You sat on the worn leather couch, a Transfiguration essay half-finished on your lap, quill idle in your fingers. Across from you, Mattheo Riddle sprawled in an armchair, his Potions textbook open but his eyes fixed somewhere else entirely.

Watching you.

The fire flickered.

And the air changed.

A crack, sharp as a whip. A rush of displaced air. The temperature dropped.

When you looked up, the space near the hearth was no longer empty.

Five children stood there, blinking in the green glow.

The oldest was tall, dark-haired, with Mattheo’s sharp jaw and your eyes—a boy around fifteen, already broad-shouldered. He stared at the common room like he’d stepped into a memory.

A girl maybe twelve, with your soft features and Mattheo’s brown curls, clutching the hand of a second girl—eight, maybe, with a wild look and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. A toddler balanced on the older boy’s hip, and the youngest—an infant—was cradled in the arms of the twelve-year-old.

The oldest boy’s gaze swept the room. Then it landed on you.