Chapter Text
Alice Everlark's POV, end of fifth year
The Black Lake was still.
Not calm, exactly. Nothing at Hogwarts felt calm anymore. It hadn’t for weeks now. Not after the ground had shaken beneath the castle. Not after Ranrok and ancient magic had nearly torn the world open somewhere deep below everyone’s feet while she stood at the center of it all. Not after Professor Fig had stopped breathing where Alice could still see him whenever she closed her eyes.
The castle stood behind her with its windows glowing warm and golden, full of students who were laughing and celebrating because exams were nearly over and summer was close. They had homes to go back to. Families who loved them. They didn't have destructive power in their veins or blood on their hands.
Alice could not bring herself to be near anyone much these days.
The worst were the ones who revered her like some sort of hero.
Most of them had barely known her name before any of it happened. To them, she had been the new fifth-year. The Muggleborn girl who had appeared out of nowhere, learned too quickly, and somehow ended up “saving the wizarding world.”
It made her sick to think about.
So she had walked past the Great Hall. Past a pair of Ravenclaws who stopped talking when they saw her. She walked until she was certain she would be alone.
Eventually, she ended up at the edge of the lake, sitting with her knees drawn up beneath her cloak.
Her wand lay beside her in the grass like something that did not belong to her.
Every time she thought of using it, she pulled back.
There had been a time, not so long ago, when magic had felt like breath to her. The first real proof that she was not empty. Not ordinary. She had spent years in an orphanage, years of never being noticed, never standing out in any way that mattered, but some small, stubborn part of her had always believed that life had to be more than that. That someday, somehow, something good would happen to her.
And then it had.
Her magic, dormant for so many years, had burst out of her so suddenly and violently that the Ministry had sent a whole team to the orphanage to clean up the damage. And eventually, Professor Fig had come.
Her constant dream of a new life, a better life, had stopped being a dream. It had become real, and it had become hers.
But now, her magic felt like something with teeth.
She could still feel it sometimes. The ancient magic. The poachers and thieves she had hurt. The curses she never should have learned. Rookwood’s voice when she-
Alice shut her eyes.
She had told herself, again and again, that she had only ever done what she had to but it never stuck.
The wind shifted over the lake. Cold air dragged over her cheeks, and Alice realized she had been crying again. She wiped the tears away quickly with the heel of her hand, irritated by them, as if they were another thing her body had decided to do without asking her permission.
Behind her, the grass whispered.
Alice went very still.
At first, she thought of goblins. Ranrok’s followers. Rookwood. Harlow. There had been no shortage of people who wanted her dead this year, and surely some of them were still out there.
Then a voice said softly, “Alice.”
Her breath caught.
The voice came again, gentler this time.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
Ominis Gaunt stood a few paces behind her, his wand held loosely in one hand, its red tip glowing faintly in the dimming light. He was still in his school robes, though they were a little rumpled, as if he had been searching for a while. His pale hair had been disturbed by the wind. His face was angled toward her with that careful precision of his.
Alice swallowed.
“You found me.”
“I did.”
She looked back toward the lake.
Ominis was the second person Alice wanted to see the least tonight.
Time and time again, she had played some part in pushing his boundaries, all in the name of curing Anne Sallow. The only thing she had actually accomplished was helping Sebastian drag him into that damned Scriptorium, where they had found his aunt’s remains and probably traumatized him for life. Then, again and again, she had stood between Ominis and Sebastian, asking him not to intervene while Sebastian did whatever lunacy he had convinced himself was necessary at the time. Whatever lunacy she had enabled, and encouraged.
And in the end, after everything happened, the rift between Sebastian and Ominis had grown so wide that Ominis had left it up to her whether they should turn Sebastian in for the murder of his uncle.
So in short, Alice really did not want to see Ominis.
“How?” she asked quietly.
Ominis took a slow step closer, then stopped.
“How what?”
“How did you know it was me?” Her voice sounded strange after so much silence. “You said my name before I said anything.”
He came closer, casting a shadow in the grass beside her, turning his wand slowly between his fingers.
“Everyone has a magical signature,” he said at last. “I learned to sense them through my wand when I was young. It’s a little like a moving shape around a person.”
Alice glanced at him.
“You can sense that?”
“Sometimes. If I know the person well enough. Or if they’re close enough.” His mouth pulled slightly to one side. “Some are easier than others.”
She looked away again.
“What is it like?”
Ominis did not answer immediately.
When he finally did, his voice had changed. Softer. More careful.
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
He breathed in slowly, as if trying to choose the least dangerous version of the truth.
“It’s like…” He paused. “A flower on fire. Like a lily.”
Alice turned her head toward him.
“A burnt lily?”
“Not in the sense that it’s being destroyed,” he explained. “It’s more like the fire is part of it. Like it’s alive.”
Alice stared at him.
She had no idea why he was here. No idea why he was so attuned to her magical signature that he had found her all the way out here. No idea why he would offer her even a modicum of kindness. She certainly did not deserve it from him.
He continued very softly, “Lately, it’s been different. A little… out of control. Grieving.”
Alice closed her eyes.
The words landed somewhere deep in her chest, and for a moment she was back below the school, surrounded by red light and stone and screaming magic. She was kneeling beside Professor Fig. She was watching the only adult who had ever looked at her as if she were something special, something to be taken care of, and not simply a problem to solve, die right in front of her.
Out of control. Yes. That sounded right.
Alice pressed her lips together. Her eyes burned. She refused to make a sound. She was sick of falling apart. Sick of being treated like glass. Sick of wanting someone to notice.
Ominis lowered himself carefully onto the grass beside her.
He left a polite distance between them. A few inches of cold air, and for a while, neither of them spoke.
That was one of the things Alice liked about Ominis. He did not rush to fill quiet just because it was uncomfortable. He let silence exist. So they simply sat there for a while, side by side, with the lake stretching dark and endless before them.
Alice drew her cloak tighter around herself.
“I’m not very good company,” she said.
“That makes two of us.”
That almost made her smile.
Ominis must have heard the shift in the grass, or sensed the small, traitorous pulse of magic she could not seem to keep from spilling out of her lately, because his voice softened further.
“You don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
Alice swallowed hard.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Her eyes stung again, and she stared at the water until it blurred.
“I keep thinking there must have been something else I could have done.”
Ominis inhaled quietly, as if preparing to reassure her that she couldn’t have.
She shook her head before he could answer.
“Don’t. I know what everyone says. I know. I know what happened. I know it was chaos. I know Professor Fig chose to be there. I know Ranrok-”
Her voice failed around the name.
She forced it steady.
“I know all of that.”
“I wasn’t going to say any of that.”
Alice wiped quickly at her cheek.
“Good.”
“I don’t think knowing those things makes it hurt less.”
“No.”
Another tear slipped free. She turned her face away, irritated by it. It felt as if that was all she had done for the past few days.
“I’m so tired,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said.
He did not know. He did not know the repository. He did not know what the ancient magic had felt like. He did not know what she and Sebastian had done to Rookwood. He did not know that there were pieces of this year Alice could never give him, not without watching the careful trust between them fracture in his hands. She had seen his reaction to dark magic. Speaking a word of any of it would make him hate her even more than he probably already did.
And yet, he knew something. Loss. Guilt. His fair share of trauma.
Alice looked at him then. The question came quietly.
“You mean your aunt?”
Ominis’ expression changed.
“Yes,” he said. “Her too.”
Alice studied him. Her too?
“Who else?” Alice asked.
For a moment, she thought he would not answer, and she thought she never should have asked.
Then his hand tightened around his wand.
“My best friend.”
Alice’s breath caught softly.
Ominis kept his face turned toward the lake.
“I lost my best friend when I was eleven.”
The world seemed to quiet around that.
Alice only knew pieces of Ominis’ life. Not all of it. Perhaps not even most of it. And most of what she did know was what Sebastian had told her. Ominis spoke of his family as little as possible, and when he did, it was usually with disgust or fear. She knew about Noctua because the scriptorium had dragged that grief into the light. She knew he carried more than he let anyone see.
“I didn’t know,” Alice said.
“No.”
Her voice dropped.
“What happened?”
Ominis’ jaw tensed.
Then he said, “She died.”
Alice looked down and decided not to push.
Instead, after a while, she asked, “What did it feel like?”
Ominis’ head turned slightly toward her.
Alice did not know why she asked. Maybe because she wanted proof that what was happening inside her had a shape someone else had survived. Maybe because Ominis, too, had more scars than he knew what to do with. Maybe because she wanted to know how he kept going.
His fingers shifted in the grass.
“It felt,” he said slowly, “like I had lost the ground I was standing on.”
She gave him a moment, in case he wanted to say more.
But he didn’t.
Her voice broke when she asked, “Does it get easier?”
Ominis turned toward her fully then.
She could not look at him.
“Yes,” he said.
Alice squeezed her eyes shut.
A tear slipped down her cheek anyway. She believed him. She was not as strong as him, but maybe she would survive this.
Her hand was resting in the space between them.
His fingers moved first, barely, then stopped.
The hesitation was so like him. He could face down curses, defy his family, stand between Sebastian and disaster, but this , this small reach across the grass, seemed to require more bravery than all of it.
Alice did not move away, and his hand closed around hers with careful warmth.
Her breath hitched, silent and sharp. She looked away quickly, but there was no hiding from him. Not really. Not when he could find her by the shape of her magic in the dark.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” he asked.
Alice answered too quickly.
“No.”
The word came out raw.
Ominis said, “All right.”
She did not know how long they sat there.
“I thought you hated me,” she said after she had calmed down a little.
The words came out before she could make them softer.
At first, Ominis went still.
Then he asked quietly, “Why would you think that?”
She swallowed.
“Because Sebastian showed me the Undercroft,” she said. “And it was yours. It was your secret, and he trusted a complete stranger with it as if it belonged to him alone.”
Ominis’ expression changed, but he did not interrupt.
Alice twisted her fingers together.
“And then the scriptorium.” Her voice thinned around the word. “He wanted to go. I knew you didn’t. I knew how much it cost you to even stand there, and I still helped him convince you.”
Ominis’ face had gone unreadable.
Alice forced herself to continue.
“And after that, everything kept getting worse. He kept making choices, and I kept thinking I could pull him back. I kept thinking if I stayed close enough, if I said the right thing at the right time, then maybe he would listen. Maybe he wouldn’t-”
She stopped.
Wouldn’t use the relic.
Wouldn’t cast that curse.
Wouldn’t become someone neither of them knew how to reach anymore.
Alice pressed her lips together and the lake blurred again.
“I couldn’t stop him,” she whispered. “And I lied to you.”
Ominis drew in a slow breath.
“I lied to you so many times.”
He said her name very softly.
“Alice.”
“I did.” She shook her head. “I stood there and let you ask questions you had every right to ask, and I gave you half answers because I was afraid. Because I didn’t want to betray him. Because I didn’t want to lose either of you.”
Her laugh was small and bitter.
“I don’t know. I suppose I thought if you hated me, it would be fair.”
Ominis was silent for long enough that Alice’s chest began to tighten. Then, suddenly and desperately, she wished she had said nothing. The only person who had managed to give her comfort in days, and she had gone and dragged the ugliest parts of the year into it like blood on a hem.
Then Ominis shifted beside her. But not away. Closer.
“I never hated you,” he said.
Alice closed her eyes.
“I was angry,” he continued. “I was frightened. I was furious with Sebastian, and sometimes with myself, and yes, sometimes with you. But I never hated you.”
She opened her eyes, though she still did not look at him.
Ominis’ voice was low now. Steady, but there was pain beneath it.
“We both tried to help him the best way we knew how,” he said.
Alice barely breathed.
“And we both failed.”
He did not say it like a judgment. He said it like a truth he had already turned over in his hands so many times that it had lost its sharpest edge and become something heavier instead.
Alice turned slightly.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I’m sorry about all of it, Ominis.”
“I know.” His voice softened. “I’m sorry too.”
For a few moments, they said nothing.
Then, quietly, she added, “Thank you for not hating me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said.
Alice looked at him properly now.
He was smiling.
Only barely. But he was smiling at her, despite everything.
It made Alice ache.
Then he said, “Do me a favor.”
Her brow furrowed.
“What?”
“Write me this summer.”
Alice blinked.
Of all the things she had expected, that was not one of them.
“You want me to write to you?”
“I’ve decided I’ll be with my family this summer,” he said.
The air changed and Alice stilled.
“Ominis…” Her voice lowered. “Are you sure? I know things with Sebastian are… but going back to your family? For the entire summer?”
“I can’t be in Feldcroft right now, Alice.” His voice was quiet, but firm enough to tell her he had already spent too long arguing with himself about it. “Not after everything. Anne is gone, and Sebastian and I are barely speaking.”
He paused, then added, with a dry edge that did not quite hide the strain beneath it, “Besides, my family’s manor is so large they may not even notice I’m back.”
Alice looked at him. He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself, not her.
“I understand,” she said softly.
“So,” he continued, lighter now, “distractions will be very welcome.”
Alice knew, as well as he did, that it was going to be a difficult summer for both of them.
But this was the least she could do for him.
“What if I don’t know what to say?” she asked.
“Well, that would be very unlike you. You always have plenty to say.”
A laugh came out of her then, unexpected and small.
She had missed the feeling. She liked knowing she had at least one thing to look forward to this summer. A letter was something. A letter could say: I am still here.
Alice turned back to him.
“It’s a deal,” she said.
Ominis’ smile returned, quieter this time.
“Good.”