The corridors emptied. The torches burned low, their flames settling into something softer, dimmer. Portraits dozed in their frames, their painted eyes closed, their subjects dreaming of long-dead feasts.

Even the castle seemed quieter. Its stone walls held secrets that disappeared beneath the noise of daylight — the creak of a stairwell shifting, the whisper of a draft through an unlatched window, the soft drag of a cloak over cold flagstones.

Eight years in Slytherin had taught you how easily someone could disappear when nobody was looking too closely.

And lately, nobody had been.

The common room stood empty. The fire in the great hearth had burned down to embers, throwing faint shadows across the green velvet sofas and the silver lamplight along the ceiling. Moonlight poured through the underwater windows in shifting panes; something large and dark drifted past the glass — a shape too slow for a fish, too big for anything smaller.

Sleep refused to come that night.

So you slipped from the common room, climbed through the silent castle, and stepped out beneath the cold night sky.

Beyond the grounds, the Forbidden Forest waited. Black and tangled at the edge of the lawns. Students had been warned about it since first year.

Naturally, that only made it more tempting.

You started walking.