A week later, Hogwarts had not returned to normal.
It tried, of course. The staircases still shifted, the ceiling of the Great Hall still reflected the weather, and the bells still rang at the proper times. Lessons continued. Homework was assigned. Points were docked and awarded with the usual severity. On the surface, everything appeared unchanged.
But beneath it, something had gone wrong.
Professors spoke more softly than they used to, even in corridors where their voices had once echoed without restraint. They paused before answering questions that should have been simple. A few had developed the habit of checking the ends of hallways before lowering their voices, as though words themselves might now be overheard and reported.
Students, too, moved differently.
They clustered in corners of the Great Hall, leaning close together, conversations breaking off the moment someone unfamiliar passed by. Whispers followed in the wake of footsteps. Groups that had once sprawled comfortably across benches now drew inward, shoulders brushing, heads bent.
And always—always—there was the same name.
Alden Dreyse.
It was never spoken clearly.
Some said he had tried to kill a Ministry official, voice low and eyes bright with the thrill of it. Others insisted it had been worse—that he had nearly killed several of them, that only Dumbledore's intervention had stopped a massacre. A group of second-years whispered, with the absolute certainty of those who knew nothing at all, that Alden had been dragged straight to Azkaban in chains.
"No," said someone else, just as confidently, "Dumbledore killed him. Had to. Too dangerous."
"He escaped," said another voice, urgent and excited. "My cousin says there was an Auror alert."
No one agreed on anything except this: whatever had happened, it was not ordinary.
What unsettled people most was not the rumors themselves, but the silence surrounding them.
There was no announcement.
No clarification from the staff table.
No Daily Prophet was delivered to breakfast bearing an official account of events.
The truth, whatever it was, had been withheld—and in its absence, speculation ruled unchecked.
By midweek, even the professors looked strained.
Professor McGonagall's mouth had become a thin, permanent line. She snapped at students who repeated rumors during Transfiguration and deducted points without hesitation, though she never said why they were being taken. Professor Flitwick was unusually sharp in Charms, silencing idle chatter with a single raised finger and a look of pointed disappointment. Even Professor Sprout seemed distracted, pausing mid-lecture as though listening for something no one else could hear.
Snape, if anything, was colder than usual.
Which, many students noted uneasily, was saying something.
And then there was Umbridge.
She moved through the castle with her usual brisk steps and that same wide, self-satisfied smile, clipboard tucked neatly under one arm. She did not acknowledge the tension. She did not slow her pace. If anything, she seemed invigorated by the way conversations stopped when she passed.
In the dungeons, a group of Slytherins watched her approach in silence.
Several did not bother to hide their glares.
They were not subtle about it—older students, especially, whose understanding of politics ran deeper than most. They knew precisely how this had unfolded. They had watched the duel. They had seen who had pushed, who had provoked, who had smiled while others bled.
Umbridge noticed the looks.
Her smile widened.
She walked past them as though the glares were nothing more than admiration, her heels clicking sharply against the stone. For a moment, the air around Daphne Greengrass seemed to tighten.
Theo felt it before he saw it.
He caught her wrist lightly, fingers closing just enough to warn. Daphne turned, pale eyes meeting his, something sharp and cold flickering there before it vanished. The magic dissipated without a sound.
Umbridge continues, unaware—or uncaring—of how close she had come to earning a hex she would never have seen.
By the time breakfast arrived, the castle was humming with it.
At the Gryffindor table, Harry listened while Ron repeated a particularly dramatic version of events involving three Aurors, a shattered dais, and Dumbledore arriving in a blaze of light. Hermione interrupted frequently, pointing out inconsistencies, but even she could not supply the missing facts.
Harry said little.
He remembered the graveyard.
Remembered standing beside Alden, wand raised, fear pounding in his ears as Voldemort returned to a world that refused to believe in him. He remembered Alden's voice—steady, controlled—when everything else had been chaos.
"He's not a bad person," Harry said finally, staring down at his plate.
Ron looked at him. Hermione went quiet.
"He's not," Harry repeated, more firmly. "He's just… not what they want him to be."
Hermione nodded slowly. Ron looked unconvinced, but did not argue.
Harry wondered, briefly, whether he should write to Alden.
The thought stayed with him longer than he expected.
In Slytherin, the common room had grown unnervingly quiet.
Alden's usual seat remained empty. No one claimed it. No one even stood near it for long. The house adjusted around the absence, conversations recalibrating, hierarchies shifting in subtle, uneasy ways.
Daphne Greengrass spoke only to Theo, Tracey, and her sister Astoria.
To everyone else, she was polite. Distant. Final.
She remembered Selwyn's voice. Remembered standing still while lies were spoken aloud. Remembered Alden's face when everything came apart.
He hates me, she decided.
And the Ice Queen returned—not as armor, but as penance.
By nightfall, the rumors were worse than ever.
And still, no word came from the staff.
No truth.
No correction.
The castle filled the silence on its own.
And somewhere far from Hogwarts, Alden Dreyse did not hear a single word of it.
Draco Malfoy had not slept well since the duel.
Not because of nightmares—he would have welcomed those—but because his mind refused to leave a single sentence alone.
Someone told us about the boy.
Selwyn's voice surfaced at the most inconvenient moments: while Draco fastened his tie in the mornings, while he walked the dungeons, while he sat at the Slytherin table pretending to listen to Pansy complain about Ministry decrees. The words arrived without warning, calm and conversational, as though the damage they carried were incidental.
Someone told us.
Draco knew immediately who that someone was.
He did not need proof. He did not need confession. The knowledge had settled into him the instant Selwyn spoke, heavy and irrevocable. His father had always been careful with information—but not when it came to influence. Not when it came to positioning.
And Draco had given him everything.
He remembered standing in the drawing room at Malfoy Manor, pacing the length of the rug while Lucius listened with that faint, indulgent smile. He remembered boasting—because that was what it had felt like at the time.
Alden's precision.
Alden's restraint.
The way professors listened when Alden spoke.
How dangerous he could become, Draco had said, meaning it as admiration. How proud he was to call him a friend. How Slytherin finally had someone worth fearing again.
Lucius had asked questions.
Draco had answered them all.
Now Alden was gone.
Draco did not blame his father.
That was the worst part.
Blaming Lucius would have been easy—comfortable, even. But Lucius Malfoy had only done what he always did: leverage information, protect his standing, ensure the right names stayed ahead of the tide.
It was Draco who had spoken.
Draco, who had not thought far enough ahead.
Drac,o who had mistaken pride for safety.
Across the common room, Daphne Greengrass sat near the fire, posture perfect, expression unreadable. A pair of seventh-year prefects—older, confident, sensing opportunity—had taken seats far too close to her side. Draco watched as one of them leaned in slightly, murmuring something he clearly thought was charming.
Daphne did not raise her voice.
She did not move abruptly.
She merely turned her head and looked at him.
It was not a glare.
It was worse.
The prefect stiffened, color draining from his face. Whatever Daphne said—if she said anything at all—was lost beneath the crackle of the fire, but the effect was immediate. He stood at once, murmured something that sounded suspiciously like an apology, and retreated with his companion in tow.
They did not look back.
The space around Daphne widened again, empty as it had been all week.
Draco swallowed.
That should have been Alden's place—quietly anchoring the room, preventing this kind of circling opportunism before it began. Alden had always seen it first. Had always stopped it without spectacle.
Now Daphne did it herself.
Colder.
Sharper.
Alone.
Draco felt the guilt twist tighter.
If Alden had stayed—If Draco had said less—If he had understood what his father would do with the information—
But Alden was not here.
And Draco was.
That, Draco realized with a dull sense of dread, was exactly why Umbridge's gaze lingered on him longer these days. Exactly why her smile sharpened when she spoke his name. Exactly why the questions she asked him felt less like curiosity and more like calibration.
He had created the opening.
And the castle, like his father, was very good at exploiting those.
Draco looked down at his hands, clenched tightly in his lap, and wondered when—exactly—guilt stopped being a feeling and started becoming a leash.
He suspected he was already wearing it.
Theo waited until the dormitory was empty.
It was late enough that the lamps had dimmed themselves and the low murmur of the common room below had thinned to a distant hush. Crabbe and Goyle had gone to bed hours ago. Even the seventh-years had retreated, their conversations trailing off into muttered plans and half-formed alliances Theo had no interest in joining.
He sat at his desk and unfolded a fresh sheet of parchment.
For several minutes, he did nothing.
The quill hovered in his hand, ink gathering at its tip, while Theo stared at the blank page as though it might offer guidance on its own. He had never been bad with words—he chose them carefully, usually—but this felt different. He was acutely aware that whatever he wrote would matter. That it might be read over and over. Or not at all.
At last, he began.
Alden,
He paused, then crossed it out. Too formal. Too distant.
He tried again.
Alden—
That would do.
He wrote slowly, deliberately, his handwriting neat but tighter than usual.
I hope you're safe. I don't know where you are, and no one will say anything useful, but I wanted you to know that things here haven't settled the way people expected them to.
Theo stopped, reread the line, and continued.
Hogwarts feels… wrong. Tense. Like everyone's waiting for something else to break.
That, at least, was true.
He wrote about Slytherin—carefully, without naming names where he didn't have to. About how people had begun circling, climbing over one another for position now that Alden wasn't there to quietly discourage it. About how strange it was to see the house like this, sharp-edged and opportunistic.
I always thought Slytherin prized unity more than this, he wrote. But I think that was you. With you there, people fell in line. Without you, it's a free-for-all.
Theo hesitated, then added a line he hadn't planned to write.
I'm sorry I didn't speak up when Selwyn said what he did.
The quill scratched softly.
I know you're probably already aware of my father's… affiliations. I never wanted to talk about them. And maybe that makes me a coward. But I don't believe—whatever they say about your parents—that it reflects on you.
He paused again, staring at the ink as it dried.
If anyone should understand that blood doesn't define a person, it's me.
That felt important.
Theo leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his face. A memory surfaced unbidden—first year, the dungeons flooded with panic, the echo of something large and moving through stone corridors that suddenly felt too small.
He smiled faintly and bent over the parchment again.
You probably don't remember this, he wrote, but during the first year, when they said there was a troll in the dungeons, you told me we'd be completely safe.
The quill paused, then continued.
When I asked why, you said, "I won't let anything bad happen to my friends."
Theo swallowed.
I've wanted to give that same promise back ever since. I don't know how yet. But I will find a way.
The words felt steadier as he wrote them. Less like hope. More like resolve.
You weren't wrong, Alden. And you didn't deserve what happened to you.
He hesitated over the last lines, uncertainty creeping in.
What if Alden wanted silence?What if he didn't want reminders of Hogwarts, of everything that had turned against him?What if writing now only made things worse?
Theo tapped the quill against the parchment once, then dismissed the thought entirely.
Take care of yourself, he wrote. And write back when you can. It'd be good to hear you're alright.
He signed his name simply.
—Theo
Theo folded the parchment carefully, sealing it with a plain charm rather than a family crest. He addressed it in his precise hand, then sat for a moment longer, looking at the letter as though he might somehow will it to arrive safely.
Finally, he rose and carried it to the owlery.
The owl took it without fuss, feathers rustling softly as it launched itself into the night.
Theo watched until it vanished from sight.
He did not know—could not know—that the letter would never reach its destination.
Only that he had sent it.
Because Alden Dreyse was his best friend.
And silence, Theo decided, was not an option.
The manor was quiet.
Not the peaceful quiet of rest, but the deeper, heavier kind that came from isolation and altitude. House Dreyse stood high in the mountains, its stone walls pressed close against rock and snow, hidden deliberately from roads, villages, and passing eyes. The windows were shuttered, the curtains drawn tight, so that daylight never quite made it inside. What little light there was came from the lamps Alden had lit and forgotten to extinguish, casting uneven pools of gold across darkened corridors.
Alden had lost track of when he had last changed his clothes.
He was still wearing his school uniform—robes creased, shirt wrinkled, the green-and-silver tie loosened at the throat. The fabric smelled faintly of parchment and ink now, the sharp scent of old books clinging to it. His hair lay untidy against his forehead, unwashed and forgotten, as though grooming had become a problem to solve later.
Later, Alden told himself, had not yet arrived.
The library no longer resembled a room meant for reading.
Books were everywhere—stacked on tables, spread across the floor, balanced precariously on chair arms and window ledges. Open volumes lay face-down where he had abandoned them mid-thought. Sheets of parchment were pinned to the walls with enchanted tacks, covered in cramped handwriting, corrections layered over corrections until the original ink was barely visible.
Alden paced slowly through it all, wand in hand, muttering under his breath.
"That's not how counter-curses propagate," he said quietly, tapping a margin in an old fifth-year Defense text. "That's not how intent works at all—honestly, who approved this?"
He dragged a chair closer to the fire and sat, flipping pages with increasing irritation.
"This is useless," he murmured. "Completely useless."
He scratched a sharp note into the margin, crossing out a paragraph entirely and replacing it with something tighter, more precise. The theory settled more cleanly once rewritten, the logic slotting into place with a faint, satisfying click.
Time blurred.
At some point—he wasn't sure when—Crix appeared beside one of the towering shelves, his long fingers folded politely in front of him.
"Has any mail arrived?" Alden asked without looking up.
"No, Head Master," Crix replied gently.
Alden nodded, as though he had expected the answer.
There was a pause.
"Begging your pardon, Head Master," Crix ventured, eyes flicking briefly to Alden's rumpled robes, "but perhaps a shower might be… wise?"
Alden blinked.
The suggestion seemed to take a moment to register. He looked down at himself, then back at the book in his hands, as though seeing both for the first time.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Probably."
Crix inclined his head, satisfied.
Alden did not move immediately.
Later—how much later, Alden could not have said—he found himself standing at the top of the cellar stairs.
The door creaked softly as he opened it, the sound echoing downward into the dark. He lit his wand and descended, the stone steps cool beneath his feet, the air growing colder and damper with each step.
The cellar smelled of dust and age.
This part of the house had been sealed for years, its contents left undisturbed, preserved more by neglect than intention. Shelves lined the walls, filled with crates and covered furniture, all shrouded beneath a thin layer of grey.
Alden moved slowly, scanning the room.
Then he saw them.
A stack of journals sat tucked beneath a worktable near the back wall, wrapped in oilcloth and bound together with a simple preservation charm. They were old—older than most of the books upstairs—and unmistakable.
His parents'.
They had been hidden carefully. Not discarded. Not destroyed. Set aside, deliberately, as though someone had known there would be a time when they would be found—and a time when they should not.
Alden crouched and lifted them one by one, stacking them neatly on the table. He did not open them. Did not even untie the binding charm.
He simply arranged them, aligning the edges with care.
Then he straightened and extinguished the light at the tip of his wand.
The cellar returned to darkness.
Alden closed the door behind him with a soft, final click.
Those journals would wait.
For now, there was still too much he did not understand.
And too much, he was not yet ready to forgive.
Alden had moved on to practical work.
The library was no longer just a place of reading—it had become a workspace in the truest sense of the word. A small table near the hearth had been cleared of books and scorched in places where spells had gone slightly awry. On it lay a neat row of candles, a chipped teacup half-filled with water, and a stack of parchment covered in revised incantations.
"Lumos," Alden murmured, wrist barely moving.
The light flared—clean, steady, stronger than necessary.
He frowned, adjusted the phrasing beneath his breath, and tried again. This time the glow softened, obedient, precisely calibrated. Alden nodded once and extinguished it with a flick of his fingers.
He set the wand aside and reached instead for a heavy Potions volume, its spine cracked from age. He skimmed a chapter on stabilizing agents, eyes flicking between text and the notes he had already scrawled in the margins of another book. A Herbology reference lay open beside it, pressed flat with a paperweight.
Cross-disciplinary correction, he thought absently.
Why no one taught it that way, he had never understood.
He paused only to rewrite a line of theory, scratching out a Ministry-approved explanation and replacing it with something leaner, truer. The words settled into place with quiet satisfaction.
Time passed.
He did not notice.
Somewhere far away, Hogwarts bells rang the hour.
Theo stared at the second letter longer than he had stared at the first.
The parchment lay folded on his desk, edges straight, seal unpressed. He had written it more quickly this time, less careful with phrasing, the lines closer together as though urgency itself had begun to crowd the page.
He had not mentioned the rumors again. He had not asked if Alden was angry.
Instead, he had written about small things: how the castle still felt off-balance, how Slytherin had grown sharper, quieter. How Daphne no longer laughed. How Draco had begun watching doorways instead of people.
He read the final lines again.
I don't know if you want space. If you do, I'll respect that. But I wanted you to know I'm here.
Theo exhaled slowly.
No reply.
Not even a brief acknowledgment.
He folded the parchment anyway, sealed it, and set it aside for the morning owl. A rational part of him insisted that Alden was busy. Recovering. Thinking. That silence did not always mean rejection.
Still, the doubt lingered.
Perhaps Alden needed to be alone.
Perhaps this was not a door Theo was meant to keep knocking on.
Alden stood at the far end of the library, wand lowered, eyes unfocused.
He had rewritten the same paragraph three times now, each version tighter than the last. The theory was sound. He knew it was. And yet—
He stopped, glanced toward the entrance hall, listening.
Nothing.
No flutter of wings.
No knock against the glass.
He told himself it didn't matter. That distraction was inefficient. That if anyone wanted to reach him, they would have found a way by now.
He returned to his notes, ink drying quickly beneath his steady hand.
That night, two candles burned in two separate rooms.
Two quills were set aside.
Two boys—brilliant, loyal, and utterly convinced of the other's silence—continued forward on parallel paths, each believing the distance between them had been chosen.
Each of them waited for a reply that would never come.