Chapter Text
The station wakes to its own pulse, and we match it.
We step into King’s Cross with the plan already alive in my bones—the Mirror’s timings nested under my ribs, the ports of quiet marked on the floorboards of my mind like chalk. The crowd knows nothing, as it should. Severus hums with the same surety as the roof iron. On him: the maintenance jacket that teaches eyes to forgive him for existing, the lanyard with nothing printed on it and the authority of things that never have to be read twice, the Regius skin-glamour that tells both people and machines, You are bored. On me: the age-read veil damped low, a schoolboy’s shape laid—politely—over the taller angles the Temple put back into me. Our Rings tap once each to say we’re inside the window.
“Between second and third,” he murmurs, as if reminding the station of its own mathematics.
“Yes, My Lord,” I answer, barely air. The two words go through me like posture. I do not look up to meet his eyes. I don’t have to. I know the look: exact, steady, a touch of mischief at the corner because we have rehearsed enough to be dangerous in the kind way.
Hagrid’s glyph in my head resolves into the man himself: plaid the size of opinions, boots that want to announce their presence, gentleness dragging a loud shadow. Beside him—me, but not; the Illusion lifts its head with the obedient curiosity of a task hours from completion. The world tilts a degree toward story. We steer it back toward procedure.
We ghost parallel paths... Hagrid’s and ours, two swimmers sharing a pool without collision. The trolley’s bell dings. The board flickers late. The cameras blink at nothing. The Mirror in my memory taps three beats. I fold a breath, slide behind a pillar, and emerge with a clipboard as if summoned by a leak.
At 09:02 the porter’s door yawns, obliging, a mouth that knows our angles by heart. The air thins; this is the moment when people who are not us would perform. We do not perform.
I lift my hand to my brow as if chasing a headache, and the syllable lives against my teeth, a kindness disguised as a reflex. “Somnus,” breathed inside my mouth, not for microphones or gossip or anyone’s diary entry. The magic slides like a duvet’s weight at the end of a long day. Hagrid’s knees decide, with gratitude, to be furniture. The illusion takes two more steps and pauses, not confused exactly, more like a sentence waiting for its verb. I am already there, handing Hagrid’s mass to my wand with the easy tilt we practiced.
Levitatus Robur under the shoulders, Axis Pulchra at the hips—rotate a door, don’t push a mountain. He goes weightless. I guide him into the carriage. The corridor accepts him with a sigh. The world has been done a courtesy; it returns one.
Severus is a precise negative space at my shoulder. He lays Quietus Minima along the compartment threshold like a napkin and Noli Tangere over the latch like a polite hand. I tuck a spare cloak (spare, not mine; I learned that rule the hard way, and he never makes me scrape that lesson twice) under Hagrid’s head so the waking will not punish his neck for consenting to be thick. The AutoPen leaves a folded line on the opposite seat, our imagined initial slanting exactly as Hagrid would remember an old friend signing: Sat down a moment. Must have nodded off. Harry boarded safely. —R. The charm from the Staff clicks into place on his pulse. Nothing loud.
“Your number?” Severus asks, not with anxiety; with the same tone he uses for flame. He hears my breath anyway. It’s fine.
“Steady,” I say, and can’t keep the smile entirely out of my voice. The little boy inside me likes it when my pulse does what his teacher wants. The not-so-little boy keeps his face obedient.
We are already moving when the porter returns to perform his scheduled frown at the ceiling. I point at the clipboard with bureaucratic despair and mutter about B-three and the blue key. He escapes the possibility of being useful. The door closes its lips. The moment lies down and becomes stationary.
Part two. The Illusion, freed from shepherd, finds its Purpose and turns toward me like water finding grade. We give it a place to end.
We take the wedge of space the Mirror taught us to find—a bend where railway brick makes a shoulder. The Rings lay their lattice: source recognized here. The Seeker sits cupped at my feet to teach the air how to listen. The Barrier’s whisper bends noise, not people. We do not make a wall; we make a courtesy.
“I am observer and guard,” Severus says softly, twenty feet off my left shoulder, under Pellis. “If I interfere, it is because safety requires it.”
“Yes, My Lord,” I breathe. The words make the hair at the back of my neck rise. Hands open. Head level. Boy saying thank you to a job, not a supplicant or a general or anything that would make the magic think it needs a sermon.
The Illusion rounds the curve. My breath does a very stupid thing behind my ribs and then remembers we practiced not being stupid. It looks exactly like reports and not at all like me. The planes are mine, the stoop I used to carry like a superstition. The eyes—my eyes—are washed of the stubborn, sideways spark I have learned to keep; they are full of a gentleness that is also absence, the kind constructs wear when they have done everything asked and will accept the end the way a good dog accepts a pat.
We stop a yard apart. The world, obedient to plan, chooses to make itself quiet.
“Thank you,” I say. My voice surprises me by being ready. We practiced until it could be. “I see you. Rest.”
I want to embroider. I do not. A rehearsed, mercy-hard addendum slips its hand into my mouth: “Thank you for taking care of them.” It is the size of a sentence, not a story. It is enough.
The face relaxes a fraction... not toward sleep, not toward relief; toward yes. It is the most honorable unmaking I have ever seen. Light unwinds from the edges first, then from the chest, then from the gaze, like a shawl set neatly back on its chair. There is no hunger in it, no grasp. It sifts toward my scar because that is where the door lives, motes like dust in a summer chapel. It touches skin as if asking permission. Under my finger, the cool charm kisses nerves that thought they might like drama and then bore of it after all. The Seeker’s needle tips once and lies flat. The Barrier’s thin veil yawns. Severus moves one step, only one, to lend me the shelter of his coat if light tries to get ideas. It does not.
It is done in fifteen heartbeats. I stay where I am for two more because respecting a thing’s ending includes not rushing away from it. The wedge breathes. The station breathes. I breathe. Severus’s number-hum finds my wrist without touching it; I feel the echo through the Rings and let my shoulders take permission from the heat of his attention.
“We released him,” he says when the world becomes a corridor again.
“Yes, My Lord,” I answer. I do not bow. This is not the moment for bows. It belongs to a door that has learned to close kindly.
Out. We are already pivoting to Part Three by the time the trolley rehearses “pasties” down the line. The AutoPen twitches toward his jacket pocket. He taps it once and it remembers it is a Portkey for exactly two people. We do not Apparate; that would be improvisation flirting with noise.
The tug lands us in Diagon Alley beneath its old bronze. The hour the Mirror prefers sits obediently on the street—between bustle and lull, that sweet seam. Pellis lies over us as a good tailor, machines decide to pursue other hobbies, a shop cat makes a note of our existence and files it under Not My Problem.
Ollivanders looks staged from a century I don’t plan to live in. The shutters are half down, which means he understood the letter’s tone: no theatre. A bell does the grace of not ringing. Severus stands where he can see lamplight and the habit of passersby. I step in as a person who is about to say please to an instrument, I imagine Corvidy's emotion of annoyance.
... would the creator beg for the creation's usefulness?... I thought so too.
He is exactly as advertised and also kinder when no audience is watching. “Good morning,” he says, as though acknowledging a practical appointment rather than greeting destiny.
“Good morning,” I say back, as a boy. We do not give the shop a proper noun to chew on; Prince pays in coin as if coin were the correct verb.
We go through the ritual without indulgence. The first wand nips like a kitten offended I like dogs. The second sulks like a weatherglass. The third warms so honestly and at the right distance from my bones that I think, for six seconds, I might do something I will regret, like grin. It’s holly, of course. Phoenix feather, yes. Eleven inches, the sort of flexibility that understands courtesy. He says “curious” because he cannot help himself; I give him the look you give a stranger who has complimented your shoes. I do not ask about brothers. I am not interviewing fate today, Proph's letters already discussed it.
“Thank you,” I tell the wand. It is an introduction, not worship. Ollivander, with the same tone, “Thank you.” We are six minutes and a handful of coin; the man is still blinking when the shutters find their way back to daylight again. The Tablets’ copy of the receipt reads like something a tutor would file and forget. We oblige it by forgetting it at once.
Eeylops is feathers and straw and the serious counsel of small men who love birds. She is there. Of course she is there, the Overseer is never wrong. My arm is already exactly where it needs to be; she steps with that insulting grace owls give because they can. She regards me as if taking my measure has been a task long delayed by fools.
A behavior that reminded me of a Silesian sorceress who took care of orphans and made it her mantle of sainthood.
“Hello, Hedwig,” I say, and I do not look at Severus because I know the face he is making with his eyes. I do not expect to be spared the lecture on overfeeding; I nod through it like a penitent accepting a sane injunction. The proprietor’s dignity gets to feel useful; we get the jesses, the travel charm, an extra bag of feed in case kindness needs to finance itself on a Sunday. Coin. Not drafts. Counting is the best gossip deterrent we own.
We leave the way we came, not a feather out of place, coins lighter, hearts larger. Hedwig tolerates the travel cage with the practiced indifference. The Portkey tugs us back to brick and dust and English signage. On the platform the day has made up its mind to be on time.
We integrate.
Hagrid’s nap hums the way good sleep hums. I watch the little rise and fall and fall in love with the line on the Seeker that says no one will have to defend the way we handled the day. Severus draws a Memory Charm like chalk. It is the most considerate line I have seen him draw in public. You saw him onto the train. Tea after. All well.
“Window,” he says, and my body is already reaching for the cage. We drift along the platform in that river the Harness opened, hips and elbows folding us cleanly through families the Mirror has decided not to let fall into our path. We place the cage where the air will please a bird. The compartment is empty and plans to remain so. Hedwig sets a single foot and claims the space.
I stow the SEPT wand in the sleeve the Forge made, a groove so loyal it already feels like a spine. The holly goes to the inside pocket where public tools live. The trunk sits in its assigned geometry. I am a student. I could cry from the relief of becoming ordinary so efficiently. I do not. I put the ordinary on like a shirt.
Severus appears at the threshold the way doors wish men would. He sweeps the compartment once, the corridor once, my face once. What he sees: a boy with the edges smoothed, a bird with opinions, the shape of a year about to be conducted instead of survived. He nods as if giving permission to a machine he built and tests every week.
“Remember your glamour,” he says, dry like tea leaves. It is his way of saying ten other things he will not say... he does not like the taste of them in public air: Write. Listen. Be useful. Don’t be bait. Eat.
“Yes, My Lord,” I answer, because I can. The compartment has already decided its ears belong to us. The age-read lays itself over me like a clean sheet. We designed it to be arithmetic. My height yields a hand's length. The line of my cheek realizes it is allowed to look less fed. The Temple’s taught posture; become “attentive” instead of a “weapon.” He studies the result with that brief, fond stillness he thinks hides itself. It does not.
“Average,” he pronounces. From him, it’s a benediction.
“Thank you for making me average,” I say, because we have trained me to make my mouth obedient and my mouth occasionally congratulates itself.
His hand comes to my collar like a craftsman adjusting a seam and, for one indulgent breath, lingers as if fact-checking that my bones have understood our thesis. He lets go. My shoulder remembers the exact weight for later.
He turns to go. It is a measured turn, designed to be uninteresting to cameras and mothers and men who think themselves historians. I should not— I know better. I do it anyway. The wand against my wrist taps my own prayer once, and Capillus-Lilium answers as if I’d said the name of a river.
My hair answers in a low ripple, not a flourish. Black remembers auburn. It lengthens like a breath unpinned. It straightens like steam. Lily. Not a costume; a truth allowed. The face in the window gives me back my mother and refuses to steal me from myself. I allow the luxury for one heartbeat, then tug the knit cap down with the practiced devoutness of boys who live on good habits. He doesn’t see. Or he decides to pretend not to see, I do not know. Either way, the plan enjoys my restraint. I will enjoy my insubordination later, in a mirror, in a dormitory, in a moment I choose.
He lifts his hand. I take it, not to be led not yet but to let our Rings kiss briefly. It is the shortest code in the world and the longest contract. “Write,” he says again, which is more than instruction; it’s the way he checks my breath from a distance.
“I will,” I say. “Every other day, unless there is nothing to report, in which case you will get maps of pastries labeled as corridors.”
“Do not weaponize pastry,” he says, almost smiling and then not. He steps down. He does not look back because other people are watching the platform and he will not give them an anecdote to feed on. He will look later, in memory, when no one else’s appetite can ruin the view.
The whistle sounds. The trolley trundles with the ancient dignity of women who have decided to keep nations alive with sugar and stubbornness. A boy performs being fine down the platform and is helped by being allowed to finish the performance. A father says something foolish and is forgiven by the clock.
I am allowed two seconds to watch Severus become a line against brick and then a fact among other facts and then a thing no one will remember seeing. I take one and a half. Hedwig studies me. I sit because it is the correct thing, and I like correct things better than applause.
The train lurches with that cat’s-paw shove I love. Brick gives way to tunnel and then to countryside that has not yet learned about me and does not need to. The knit cap itches pleasantly—a private alarm reminding me there is a secret under the fabric and patience is, itself, a glamour. The holly hums hello and goes companionably quiet. The SEPT wand sleeps like a wolf under the floorboards with no intention of biting anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
The trolley arrives to be greeted properly. “Pumpkin pasties,” the woman says like an incantation.
“Yes, please,” I answer, like an oath. I also buy a biscuit that is not, strictly speaking, a biscuit. I will argue terminology later in letters and take my disownment like a man.
“First year?” she asks—the ritual question.
“Yes,” I say, the ritual answer. “Good nerves.”
She weighs me—owl, cap, hands open—and approves with the tender tyranny of aunties. “Speak up to Prefects,” she advises. “They like to think they invented trains.”
“Noted,” I say gravely, which is also true. The AutoPen could write that down and pretend it was law.
I send the first letter after the first station because we don’t announce wins; we file them. Seven lines, the way we planned, the way a day like this deserves to be made into an audit: Arrived, average, Hedwig contemptuous in the regal fashion, hair obedient, pasty companionable, compartment mine, plan successful. Thank you for making this look like nothing. Will be kind on purpose. Will listen before speaking. Will not buy more biscuits than fit in a pocket. —H. I asterisk “nothing” in the margin because the Temple taught me to mark joy even when we are busy pretending to be serious, and I will not let joy be laundered into usefulness without at least a little resistance.
Someone runs past the compartment door and fails to keep going because an owl is a gravitational event. He peeks, flushes, bolts. He will not be awful if he keeps doing that and survives it.
I rest my head against the cool of the window and practice the internal version of hovering—lift without leaving—because flights are for dawn when no one is living their important lives in the corridor. “Ask the wind,” Severus said, fingers steady at my shoulders the last time we did this. I smile because the wind will be dull inside a train that thinks it’s an idea, but the body appreciates rehearsal.
Out the glass, hedges give way to fields where people have moved bales in arrangements that look like chapels disguised as chores. I salute their stubborn. Hedwig rotates her head into her shoulder and pretends that this was all her idea. The knit cap and I have a truce. I keep my hands off the hair. It behaves by existing. I promise it the future: platform, night air, a corridor where stone likes red, and a man who will see my mother’s color and my face and close his mouth on whatever he almost says and then say the correct thing instead.
He will. He will say, “Keep it clear of the flame,” perhaps, and it will be better than poetry.
The countryside is observed for the length of a book’s chapter. The train agrees to take this load of children to a castle without incident. The plan curls up under my ribs and sleeps with one eye open. I am eleven where it counts, which is to say: inquisitive, scheduled to grow, dangerous only on purpose.
The compartment door slid open and three first-years hovered in the corridor, luggage in tow, looking that hopeful mix of polite and excited.
“Pardon,” the slim boy in front said, voice careful. “Is there room for three? I’m Theodore Nott. This is Blaise Zabini, and Millicent Bulstrode.”
“Harry Evans,” I said, standing to shift my trunk so they could pass. “Plenty of space, if you don’t mind the owl.”
Blaise’s mouth tipped, amused. “An owl is a point in your favor, Evans. They’re more reliable than most cousins.” He gestured for Millicent to go first, and she took the window seat with the practical air of someone who has already decided to make the best of school benches for the next seven years.
“What’s her name?” Millicent asked, peering into the cage without flinching.
“Hedwig,” I said. The snowy owl blinked, solemn and grand, as if endorsing the introduction.
“Lovely,” Millicent approved, settling her cloak. “And thank you for the seat.”
Theodore—Theo, even his posture said—looked at my hands as I latched the cage again. “You tie a square knot properly,” he observed, almost pleased. Then his gaze drifted to the book spine poking from my satchel. “Is that Magus?”
I eased the volume out so he could see the gilt letters. “Abridged Theorems of Simon Magus. The 1862 reprint.”
Theo’s face brightened the way a lamp does when someone fixes a loose wire. “You’re joking. My father swore there were only three of those still in circulation. The indexing on vector phrases is abysmal, but the practical chapters—”
“—are better than the commentaries,” I finished, grinning despite myself. “He has that section on trimmed incantations for unstable mediums.”
“You two are going to be unbearable,” Blaise said, but he looked entertained rather than annoyed. He stowed his own trunk with an easy flick I recognized as hours of practice at home, then offered me the box of Pumpkin Pasties the trolley had just left. “Tribute for sharing a compartment?”
“Only if you take one back,” I said, and traded him a Cauldron Cake from my stash so the exchange didn’t look like charity. He accepted, elegant as if this were already a ritual.
We all sat. For a beat, the four of us listened to the train rattle into a steadier rhythm, the sound of the year beginning.
“So,” Blaise said, unwrapping his pasty, “Evans. London, or countryside?”
“Surrey,” I answered. “Near enough to London to catch the smoke on windy days.”
Theo leaned forward, still fixated on the Magus text. “Do you have a favorite passage?”
“‘Instruction before ornament,’” I quoted. “The chapter where he pares the spell down to the verb and proves the result is more stable.”
Theo smiled, genuinely pleased. “I copied that in my notes last month. I like how he says a spell should be intelligible to the thing you’re asking to change.”
Millicent nudged her trunk farther under the bench with the heel of her boot. “I like spells that don’t singe my hair. But I’ll let you two write the essays.”
I laughed, tugging my knit cap a little lower against a draft sneaking along the floor. “Happy to share essays, less happy to share singe.”
“Any reason for the hat?” Blaise asked, curious but not unkind.
“Windy platform,” I said easily. “And I didn’t fancy starting the term with wet hair.” Which happened to be true. No one pressed. No one glanced at my forehead. It was smooth, unremarkable skin; there was nothing to see there, and that was how I liked it.
“House hopes?” Millicent asked. “My mother says I’ll do well wherever they put me, but she packed so much green ribbon I suspect she’ll only be disappointed in one color.”
Theo’s ears went slightly pink. “I’ll be glad if the Hat doesn’t make me sing.”
Blaise gave a lazy shrug. “Somewhere with warm fires and decent company.”
“I’ll manage where I’m sent,” I said, which was both an answer and not. “I’m mostly excited for the library.”
That earned nods all around, like I’d chosen the right flag to fly in neutral waters.
“First-year lore,” Millicent said briskly, ticking items off on her fingers. “Beware windows that stick, because if you lean too hard you’ll wear pumpkin juice. Store your cauldron with the lid reversed so it doesn’t rattle. Prefects appreciate being asked rather than told.”
“Good,” Blaise said. “Also, never say you’re good at chess until you’ve seen the board.”
Theo pointed to Hedwig. “And don’t let anyone convince you to trade her for a toad.”
“Never,” I said, and Hedwig clicked her beak softly in what I decided to interpret as agreement.
The trolley returned; we topped up our supplies as if we were provisioning for a polite siege. Conversation wandered the way conversation should when people are trying on friendship. Draco Malfoy swung by once, all pale chin and pedigree, searching compartments the way a boy searches for a mirror. He asked if we had seen Harry Potter. Blaise said, “No celebrities here,” with an innocent face so perfect even the carriage seemed to smirk. Draco floated away, dissatisfied but not offended.
Theo’s fingers hovered over the Magus book again. “Do you actually work from this, or is it forgive me just a family ornament?”
“Work from it,” I said, pleased he’d asked the right way. “Magus talks about cutting gestures in half and getting twice the control. That’s useful.”
Blaise’s eyes warmed with interest. “You sound like Professor-before-we-meet-him.”
“Or like someone who reads footnotes,” Millicent said, approving. “Either way, I’ll sit next to you in Potions if you promise not to set me on fire.”
“Deal,” I said. “I’ve read enough about flame to respect it.”
We traded small stories: Theo’s mother swears by counter-curses as if they’re recipes; Blaise’s grandmother collects dueling programs like other people collect silver spoons; Millicent learned to lift crates at her aunt’s shop and now every trunk at school will fear her. I liked them. Not noisily, not with declarations... just with that steady ease you get when something stops insisting you be someone you aren’t.
Theo caught me looking at the Magus spine again. “We could copy passages together,” he offered, almost shy. “Compare notes. There’s a proof I can’t make of.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “Very much.”
Blaise tapped the window with a knuckle. “Look. First hills. We’re closer.”
The four of us fell quiet, the good kind, the one that doesn’t ask to be filled. The Express kept running north, the glass blurred with breath, Hedwig dozed with her head under her wing, and for the first time all day I let myself believe the simple thing: this might be a place I could make mine.
No one asked my surname again; “Evans” held. No one asked about a scar; there wasn’t one to ask about. We made plans that weren’t binding: meet early for breakfast, test our luck with the chessboard in the common room, find out if the library really did smell like dust and lemon oil.
When the trolley rattled past the last time, I bought another pasty and set it on the seat between us without comment. Theo took half and slid the other half neatly toward Millicent. Blaise declined with a flourish that fooled no one, then pinched a corner as soon as I looked away. The compartment steadied around us, four strangers rewriting the day into something better.
“Here’s to instructions without adjectives,” Theo said suddenly, as if toasting the Magus in absentia.
“To not singeing hair,” Millicent returned, deadpan.
“To warm fires,” Blaise added.
“To first pages,” I said.
We knocked paper cups as if they were crystal and let the train carry us toward the rest of it.
I write one line in the journal—All quiet, making friends the slow way—and the answering tick arrives—Approved..
The whistle keeps its last opinion to itself for once. The train behaves. Hedwig sleeps. We split the second biscuit four ways without pretending we are noble about it. I do not think about the Illusion, except to be grateful that Thank you. I see you. Rest, will never be asked to work that hard again. I do not think about Dumbledore. I do not think about men who like chess. I think about flame and glass and the way Severus says average like a shield and a compliment at once.
The cap stays on. The hair hums a private chord. I let the year come toward me like a well-run class: clear instructions, firm tolerances, no stupid theatre, proof where proof belongs, kindness where kindness heals, and the luxury, earned, of being ordinary on purpose.
We are moving. The plan has no more verbs to spend today. It will eat, it will sleep, it will take roll tomorrow, and it will not, if I can help it, turn boys into stories when boys deserve to be students. I watch my new friends argue gently about which biscuits count as culture and feel my chest make space for three chairs and a table that may, if we build it slowly, learn our names and keep them. I keep my hands open. I keep my breath steady. I keep the glamour like arithmetic in my bones.
Above the window, a tiny screw wants to work loose and be interesting. It fails. The world enjoys being boring for us. That is the nicest thing I have ever done to it.