The brief, uncomplicated joy of the Quidditch match evaporated two days later in the hushed aisles of the library. Shya was balanced precariously on a stool, reaching for a book on advanced wand movements when a smooth, cool voice cut through the silence.
"That's a sixth-year text. The theory is… ambitious for a first-year."
They turned. Cho Chang, a beautiful and popular second-year, stood with two of her friends, their arms crossed, creating a subtle but effective blockade in the Charms theory aisle. The slight emphasis on "ambitious" made it sound like a flaw.
Talora's posture straightened instantly, her face becoming a polite, impenetrable mask. "We find value in challenging material."
"Challenging material is one thing," said one of Cho's friends, a girl with freckles, her eyes sweeping over them, lingering on Shya's dragon-hide bag. "Sitting with Slytherins in plain sight is another. We saw you at the match."
"They're our Potions partners," Talora replied, her tone even. "Collaboration is efficient."
Cho's gaze was sharper than her friend's. "It's not very efficient to alienate your own house, Gill. Those boys—Black and Nott—their families have… reputations. You're new. You might not understand the lines that are drawn here." Her eyes flickered to Shya's *kara* and then to Talora's face, the unspoken *people like you* hanging in the air. "Ravenclaw is supposed to be about wit, not social climbing with the wrong crowd."
Shya, who had been quietly fuming on the stool, hopped down. The landing was less graceful than she intended, and she stumbled slightly, grabbing the shelf for support. The freckled girl smirked.
"We'll keep your… concern… in mind," Shya said, her voice dripping with a sarcasm so dry it could start a fire. She looped her arm through Talora's. "Come on, Bob. We have more important things to do than listen to unsolicited advice from strangers."
They walked away, leaving Cho and her friends staring after them, but the confrontation left a bitter residue. Shya's cheeks were flushed with anger and a humiliating sense of being put in her place. She was used to excelling, to commanding a room with her wit. Being treated like a naive child stung.
***
"We need a place," Talora declared later, her voice tight as they huddled in a corridor. "Somewhere they can't find us. Somewhere we don't have to be… *on display*."
The search felt urgent, a direct response to the library ambush. They found it on the third floor—a dusty, disused classroom bathed in the pale, late-afternoon light. A few broken desks were piled in a corner, and a lone, wobbly armchair sat by a large window overlooking the grounds.
"It's perfect," Lisa breathed, brushing dust from a windowsill.
"It's a dump," Shya corrected, but she was already claiming the wobbly armchair, testing its stability with a critical eye. "But it's *our* dump."
They spent the next hour cleaning and warding the door with a simple Locking Charm Padma had read about. It was theirs. A sanctuary.
It was here, in their new sanctuary, that the frustration of the day finally boiled over. They were practicing the Match to Needle transfiguration. Talora's match shimmered and transformed into a perfect, silvery needle on her third precise attempt. She didn't look triumphant, just grimly satisfied, as if she'd checked off a task on a mental list.
Shya's match, however, merely turned a blotchy grey and remained stubbornly wood. She stared at it, her artist's eye seeing the perfect needle in her mind but unable to force the magic to comply.
"Ugh! I can *see* it. Why won't it just *be* it?" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. She slumped back in the creaky chair, a rare and genuine look of defeat on her face. "I'm not used to being bad at things."
The admission hung in the dusty air. Padma, Mandy, and Lisa fell silent, recognizing the raw honesty in it.
Talora looked from her own perfect needle to Shya's slumped form. For a moment, it seemed she would quote a textbook. Instead, she set her wand down with a soft click.
"You're trying to command it," Talora said, her voice losing its usual lecturing edge. "Like it's a person you can argue into submission. It's not a debate, Bob. It's a… collaboration with the magic. You have to persuade it that the needle is its truer form."
It was the first time Talora had ever suggested that Shya's forceful, intuitive approach might need tempering, and that her own methodical nature wasn't the only path. She wasn't following a schedule; she was chasing a standard of perfection that felt terrifyingly out of reach in this new world, a standard set by parents who couldn't possibly understand the magic she was now failing to master.
The door creaked open, and Roman Nott leaned against the frame, a lazy, knowing smile on his face. "Heard you had a run-in with Chang's little court." He held up a heavy, leather-bound book. "*The Architectural Principles of Transfiguration*. It breaks down the structural theory. Thought it might help you… deconstruct the problem, Livanthos."
Talora took the book, her fingers tracing the embossed title. It was a peace offering that spoke her language—not of social maneuvering, but of pure, uncompromising knowledge. It was an acknowledgment of her intellect from a world that often dismissed her as an outsider. "Thank you, Nott," she said, her voice softer than usual.
"Anytime," he said, his dimples showing. "Can't have your work being anything less than perfect, can we?"
***
That evening, as a cold drizzle began to fall, Shya and Cassian found themselves walking a slow circuit around the Black Lake, slightly apart from the others. The library confrontation and her transfiguration failure had left her feeling scraped raw.
"My family's library," Cassian began abruptly, breaking the comfortable silence, "has books on magical theory. My grandfather's collection. They treat magic not as an art, but as a science. A series of laws to be decoded." He glanced at her. "Your way of seeing it… the way you try to argue with a spell until it listens… it's not wrong. It's just a different branch of the same science."
Shya stopped walking, turning to face him. The offer was immense. It was him sharing a piece of his shrouded, complicated world, not to correct her, but to validate her own. "You'd… let me see those? Your family's books?"
"If you wish," he said, his gaze steady on her. "Some of the oldest magic is simply a different way of asking the question."
A few yards away, Roman and Talora had also stopped, watching the Giant Squid break the lake's surface.
"It doesn't seem to have a five-year plan, does it?" Roman mused, nodding toward the squid. "Still seems to manage."
Talora hugged her arms against the chill. "It's all so much bigger here," she confessed, her voice barely a whisper. "The history. The politics. At home, I knew how to succeed. I knew what 'top of the class' looked like. Here… the goalposts keep moving, and I don't even know who moved them." The fear of disappointing a family she was suddenly, vastly separated from was a cold weight in her stomach.
Roman didn't tease her. He didn't offer a glib answer. He simply stood beside her, a solid, reassuring presence in the gathering twilight. "You're not playing their game, Talora. You're defining a new one. And from where I'm standing, you're already winning."
For the first time all day, Talora felt the tight knot of anxiety in her chest begin to loosen. She wasn't alone. None of them were. And in the face of that, the judgment of a few second-years and the specter of failure suddenly seemed a little less terrifying.