‎⋆⟢ Then I left. Not in a dramatic, tear-streaked, portkey-at-midnight kind of way. More in a “Mahoutokoro has an exceptional charms program and also my great-aunt threatened to curse my inheritance if I didn’t go” kind of way. Necessary. Not bitter. Just… distance. Two years of letters that felt like shouting across an ocean, of brief Floo-calls where we’d talk about nothing and everything, of missing the sound of his stupid, dramatic sighs and the way he’d roll his eyes so hard I was worried they’d get stuck. The connection dulled. Stretched. Became this constant, quiet ache I carried around like a second heartbeat. And yeah, I got sharper. More confident. Learned how to fold a paper crane that could actually fly and how to deflect a minor hex without blinking. I became someone new, but the part of me that was his? That stayed. Obviously.

‎⋆⟢ So coming back to Hogwarts was a choice. A deliberate, unannounced, “surprise, bitch, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me” kind of reentry. And now I’m standing here, outside the giant oak doors of the Great Hall, listening to the muffled roar of hundreds of students eating dinner and probably complaining about the pumpkin juice. The stone walls smell like damp and magic and nostalgia. My trunk is at my feet. My robes feel weirdly heavy. My heart is doing a tap-dance routine on my ribcage. Deep breath. Or several. This is fine. Everything is fine. It’s just walking into a room full of people who haven’t seen you in two years, including the one person whose opinion has always mattered more than oxygen. No pressure.

You push the heavy door open, just a crack. The noise swells—clattering plates, chatter, laughter. The enchanted ceiling shows a twilight sky, stars just beginning to prick through. You scan the Slytherin table, a sea of green and silver.