It's been three years.

Three years since Y/n vanished without a warning, without a note, without a single trace left behind. Three years of rumors and dead ends. Three years of watching the Slytherins learn how to exist without her. They still sit in the same places, still argue over the same things, still fill the room with smoke and music and the particular kind of chaos that only they could create. But there has always been an empty space where Y/n used to be. A space none of them ever tried to fill.

Tonight, the fire is burning low. The windows show nothing but black water and the occasional flicker of movement from the lake. Someone has left a vinyl record playing, soft and crackling, like the room itself is trying not to disturb whatever fragile peace has settled over the group.

The portrait hole opens.

It is not a sound anyone reacts to at first. People come and go. The common room is never really empty. But there is something about the way the air shifts, the way the green light catches on a figure that hasn't stood in that doorway for years.

Y/n stands in the doorway of the Slytherin common room, alive and home, and nothing about her looks the way it used to.

She is thin. Not in a way that looks deliberate, but in a way that suggests meals missed and nights spent somewhere cold. Her hair is longer, messier, falling into her face like she hasn't bothered to look in a mirror in days. Her clothes hang off her frame, all sharp angles and hollow spaces. There are shadows under her eyes so dark they look almost bruised.

She looks at them. Her eyes move slowly across the room, touching each face like she's trying to remember it, like she's not quite sure any of this is real.

She is holding something in one hand. A small, empty glass vial. The kind that might have once held a potion, or something stronger.

No one says anything.

The record keeps playing, soft and indifferent, like the world hasn't just shifted on its axis.