The silence did not end when Dumbledore finished speaking.
It lingered, settling into the office like fine dust after a collapse—slow, inevitable, impossible to sweep away. The fire burned low behind Dumbledore's desk, its flames folding in on themselves with a weary patience, and the strange silver instruments that had rattled and chimed earlier now sat inert, as though exhausted by the truth they had helped uncover.
Alden did not move.
He remained seated, hands folded loosely in his lap, eyes fixed on the surface of the desk between them. The wand lay there still.
His wand.
Ebony, unyielding, faintly reflective in the firelight. It rested not on Dumbledore's side of the desk, nor on Alden's, but precisely between them—as if neither man had quite claimed it yet.
The sight of it tightened something in Alden's chest.
He was dimly aware of his own breathing, slow and measured now, though moments earlier it had been anything but. The pressure behind his temples had eased, leaving a hollow ache in its place, and the veins along his wrists—once dark with exertion—had faded back beneath his skin.
Dumbledore remained where he was, hands folded, posture relaxed, though there was an alertness about him that Alden had learned not to mistake for ease. The Headmaster's gaze drifted, not to Alden, but to the far wall, where a faded tapestry hung depicting a wizard standing at a crossroads, wand lowered, eyes shadowed.
At last, Dumbledore shifted.
He glanced down at the delicate watch encircling his wrist, its face crowded with tiny turning hands, each marking a different kind of time. The motion was unhurried. Not reluctant. Simply… necessary.
"It's time," Dumbledore said.
The words were quiet. Almost conversational.
Alden felt them land all the same.
He did not ask what time it was, or where they were going, or how long he would be gone. There was no protest rising in him, no flare of anger, not even the hollow resignation he might once have expected. Instead, a strange clarity took hold, as though the night had been steering him here from the moment his name had first been spoken in the Great Hall.
He nodded once.
"I understand," Alden said.
His voice sounded steadier than he felt. Not calm, exactly—but controlled. Contained.
Dumbledore's eyes flicked back to him then, sharp behind the half-moon spectacles.
"I thought you might," he replied.
Alden rose.
The chair scraped softly against the stone floor, the sound echoing too loudly in the quiet office. He paused for half a second, as if expecting his legs to betray him, but they did not. He stood straight, shoulders squared by habit more than confidence, and looked down once more at the desk.
At the wand.
Dumbledore noticed.
He followed Alden's gaze and inclined his head slightly, as though acknowledging an unspoken question.
"I placed it there deliberately," he said.
Alden looked up.
"Because I wanted you to see it," Dumbledore continued, "and because I wanted you to know that its presence here is not a punishment."
He did not reach for it.
Nor did he push it closer.
"It is a reminder," Dumbledore said gently. "Of what you carry. And of what you chose not to do."
Alden swallowed.
"I nearly—" he began, then stopped.
Dumbledore waited.
Alden exhaled through his nose, fingers curling briefly at his sides. "I nearly crossed a line I don't know how to come back from."
"Yes," Dumbledore said simply.
There was no rebuke in it.
No softening either.
Alden's jaw tightened. "If you hadn't—"
"But I did," Dumbledore said, and this time his voice carried the faintest edge—not sharp, but firm. "And that matters."
He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the desk.
"So does the fact," he added, "that you stopped."
Alden's eyes flicked, once again, to the wand.
"I don't feel like I stopped," he admitted quietly. "It feels more like I was… interrupted."
Dumbledore considered this.
"That may be so," he said at last. "But restraint does not always announce itself with certainty. Sometimes it arrives as hesitation. Sometimes as doubt. And sometimes"—his gaze sharpened—"as another voice cutting through one's own."
Alden did not answer.
The office seemed to draw inward around them, the shadows deepening in the corners, the high ceiling pressing just slightly lower. Fawkes shifted on his perch, feathers rustling, but still he did not sing.
Dumbledore straightened.
"We will be leaving shortly," he said. "Professor Snape will meet us at the station with your belongings."
Alden nodded again. No surprise there.
"How long?" he asked.
Dumbledore's lips curved faintly—not a smile, exactly, but something warmer than neutrality.
"That," he said, "depends very much on what you do with the time you are given."
Alden hesitated, then said, "And the Ministry?"
Dumbledore's expression cooled.
"They are shaken," he replied. "Not defeated. They will be… loud, in the coming days. There will be statements. Speculation. Convenient interpretations of events."
"And Selwyn?" Alden asked, the name tasting bitter.
"Alive," Dumbledore said. "And furious."
Alden let out a slow breath. "I didn't mean to—"
"I know," Dumbledore interrupted softly. "But intent does not erase consequence. You understand that better than most."
"Yes," Alden said. He meant it.
Another silence fell, heavier than the last.
At length, Dumbledore nodded toward the desk.
"You may take your wand now."
Alden did not move immediately.
For a moment, he simply looked at it, remembering the weight of it in his hand, the way it responded not to words but to resolve. He remembered how easily it had obeyed him—how readily it had reached for something final.
He reached out and closed his fingers around it.
The contact sent a faint, familiar pulse up his arm, subtle but unmistakable. His magic settled, aligning itself once more, as though relieved to be whole again.
Dumbledore watched closely.
"You trust me," Alden said suddenly.
It was not a question.
Dumbledore met his eyes. "Yes."
"Even now?"
"Especially now."
Alden absorbed that in silence.
"Trust," Dumbledore added, "is not the absence of concern. It is the decision to believe that someone can still choose rightly, even when they have shown how close they can come to choosing otherwise."
Alden's grip tightened imperceptibly.
"I don't know if I'll always make the right choice," he said.
Dumbledore rose from his chair.
"Neither did I," he said quietly.
He stepped around the desk, his robes whispering against the floor, and stopped beside Alden—not facing him directly, but angled, allowing space.
"That uncertainty," Dumbledore said, "is not a weakness. It is the beginning of wisdom."
He turned toward the door.
"Come," he said. "We should not keep the train waiting."
Alden followed.
They left the office together, the door closing behind them with a soft, definitive click. The room that had held accusation, confession, and restraint was sealed away, at least for now.
The corridor beyond was dim and still, torches guttering low along the stone walls.
Dumbledore did not walk ahead.
Nor did Alden trail behind.
They moved side by side into the quiet of the castle, their footsteps echoing faintly as the night swallowed them whole.
And for the first time since the duel, since the Ministry's eyes had turned so sharply upon him, Alden felt neither hunted nor absolved.
Only… moving.
The castle was asleep.
Not the restless, whispering sleep of students behind curtains and spells, but the deeper kind—ancient, patient, untroubled by the concerns of any single night. Torches burned low along the corridors, their flames guttering softly, casting long shadows that clung to the stone as though reluctant to let go. The air carried the familiar chill of Hogwarts stone, a cold that felt less like temperature and more like memory.
Alden felt it settle into his bones as they walked.
Their footsteps echoed faintly, measured and unhurried. No rush. No pursuit. No audience.
They did not walk in procession.
Dumbledore did not lead, nor did Alden trail behind as he once might have. They moved together, their pace naturally aligned, the silence between them unforced. The portraits lining the walls stirred as they passed—painted figures shifting in their frames, exchanging murmurs too low to distinguish. Eyes followed Alden's pale hair, his straight-backed posture, the wand now once more at his side.
No one spoke aloud.
Alden did not look at the portraits. He did not need to. He could feel their attention like pressure at the nape of his neck, the weight of being known without being understood. It was a sensation he had grown used to more quickly than he liked.
They turned a corner, descending a short flight of steps where the torchlight dimmed even further. For a while, only the sound of their shoes against stone filled the corridor.
Then Alden spoke.
"Do you really think things will ever get better?"
The question was quiet. Not sharp. Not accusing.
Just tired.
Dumbledore did not answer immediately.
They walked a few more steps before he spoke, as though he were choosing not only his words, but the space in which to place them.
"Yes," he said at last. "I do."
Alden waited.
"But not quickly," Dumbledore added. "And not cleanly."
Alden's mouth twitched—something between a smile and a grimace. "That figures."
Dumbledore glanced at him sidelong. "You have already learned one of life's more inconvenient truths," he said. "That moments of clarity are often followed by prolonged misunderstanding."
They passed a tall arched window, moonlight spilling across the floor in pale bands. Alden's reflection flickered briefly in the glass—silver hair, sharp eyes, a face too composed for fifteen.
"Scrutiny," Dumbledore continued, "will increase before it diminishes. Those who feel their authority shaken rarely respond with humility. They respond with noise."
"I noticed," Alden said.
Dumbledore's lips curved faintly. "Indeed."
They turned again, entering a narrower corridor where the ceiling sloped lower, the stone pressing in more closely. Alden became aware, not for the first time, of how often his life had begun to resemble these passages—confined, watched, heavy with expectation.
"Growth," Dumbledore went on, "will cost you more than talent ever did."
Alden's brow furrowed. "Talent's always been expensive."
"Yes," Dumbledore said softly. "But talent is paid for with effort. Growth is paid for with pieces of oneself one does not easily replace."
They walked in silence for several seconds after that.
Then Dumbledore said, seemingly without preamble, "Gellert Grindelwald was not always certain."
Alden's steps faltered—just slightly.
He recovered at once, but Dumbledore had noticed.
"I thought he was," Alden said carefully. "Everyone does."
Dumbledore nodded. "History prefers its villains uncomplicated."
He slowed his pace a fraction, giving the words room.
"When I first knew him," he said, "Gellert was… inquisitive. Restless. Brilliant, certainly—but more interested in questions than answers. He argued for hours. Changed his mind. Changed it back again."
Alden absorbed this in silence.
"There were nights," Dumbledore continued, "when he spoke of wizardkind's future not as a conquest, but as a responsibility. He worried, in his own way, about what power did to those who wielded it."
"What happened?" Alden asked.
Dumbledore's gaze fixed ahead.
"Certainty," he said. "He discovered how intoxicating it could be."
They reached a landing where a single suit of armor stood guard, its visor tilted downward as though listening. Dumbledore paused there, one hand resting lightly against the stone wall.
"Gellert believed," he said, "that doubt was a weakness to be excised. That hesitation was a flaw. And so he trained himself out of them."
Alden's fingers curled briefly at his side.
"And Mathius?" he asked.
Dumbledore's expression softened.
"Mathius was the opposite," he said quietly. "He had little magic to speak of, but an abundance of patience. He questioned everything—including Gellert."
Alden listened, every instinct attuned.
"He did not argue to win," Dumbledore went on. "He argued to understand. He believed that certainty should be approached like fire—useful, yes, but never embraced."
Alden felt something shift, slow and subtle, deep in his chest.
"He was the one," Dumbledore said, "who made Gellert pause."
They resumed walking.
"When Mathius died," Dumbledore continued, "Gellert lost more than a brother. He lost his anchor. There was no longer anyone he trusted enough to tell him he was wrong."
Alden swallowed.
"The world remembers the rise," Dumbledore said. "It forgets the moment restraint vanished."
They passed beneath an archway carved with runes so old that Alden had once spent weeks translating them for his own interest. Tonight, he barely noticed them.
"No one survives certainty alone," Dumbledore said.
Alden nodded once.
"Those who care for you," Dumbledore added, "will matter more than any philosophy you master. Even—perhaps especially—when it becomes difficult to believe they do."
Alden said nothing.
They walked on, the castle unfolding around them in quiet corridors and sleeping halls. The murmuring portraits faded behind them, the stone grew colder beneath their feet, and the path ahead remained unwritten.
Alden did not reply.
But he did not fall behind.
The station lay silent beneath the open sky.
Not the bustling, chatter-filled place it became at the beginnings and ends of terms, but something older and lonelier—reduced to its bare essentials of stone, iron, and waiting. The platform stretched out into the darkness, its edges swallowed by shadow, while a thin layer of frost clung to the rails, catching the faintest hint of moonlight.
A single train stood at the far end.
Its engine was dark, but not dormant. Steam curled lazily from beneath its body, drifting into the cold air in pale, ghostly ribbons that vanished almost as soon as they formed. Now and then, metal sighed softly, as though the train itself were breathing, patient and indifferent to the reason it had been summoned at such an hour.
Lamps lined the platform at measured intervals, their light weak and yellow, pooling on the stone in uneven circles. Between them, the darkness pressed close, unchallenged.
There were no students.
No voices, no hurried footsteps, no final embraces or shouted goodbyes. Even the owls were absent. The station felt stripped of ceremony, reduced to function alone.
Alden slowed as they stepped onto the platform.
He had been here countless times before—always surrounded by noise, anticipation, relief. Tonight, it felt like an entirely different place, as though it had been waiting for this version of him and no other.
Near the edge of the platform stood Professor Snape.
He was dressed in black, as ever, his cloak hanging motionless in the still air, his posture rigid and unmistakable even at a distance. At his feet rested Alden's trunk.
It was not fully packed.
The lid sat slightly askew, one corner refusing to close properly. A stack of books had been forced in without care for order—spines misaligned, pages bent at the edges. A folded set of robes lay on top, rumpled, as though gathered in haste rather than chosen.
A life interrupted mid-sentence.
Alden felt the sight of it strike somewhere just beneath his ribs, sharp and unexpected.
Dumbledore stopped several paces short of Snape.
He did not announce their arrival.
He did not gesture Alden forward.
Instead, he turned slightly away, his gaze lifting toward the dark outline of the hills beyond the station. It was a small thing—a step no one else might have noticed—, but the intent behind it was unmistakable.
This moment was not his to occupy.
Alden understood.
He took a breath, he had not realized he was holding, and walked toward Snape alone, the sound of his footsteps echoing too loudly on the empty platform.
Behind him, the train exhaled another slow plume of steam, and the night pressed in closer, making the distance between Hogwarts and the rails feel suddenly, irrevocably wide.
Alden stopped a few feet from Snape.
Up close, the man looked as he always did—severe, pale, eyes dark and unreadable. His expression betrayed nothing of surprise or relief at Alden's approach, though his gaze flicked once to the trunk at his feet, then back again, sharp and assessing.
Neither of them spoke.
The silence stretched, long enough to become something else entirely—not awkward, not empty, but weighted. The kind of silence that forms between two people who know one another too well to pretend.
Alden stood straight, hands at his sides, with a quiet presence against his leg. He was aware, suddenly, of how young he must look standing there on the platform, framed by lamplight and steam, his life reduced to a poorly packed trunk and a train waiting without interest.
Snape did not look away.
At last, Alden drew a breath.
"I'm sorry, Professor," he said.
The words came out evenly, though they cost him more than he expected. He hesitated, then continued, his voice lower.
"I did something… inexcusable."
Snape's eyes narrowed—not in anger, but in focus.
Alden forced himself to go on.
"I couldn't keep swallowing it," he said. "Not the accusations. Not the way they were using my family like a weapon." His jaw tightened. "I tried. I truly did. But I didn't want it to end that way."
For a moment, Snape said nothing.
His gaze dropped briefly, not to Alden's face, but to the boy's hands—steady now, though faint traces of strain still lingered in the way his fingers curled and uncurled, as if remembering something they had nearly done.
Then Snape spoke.
"It was not your fault," he said.
The words were blunt. Unadorned. Almost harsh in their simplicity.
Alden's head snapped up.
"No one," Snape continued, "could have endured that pressure indefinitely. Not at your age. Not at any age."
Alden swallowed.
Snape's voice lowered, the edge of it shifting—not softening, exactly, but losing some of its steel.
"You were provoked," he said. "Systematically. Publicly. And with a degree of cruelty that the Ministry will, no doubt, deny with great enthusiasm."
Alden let out a slow breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"That doesn't excuse what I nearly did," he said quietly.
"No," Snape agreed at once. "It does not."
The honesty stung—but it did not wound.
Snape stepped closer, lowering his voice further, as though the night itself might be listening.
"This time away matters," he said. "More than you realize. You have been living at a constant boil, Alden. Reflection has been a luxury you could not afford."
Alden looked down at the platform stones, their surface slick with frost.
"I don't know how to stop thinking," he said. "If anything, it only gets louder when I'm not doing something."
Snape's lips thinned. "Then you will learn," he said, "to think deliberately."
He gestured once, sharply, toward Alden's head.
"Restraint is not the absence of thought. It is the discipline to choose which thoughts are permitted to act."
Alden nodded slowly.
"And recalibration," Snape added. "You are not broken. But you are… misaligned."
Alden almost laughed at that, though the sound never made it past his throat.
Snape studied him for a moment longer, then said, in a tone that was unmistakably his own, "And if you learn nothing else during this enforced absence, I expect that your Occlumency will improve markedly."
Alden looked up.
For the briefest moment—so fleeting it might have been imagined—the corner of his mouth twitched.
"I promise it will," he said. "I won't waste the time."
Snape inclined his head once. No approval. Not forgiveness.
Acknowledgment.
He reached down, grasped the handle of Alden's trunk, and nudged it forward a few inches.
"You are not dismissed," he said quietly. "You are removed from immediate danger—your own included."
Alden met his eyes.
"I won't forget that," he said.
Snape held his gaze for a long second longer, then stepped back, his expression once more composed, impenetrable.
Behind them, the train shifted, metal groaning softly as though impatient to be gone.
And Alden, standing there with his imperfectly packed life at his feet, understood something with sudden clarity:
He had failed.
But he had not been abandoned.
The train doors stood open.
Alden lifted his trunk with a muted thud, the weight of it heavier than it should have been, and stowed it in the nearest compartment. The space was narrow, utilitarian, lit by a single yellow lamp that did nothing to soften the hard lines of wood and metal. There was no one else inside.
No voices in the corridor.
No footsteps following him.
When he stepped back onto the platform, the cold bit more sharply, as though the night itself were reminding him that he was leaving warmth behind.
Dumbledore stood a short distance away, hands folded, his expression calm and unreadable. He did not offer final advice, nor did he speak Alden's name. Whatever needed to be said had already been spoken, and anything more would only dull its edge.
Snape had retreated several paces down the platform, his silhouette half-lost in shadow, his presence no less solid for the distance.
Alden paused at the threshold of the carriage.
For a moment, he looked back.
The station lay empty beneath the lamps, stone and iron and silence stretching in every direction. Beyond it, the dark outline of the castle rose against the night sky, its towers and battlements indistinct but unmistakable. Somewhere within those walls, students slept, unaware—or unwilling—to imagine where he was now, or why.
By morning, there would be whispers.
By afternoon, certainties.
Alden knew how the story would be told.
He would be the boy who dueled Ministry officials and did not lose.
The Slytherin who nearly spoke the Killing Curse aloud.
The thing Hogwarts had not known it was harboring.
A monster, neatly labeled, safely distant.
He turned away.
The door slid shut with a soft, final click.
The whistle sounded—low, mournful, and unyielding.
The train lurched, then began to move, steam billowing as the wheels rolled forward, slow at first, then gathering momentum. The platform slipped past the window, the lamps stretching into lines of light before vanishing altogether.
Alden sat alone, watching the countryside emerge from darkness and then dissolve back into it, field after field passing without recognition or meaning.
He did not know what awaited him in London.
He did not know how long this exile would last, or what shape he would be forced to take in its absence.
But even as the world beyond Hogwarts decided what he was—
Alden Dreyse was still moving.
Forward, into a future unknown even to him.