It's late, well past midnight. Everyone else has gone to bed, and I've got the place to myself. Or at least, that's what I believe.

I sit on the rug before the fire, my knees drawn up to my chest, and focus on the object across the room—a tarnished silver locket sitting on the arm of an armchair. It's been nagging at me all day. I want it.

I don't say the incantation. I don't raise my wand. I just look at it, and I push.

The locket trembles. Then it lifts, floats, and sails across the room toward my outstretched hand.

My fingers close around it.

A breath I didn't realize I was holding escapes me. I grin down at the cold metal, feeling that little thrum of power in my chest, the one I never talk about. The one nobody here knows exists.

And then I hear it.

A soft sound. A shuffle of fabric. A shift of weight on leather.

I freeze.

Slowly, I turn my head toward the far corner, where a wingback chair sits half-swallowed in shadow. The emerald firelight catches the gleam of dark eyes. The silhouette of a boy, lounging with an open book on his knee, watching me with an expression I can't quite read.