greeting when she pushed herself upright. She flexed her fingers experimentally beneath the bandage. The sharp, vicious stab from the night before had faded to a deeper, bruised ache. Severus’s intervention had helped; she could feel the difference. The skin pulled less. The swelling had gone down a little.

“Not bad,” she muttered to it. “You live to be bitten another day.”

The bandage itself was clean. No fresh staining, no tackiness. She considered leaving it alone until tonight. Pomfrey would insist on inspecting it if she saw the state of the finger; Estelle was not yet ready to surrender that much autonomy over her own limbs.

She dressed slowly, dragging on thick socks and boots in anticipation of slick stone and puddles. Her robes felt heavy even before she stepped into the corridor. The castle air had a damp chill to it, stone sweating under the pressure of the storm outside.

By the time she reached the Entrance Hall, the noise from the rain had deepened from a hiss to a drumbeat. Sheets of water lashed the windows; the far turrets blurred into gray.

The Goblet still sat in its circle of light, blue flames flickering serenely, utterly unconcerned with the weather. A handful of students stood at the edge of the Age Line, staring at it with expressions ranging from awe to hunger to dread.

“Still thinking about it, are you?” Estelle said as she passed a cluster of Hufflepuff sixth-years.

They jumped.

“I—no, Professor, I mean—maybe, but—” one boy stammered.

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said mildly. “Just make sure you’re thinking about staying alive as much as you’re thinking about glory.”

That shut them up.

At breakfast, the staff table buzzed quietly. Madam Maxime was in deep conversation with Minerva about carriage charms under inclement weather. Karkaroff spoke in low, smooth tones to one of his staff, gaze sliding toward the Goblet like a man watching a game he’d rigged.

Severus sat in his usual place, profile still against the candlelight. If he’d taken his adjusted sleeping draught, it hadn’t worked miracles; he still looked tired. But the lines around his eyes were less etched, his movements a fraction less brittle.

She did not let herself stare.

Dumbledore raised his goblet in a small, offhand toast. “To our students,” he said, voice light. “May they keep their feet on the ground and their heads out of the Goblet—unless they are absolutely certain.”

Laughter rippled. It sounded a little strained in places.

Estelle drank her tea and let the warmth soak into her fingers, the bandaged one held slightly off the cup.

Classes on Thursday were a strange mix of normalcy and distraction.

Her first years were giddy and inattentive, Whisperferns rustling irritably as tiny hands fumbled at their soil while their owners whispered about who might enter the Tournament. A Beauxbatons girl asked her, wide-eyed, whether Hogwarts had ever lost a Champion before. A Durmstrang boy muttered something dark in his own language that she suspected translated to, “If they have, no one writes about it.”

“Plants don’t care about Tournaments,” Estelle told them, guiding a trembling Hufflepuff’s grip on a trowel. “They care about water, light, soil, and whether you listen when they tell you they’re unhappy.”

“What does an unhappy plant look like?” the boy asked.

“Depends,” she said. “Sometimes it wilts. Sometimes it spits. Sometimes it bites your finger and infects it for a week out of spite.”

The class gasped.

Her bandaged hand suddenly became the subject of intense scrutiny.

“Professor, is that what happened to you?” a Ravenclaw asked, fascinated.

“Yes,” Estelle said. “Let that be a cautionary tale. Respect your herbology instructor. She bleeds easily.”

They laughed, but a little nervously.

By the time she dismissed them, her finger had begun to throb again—not the stabbing, hot pain of infection, but the deeper ache of overuse. She flexed it surreptitiously, then kept it still for most of her second class.

Her afternoon seventh-year lesson with the Slytherins and their visiting counterparts was mercifully focused. The Venomous Tentacula had grown more aggressive with the changing weather, its vines slapping against the barrier with vicious enthusiasm.

“Note the increased reach,” she said, as a thick vine lashed out and struck a protective charm she’d erected for demonstration. The spark of contact sent a jolt of light up the barrier.

“Is that because of the storm?” Fleur asked, voice steady, eyes sharp.

“Partly,” Estelle said. “Some plants respond to atmospheric pressure changes. Some pick up on ambient emotional energy. Some are simply in a mood. Today I suspect it is all three.”

Viktor Krum stood near the back of the group, arms folded, watching the Tentacula with that same careful intensity she’d noticed before. When she assigned them to refine their hazard-control strategies in light of the plant’s increased aggression, he was one of the first to suggest adjusting spell angles instead of raw power.

Her hand ached more by evening, but she chalked it up to the damp.

Rain did that. Made old injuries complain louder and new ones act as though they were older than they were.

She wrapped the bandage a little tighter before bed and told herself it would be better by morning.

---

It was not.

Friday dawned darker than Thursday, the rain heavier, the sky one unbroken slab of slate. Thunder grumbled somewhere over the Forbidden Forest like distant giants.

Estelle’s first awareness was of the sound: not just rain now, but proper storm—sheets of water hammering the castle, wind finding every gap in the stone.

Her second awareness was of her finger.

The pain woke with her. A sharp, swollen throb, as if her pulse had migrated entirely into that one, stupid extremity. She clenched her teeth, brought the hand up, and pressed it against her chest through the blanket.

For a few breaths she lay there, breathing in and out, letting the waves of pain crest and fall.

It had been a mistake not to see Pomfrey yesterday. She knew that now.

Too late to admit it without an “I told you so” from Severus and a week of brisk lectures from the matron.

She pushed herself upright and swung her legs out of bed.

When she flexed her fingers, the bandage pulled in a way that made her stomach tighten. It wasn’t just sore. There was a tautness there, a wrongness under the wrappings, like something too large had been forced into a space too small.

“Lovely,” she muttered. “Brilliant. Absolutely inspired.”

She considered unwrapping it then.

Then she glanced at the clock.

She had a class in less than an hour—with Durmstrang students, some of whom seemed to think every lesson was a test of their personal mettle.

No time for collapse.

“No time to deal with you,” she told her finger through gritted teeth. “You can sulk properly tonight.”

She dressed in her heaviest robes and added an extra layer under them. The cold in the dungeons was different on days like this—more invasive, more insistent. Boots, scarf, gloves. She shoved her right hand into its dragon-hide sheath with more care than usual, suppressing a wince when the leather pressed against the swollen bandage.

By the time she reached the greenhouses, she was already damp. Wind whipped the rain sideways in gusts; her hair clung to the edges of her face, curls dampening.

The sight that greeted her did not improve her mood.

A line of students huddled under the narrow eaves of Greenhouse Three, robes plastered to their legs, hair dripping. The air was thick with the smell of wet wool and damp parchment.

“Inside, quickly,” Estelle called, fumbling with the door latch. “Unless you’d like me to teach you how to farm gills.”

They shuffled in, dripping on the stone floor. Condensation streamed down the inside of the glass; the storm beyond turned the world into a blurred grey wash.

“It’s freezing,” a Beauxbatons girl complained, wrapping her arms around herself.

“It’s *Hogwarts*,” Estelle replied. “Half of our charmwork is about not freezing to death. Consider this practical experience.”

Lightning flashed; thunder followed close behind, a sudden, booming crack that made the glass rattle.

Several students flinched. One Hufflepuff let out a squeak.

The plants rustled uneasily.

“All right,” Estelle said, clapping her hands once. “Today’s lesson was going to be about carefully pruning Shrake bushes. But since the weather has decided to participate, we’re going to adapt.”

She led them to the outer row, where a series of hardy, bristling shrubs pressed up against the glass, their leaves thick and slightly waxy.

“These are Stormcaps,” she said. “They respond to atmospheric conditions. Note their leaves.”

Outside, another flash of lightning lanced across the sky. A beat later, thunder rolled.

The Stormcaps quivered. Their leaves curled inward briefly, then unfurled, releasing a faint, ozone-laced scent.

“They’re absorbing the excess charge,” Estelle went on. “Very useful in preventing lightning damage to nearby plant life. Also useful in potions designed to treat shock.”

“How do we harvest them?” a Durmstrang boy asked, his accent clipping the words.

“Very carefully,” Estelle said. “With grounding charms in place, one student at a time, and *only* when the leaves are fully extended. If you attempt it when they’re curled, they will discharge the stored energy. Onto you.”

“Has that happened before?” a small Beauxbatons girl whispered.

Estelle flexed her bandaged hand unconsciously.

“Yes,” she said. “But that’s another cautionary tale.”

She guided them through the process: first, the grounding charm—wand tip tapping the floor, creating a faint, humming circle of safety. Then, approaching the Stormcap with palms open, intent steady.

Her finger protested every motion, but she kept her expression neutral, teeth clenching only slightly when she demonstrated a proper harvest.

By midday, the worst of the storm had settled into a steady, relentless downpour. The greenhouses creaked under the weight of it. Water streamed in narrow rivers down the outside of the panes; occasional drips made their way through in places where charms needed refreshing, dampening the edges of benches.

Her third class—fourth-year Gryffindors with their Durmstrang and Beauxbatons counterparts—arrived soaked, shivering, and buzzing.

“This is mad,” Ron announced the moment he stepped inside. “We’re going to drown in here.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Hermione said briskly, wringing water out of her hair with a charm. “We’re under a roof.”

“Barely,” Ron muttered, eyeing a patch where a thin drip had started.

Harry pushed his glasses up his nose, leaving a smear of rainwater. He gave Estelle a quick, sheepish smile.

“If anyone starts gills,” Estelle said conversationally, “I’ll give extra credit.”

Fred and George, still very much back to their proper adolescent forms, were in the back of the group, hair plastered flat, grins undimmed.

“Professor,” Fred said, “if this keeps up, can we transplant the entire Quidditch pitch into the lake and have underwater matches?”

“I will not dignify that with an answer,” Estelle said. “Open your books. Today we’re working with water-logged root systems. Since nature has provided an overabundance of the relevant condition, we may as well take advantage.”

She focused on teaching.

On the way water suffocated roots when trapped without proper drainage. On how specific soil charms could create tiny air pockets. On which plants could thrive in such conditions and which would rot.

Her hand ached steadily, a deep, throbbing presence that refused to be ignored. Twice she had to pause and shift her grip on a trowel when a sharp bolt of pain shot up her wrist.

“Are you all right, Professor?” Neville asked quietly as she passed his table.

“I’m fine,” she lied. “Your roots, however, are drowning. Tilt the pot and let them breathe.”

By her last class of the day—a small group of fifth-year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws with a scattering of visiting students—her patience was worn thin and her finger felt like it was on fire under the bandage.

She made it through on sheer stubbornness and the knowledge that in a few hours, she could finally stop pretending it didn’t hurt.

When she dismissed them, the rain outside had subsided from a roar to a steady roar-mutter, like a beast settling down but refusing to sleep. The sky still pressed close to the earth, heavy and low.

Estelle stayed in the greenhouse long enough to tidy the worst of the mess, then snuffed the lanterns and stepped out into the damp evening.

The walk back to her chambers felt longer than usual. Each step sent a small, unpleasant jar through her body. Her gloves felt clammy. The bandage under the right one felt… wrong. Too tight and too loose simultaneously, as if the skin beneath it were swelling against its constraints.

By the time she reached her door, her mouth was set in a thin, grim line.

She shut it behind her, leaned against it for a brief moment, then pushed herself toward the bed.

Her hands shook slightly as she tugged off her robes and damp under-layer, exchanging them for an old, soft nightshirt. The air in the room was cool enough to raise goosebumps along her arms.

She sat on the edge of the bed, heart beating a little too fast, and stared at her gloved hand.

“Right,” she whispered. “Truth time.”

She peeled the glove off carefully.

Even that motion hurt. The leather dragged against the bandage, and whatever was beneath the cloth protested the movement.

When the glove came free, she dropped it on the bedspread and stared at the wrapped finger.

It looked swollen even through the layers.

Her stomach flipped.

Slowly, she began to unwind the bandage.

The outer layers came away easily, stiff with dried antiseptic solution but not heavily soiled. As she got closer to the skin, the fabric began to cling. A faint, darkish stain had seeped through near the underside of the finger, where the bites had been deepest.

Her breath shortened.

“Come on,” she muttered. “It’s fine. It’s just healing. It’s fine.”

The last layer peeled away with a small, unpleasant tug.

She hissed.

Her finger looked worse.

There was no polite way to frame it. Angry red had spread from the initial crescent of punctures, bleeding out into the surrounding skin in a mottled flush. The area around the stitches was puffy, almost glossy. Here and there, the red shifted into an ugly, bruised purple that crept toward the base of her finger.

A faint line of deeper color traced along the side, following the course of a vein.

“Damn,” she whispered.

The sutured punctures themselves were closed, the silver threads holding—but the skin between them bulged uncomfortably. The whole finger seemed too large for her hand, an overinflated balloon grafted onto living flesh.

Carefully, she tried to curl her hand.

Pain flared hot and sharp, shooting through the finger and radiating down into her palm.

She gasped and let it fall slack.

The air around the wounds felt hot, the skin flushed under her touch. There was no obvious discharge like there had been before Severus had drained it, but the heat and color were undeniable.

Infection. Again.

“Of course,” she said, voice thin. “Of course it would be stubborn. It’s mine.”

Her first thought was of Pomfrey—of the woman’s brisk fussing, her efficient clucks of disapproval, the sharp, necessary potions she’d press into Estelle’s hands.

Her second thought was of Severus, brow furrowing, saying, *If it throbs more than mildly tomorrow, go to Pomfrey. Do not wait a week.*

It hadn’t been a week.

It had been… forty-eight hours.

That still felt like a failure somehow.

“I’ll go tomorrow,” she told the empty room. “First thing. Before breakfast. I’ll… go.”

The last word sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

She fetched Pomfrey’s salve from her bedside and dabbed a thin smear around the inflamed skin, avoiding the worst of the swollen area. The coolness seeped in slowly, blunting the sharpest edge of the pain.

Then she reached for fresh bandages.

Wrapping it was more difficult this time. The swelling made it harder to get the cloth lying flat; every turn felt too tight or too loose. She ended up settling for snug but not compressive, anchoring the final layer with a charm.

Her hand looked bulky now, comically so—glove or no glove.

She stared at it.

“You are an absolute nuisance,” she informed it. “I hope you know that.”

The bandaged lump did not reply.

She lay back on the bed, cradling the injured hand against her chest, and blew out the lamp.

Rain whispered at the window.

Her body, exhausted from the long, damp day, surrendered quickly. Her mind, however, took longer to follow.

When sleep finally came, it did not come gently.

---

In the dream, she was standing on the Astronomy Tower.

She knew it by the tilt of the stones under her boots, by the way the wind knifed through the open arches, by the faint, familiar smell of old chalk and cold iron. But the night around her was wrong. The stars were too bright, burning like holes punched in a painted sky. The moon hung low and swollen, the color of old bone.

The rain had stopped here—if it had ever been falling at all—but the stones glistened as though they’d been recently wet. Her breath misted in the air, visible in a way it shouldn’t have been at this altitude.

She looked down and saw nothing.

The grounds were gone. No lake, no Forbidden Forest, no Quidditch pitch. Just an endless depth of shifting fog, lit from below by a light that pulsed faintly blue, then went dark, then blue again, in time with her heartbeat.

“Elle.”

The voice came from behind her.

Her entire body went rigid.

No one had called her that in years.

She turned slowly.

Sirius stood at the far edge of the tower.

Or someone wearing Sirius’s face.

He looked the way he had the last time she’d seen him clearly: gaunt, hollow-cheeked, eyes too large in their sockets, hair hanging in tangled ropes around his face. His robes were threadbare, patched at the elbows, the hem stained with dirt and… something darker.

Behind him, perched on the low wall of the tower as if it were a perfectly ordinary thing to do, was Buckbeak.

The hippogriff’s feathers were slick with an oil-sheen of moonlight. His wings were half-spread, talons gripping the stone. His eagle eyes, usually keen and animal-bright, glowed with a pale, unnatural luminescence.

“Sirius,” Estelle said.

Her voice came out hoarse, thin. The wind snatched it and flung it away.

He smiled crookedly. It did not reach his eyes.

“Took you long enough,” he said. “You were always late.”

“This is a dream,” she said.

“Is it?” He tilted his head. “Feels real enough.”

Buckbeak tossed his head, beak snapping once in the air, like he was scenting something she couldn’t smell. The motion sent drops of something dark flinging outward. They hit the stone and did not vanish. They smoked.

Estelle swallowed.

“Where are you?” she asked. “Really?”

Sirius shrugged, a too-fluid movement. His shoulders rolled like a wave. “Somewhere,” he said. “Nowhere. Everywhere they aren’t looking.”

His eyes slipped past her, toward the strange, star-pocked sky.

“On the run,” she said softly.

“Always,” he replied, with a twist of his mouth that wasn’t quite a smile. “From Azkaban, from the Ministry, from the past.”

“From me?” she asked before she could stop herself.

His gaze snapped back to her, sharp as glass.

“Can’t run from you,” he said. “We’re attached, remember?”

He raised his left hand and tapped his chest twice, as though indicating an invisible thread.

She felt it then.

A pull.

Not physical, not exactly, but something deeper—a tug in the place where twinhood had once woven them together. It had been faint for years, muffled by time and distance and the catastrophic sundering of faith. But here, in the too-bright starlight, it thrummed like a plucked chord.

Her finger pulsed in time with it, the pain flaring even in the dream.

“You feel it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good.” His smile sharpened. “I’d hate to think I was the only one with that particular curse.”

Buckbeak shifted behind him, feathers rustling like dead leaves. His wings unfurled a little more. In the uncanny light, his form seemed to blur at the edges, as if he were half made of smoke.

“We should go,” Sirius said, glancing down into the fog below. “They’re coming.”

“Who?” Estelle asked.

He tilted his head, listening to something she couldn’t hear.

In the distance—if there was such a thing as distance here—the fog below the tower began to churn. Dark shapes moved within it, gliding, slow and inevitable. The blue light that had pulsed faintly now flared with each movement, casting sickly illumination upward.

The shapes coalesced, resolved into tattered forms gliding through the mist.

Dementors.

Dozens of them.

Maybe hundreds.

They didn’t rise. They hovered in the churning fog, moving in patterns that made her stomach twist. Like sharks circling beneath a boat. Like bad thoughts circling a tired mind.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said to Sirius. “Not this close to them.”

“They’re always close,” he said quietly. “They never really leave. They’re in the walls. In your head. In the way tea tastes wrong some days.”

She wanted to step toward him.

Her feet wouldn’t move.

“No,” he said suddenly, frowning. “No, no, that’s wrong.”

“What is?”

“You,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here either.”

He squinted, as if trying to bring her into focus.

“You look tired,” he added. “Didn’t I tell you not to work yourself to death?”

“You told me a lot of things,” she said. “Forgive me if I lost track between your incarceration and your fugitive phase.”

A huff of laughter escaped him.

He looked more like himself for a heartbeat.

Then Buckbeak screeched.

The sound ripped through the air, impossibly loud. The stars above flickered; the moon dimmed. The Dementors below surged upward a fraction, as if drawn by the sound.

Buckbeak’s eyes rolled white for a second.

“Time to go,” Sirius said.

“Wait,” she said, panic rising. “Where? How long? Are you safe? Do you have enough food, enough—”

“Always with the questions,” he said. “That was never your job. You were supposed to be the one flying ahead, not the one worrying in the rear.”

“I can do both,” she snapped.

“In your dreams, maybe,” he said wryly.

He turned, grabbing a handful of Buckbeak’s feathers just behind the wing joint. For the first time, she noticed the blood matting the plumage there—dark, almost black in this light. It wasn’t clear whose it was.

“Sirius,” she said, voice cracking. “Don’t go.”

He paused.

Looked back over his shoulder.

For a heartbeat, the tower, the sky, the Dementors—all of it—blurred.

He wasn’t gaunt in that instant. He was seventeen again, hair full and messy, eyes bright, laughing at her from across the Gryffindor table. He was twenty, leaning back in a chair in a cramped kitchen, boots up on the table as she told him to get them off. He was every version of himself layered, flickering, impossible to separate.

Then he was the man again, older and worn.

His gaze softened.

“Elle,” he said quietly. “Tell Remus I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she whispered.

“For all of it,” he said.

Buckbeak launched.

Stone cracked under talons. Wind roared as the hippogriff bounded onto the low wall and leapt into the air, wings beating.

Sirius turned fully into the movement, climbing up onto Buckbeak’s back with the grace of a man who’d done it a hundred times in the dark. For a second, silhouetted against the too-bright moon, he looked like some grotesque heraldic crest—grim rider on spectral beast, flying into nothing.

“Wait!” Estelle shouted, finding her voice too late. “Come back! Tell me where you are! Tell me if—”

He twisted in the saddle, grinning suddenly, wildly.

“Catch me if you can!” he yelled.

The phrase was familiar.

He’d shouted it as a boy, racing brooms with her over the Quidditch pitch.

He shouted it now, as if nothing had changed.

Then the fog surged upward.

The Dementors rose like a tide.

They didn’t reach him; not quite. They swarmed below and around, a writhing sea of tattered shapes. Buckbeak soared above them, wings cleaving the cold air. But their chill reached her. It seeped into her bones.

Her breath crystallized in front of her, hanging in the air for too long. Her hands went numb.

Her injured finger burned.

She looked down.

The bandage was gone.

Her finger was bare, the skin perversely luminous, the infected lines glowing purple beneath the surface. The puncture marks widened slowly, splitting like mouths.

From somewhere, she heard a child crying. Then someone screaming. Then James laughing. Then Lily’s voice, saying her name in a tone she’d never heard in life.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

The cold pressed in.

Something touched her shoulder.

She jerked, eyes flying open.

No Dementor. No Auror. No ghostly hand.

Just Sirius, hovering directly in front of her, standing on nothing, face inches from hers. Buckbeak and the sky and the tower were all too far away and too close at once, the perspective slipping like water.

His eyes were wrong up close.

Too black. No gray left. No light.

“Wake up,” he said.

“What?”

“Wake up, Estelle.”

“I am awake—”

“You’re not,” he said, and his voice overlapped—Sirius’s and someone else’s and her own, echoing. “Wake up. You’re going to miss it. You’re going to miss *him.*”

“Him who?” she demanded, anger surging to cover the fear. “Who, Sirius? Krum? Harry? Severus? You?”

He leaned forward until his forehead touched hers.

It was ice cold.

“Wake up,” he whispered. “Before it’s too late.”

The world shuddered.

The tower cracked like glass.

She fell.

---

Estelle woke with a strangled gasp, sheets tangled around her legs, nightshirt plastered to her skin with sweat.

The room was dark.

For a heartbeat she couldn’t hear the rain, couldn’t see the familiar shape of the wardrobe or the faint rectangle of lighter darkness where the window was. All she could feel was cold. The Dementor chill clung, even though she knew—she *knew*—there were no Dementors at Hogwarts now, not inside the grounds, not close enough to touch her.

Her heart hammered against her ribs.

She dragged in a breath.

The sound of the storm crept back in—rain against glass, lower now, more tired. The castle’s ambient creaks and sighs wrapped around that. Somewhere, a clock chimed softly.

She brought her injured hand up.

The bandage was still there.

Her fingers were shaking.

She pressed the wrapped finger gently, half-terrified she’d find it split open, glowing, mouths where wounds should be. Instead, she felt only heat and pain. Familiar, wretchedly mundane.

“Just a dream,” she whispered.

Her voice sounded small in the dark.

She lay back slowly, staring at the ceiling she couldn’t see.

Sirius’s last words in the dream echoed in the spaces between her breaths.

Wake up. Before it’s too late.

Her heart refused to slow.

Outside, the rain fell on, indifferent to what any of them dreamed.

Estelle turned her face toward the faint lighter patch of the window, bandaged hand pressed against her sternum, and waited for the night to let her go.

Chapter Text

Estelle woke in pieces.

For a few long beats she wasn’t entirely sure which way was up. Her heart was already pounding, as if she’d been running. Her nightshirt clung damply to her back. The room held that odd, grainy quality of late afternoon—light slanting in thin and tired through the window, shadows stretched too long.

She stared at the ceiling and tried to grab hold of something solid inside herself.

Tower. Fog. Buckbeak. Sirius.

Wake up, before it’s too late.

The memory of his voice slid through her like a cold knife. She swallowed, forcing her thoughts into order. It had been a dream. A vivid one, yes, and the kind that left echoes clinging to the corners of her mind—but a dream.

The pain in her hand, on the other hand, was very real.

The throb in her ring finger had upgraded from “annoying” to “actively hostile.” Even before she moved, she could feel it: a swollen, pulsing ache beneath the bandages, matching her heartbeat too closely for comfort.

She lifted the hand into her line of sight. The bandage looked a fraction more discolored than it had that morning. Her stomach dipped.

She’d made it through her abbreviated Saturday duties—an extra-care session in the greenhouses, a handful of older students coming for help with their essays—on grit and potions, then stumbled back to her quarters around four in the afternoon intending to rest “for a minute.”

Clearly, that minute had stretched.

The clock on her mantelpiece read just past six.

The castle bells chimed a heartbeat later—long, rolling notes that carried the clear message: dinnertime.

Estelle exhaled slowly.

Halloween. The choosing of the Champions.

Whatever funk the dream had left in her, whatever infection simmered in her finger—none of that was going to stop the evening from happening. The Goblet would not wait for her to feel ready.

She swung her legs off the bed, hissing as a jolt of pain shot through her finger at the simple motion. She cradled the hand against her chest for a moment, breathing. The ache ebbed back to its baseline angry throb.

“Enough,” she muttered at it. “We’ll see Pomfrey tomorrow. Or Severus. Or both. Tonight you’re just a spectator like the rest of us.”

She meant it this time, she told herself. The creeping heat up the side of the finger, the mottled bruising she’d glimpsed under the bandage the night before—those were not things to ignore indefinitely.

Her reflection in the small mirror above the basin looked as off-kilter as she felt. There were smudges under her eyes that hadn’t been there a week ago. Her hair—dark and usually obedient to a braid—had half escaped in sleep, curling out around her face like black smoke.

She splashed cold water over her cheeks, letting it shock her fully awake, then pulled her hair back into something approximating order. Fresh robes, a neat-enough collar, dragon-hide glove reluctantly back over the bandaged hand.

She shrugged her outer robe into place, squared her shoulders, and stepped out into the corridor.

The castle felt charged.

Not just noisy—the usual weekend clamor of feet and voices—but *amped.* The air was taut with expectation, with the kind of nervous giddiness that hovered before fireworks or storms. She could feel it humming in the stones under her boots as she climbed toward the Great Hall.

Groups of students hurried in the same direction, clusters of blue silk, heavy fur, and black Hogwarts robes moving like shoals through the corridors.

“—of course it’ll be Krum—”

“—Delacour, have you seen her do non-verbal charms—”

“—Hufflepuff’s got Cedric, we’ve got a real chance—”

“—what if no one from Hogwarts gets picked at all?”

The question hung like a half-joking fear.

Estelle threaded through them, listening, not intervening. The staccato rhythm of English peppered with French and the harsher Durmstrang consonants reminded her of the dream’s layered voices. She shook the thought away.

Inside the Great Hall, the atmosphere sharpened from buzzing to electric.

The Halloween feast had outdone itself. Pumpkins the size of armchairs hovered over the tables, carved with flickering faces. Bats wheeled in lazy arcs under the enchanted ceiling, which reflected the storm-tossed sky—clouds scudding across a deep, star-scratched black. Candles floated everywhere, their flames steady despite the phantom wind.

At the far end, on a raised platform before the staff table, the Goblet of Fire burned within its golden Age Line circle. Its flames were that peculiar, otherworldly blue—cold to look at, yet casting a bright glow on the surrounding stone. The Triwizard Cup sat on its plinth nearby, gleaming silver, drinking in the light.

All three schools had gathered now. Beauxbatons students clustered together in a pale sea of blues at their table; Durmstrang’s contingent anchored the end of the Slytherin table like a knot of dark cloth and broad shoulders. The Hogwarts houses had filled their benches, colors intermingling more than usual as friends from different tables leaned across to gossip.

Estelle took her place at the staff table between Aurora Sinistra and Professor Vector. Aurora’s usual composed elegance was tinged with tension; Vector bounced one leg under the table, eyes alight in a way that suggested she was mentally calculating odds.

“Sleep well?” Aurora murmured without looking away from the Goblet.

Estelle made a noncommittal sound. “Vividly,” she said. “You?”

“Barely,” Aurora replied. “If one more Beauxbatons girl asks me if the stars will be ‘kinder’ to them tonight, I may throw myself off the tower.”

“Tell them the stars prefer quiet,” Estelle suggested.

Aurora’s mouth quirked.

Down the table, Severus sat very straight, dark gaze fixed not on the Goblet but on the cluster of Durmstrang students. His expression was unreadable from this angle. Every now and then his eyes flickered to Karkaroff, who lounged near the end of the table in his furs, thin beard framing a smile that was all teeth and no warmth.

Dumbledore rose to his feet.

The noise in the Hall ebbed, then died.

“Good evening,” he said, and the words rolled out warm and deceptively simple. “As you all know, the time has come to select the champions who will represent each of our three schools in this year’s Triwizard Tournament.”

A low ripple went through the students—excitement, nerves.

“The Goblet of Fire has now accepted all entrants,” Dumbledore went on. “In a moment, it will make its choice.”

He explained again, for form’s sake, how each chosen name would emerge, how each school would have one champion, how those champions were bound by their acceptance. His beard caught the blue glow, making him look almost spectral.

Estelle listened, but her attention drifted to the Goblet itself.

The flames were burning higher now, the blue light sharpening, throwing white highlights across the carved rim. Sparks snapped, rising and dissolving before they reached the enchanted ceiling.

Her finger chose that moment to throb hard, a deep pulse that made her bite the inside of her cheek.

She curled the hand in her lap, hidden under the table, and stared at the Goblet as if daring it to do anything stranger than it was already meant to.

Dumbledore concluded his remarks with a small nod and a twinkle. “Let us begin.”

The Hall held its breath.

The Goblet flared.

The blue flames shot up, roaring suddenly higher. The light shifted—white blazing at the core, then shading toward orange at the tips. A shower of sparks flew up, then—

With a sharp pop, a charred piece of parchment spat from the fire and whirled into the air.

Dumbledore caught it neatly between two fingers.

He unfolded the scrap and read it, his voice ringing through the Hall.

“The champion for Durmstrang,” he announced, “is Viktor Krum.”

The Durmstrang table erupted.

Cheers, shouts, fists hammered on wood. A number of Hogwarts students joined in, particularly from Gryffindor; more than one voice screamed Krum’s name in the same tone it might for a Quidditch final.

Karkaroff surged to his feet, clapping enthusiastically, eyes gleaming with a pride that looked uncomfortably proprietorial.

Viktor himself pushed back his bench and stood.

He was pale, but not with surprise; more like a man walking toward something he’d always known was coming. His dark eyes looked even deeper in the Goblet’s glow as he crossed the Hall, shoulders straight, jaw set.

As he passed the Ravenclaw table, a cluster of girls seemed to forget how to breathe. Hermione, Estelle noted, raised her eyebrows but did not swoon.

“He knew,” Vector murmured, nudging her spectacles up her nose. “Of course he knew.”

“He looks like someone heading into storm rather than glory,” Estelle replied quietly.

Krum stepped into the chamber off the side of the Hall where the champions would wait, disappearing from view.

The buzz leveled out into a simmer.

The Goblet quieted.

Then, once more, it burned higher.

Blue to white. White to orange. Sparks. Another charred scrap spiraled up and out.

Dumbledore’s hand closed around it.

“The champion for Beauxbatons,” he called, “is Fleur Delacour.”

A wave of delighted shrieks and applause swept through the Beauxbatons table. Several girls jumped to their feet, hugging each other. Madame Maxime’s face glowed; she clapped, chin lifted.

Fleur stood.

Even Estelle, who was not easily swayed by aesthetics, had to admit the girl looked like she’d stepped out of a storybook illustration. Pale hair gleaming, chin high, she walked with measured grace toward the side chamber.

But beneath the composed exterior, Estelle caught flickers of something sharper—a strain around the mouth, a blaze in the eyes. Fleur might have expected the selection, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t keenly aware of the stakes.

At the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy watched Fleur pass with the air of someone filing away a new ambition.

The Hall murmured again, speculation rising.

“Two down,” Aurora said under her breath. “Place your bets.”

Estelle’s eyes moved, almost against her will, to Cedric Diggory at the Hufflepuff table.

He sat very straight, as usual, shoulders back, the easy smile he often wore replaced tonight with straighter lines. The Hufflepuffs around him were already jittery, glancing between him and the Goblet as if trying to will it to see what they did.

The Goblet’s flames flickered low, then suddenly shot up for the third time.

This time, there was no preliminary crackle. The parchment burst forth as if impatient.

Dumbledore caught it, unfolded, read.

“The champion for Hogwarts,” he said, voice carrying clearly, “is Cedric Diggory.”

The Hufflepuff table exploded.

There was no other word for it. Students surged to their feet, yelling, whistling, pounding the table so hard the plates rattled. A sea of yellow and black bounced up and down. Someone started chanting Cedric’s name; the rest took it up immediately.

Cedric looked momentarily stunned.

Then he smiled, wide and brilliant, a little disbelieving, and got up.

He was blushing faintly as he stepped over benches and skirted around elated classmates, accepting claps on the back so many that Estelle worried someone would bruise him before the Tournament ever began. But he moved with that same steady grace he had on a broom.

“Of course,” Estelle murmured, warmth unfolding in her chest. “Of course it’s him.”

“Good choice,” Minerva said crisply from down the table, the slightest hint of pride threading through her tone.

Even some Slytherins clapped—politely, coolly—but it was there. The Gryffindor table joined in, albeit with scattered grumbles about fairness. The Ravenclaws were already debating his strengths in potential tasks.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione clapped too. Harry’s expression was open, unconflicted happiness for his schoolmate; Ron looked as if he’d bitten into something sour but was trying not to show it; Hermione beamed.

Cedric gave a courteous nod toward the staff table as he passed below it. Dumbledore inclined his head, eyes twinkling. Estelle lifted her good hand slightly in acknowledgment, ignoring the twinge in the injured one.

The door to the side chamber closed behind him.

The Hall’s energy shifted. The crest of anticipation had broken; what remained was excited satisfaction, relief, and the low roar of conversation rising as everyone began to dissect the choices.

“Hufflepuff,” Aurora said, half-smiling. “Interesting. Good for them.”

“They deserve a win,” Estelle said. “Preferably one that doesn’t involve anyone maimed beyond recognition.”

“Your optimism is showing,” Vector put in dryly.

Dumbledore raised his hands for quiet again.

“Well,” he said, “I believe that concludes—”

The Goblet flared.

Estelle’s head snapped around.

The flames leapt higher than before, the blue burning almost white-hot, reaching toward the ceiling. Sparks shot out in all directions. The light around the Cup shifted from steady to erratic, pulsing.

A murmur swept through the Hall—confusion, then unease.

“That’s not in the script,” Vector said sharply.

The color of the fire changed.

Not the normal shift to orange.

Red.

An ugly, deep red at the core, like heated metal, edged with black. The sound it made was different too—less a bonfire crackle, more a low, urgent roar.

Another scrap of parchment burst out.

It fell more slowly this time, spinning end over end, the charred edges still glowing.

Dumbledore caught it.

For a moment—just a moment—his face went blank.

Estelle’s stomach turned.

He smoothed the parchment, looked at the name, then looked out over the sea of upturned faces.

When he spoke, his voice was calm, but there was a new thread in it. Something taut.

“The fourth champion…” he began, the words themselves enough to send another ripple through the room, “for Hogwarts…”

Silence.

“Harry Potter.”

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

It was as if the entire Hall had been frozen.

The words hung in the air like a spell.

Then the reaction came, not all at once but in layers.

Closest to Harry, the sound was disbelief.

“What?” Ron blurted, half-rising from the bench.

Harry stared at Dumbledore as if he hadn’t heard properly. Hermione’s mouth fell open before she snapped it shut again, eyes huge.

Further out, confusion.

“That can’t be right—”

“He’s not seventeen—”

“The Age Line—”

At the Slytherin table, low hisses and mutters started immediately. Estelle heard Draco Malfoy’s voice, sharp with ugly satisfaction. “Knew he wanted attention…”

The Beauxbatons students exchanged baffled looks. A few Durmstrang boys laughed once, short and disbelieving, before subsiding into murmured commentary.

The staff table held its own small storm.

Minerva’s hand flew to her chest. “But—he’s a fourth-year,” she said under her breath, as if Dumbledore didn’t know that.

Madame Maxime’s dark eyes narrowed, her lips pressing together. Karkaroff’s face went very still, the false smile draining away. His gaze darted from the Goblet to Dumbledore to Harry and back again, like a man tracking a threat.

Severus’s expression shifted in a way Estelle couldn’t entirely read from her angle—alarm, anger, something darker. His black eyes pinned Harry for a long, unblinking second.

Estelle’s finger throbbed once, so sharply she almost flinched.

Dumbledore repeated the name, more gently, extending a hand.

“Harry,” he called. “If you would come forward.”

Harry moved like someone in a dream.

He stood up slowly, every eye in the Hall following him, a thousand pinpricks of attention pricking his skin. His face was pale, stunned. Estelle could see from here that his hands were empty; he had no wand out, no parchment, no anything. He looked nothing like a boy who’d been plotting this all week and everything like someone whose world had just lurched sideways.

“Go on, Potter,” someone called, half-jeering, half-awed.

Harry walked.

The noise rose around him—shouts, questions, hisses, murmured commentary—but it all seemed to fall away from him. Estelle recognized that look. It was how people sometimes moved through the Hospital Wing—past the curtains, past the worried faces, toward a bed they hadn’t known they’d be lying in that morning.

He passed the Hufflepuff table; some of the cheering had died on their faces. Cedric’s name still vibrated in the air, half-celebration, now half-question.

As Harry drew level with the staff table, Estelle saw his eyes flick up, scanning the adults like he was searching for someone to deny it, to tell him this was some elaborate prank.

She felt a sudden, fierce urge to stand, to say *I know you, you wouldn’t do this,* to put herself between him and the weight of all those stares.

She stayed seated.

This was not her call.

Her right hand curled under the table. Pain sparked up from her finger, once, twice, steady and insistent.

Harry stepped into the circle, crossed the Age Line without resistance, and disappeared into the side chamber where the other champions waited.

The doors closed behind him with a soft thud.

The Hall erupted.

Everyone seemed to be talking at once—angry, incredulous, gleeful, frightened. The Hufflepuffs’ jubilation had broken into fractious arguing. Gryffindor’s table seethed—some up in arms on Harry’s behalf, others stunned into quiet. The Slytherins smirked and whispered.

At the staff table, voices were firmer, sharper.

“This is impossible,” Madame Maxime said coldly. “The boy is too young.”

“Quite right,” Karkaroff agreed quickly, but his eyes never left the closed door where Harry had vanished. “The Goblet should not have done this. Unless…”

Dumbledore raised a hand.

“Calm,” he said, and the word, spoken in that particular way he had, cut through a surprising amount of the noise. “We will investigate. I ask the heads of the visiting schools, and Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall, to join me in the antechamber.”

He turned to go, his expression unreadable, the lines around his eyes deeper than they’d been an hour before.

Severus rose, robes whispering. As he passed Estelle, his hand brushed the edge of the table—just a touch, almost as if to steady himself.

She caught a glance of his face up close.

He looked, she thought, like a man who had just seen a pattern he’d hoped never to see again.

Minerva moved with crisp, clipped strides, lips a thin, furious line.

Madame Maxime swept down from the platform like a storm in silk. Karkaroff followed, his fake joviality gone, shoulders tight.

Estelle remained seated, fingers pressed hard to her bandaged hand as if she could keep its throbbing in check by force of will.

Students were still talking, still speculating.

He must have cheated—
He didn’t even want to enter—
Maybe the Age Line failed—
It’s Harry Potter; of course something weird happened.

Aurora let out a low breath beside her. “So much for one champion per school,” she said.

“So much for a quiet year,” Estelle replied, voice steadier than she felt.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ron’s face—flushed, stiff, jaw clenched in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with pride. Hermione leaned toward him, talking urgently; he stared straight ahead.

At the Hufflepuff table, Cedric was surrounded, but his expression was thoughtful, not angry.

High above, the enchanted ceiling showed the storm clouds starting to thin, moonlight pushing through in ragged patches.

Estelle’s finger burned under the bandage.

Her dream flickered behind her eyes—Sirius on Buckbeak’s back, Dementors swirling below, his voice saying wake up before it’s too late.

She stared at the closed door where Harry had vanished.

Whatever had just happened, it was bigger than a boy’s name on a bit of parchment.

The Goblet of Fire’s blue light sputtered once, then steadied, as if it had done exactly what it intended and could now rest.

Estelle Black sat very still in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, surrounded by roaring voices, with her hand throbbing and her heart full of a familiar dread.

The champions had been chosen.

But nothing about this felt settled.

Chapter Text

The castle swallowed her.

The moment Estelle stepped out of the Great Hall, the roar of voices behind her became a muffled, distant sea. The corridor ahead was dimmer, the torches seeming to burn lower than usual, the shadows thicker. She could still feel the echo of a thousand eyes on the back of her neck, the image of the Goblet’s last flare seared into her thoughts.

Harry Potter.

A fourth champion.

Her bandaged finger throbbed in time with her heartbeat as she followed Minerva and Severus toward the moving staircase that led to Dumbledore’s office. Her glove felt too tight; the skin beneath it was hot and swollen. Each step sent a little spike up her arm, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it.

One catastrophe at a time.

They climbed in a small, tense knot—Dumbledore at the front with Madame Maxime and Karkaroff, Crouch and Bagman trailing, Moody clunking somewhere behind. Severus walked just in front of her, his robes whispering against the stone, shoulders rigid. Minerva’s mouth was a sharp line; Vector and Flitwick had peeled off somewhere else, shepherding confused students, while Hagrid, enormous and anxious, had lumbered toward the grounds to do… something with the Beauxbatons carriage and the Durmstrang ship.

For once, Estelle was content to be the quiet shadow in the group.

The gargoyle leapt aside at Dumbledore’s murmured password. The spiral staircase carried them upward, stone grinding softly under their feet.

Dumbledore’s office was already full.

The circular room seemed smaller than usual with so many bodies inside—shelves crammed with spindly instruments humming faintly, portraits of past headmasters and headmistresses pretending to sleep with varying degrees of success, the great claw-footed desk piled with parchment.

And there, clustered near the center, stood the champions.

Cedric Diggory—still a little dazed, but holding himself straight. Fleur Delacour—chin up, arms folded, anger and worry warring visibly in her eyes. Viktor Krum—expression thunderous, gaze glued to the stone floor as if it had personally betrayed him.

And Harry.

He stood slightly apart, shoulders hunched, hair even more of a mess than usual. He clutched his wand in one hand like it was an anchor. His eyes flicked to Dumbledore as the headmaster stepped in, then darted to the others—Karkaroff’s sneer, Maxime’s glare, Severus’s keen dark stare, Estelle’s own wide gray eyes—before dropping to the floor.

Moody was already there, leaning against the wall with a kind of coiled, restless energy, his magical eye whirring and ticking as it spun in its socket.

Estelle slipped into a spot against the wall near the door, just to the right of Severus. The stone was cool at her back. The air smelled faintly of lemon and woodsmoke and the metallic tang of magical instruments.

She realized she was breathing too fast and forced herself to slow it down.

Dumbledore crossed to the center of the room, blue eyes moving from one champion to the next.

“Good evening,” he said quietly.

No one answered.

The portraits on the walls pretended not to lean closer.

“Now,” he went on, still gentle but with steel folded into his tone, “we are here to address a matter our Goblet has… complicated.”

“That is one word for it,” Karkaroff snapped. “I can think of others.”

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said calmly. “But let us begin with what we know. Four names have emerged from the Goblet of Fire. Four champions have been chosen.”

“Three champions,” Madame Maxime corrected sharply, folding massive arms over her chest. “Three schools. The boy is an error.”

“Is he?” Moody rasped from the wall. “Funny sort of error, spitting out a fully-legible name and school.”

Harry flinched at the word *boy.* Estelle saw it, that little dip in his shoulders.

“Regardless,” Dumbledore said, holding up a hand before Maxime could retort, “we must determine how this occurred. Harry…”

He turned to the boy, and the room seemed to tilt just slightly around that pivot.

Estelle’s stomach tightened.

“Did you put your name into the Goblet of Fire?” Dumbledore asked.

His voice was calm, but there was a latent urgency in it that hadn’t been there at dinner. He moved closer as he spoke, white beard trailing, eyes locked onto Harry’s face as if he could read truth there the way others read books.

Harry swallowed.

“No, sir,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Did you ask an older student to put it in for you?” Dumbledore pressed.

“No,” Harry said again, more firmly.

“Are you sure you have not… forgotten?” Karkaroff drawled, a thin smile twisting his mouth. “A moment of excitement, perhaps? A lapse?”

Harry’s face flushed. “I didn’t,” he repeated. “I swear. I didn’t put my name in. I didn’t ask anyone to do it.”

Estelle’s bandaged hand twitched at her side.

She didn’t know Harry well—not in the way she’d known James, not yet—but she knew enough. The terror in his eyes, the stunned confusion, the stubborn honesty were all painfully familiar.

She believed him.

Beside her, Severus shifted, the fabric of his sleeve brushing hers. She glanced up at him. His expression had settled into something unreadable—a carefully blank mask he wore when his mind was moving too fast to show on his face.

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second.

You see it too, she wanted to say.

I see something, his gaze answered, though the words never left his mouth.

“Headmaster.” Barty Crouch’s clipped, precise voice cut through the air. “Whether the boy entered himself is, at this point, immaterial. The Goblet has named him. The binding magic is not concerned with… intent.”

“You can’t be serious,” Madame Maxime said, outraged. “’E is a child.”

“A child who somehow circumvented the Age Line,” Karkaroff added smoothly. “If he did not do this himself, someone did it for him. Someone powerful. Someone who seeks to undermine the Tournament.”

Moody let out a harsh, barking laugh. “And that’s what we should be worrying about, isn’t it? *Who* put the boy’s name in. Not whether he’s old enough to play.”

His magical eye whirred wildly, settling on Harry for a moment so intense that Harry took a step back.

“We’re looking at a plot, Dumbledore,” Moody went on, ignoring Maxime’s offended huff. “Someone got past your Age Line. Someone wanted Potter in this mess.”

Estelle shivered.

The word plot sent her mind spiraling backward—war councils, whispered plans in Order safe houses, names written and scratched out on parchment, the cold knowledge that sometimes a boy or girl was a piece to be moved onto a board.

Harry looked up at Dumbledore again.

“I don’t want to compete,” he said.

The quiet desperation in his voice made Estelle’s throat ache.

Dumbledore’s eyes closed briefly.

“I know,” he said softly.

“Regardless,” Crouch interjected, “the rules are clear. The Triwizard Tournament carries with it a binding magical contract. Those whose names emerge from the Goblet are compelled to compete.”

“He is fourteen,” Minerva snapped, her composure beginning to crack. “You cannot seriously expect—”

“It is not a matter of expectation,” Crouch said coldly. “It is a matter of law. International law, Professor McGonagall.”

“Surely we can—” Estelle began, the protest slipping out before she could stop it. *Surely we can find a way around a bloody cup.*

Dumbledore glanced at her, and the look in his eyes was apology and resignation and something like grief.

“If there were a way to undo the Goblet’s decision, Estelle,” he said, gently but firmly, “I would take it.”

That shut her up.

Fawkes, perched high on his golden stand, ruffled his feathers and let out a low, mourning trill.

Cedric spoke for the first time.

“Professor,” he said, looking at Dumbledore rather than Crouch, “if… if there’s another Hogwarts champion… does that mean Cedric isn’t…” He trailed off, flushing. “I mean—I got picked fair. I put my name in. That’s not… that doesn’t change, does it?”

There was no arrogance in his voice. Only concern—for fairness, for the meaning of this moment.

“Your selection stands,” Dumbledore said. “You are still the Hogwarts champion.”

“And Potter?” Karkaroff demanded. “What is he, then? A spare? An extra?”

“The Goblet named him as representing Hogwarts as well,” Crouch said, steepling his fingers. “We must regard him as a fourth champion.”

Maxime made an angry, inarticulate noise.

“This is an outrage,” she said. “If ’Ogwarts has two champions—”

“The boy is not my doing,” Dumbledore said sharply, for once allowing a hint of temper into his tone. “And whatever advantage Hogwarts might seem to gain from this, I assure you, I take no pleasure in it.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Karkaroff sneered.

Severus’s voice slid into the conversation then, smooth and quiet and dangerous.

“Are you suggesting, Igor,” he said, black eyes narrowing slightly, “that Albus orchestrated this? That he somehow tampered with his own protections and risked the Tournament’s collapse for the sake of… what? House pride?”

Karkaroff flinched, just slightly, at the way Severus said his name.

“I am suggesting,” Karkaroff said, tone cooling just a fraction, “that Hogwarts has a reputation for trouble. And that wherever this boy goes, it follows.”

Estelle’s hand curled into a fist inside her glove. Pain flared; she welcomed it.

“Trouble follows those who seek it,” she said coldly, unable to keep quiet any longer. “Harry Potter did not ask for a Dark Lord as an enemy. He did not ask for a scar or a prophecy or a place in this Tournament.”

Karkaroff’s gaze flicked to her. He looked like he would very much like to snap something venomous back, but Moody spoke first.

“She’s right,” Moody growled. “Whether you like it or not, the boy’s been a target since he had barely learned to walk. Imagine what someone could do with him in a competition designed to test the limits of what a student can survive.”

The room went very still.

Harry’s face had gone a shade paler with every sentence. He stood very small in the circle of adults, shoulders drawn in, as though trying to make himself a harder target.

“Enough,” Dumbledore said, the word quiet but carrying more weight than a shout.

He looked at Harry again.

“Harry,” he said, and this time the steel in his voice was tempered by something deep and sorrowful, “I must ask you once more, for the record and for the sake of those gathered here: did you put your name into the Goblet of Fire? Did you ask an older student to do so on your behalf?”

Harry met his gaze.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

Silence followed, thick and heavy.

Dumbledore held his eyes a moment longer, then nodded.

“Very well,” he said. “I believe you.”

Some of the portraits murmured in alarm; Phineas Nigellus snorted audibly.

“Albus—” Crouch began.

“The Goblet’s magic stands,” Dumbledore said. “The contract binds him, whether he wished it or no. That is a fact. Another fact is that Harry did not choose this. We will proceed, but we will do so with that knowledge in mind.”

He turned to the champions as a group.

“You four,” he said, “will face three tasks, spaced throughout the school year. They will test your courage, your intelligence, your resourcefulness. They will be dangerous.”

Fleur’s jaw tightened. Cedric straightened. Krum’s eyes darkened.

Harry swallowed again.

“You will receive information about the first task in due course,” Dumbledore continued. “For now, you will return to your dormitories. Rest. Try to ignore the gossip, as much as that is possible. You will all be given time to prepare.”

“’Ow generous,” Fleur muttered under her breath in French.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Delacour?” Maxime said sharply.

“Rien,” Fleur said quickly, though her eyes flashed.

“Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall, Estelle,” Dumbledore said, glancing to where they stood by the wall. “Please see that your houses are… calmed. Or at least contained.”

“Of course,” Minerva said.

Severus inclined his head, his expression becoming that familiar blend of disdain and reluctant responsibility.

Estelle nodded once. Her throat felt tight.

“Champions, you are dismissed,” Dumbledore said.

They filed out slowly.

Cedric went first, offering a brief, apologetic smile toward Harry as he passed. “See you in the common room,” he murmured.

Harry nodded mutely.

Fleur went next, shoulders stiff, chin high, quick French spilling under her breath in what Estelle suspected was a string of curses. Krum trailed after, hands in his pockets, jaw clenched.

Harry lingered for half a heartbeat, as if wanting to say something—perhaps to Dumbledore, perhaps to someone else—and then moved toward the door.

As he drew level with Estelle and Severus, Estelle couldn’t help it.

“Harry,” she said softly.

He glanced up, startled.

“If you need… to talk,” she said, fumbling for words that wouldn’t sound patronizing or intrusive, “about anything—the Tournament, the plants that might not kill you, the ones that might—it doesn’t have to be tonight. But I’m here. All year.”

His eyes searched her face, as if trying to determine whether this was some kind of test.

“Thank you, Professor,” he said quietly.

Severus said nothing, but his gaze on Harry was sharp and measuring. Harry’s eyes flicked to him briefly—tight, wary—and then he was gone, swallowed back into the stairwell, off to face a common room full of shouting Gryffindors.

The door closed with a soft snick.

For a moment, no one moved.

Then Dumbledore exhaled, looking suddenly, profoundly tired.

“Thank you all,” he said to the assembled staff and guests. “We will speak more in the morning. For tonight, I suggest sleep, if you can find it.”

“Sleep,” Maxime repeated with a scoff. “You expect me to sleep when my girl is in this mess?”

“I expect you to rest enough to be of use to her,” Dumbledore replied mildly.

Bagman and Crouch murmured about regulations as they departed. Moody gave Dumbledore a long, hard look, then stumped out with less clatter than usual, as if deep in thought rather than blustering.

Karkaroff lingered a moment longer, eyes drilling into Severus’s profile.

“This place,” he said in a low, unpleasant tone, “is a magnet for catastrophe.”

“Then feel free to leave,” Severus replied without turning.

Karkaroff bared his teeth in something not unlike a smile, then swept out, fur-lined robes whispering against the floor.

The office emptied by degrees.

Minerva gave Estelle’s arm a brief squeeze as she passed. “Get some rest,” she said briskly. “We’ll need our wits tomorrow.”

Estelle nodded.

Soon, only a few remained: Dumbledore behind his desk, staring at nothing; Fawkes, preening mournfully; and at the back of the room, the two of them—Severus and Estelle—still standing with their shoulders almost, but not quite, touching.

“You should both go,” Dumbledore said at last, looking up.

Severus frowned. “Albus—”

“I know,” Dumbledore said. “Believe me, Severus, I know.”

Their gaze held.

Estelle felt very much like she was intruding on something older and sharper than her.

“I will be here,” Dumbledore went on, “should anything… develop tonight. For now, the best thing we can do is watch, and prepare. And try to sleep after failing at both.”

A corner of Severus’s mouth twitched.

“As you wish,” he said.

“Goodnight, Estelle,” Dumbledore said, his voice softening when he turned it on her.

“Goodnight, Headmaster,” she replied.

They left together.

The spiral staircase carried them down in silence. The castle’s ambient noise felt muffled now, as if someone had thrown a blanket over the whole place.

It wasn’t until they were halfway back to the dungeons, feet echoing on a quieter corridor, that Estelle realized her hands were shaking.

She curled her bandaged one tighter against herself. Pain radiated out from the finger—hot, insistent—but it felt almost distant compared to the buzzing in her skull.

“Stop,” Severus said suddenly.

They were in a stretch of hallway just before the turn toward the Slytherin entrance, a lower torch sputtering overhead.

Estelle blinked. “What?”

“Your breathing,” he said. “You’re about two seconds from hyperventilating.”

She hadn’t even noticed.

She dragged in a breath. It stuttered.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“You are a terrible liar,” he said quietly.

She let out something between a laugh and a gasp.

He regarded her for a moment, then tipped his head toward the deeper corridor.

“Come,” he said. “You’re not going to manage sleep like this. And if you faint in the hallway, I’ll be obliged to explain you to Slytherin students, which I refuse to do.”

“I should go to my rooms,” she protested weakly. “I should… check on… plants. Things.”

“Your plants are not about to fling themselves into mortal peril for the sake of inter-school sport,” he said. “Potter is. Cedric is. And you’re trembling like a bowstring. My chambers are closer.”

“I don’t—”

“Estelle,” he said, very softly but in that tone he rarely used—gentle, but brooking no argument.

She shut her mouth.

He was right. Her legs felt unsteady; her brain buzzed as if full of bees. The infection in her finger added its own hot pulse, like an off-beat drum beneath the rest.

“Fine,” she muttered. “But only because your tea is marginally better than mine.”

He made a faint, almost amused huff.

“Obviously,” he said.

His quarters were cool and dim when they stepped inside, the fire down to embers. He flicked his wand and the lamps brightened, revealing the familiar tidy chaos: books in careful stacks, vials in precise rows, a kettle on a side table near the hearth.

Estelle sank into the armchair without being asked.

Her body seemed to fold into it with a kind of bone-deep exhaustion. The cushioning was firmer than in her own rooms but felt oddly reassuring—like being held upright by something that refused to let her collapse.

Severus moved around the room with his usual efficient economy, shrugging off his outer robe and hanging it on its peg, stoking the fire with a word. He picked up the kettle, weighed it, and filled it with water from his wand before setting it over the flames.

The small, domestic motions—familiar and unhurried—did more to steady her than any speech would have.

She watched him through half-lidded eyes.

“You should have gone to Pomfrey yesterday,” he said after a moment, without turning. “Your hand is worse.”

“How can you tell?” she asked.

“You’re holding yourself strangely,” he said. “Protecting it. And you went chalk-white when Karkaroff started shouting.”

“That was Karkaroff,” she muttered. “Anyone would go chalk-white.”

A ghost of a smirk.

“True,” he allowed.

The kettle began to hum softly.

He retrieved a tin of tea leaves from the shelf—one she recognized; he’d grudgingly admitted once that it was a blend she’d introduced him to—and measured them into two cups. The scent of bergamot and something darker curled into the air.

He brought her a cup first.

“Careful,” he said. “Hot.”

She accepted it with her left hand. Her right twitched, wanting to help, then recoiled from the heat. The motion sent a spike of pain through her finger that made her vision blur for a second.

Severus’s eyes sharpened.

“Let me see,” he said.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, more reflexively than convincingly.

“Estelle.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

She hesitated, then reluctantly set the tea down and tugged off her glove.

The bandage underneath looked worse in this light: darker at the edges, swelling stretching the cloth in an uneven bulge.

Severus’s mouth thinned.

“Drink your tea,” he said.

“That doesn’t sound like ‘let me see,’” she replied.

“I’m deciding whether I need to drag you to Pomfrey tonight or merely bully you into going first thing in the morning,” he said. “In the meantime, drink. It will help.”

She obeyed.

The tea was strong and hot and pleasantly bitter. It grounded her, bringing her back into her body more fully—the burn on her tongue, the warmth spreading down into her chest, the harsh, steady beat of her heart.

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.

The fire crackled softly. The rain outside had softened to a quieter patter against whatever windows the dungeons could claim. Somewhere deep in the castle, a clock chimed the hour.

Finally, Estelle exhaled.

“I can’t,” she said.

Severus glanced over. “Can’t what?”

“Watch this,” she said, staring into her cup. “Not again. Not another boy with James’s face dragged into something he didn’t choose. Not a Hufflepuff who’s done everything right, who’s kind and fair and good, thrown into the same line of fire.”

Her voice fractured on the last word. She swallowed hard.

“The Tournament is controlled,” he said quietly. “Monitored. It is not war.”

“It’s not war yet,” she shot back. “But it’s dangerous enough without someone meddling with the Goblet. Someone who wanted Harry in there for a reason.”

She set the cup down with a clink and pressed the heel of her good hand to her brow.

“We both know how this goes,” she went on, words tumbling out now that the dam had cracked. “A boy gets marked. People call it fate, call it prophecy, call it anything other than what it is—adults deciding how much risk is acceptable when it’s not their bodies on the line. I stood in too many rooms where James laughed it off, where Sirius made jokes, where Lily exhaled like she was trying not to scream. I watched it go badly. I watched it end with a cottage destroyed and a baby orphaned and my twin in chains.”

Her chest heaved.

“And now he’s thirteen years older,” she said, voice low. “Carrying all of that, whether he knows it or not. And we’re still putting him on pedestals and in arenas and calling it destiny.”

Severus was very still.

Fawkes’s distant, mournful trill from the office earlier seemed to echo in the back of her mind.

Finally, Severus spoke.

“You think I do not see it,” he said. It wasn’t quite a question.

She looked up.

His dark eyes were fixed on the fire, not her, but his jaw was clenched.

“I see James’s face every time Potter looks at me with that… that mixture of fear and defiance,” he said. “I see Lily’s eyes when he is confused, or horrified, or determined. I see… outcomes.”

He spat the word like it tasted bad.

“That does not mean,” he went on, softer, “that there is nothing between now and then. That what we do now is irrelevant.”

She swallowed.

“You think someone is targeting him,” she said.

“I think,” Severus said, “that the Goblet of Fire does not make mistakes. It does not miscount. It is a tool. A powerful one. Someone used it. And I think that we would be foolish to assume that whoever is capable of such manipulation is done.”

A cold that had nothing to do with the dungeons settled in her.

“And Cedric?” she asked. “What about him? He didn’t ask for this, either.”

“No,” Severus said. “He did not. But Cedric Diggory chose to enter. He is of age, and he did so understanding it was dangerous. That does not make what may happen to him acceptable. But it is… different.”

Estelle let out a short, humorless laugh.

“You really have gone soft,” she said. “I remember a time when you wouldn’t have bothered to differentiate.”

“I remember,” he said dryly, “a time when you would not have stayed to listen.”

Their eyes met.

The tiredness in his face was different from Dumbledore’s. It wasn’t the tiredness of age, but of someone who had been braced against impact for so long he no longer knew how to stand any other way.

“I am…” She groped for the word. “Afraid,” she admitted. “For them. For us. For what this means. It feels like the ground has tilted, and we’ve only just found our footing from last year.”

From Azkaban. From Sirius’s escape. From Dementors on the grounds and fainting thirteen-year-olds and the revelation that the past never really stayed buried.

Severus inhaled slowly.

“I am not in the habit of offering comfort I cannot guarantee,” he said. “I will not tell you it will be fine. It may not be. But I will tell you this: we will not stand by and watch without acting. Not this time. Not if I can help it.”

“And if you can’t?” she asked, voice small.

He looked at her fully then.

“I have failed enough,” he said quietly. “I do not intend to add to that tally if I can prevent it.”

Her eyes burned.

She blinked hard, looking away, angry at herself for the tears.

Her bandaged finger pulsed insistently, drawing an annoyed hiss from her.

“May I?” he asked.

She glanced at him, confused.

“Your hand,” he clarified. “I cannot concentrate on doom and idiocy if you keep flinching every time blood reaches your fingertip.”

Despite herself, her mouth twitched.

“Such romance,” she murmured. “Tend to my wounds so we can better discuss doom.”

“It is what passes for romance at our age,” he said.

“Speak for yourself. I’m still in my prime.”

He made a soft, skeptical sound and held out his hand.

She surrendered hers.

The heat of his fingers around her wrist was steady and surprisingly gentle. He turned her palm upward, inspecting the bandage with a critical eye.

“Thicker swelling,” he said, mostly to himself. “Increased heat. You’re going to the Hospital Wing at dawn.”

“Bossy,” she muttered.

“Alive,” he countered. “Preferably with all digits intact. Unless you wish to be known as Professor Black, the woman who lost a finger to a Fanged Geranium. I would prefer not to have to explain that to future generations.”

She snorted, then winced as the movement jostled her hand.

He shifted his grip, thumb resting just above the bandage, not quite touching the worst of it.

For a moment, they were very close.

She could see the tiny flecks of gold in his otherwise black eyes, could smell tea and smoke and the faint, clean tang of potions ingredients clinging to his skin. His hair, often dismissed as greasy by students, simply looked damp and slightly disheveled from the long night.

“Estelle,” he said quietly.

She looked up, pulse stuttering.

“Yes?”

“Sleep, if you can,” he said. “We will need clear heads. And… leave the worst of the fear with me, for tonight.”

The words were clumsy, a little stiff, as if unused. But the intent behind them made something in her chest loosen and ache all at once.

“That’s not how it works,” she said, voice unsteady.

“No,” he agreed. “But if it did, I would insist.”

Her throat closed.

“You’re allowed to be afraid, too,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

He looked almost startled.

Then, slowly, he exhaled.

“I am,” he said simply. “Terrified. Of many things. But I am more terrified of what happens when we let that rule us.”

She nodded.

Silence stretched between them, not empty now, but full—of shared history, of grief, of something that might, in another lifetime, have been called hope.

Without quite deciding to, she leaned forward.

Not much. Just enough that their shoulders nearly brushed, that the space between them narrowed.

He moved first.

It was small, almost shy in its own way. He lifted his free hand and, with a hesitation she felt all the way down to her bones, touched her hairline, brushing a stray strand back.

Then he bent his head and pressed his lips to her forehead.

The kiss was brief.

Chaste, technically.

But it held more than most people managed with entire speeches.

Heat flared where his mouth touched her skin—a different kind of warmth than tea or pain or fever. Her eyes drifted closed for a heartbeat, the breath catching in her throat.

When he drew back, he did so slowly, fingers lingering at her temple for a moment before falling away.

“There,” he said quietly. “Consider that an extra measure of protection for Potter and Diggory both.”

She let out a shaky laugh.

“That’s not how that works either,” she said.

“No,” he said again. “But if it was, I would kiss your entire skull and be done with it.”

She laughed properly then, the sound bubbling up despite the heaviness in her chest.

The pain in her finger did not vanish. The fear gnawing at her ribs did not magically dissipate. Harry was still in danger. Cedric was still bound to three tasks designed to test the limits of survival. Someone out there had used the Goblet for a purpose they hadn’t yet seen.

But sitting there, tea cooling on the table, the fire throwing warm light across Severus’s tired, wry face, Estelle felt—if not safe, then at least less alone.

“That’s the second time you’ve threatened to kiss me in two days,” she said lightly, trying to steady herself with humor.

“I did not threaten,” he said. “I merely… suggested.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“For tonight, yes.”

She picked up her tea again, carefully, ignoring the twinge in her hand.

“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “For the tea. For the… reckless forehead magic.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. He didn’t say ‘anytime.’ He didn’t have to.

After a while, he walked her back to the corridor.

The walk to her chambers felt shorter with him beside her. The castle still hummed with unease, but the darkness seemed less absolute.

At her door, he paused.

“Hospital Wing,” he reminded her.

“Dawn,” she confirmed.

He gave a sharp nod, as though sealing a pact, then turned away, robes whispering along the floor as he vanished back into the dungeon shadows.

Estelle slipped into her rooms, leaning against the closed door for a moment, hand pressed to her forehead where his lips had brushed.

Her finger throbbed, distant and urgent.

Her heart did too.

Outside, the night held its breath around Hogwarts.

Inside, somewhere above and a few corridors over, Harry Potter lay in his four-poster bed, staring at the hangings, the weight of a magical contract pressing into his dreams.

Estelle crawled into her own bed, bandaged hand resting on her chest, and closed her eyes.

She did not expect sleep to come.

But when it finally did, it came threaded through not only with fear and memories of Sirius’s wild grin, but with the faint ghost of Severus’s touch, and the fragile, stubborn resolve that this time—this time—they would not go into the storm with their eyes shut.

The castle shifted around her, as if listening.

And the Triwizard Tournament moved forward, whether any of them were ready or not.

Chapter Text

By the time two weeks had dragged themselves past the Goblet’s last unnatural flare, Hogwarts had settled into its strange new normal.

Sort of.

The Triwizard Tournament hung over everything like a second moon—always there, even when you weren’t looking at it. Students still whispered about Harry’s name in the Goblet. Hufflepuff still lionized Cedric. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang still watched one another—and Hogwarts—with a wary, appraising air. But life, stubborn thing that it was, insisted on going on.

Estelle clung to that.

Classes helped.

On Monday, a Beauxbatons girl in pale blue gloves startled when a Snapping Sunbloom turned its head toward her too quickly and flashed its teeth. By Wednesday of that week, the same girl was tapping the pot with practiced ease, murmuring in rapid French to soothe it.

On Tuesday, one of the Durmstrang boys scoffed at the idea that a plant could be used for self-defense. On Friday, he stood in front of his classmates and demonstrated—slightly red-faced but unflinching—how a properly handled Puffapod could blind and disorient an opponent long enough for you to get away.

By the following Monday, Fleur Delacour had argued a Hufflepuff into sharing greenhouse space for an independent project, Viktor Krum had quietly stayed after class to ask about a root that eased muscle cramps, and three Durmstrang girls had begun showing up ten minutes early to water the plants “the way Hogwarts does it,” as if the castle itself were an eccentric relative they’d decided to humor.

Estelle watched it all with a kind of cautious relief.

It was harder to fear a school when its students had dirt under their fingernails and pollen on their sleeves.

Between lessons, she saw Harry in flashes—passing in the corridors with Ron and Hermione, ducking his head as whispers followed him, shoulders squared more out of stubbornness than confidence. Sometimes he caught her eye and managed a small, wry half-smile. She always nodded back, projecting as much steady normalcy as she could.

You’re still just a student, she tried to telegraph. You’re still allowed to care about homework and Quidditch and how ridiculous your friend’s hair looks in the rain.

Quidditch. The word made her chest tighten.

That loss, at least, she couldn’t soften. The pitch stood empty most days, grass rippling in the early autumn wind, goalposts stark against the sky like skeletal fingers. The absence of weekly matches and practices had left a strange hollow in the school’s heartbeat. Some of the older students filled it with extra studying. Others with mischief.

Fred and George, denied their usual outlet of sanctioned bodily peril, had redirected their energy into compost explosions and charm-layered flower beds that occasionally sang.

“Bring them to me,” Estelle instructed a harried Filch who turned up in the greenhouses one morning with hair full of glittering spores. “Not to detention. I can use minions.”

“Minions?” he sputtered.

“Apprentices,” she amended. “Translatable as ‘profitable chaos.’”

Her finger throbbed when she laughed with him, but less sharply now.

Madam Pomfrey had clucked appropriately loud and long when Estelle showed up at the Hospital Wing that dawn after the night in Severus’s chambers.

“Professor Black,” she’d scolded, peeling the bandage back with no-nonsense hands. “You might be able to bully venom out of a plant, but infections are not so easily cowed. Honestly. Did you learn nothing during your own school days?”

“I learned not to argue with you,” Estelle had replied meekly.

Which was how she’d ended up with a course of potions that smelled faintly of copper and cloves, strict instructions not to overuse the finger, and an order to come back every other day so Pomfrey could hiss over the healing.

Between Pomfrey’s regimen and Severus’s earlier intervention, the angry red gradually faded to pink. The purple receded. The heat leached out. The sharp, infected ache gave way to the duller pull of mending tissue.

By mid-September, Estelle’s finger hurt only when she overdid it.

She still wrapped it lightly for the greenhouses, more out of superstition than necessity. But the bandage stayed clean now, and the skin beneath no longer felt as though it were trying to burst its way out.

On a Wednesday afternoon, after her last class had filed out, she shut the greenhouse door and leaned back against it, flexing her hand in the quiet.

The stitches tugged faintly under the skin—foreign, uncomfortable, but no longer essential.

“Right,” she told her hand. “You’ve had your fun. Time for the silver to go.”

The thought of Pomfrey wielding the stitch-removal charms was not unpleasant. The woman was competent, careful. But Estelle’s mind had already supplied another image: Severus, brow furrowed in concentration, fingers steady, that strange softness in his face he seemed to reserve for injuries and very occasional jokes.

Her chest tightened in an entirely different way.

“Disastrous idea,” she muttered.

She dried her hands, shrugged into her robe, and set off toward the dungeons.

---

The corridors were cooler now, autumn seeping inevitably into the stone. Students’ voices rang off the walls—French laughter, Durmstrang grumbles, the familiar chaotic music of Hogwarts arguments.

At the doorway to Severus’s chambers, Estelle hesitated only a heartbeat before knocking.

For a moment, there was no response. Then she heard it: the scrape of a chair, the rustle of fabric, a muttered curse in a language she didn’t speak but could easily translate as bloody hell.

The door opened.

Severus looked as if sleep had become a rumor rather than a practice.

The tiredness she’d seen two weeks ago had settled deeper. The shadows under his eyes were darker, hollowing his cheeks. His hair hung slightly limp, as if he hadn’t bothered with the effort of a drying charm after his morning shower. His shirt was buttoned correctly—it was still Severus, after all—but his sleeves were rolled unevenly, one higher than the other.

“Estelle,” he said, voice roughened by disuse or too many late nights. “Have the plants staged a coup?”

“Not yet,” she said. “They’re still working on their manifesto.”

He huffed—the barest suggestion of amusement. “Give them time.”

She slipped past him into the room as he stepped back, the familiar smell of tea, parchment, and potions meeting her like a peculiar kind of comfort.

A cauldron simmered on the side table near the fire—the same squat pewter one he’d used for the somnolence draught. The liquid inside was a pale, translucent blue this time, closer to the proper hue. A thin spiral of steam rose from it, carrying notes of chamomile, asphodel, and something sharper she recognized as lion’s tail.

“You’re still working on it,” she observed, nodding toward the brew.

Severus followed her gaze. “The base is stable now,” he said. “Consistency holds for six hours without breakdown. Effectiveness…” He trailed off with a noncommittal shrug.

“Meaning you still can’t sleep,” she translated.

He gave a thin smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Meaning,” he said, “I am discovering there are limits to what potions can do against certain… varieties of insomnia.”

She moved closer to the cauldron, peering in. The potion rolled gently, surface smooth, color even.

“It looks right,” she said.

“It behaves correctly,” he replied. “It induces sleep, keeps one under without suppressing breathing or heart rate beyond acceptable parameters. It allows for waking if necessary.”

“Those sound like good things.”

“They are,” he said. “In theory.”

She glanced at him. “And in practice?”

He hesitated, jaw tightening, then sighed.

“In practice,” he admitted, “I fall asleep. I stay asleep. But the… tenor of the dreams remains unchanged. If anything, they are sharper. More vivid. The draught removes fatigue but not the… content.”

He said the last word like he’d bitten down on something sour.

Estelle’s chest ached.

“Nightmares,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer, which was as good as confirmation.

She leaned over the potion, inhaling carefully.

“You’ve stabilized the somnolence curve,” she said. “Good. And the lion’s tail is binding the second stage properly.”

“But?” he prompted, hearing the unsaid.

“But you’re using straight asphodel as your primary anchor,” she said. “Asphodel is excellent for pulling someone under. Less excellent at… softening what meets them there.”

“I am not in the habit of softening things,” he said dryly.

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” she replied. “Try switching half the asphodel for willow bark in the next batch. It won’t blunt the mechanism—you’ll still sleep—but it may buffer the emotional resonance. Think of it as… padding between your mind and whatever’s trying to claw it apart.”

He was quiet for a moment, considering.

“Willow bark interacts unpredictably with lion’s tail,” he said.

“Only if you boil them together,” she countered. “Add the bark in after the first cooling phase, before the last restorative passes. You’re not trying to create euphoria, just a little distance.”

“You presume a great deal about the contents of my mind,” he said.

“I presume a great deal about the effects of trauma on the nervous system,” she said. “Your mind just happens to be attached to someone I… know.”

The pause before ‘know’ held multitudes.

He studied her for a few seconds, then inclined his head.

“I will try it,” he said.

Her mouth curled. “You might have said that first.”

“And miss the opportunity to challenge your brewing ego?” he replied. “Perish the thought.”

“Speaking of bruised egos and poor decisions,” she said, looking down at her hand, “I’ve come to admit defeat.”

He frowned. “You? Never.”

“In this one instance,” she said. “Pomfrey says the infection is gone. The finger’s healed as much as it will with the sutures. It’s time for them to come out.”

His gaze dropped to her hand.

She had wrapped it lightly that morning out of habit, but the bandage was clean now, thin enough that he could see the shape of her finger beneath it—no longer grotesquely swollen, just a bit pinker than the others.

“I see,” he murmured. “And you wish for me to…?”

“If you’re willing,” she said. “You put them in. Seems only fair you take them out. I trust your hands.” She hesitated, then forced herself to add, “And your magic.”

Something flickered across his face at that. For a moment, his usual defensiveness shifted, revealing something rawer underneath.

“You could have gone to Pomfrey,” he said, not quite a question.

“I did,” she said. “For the infection. For the potions. But… this feels like our mess.”

He snorted softly. “An accurate description of most things we touch.”

“Will you?” she asked.

His answer was immediate.

“Yes,” he said. “Sit.”

He pointed toward the armchair by the fire. She obeyed, easing down into it. Her pulse had picked up oddly; it was, objectively, a simple enough procedure. She’d had stitches out before. It wasn’t the mild discomfort that made her heart race.

Severus vanished briefly into the adjoining room and returned with the small silver knife, a few pieces of clean gauze, and a vial of the antiseptic infusion. He set them on the low table, then dragged the other chair closer so he could sit opposite her, knees almost brushing hers.

“Glove,” he said gently.

She slipped it off and dropped it onto the table.

He took her hand in both of his, turning it palm-up again, his long fingers bracing her wrist. The skin-to-skin contact sent a tiny shock through her. His hands were cool but not cold, his grip firm without being harsh.

He began unwinding the bandage with practiced care, thumb smoothing the fabric as it came away. The last layer peeled back, revealing the healing crescent.

It looked… good.

The puncture marks were closed now, the angry red faded to a softer pink. A few faint threads of scar tissue crossed the site, but the overall shape of her finger was normal again. The silver stitches gleamed faintly, sitting like tiny constellations under the skin where they’d held everything together.

“Much better,” Severus said quietly. “Pomfrey will be pleased I did not botch this.”

“You?” Estelle snorted. “She’s more likely to hex me for not going back sooner.”

He hummed—a low, amused sound that vibrated through his hands.

“This may sting,” he warned. “Not as badly as draining it did. But some discomfort.”

“I’ve survived worse,” she said.

He gave her a look that said we both have, then picked up his wand.

Instead of using the knife this time, he murmured a gentler incantation—one designed specifically for suture dissolution. His wandtip glowed a soft blue as he traced along the line of stitches.

One by one, the silver threads loosened.

She watched, fascinated, as the first suture unhooked itself, the tiny loop of metal sliding free of the puncture track with a faint, tingling sensation. It hurt, briefly—a quick, pinching pain—but nowhere near the white-hot agony of the infection being drained.

Severus’s face was intent, all his considerable focus narrowed to this small task. His brows drew together, his mouth set. He looked, Estelle thought, like a man rebuilding something delicate he was terrified of breaking again.

“How many?” she asked, voice a little shaky.

“Eight,” he said. “You were very unlucky. Or very foolish. Or both.”

“I’ll go with unlucky,” she said. “Preserves my ego.”

He huffed softly.

The second stitch eased out. Then the third. Each time, he paused to dab a drop of antiseptic around the tiny opening, murmuring a quick sealing charm to encourage the skin to knit fully in its absence.

She watched his hands more than her finger.

They were capable of such violence, those hands. They had brewed poisons and antidotes, held wands that cast curses and counter-curses, gripped Death Eater masks and ripped them off. They had written reports that changed the fates of spies and traitors. They had trembled, once, over a dying woman’s hand.

Now they were steady, precise, wholly focused on causing her as little pain as possible.

“Almost done,” he said softly.

“You’re good at this,” she murmured.

“I am good at knives and wounds,” he said dryly. “It is not a comfort.”

“It is when you’re on my side,” she replied.

He paused for a heartbeat—just long enough that she felt the hesitation through his grip.

“Is that what we are now?” he asked. “On the same side?”

The question held more than it seemed to—history, mistrust, the last year’s slow thaw.

She met his gaze.

“Yes,” she said simply. “I think we are.”

He searched her face, as if trying to see whether that was a reflexive reassurance or a considered truth.

Then he slipped the last stitch free.

“There,” he said, sounding faintly relieved. “All done. Try bending it.”

She did so cautiously.

There was a tight, pulling sensation, and a twinge of sensitivity along the healing line, but no sharp pain. The finger flexed with the rest of her hand, stiff but serviceable.

She smiled.

“Feels like mine again,” she said.

His mouth curved.

“It always was,” he said.

He cleaned the area one last time and, instead of wrapping it fully, placed a simple, translucent salve over the top, smoothing it with his thumb.

“No more bandages,” he said. “Let it breathe. It will be tender for a few days. Limit strain and gripping, especially of tools and recalcitrant students.”

“I make no promises about students,” she said.

He released her hand slowly, fingers slipping away from her wrist.

Her skin felt oddly bereft where he’d been touching it.

“I meant what I said,” she blurted before she could stop herself.

He blinked. “About what? Your questionable grip strength?”

“About being on the same side,” she said. “About… trusting your hands. Your magic.”

His expression shifted—softened, then closed again, then reopened in a way that looked almost painful.

“I know,” he said quietly.

She shot him a wry look. “Do you?”

He was silent for a moment.

When he spoke, his voice had lost its usual dryness. It was low, hesitant in a way she’d rarely heard.

“Last year,” he began, “when you returned… I did not expect this.”

She leaned back in the chair, cradling her now-bare hand in her lap. “What did you expect?” she asked.

He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.

“Distance,” he said. “Politeness. Wary co-existence. Perhaps the occasional argument about curriculum.”

She smiled faintly. “We did manage the arguments.”

“Indeed,” he said. “We excelled at them.”

He stared into the fire for a long moment.

“I spent years building walls,” he said, quieter. “Around myself. Around… certain memories. Certain… loyalties. And then you walked back into this castle. As if no time had passed. As if we were still—”

He broke off.

“Still what?” she asked gently.

“Still young enough to believe that wanting someone near was not… dangerous,” he said.

Her heart clenched.

“Severus,” she said.

“You were always a… point of reference,” he went on, eyes still on the flames. “A fixed star. Even when I tried to ignore you. Even when I made choices that hurt you.” His jaw tightened. “Especially then.”

She swallowed past the lump in her throat.

“I made my own choices,” she said. “Some of them bad. Some of them… necessary.”

“I know,” he said. “You chose Gryffindor when everyone expected Slytherin. You chose Lily when the world tried to dictate her friends. You chose the Order when your family would have burned you from the tapestry for it.”

She huffed. “They nearly did.”

“They should be grateful you left,” he said. “You improved the average moral temperature of that house merely by walking away.”

She laughed, surprised.

“You’ve changed,” she said softly.

“People do,” he replied. “Contrary to popular belief.”

She thought of him years ago—sour, sharp, wounded, hiding behind hexes and sneers. Of him last year, brittle with secrets, yet the first to bring her a calming draught when she’d locked herself in a bathroom after seeing Sirius’s face on the front page of the Prophet. Of him this year, brewing sleep draughts he sabotaged to avoid rest and stitching her fingers back together when plants bit too deep.

“You’ve softened,” she said.

His eyelids flicked up in annoyance. “I have not.”

“You have,” she insisted. “Just… not evenly.” She shrugged. “Some edges are still sharp enough to cut. But there’s more… room in you now. For other people. For—” She gestured between them. “This. Whatever this is.”

He finally looked directly at her.

“And what,” he asked quietly, “do you think this is?”

Her breath stuttered.

She’d had three or four answers to that question hovering at the edges of her mind for months now—some flippant (a mistake, a distraction), some terrified (a disaster waiting to happen), some hopeful (a second chance).

Looking at him now, dark eyes ringed with exhaustion, shoulders bowed under the weight of obligations he never stopped shouldering, none of those seemed quite right.

“Complicated,” she said at last. “Old. New. Messy. Necessary.”

He absorbed that.

“Accurate,” he said.

“And you?” she asked. “What do you think this is?”

He was very still.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that for the first time since I was… nineteen, perhaps, there is someone whose opinion can undo me.”

Her chest tightened so hard it hurt.

“That’s not a comfortable thing to admit,” he added almost wryly. “Even to myself.”

She let out a shaky breath. “You’re not the only one,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

His mouth curved, a small, sad smile.

“I suspected,” he said. “There have been… moments.”

She thought of his hand on hers in the storeroom. His forehead against hers in anger and in apology. His shoulder brushing hers on the walk from the Great Hall. His kiss on her forehead, soft and startling, like something almost sacred.

“We are ridiculous,” she said.

“Undeniably,” he replied.

The fire popped softly, sending a brief spray of sparks up the chimney.

“I am frightened,” she said, the words tumbling out before she could lose her nerve. “Not just about the Tournament, or Harry, or Cedric. I’m frightened of caring about someone like this again.”

He looked as if she’d struck him.

“As you did for…?” He didn’t finish the sentence. James. Lily. Sirius. Regulus. The list was long.

She nodded anyway.

“It nearly killed me,” she said. “Losing them. Being left behind. Surviving when so many didn’t.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I watched you break.”

She swallowed.

“And then last year,” she went on, “you were just… there. Annoying, infuriating, relentless. Not letting me wall myself up in grief.” Her lips twitched. “Also making sure I ate. And slept. And didn’t let Remus drink all his pain away in the Shrieking Shack.”

“Remus is perfectly capable of pacing himself,” Severus muttered, but without much venom.

“He’s terrible at pacing himself,” she said. “He has you beat in martyrdom. That’s saying something.”

He made a face.

“Between the two of you,” she added, “I didn’t have room to drown. I hated you for that some days. And was grateful others. Often in the same hour.”

“A common reaction to my presence,” he said dryly.

Her bare hand lay on the arm of the chair now, fingers unconsciously flexing and unflexing. His gaze dropped to it, then returned to her face.

“I do not know how to… do this,” he said quietly. “Whatever this is. I know how to wield fear. How to calculate. How to keep people at arm’s length. I do not know how to be… kind. Not without feeling as though I’ve left myself exposed.”

“You’ve been kind more than you think,” she said. “You just call it something else.”

“What would you call it?” he asked.

“Care,” she said simply. “Protection. Affection. Whether you like it or not.”

The word *affection* seemed to make him flinch and lean toward her at the same time.

He let out a long breath.

“I am attempting,” he said. “In my own… deeply flawed way.”

“I know,” she said. “And I am, too.”

They sat in silence for a while.

Not the brittle, angry silences of their early months back at Hogwarts. This one felt… tentative. Open. Full of things that could be said now or saved for later.

At some point, she realized her hand had drifted closer to his on the shared edge of the table.

His little finger brushed hers.

It might have been accidental.

It didn’t feel like it.

Her heart hammered against her ribs.

“Severus,” she said.

He turned his hand over, palm up, slowly, offering without grabbing. An invitation, not a demand.

She placed her hand in his.

His fingers curled around hers, careful of the healing finger, thumb resting lightly on the inside of her wrist where her pulse beat fast.

The contact was… grounding.

Not fireworks. Not some swooning, adolescent rush. Just a deep, steady sense of *there you are.*

“I am not good at this,” he said again, almost apologetic.

“You kissed my forehead,” she reminded him. “That’s practically expert level.”

He huffed. “Hardly.”

“You could have hexed me instead,” she said. “That’s progress.”

His thumb stroked once, absently, across the back of her hand.

“Estelle,” he said, her name a thread between them.

“Yes?”

“May I…?” He trailed off, uncharacteristically at a loss.

She knew what he was asking.

Fear flared—old, bone-deep fear of losing, of wanting, of opening a door that couldn’t easily be shut again.

Underneath it, something else pulsed. Want, yes. But also the quiet, fierce recognition of how far they’d come to get here—from children in opposite corners of a divided House, to adults on opposite sides of a war, to this improbable, fragile middle ground.

“Yes,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “You may.”

He moved slowly.

So slowly that she had ample time to change her mind, to pull away, to make a joke and break the tension. She didn’t.

He leaned forward, free hand lifting to cup her jaw, fingers spanning the line of her cheek, calluses rough against her skin. His eyes searched hers one last time, asking, always asking.

She nodded once.

He closed the distance.

The first brush of his mouth against hers was light, almost tentative—a question kept in the shape of a kiss.

Her breath caught.

She kissed him back.

It wasn’t graceful. Their noses bumped. Her healing finger protested when instinct made her tighten her grip on his hand. But his lips were warm and surprisingly soft, the pressure gentle, careful in a way that made her chest ache.

All the fear, the grief, the bitter humor, the long history—they were all there, between them, but for a few moments they didn’t dominate. There was only this: the feel of him, solid and real and close. The taste of tea and sleep draught on his tongue. The quiet, startled sound he made when she deepened the kiss, fingers curling in the fabric of his sleeve.

His hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, anchoring her, thumb stroking the line of her pulse. The other tightened around her fingers, heedful of the tender skin, yet unwilling to let go.

They broke apart only when breath insisted on it.

He rested his forehead against hers, eyes closed, exhaling shakily.

“Well,” he murmured, voice rougher than before. “That was… ill-advised.”

She laughed, a little breathless. “Absolutely,” she agreed. “Terrible idea.”

“Disastrous,” he said.

She opened her eyes.

He was looking at her like a man who’d stepped to the edge of a familiar cliff and found the drop both more terrifying and more beautiful than he remembered.

“And yet?” she prodded softly.

“And yet,” he said, “I find myself unwilling to take it back.”

“Good,” she said.

Her heart was still pounding. Her finger still ached. Outside, the castle still held a boy with a lightning scar and a Hufflepuff with steady eyes in the crosshairs of a Tournament none of them fully understood.

But here, in this small, lamplit room in the dungeons, Estelle Black sat with Severus Snape’s hand wrapped around hers and the taste of his kiss on her lips.

It was not safety.

It was not certainty.

It was something else.

Something that had survived war and betrayal and twelve years of loss, and still—stubbornly, ridiculously—refused to die.

Hope, she realized.

It felt like hope.

Chapter Text

The news came in the way bad news always seemed to arrive at Hogwarts: sideways, in a room that smelled of tea and parchment and old stone.

It was Tuesday morning, two and a half weeks after Harry’s name had spilled out of the Goblet. Mist clung to the windows of the staff room; outside, the grounds were wrapped in a grey that blurred lake from sky, distant trees from low clouds.

Estelle sat at the long table with a mug cupped in both hands, her healed finger tapping absently against the warm ceramic. The stitches were gone now—Severus had removed them over a week ago—and the skin had knitted well, still pink but solid. It felt like it belonged to her again.

Minerva was reading the Daily Prophet with a frown that deepened with each paragraph. Flitwick munched toast, legs swinging off his chair. Aurora Sinistra stared out the window with a thousand-yard gaze that suggested she’d been up most of the night at the top of her tower.

Dumbledore came in late, as he often did, but this morning something about him seemed… sharpened. His eyes still twinkled; his beard still flowed; his robe was still an elaborate riot of purple and gold. But the set of his shoulders was different, and there was a line between his brows that hadn’t been there a week ago.

Severus walked in behind him, expression shuttered, dark robes trailing like a private storm.

Dumbledore took his usual seat at the head of the table. He folded his hands, glanced around as if counting them, and then said, in that mild tone that always meant something unwelcome was coming:

“We have a little more information on the first task.”

Conversation stuttered and died.

Estelle’s stomach did a slow, deliberate turn.

“They’re telling us something already?” Vector said, setting down her fork. “It’s barely October.”

“The champions must have time to prepare in… certain ways,” Dumbledore replied. “And we, as their teachers, must also begin to make… adjustments.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Adjustments,” Minerva repeated. “Albus, if you do not stop speaking in ellipses and start saying something concrete, I shall confiscate your lemon drops for the rest of the term.”

Dumbledore inclined his head, acknowledging the point.

“The first task,” he said, “will test courage and resourcefulness in the face of magical creatures.”

Estelle’s grip on her mug tightened. Heat bled into her fingers; the ceramic creaked softly.

“Creatures,” Hagrid echoed from his spot near the fire, eyes lighting up. “Brilliant! Nothin’ like seein’ ’em up close, tha’s what I say.”

“How dangerous?” Minerva asked immediately.

Dumbledore hesitated for just a fraction of a heartbeat. Estelle caught it; so did Severus, whose eyes went flinty.

“Dangerous enough that the champions will need to exercise considerable caution,” Dumbledore said. “But there will be handlers. Protections. We are not throwing them in unarmed.”

“Of course not,” Severus murmured. “Merely asking them to dance with something that can kill them.”

“What will they have to do?” Vector pressed, quill already in hand as if she could somehow calculate the exact level of risk on a sheet of parchment.

“Exactly what,” Dumbledore said, “I am not yet at liberty to say. The details remain… fluid. But we have been told this much: each champion will be required to face a magical beast. There will be a choice involved.”

“A choice?” Flitwick squeaked. “What sort of choice?”

“A choice of which beast to face, I believe,” Dumbledore said. “We can assume each option will present its own… challenges.”

“Lovely,” Estelle muttered before she could stop herself.

Aurora dragged her gaze from the window. “Will they know what they’re choosing?” she asked. “Or will it be… blind?”

“That,” Dumbledore said, “has not been made entirely clear. Mr. Crouch prefers his rules… oblique.”

“Convenient,” Severus said softly, “for anyone who might want to stack the deck.”

Dumbledore glanced at him, something like apology in his eyes.

“They will be told the nature of the task the day before,” he said. “As is tradition. They will be warned that they are to face a creature. Beyond that…” He spread his hands.

Estelle’s tea sat untouched now, cooling in her hands.

Magical creatures.

Images flashed up unbidden: Lupin’s twisted, agonized form under the full moon; dragons on the horizon during the war, outlines against the sky; the sick, crackling energy of a cage full of werewolves; a room at St. Mungo’s with a boy whose legs had been bitten cleanly off at the knee by something that had not meant to hurt him that badly.

“Of course,” Minerva said tightly, “this will all be perfectly safe.”

“As safe,” Dumbledore said, “as a centuries-old magical tournament designed to push the limits of young witches and wizards can be.”

“That is not the reassurance you think it is,” Estelle muttered.

Flitwick looked troubled. “Will we be allowed to know which creatures beforehand?” he asked. “Purely for… academic curiosity.”

“And to better calculate how to patch them up afterward,” Vector added.

Dumbledore shook his head.

“I have been given a general brief, nothing more,” he said. “And I must ask all of you not to attempt to ferret out more. This task is the champions’ to meet. We are here to support them, not to fight their battles for them.”

“Support them,” Severus repeated. “By standing on the sidelines and watching them ‘choose a beast’ to… what? Subdue? Escape? Kill?”

“That depends on them,” Dumbledore said quietly.

Estelle looked down at her hand. The healed punctures from the Fanged Geranium stood out pale against the rest of her skin.

“You look pale, Estelle,” Aurora said under her breath.

“I’m fine,” Estelle lied.

“It is normal to be… unsettled,” Dumbledore said, as if he’d heard her anyway. “We are taking young people and asking them to step into danger. It is never something I do lightly.”

No one said you did it once before and James died, Lily died, so many died. But Estelle thought it. She saw Severus thinking it too.

“When will the champions be told?” Minerva asked.

“The day before the task,” Dumbledore said. “Which gives them… roughly a month. It gives us… about as long to prepare ourselves for what that means.”

Hagrid shifted excitedly. “Can’ wait t’ see what creatures they picked,” he said. “S’gonna be—”

“Hagrid,” Minerva said sharply. “Not. In front of students.”

“Aye, right,” he said quickly, chastened.

Dumbledore glanced around the table, taking them all in.

“I know,” he said softly, “that this is difficult. But I ask you to remember: there is more at work here than spectacle. The Tournament exists in part to forge bonds between our schools, to push our students to grow, to test their resourcefulness. It is… not the path I would choose, perhaps. But it is the one we are on.”

Estelle thought of Harry—fourteen, eyes too old already—and Cedric, who smiled politely at everyone because that was his nature, not a strategy.

She thought of Fleur’s chin, tilted up in pride and determination. Of Krum’s hunched shoulders and steady gaze.

“Forgive me,” she said quietly, unable to keep the edge from her voice, “if I find it hard to see that when all I can picture is four children standing in front of something with teeth.”

Dumbledore’s eyes met hers.

“I do forgive you,” he said simply. “And I ask only that you stand ready, as you always do, to heal what can be healed and to help them shoulder what cannot.”

The room fell silent again.

Someone coughed. Dishes clinked faintly as an elf cleared the far table.

Severus’s hand, resting on the wood near her own, curled slowly into a fist.

“All right,” Minerva said briskly at last, as if daring the universe to argue. “If that is all, I have a lesson to prepare that does *not* involve feeding my students to beasts.”

Chairs scraped back. The staff drifted out in a subdued trickle.

Estelle stayed where she was for a moment longer, mug cooling in her hands, eyes fixed on a knot in the wood of the table.

It looked faintly like an eye.

“Estelle,” Dumbledore said gently as the room emptied.

She glanced up.

“I will do everything I can,” he said softly. “You have my word.”

“I know,” she replied.

“And so will you,” he added. “As you always have.”

She wanted to say it was not enough before. Instead, she nodded, swallowed, and stood.

Severus waited just outside the staff room door, leaning against the wall, arms folded, eyes on the floor.

“Well,” he said when she emerged. “Magical creatures. Inspired.”

“Of course,” she said. “Wizards never met a dangerous thing they didn’t eventually decide to throw teenagers at.”

His mouth twitched.

They walked down the corridor together in silence.

“You’re thinking of the war,” he said eventually.

“Hard not to,” she replied.

“Try,” he said quietly. “For your own sake, if not theirs.”

She glanced at him.

“You’re one to talk,” she said.

“I didn’t say I was succeeding,” he replied. “Only that someone ought to.”

She huffed, then reached over and brushed her fingers lightly against his sleeve.

“Tea later?” she asked.

“Tea later,” he agreed.

And then it was time for classes.

---

The week moved in fits and starts.

News traveled faster than Dumbledore might have liked. By Wednesday, the rumor had spread across the school: the first task would involve beasts.

No one seemed entirely sure how they knew, but Estelle suspected a combination of overheard fragments, Hagrid’s inability to keep excitement from his face, and the school’s uncanny ability to sniff out danger.

In her third-year Gryffindor and Beauxbatons lesson, Neville raised his hand midway through a discussion of Venomous Tentacula repotting.

“Professor,” he blurted as soon as she nodded to him, cheeks already reddening, “is it true the champions have to fight a monster?”

The greenhouse went quiet.

Beauxbatons students glanced at one another with wide eyes. A redheaded Gryffindor boy whose name Estelle never retained because there were so many Weasleys at Hogwarts leaned forward, clearly all ears.

Estelle set down her pruning shears.

“‘Monster’ is a generous term,” she said mildly. “It implies malicious intent. Most magical beasts simply exist, the same way you do. Sometimes they are dangerous. Usually they are not out to get *you* personally. Unless you poke them.”

“But they are going to have to… fight something, aren’t they?” Neville persisted. “Harry and Cedric.”

“And Fleur and Krum,” a Beauxbatons girl added sharply.

Estelle studied their faces—the fear, the awe, the thrill.

“They are going to face a magical creature,” she said. “That is what we have been told. They will not be thrown in blindly. There will be protections in place.”

“Protections like the Age Line?” one of the Gryffindor boys muttered.

A ripple of nervous laughter.

Estelle’s mouth tightened.

“Protections,” she repeated, “that I am certain the Headmaster is reinforcing as we speak.”

She picked up the shears again.

“In the meantime,” she went on, “your task is considerably simpler and far less likely to cost you a limb. Longbottom, your Tentacula is sulking. You’ve been hovering. Give it a bit of space, then try again.”

A few of them smiled. The tension eased, at least superficially.

But as Neville turned back to his plant, Estelle noticed the way his hands shook slightly when he adjusted the soil.

Later that day, in her N.E.W.T.-level seminar, Cedric lingered after the others had filed out.

The Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students in that class had already adopted a certain dry detachment; they worked hard, asked good questions, and pretended not to be watching Cedric and Krum out of the corners of their eyes.

Cedric waited until they were alone before speaking.

“Professor,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in a gesture she’d come to recognize as *I am trying to sound casual but failing.*

“Yes?” she prompted.

“Do you… er…” He hesitated. “Have you ever seen anyone—have you… dealt with people who’ve been injured by magical creatures before? Badly, I mean.”

“Many times,” she said honestly.

“Right,” he said, a little grimly. “Thought so.”

He fell silent again.

“Cedric,” she said gently, “are you asking if I’ve seen people survive such injuries?”

He met her gaze, surprised at the directness.

“I suppose I am,” he admitted.

“I’ve seen many survive,” she said. “Some with scars. Some with stories they can’t bear to tell for a while. A few with new respect for things they used to underestimate. I have also seen,” she added quietly, “people die.”

He swallowed.

“I won’t lie to you,” she said. “This will be dangerous. But you are not going into it unarmed, and you are not going into it alone. Even when you are physically alone in the arena, you carry with you everything you’ve learned, every person who has taught you something, every instinct that brought you this far.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded slowly.

“Thanks,” he said. “I… just wanted to know there was someone here who’d seen… the worst of it. Who’d still say it’s worth trying.”

She smiled faintly.

“I am still here,” she said. “Make of that what you will.”

He huffed a small laugh, then turned to go.

“Cedric,” she called after him.

He paused.

“You are not just Hufflepuff’s champion,” she said. “You’re Hogwarts’ champion too. Wear that how you like, but don’t let anyone make you feel like a spare shadow.”

He blinked.

“Harry’s my friend,” he said. “It’s… weird. But I’m glad he’s not totally alone in this either.”

Estelle let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Good,” she said.

On Thursday, Harry’s class was restless.

Ron speculated about Chimaeras between mouthfuls of dirt-stained quill. Hermione had a book on European magical tournaments open under the bench, one finger marking a page about “Legendary Creatures and Historic Tests.” A Durmstrang girl scoffed at British regulations; a Beauxbatons boy muttered that in France they would never be so reckless (which Estelle knew for a fact was a lie).

Harry himself was quieter than usual, but his jaw was set.

When class ended, he hung back while the others trickled out, Hermione and Ron hovering uncertainly near the door.

“Professor?” he said.

“Yes, Harry?”

“Is it… true?” he asked. “About a beast? I mean, I know you’re not supposed to tell us anything, but… everyone’s saying…” He gestured vaguely, as if “everyone” included the walls.

“It is true that the first task will involve a magical creature,” she said carefully. “That much has been announced to the staff.”

His shoulders tightened.

“Listen to me,” she said, dropping her voice. “You will not earn any extra points for charging in like a Gryffindor martyr. Use your head. Use what you’ve got. You’re better at that than you think.”

He frowned. “Better at what?”

“Seeing what’s really in front of you. Finding gaps,” she said. “You do it in class. You did it with the Dementors. You’re not just a boy with a broom, Harry. You’re a boy who thinks sideways when it counts.”

A flicker of something—hope?—passed across his face.

“I didn’t ask for this,” he muttered.

“I know,” she said.

He looked up at her.

“Do you… ever get tired?” he asked suddenly. “Of being the one who… survived?”

Her breath caught.

“All the time,” she said quietly.

His eyes widened slightly, as if he hadn’t expected her to admit it.

“What do you do about it?” he asked.

“Some days? I plant things,” she said. “I tend to living things that don’t ask me for anything except water and light. Some days I yell. Some days I sit with people who remember the same ghosts I do. And some days…” She shrugged. “Some days I just keep breathing and hope the next day is easier.”

He nodded slowly.

“Thanks,” he said. “For not… pretending.”

“Anytime,” she said. “Now go. Hermione is going to explode if you keep her waiting much longer.”

He glanced over his shoulder; Hermione was indeed practically vibrating, torn between giving them privacy and wanting to drag Harry away before someone else cornered him.

He smiled faintly and jogged to catch up.

By the time Friday came, Estelle felt like she’d run a marathon without leaving the castle.

The announcement about the nature of the task was rumored to be coming on Saturday; whispers had intensified all day. The air felt charged, the students’ moods swinging wildly between excitement and dread.

Estelle had a light teaching schedule that day—only two classes, both in the morning. As the afternoon dragged its heels into evening, she found herself in her chambers with a stack of essays, a pot of tea, and the blessed quiet of solitude.

Her quarters, down the corridor from Severus’s, had developed a personality over the last year. Plants crowded the windowsills—some from the greenhouses, some rescued from students’ well-meaning attempts, a few rare specimens gifted by grateful alumni. Books lined one wall, spines a patchwork of faded colors. A worn sofa faced the fireplace, its cushions sagging invitingly.

She sat at the small desk by the window, quill scratching across the parchment as she marked a Beauxbatons student’s essay on the ethical implications of domesticated magical plants.

Outside, the lake glimmered dull pewter. The Forbidden Forest loomed, dark and steady. A few students walked along the path in twos and threes, cloaks drawn tight against the wind.

Her finger ached faintly from holding the quill, but it was the normal ache of use, not the throbbing warning of infection. She flexed it now and then, marveling at the simple pleasure of motion without pain.

Her mind, however, refused to behave.

Every other line, her thoughts drifted—to Harry, to Cedric, to Fleur and Viktor; to rumors of beasts; to the look in Dumbledore’s eyes in the staff room.

And, inevitably, to Severus.

They’d kissed again, since that night in his chambers. Not always; not often. But enough that it had become… known between them, a quiet, private truth rather than a one-off mistake.

Sometimes, after dinner, he would walk her back to her door. The first time he’d reached for her hand in the middle of the corridor, she’d nearly tripped. Now it felt… almost natural. His long fingers linking with hers, careful of her healing finger, the warmth of his palm grounding her.

They hadn’t told anyone. There was no declaration, no dramatic scene. It was not that kind of story.

They were simply… there. A little closer than colleagues. A little more than friends. A little less than whatever word she might have used if the world were kinder.

She dipped her quill again, forcing herself to focus on an underdeveloped argument about bowtruckle sap.

A knock at the door broke her concentration.

She glanced at the clock. It was later than she’d thought—just past seven. Most of the students would be at dinner now, or sprawled in their common rooms.

Her heart lifted in a way she pretended not to notice.

“Come in,” she called.

The door opened.

Severus stood there, framed by the corridor’s dim light.

He looked… different.

Still himself—robes, height, the familiar angle of his shoulders—but the hollows under his eyes had filled in, the bruised blue shadows lightening to something closer to normal. His posture, while never exactly relaxed, lacked the brittle tension she’d come to recognize as bone-deep exhaustion.

He carried a small glass phial between two fingers. The liquid inside was a soft, pearly blue, swirling with a faint silver sheen.

“Busy?” he asked.

“Only drowning in mediocrity,” she replied, gesturing at the papers. “Come in. Save me from the phrase ‘in conclusion’ one more time.”

He closed the door behind him, layered a quick privacy charm without seeming to think about it, and made his way to the desk.

She leaned back in her chair to look at him properly.

“You look…” She searched for a word that wouldn’t sound dangerously sentimental. “Less like death,” she settled on.

“How poetic,” he said dryly. “I shall add it to my self-descriptions.”

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

He held up the phial.

“I did,” he said. “Four hours uninterrupted on the first night. Five on the second. Six last night.”

Relief flared in her, startling and sharp.

“That’s… that’s good,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”

He inclined his head.

“It appears your meddling has borne fruit,” he said. “I altered the cooling cycle as you suggested. Staggered the temperature drops. Substituted half the asphodel with willow bark in the final phase.”

“And?” she asked.

“And,” he said, “the potion now lulls rather than bludgeons. The dreams are… still unpleasant. But they no longer wrench me awake with my heart trying to escape my chest. I wake… tired, at times. But not shattered.”

She swallowed.

“I’m… glad,” she said softly. “You needed rest.”

He regarded her for a long moment.

“It is not a feeling I am accustomed to,” he said. “Waking and realizing I have slept. That time has passed without my supervision.”

“That’s what sleep is,” she pointed out gently. “Trusting the world to stumble on without you for a few hours.”

“A horrifying concept,” he said. “And yet.”

He set the phial on her desk.

“This is the perfected brew,” he said. “As perfected as it is likely to be. I thought… you might like to see the finished form of your interference.”

She picked it up, holding it to the lamplight. The potion caught it, refracting it in slow, spiraling eddies.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, meaning more than the color.

“Do not tell the students I brew anything ‘beautiful,’” he said. “They will start expecting art.”

She smiled.

“How did it… feel?” she asked tentatively. “Sleeping like that again.”

He hesitated, then moved away from the desk, sinking onto the sofa with a sigh that seemed to come from his bones.

“Strange,” he admitted. “Disorienting at first. The first night, I woke halfway through convinced I’d been Obliviated. The sheer amount of missing time… was unnerving.”

She stood and joined him on the sofa, tucking one leg beneath her.

“And then?” she prompted.

“And then…” He stared into the fire, its light gilding the side of his face. “It was… quieter. Not empty. The nightmares are still there. But they feel… further away. Less like being dragged through them and more like watching them through glass.”

She listened, heart twisting.

“I dreamt of Lily,” he said, voice barely above the crackle of the flames. “The first night. Her laughing at something Potter said at the lake. A memory I had nearly forgotten. For once, it did not end with her dead.”

Estelle’s throat closed.

He went on.

“The second night, it was the Dark Lord,” he said. “Yelling. As usual. But his voice sounded… off. Like an echo. I woke uncomfortable, but not… gutted.”

He flexed his fingers, as if restructuring his own muscles around the experience.

“Last night,” he said, “I dreamt of the Greenhouses. Of you berating a Fanged Geranium. It bit you. You swore at it. It apologized. Clearly my subconscious has gone entirely mad.”

She laughed, the sound watery.

“You know what that sounds like to me?” she said.

“A cry for help?” he suggested.

“Your mind remembering it’s allowed to show you things that aren’t just punishment,” she said.

He snorted, but didn’t contradict her.

For a while, they simply sat, the comfortable quiet settling around them. Her shoulders loosened. His head tipped back against the sofa cushion, eyes drifting half shut.

“Thank you,” he said suddenly.

She blinked. “For what?”

“For interfering,” he said. “For… insisting. For knowing the right ratio of willow bark to asphodel better than I did.” His mouth twisted. “I dislike admitting that last part most of all.”

She smiled, warmth spreading through her chest.

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said.

“I do,” he countered. “It would be… graceless not to. And I am trying, as an experiment, to be slightly less of a bastard in your presence.”

“Remarkable progress so far,” she teased.

He rolled his eyes.

“You are also…” He hesitated, searching for words that didn’t seem to come easily. “…one of the few people whose interference has not ended in calamity. It seems only fair to acknowledge when it ends instead in… rest.”

Her breath hitched.

“Severus,” she said softly.

He turned his head, meeting her gaze.

In the lamplight, his eyes looked softer. The lines around them, carved by years of scowling and squinting at cauldrons, had eased a fraction.

“You look more like you,” she blurted.

He raised an eyebrow. “I was not aware I had an alternative setting.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Less like a ghost. More like… the boy who glared at me for choosing Gryffindor and then stole my notes in fifth year.”

“I did not steal,” he said, half-indignant. “I borrowed.”

“And then hexed them to bite anyone who tried to read over your shoulder,” she reminded him.

“Well,” he said. “Some things never change.”

She nudged his knee with hers.

“You’re welcome,” she said at last, for the potion and more than the potion.

He looked away, a faint flush rising along his cheekbones.

They sat in silence again, the kind that hummed with unsaid things but didn’t curdle.

“You know,” she said eventually, “tomorrow the champions find out what their beasts will be.”

“I am aware,” he said.

“Do you… have any idea?” she asked.

He was quiet for a long moment.

“Several,” he said finally. “None reassuring.”

“I keep thinking about all the ways this could go wrong,” she admitted. “About scales and teeth and venom. About Harry and Cedric and Fleur and Krum standing in front of something they can’t possibly be prepared for.”

“Welcome,” he said dryly, “to my head.”

She smiled weakly.

“What do we do,” she asked, “when the thing we’re afraid of is exactly the thing we can’t stop?”

He considered that.

“We do what we can,” he said. “We brew. We bandage. We stand near the exit with counter-curses ready. We make sure someone sensible is watching the handlers. We… stay alive, so that if it all goes to hell, there is someone left to drag them out.”

“You make it sound so simple,” she muttered.

“It isn’t,” he said. “But it is… practical.”

She thought of him asleep at last, potion smoothing the sharp edges of his nightmares.

“Do you ever wish you could just… opt out?” she asked, surprising herself with the question. “Of all of this. The Tournament, the war-that-wasn’t-really-over, the prophecies, all of it.”

He stared into the fire.

“Every day,” he said. “For a long time. Less so, recently.”

Her heart stuttered.

“What changed?” she asked.

“You,” he said quietly.

Heat flooded her cheeks.

“Severus,” she said, half-warning, half-plea.

“If that makes you uncomfortable,” he went on, “you are free to pretend I said it was the improved quality of the tea in the staff room.”

She laughed, a little breathless.

“The tea has been awful for years,” she said.

“Precisely,” he replied. “You, at least, occasionally bring contraband.”

She leaned her head back against the sofa, letting it rest there.

“I’m glad you can sleep,” she said again.

“I am glad you can use your hand without it resembling a sausage,” he replied.

She wiggled her fingers in front of his face. “Fully functional,” she declared.

He caught her hand gently, lowering it, thumb brushing over the faint, pale marks where the Fanged Geranium had once sunk its teeth.

The touch was light, almost absent-minded, but it sent a pleasant shiver up her arm.

“Do you ever think,” she said softly, “about how many times we almost… missed this?”

“This?” he echoed, thumb still making slow, aimless circles on the back of her hand.

“Us,” she said, the word feeling both too small and too large. “How many times we could’ve gone the other way. Stayed strangers. Stayed enemies.”

He inhaled slowly.

“More often than is comfortable,” he admitted. “It is not reassuring, to realize how much of one’s current… stability… rests on accidents and stubbornness.”

She smiled faintly.

“Accidents and stubbornness,” she said. “Story of my life.”

“Story of mine,” he said. “We are, at least, consistent.”

He shifted closer, their shoulders brushing now. The warmth of him seeped through her robes, a counterpoint to the chill she’d been carrying around since the staff room.

“Stay,” she said before she could overthink it. “For a while. You don’t have to go yet.”

His hand tightened around hers.

“I wasn’t planning to,” he said.

He let his head tip sideways, resting lightly against hers.

They stayed like that, watching the fire. His breathing slowed, each exhale a little longer than the last. The lines at the corners of his eyes softened further.

For the first time, Estelle realized she was seeing Severus Snape genuinely relaxed. Not just less tense, but on the cusp of sleep, his guard lowered not by exhaustion but by choice.

It felt… intimate in a way that had nothing to do with kissing and everything to do with trust.

His hand loosened in hers; his thumb stilled.

“Severus?” she murmured.

He made a small, noncommittal sound. Not quite awake; not quite asleep.

She smiled.

“You can sleep,” she said quietly. “I’ll keep watch.”

His lips twitched, as if he’d heard and found it darkly funny.

She shifted just enough to ease him into a more comfortable angle, letting his shoulder slide down so that his head rested against hers and the back of the sofa instead of hanging at an awkward tilt. He didn’t protest.

The fire crackled softly. Somewhere in the castle, a clock chimed the hour.

Estelle let her eyes drift shut, just for a moment, savoring the strange, fragile peace.

Tomorrow, the champions would learn what beasts they’d face. Dragons or manticores or something else entirely—whatever it was, it would demand everything they had.

Tomorrow, she and Severus and the rest of the staff would stand on the sidelines and pretend not to be terrified as four young people walked into danger with their wands and their wits and far too much on their shoulders.

Tomorrow would come, teeth bared.

Tonight, for a few stolen minutes, she had this: a warm shoulder against hers, a hand in hers, the knowledge that the man who had spent years refusing rest was finally, finally sleeping without being dragged there by exhaustion.

She could feel his slow, steady breaths, the faint weight of his head. It made something in her chest unclench.

“Sleep,” she whispered, more to herself than him.

The flames danced.

The castle held its breath.

And in a small chamber in the dungeons, while the world outside sharpened its claws, Estelle Black and Severus Snape sat side by side on a sagging sofa, sharing the quiet as if it were the rarest potion either of them had ever brewed.

Chapter Text

The last two weeks of September slipped past in a strange, double-exposed way—part ordinary school days, part slow tightening of a wire no one could see but everyone felt.

Every morning, the air bit a little harder. Mist clung low over the lake until midday. Leaves on the beech tree by the water edged toward gold. Students swapped jumpers for cloaks and started racing to class not just to avoid lateness, but to get out of the wind.

The Tournament sat in the middle of it all like an invisible, hulking thing. You could navigate around it. You could pretend not to see it. But every conversation curved subtly toward it, as if pulled by its own gravity.

Estelle woke each day to the same set of questions arranging themselves in neat, unwelcome rows at the back of her mind.

What will they face?
Will it be enough?
Will we be enough?

On good mornings, she could shove those thoughts into a mental cupboard, slam the door, and let the rhythm of lessons drown them out. On bad ones, they prowled just behind her as she moved through the greenhouses, tugging at the edge of every interaction.

Monday began with second-year Hufflepuffs and Beauxbatons.

They were working with Puffapods—simple, if you knew what you were doing; chaotic if you didn’t. Estelle had set them the task of measuring germination time under different light conditions.

One of the Beauxbatons boys, a delicate-featured thing with glossy hair and an expression that hovered perennially between boredom and disdain, looked horrified when the first pod burst open in his hands.

“Mon Dieu!” he yelped, jerking back as soft pink blossoms spilled across the bench. “It exploded!”

“It sprouted,” Estelle corrected. “That’s what Puffapods do. That’s literally the point.”

He stared at the tiny flowers as if they might leap up and attach themselves to his face.

Across the bench, a round-faced Hufflepuff girl reached over and gently righted his overturned pot.

“You just have to be quick,” she said kindly. “Watch.”

She pressed another pod lightly into the loosened soil, murmured the simple warming charm Estelle had taught them, and lifted her hand just in time for the pod to pop. Blossoms cascaded into the pot instead of all over the table.

“Comme ça,” she said, cheeks dimpling.

The boy blinked, lips twitching.

Estelle watched them out of the corner of her eye, something in her easing. For every rumor about beasts and danger, there was this: a Hufflepuff showing a Beauxbatons boy how not to panic over flowers.

In her next class, the fourth-year Gryffindors and Durmstrang, Neville Longbottom gave her a different kind of solace.

They were working with a batch of young Mandrakes—safely muffled, still in their juvenile stage. The assignment was simple enough: repotting and checking root health. The trick lay in not dropping them.

Several students had already discovered that the plants, while not deadly yet, were squirmy and opinionated about their living arrangements. One Durmstrang boy held his Mandrake at arm’s length, expression pinched, as it flailed its stubby arms and kicked soil everywhere.

Neville, on the other hand, looked… calm.

“Firm but gentle, Longbottom,” Estelle reminded, more out of habit than concern, as she passed his bench.

“I know,” he said quietly, eyes focused. “Like you showed us last year. They don’t like sudden movements.”

His Mandrake wriggled a bit, then settled as he cupped its leaves and eased it from the old pot. Its pale root-body stretched, gave what sounded suspiciously like a contented sigh, and allowed itself to be transferred into the new container without fuss.

“Perfect,” Estelle said, genuine warmth seeping into her voice.

Neville flushed, ducking his head, but his smile lingered.

A few minutes later, as the other students packed up and began wrestling with their ear-muffs, he hovered near her desk.

“Professor?” he said, twisting his gloves between his hands.

“Yes, Neville?”

“I, er—” He hesitated, then blurted, “You look a bit tired.”

She blinked.

“That subtle, am I?” she said dryly.

He flushed deeper. “Sorry. I just—last year, when you were… y’know… after—”

He flailed to a halt, clearly realizing he’d backed himself into conversational disaster.

“After nearly getting eaten by half the plant collection and watching Dementors circling the grounds?” she supplied.

“Yeah,” he said, mortified. “You looked… worse than now. But you kind of look the same. Just a bit.”

Estelle considered pretending she was insulted. Instead, she sighed.

“It’s been a long month,” she said. “And the year promises to get longer.”

Neville nodded, worrying his gloves. “I was thinking,” he said, words tumbling faster now as if he feared he’d lose his nerve, “maybe—er—this could help?”

He fumbled in his bag and pulled out a small pot.

Inside, a tiny plant with wide, glossy leaves and pale purple flowers sat serenely in a carefully mixed soil. The pot itself was chipped around the rim, but the plant looked as content as any Estelle had ever seen.

She looked up, surprised.

“You grew this?” she asked.

He nodded, eyes on the floor. “Since last year,” he said. “Well. I started it in summer. It’s, er, a sort of hybrid. I don’t know its proper name, but Gran says the flowers help with headaches. You can dry them for tea or just… keep it round. I thought maybe… it could live in here. Or in your quarters. If you want. For when you get… tired.”

Her chest went unexpectedly tight.

“Neville,” she said, voice softer than she meant.

He flinched. “Sorry, is that stupid? I just—”

“It’s not stupid,” she cut in. “It’s… one of the kindest things anyone’s done for me in a long time.”

He dared a glance up at her. “Really?”

“Really,” she said. “May I?”

She took the pot from him, cradling it in both hands. The plant’s leaves brushed her fingers, cool and sturdy. It exuded a faint, soothing scent—lavender and something minty underneath.

“I’ll keep it on my desk,” she said. “As a reminder that some things can be coaxed into blooming if you give them time.”

Neville’s mouth twitched into a lopsided grin.

“You’re the one who coaxed me,” he muttered.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing!” he squeaked, then fled before she could press.

She watched him go, affection and something like pride knotting together in her chest.

One boy, she thought. One boy who’d once been terrified of his own shadow now offering her comfort in the shape of a plant.

If the Tournament’s shadow loomed over the castle, moments like that threw small, stubborn beams of light through it.

She checked on Harry on Wednesday.

Officially, it was because he’d been quieter than even his newly subdued norm in class that day, despite Ron’s desperate attempts to get him to speculate on what kind of beasts they might be facing. Unofficially, it was because the circles under his eyes were beginning to resemble Severus’s pre-potion shadows, and Estelle knew what sleep deprivation did to a person’s judgment.

She found him by the lake in the late afternoon, jacket thrown over his shoulders, trainers scuffing the pebbled bank. Hermione sat a few yards away under the beech tree, nose in a book so enormous it could’ve been used as a shield. Ron lay on his back nearby, tossing small stones into the air and catching them again.

Harry was staring across the water, jaw clenched.

She approached from the side, footsteps crunching on gravel.

“Careful,” she said. “If you brood too hard, the Giant Squid might start offering you advice. He’s got very strong opinions about detentions.”

Harry jumped, then relaxed when he saw her.

“Professor,” he said, giving an awkward half-smile.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m off-duty from terrifying authority figure today. Just passing through.”

Hermione glanced up, gave Estelle a quick, worried nod, then tactfully went back to her reading. Ron squinted at them, opened his mouth as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it and let another stone arc lazily skyward.

Estelle stopped a few feet away from Harry, close enough to talk without being overheard, far enough for him to bolt if he wanted to.

“How’s your Mandrake?” she asked, as if that were the most natural question in the world.

He snorted. “Still not trying to bite me, so I guess that’s good.”

“High bar,” she said. “But I’ll take it.”

He kicked at a clump of grass.

“Everyone keeps asking me about the Tournament,” he muttered. “Like I’d know anything. I didn’t even put my name in.”

“I’m aware,” she said.

He glanced at her, wary. “Are you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I have many faults, Potter, but I like to think gullibility isn’t one of them. You do not have the subtlety to have fooled the Goblet. No offense.”

“None taken,” he said, and this time the smile looked a little more real.

They watched the lake for a moment.

On the far shore, a few giant squid tentacles broke the surface lazily, then sank again.

“They’re saying it’s going to be some kind of monster,” Harry said suddenly. “First task.”

Beast, Estelle corrected automatically in her head. Creature. The word monster carried its own weight.

“Something like that,” she said aloud. “Dangerous magical creature.”

His shoulders tightened. “And we get to choose which one to fight,” he said. “Like that’s meant to make it better.”

She considered her words.

“You know what I’m going to say,” she said. “That you’ll need to use your head. That you’re not alone. That your friends and your teachers are here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard that one. A lot.”

“You sound unconvinced,” she said.

He laughed, a short, bitter sound that didn’t belong in a fourteen-year-old’s mouth.

“Feels a bit like when they put me in the middle of the Quidditch pitch with a bunch of Dementors around and said, ‘Don’t fall off your broom, Harry,’” he said. “Except this time there won’t be a broom.”

She flinched internally at the image.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said. “It will be dangerous. There will be risk.”

“That’s one word for it,” he muttered.

“But it will also be watched,” she went on. “Observed. There will be adults with wands and wards ready. There will be healers on standby. This is not the first time a school has done this ridiculous thing. They’ve had centuries to make it survivable.”

“People have died,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she said. “They have. And people have survived. Some badly hurt. Some changed. Some…” She shrugged one shoulder. “Some walked away with more than they started with.”

He stared at the water.

“I’m not brave like my dad,” he blurted suddenly. “Everyone keeps saying I’m like him. But I’m not. I’m scared out of my mind and I just want it to be over.”

Estelle’s chest twisted.

“You know what’s funny?” she said.

“What?”

“James was scared too,” she said. “He just hid it behind jokes and arrogance and a truly appalling sense of humor. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, Harry. It’s what you do while you’re terrified.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“Did you… know him?” he asked hesitantly. “My dad?”

She smiled, small and aching.

“Yes,” she said. “Very well.”

“And my mum?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said again. “Enough to know she’d hex the lot of us if we let you believe you had to be a copy of either of them.”

His throat bobbed.

“What would they say?” he asked. “If they were here. About all of this.”

Estelle considered that.

“Lily would say,” she began slowly, “that she loves you, that she’s proud of you, and that if you ever risked your life unnecessarily she’d ground you until you were thirty.”

Harry snorted.

“And my dad?” he asked.

“James would say he loves you and he’s proud of you,” she said. “And then he’d probably start trying to teach you highly ill-advised tricks to impress everyone during the task until Lily hexed him and dragged him away.”

Harry actually laughed at that, a real laugh, quick and surprised.

“They sound…” He trailed off, eyes suspiciously bright.

“Human,” she supplied. “Flawed. Stupid sometimes. Brave a lot. You’re allowed to be all of that too.”

He swiped at his nose.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “For not… y’know.”

“Making a speech?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

She reached out and squeezed his shoulder, brief but firm.

“Get some sleep, Potter,” she said. “You’ll need your head clear. And stop staring at the lake like it’s going to give you answers. It’s moody enough as it is.”

He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth tugged up.

“I heard that,” Ron called from under the tree. “About not making speeches. I’ll hold you to it, Professor.”

“I make excellent speeches,” she shot back. “You just haven’t been paying attention.”

Hermione snorted into her book.

Estelle left them there, three small figures by the water, and told herself—for the thousandth time—that fourteen could be enough. That they could be enough.

She brewed Wolfsbane on the Sunday between those two weeks.

She’d been putting it off, telling herself Remus had stocked up before he left in June, telling herself she was too busy, too tired, that the Tournament demanded all of her attention.

It was only partially a lie.

The truth was, brewing Wolfsbane always brought Remus into the room with her. His face. His voice. His laugh. His scars. His particular blend of dry humor and stubborn self-loathing. Some days, it was more than she could stand.

But that morning, she woke with a restless energy she couldn’t shake and a sharp, clean need to do something that might help someone she loved that wasn’t trapped inside these walls.

So she headed to the greenhouses at dawn, collected the fresh aconite she needed, and then made her way down to the dungeons.

Severus’s store cupboard had become familiar—and, disturbingly, comforting—over the last year. She slipped in with his permission, gathered the remaining ingredients (powdered moonstone, belladonna—carefully labeled with three warning symbols—and a particular strain of thyme she knew he kept for its stabilizing properties).

Back in Greenhouse Seven—the smallest, quietest, least-trafficked space—she set up her cauldron.

The process took hours.

Wolfsbane was not forgiving. One mis-timed stir, one temperature fluctuation, and the brew turned from salvation to poison. Estelle had made it enough times now that her muscles knew the motions before her mind did, but she didn’t let herself treat it lightly.

She chopped. She crushed. She infused.

Steam rose in slow, lavender-tinted coils. The scent was acrid at first—aconite’s bitter bite—but as the moonstone dissolved and the herbs released their oils, it mellowed into something almost pleasant: sharp and green and faintly metallic, like rain on stone.

Between stages, her thoughts wandered.

To Remus, in whatever cottage or safe house he’d landed in this time. To how he’d looked last Christmas when he’d come to Grimmauld Place—thinner than ever, eyes tired but alight when he’d seen her. To the way his hands had trembled slightly as he’d accepted the mug of tea she’d pressed into them.

He’d written sporadically since leaving Hogwarts. Owls carrying pages that smelled faintly of pine and smoke, words full of wry asides and careful omissions. He never said where he was. He never said who he was with. He always asked about her.

She’d written back, of course. But as the summer edged toward autumn and the Tournament had swept in like a storm, she’d let the letters lapse.

He needs peace, she’d told herself. He doesn’t need your constant litany of Hogwarts crises.

But now—now there were dragons on the horizon (literal or not), and Harry was once again in the center of something he hadn’t chosen, and Severus was sleeping only by the grace of a potion they’d cobbled together out of shared stubbornness, and Estelle felt like she might come apart at the seams if she didn’t talk to someone who wasn’t also drowning in the same water.

By the time the Wolfsbane reached its final simmer, the sun had climbed high enough to turn the greenhouse glass into a hazy mirror.

The potion was correct—a deep, translucent indigo that clung lightly to the ladle when she lifted it, then flowed off in a smooth, continuous ribbon.

She let it cool, whispering the stabilization charm under her breath, hands steady.

When it had settled, she decanted it carefully into four thick glass vials, sealing each with a wax cap and a stasis charm. Enough for a full moon cycle, with one extra dose in case of breakage.

She held one up, watching the light catch in its depths.

“Here,” she murmured to no one. “Some small thing I can fix.”

Back in her chambers, she set the vials on the desk and pulled out parchment.

For a long time, she just stared at the blank sheet.

How did you reduce all of this—Tournament, beasts, Harry, Severus, her own mess of a heart—into something that wouldn’t send Remus spiraling?

She dipped her quill.

Remus,

She paused, then began.

Remus,

I hope this reaches you somewhere safe, and that for once “somewhere safe” doesn’t mean “cold, damp, and infested with more mice than furniture.”

I’ve brewed you a fresh batch of Wolfsbane. Enclosed you’ll find enough for the next full moon and then some. Before you protest that you have plenty, humor me. It calms me to know that somewhere out there you are not suffering through transformations unaided because “someone else might need it more.” It is possible that “someone else” is allowed to include you.

Hogwarts is… Hogwarts. This year it comes with extra spectacle and significantly fewer Quidditch practices. We are hosting the Triwizard Tournament. Yes, I know. I made that face too when Albus told me. No, he did not ask my opinion beforehand. Yes, I told him exactly what I thought anyway. You would have been proud.

Durmstrang and Beauxbatons have arrived. Their students are using our corridors as a fashion show / war march hybrid. You’d like some of them. You’d want to strangle others. Our own lot are taking it in stride in the way only teenagers can when presented with new people to impress and/or compete with.

Harry… he’s all right. As all right as a fourteen-year-old can be with the weight of several nations’ magical communities pressing down on his scar. He’s in my classes. He’s polite. Stubborn. Smarter than he lets on. He asked me, the other day, what his parents would say about all of this. I told him Lily would ground him and James would try to teach him stupid tricks. I hope that was the right answer.

I find myself thinking of you more than is probably healthy. There is no one here who quite understands what it is to have survived one war only to smell the smoke from the next one on the wind. Severus—

She stopped.

The quill hovered over the page, dripping ink.

What did she say about Severus, exactly? That they’d gone from enemies to… whatever they were now? That he’d perfected a sleeping draught with her help and fallen asleep on her shoulder in her quarters? That he still served a dangerous man while trying to protect a boy who didn’t know the half of it?

There is no way to explain this that doesn’t set something on fire, she thought.

She drew a careful line through “Severus,” blotted the ink before it could seep too deeply, and continued.

—The staff are doing what they can. Some days we manage genuine competence. Other days we cling to the illusion. You know how it is.

They’ve told us the first task will involve magical creatures. No, they haven’t told us what kind. Yes, I am already thinking of every possible way it could go wrong. No, I am not sleeping particularly well. Before you say anything: I am eating. I am breathing. I am making children repot Mandrakes without losing fingers. I am more functional than last year. (Low bar, I realize.)

I miss having your voice in my ear. Not literally; I’m not hearing things. (Yet.) I mean your perspective. You are outside these walls. You remember what the world looks like beyond stone and house ties and Dumbledore’s plans. I find myself needing that. Needing you.

If you have the time and the inclination, write back. Tell me how the moon looks where you are. Tell me if it feels different, not seeing it over the Forbidden Forest. Tell me if I am being ridiculous to worry as much as I do, or if I am not worrying enough.

Take the potion. All of it. That is not a request. Consider it an order from your former colleague and current busybody.

Stay alive, Remus. It’s selfish of me to ask, but I’m asking anyway.

All my love,

Estelle

She read it twice, resisting the urge to soften or embellish. It was more honest than most of the letters she’d sent in years.

Good, she thought. If she was asking him for something real, she owed him the same.

She rolled the parchment, sealed it with wax, and slipped it into the padded box with the four vials. A few cushioning charms later, she fastened the lid.

“Icarus,” she called.

Her owl—a golden-tan horned creature with keen amber eyes—launched himself from his perch near the window and landed on the desk, talons clicking softly.

He blinked at her, then at the box.

“Going to Remus,” she said, stroking his feathers. “You remember the route.”

He hooted softly, a sound that always reminded her of low thunder.

“Take your time,” she added. “Find him wherever he is. Don’t rush. And don’t let anyone intercept you. Bite if you have to.”

Icarus clicked his beak, as if offended she’d suggest he’d allow such a thing.

She tied the box carefully to his legs, double-checking the knots, then carried him to the open window.

Outside, the sky was streaked with the colors of late afternoon—washed-out blue near the horizon, deepening toward indigo at the zenith. A few wisps of cloud dragged lazily over the mountains.

“Go on, then,” she whispered.

He launched, wings beating strong, body cutting a sure line through the air.

She watched until he was a speck, then nothing, swallowed by the sky.

Only when he’d disappeared did she realize how tightly she’d been gripping the windowsill. Her fingers ached.

Sending the letter didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change the Tournament, or the beasts, or the fact that somewhere out there a dark wizard was probably making his own preparations.

But knowing that, soon, Remus would hold those vials in his hands, would read her words and know she was thinking of him—that helped.

He might not respond. He might decide that silence was safer. She knew that possibility, held it alongside the hope.

Even so.

“I need you,” she had written.

It had felt like stepping off a ledge. It still did.

She closed the window against the chill creeping in and turned back to her room.

Neville’s little plant sat on her desk, leaves catching the last scraps of light. She ran a fingertip along one leaf; it shivered, releasing another faint wave of calming scent.

“Let’s see if we can keep anyone else alive this year,” she told it.

The plant, obligingly, did not disagree.

The last days of September blurred together in small, tangible ways.

Students fretted over essays and exams, gossip and crushes. A Beauxbatons girl developed a hopeless infatuation with one of the Durmstrang boys and spent an entire lesson mis-watering her Flitterblooms while sneaking glances at him. Two Hogwarts fourth-years started a quiet competition to see who could correctly identify more foreign plants without consulting their textbooks.

Estelle spent her evenings between the greenhouses, her chambers, and the dungeons. Sometimes she and Severus shared tea and companionable silence. Sometimes they argued about curriculum. Sometimes they walked the corridors side by side, not quite touching, shadows merging on the stone floor.

On the last night of the month, she stood at her window again, looking out at the moon—a thin silver crescent rising over the forest.

Somewhere under that same sky, Remus would be receiving a tired owl with a box tied to its leg.

Somewhere under that same sky, the champions were lying awake, imagining teeth and claws.

Inside the castle, students slept, dreamed of glory or disaster or nothing at all.

Estelle leaned her forehead against the cool glass, eyes closing.

Inside her, the worry and the weariness and the flicker of something like hope moved around each other, refusing to settle.

Tomorrow, October would come. With it, shorter days, colder nights, and the Tournament drawing closer to whatever terrible, stunning spectacle awaited them all.

For now, she had this: a quiet room, a healing hand, a plant from a boy who had learned to trust himself, a letter out in the world like a message in a bottle.

And somewhere just down the corridor, a man who had finally, finally slept.

It wasn’t enough.

It was what she had.

She pushed away from the window, blew out the lamp, and let the dark wrap around her as she made her way to bed, hoping—selfishly, fiercely—that when she woke, there might be an owl at her window bearing Remus’s cramped, familiar handwriting.

She needed, more than anything, to hear a voice that didn’t echo off Hogwarts stone.

Chapter Text

The first cold winds of October swept across the grounds with the same force as a shifting tide, and by its second morning the air tasted like frost and woodsmoke and the faintest bite of winter lurking behind the trees. Hogwarts always changed in October—more quickly, more dramatically than in any other month. The stone walls chilled. The portraits donned scarves. Even the ghosts drifted faster, trailing little wisps of thin, cold fog wherever they went.

Estelle preferred October to September. September smelled too much like beginnings, like new expectations layered atop old exhaustion. But October—October was quieter. It was the month where the castle settled into its bones.

And where dread settled into hers.

The first task was now only weeks away.

She could feel it in the way the students spoke, half-whispering when they thought no one listened. She could feel it in the staff room, where Minerva had begun pinching the bridge of her nose again as she read the morning Prophet, and where Severus was beginning to smother more sighs into his teacup than usual.

She could feel it in the greenhouses, where even the temperamental plants seemed on edge. Perhaps it was the cold. Perhaps it was her nerves. Perhaps it was that everything—students, teachers, sky—held still right before the moment something enormous broke open.

Two weeks into October, she woke every morning with that sensation coiled under her ribs.

But she did what she always did.
She taught. She kept her hands busy. She stitched the edges of her days with small, steady rituals to keep the larger storms from swallowing her whole.

And on one particularly chaotic Tuesday, the chaos came to her in twin form.

Her fourth-year Gryffindor and Durmstrang class had just ended, and Estelle was restocking a cabinet of pruning shears when she heard the unmistakable sound of whispered scheming floating down the corridor outside Greenhouse Four.

She didn’t even need to turn around to identify the voices.

“—you open the door, I’ll toss it—”

“No, you toss it and then I open the door—”

“If we do that, it’ll explode on me—”

“That’s what shields are for—”

“Should’ve used Neville—”

“We are not using Neville—”

Estelle pinched the bridge of her nose, took a single steadying breath, and stepped into the threshold just as Fred and George Weasley attempted to boomerang something suspiciously glowing toward her greenhouse.

“Hold it,” she said sharply.

Both boys froze in place comically—one with his arm mid-throw, the other mid-grin.

“Professor Black!” Fred said brightly.

“Fancy seeing you here!” said George.

“I teach here,” Estelle said. “Daily. In this exact location.”

“Yes, well,” George said.
“Teaching is an overrated detail.”
“Minor, really.”
“Spatial coincidence at best.”

Estelle folded her arms. “What exactly were you about to throw near my greenhouse?”

Fred winced. George winced harder. They exchanged a look that said: prepare to lie, but also prepare to die.

“It’s a prototype!” Fred blurted.

“A harmless experimental one!” George added.

Estelle held out her hand.

Fred placed the glowing object into her palm with the reverence of someone surrendering an injured owl.

It was a Puffapod. A heavily modified one. Its usual pale glow now flickered like a candle flame trapped under glass.

“Explain,” Estelle said.

“Well—”

“Funny story—”

“You know how Puffapods burst into flowers when dropped?”

“Beautiful flowers.”

“Lots of them.”

“So many flowers.”

“Entire ecosystems of flowers.”

Estelle stared at them.

George cleared his throat. “We wondered what would happen if we… encouraged them a bit.”

“With enchantments,” Fred said.

“And charm layering!” George said.

“And maybe a questionable growth-acceleration potion,” Fred whispered.

George elbowed him. “Not questionable,” he hissed. “Innovative.”

Estelle raised an eyebrow. “And you were planning to test this in front of my greenhouse?”

Fred looked insulted. “Of course not! Only near it.”

“Very near,” George agreed.

“Almost inside.”

Estelle inhaled slowly through her nose.

“What exactly does this do?”

Fred opened his mouth.
George clapped a hand over it.

“Nothing catastrophic,” George said immediately. “Probably. Very likely. Fair odds. Favorable odds, even.”

Estelle drew her wand and cast a controlled diagnostic spell.

The Puffapod trembled.

Vibrated.

Then emitted a soft whomp that puffed out a tiny cloud of iridescent pollen.

Fred and George both ducked.

Estelle did not.

The pollen fell harmlessly to the ground. It shimmered, then burst into a cascade of miniature flowers—dozens of them, no bigger than her fingernail, each shaped like a star and humming faintly as they drifted upward.

The twins’ faces lit up identically.

“That’s new,” Fred breathed.

“They’ve never hummed before,” George whispered reverently.

Estelle glared. “Did you test any of this in a controlled environment?”

“…Define controlled,” Fred said.

“I’m about to define detention,” Estelle countered.

Both twins snapped to attention.

“No, no, no,” George said. “We’ve been very good lately.”

“Extremely good,” Fred said. “Almost saintly.”

“You tried to enter the Triwizard Tournament illegally,” Estelle reminded them.

“That was last month,” George argued.

“Ancient history,” Fred agreed.

Estelle sighed.

“You may keep your… experiment,” she said. “But do not test it near the greenhouses again. Or near students. Or walls. Or floors. Or air that I breathe.”

The twins saluted vigorously.

“We’ll do better,” George promised.

“Much better,” Fred said. “At least until after the first task.”

Estelle narrowed her eyes. “Why after the first task?”

“Oh—no reason,” they chorused, far too quickly.

She groaned.

“Twenty points from Gryffindor,” she said. “And if this thing explodes, you are both explaining it to Madam Pomfrey.”

The twins flinched.

“Understood,” Fred said grimly. “Hospital Wing is enemy territory.”

“We’ll behave,” George promised.

Estelle doubted that, but they scampered off down the hall, muttering excitedly about humming flowers and future improvements, so at least the danger had been postponed.

For now.

The next morning brought mist, frost on the grass, and something she’d been waiting for without letting herself hope.

Icarus was perched on her windowsill when she awoke, feathers fluffed against the cold, a small parcel tied neatly to his leg. Her heart jolted.

“Sweet boy,” she whispered, undoing the knot carefully. “How long were you waiting?”

Icarus hooted softly and dipped his head into her palm to demand praise. She stroked him until he settled, then carried the parcel to her desk.

She recognized Remus’s handwriting immediately—narrow, slanted, a little shakier than usual, but still unmistakably him.

Her throat tightened.

She opened the letter slowly, almost reverently, as if it might disappear if she moved too quickly.

Estelle,

Your owl is as imperious as ever. He found me without trouble, which is more than I can say for most humans. I was in the middle of coaxing a fire to life in a hearth I suspect predates Merlin when he arrived and nearly took off half my hair with his wingspan.

The Wolfsbane is appreciated. Deeply. You’re right, of course—I do have a reserve, but it isn’t your brew, and Substandard Wolfsbane is like drinking watered-down tea or reading defensive spellwork written by Lockhart. Technically functional. Practically useless. Don’t tell Severus I said that; he’ll deduct imaginary House points.

I’m in a remote forest in the western Balkans. Don’t worry about how I got here. Or why. I promise it’s not for any reason that should alarm you (which you won’t believe, but I am saying it anyway because I know you). There is a village nearby that minds its own business. Wizards here tend to keep to themselves. It’s peaceful in a way I’d forgotten was possible.

I camp near the edge of the forest when the weather allows it. Inside it, when the rain becomes too vicious. There are wolves here. Real ones. They do not bother me. They keep their distance. Sometimes I hear them at night. Oddly enough, it helps me sleep.

Estelle paused, pressing the page briefly to her chest. Real wolves. He’d written that deliberately, she knew. A reminder that he was not only the monster the world made him believe he was.

She continued reading.

Sirius sends his love. (No, that is not a joke. And no, he did not dictate this letter, though he tried.) We met three nights ago. He is—

Estelle froze.

Her eyes skimmed the next lines more slowly.

Sirius is… thinner. Sharper around the edges. Quicker to laugh at things not remotely funny. He is hunting. Searching. I don’t know for what. Or who. Perhaps just purpose. Perhaps himself. I don’t press him. You know how he is—give him an inch of questioning and he retreats a mile.

He is staying mostly in his Animagus form. It’s safer. Less attention. Though there was an unfortunate incident involving a hunter, a crossbow, and a very angry Hippogriff. (Buckbeak appears to have forgiven him. Mostly.)

Estelle closed her eyes.

Sirius alive. Indoors somewhere. Eating. Sleeping—maybe. Laughing at terrible jokes. Narrowly avoiding crossbows. Flying on Buckbeak.

Alive.

Her lungs tightened with relief so abrupt it bordered on painful.

She read on.

He asked after you. Quietly. In that conspiratorial way he used to save for stolen sweets and secret passageways. If it comforts you: he is safe, at least in the way Sirius Black can ever be said to be safe. He is not alone.

But you are right not to ask too much. Owls can be intercepted. Words can be twisted. I will not tell you the things that would endanger him. Or you. Or anyone else.

Estelle let out a shaky breath.

Now—about Hogwarts.

You asked if you were worrying too much or not enough. I’m tempted to reply “yes.” You’ve always been talented at both extremes. But I will give you something honest, if you’ll take it.

This Tournament is a powder keg. Even without dark forces stirring, it would be dangerous, political, manipulative, and deeply unfair to all involved. That is the nature of such spectacles. But you know that already.

What you perhaps need reminding of is this: you are not alone in facing it. You have Severus—yes, I can practically hear you groaning from here—who is, despite all his attempts to insist otherwise, one of the most capable and sharp-minded witches or wizards alive. You have Minerva. Filius. Hagrid. You have a staff who have survived wars of their own.

And you have your own stubbornness, which has pulled you through fire more than once.

Estelle’s eyes stung.

As for Harry… I don’t know what I can tell you that you haven’t already said to him yourself. He is James’s son in all the reckless, earnest ways. Lily’s in all the fierce, loving ones. He will break before he bends. He will run headfirst into danger if he thinks it protects someone else. He is young enough to believe he is invincible. And old enough to know he isn’t.

Be patient with him. Be honest. He responds better to truth than to coddling. Remember that he has almost no one who speaks to him as you do—with your past in your voice, and his parents in your eyes.

Estelle wiped her cheek before the tear could fall onto the parchment.

You asked how the moon looks from here. Pale. Thin. Suspended above trees that whisper in languages older than English. I don’t hate it. That feels worth saying.

I will write again if I can. If not, assume I am alive, probably annoyed, probably hungry, and probably being pestered by a gigantic dog with more opinions than sense.

Take care of yourself, Estelle. Which includes sleeping. And eating. And not getting bitten by your own plants. (Yes, I heard about that.)

My love, always—

-Remus

Estelle pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes.

Remus’s handwriting blurred, then steadied again.

He was alive. Sirius was alive. Somewhere far away, in a forest she’d never seen, her two closest ghosts were breathing, moving, arguing, living.

And Remus—Remus still loved her. In that quiet, steady, maddening way that made the world feel slightly less unbearable.

She folded the letter gently and placed it in her drawer, then sat back in her chair, letting her breath finally escape her chest.

Something unclenched inside her.

Not everything. But one part. One piece.

Enough to let her move again.

By evening, she knew what she needed to do next.

She’d been dancing around the idea for days, circling it like a predator unsure of the strength of its prey.

If the first task involved magical creatures—and Dumbledore’s wording had made it abundantly clear it did—then one person at Hogwarts would absolutely know what those creatures were.

One person who would be involved in their transport, their care, their containment.

One person who had no poker face whatsoever.

Rubeus Hagrid.

Estelle paced across her chambers, Remus’s letter still echoing in her mind.

Sirius alive.
Remus safe.
Beasts coming.
Harry unprepared.
Cedric unaware.
Fleur proud.
Krum silent.
Severus tired, but sleeping.
Dumbledore secretive.
She, somewhere between.

She stopped pacing.

“Right,” she said aloud to the room. “Enough guessing.”

She crossed to her desk, sat down, and jotted a single-line note.

Hagrid — Are you free tomorrow morning? I’d like to visit the pumpkins. — Estelle

She attached it to a small school barn owl and sent it off before she could second-guess herself.

The owl returned ten minutes later with a scrawl that took her several seconds to decipher:

Absolutely!!! Come by whenever yeh like! Got somethin’ yeh oughta see. — H

Estelle groaned.

“‘Something you ought to see’ is never a good sign,” she muttered.

Still.

It was better to know than not know.

She folded Remus’s letter one more time, smoothing the edges with her palm.

Tomorrow, she thought.
Tomorrow she would go to Hagrid’s hut and find out—if not the truth, then at least a piece of it.

For now, she banked the fire, changed into her softest nightclothes, and climbed into bed.

Outside her window, October wind rattled the panes.

The moon rose slowly over the Forbidden Forest, thin as a blade.

And Estelle Black, lying in the dark with her heart caught somewhere between fear and resolve, let the night come.

Tomorrow, she would face whatever Hagrid had to show her.

And she would be ready.

Chapter Text

The sky was a pale, uncommitted gray the next morning—too thin to be called overcast, too bright to be foggy. It was the color of early October indecision, and Estelle felt that exact mood humming in her bones as she wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and stepped out onto the damp grass.

The dew soaked through the toes of her boots almost immediately. She didn’t mind. She breathed in the earthy scent of the grounds, letting the chill sting her lungs. It helped her feel awake. Or at least grounded.

She needed grounding.

The first task loomed less than a month away, and while everyone in the castle whispered theories and suspicions, Estelle knew Hagrid always knew more than he let on.

And he had written:

Got somethin’ yeh oughta see.

That, in Hagrid-speak, translated roughly to:

Something dangerous and enormous has arrived. I am delighted. You will be terrified. Come immediately.

She reached his hut and knocked.

It rattled slightly.

“Come in!” Hagrid boomed.

Estelle pushed the door open—

—and the heat hit her first. A wave of furnace warmth, thick with steam and the faint tang of singed hair.

“What in Merlin’s—”

Her words died.

Hagrid beamed at her over a massive copper cauldron bubbling in the center of the room.

The cauldron was the size of a small bathtub. It hissed, splattering flecks of what looked suspiciously like dragon hide around the hearth.

“Thought yeh might like a peek,” Hagrid said proudly. “They’ll want ter keep this stuff safe for the next week or so.”

“This… cauldron?” Estelle asked carefully.

“Nah,” Hagrid said. “What’s *in* it.”

The cauldron gave an ominous BLORP.

Estelle raised a brow. “…Hagrid, what exactly are you brewing?”

“Feed.” He grinned. “Enriched feed. Fer the—well, yeh’ll see. Jus’ a little early preparation.”

He winked at her in a way that made her stomach drop.

“Is this related to the first task?” she asked softly.

Hagrid’s eyes darted left. Then right. Then left again.

“Well,” he said, “I shouldn’t say too much—”

That meant yes.

Estelle stepped closer to the cauldron, peering into the bubbling mess. She recognized bits of powdered salamander bone, horklump juice, crushed bloodroot petals—

This wasn’t feed.

This was lure.

“Dragons,” she breathed.

Hagrid froze.

Then broke into a sheepish grin.

“Well, yeh know,” he said, scratching behind his beard, “could be other big beasts. Big Competin’ Beasts. Could be anythin’ o’ that sort—”

“Hagrid,” she said firmly.

He deflated.

“Alright,” he whispered, leaning conspiratorially close. “But don’ go repeatin’ this—students aren’t supposed ter know yet.”

“I’m not a student.”

“Aye, but yeh’ve always been one o’ the ones with more sense than most o’ the staff,” he said fondly. “Still—promise?”

“I promise,” she said.

Hagrid exhaled with relief. “Right. Well—yes. Dragons.”

Estelle’s stomach twisted into knots so sudden her knees wobbled. She braced a hand against the table.

Dragons.

Harry.

Cedric.

Fleur.

Krum.

Dragons.

She swallowed hard. “One dragon?”

“Four,” Hagrid said cheerfully. “Tha’s the biggest surprise. One fer each champion. Makes it fairer, see?”

Her pulse stuttered.

Four dragons meant four chances for something to go wrong—terribly, explosively wrong.

“If anyone dies—” she started, voice tight.

“No one’s gonna die,” Hagrid said stoutly. “We’re takin’ every precaution. We’re gettin’ handlers from Romania—Charlie Weasley’s even comin’ back.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Estelle murmured.

Hagrid patted her shoulder, which nearly dislocated it. “Yeh’ll understand when yeh see ’em. Beautiful creatures. Just magnificent.”

“Terrifying,” Estelle corrected.

Hagrid shrugged. “Beautifully terrifying.”

She pressed two fingers to her temple. “Hagrid, are you sure they’re secure?”

“Completely! Have a look out there.”

He gestured toward the window. Estelle stepped closer, squinting toward the distant tree line behind the Forbidden Forest.

She saw it then—just barely—but unmistakable:

A temporary paddock being constructed. Large enough to hold a Hungarian Horntail. Large enough for something worse.

She closed her eyes.

“Harry is going to faint,” she whispered.

“Eh, he’s faced worse,” Hagrid said, surprisingly calm. “And he’s got yeh.”

“Exactly,” Estelle said. “He only has me.”

Hagrid frowned at her tone but said nothing.

Instead, he thrust a plate of rock cakes into her hand.

“Eat,” he insisted. “Yeh look pale.”

“I don’t think this will help.”

“Eat,” he repeated loudly.

She took one delicate bite. It cracked one of her molars.

But she smiled anyway.

She loved Hagrid. She truly did.

He just had an unfortunate fondness for creatures that could kill them all before breakfast.

After half an hour and one nearly broken tooth, Estelle left his hut, the cold wind hitting her cheeks like a slap. She needed to walk. To breathe. To do something with the panic swirling under her ribs.

Dragons.

It was no longer abstract.

No longer rumor.

It was real.

And the task was only a week away.

She spent the rest of the morning teaching her seventh-year Slytherins, barely hearing half her own lecture. They were working on Fanged Geranium morphogenesis, and she nearly lost a thumb when she mistimed a pruning spell.

“Professor Black?” one of her students asked nervously.

“Yes?” she snapped.

“Are you… alright?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “But thank you.”

She ended class early.

A few of them looked ready to flee the country.

---

The next two weeks passed with a strangeness that made Estelle feel as though she were pushing through water rather than air. Everything was muffled, everything distant. Students whispered about the upcoming task, speculating wildly:

“Merpeople!”

“Acromantulas!”

“A giant chess match again—no, that’d be stupid—”

“Kelpies!”

“Giant scorpions!”

“Blast-Ended Skrewts!”

“Oh Merlin, if Hagrid has anything to do with it—”

Estelle had to fight the urge to blurt out dragons, actually, at least twenty times.

The days blurred into classes, grading, meetings, patrolling, and spending more time than she wanted in Severus’s company—but also not enough time, because she never seemed to see him when she needed reassurance and always saw him when she wasn’t sure what to say.

Sometimes he brushed past her in the halls, their hands nearly touching.

Sometimes they spoke during patrols, soft exchanges in the dim light.

Sometimes she found herself wondering if he slept at all.

Her heart tugged in ways she wasn’t ready to name.

And then came the night everything shifted again.

---

Estelle was patrolling the castle on a Tuesday night close to midnight. The corridors were cool, lit only by floating torches and the pale ghosts drifting silently near the ceilings.

She passed the library.

Empty.

She passed the Charms corridor.

Silent.

She rounded the corner toward the unused classrooms—

—and stopped.

Two figures stood near the far end of the hallway.

And both had their wands drawn.

Estelle’s pulse pounded. She took two careful steps forward.

The torchlight flickered and illuminated their faces.

Severus.

And Karkaroff.

Her heart dropped straight to her feet.

“—you cannot be serious—” Karkaroff hissed.

“I am,” Severus said sharply. “And lower your voice.”

“You think I can be calm? In this cursed castle? With this—this *tournament*—”

“That is not my concern.”

“It damn well should be!”

Estelle raised her wand slightly, stepping forward so her boots clicked deliberately on the stone.

Both men snapped toward her.

Karkaroff’s wand swung up.

Severus’s followed—toward Karkaroff, not her.

“Enough,” Estelle said, voice cool but slicing through the tension. “Put them down.”

Karkaroff sneered. “This does not concern you, Professor Black.”

“When two grown men are pointing wands in a school corridor, it concerns me,” she said sharply. “Lower them.”

Karkaroff hesitated. His eyes flicked to Severus. Something like fear twitched in his lip.

Severus didn’t move.

“Karkaroff,” Estelle warned.

He finally dropped his wand, though he did so with all the grace of someone swallowing poison.

Severus lowered his, but only an inch.

“What is going on?” Estelle demanded.

Neither answered.

Of course.

“Fine,” she snapped. “Severus. You. With me.”

He stiffened. “Estelle—”

“Now.”

She didn’t give him time to argue. She turned and began walking.

Behind her, she heard a low, furious exhale—Karkaroff—and softer footfalls that meant Severus had followed.

She didn’t look back until they were three corridors away.

Karkaroff was nowhere in sight.

She turned to Severus.

“Explain.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling through his teeth. “Not here.”

She stared him down. “My chambers. Now.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she was already walking briskly toward the dungeons. He had no choice but to keep up.

When they reached her chambers, she unlocked the door, shoved it open, and gestured inside.

“Sit.”

He didn’t.

She arched a brow.

He exhaled sharply and lowered himself onto the small loveseat in her den.

She set water to boil.

He watched her, jaw tense, fingers flexing on his knee.

When she handed him a cup of tea, he stared at it for a full six seconds as though it were a foreign creature. Then he accepted it with a quiet, “Thank you.”

She sat opposite him and folded her arms.

“Now talk.”

Severus closed his eyes.

When he opened them, something haunted lingered there.

“Karkaroff,” he began slowly, “was a Death Eater.”

Estelle froze.

Her blood turned cold.

She knew Severus had been one. Knew he’d left. Knew he’d suffered for it. Knew she trusted him deeply even when she didn’t want to admit it.

But Karkaroff?

“Still a Death Eater?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Severus said tightly. “Nor do I care to.”

“Why was he confronting you?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“He believes,” Severus said, “that I… know things. That I have information he doesn’t.”

“About what?” she asked.

Severus stared into his tea.

“…The Dark Mark,” he finally said.

Estelle’s breath hitched.

“He says it’s… darker,” Severus murmured. “Stronger. Changing. And he believes—because of my past—that I can explain it.”

“But you can’t,” Estelle guessed.

“No,” Severus said, voice low. “And I told him so. Repeatedly.”

“What did he say?”

Severus’s lip curled. “He said he didn’t believe me.”

Estelle exhaled slowly.

“Severus,” she said softly, “why didn’t you tell me this before?”

His eyes flickered to hers. “Because,” he said carefully, “I did not want you to fear me.”

She blinked.

All her irritation dulled instantly.

“Fear you?” she whispered.

He looked away.

“I know what I was,” he said, quieter. “And I know… how it appears when one of my former associates begins seeking me out again.”

She reached out without thinking and touched the back of his hand.

He stilled.

“You’re not that person anymore,” she said. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

His eyes closed briefly.

“I don’t know what Karkaroff wants,” he said. “But I do know he is unstable. And terrified. And dangerous when cornered.”

“Should we tell Dumbledore?”

Severus shook his head. “He already knows.”

Of course he did.

“So what now?” Estelle whispered.

Severus hesitated.

Then—

Unexpectedly—

His shoulders slumped.

And he looked tired. Bone-tired. More than she had ever seen.

“We wait,” he said softly. “And prepare. And keep the students safe. And hope whoever put Potter’s name in the Goblet… does not have plans worse than dragons.”

Estelle shivered.

The kettle clicked softly.

The fire crackled.

Silence stretched between them—comfortable in one breath, unbearable in the next.

Finally, she whispered, “Severus?”

“Yes?”

“The first task is in a week.”

His eyes opened fully then. Something sharp and worried flickered behind them.

“I know,” he murmured.

“And Harry—” she began.

“And Cedric,” he added quietly.

“And Fleur. And Krum. And every student who will be close enough to be hit if anything goes wrong.”

He set his teacup aside.

She watched him with a tightness in her chest she was too exhausted to hide.

“You’re worried too,” she said softly.

Severus’s expression flickered—just barely—like a crack in stone.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I am.”

She inhaled shakily.

“Stay,” she said softly. “At least for a bit.”

He didn’t question it.

Didn’t argue.

He simply shifted, letting her sit beside him on the small loveseat. The cushions were too close, too narrow, forcing their knees to touch.

She rested her head against his shoulder.

After a moment, he rested his cheek against her hair.

The fire dimmed slowly.

Her eyes grew heavy.

Severus’s breathing deepened beside her.

And like that—quietly, without declaration or intent—

the two of them fell asleep on the loveseat, curled together against the storm pressing in from all sides.

The first task loomed like a shadow behind the mountains.

But tonight, for a few stolen hours, they slept.

Chapter Text

Estelle woke before Severus.

The fire in her den had burned down to smoldering coals, giving off thin, lazy wisps of heat that barely warmed the air. She blinked slowly, realizing her head was still resting on Severus’s shoulder, her legs tangled with his, the blanket she must have draped over them slipped halfway onto the floor.

She started to move—

And Severus stirred too, inhaling sharply before blinking into the dim morning.

“…Estelle,” he murmured, voice rough with sleep.

She froze, then sat up. “Good morning.”

He looked down at their arrangement, then at the pillow mark now embossed across her cheek, then at the blanket pooled around his waist.

“We fell asleep,” he said needlessly.

“We did.”

A slow, awkward stretch of silence.

He cleared his throat. “I should—”

“Yes,” she agreed at the same moment.

But neither moved.

Then, as though remembering the entire world existed outside these four walls, Severus sighed and stood. “We’ll speak later.”

Estelle nodded, though she wasn’t sure what later meant anymore.

He hesitated at the door—looked at her once, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes—and then swept out of her chambers before she had time to decipher it.

The moment dissolved.

And the day began.

---

By mid-morning, Estelle had thrown herself into class preparation deep enough to distract herself from the memory of Severus’s arm wrapped around her while they slept. She tried not to replay it. She tried not to consider what it meant—if it meant anything at all—or if they were simply two exhausted people clinging to proximity for warmth.

The castle was unusually loud today. Whispers of the first task—just five days away—carried from corridor to corridor, floating under doorways like stray leaves.

And with those whispers came tension.

Durmstrang students were growing restless.
Beauxbatons girls increasingly wary.
Hogwarts students somewhere between smug, terrified, and outrageously curious.

Estelle felt it all humming through the stone floors.

After lunch, she made her way toward Greenhouse Three for afternoon pruning, wrapped tightly in her emerald cloak against the brisk wind sweeping across the grounds.

She passed the courtyard—
passed the fountain—
turned a corner—

—and walked directly into Igor Karkaroff.

Her hand shot instinctively toward her wand. “Excuse me.”

Karkaroff didn’t move.

His pale eyes narrowed. “Professor Black.”

His tone held a thin veneer of civility, stretched tight like paper over a flame.

Estelle stepped sideways.

He stepped sideways too.

They stood face-to-face beneath a canopy of shifting autumn leaves.

“I believe you are in my way,” she said coolly.

“And I believe,” Karkaroff murmured, voice oily, “that you have been interfering in matters that do not involve you.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Matters like pointing your wand at a fellow professor in a school hallway?”

Karkaroff’s jaw clenched.

“You don’t understand what you saw,” he hissed.

“Oh, I understand perfectly.”

She let her gaze flick meaningfully to his left forearm.

His face went white, then blotchy red.

“You—” His voice trembled. “You do not have the slightest idea what you are speaking of.”

“I know enough,” Estelle said quietly. “Enough to recognize a man who made choices he regrets—choices that mark him still.”

Her eyes dipped again to his sleeve.

Karkaroff flinched.

“You presume,” he whispered furiously. “You have no right to—”

“I have every right,” she said, stepping closer, voice low and steady. “Because I know the difference between a man who left that life behind—and one who simply hid from it.”

His breath hitched.

And then he exploded.

“You insolent—filthy—little—bloody—”

Her wand was out before he finished.

“Be careful,” she said coldly. “You are speaking to a professor. And a Black who does not give a damn about the traditions you grovel under.”

Karkaroff’s wand appeared in his hand like lightning.

“You will hold your tongue,” he snarled. “Or you will learn what I do to those who threaten—”

“Is that a threat?” Estelle asked sharply.

“A promise,” he spat.

“And you call yourself reformed.”

Karkaroff’s eyes blazed with something wild, something frantic, something unmistakably dangerous.

He raised his wand.

Estelle raised hers—

“ENOUGH.”

Severus’s shout cut through the corridor like a blade.

He stormed toward them, robes flaring behind him, his wand already drawn.

Karkaroff spun. “This doesn’t concern you—”

But he didn’t finish.

Because Severus aimed his wand directly at Karkaroff’s throat.

It trembled—not from uncertainty, but from restraint.

“Threaten her again,” Severus said softly, dangerously, “and I will hex you so thoroughly that your own mother won’t recognize you.”

Karkaroff stumbled back a step.

“Severus,” he rasped. “This is—she—she provoked—”

“She did nothing,” Severus snarled. “You, however, seem intent on drawing attention to matters you swore you’d left behind.”

Karkaroff blanched. “You think—you think you can intimidate me—”

“No,” Severus said. “I know I can.”

For a heartbeat, no one breathed.

Then Karkaroff backed away entirely, fingers trembling around his wand.

“This isn’t over,” he hissed.

Estelle took a single step forward. “It is.”

Karkaroff paled.

Severus’s wand didn’t move until Karkaroff turned and nearly tripped in his haste to escape the corridor.

Once he was gone, silence collapsed around them.

Only the rustle of orange leaves outside the windows broke it.

Estelle let out a long, shaky exhale.

“You nearly hexed him,” she said softly.

“Correct,” Severus said.

“He threatened me.”

“He did.”

“That doesn’t usually—”

“Yes,” Severus said sharply, cutting her off. “It does.”

She blinked.

He looked away, jaw tight, breathing too fast.

She touched his sleeve. “Let’s walk.”

Severus hesitated.

But then—slowly—he nodded.

The October wind tugged at their cloaks as they stepped outside. Leaves spun wildly across the grounds in curls of gold and russet and deep crimson.

The sun hovered low, washing everything in pale autumn light.

Estelle led them toward the greenhouses, walking slowly, letting the cold air strip the tension from her lungs.

Severus walked beside her, rigid with leftover fury.

“You should not antagonize him,” he said finally.

“He antagonized me first.”

“Estelle.”

She turned and faced him, leaves crunching beneath her boots.

“He threatened you,” she said. “He blamed you for something you left behind. And he is angry because he knows you saw through him. That frightens him. So he went after someone he thought would be easier to intimidate.”

Severus scowled. “I am not concerned for myself.”

“I know,” she said. “And that’s the problem.”

He hesitated.

Then his scowl softened around the edges.

“Estelle,” he said quietly, “you cannot afford to make enemies like him.”

She walked a few paces ahead, then crouched beside a patch of moss at the base of Greenhouse Two.

“He cannot afford to make enemies like me,” she said, reaching for a small cluster of mushrooms.

Severus blinked. “Those are Starlace caps.”

“Yes.”

“They’re poisonous when raw.”

“I know.”

He knelt beside her. “You don’t usually harvest them this early.”

“I know,” she repeated, gathering the pale blue fungi into a small tin. “But I need them for a class demonstration.”

Severus watched her hands move with practiced precision.

His voice lowered. “You are shaking.”

She stilled.

“I’m cold,” she said.

“You are lying,” he murmured.

The wind rustled through the nearby trees.

She finally whispered, “He said my name like a slur.”

Severus’s jaw clenched again.

“Your family’s reputation,” he said, “means nothing compared to your character.”

She scoffed weakly. “You didn’t always think that.”

He looked at her sharply.

“Estelle,” he said quietly, “I stopped believing the pureblood rhetoric of my youth long before I left that life. I was simply too much of a coward to act on it.”

She set the last mushroom in the tin, closed the lid, and stood.

His eyes followed her.

“Severus,” she said softly, “you were the one who nearly hexed him. Not me.”

“Yes,” he said immediately.

“Why?”

He looked away.

Leaves drifted around them like slow-motion embers.

“Because he threatened you,” Severus said simply.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It is the only answer,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I have too many ghosts already. I don’t need another.”

Something in Estelle’s chest faltered.

She stepped closer.

“So you are… what?” she asked gently. “My protector now?”

He flinched—but not away.

“Not by duty,” he murmured. “By choice.”

Estelle swallowed.

Hard.

The wind gusted, swirling leaves around their boots.

She took one more step toward him.

“Severus,” she whispered, “your past doesn’t dictate who you are now.”

He stared at her—really stared—as though bracing for a blow that never came.

“And yours?” he asked softly.

“My past is why I recognize remorse when I see it,” she said. “And why I know Karkaroff fears you.”

“He should,” Severus said darkly.

“And why he should fear me,” she added.

Something flickered across Severus’s face—not anger, not pain, but something like reluctant admiration.

“You are impossible,” he murmured.

She lifted a shoulder. “So are you.”

A faint, unexpected smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

The tension between them—fragile, electric—warmed the air around them more than the weak October sun.

“Let’s keep walking,” she said quietly.

He nodded.

They circled Greenhouse Three, the glass walls reflecting the soft afternoon light. Inside, puffing podworts released little clouds of purple smoke. A pile of harvested roots waited in the corner for Estelle’s evening preparations.

Severus walked with his hands clasped behind his back, posture still taut but slowly easing.

“Karkaroff will not let this go,” he said calmly.

“I don’t expect him to,” Estelle replied.

“You threatened him.”

“I hinted,” she corrected.

“You hinted loudly.”

“Yes.”

He sighed heavily. “Why must you always—”

“Stand up for myself?” she asked.

“That is not what I was going to say.”

“What were you going to say?”

“I was going to say: why must you always throw yourself directly into danger?”

She looked at him pointedly. “You were the one who nearly hexed a visiting headmaster.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

His mouth opened.

Then closed.

Then opened again.

“My reasons,” he said stiffly, “were justified.”

She arched a brow. “And mine weren’t?”

He met her gaze.

“…Both were justified,” he admitted quietly.

She fought a smile.

“Severus?” she asked softly.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

He looked startled. “For what?”

“For stepping in,” she said. “For… caring. Even if you won’t admit it out loud.”

He cleared his throat and stared very intently at a patch of grass. “I have… an investment in your continued survival.”

“Do you?” she teased.

“Yes,” he said, voice unexpectedly firm. “I do.”

Her breath caught.

The greenhouse glass beside them reflected his face—and hers. Their silhouettes leaned slightly toward each other.

She reached up and touched his sleeve again—lightly, deliberately.

Severus inhaled sharply at the contact.

The leaves around them rustled like the world was whispering secrets.

He looked down at her hand, then up at her eyes.

“Estelle,” he said softly, warning and plea twisted together.

She stepped closer.

“Severus,” she whispered, “it’s alright.”

He swallowed.

“How can you say that,” he murmured, “after everything—”

“Because I know you,” she said simply. “And because you are not alone anymore.”

The words seemed to hit him harder than she meant. His breath shuddered.

And then—

Slowly, as though fighting himself every step of the way—

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.

Her entire body stilled.

The world stilled.

“You are infuriating,” he murmured.

“I know,” she whispered.

“And reckless.”

“Yes.”

“And impossible.”

She smiled. “So they tell me.”

His thumb lingered against her cheekbone.

For a moment, they hovered—caught between steps, caught between breaths, caught between history and something fragile and new.

Then Estelle whispered:

“Five days.”

He nodded. “Five.”

“The first task,” she said.

“Dragons,” he said.

She closed her eyes. “We need to protect them.”

“We will.”

She opened her eyes.

He looked at her with a certainty that startled her.

“We will,” he repeated softly.

Her chest tightened.

She turned her hand over and took his—tentative, gentle.

He didn’t pull away.

Not this time.

They stood beside the greenhouse in the dimming October light, fingers entwined, leaves falling around them like burnt-orange snow.

For a long, quiet stretch, nothing existed but the muffled heartbeat of autumn, the soft brush of their shoulders, and the understanding blooming slowly between them.

Not spoken.
Not defined.
But present.

Real.

Finally, Estelle squeezed his hand once before letting go.

“We should head back,” she said.

He nodded, though he didn’t move immediately.

When they finally walked toward the castle, they did so close enough that their cloaks brushed with each step.

Neither commented on it.

Neither had to.

The shadows were lengthening.
The air was cooling.
The first task lay only days ahead.

But for the first time since the Tournament began, Estelle felt steady.

Because Severus Snape walked beside her—
furious, loyal, haunted—
and entirely unwilling to let her face any of it alone.

Just tell me.

Chapter Text

Estelle had barely slept the past two nights. Not because of nightmares—not exactly—but because of an ache beneath her ribs, a restlessness she couldn’t soothe. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Karkaroff’s sneer, Severus’s rage, the glass reflection of their almost-touching hands by the greenhouses. The memory left her feeling unsteady, pulled in two directions she couldn’t yet name.

By Tuesday afternoon, her satchel was half-empty, her storeroom shelves thinning. And brewing for the week ahead—for both her and Severus—would require more fresh ingredients. The students in her advanced classes had taken to using her best stock at an alarming rate, and the greenhouse harvests were limited this time of year. The only reliable source for the ingredients she needed was the edge of the Forbidden Forest and the deeper interior where rarer plants grew.

It wasn’t unusual for her to forage alone. But something in her resisted the idea today—something small and instinctive, tugging at her nerve endings like a warning. She ignored it. She had been walking that forest alone since she was fourteen. She knew its voice, its moods, its rules.

And its dangers.

She pulled her hair into a tight braid, shrugged into her thickest cloak, and slipped gloves into her belt before heading down through the castle and across the grounds. The air was crisp, biting a little against her cheeks. Leaves skittered across the grass in their last dying dance of color.

She paused before the dark mouth of the Forbidden Forest, feeling the familiar shift at the boundary where the castle’s cultivated grounds surrendered to wild ancient magic. It always felt like stepping over a threshold—like walking into the lungs of something living.

Estelle inhaled deeply.

“Just a few hours,” she murmured to herself. “Back before dusk.”

She adjusted the strap of her satchel and stepped inside.

The forest took her in without ceremony.

Light filtered through the canopy in faint gold ribbons. The underbrush was damp beneath her boots, soft with half-decayed leaves that released the smell of earth and moss whenever she stepped.

She headed toward the stream first. The germs she needed—tiny bright green pom-pom like growths—grew only on smooth rocks along cold running water. They were sensitive to heat, and any attempt to grow them in the greenhouses had resulted in rot. They needed the chill of natural current, the breath of the forest.

She reached the stream after about fifteen minutes, crouching near the water’s edge. The cold startled her fingertips even through her gloves as she brushed it aside to reveal rounded stones beneath the surface. The germs clung to them like tiny green starbursts. Perfect.

She used a fine silver blade to slice each cluster from the rock, placing them delicately into a padded compartment inside her satchel. They glowed faintly as if grateful to be harvested.

When she had enough, she stood and wiped a stray drop of water from her cheek.

One hour until dusk.

Plenty of time.

She headed deeper into the forest.

The air cooled further under thick branches. The shadows lengthened, and the path narrowed into tangled roots and soft moss. She harvested a few small puffing fungi from fallen logs—fresh enough to be potent, harmless enough to handle without tongs.

Further in, she found a swath of creeping noctiflora along the forest floor. Their petals opened slightly each time her shadow passed over them, sensing motion. She collected five, careful to wrap them individually in waxed parchment.

Her satchel grew heavier. Her breath puffed in small misty clouds.

And then she realized how quickly the light had gone dim.

She looked up through the trees.

The sky was bruised purple.

Had she really been walking that long?

Two pathways stretched ahead—one leading back toward the stream and the clearing, the other deeper toward the ancient heart of the forest.

The ingredient she still lacked—the one Severus needed—was the deep-forest variant of Mooncap moss. It grew in large clusters only in the sheltered thick of the woods, far from human disturbance.

She checked the position of the sun—or what little remained of it.

She had maybe ninety minutes until true darkness.

Enough time if she was careful.

She chose the deeper path.

The forest grew denser. The air thickened with the smell of earth, pine, and the faint metallic tang of something old. Estelle stepped over roots, ducked under low branches, and kept her wand lit with a soft whisper of Lumos.

She found the moss after twenty-five minutes—soft glowing silver clusters spread across the north-facing side of a boulder taller than she was. She knelt and sliced them carefully, placing the delicate pieces into sealed glass jars. The moss pulsed faintly, as if breathing.

The last jar clicked shut.

As Estelle stood, she realized how dark the forest had grown. Only a thin sliver of fading sunset broke through the canopy. She exhaled slowly.

“That’s enough,” she whispered. “Time to go.”

She gathered her satchel closer to her chest, turned—

—and stopped.

A faint light shimmered in the distance.

Not golden.
Not moonlight.

Sparks.

Blue. Orange. White.

Her heart lurched.

“Fire.”

Without thinking, she walked toward it.

Then faster.

Branches whipped at her cloak as she pushed through the brush.

“Of all the idiotic things—” she muttered to herself. “If Severus knew I was running toward sparks in the Forbidden Forest—Merlin, he’d drag me back to the castle by my ear—”

She broke into a clearing—

—and stopped dead.

Her breath vanished.

In front of her stood four enormous metallic cages.

Dragging chains.
Thick iron bars reinforced with runic wards.
Gates large enough for something the size of a house.

And inside each—

The ground trembled.

A plume of black smoke rose in the second cage.
A growl that sounded like rolling thunder rattled from the third.
The fourth cage sparked with sharp metallic flashes, illuminating a long, spiked tail.

Dragons.

Real dragons.

Four of them, each monstrous, each breathtaking, each shifting in restless agitation as evening tightened around them.

Estelle’s blood ran ice-cold.

She approached slowly, barely daring to breathe, drawn forward in horrified awe. Her heart hammered at the sight of sharp scales, massive wings folded tight, golden eyes glowing like embers in the dark.

The closest dragon—a Swedish Short-Snout—lifted its head and inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. Silver-blue sparks crackled along its jaw.

Estelle froze.

“Easy,” she whispered instinctively. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Professor?”

A voice behind her made her jump.

She spun.

A tall man stepped out from the shadows, holding a glowing crystal lantern. His hair—longer than before, sun-bleached red—caught the light. His face was older but familiar.

Her lips parted.

“Charlie?”

Charlie Weasley grinned so widely she almost didn’t recognize him.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said, stepping forward and sweeping her into a crushing hug. “Estelle Black in the Forbidden Forest. Thought I’d hallucinated you.”

She laughed—breathless, startled, flooded with warmth she didn’t expect.

“Charlie Weasley in charge of dragons,” she shot back. “Thought I’d hallucinated you.”

He pulled back, eyes bright. “Still alive, still reckless, still letting giant lizards breathe down my neck. And you—Merlin’s beard, look at you. It’s been what—five years?”

“Six,” she corrected.

“Six,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Too long.”

Estelle couldn’t stop smiling. She felt younger suddenly—like the version of herself she’d been in Romania, studying flora near the Carpathian Mountains while Charlie had been the charming, overenthusiastic dragon intern she’d fallen temporarily and pleasantly into bed with.

They’d parted without heartbreak. Without bitterness. Just two people with other destinations.

“You work for Hogwarts now?” Charlie asked, leaning against a crate.

“Yes. Herbology.”

“Perfect,” he said, gesturing to the dragons. “As you can see, we’re in need of greenery around here.”

“Be serious,” she said, laughing.

He patted the nearest cage. “I am serious. These beauties like to snack on moss and small plants along with the meat. You’d love their diets—very complicated.”

“I’ll take your word.”

He stepped closer, lantern light catching the scar across his forearm. “What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Gathering ingredients,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to run into… this.”

“Nor should you,” Charlie said mildly. “They’re supposed to be a secret.”

“They’re dragons, Charlie.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve placed dragons forty minutes from the castle.”

“Yes.”

“In thin metal cages.”

“Reinforced metal cages.”

“Reinforced or not,” Estelle said, “they are dragons.”

He grinned. “I told Hagrid you’d react like this.”

“Hagrid knew I’d come out here?”

“He said—and I quote—‘Estelle’s got a knack for wanderin’ where she shouldn’t.’”

She groaned.

Charlie laughed deeply—the same bright, warm laugh she remembered.

“Well,” he said, shifting his lantern, “I’m staying on the grounds until the task. Wanted to keep an eye on these beauties and make sure they don’t eat any stray students.”

“That’s comforting.”

“It shouldn’t be.” He winked.

Around them, the dragons huffed, crackled, and shifted.

“Ready to head back?” Charlie asked. “It’s dark enough that these woods get ideas.”

Estelle hesitated.

Then nodded. “Yes.”

He offered his arm out of old habit.

She hesitated again.

Then took it.

They walked slowly at first, the forest thick around them as Charlie’s lantern carved a soft glow through the underbrush. Once the clearing dimmed behind them, the darkness grew absolute except for their fragile circle of light.

“So,” Charlie said conversationally, “you teach. At Hogwarts.”

“Yes.”

“And you brew.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re working on Wolfsbane modifications? Don’t deny it—I saw the plant in your satchel.”

She raised a brow. “Been checking my belongings?”

“Only the interesting parts.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been improving the formula for Remus. Smoother transitions. Fewer side effects.”

Charlie let out a low whistle. “You always were brilliant.”

Estelle didn’t blush often. She blamed the cold wind for the warmth rising in her cheeks. “It’s not perfected. But I’m close.”

“He’s lucky to have you.”

She swallowed. “I’m lucky to have him.”

Charlie squeezed her arm slightly before letting go so they could walk single-file along a narrow path.

Charlie adjusted the lantern as they maneuvered around a fallen tree, its trunk damp with moss.

“And how’s life at Hogwarts?” he asked. “Any catastrophes I should know about?”

“Besides dragons?”

“Besides dragons,” he echoed with a grin.

Estelle exhaled a humorless laugh. “Complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

Estelle snorted softly. “It’s busy. Chaotic. Loud. And strangely comforting. I think I’ve finally grown into the madness of teaching.”

“Never doubted you would,” Charlie said. “You always had a way of making things grow. Plants. People. The rest of us just made messes.”

She huffed a quiet laugh, shaking her head. “It’s still a mess. Just… the kind I understand. And I like my colleagues. Even when they’re infuriating.”

“I imagine they’d have to be,” Charlie said. “A castle full of kids, magical hazards, and a deadly tournament? The staff must be half-saints, half-martyrs.”

“Some more than others,” she murmured. “But yes. They’re good people.”

Charlie shot her a sideways look. “You sound like someone who’s got herself a little family there.”

“Maybe I do,” she admitted, surprised to hear the truth out loud. “Minerva’s practically the castle’s spine. Pomona’s a godsend. Filius is brilliant. And Severus… well…” she paused, then shook her head with a small laugh, “he’s Severus.”

Charlie raised a brow but didn’t press. “Sounds like you’ve found your place.”

She nodded slowly. “I think I have. Even when the world feels too heavy. Teaching keeps me grounded. The students… they matter more than they know.”

“They’re lucky,” Charlie said sincerely. “Hogwarts needs people who actually care.”

She exhaled, warmed by the compliment.

“I do care,” she admitted, though her expression went a bit pained.

“That’s the trouble with caring,” Charlie said. “It complicates everything.”

They walked in silence for a moment before Charlie added lightly, “Any hopes for the future? You always had a bucket of plans back in Romania.”

She smiled faintly at the memory. “I think for now… surviving the next three weeks is enough of a plan.”

Charlie barked a laugh. “Fair enough. Dragons tend to rearrange long-term goals.”

“That they do.”

She went silent.

They walked on in comfortable quiet for a few minutes, the forest thinning around them as the castle’s lights began glowing faintly in the distance.

“You’ll be alright,” Charlie said suddenly.

“How do you know?”

“Because you always have been.”

She looked at him. “We were younger then.”

“Still true,” he said simply.

When they reached the forest edge, the castle shimmered through its tall glass windows—warm, golden, humming with life.

Charlie stopped. “This is where I head back.”

“You’re going into the forest at night?”

“Estelle,” he said, grinning, “I sleep twenty feet from a nesting mother Welsh Green. I’ll be fine.”

She laughed, despite herself.

Charlie stepped forward and wrapped her in a warm, solid hug.

“We’ll catch up more tomorrow,” he said into her hair. “Breakfast?”

“Yes. Breakfast.”

He pulled back, squeezing her shoulder once before turning and disappearing into the dark—lantern bobbing like a small star swallowed by trees.

Estelle watched until the light vanished.

Then she turned toward the castle and walked up the gentle slope, the windows glowing brighter with each step.

Her satchel was heavy.
Her cloak was cold.
Her heart was full of far too many things—

Fear of the coming task.
Relief at seeing Charlie.
Worry for Harry.
A tangle of emotions for Severus she didn’t dare untie yet.
And above all, the weight of everything still to come.

But as she pushed open the great oak doors and stepped into the warm light of the castle, one thought whispered softly through her mind:

She wasn’t alone in any of it anymore.

By the time Estelle stepped through the oak doors and into the entrance hall, the warmth of the castle hit her like a wave. The stone underfoot had absorbed the day’s heat, and the torches threw up a lazy amber glow that made the air feel thicker, softer, safer.

She hadn’t realized how chilled she was until the cold began to leach out of her fingers.

Her satchel pulled at her shoulder with familiar, reassuring weight. The strap had dug a groove into her skin through her cloak. She could smell the forest on herself—loam, crushed leaves, a hint of stream-water, and, under it all, the unmistakable tang of dragon ash that had seeped into her clothes when one of the beasts had snorted a plume of smoke near the cage bars.

She glanced down at her sleeves. Grey streaks. A smear of soot across her cuff where she must have wiped her mouth. Merlin.

Severus would have comments.

The thought of him hit her unexpectedly hard as she started down the dungeon stairs toward her chambers. His face in the dim light, the way his wand had trembled as he pointed it at Karkaroff, the rare softness that had crept into his features when they’d stood together outside the greenhouses.

She should go to bed, she thought. She should shower, scrub forest and dragon from her hair, file away her new ingredients, and sleep.

But sleep felt like an abstract concept—something that happened to other people, in other lives.

Her feet carried her automatically to her own door.

Inside, her chambers were comfortably cluttered.

The small fire she’d left burning earlier had dwindled to glowing coals. Neville’s little plant sat on her desk, leaves relaxed, their faint lavender scent lingering in the air. The room smelled like parchment and dirt and the lingering sharpness of a potion she’d brewed three days ago.

Estelle shrugged off her cloak and hung it over the back of a chair. Dust puffed from the hem. A few flakes of ash drifted to the floor.

She unfastened her satchel and lowered it gently onto the table near her shelves.

The ritual of unpacking grounded her.

One by one, she removed the jars and bundles.

The germ clusters from the stream went into the cool-box drawer lined with frost charms. The puffing fungi slid into labeled stone jars, each with its cork stopper and preservation sigil. The noctiflora, still faintly responsive to her proximity, nestled into a drawer sealed against light.

She saved the Mooncap moss for last, fingers gentle as she lifted the jars. Their silvery glow pulsed faintly through the glass.

One jar she put on her own shelf.

The others she set aside.

For Severus.

She hesitated, hand hovering over the glass.

She could take them to him in the morning. When she was clean. Less tired. Less… overwhelmed.

But she knew him. He brewed late into the night. A fresh batch of Dreamless Sleep, or some obscure antidote, or the sleeping potion he’d been perfecting and barely drinking. When his stores ran low and he didn’t have what he needed, he compensated—with more work, more worry, less rest.

If she waited, he’d likely improvise with inferior ingredients from his own cupboards and then pretend he hadn’t.

She huffed softly, half-annoyed, half-fond.

“Of course,” she muttered. “Of course I’m going back out again.”

She gathered the jars—three in total—into the satchel along with a small bundle of dried stream herbs she’d cut with him in mind. He would dismiss them as “unnecessary” and then use them anyway.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above her washstand as she turned.

She paused.

Her hair had come half-loose from its braid, strands escaping in wild dark curls that stuck to her temples. A smear of dirt tracked along her cheekbone. There were tiny black flecks on her jaw where ash had settled. Her cloak was dusted in grey from shoulder to hem. Her hands, though gloved for most of the foraging, bore faint stains on the knuckles.

She looked… wild.

Raw.

Exposed.

She considered washing her face. Changing her robes. Pulling herself into some semblance of presentable.

But some stubborn part of her—some thread of honesty still stretched thin from the forest—refused.

Severus had seen her covered in worse.

Blood. Glass. Mud. Fear.

He could see her like this. Soot-streaked and bone-tired, with the forest still clinging to her.

She slung the satchel back over her shoulder.

The dungeons were quieter than the upper floors. Sound moved differently down here, softer and slower, as though the stones absorbed half of everything spoken. Torchlight flickered in brackets along the wall, casting long shadows that swayed with her passing.

The corridor to Severus’s chambers felt doubly familiar now—the path her feet had worn unintentionally over the last year. She could have walked it blindfolded.

Outside his door, she paused.

It was late, but not unforgivably so. Students would be to bed. Patrols would be ending. Severus might be awake at his desk, huddled over essays, or in his lab, stirring something luminous and dangerous.

She lifted her hand and knocked lightly.

For a heartbeat, nothing.

Then she heard it: the scrape of a chair, the faint rustle of cloth, the sound of a bolt sliding back.

The door cracked open.

Severus appeared in the gap, hair unbound and slightly mussed, dark eyes sharp even when tired. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms. Ink smudged one knuckle.

“Estelle?”

She lifted the satchel in wordless explanation. “I bring offerings.”

His gaze flicked from her face to the bag, then back again. His eyebrow arched.

“You look as though the forest attempted to swallow you whole,” he said.

“It tried,” she replied, stepping past him as he moved aside. “I negotiated.”

He let the door fall shut behind them, sealing out the corridor and the rest of the world.

His chambers were warm, lit by a low fire and several candles clustered on his desk. The air smelled like parchment, bitter herbs, and the faint tang of some potion mid-brew—something acrid and sharp enough to sting the back of her throat, but in a comforting, familiar way.

She set the satchel on the edge of his work table and began unpacking.

Severus came to stand beside her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that their sleeves brushed when she shifted.

“What, precisely, did you bring?” he asked, voice softer than his words.

“Mooncap moss,” she said, lifting one of the jars for him to inspect. “The deep-forest strain. And fresh germ clusters from the stream. And a few stream herbs you’ll pretend not to care about and then integrate into something impressive.”

He took the jar from her, holding it up to the light. The moss glowed faintly, silvery and alive.

“You went alone,” he said.

It was not a question.

She accepted the accusation anyway.

“Yes.”

“Into the heart of the forest. Near dusk.”

“Yes,” she said again. “Technically before dusk.”

“Estelle.”

Her name, in his voice, was less a reprimand than an exhale dragged over bruised worry.

She bristled on instinct.

“I have been foraging in that forest since before you learned how to hold a wand without hexing yourself,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

“That is debatable,” he muttered.

She huffed. “I brought you moss, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” he conceded. “At the probable expense of your own safety.”

“Probable? I’m here, aren’t I?”

He turned the jar in his hands, watching the light catch the moss.

“And what, exactly, did you encounter?” he asked quietly.

She hesitated.

He looked up sharply. “Estelle.”

“Dragons,” she said.

The word dropped into the room like a stone into a well.

Severus stilled.

“You saw them,” he said.

“Yes.”

“How?”

She lifted a shoulder. “There were sparks. I thought it was a fire. I followed them.”

His expression tightened. “Of course you did.”

“I thought the forest was burning. What would you have done? Walked away and hoped it extinguished itself?”

“Yes,” he said instantly. “Or gone to fetch Hagrid. Or Minerva. Or—”

“Or you,” she cut in. “So you could follow the sparks yourself while I had to stand safely in the castle and wring my hands.”

“That,” he said, “would have been preferable.”

“To whom?”

“Me.”

Her shoulders softened, the snap of her retort losing some edge.

“…Severus,” she said quietly, “I am not made for standing still while things burn.”

“I am aware,” he said dryly. “Vividly.”

He set the jar aside, fingers lingering on the glass.

“What did you see?” he asked.

For a moment, she considered sparing him details. But he would learn them soon enough—by rumor, by observation, by some flagrant slip on Hagrid’s part. Better it come from her, with the full weight of what she’d felt standing in that clearing.

“Four cages,” she said slowly. “Runes etched into the metal. Chains. Wards. Huge. Each holding a dragon. A Swedish Short-Snout. A Chinese Fireball. A Common Welsh. And…” She swallowed. “…a Hungarian Horntail.”

Severus’s eyes darkened.

“And you approached them,” he said.

“Not too close.”

“How close is ‘not too’ for you? Within incineration radius?”

“I’m not charred, am I?”

He gave her a long, flat look.

“They were magnificent,” she added, voice softening despite everything. “Terrifying. Wrong and right all at once.”

“Wrong,” he echoed.

“Yes,” she said. “To cage them. To pit children against them. To drag them across continents so that four teenagers can show off.”

His jaw tightened. “Dumbledore believes—”

“I know what Dumbledore believes,” she cut in. “That controlled danger is somehow nourishing. That children grow from near-death experiences like plants in the shade. That some level of suffering is a requisite ingredient for greatness.”

Her hands had curled into fists without her permission.

She forced them open, placing them flat against the table.

“The dragons did not ask to be exiled here,” she said. “And the champions did not ask to be thrown in front of them. Harry certainly didn’t.”

Severus’s gaze softened at Harry’s name, though the lines at his mouth remained drawn.

“I agree,” he said quietly.

“You do?”

He gave a humorless huff. “Do not look so surprised. I am capable of recognizing unnecessary risk when I see it. I simply have less leverage to object than I once imagined I would.”

She studied his face—the weariness pooled under his eyes, the faint greying at his temples she’d never remarked upon aloud, the way his shoulders seemed permanently half-tensed as if waiting for a blow.

“Severus,” she said suddenly, “you mustn’t tell anyone I saw them. Or that I know what they are.”

His eyes snapped back to hers. “Why?”

“Because if the Ministry hears that I stumbled into the dragons’ clearing, there will be complaints. And paperwork. And the suggestion that I tampered with the wards. Or that I helped Harry. Or that I endangered them. And if the students hear I've seen them, they’ll ask me questions I’m not allowed to answer. And if the staff hear, there’ll be a debate. I don’t have the energy for that.”

A beat of silence.

“And perhaps,” she added more quietly, “because I don’t want Albus to know how little control he has over what his staff see and understand.”

One corner of Severus’s mouth twitched.

“Albus knows very little of what any of us see and understand,” he said. “He merely believes otherwise.”

“Then we’re agreed,” she said. “You keep this between us.”

His gaze lingered on her.

“You trust me,” he said.

It wasn’t smug. It was surprise wrapped uneasily in something softer.

“More than most,” she replied.

He flinched slightly at that, as if the words brushed against something tender.

“You should not,” he murmured.

“I know,” she said. “And yet.”

He looked down, fingers absently tapping against the rim of the jar.

“I will tell no one,” he said finally.

She exhaled.

“Thank you.”

She moved to gather the emptied satchel. As she did, his hand brushed her sleeve—accidental, perhaps, perhaps not. He frowned and pinched the fabric between his fingers, examining the grey streaks there.

“You’re filthy,” he observed.

“Thank you,” she deadpanned.

“Is that… ash?”

“Yes.”

“Dragon ash.”

“Technically smoke residue,” she said. “But yes.”

“And you came here before changing.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

How did she answer that? Because she wanted to see him more than she wanted to wash her face? Because bringing him fresh moss felt more urgent than scrubbing dragon from her skin? Because some irrational part of her wanted him to see her precisely as she was—smoked and shaken and still standing—and know that she had come to him anyway.

She settled for, “Because I thought you’d want the ingredients as soon as possible. And because I didn’t feel like being alone yet.”

His expression shifted, the edges softening as if her words had stripped something bare.

“You are not alone,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she replied. “That’s why I’m here.”

Silence stretched, warm and dense.

He gestured to the chair near the fire. “Sit.”

She considered refusing out of sheer instinct, then relented. Her legs were heavier than she’d admitted. The moment she sank into the chair, the tiredness in her bones roared into full awareness.

Severus moved with practiced efficiency, setting the jars of moss into one of his cupboards, labeling them with his neat, angular script. The small bundle of stream herbs he paused over, thumb brushing the leaves.

“I suppose you expect gratitude,” he said.

“I expect you to use them in something unnecessarily complicated,” she countered.

A faint smirk ghosted over his mouth.

He closed the cupboard with a soft click, then crossed to his desk and extinguished two of the candles with a wave of his hand. Their smoke curled upward, ghostlike.

When he came to sit in the armchair beside hers, he looked more tired than ever.

“Have you been marking all night?” she asked.

“Seventh-year essays,” he said. “Painful attempts at original thought. I question the Ministry’s insistence that we let children handle cauldrons unsupervised after reading half of them.”

“You always question the Ministry.”

“With good reason.”

She followed the lines of his profile with her eyes. The set of his mouth, the faint shadow of stubble, the way his lashes cast thin crescent shadows on his cheeks when he blinked more slowly.

“Go to bed,” she said.

“I will,” he replied. “Eventually.”

“You mean you’ll sit up until your spine fuses to that chair and your eyes cross from ink fumes.”

His lips twitched. “Your concern is noted.”

“Mocked, more like.”

“Never.”

They fell into a quieter rhythm then. The fire crackled. Somewhere deep in the dungeons, water dripped rhythmically through stone. Estelle felt the tension in her shoulders finally begin to unknot, the forest’s weight easing just a fraction.

Severus shifted in his chair.

When he spoke again, his voice was softer.

“You said they were magnificent,” he murmured.

“The dragons,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“They were,” she said. “There is something… honest about them. They are what they are. No excuses. No masks. Only hunger and heat and instinct.”

“And yet,” he said, “we’ve built an entire world on pretending we are nothing like them.”

Her gaze slid to him.

“You are not like them,” she said quietly.

He huffed. “No? Dangerous, temperamental, inclined to incinerate things when provoked—”

“Capable of great destruction, yes,” she interrupted. “But also of control. Mercy. Restraint. Dragons don’t stop themselves from burning what they hate. You do.”

He looked at her as if she’d said something blasphemous.

“I am not merciful,” he said.

“You are,” she replied. “You just don’t advertise it.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled minutely, as if he wanted to argue but couldn’t quite find the shape of the words.

Silence settled again, this time gentler.

She didn’t realize she’d begun to doze until her head tipped back against the chair, muscles loosening. Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, then reopened when she sensed movement near her.

Severus had shifted closer in his chair, angled slightly toward her. His head rested against the back cushion, tilted so that if either of them moved a few inches to the side, his shoulder would meet hers.

“Try the sleeping potion,” she said quietly. “Tonight. The one you perfected.”

“I have,” he murmured. His voice had gone lower, less rigid. “Sporadically.”

“And?”

“It helps,” he admitted. “Temporarily.”

She watched him, the way his eyelids drooped a fraction more with each passing moment.

“Stay,” she said softly, the word slipping out before she could consider it. “Just… for a little while. Rest.”

He did not answer with words.

Instead, he let out a slow breath, the kind that sounded like surrender pressed through exhaustion, and leaned sideways, just enough that his shoulder brushed hers.

The contact sent a small shock through her, not because it was sudden—it wasn’t—but because it felt so deliberately unguarded.

She shifted an inch closer to meet him halfway, the fabric of their sleeves whispering together.

Minutes passed.

His breathing changed—slowed, deepened. The muscles along his jaw unclenched. The line of his mouth softened.

It was subtle, the moment he slipped from wakefulness into sleep. One second he was there with her, hovering in that liminal state between resistance and acceptance; the next, his head had tipped gently until it rested, carefully, against her shoulder.

Estelle froze for half a heartbeat, not wanting to startle him.

Then she relaxed too, letting herself lean back, the weight of him pressed lightly to her side.

He was warm.

Warmer than the fire. Warmer than the room. He smelled of ink and potion smoke and the crisp, faintly medicinal scent of ingredients she’d recognize blindfolded.

She could feel the way his body, usually wound like a wire, had eased in stages—layer by layer—until finally there was nothing left but a man asleep because, for once, his mind had loosened its grip on him.

“You sleep better when I’m here,” she whispered silently into the dark, the words held only in the space between her thoughts and the steady rhythm of his breaths.

It was a dangerous truth.

A tender one.

She let her eyes close, just for a moment, feeling the slow, even rise of his chest. The world outside these four walls—the dragons, the tournament, Karkaroff, the Mark—receded, replaced by this narrow, fragile pocket of peace.

She didn’t know how long they stayed there.

Long enough for the candles to burn down further. Long enough for the fire to settle into low orange embers. Long enough for her thoughts to drift and loop and finally, finally quiet.

At some point, she realized with a start that she was on the precipice of sleep too.

If she let herself fall fully into it, she wasn’t sure what that would mean. Not symbolically—she had no patience for that—but practically. How tangled their lives would become. How little distance they’d be able to reassert afterward.

She opened her eyes.

Severus didn’t stir.

His head was still on her shoulder, hair spilling partially across the lapel of her robe. One hand had fallen limply against the armrest, fingers relaxed, palm open.

He looked younger like this.

Not peaceful—that was too much to ask—but less haunted. Less burdened by the choices he’d made, by the role he’d chosen, by the double life he walked.

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

Very gently, she lifted her hand and brushed a stray strand of hair away from his brow.

He didn’t move.

“Thank you,” she murmured so quietly it barely qualified as sound. “For caring. For staying.”

He did not hear it.

Or perhaps he did, somewhere buried in dreams that did not end in death or darkness for once.

She waited a few minutes more, then, with agonizing slowness, shifted her shoulder. His head slid a fraction.

He frowned faintly in his sleep, body tensing.

She paused, letting him settle again.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

She slid her arm along the back of the chair, giving herself enough leverage to lift.

This time, when she eased herself away, he didn’t start awake. His head lolled momentarily before finding the cushion. His body turned slightly toward the warmth where she’d been a moment before, then relaxed.

She stood, the loss of contact leaving a chill behind on her skin.

For a moment, she simply watched him.

Severus Snape, feared by generations of students. Half-despised, half-relied upon by colleagues. Double agent. Former Death Eater. Reluctant protector. Stubborn, acerbic, infuriating man.

Asleep in his chair with ash-smeared Estelle Black’s warmth still lingering in the fabric beside him.

She wanted to press a kiss to his forehead.

The urge rose, sharp and unbidden, before she could stop it.

She stilled.

Not yet, she thought. Not like this. Not when he couldn’t choose to lean in or pull away.

She turned instead toward the door.

Her boots felt heavier as she crossed the stone floor. She slipped out quietly, closing the door with a soft click that didn’t echo in the hallway.

The dungeons were colder now.

The castle seemed to hold its breath between one day and the next.

In her own chambers, she didn’t bother with the lamp at first. She leaned against the door, letting the darkness wrap around her like a cloak. Only when her eyes adjusted to the faint orange glow from the dying fire did she push herself upright and move to untie her boots.

Her clothes smelled strongly now of forest and dragon smoke. The cloak she shrugged off dropped onto the chair with a dusty puff. She unbraided her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders, fingers catching on one small, stubborn knot where a twig had snagged.

She washed her face at the basin, watching the water run grey and brown before swirling down the drain. Ash smudges vanished from her skin, but the feeling of heat and steel and scales in the forest clearing clung like another kind of residue.

She slipped into her nightclothes mechanically, muscles aching in that oddly gratifying way that came from a day spent moving, thinking, reacting.

When she finally crawled into bed, the sheets cool against her skin, Estelle lay on her back for a long moment, staring at the ceiling.

Images flickered across her mind’s eye.

A Horntail’s eye, molten gold.
Charlie’s grin in the lantern light.
The forest closing in.
Karkaroff’s twisted expression.
Severus’s head on her shoulder, breath warm against her neck.

Her chest tightened around that last one in a way that frightened her and soothed her all at once.

“You’re not alone,” he had said.

Neither was he, she thought.

She turned onto her side, pulling the blanket around her, letting the weight of it anchor her to the mattress.

Outside her window, the wind picked up, rattling against the panes.

In the forest, dragons shifted restlessly in their cages.

In a chamber just down the corridor, Severus Snape slept more deeply than he had in months, his mind wrapped—for a little while—in something quieter than fear.

Estelle let her eyes drift closed.

Sleep came slowly, threading its way through worry and memory and resolve.

When it finally settled over her, it did so with a gentler hand than usual.

The first task was only days away.

But tonight, for a handful of hours, she let herself rest.

Chapter Text

Estelle woke to pale grey light and the faintest ache at the back of her neck.

For a moment she couldn’t place why she felt so strangely dislodged—like she’d fallen asleep halfway through a sentence and woke up with the ending still missing. Then memory slid back into place: Severus’s head heavy on her shoulder, his breathing deep and even for once, the warmth of him pressed along her side.

And the way she’d eased herself away and slipped back to her own chambers in the small hours, leaving him asleep in the armchair.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, the thin morning light turning the plastered stone a washed-out silver.

She hadn’t meant to stay so long. She hadn’t meant to enjoy it so much.

The thought sat in her chest like a stone she did not know what to do with.

After a few minutes of wrestling with the urge to pull the blankets over her head and ignore the world, Estelle exhaled sharply and swung her legs out of bed. Hiding would do no one any good. Certainly not Harry. Certainly not Severus. Certainly not herself.

Besides, she had said she would meet Charlie at breakfast.

And she’d finally run out of excuses to avoid the staff table.

Half an hour later, scrubbed free of ash and forest dust, hair braided neatly over one shoulder, Estelle made her way up from the dungeons, through the cool hush of the corridors, and into the warmth and noise of the Great Hall.

It hit her like a familiar wave—the hum of voices, the clatter of cutlery, the rustle of owl wings as the morning post swooped overhead. Sunlight spilled in through the enchanted ceiling, bright even through a thin veil of cloud.

The long house tables were dotted with hunched shoulders, bed-mussed hair, and half-awake expressions. Hufflepuffs clustered around porridge. Ravenclaws shielded their letters with their elbows as they read. Gryffindors laughed too loudly for the hour. Slytherins pretended not to care that everyone else was there.

The Durmstrang students hunched in a group along the far end of the Slytherin table, speaking low and sharp in thick accents. Beauxbatons girls sat together midway down the Ravenclaw table, elegant and self-contained, their light blue uniforms a splash of color amidst darker robes.

Estelle’s eyes slid automatically toward the staff table.

Charlie was easy to find. Even if she hadn’t recognized his hair—a shade brighter in the Great Hall’s light, cropped shorter now—his posture would have given him away. He sat one chair down from Hagrid, leaning back as he spoke animatedly with Minerva, who watched him with narrowed eyes that did nothing to hide the fondness behind them.

Estelle felt something ease in her as she saw him laughing.

She walked the length of the hall and slipped into the empty chair on Charlie’s other side, between him and Flitwick’s high stack of toast.

Charlie turned as she sat, face breaking into a wide grin.

“There she is,” he said. “I was starting to think the forest had eaten you after all.”

“Don’t say that,” Hagrid rumbled, looking faintly alarmed. “Forest’d never do tha’. It likes her.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Estelle said, reaching for a pot of tea.

Minerva’s sharp gaze flicked to her. “You’re joining us today, Estelle. That makes a pleasant change.”

Estelle lifted her cup. “I was shamed into appearing. I heard rumor the castle still provided breakfast.”

Flitwick chuckled into his pumpkin juice. “You’ve been brewing yourself hollow down there, my dear. Even potions masters need kippers and toast.”

Estelle stole one of his toast slices before he could object. “I’ll be sure to inform Severus of your decree.”

Minerva’s mouth twitched. “If Severus Snape voluntarily eats more than coffee and resentment, I shall award ten points to every House.”

Charlie snorted. “You haven’t changed much, Professor McGonagall.”

Minerva’s eyebrows arched a fraction. “And you have changed enough to grow a bit of sense, Mr Weasley, if your letter suggested accurately that you are now responsible for dragons.”

“‘Responsible’ is a strong word,” Charlie said, buttering his toast with the kind of focus usually reserved for explosives. “I prefer ‘on speaking terms with.’”

“You mean they don’t eat you,” Estelle said dryly.

“Not so far.”

Minerva’s lips thinned. “And Romania? You’ve been there… how long now?”

“Nearly four years,” Charlie said. “Before that, a year in Wales. And, well, a brief stint in the Carpathians you might remember someone complaining about, Professor.”

Minerva’s eyes glinted. “I recall certain letters mentioning ‘foolhardy night flights’ and ‘absolutely unacceptable proximity to dragon flame.’”

“Exaggerations,” Charlie protested. “Mostly.”

“Dragon flame,” Minerva repeated flatly.

Charlie shot Estelle a look. “You see? This is what I mean. No faith.”

Estelle smiled into her tea. “I have enough faith not to assume you’ll be immolated before Friday, if that helps.”

“High praise,” he said.

Minerva’s sharp gaze softened as she studied him. “And you’re enjoying it? Truly? The work, I mean. Dangerous as it is.”

Charlie’s expression shifted, some of the jest dropping away.

“I am,” he said simply. “They’re incredible creatures. You don’t get used to it, exactly, but… you learn them. Their moods. Their habits. The things that startle them. What calms them. They’re not mindless. Just big and badly understood.”

“That sounds familiar,” Estelle murmured.

Minerva’s eyes softened further. “You are your mother’s son,” she said. “Stubborn, driven, entirely too brave.”

Charlie ducked his head, though he did not look displeased.

“Thank you, Professor,” he said quietly.

Estelle watched the exchange with a warmth she tried not to show too clearly on her face. Minerva had always liked the Weasleys—she’d admitted once, half-grudgingly, that the world needed more people like them. Brave in untidy ways. Loyal in loud ones.

“So,” Estelle said, nudging the conversation back into lighter waters, “how many times have you been asked about the—”

“Hemlock exports?” Charlie interrupted sweetly.

She shot him a look. “You were expecting ‘dragons’?”

“Everyone’s expecting dragons,” he said. “Which is precisely why I am not allowed to talk about them above a whisper and only while Hagrid is swearing he won’t repeat it within earshot of a student.”

“I never said I wouldn’t,” Hagrid muttered.

“Exactly my point,” Charlie said.

Minerva sniffed. “Rest assured, Mr Weasley, you are under no obligation to answer any impertinent questions staff may pose about the first task either.”

“Yes, Professor,” he said. “Though between you and me, it is killing me not to brag.”

Estelle laughed, a short, delighted sound that escaped before she could temper it. “You can brag in non-specific metaphors.”

Charlie brightened. “Oh, I can do that. The beasts are—hypothetically—majestic. Hypothetically enormous. Hypothetically capable of turning a Quidditch pitch into kindling in under four minutes.”

Minerva’s head snapped toward him. “Mr Weasley.”

“Hypothetically,” he repeated quickly. “And only if profoundly annoyed.”

“Dragons do not need an excuse to be annoyed,” Estelle said. “Existence appears to suffice.”

Charlie gave her a sideways grin that hit her like a memory.

Romania. A cramped wooden table, two chipped mugs of something too strong, Charlie’s laugh ricocheting off the low ceiling. The heat of his hand on the small of her back as they stepped out into cold night air. The decision to follow him home. The equally deliberate decision to leave three months later, with no promises they both knew they couldn’t keep.

She felt that ghost of familiarity now—comfortable, fond, uncomplicated.

Rather unlike the entanglement currently sleeping in an armchair in the dungeons.

“We should catch up properly,” Charlie said, spearing a sausage with unnecessary enthusiasm. “Away from dragons and Headmistresses and impending doom.”

“An intriguing combination,” Estelle said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Hogsmeade,” he replied without pause. “Tomorrow. Afternoon. Before all hell breaks loose. Pint of butterbeer, maybe two, you telling me all about terrifying young minds into respecting dangerous plants.”

“I don’t terrify them,” she said. “I gently encourage them to appreciate the consequences of inattention.”

“Same thing,” he said cheerfully. “So? You in?”

Estelle hesitated only a second. The thought of leaving the castle, even just to walk down the familiar path to Hogsmeade, tugged at something inside her—like a tight muscle being coaxed into stretching.

She needed air. She needed a reminder that the world existed beyond castle walls and dragon cages and Karkaroff’s sneer.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m in.”

Charlie grinned. “Excellent. I’ll drag Hagrid along for cover. Or as bait, depending on whether anyone’s watching.”

“I heard that,” Hagrid grumbled, though his eyes crinkled.

Minerva cut into her kipper with precise efficiency. “So long as you are both back before curfew, and do not smuggle a dragon into the Three Broomsticks, I suppose I can tolerate this excursion.”

“No promises,” Charlie murmured.

Estelle laughed again, feeling some of the heaviness she’d been carrying loosen at the edges. Charlie had always had that effect on her. He was like firelight: warm, bright, occasionally reckless, but never unkind.

She was still smiling, eyes crinkled at something he’d muttered about a Welsh Green with a taste for wizards’ hats, when the atmosphere at the staff table shifted.

It was subtle.

A small eddy in the current.

The kind of change she would have missed if she hadn’t felt him before she saw him.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. The air seemed to cool by a degree.

Estelle looked up reflexively.

Severus had just entered the Great Hall.

His expression, at first, was unreadable—its usual mask of disinterest and mild disdain. His hair was neatly bound. His robes swept behind him with familiar precision. A few of the nearer students instinctively straightened in their seats.

Then his gaze found her.

And in the space of a heartbeat, the mask cracked.

It wasn’t obvious, not to anyone who didn’t know the minute shifts in the angles of his mouth, the way his shoulders tightened, the flicker in his eyes that flashed too quickly to be nameable.

But Estelle saw all of it.

He took in the picture at the staff table with one sweep: Estelle leaning in toward Charlie, Charlie grinning, Minerva looking wryly amused, Hagrid chuckling at some shared joke.

And Estelle laughing.

Not carefully. Not guardedly.

Just… laughing.

His eyes darkened.

The storm she’d joked about more than once—the one he kept banked so carefully beneath layers of control—rolled silently across his face.

He approached the table anyway, long strides even, cloak swaying in disdainful arcs. To anyone else, he would have looked merely displeased with the concept of breakfast.

To Estelle, he looked like something brittle had been knocked loose inside his chest.

She straightened instinctively, her laughter fading at the edges, her fingers tightening around her teacup.

Severus reached his usual seat beside Minerva and across from Flitwick.

He did not sit.

Instead, he stopped directly behind Estelle’s chair.

“Black,” he said evenly. “Weasley.”

“Professor,” Charlie said easily, looking up with the open curiosity of someone who did not yet realize he was standing at the edge of a minefield.

Estelle turned slightly. “Severus. Good morning.”

It sounded more formal than she meant.

His gaze flicked to her, cool and assessing.

“You’re dining with us,” he observed.

“Yes,” she replied. “Thought I’d remind the students I’m not a nocturnal myth that only appears over cauldrons.”

“Hn.”

His eyes shifted back to Charlie.

“You must be Mr Weasley,” he said. “The dragon enthusiast.”

Charlie smiled. “One of them, at least. Charlie Weasley. We’ve met—briefly, I think. You gave a lecture at Hogwarts the year I finished. On poison-antidote theory. I sat in, terrified the entire time.”

“Most graduates are slow to recover from their education here,” Severus said mildly. “Some never do.”

Charlie laughed. “I took it as a sign I’d picked the right field. If theory scared me that much, I figured fire couldn’t be worse.”

“An interesting metric,” Severus said.

Estelle picked up her knife and carefully began cutting her toast, mostly to give her hands something to do. The air between the two men felt… electric. Not openly hostile, but humming with the tension of things unsaid.

“Charlie is here for the first task,” Estelle said, attempting to smooth the edges. “To help oversee the… transports.”

Severus’s lip curled faintly. “How noble.”

Charlie either didn’t notice the bite or chose to ignore it. “More practical than noble. Someone has to make sure they don’t accidentally light the wrong thing on fire.”

“Or the right thing,” Severus said. “Depending on perspective.”

Estelle shot him a quick warning look.

He held her gaze a second too long, something sharp and wounded glinting just beneath the surface.

“So,” Charlie said lightly, plowing on, “you teach Potions, yeah? Estelle says you’re brilliant.”

Estelle nearly choked on her tea.

Severus’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. He turned his head just enough to look down at her, eyes narrowed in a way that asked very clearly, *Oh, she does, does she?*

Estelle stared determinedly at her plate.

“Professor Snape is very good at what he does,” she said, deliberately bland.

“High praise,” Severus murmured.

Charlie, oblivious to the undercurrent, went on, “You two must work together a lot. Herbology and Potions go hand in hand. I imagine it makes the students’ lives easier, having a bit of coordination between the dungeons and the greenhouses.”

“It does,” Estelle said.

“At times,” Severus allowed.

Charlie grinned. “Must be nice, having someone to talk shop with. Out in Romania I mostly have dragons and the occasional half-asleep intern to bounce ideas off of.”

“You could try the dragons,” Estelle said. “They might have insightful feedback.”

“They mostly complain the food isn’t charred enough.”

“Kindred spirits, then,” Severus said.

Before Estelle could decide whether that was self-directed or not, Charlie shifted in his seat, turning slightly more toward her as he reached for his mug. His knee bumped hers under the table—an old, easy sort of contact. The kind that came from having shared cramped benches and narrow beds and mornings after without regret.

Her body remembered the familiarity. Her stomach swooped once, not with romantic flutter but with the disorienting sensation of two eras of her life colliding in the same breath.

She shifted back instinctively, but not before Severus’s gaze flicked to the movement.

Something in his expression shuttered further.

“Well,” Charlie said, wiping a crumb from the corner of his mouth, “I should go make sure Hagrid hasn’t snuck off to visit the—hemlock exports—without me.”

Minerva made a faint, imperious noise that translated to, If either of you go near a dragon without proper supervision, I will transfigure you into a teapot.

Charlie slid his chair back. The bench scraped faintly against the floor.

He turned to Estelle.

“Tomorrow?” he said. “Hogsmeade?”

“Yes,” she said. “Three o’clock?”

“Perfect.”

His hand landed gently on her leg under the edge of the table—a brief, entirely natural gesture for him, fingers warm through the fabric of her robes.

Estelle went very still.

It was nothing. It was a friendly press of contact. It was habit.

But she felt Severus’s attention snap to the point of contact like a spell.

Before she could subtly move away, Charlie leaned in, planting a light kiss on her cheek in obvious farewell.

It was soft. Quick. Familiar without being intimate.

Hagrid’s beard twitched in what might have been a suppressed grin.

Minerva’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, cataloguing everything and filing it away for later.

Flitwick pretended to adjust his fork.

For Estelle, time stretched thin.

She caught a flash of red hair. The ghost of dragon smoke on Charlie’s clothes. The warm brush of his lips against her skin.

And then it was over. He straightened, winked, and said, “See you then,” before heading down the staff table and out of the hall.

The moment his hand left her leg, she exhaled, only then realizing she’d been holding her breath.

She turned her head.

Severus had not moved.

He stood exactly where he’d been, robes undisturbed, posture razor-straight.

But his face—

His face was no longer masked.

Stormy didn’t quite cover it.

His eyes were dark, almost black in the morning light. His mouth was pressed into a thin, bloodless line. A small muscle ticked near his temple in a betrayal of tension.

“Severus—” she began.

He cut her off.

“Enjoy your breakfast,” he said, voice cold enough to frost the tea. “We have a staff meeting at ten.”

Before she could reply—before she could reach for him or make some half-formed explanation that would have sounded pathetic even to her own ears—he turned sharply on his heel and strode down the length of the table.

His robes flared like a curtain closing.

He didn’t look back.

Estelle watched him go, stomach twisting.

Around her, the noise of the Great Hall pressed in again—the clink of cutlery, the murmur of student voices, the flap of owl wings. It all sounded oddly far away.

She looked down at her plate.

Her toast, once steaming and golden, sat unbitten and cooling rapidly. The butter had congealed at the edges. Her tea had gone lukewarm.

Her appetite evaporated.

Minerva said nothing. But Estelle could feel her assessing gaze like a weight on the side of her face.

She picked up her toast anyway, holding it more out of habit than hunger.

Her fingers left faint indentations in the soft bread.

For the first time since she’d stepped into the Great Hall, Estelle wished she’d stayed downstairs. That she’d watched the light change from her own window with a mug of tea and a quiet, sleeping man in the next room to confront later.

Instead she sat at the staff table with a cold piece of toast and the distinct, suffocating awareness that she had just hurt someone she cared about—without quite knowing how to fix it.

Chapter Text

The staff meeting was already underway when Estelle slipped through the double doors of the staff room and into her usual seat near the far end of the long table.

The room smelled like parchment, tea, and varying degrees of skepticism. The windows were half-fogged by the cool morning outside, blurring the view of the grounds into soft smears of green and grey. A tray of stale biscuits sat ignored in the center, next to a pot of coffee that looked strong enough to strip cauldrons.

Dumbledore stood at the head of the table, hands clasped behind his back, the sleeves of his robes drifting like smoke. He looked, Estelle thought, almost buoyant. That was how you knew he was about to say something either foolishly optimistic or faintly horrifying.

“…as we move closer to the first task,” he was saying when she settled in, “I must ask for your continued cooperation in maintaining an atmosphere of calm.”

“Calm,” Severus murmured from two seats down, just loud enough for her to hear, “while four children are procured for public endangerment.”

She didn’t dare look at him. She could feel him like a presence across the table, edges sharper than usual.

Dumbledore went on.

“We are, as you know, hosting guests of great distinction,” he said, twinkling at Madame Maxime, who sat enormous and impassive at the far side of the table. Igor Karkaroff lounged several seats away, thin mouth twisted in something meant to resemble a smile. “It is important that we present Hogwarts as a welcoming, collaborative institution.”

“Welcoming in the sense that we will not let them be eaten,” Minerva said dryly.

Dumbledore’s eyes sparkled. “Precisely.”

A faint ripple of uneasy amusement passed around the table.

Charlie sat between Hagrid and Sprout’s empty chair, his expression politely attentive. He glanced sideways at Estelle for half a second when Dumbledore said “first task,” but she kept her gaze fixed on her notes, jaw set.

“Regarding the specifics of the task,” Dumbledore continued, “you will understand that there are… elements of surprise which must be preserved for the sake of the champions.”

“Elements,” Filius Flitwick repeated, skeptical. “Headmaster, you have stationed one of the world’s foremost dragon handlers on our grounds. We may not know the precise nature of the task, but we are not fools.”

Karkaroff’s eyes flicked toward Charlie. Madame Maxime’s brows tightened almost imperceptibly. Several professors shifted in their seats.

Dumbledore’s smile did not falter, but Estelle saw the quick flash of something like weariness pass through his eyes.

“You are quite right, Filius,” he said lightly. “And I am grateful to you all for the discretion you have shown thus far. Still, I must ask that we leave… certain details unspoken. Curiosity is a powerful thing. Particularly in teenagers.”

“And in Weasleys,” Minerva added under her breath.

Charlie coughed to hide a grin.

Alastor Moody thumped his flask onto the table. “Dragons or no,” he growled, magical eye whizzing, “they’ll be safer than half the missions I’ve been on. You lot are forgetting there’ll be handlers, warding, judges, proper preparation. Could be worse.”

“Reassuring,” Estelle muttered.

Dumbledore raised his hands in a mild, placating gesture. “We have taken every precaution,” he said. “The champions will be briefed shortly before the task. Our primary responsibility, as ever, is to support them before and after, and to ensure the other students remain at a safe distance. The stands will be warded. The perimeter secured. Madam Pomfrey has, as you might imagine, prepared extensively.”

“At least someone has,” Severus said softly.

Minerva’s lips thinned. “And what, precisely, would you have us do differently, Severus? Cancel the Tournament? Send them all home?”

“Yes,” he said.

Estelle’s heart pinched.

Dumbledore’s gaze slid briefly to Severus, then away. “We cannot undo what has been set in motion,” he said, voice gentle. “We can only walk through it with as much care as we can muster.”

“And pray,” Moody said.

“And trust,” Dumbledore added.

Estelle looked down at her quill so he would not see the skepticism on her face.

Dumbledore moved on to practical matters—the escort schedule for visiting heads, adjustments to the timetable for the day of the first task, reminders about curfew. Sprout’s classes would remain covered by Estelle. Hagrid was not to bring any guests, winged or otherwise, to dinner without notifying the staff first. Filch was to keep an eye out for illicit betting pools.

It was, on the surface, uneventful.

But beneath the murmured assent, Estelle felt the tension in the room like a taut string. Those who knew what Charlie did for a living, and what kind of creatures made wards and fuss and secrecy necessary, were all thinking the same thing:

Dragons.

The word hung unspoken over the table until Dumbledore dismissed them.

“Thank you,” he said warmly. “For everything you are doing. Take care of yourselves as well as the students.”

Chairs scraped. Robes swished. Conversations resumed in low hums.

Estelle stood quickly, intent on slipping out before Severus could catch her eye—or before she could be tempted to look for it.

No such luck.

She had taken three steps toward the door when his voice cut through the milling staff, soft and precise.

“Black.”

Estelle stopped.

Turned.

He approached with that measured, calm stride that anyone else might read as composed. She saw the tightness in his jaw, the faint line between his brows. Last night’s softness—his head on her shoulder, the warmth of him asleep—felt a world away.

“Severus,” she said quietly.

There were people all around them. Minerva speaking with Flitwick. Hagrid hovering near Charlie. Madame Maxime gliding out with surprising grace. Karkaroff watching them with thinly veiled interest.

They were both too practiced to do anything as undignified as fight in the middle of the staff room.

“We have fourth-year Gryffindors and Durmstrang this afternoon,” Severus said. “You should be prepared for divided attention. They are buzzing like flies.”

“I’m used to divided attention,” she replied. “I’ve taught through a Quidditch final and a troll rumor.”

His mouth twisted. “This will be worse.”

She wanted, irrationally, to reach out and fix the fold of his sleeve. He looked frayed at the edges.

“I’m prepared,” she said.

He nodded shortly. His eyes flicked once, involuntarily, toward where Charlie was speaking with Hagrid. Something sharp flashed in them before he dragged his gaze back to her.

“We have a potion to discuss,” he said, lower. “Later. Regarding Harry.”

She nodded. “After dinner?”

His expression shuttered. “If you can spare the time from… butterbeer engagements.”

The words landed between them like a slap.

She swallowed. “My plans for tomorrow do not negate what we need to do today.”

“Let us hope not,” he said.

He inclined his head to her in a gesture that was technically polite and practically furious, then swept out of the room in a flurry of black.

She stood very still for a moment, breathing carefully.

She could feel eyes on her. She didn’t bother to see whose.

There would be time for that later.

For now, she had classes to teach.

—

Her first class of the day was second-year Hufflepuffs and Beauxbatons students, a combination that usually went smoothly. Hufflepuffs were earnest and careful. Beauxbatons girls, while occasionally disdainful of muddy knees, were precise and responsive to clear instruction.

They were working with Puffapods. Safe. Familiar. A comfort.

“Remember,” Estelle said, voice steady, “these will bloom wherever they drop. If you do not want flowers in your shoes, do not drop them near your shoes.”

A few students giggled.

She moved among them, correcting wand grips, steadying elbows. One pale Beauxbatons girl with a sharp braid and sharper cheekbones looked up at her with frank curiosity.

“Professor,” she said in lightly accented English. “Is it true that the first task will involve… how you say… creatures?”

Estelle smiled thinly. “It is true that the Tournament has a long history of tasks involving challenging magic. Beyond that, you will have to ask your Headmistress.”

The girl huffed. “She says nothing. Only that we must be prepared.”

“She’s right,” Estelle said. “Being prepared is more useful than knowing every detail. What you know can be wrong. What you can do is what matters.”

The girl seemed to consider that.

“Is that why you stay here for so many hours?” she asked. “To be prepared?”

Estelle blinked.

“I stay here because this is where my work is,” she said. “And because if I don’t keep an eye on your classmates, they will repot themselves into the Venomous Tentacula beds.”

A Hufflepuff boy near the back, already elbow-deep in soil, tried to look offended and failed.

By the time class ended, her muscles had found their rhythm again. The familiar flow of lesson, observation, correction, praise. The soft satisfaction of seeing students leave the greenhouse bemused, a little more competent than when they’d walked in.

Her second class was trickier.

Fourth-year Gryffindors and Durmstrang.

They filed in with a kind of jittery energy that made the diricawls in their cage fluff up and mutter. Estelle could feel the difference immediately—like static in the air.

Weasley twins, already whispering furiously. Harry, eyes shadowed and distracted, flanked by Ron and Hermione. Three Durmstrang boys with shaved heads and stubborn scowls. Two Durmstrang girls who watched everything with narrowed eyes.

Estelle stepped to the front of the greenhouse and let the door swing shut behind the last student.

“All right,” she said. “Today, we’re working with Shrivelfigs and their role in restorative potions. This will be messy. It will not, however, be deadly, unless you deliberately attempt to eat the skins. Which I do not recommend.”

A small murmur of laughter broke the tension.

Fred raised his hand without waiting to be called on. “Professor, is it true the first task is—”

“If the next word out of your mouth is ‘hippogriffs,’ Mr Weasley, I will assign you an essay so long it qualifies as a novel,” Estelle said.

George raised his hand. “What if it’s ‘giant squid’?”

“Then I’ll give your novel to Hagrid,” she said. “Begin preparing your worktables. Skinning knives are in the basket. The figs will bruise if you look at them too hard. Do not look at them too hard.”

The class settled into motion. Even so, she could feel the questions humming through them like bees. Harry sliced three Shrivelfigs in a row without seeming to notice he’d mangled them. Hermione kept glancing toward him, frowning. A Durmstrang boy muttered something in his native language that sounded suspiciously like a wager.

Estelle moved to Harry’s table.

“Your knife angle is off,” she said quietly.

He startled. “Sorry, Professor.”

“Don’t apologize. Adjust.” She took his hand and shifted it into the correct position. “Like this.”

He swallowed. “Professor… is it…” He glanced around, then lowered his voice. “Is it really going to be something that can kill us?”

“Yes,” she said.

He stared at her.

She sighed. “Everything is something that can kill you, Harry. A fall from the Astronomy Tower. An improperly brewed potion. A bad decision. The question isn’t whether it can. It’s whether we make it easier for it to try.”

“That’s not comforting,” Ron muttered.

“It isn’t meant to be,” she replied. “What should comfort you is that you’re not going into that arena alone. You have teachers who know far more than they’re saying. You have friends who’d throw themselves in front of inferi for you. You have a brain you insist on underusing. And you have time. Three days is not much, but it’s not nothing. Use it.”

Harry looked down at the Shrivelfig. His hand was steadier when he cut the next one.

The hour passed.

By the time the last student had trooped out, leaving bits of Shrivelfig skin and the faint smell of pulpy fruit behind, Estelle’s head felt full and hollow at once.

She scrubbed the tables with a flick of her wand, watched the detritus gather and vanish. For a moment she stood in the middle of the empty greenhouse, listening to the faint beat of rain starting against the glass.

She should go to lunch.

She did not.

The thought of sitting at the staff table again, feeling Severus’s glances or deliberate lack of them, answering Minerva’s subtly barbed questions, making small talk around the gaping hole of what was coming—it made her chest tighten.

Instead she went back to her chambers.

The house-elves, bless them, had already left a covered plate on her desk by the time she arrived: bread, cheese, a small bowl of stew, a slice of apple tart. She uncovered it and ate mechanically, barely tasting anything.

On the table beside her, a tray of seedlings waited to be transplanted. She’d brought them up from the greenhouses a week ago, intending to repot them in stronger soil. They’d sat there quietly, leaves curling and uncurling, patient as only plants could be.

She rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

The task was simple. Soil. Pots. Gentle pressure around fragile stems. The satisfaction of tucking each small life into somewhere it would grow stronger.

She lost herself in it for a while.

The emptiness in her chest dulled to something manageable, the steady movements of her hands soothing the buzzing of her thoughts.

She was brushing loose dirt from the table when a knock sounded at her door.

Three sharp raps. Impatient.

Her heart jumped.

“Come in,” she called, wiping her fingers on a rag.

The door swung open.

Severus stood in the threshold, door still half-caught in his hand as though he might yet decide to leave.

“Hello,” Estelle said carefully.

“You weren’t at dinner,” he said. No greeting.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“You weren’t at lunch,” he added.

“I was teaching.”

“You have to eat,” he said, as if this were a personal affront.

“I did,” she snapped. “House-elves brought me something.”

He looked around, as if inspecting for evidence of stew.

His gaze snagged on the tray of pots, the pile of soil, the faint line of dirt running along her forearm where she hadn’t noticed it.

“You were gardening,” he said.

“Yes.”

“In your chambers.”

“Yes.”

“Alone.”

“As opposed to what?” she demanded. “Hosting a symposium?”

He exhaled sharply, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him with more force than necessary.

The latch clicked like something locking into place inside her chest.

“What is this about, Severus?” she asked.

“You didn’t come to dinner,” he said again, as if that explained everything.

“Is that a punishable offense now?”

He stared at her, eyes dark, jaw set.

“If you did not want to be seen with him,” he said slowly, “you could simply have said so.”

It took her a beat to catch up.

“With—Charlie?” she asked.

He laughed once, bitter and low. “You say his name very easily.”

“It’s his name,” she said, thrown. “He has one. As do you.”

He stepped closer, robes whispering around his legs.

“At breakfast,” he said, “you were laughing.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t laugh like that often.”

“I do, actually. Just not always in your vicinity.”

His nostrils flared. “And he—”

He broke off, pacing once across the room, hand raking through his hair, disturbing the neatness he’d put on like armor that morning. He looked less controlled than she’d seen him in months. Not furious, exactly. Agitated. Fractured.

“He put his hands on you,” Severus said.

She blinked. “He—what?”

“At the table. Under it. On your leg. And then he—”

He cut himself off again, as if the memory were physically painful.

“Severus,” she said slowly, “are you… jealous?”

The word hung between them, almost absurd in the way it didn’t fit the usual lines of his expression.

He went very still.

Estelle realized, with a strange lurch in her chest, that he was. Utterly. Utterly, irrationally, almost boyishly jealous.

“I have not seen you act like this since we were seventeen,” she said softly.

His eyes snapped to hers.

“Well,” he said, voice tight, “forgive me if seeing another man’s hands on you in public inspires… comment.”

“He’s an old friend,” she said.

“Ah.”

“From Romania. We worked in the same region. We were… close for a time.”

“I gathered.”

“It ended amicably,” she insisted. “Years ago. Before the war truly… before everything. It was never meant to be permanent.”

“And yet he still feels entitled to—”

“He doesn’t feel entitled to anything,” she cut in. “That’s the point. We parted because we knew what we could be to each other and what we couldn’t. That’s not what this is.”

“This,” he repeated. “This.”

He made a vague gesture that seemed to encompass the entire room, her, him, the air between them.

“Severus,” she said, more quietly, “what do you think this is?”

“I don’t know,” he snapped.

The honesty of it startled her.

He took a breath, forced his voice down.

“I am not good at this,” he said. “Any of it. The… the rules. The expectations.”

“The feelings,” she supplied.

“Yes,” he spat. “Those.”

She folded her arms, partly to keep from reaching for him.

“And what are you feeling now?” she asked.

“Foolish,” he said immediately. “Exposed. Irrational. All the things I swore I would not be again.”

“Because Charlie kissed my cheek?”

“Because he can,” Severus said, and in that moment, the rawness in his voice nearly undid her. “Because he can do it without hesitation. Without history. Without consequence. Because he can touch you in a hall full of people and not have it mean anything that tears him apart.”

She stared at him.

“So you think it means nothing,” she said slowly. “To me.”

He looked away.

“I think,” he said, “that you could choose someone like him and be… safer.”

“Safer,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

She laughed once, disbelieving. “You think safety has ever been high on my list of priorities?”

“Perhaps it should be,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she said, stepping toward him, “you should stop assuming you know what’s best for me just because you have experience with pain.”

He flinched.

She softened.

“Severus,” she said, quieter, “look at me.”

He did, after a moment.

“I am not interested in Charlie,” she said. “Not in the way you mean. I care about him. I’m fond of him. I’m glad he’s alive and whole and happy. I will share butterbeer with him and let him make me laugh about dragons. But I am not… with him.”

He swallowed.

“You could be,” he said.

“I’m not,” she countered. “Because I’m here. With you. In this room. Having this ridiculous conversation.”

“Ridiculous,” he echoed.

“Yes,” she said. “Because you, Severus Snape, who once glared an entire Death Eater assembly into silence, are in my chambers having what can only be described as a small jealous panic because a man kissed my cheek in front of Minerva McGonagall.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched.

“You make it sound absurd,” he muttered.

“It is absurd,” she said gently. “And also… human. And strangely endearing. If you weren’t suffering so much through it, I might laugh.”

“You may do so,” he said stiffly. “I deserve it.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t.”

He sank into the chair by the fire as if his legs had decided they’d had enough. His shoulders slumped. Some of the anger drained out of him, leaving him looking… fragile, in a way she rarely saw. Not in charge. Not composed. Not the feared Potions Master.

Just Severus.

“You assure me,” he said after a moment, “that you are not interested in him. How long will that remain true?”

She considered.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I could be hit by a rogue Bludger tomorrow and reevaluate my entire life. But here is what I do know: right now, I am more interested in the way you fall asleep the second you let yourself lean on someone than I am in whatever Charlie and I used to be.”

His eyes flickered.

“That,” he said, “is not romantic.”

“It isn’t meant to be,” she said. “It’s meant to be true.”

Silence stretched, softer now.

He stared into the fire, jaw working.

“The first task is in three days,” he said, as if changing the subject to something more manageable. “Harry is nowhere near ready. Neither is Cedric. Karkaroff is jumpy. Maxime too controlled. The Dark Mark…” He trailed off.

“Is it worse?” she asked quietly.

“It’s… present,” he said. “In ways it hasn’t been in years.”

She sank into the other chair.

“Remus wrote to me,” she said, apropos of nothing and everything. “He’s with Sirius somewhere in the Balkans. They’re alive. Moving. Watching.”

His eyes closed briefly, as if absorbing a blow he’d half-expected.

“And?” he said.

“And he says this Tournament is a powder keg,” she said. “And that I am talented at worrying both too much and not enough.”

“A rare gift,” he murmured.

“He also says I’m not alone,” she said.

“You aren’t,” Severus said, so quietly she almost missed it.

She leaned her head back against the chair.

“We are not prepared for this,” she said.

“No,” he agreed.

“But we will go anyway.”

He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “That seems to be our specialty.”

They lapsed into a quieter conversation after that. Practicalities. The schedule for the next two days. Her classes tomorrow—three in the morning, then Hogsmeade with Charlie, with the unspoken expectation that she would return in one piece and not give Severus another coronary. His antidote preparation. The warding Alastor kept muttering about under his breath. Minerva’s increasingly aggressive timetable charts.

At some point, his hands stopped twisting in his lap.

At some point, the rigid line of his shoulders eased by a fraction.

At some point, Estelle realized that the sharpest edges of his jealousy had dulled, replaced by something more cautious, more vulnerable.

“You should go,” he said eventually, glancing at the clock on her mantel. “You have an early morning tomorrow. And an allegedly harmless outing with a dragon tamer.”

“You’re not going to tell me not to go?” she asked.

His mouth twisted. “I have no right to.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He met her gaze.

“No,” he said. “I am not going to tell you not to go.”

She nodded, slow.

“Thank you,” she said.

“If he hurts you,” Severus added, eyes narrowing slightly, “I will feed him to his own dragons.”

“There it is,” she said. “The romance.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was less venom in it.

She walked him to the door.

He paused with his hand on the latch.

“Estelle,” he said.

“Yes?”

He didn’t look at her when he spoke.

“I am… not used to this,” he said. “To being chosen. Even provisionally. Even for now. If I… overreact… it is not because I doubt your judgment. It is because I doubt that I am a reasonable recipient of it.”

Her throat went tight.

“Severus,” she said softly, “if I didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be.”

He swallowed once.

“That will have to suffice,” he said.

“For now,” she replied.

He opened the door, hesitated, then glanced sideways at her, something like apology in his eyes.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night.”

After he left, she stood in the quiet for a long moment, listening to the fading echo of his footsteps in the corridor.

Tomorrow, she would teach through the morning, as always.

She would walk to Hogsmeade with Charlie, drink butterbeer, let herself remember a version of her life where dragons were interesting and not a direct threat to her students.

The next day, she would teach again, stand on the grounds as they erected stands and wards, feel the castle hold its breath.

And the day after that, the champions would face their dragons.

Three days, she thought, as she banked her fire and prepared herself for bed.

Three days to prepare.

Three days to hold Severus’s fragile trust together.

Three days to remember who she was before the roar of flame changed everything again.

Chapter Text

Estelle woke before her alarm charm could trill, as though her body had rehearsed the movement during the night. Pale morning light seeped through the small window near the ceiling, soft and diffused, illuminating the faint swirl of dust motes above her bedside table. For a long moment she simply lay there, staring up at the stones overhead, letting the cool quiet of the early hour settle into her bones.

Today was going to be a long one. Four classes in a row. Hogsmeade afterward. Butterbeer with Charlie. And the constant, unavoidable hum of the first task looming only two days away.

She exhaled, rolled out of bed, and began her morning routine with careful deliberation. A splash of cold water over her face. Brushing her hair until the dark strands shone enough for a simple braid. A clean set of robes—deep green, the shade she favored most for Herbology days—and a final check on the seedlings by her window.

Her chambers were quiet, still scented faintly of soil and parchment from last night’s transplanting. Her mind shifted back to Severus—the way he’d stood in her doorway, taut with worry and jealousy; the way he’d softened when she’d spoken truth; the quiet confession of choosing and being chosen.

She wondered briefly if he’d slept. If the sleeping draught had helped. If he was somewhere in the dungeons now, preparing for his classes with the same grim determination he wore like a cloak.

She resisted the instinctive urge to send a Patronus checking on him.

Instead, she gathered her teaching bag and headed for the greenhouses.

Her first class of the day was seventh-year Gryffindors and Beauxbatons—an unlikely but surprisingly effective pairing. The Gryffindors arrived boisterous and under-caffeinated, while the Beauxbatons girls entered with an air of elegant resignation, as though bracing themselves for mud.

She stood at the center of Greenhouse Four, wand behind her back, hair braided neatly, boots planted firmly in the soil.

“Today,” she announced, “we’ll be discussing infusions—specifically, how to prepare and distill properties from mature Scorchbark leaves.”

A chorus of groans rose from the Gryffindors. The Beauxbatons students remained politely blank-faced.

“Scorchbark,” Estelle continued, “is essential for a range of potions—including certain burn balms and two important antidotes. If you plan to take NEWT-level potions, you will work with it often. If you don’t, well… consider this your last chance to complain before life becomes easier.”

That earned a few weak laughs.

She demonstrated the correct wand movement for separating a Scorchbark leaf from the branch without igniting the entire plant, then handed around pairs of dragonhide gloves—which, under present circumstances, earned a few pointed glances.

One Gryffindor boy, tall with a shock of sandy hair, eyed the gloves suspiciously.

“Professor,” he said, “is it true the first task—”

“No,” she said.

“I didn’t even—”

“No.”

“But—”

“If you want to keep your eyebrows,” she said, “focus on the leaves.”

He closed his mouth with a soft click and complied.

The class settled into a rhythm. Beauxbatons students murmured in French over the best methods of slicing. Gryffindors tried (and failed) to resist showing off with increasingly dramatic wand flourishes. Estelle corrected angles, prevented three near-fires, and confiscated one wand from a boy who insisted he could “ignite just a little bit on purpose.”

By the end of the lesson, a surprising number of students had produced workable Scorchbark infusions.

Her second class was first-year Ravenclaws and Durmstrang—a much stranger combination. Ravenclaws tended to ask thoughtful questions. Durmstrang students asked questions designed to see what they could get away with.

She stood before a row of trembling Fizzing Ferns.

“Today,” she said, “we are learning about plants that react to emotional energy.”

One Ravenclaw girl raised her hand. “How can a plant know what we’re feeling?”

“Magic,” said a Durmstrang boy with a scoff.

“Yes,” Estelle said dryly, “but also: resonance. Some plants are highly susceptible to ambient magical fields, and those fields change with emotion.”

The Ravenclaw girl considered this thoughtfully.

The Durmstrang boy smirked.

Estelle continued, “These Ferns detect nervousness. If you’re anxious, they fizz. If you’re calm, they remain still. If you are lying—”

All the Ferns immediately vibrated.

She arched a brow at them.

“Fascinating,” she said. “Well then. Let’s practice honesty—or better composure.”

Ravenclaws tried deep breathing. Durmstrang boys attempted to stare the ferns down. One small Ravenclaw boy ended up giggling uncontrollably every time the ferns fizzed near his hands.

It wasn’t a productive lesson, exactly—but it was a memorable one.

Her third class—fourth-year Hufflepuffs and Beauxbatons—was easier. Hufflepuffs were gentle with even the crankiest plants. And Beauxbatons students, while initially squeamish about handling Slugroot bulbs, quickly adapted, finding the rhythmic scraping of the bulbs oddly soothing.

Midway through explaining the anatomy of a Slugroot bulb, one Hufflepuff raised his hand timidly.

“Professor Black?” he said. “Are… um… are you nervous about the first task?”

The greenhouse quieted instantly.

Even the plants seemed to still.

Estelle blinked.

“No,” she said—not a lie, but not the whole truth either. “I’m cautious. And focused. Those are more useful to me than nerves.”

A Beauxbatons girl nodded solemnly as though Estelle had imparted something profound.

Her final class of the morning—third-year Slytherins and Gryffindors—was its usual chaos.

Slytherins arrived confident. Gryffindors arrived competitive. Neither group enjoyed being told to cooperate.

They were studying Saltcleaver Moss today—a plant that, when mis-handled, dissolved into a caustic gel.

“Your goal,” Estelle said, “is to trim a section of moss without melting your cauldron."

A Gryffindor boy raised his hand. “Professor—hypothetically—”

“No.”

“But if—”

“No.”

“But if someone else—”

“Still no.”

Slytherins smirked.

Gryffindors glowered.

Then—miraculously—they got to work.

A few pairs found a cautious rhythm. Others barely resisted sabotaging one another. One Slytherin girl muttered under her breath about “idiotic Gryffindor wrists.” A Gryffindor boy retaliated with complaints about “cryptic Slytherin muttering.”

Estelle moved among the chaos, intervening only when necessary.

By the time the bell rang, she felt wrung-out but steadier. Teaching had always done that—grounded her, reminded her that the world was bigger than whatever private storm she was experiencing.

She dismissed her fourth class, breathed in the warm greenhouse air, and let her shoulders finally loosen.

Afternoon sunlight seeped through the panes overhead.

Charlie would be waiting soon enough.

After tidying up the greenhouse and ensuring her next-day materials were set, Estelle returned to her chambers to change.

She peeled off her teaching robes and swapped them for a dark brown cloak lined in soft wool—warm enough for the autumn air but inconspicuous enough that no one would stop her on her way out.

She brushed her hair again, tucking loose strands behind her ears, then hesitated at her mirror.

There was dirt under one fingernail. A smudge of moss at her wrist. Leaves clung to the hem of her skirt.

She huffed softly.

A Marauder once again, she thought. Or close enough.

Charlie wouldn’t care if she looked slightly windswept. Hogsmeade certainly wouldn’t. Butterbeer, by nature, forgave imperfections.

She strapped her satchel across her chest—it held only essentials, her wand, and a few dried herbs she intended to give Charlie—and stepped into the corridor.

Hogsmeade trips for staff were easy enough—you could leave by the gate, turn right, and follow the path.

But today she didn’t want the walk.

She wanted the quiet. The secrecy. The old thrill of slipping through hidden places untouched by official routes.

So she took a left.

Down a narrow staircase she knew by heart.

Past the painting of Sir Cadogan arguing with a disgruntled pony.

Toward the stretch of wall near the abandoned classroom.

She paused, listening.

No footsteps.

No stray students.

Only the castle breathing slow and steady.

Estelle placed her palm flat against the stone.

“Open up,” she whispered—an echo of something Sirius had once shouted with a grin, James cackling beside him, Remus pretending not to enjoy himself.

The wall shivered.

Then, with a soft grinding sigh, it folded inward, revealing the mouth of a long, sloping passageway. Dust hung in the air. The scent of old wood and forgotten secrets drifted toward her.

Her heart thudded once, almost painfully fond.

She stepped inside.

The stones closed behind her with a whisper, sealing her into the cool, dim tunnel lit only by her wand tip.

“Lumos.”

Warm light flared.

Estelle adjusted the strap of her satchel and began the descent—the gentle decline toward the outskirts of Hogsmeade, the tunnel carved decades ago by four boys who had once been everything to her.

Her boots echoed softly on the packed earth.

She smiled to herself, small and wistful.

She was a Marauder, after all.

And some paths never stopped knowing her.

Chapter Text

The passage sloped gently downward, the packed earth beneath Estelle’s boots uneven but familiar. The air grew cooler as she walked, the castle’s faint background hum fading behind her, replaced by the distant whisper of underground things—roots, water, the memory of footsteps laid down years ago.

She kept her wand lit and her pace steady, one hand brushing the stone as she went. When she’d been a student, they’d raced through these tunnels—James and Sirius sprinting ahead, Remus calling warnings, Peter puffing along behind. She’d often brought up the rear, not because she was slow, but because she liked watching the way the light from their wands bounced against the rough walls, the bright streaks of their laughter scribbled into the dark.

Now she walked alone.

At the far end, the tunnel narrowed, then curved. She felt more than saw the slight rise of carved steps. The scent of sugar drifted faintly in—thicker, sweeter, undercut with chocolate and powdered cane.

Honeydukes.

She reached the heavy trapdoor, pressed her palm to the underside, and whispered, “Alohomora.”

The latch clicked.

The door shifted upward an inch. Estelle slid her shoulder under it, pushed, and eased it open just enough to slip through into the dim cool of the Honeydukes storeroom.

Crates towered around her, stamped with names: CHOCOLATE FROGS, SHERBET LEMONS, PEPPERMINT TOADS. The room smelled like every childhood dream crammed into one space. For a moment she just stood there, her head filling with half-ghosted memories of sneaking sweets back to the common room, Sirius stuffing an entire Fizzing Whizbee into his mouth and nearly floating into the rafters.

She shut the trapdoor quietly and tapped it once with her wand to reseal the lock. The magic thrummed faintly under her palm.

Her cloak was dusted with tunnel grit. She gave it a brisk shake, watching the dust settle harmlessly into the cracks between the floorboards. Then she pinched a stray cobweb off her sleeve, brushed her braid over one shoulder, and listened.

Voices drifted from the shop above—customers, Mrs. Flume’s warm chatter, the occasional delighted squeal at something on display.

Estelle moved toward the narrow stair that led up from the storeroom, climbing carefully. At the top, she cracked the door open an inch and peered through.

The shop was bustling but not packed. A few students in Hogsmeade-weekend cloaks milled around the displays, pointing out their favorites. A witch in a dark blue hat inspected a tower of Sugar Quills. Madam Rosmerta’s younger cousin, now co-managing the shop, was restocking Bertie Bott’s jars with the expression of someone who had seen far too many unfortunate flavors in her time.

No one was looking toward the storeroom door.

Estelle slipped out, closed it behind her with a soft click, and merged into the flow of the shop. She moved past shelves of Fizzing Whizbees and Acid Pops, ignoring the tug of nostalgia. At the front, she caught Mrs. Flume’s eye and offered a brief, conspiratorial smile.

“Professor Black,” Mrs. Flume said warmly. “In for something sweet?”

“Just passing through,” Estelle replied. “But if I don’t leave with at least one box of Chocolate Frogs, Minerva will claim I’ve changed for the worse.”

Mrs. Flume laughed and slid a box toward her without asking for payment. “On the house. You looked after Neville Longbottom last year when he fainted in here, remember? Consider it belated thanks.”

Estelle accepted the box, warmth prickling behind her ribs. “Thank you. And for the record, I only picked him up off the floor. The sugar smell did the rest.”

She stepped out into the Hogsmeade street, the bell over the door chiming softly behind her.

The village was in that comfortable lull between weekend crowds and evening quiet. Smoke curled lazily from chimneys. The air carried the mingled scents of butterbeer, damp stone, and the faint metallic tang of early frost threatening from somewhere north.

She scanned the street.

It didn’t take long to find them.

Charlie’s hair was an easy beacon—bright, wind-tossed auburn catching what light there was. He walked beside Hagrid, who towered over everyone else on the lane, shaggy hair and beard ruffled by the slight breeze.

They were halfway down the street, heading in the direction of Zonko’s, both mid-laugh. Hagrid’s booming guffaw echoed off the shopfronts; Charlie’s more familiar, chest-deep laugh threaded through it.

Estelle felt something in her chest unclench.

She jogged a few steps and lifted a hand. “Oi,” she called. “You two look like trouble.”

Charlie turned first, grin widening when he saw her.

“Hah,” he said. “Here she is. Thought the castle might have swallowed you again.”

“It tried,” Estelle said. “But I bribed the staircases with Chocolate Frogs.”

Hagrid’s eyes twinkled as he turned. “Afternoon, Estelle. Thought yeh’d be late. Greenhouses takin’ extra coaxin’?”

“Only the Fanged Geranium bed,” she said. “They’ve been sulking since Sprout left. I told them if they bit one more second-year I’d reassign them near the Mandrakes.”

Charlie shook his head, amused. “Threatening leafy relocation. Terrifying.”

“You mock,” Estelle said, “but plants have pettier grudges than most wizards I know.”

“Present company excluded, o’ course,” Hagrid said, eyes dancing.

“Obviously,” she replied.

They fell into an easy pace, the three of them walking down the main street together. Students parted instinctively around Hagrid, then glanced curiously at Charlie—clearly older, clearly Weasley-adjacent, clearly interesting.

“So,” Charlie said, glancing at Estelle sidelong, “you get much time up here these days? Or does Hogwarts chain you to your desk?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Estelle said. “If you ask the students, I never leave the greenhouses. If you ask Minerva, I pop up to the surface for air just often enough to cause concern. I do come to the village sometimes, though. Usually when Remus urges me to find perspective outside of the castle walls.”

“How is he?” Charlie asked quietly.

“Alive,” she said. “Stubborn. Worrying from an undisclosed distance. The usual.”

Charlie nodded, expression shadowed briefly. “Mum still sets a place for him at dinner some nights,” he said. “Just in case he walks in. Doesn’t say it, but we all know.”

The words lodged under her breastbone.

“I hope he does, someday,” Estelle said. “Not now. I think after last year he wants the space. But… someday.”

They walked a few more paces in comfortable silence, the weight of shared absences between them.

“So what’s the agenda?” Estelle asked, forcing a lighter tone. “A tour of all three shops that don’t sell cursed objects? Or straight to the Three Broomsticks?”

“Thought we’d pop into Spindle & Spoon first,” Charlie said, pointing toward a little shop near the end of the high street Estelle had never paid much attention to. “They’ve started selling specialized beast tack. Hagrid wants to disgrace himself over Hippogriff halters.”

Hagrid snorted. “If they’re sellin’ halters, they need someone who knows what they’re talkin’ about. Most o’ these vendors think a dragon’s just a bigger cow.”

Estelle made a face. “That’s a horrifying sentence.”

“You’d be surprised,” Charlie murmured. “Some ministry buyers are even worse. At least Hagrid respects the claws.”

They reached the little shop, its window cluttered with leather straps, harnesses, and a few ominous-looking chains enchanted with subtle runes.

The bell over the door jingled as they stepped inside.

The interior was narrower than it looked from outside, crammed with gear. Saddles hung from rafters in miniature and full-size; shelves were lined with grooming tools and enchanted muzzles that shivered faintly.

Hagrid’s eyes lit up like Christmas.

“Oooh,” he rumbled, moving immediately toward a display of reinforced lead ropes. “Look at this, would yeh? Triple-braided, dragonhide core… what I wouldn’t give ter have ‘ad this when Norbert was teething…”

Estelle and Charlie exchanged a look.

“You’ve lost him,” Estelle said under her breath.

Charlie nodded solemnly. “He’s gone. We’ll find him in a corner arguing with a bit and bridle by the time we leave.”

As if to prove the point, Hagrid drifted deeper into the shop, already in animated conversation with a stocky witch about the relative merits of charm-woven harnesses.

Charlie cleared his throat. “Right, then. We’ll leave him to it?”

“He’ll be happy for an hour,” Estelle said. “As long as no one tries to sell him something for dragons we absolutely do not want him experimenting with.”

“I’ll check on him before I go,” Charlie promised. “Make sure he hasn’t bought a flameproof hammock or something.”

“That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d buy,” Estelle muttered.

They slipped back out into the street.

The air had cooled, the sky overhead a soft, washed-out blue tinged at the edges with cloud. A mild breeze carried the sound of distant laughter and the rattling creak of a cart being wheeled somewhere near the Hogsmeade station.

The Three Broomsticks stood warm and familiar halfway along the lane, its bay windows glowing faintly, its sign swinging gently in the wind.

Estelle felt something like nostalgia thread through her as they approached. She’d been in here dozens of times since returning to Hogwarts, but today felt different—like revisiting an old memory with someone who’d known her when that memory was being made.

Charlie pulled the door open and gestured her inside with a mock-formal flourish.

“After you, Professor.”

“Don’t call me that in here,” she said sharply, stepping past him. “I prefer to drink in denial and anonymity.”

The pub was pleasantly busy—enough people to make it lively, not so many to make it crowded. A smattering of seventh-year Hogwarts students occupied corner tables, clustered in small groups, talking too loudly. A few villagers sat at the bar, nursing pints of ale and exchanging the kind of gossip that never reached the castle.

The air was warm, thick with the smell of butterbeer, smoke, and that indefinable pub scent of old wood and spilled conversation.

Madam Rosmerta stood behind the bar, polishing a glass with her usual flare, hair piled artfully atop her head. She glanced up as the door swung shut behind them.

“Afternoon, welcome t—”

She broke off, eyes widening.

“Charl—by Merlin’s beard, Charlie Weasley?”

He grinned. “Afternoon, Rosmerta. Still making the best butterbeer in Britain?”

She set the glass down, her face breaking into a delighted smile.

“You cheeky thing,” she said, coming out from behind the bar. “You disappear to the continent for six years and then stroll back in here like you never left.”

“Flame-retardant work socks are hard to come by outside of Hogsmeade,” Charlie said. “And Romanian dragon preserves have terrible taste in ale.”

Rosmerta gave him a swift hug, laughing. “You look good,” she said, patting his cheek. “A bit singed around the edges, but good.”

“I moisturize with Burn-Healing Paste,” he replied solemnly. “It’s very rejuvenating.”

Rosmerta rolled her eyes and then glanced past him.

“And Estelle,” she said, smile softening. “Good to see you too, love. You keeping this place afloat with your dignified presence and questionable friends?”

“Questionable is generous,” Estelle said. “Your standards are slipping.”

“Rubbish,” Rosmerta replied. “It’s nice to see the two of you in the same place again. I remember that night in your student years—what was it—third butterbeer in, and you decided to lecture half the pub on the ethics of dragon-training.”

Charlie looked up at the rafters, deeply thoughtful. “Ah. Yes. The very important ethical lecture that ended with me falling off my chair.”

“You missed the table by inches,” Estelle said. “I dragged you home by one ankle.”

“And still let him back in the pub after,” Rosmerta said. “I’m a saint.”

“You’re an enabler,” Estelle corrected fondly.

Rosmerta laughed and waved them toward a corner table. “Sit yourselves down. First round’s on me. Butterbeer?”

“Absolutely,” Estelle said.

“And something stronger for later,” Charlie added.

She gave them both a knowing look. “I’ll see what I can do.”

They slid into a small round booth near the back, half-shielded from the rest of the room by a wooden partition. Estelle sat with her back to the wall, a habit she’d picked up from too many years of war-coded instincts; Charlie sat opposite, sprawling comfortably.

“So,” he said, leaning his elbows on the table. “Tell me everything. How did you end up back at Hogwarts sprouting roots in Greenhouse Three?”

“Dumbledore bribed me,” Estelle said. “With sentiment and guilt.”