Archive of Our Own

Silver had been on his way to check on the Equestrian Club's evening feeding schedule — a small, unofficial duty he'd taken on himself, since he found the quiet rhythm of the stables soothing in a way few other places on campus managed — when he heard singing drifting out from the open stable doors.

He stopped mid-step, genuinely surprised.

It wasn't unusual for the stables to have some ambient noise in the evenings — the soft shuffle of hooves, the occasional low nicker, sometimes a stablehand humming while mucking out a stall. But this was different. Clear, unhurried, carrying a gentle, old-fashioned melody Silver didn't recognize, and unmistakably, impossibly familiar in its source.

Silver approached the doorway slowly, and peered inside.

Riddle stood in Vorpal's stall, brush moving in slow, even strokes through the mare's dark coat, singing softly to himself — or, Silver amended, watching the way Riddle's eyes had drifted half-closed with quiet, unselfconscious focus, singing to Vorpal, more than anyone else.

Silver went very still, and found, to his own mild surprise, that he had absolutely no intention of interrupting.

Riddle's voice was — Silver searched, briefly, for the right word, and settled, somewhat helplessly, on lovely. Clear and warm, pitched soft, the melody unhurried and gentle in a way Silver had genuinely never once associated with Riddle's usual brisk, precise manner of speaking. It was the kind of voice that seemed built for exactly this — quiet rooms, slow evenings, animals settling into calm under careful, patient hands.

And the horses, Silver noted, were listening. Every animal within earshot had gone soft and drowsy, ears tipped gently toward the sound, several already dozing on their feet. Vorpal herself looked practically boneless with contentment, head lowered, eyes drooping, entirely unbothered by the brush moving steadily through her coat.

Silver leaned quietly against the doorframe and let himself simply watch, feeling something warm and unhurried settle into his own chest. He thought, with the faint, distant part of his mind that was always cataloguing small important things, that he rather wanted a picture. A video, even better — something to keep, something to return to on days that needed a little more softness in them.

He was, if he was honest with himself, on the verge of dozing off himself, lulled by the same gentle rhythm that had claimed every horse in the building, when Riddle's gaze happened to drift toward the stall door and landed, with a visible start, directly on him.

The song cut off mid-note.

"Silver!" Riddle's face flushed, brush stilling in his hand. "How long have you been standing there—"

Several of the horses, Vorpal included, lifted their heads at the sudden silence with an expression Silver could only describe, despite the sheer improbability of horses managing facial expressions at all, as deeply, personally disappointed. Vorpal actually huffed, ears flattening slightly, as if to say oh, come on, we were nearly asleep.

"My apologies," Silver said quickly, straightening from the doorframe, guilt creeping in at having so thoroughly ruined what had clearly been a peaceful moment for everyone involved except himself. "Please — continue. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"No, it's — it's fine," Riddle shook his head, setting the brush down against the stall wall with more precision than the action strictly required. "I was finished with Vorpal anyway."

Vorpal made a low, unimpressed sound that suggested she disagreed rather strongly with that assessment, but Riddle, apparently immune to horse-based guilt-tripping, simply patted her neck fondly and stepped out of the stall to join Silver by the door.

Silver studied him for a moment, curiosity winning out over his earlier guilt. "Where did you learn that song? I don't believe I've heard it before."

Riddle's blush eased, replaced by something softer, more thoughtful. "Heartslabyul's archives, actually. It's old — I found it while researching dorm history a while back. Apparently the very first housewarden of Heartslabyul used to sing it while tending to the animals. The hedgehogs, the dorm mice, the flamingos." He glanced back toward Vorpal, something fond crossing his expression. "It's meant to be a lullaby, technically. I started singing it myself as a kind of — tradition, I suppose. A way of honoring the dorm's history. And somewhere along the way it just became something I do automatically now, whenever I'm caring for an animal. I don't even think about it anymore. I just start singing."

"It's a beautiful tradition," Silver said, and meant it, watching something in Riddle's posture ease further at the words — like he'd been braced, faintly, for teasing, and hadn't quite expected sincerity instead.

"You really think so?"

"I do." Silver tilted his head slightly. "You should sing more often, if it comes this naturally to you. And if it keeps every horse in the building this calm, I imagine the club would agree."

That earned him a small, pleased smile, and Riddle's shoulders relaxed the rest of the way, whatever lingering embarrassment had gripped him finally releasing entirely.

"I could tell you about the rest of it, if you're curious," Riddle offered, a little hesitant, like the invitation cost him something to extend. "The animals, I mean. Heartslabyul's whole menagerie — most people only ever hear about the hedgehogs, but we've got the dorm mice too, and the flamingos, though they're considerably more particular about who's allowed near them—"

"I'd like that," Silver said, immediately, and meant it with his whole chest.

And that, apparently, was all the invitation Riddle needed.

He talked — properly talked, in a way Silver rarely got to witness, animated and quick and thoroughly unguarded. He talked about the hedgehogs first, and longest, clearly his favorite subject of all — how each one had a distinct personality despite looking nearly identical, how one in particular had taken to following Riddle around the garden like a small, spiky shadow, how they'd apparently developed the habit, sometime over the past year, of leaving their shed quills in little piles near Riddle's usual garden bench, like small offerings.

Silver watched him talk, more than he actually listened, if he was honest — watched the way Riddle's eyes lit properly, genuinely bright in a way Silver had learned to treasure precisely because it appeared so rarely, watched the small, unconscious gestures Riddle made while describing some particular hedgehog's antics, watched the flush of quiet, unguarded happiness that had nothing at all to do with embarrassment this time.

He's cute like this, Silver thought, warm and unhurried, the same thought he'd had a hundred times before and never once tired of having. He should get to be like this more often.

"—and this one," Riddle was saying, reaching into the small pouch he kept clipped to his uniform belt, "is actually my favorite. Here."

He held something out, and Silver opened his palm automatically, watching a small charm settle into it — a single hedgehog quill, pale and glossy, wound carefully with fine silver thread and finished into a small, neat pendant.

"The hedgehogs shed their quills naturally," Riddle explained, a little shy now, watching Silver examine it. "And for some reason, they've taken to bringing me their prettiest ones when they fall out — I don't fully understand why, Trey thinks it might be because they like me, but regardless, I've been making them into charms. I call them my lucky charms." He hesitated, just slightly. "I'd like you to have this one. It's one of my favorites — from the hedgehog that follows me around most."

Silver looked down at the small charm resting in his palm, turning it gently between his fingers, and felt something warm settle deep and quiet in his chest.

"Thank you," Silver said, quiet and genuine, closing his hand carefully around the charm like it might slip away if he wasn't careful with it. "I'll treasure it."

"I'm glad," Riddle's answering smile was small, and a little shy, and entirely, achingly sincere.

Silver, walking quietly beside him, closed his fingers a little tighter around the small silver-wound quill, and thought, with the same warm, patient certainty he always carried where Riddle was concerned, that he was in no hurry at all — but that someday, someday soon, he rather hoped he'd find the nerve to give Riddle something in return.

Silver's remedial potion assignments had, over his years at NRC, become something of a routine. Professor Crewel and the rest of the faculty understood his condition well enough by now — the strange, curse that pulled him under into sudden, unpredictable sleep no matter how hard he fought it, no matter how many hours of rest he'd already had the night before. It wasn't laziness, and every professor at NRC had long since stopped treating it that way. It simply meant Silver missed things sometimes, dozing through the middle of a lecture or a demonstration he'd genuinely wanted to see, and remedial work was simply the practical, understanding solution the school had settled into.

Today's assignment: two intermediate stabilizing potions, brewed independently, no assistance. Simple enough, and Silver didn't particularly mind the quiet work — the potions lab, empty this late in the afternoon, offered a peaceful kind of solitude he rather enjoyed.

He wasn't entirely alone, of course. He rarely was. A pair of small woodland mice had followed him in through the propped door, along with one of the local squirrels who'd taken a particular liking to him over the past year, and — settling comfortably atop a nearby stool — a small, familiar hedgehog that had trailed him most of the way from Heartslabyul's gardens, the same one, Silver was fairly sure, that Riddle had mentioned followed him around like a shadow.

Silver had been very curious to see the exhausted creature in the mirror chamber, and while he would have preferred to drop it off first at Heartslabyul, his remedial lessons needed to come first.

So, the knight picked him up and the little creature joined Silver and his friends.

"You don't have to stay," Silver told them all, mild and unbothered, measuring out a careful portion of powdered moonstone into his first cauldron. "This will take a while."

The animals, unsurprisingly, ignored him entirely and settled in to watch.

Professor Crewel had stepped out shortly after assigning the work, called away to oversee a fresh shipment of ingredients arriving at the greenhouse, leaving Silver with clear instructions and an entire hour to himself. Silver worked through the first potion methodically, unhurried, checking his ratios twice against the textbook propped open beside him, and had just begun measuring out components for the second when he made the mistake of glancing away for slightly too long, checking a particularly small measurement against the light.

That was, apparently, all the time his small audience needed.

He heard the scuffle before he saw it — a soft scrabbling sound, a tiny surprised squeak, and by the time Silver's attention snapped back to the cauldron, it was already too late.

One of the mice, apparently attempting to "help" by nudging a stray ingredient closer to the cauldron's edge, had knocked something small and glinting directly over the rim.

Silver's stomach dropped as he recognized it mid-fall — the little silver-wound hedgehog charm, the one Riddle had given him just days ago, the one Silver kept clipped carefully to the inside of his uniform collar where it wouldn't easily come loose.

Except, apparently, it had come loose. And it was now falling, in slow, horrible clarity, directly toward an actively bubbling cauldron of half-finished stabilizing potion.

"No—" Silver lunged, hand outstretched, faster than he'd moved in weeks, and still nowhere near fast enough.

The charm hit the potion's surface with a soft, unassuming plip.

For one full second, nothing happened.

Then the cauldron's contents seized, color shifting violently from pale blue to a churning, unstable violet, and Silver had just enough time to register the mounting, dangerous pressure building beneath the surface before the whole thing detonated outward in a burst of light and force that knocked him clean off his feet.

Silver woke up slowly, disoriented and heavy-limbed, the familiar fog of unwanted sleep clinging stubbornly to the edges of his mind.

Except something was wrong. The angle was wrong. The floor felt too close, the ceiling too far, and when he tried to push himself upright, his arms simply — weren't where he expected them to be.

Silver blinked. Or did something that felt like blinking, though it happened faster and stranger than blinking usually did.

He looked down at himself, and found four small paws instead of hands, a soft belly instead of a chest, and — he twisted, awkward and unfamiliar in this new, compact little body — a coat of short, dense quills covering his back.

What, Silver thought, with the slow, creeping horror of a man realizing something has gone catastrophically, irreversibly wrong, is happening.

He turned — an action that required considerably more effort and coordination than it used to — and found the answer sprawled a few feet away on the potions lab floor.

Silver lay there. His body — tall, pale-haired, uniform slightly singed at one sleeve — lying utterly motionless on the stone floor, eyes closed, chest rising and falling in slow, even breaths that suggested unconsciousness rather than anything more serious, thank the Seven for small mercies.

Silver stared at his own unconscious body for a long, uncomprehending moment.

I am a hedgehog, he thought, with the flat, disbelieving clarity of someone whose brain had not yet caught up with the sheer absurdity of the situation. I am currently a hedgehog. My body is over there. Unconscious. And I am, apparently, four inches tall and covered in quills.

Around him, the potions lab remained otherwise undisturbed — cauldron overturned, a faint singe mark scorched into the stone floor beneath it, powder and liquid splashed across the workbench — and his small, guilty audience had gathered in a loose, anxious cluster nearby: both mice pressed close together, the squirrel sitting up on its hind legs with what looked, even to Silver's currently addled brain, like genuine distress, and the hedgehog — the actual hedgehog, the one that had followed him from Heartslabyul, the original owner of the very quills currently making up Silver's own new and unfamiliar body — watching him with wide, dark, eyes.

Silver looked down at his own new paws. Flexed them, experimentally, and found the motion came surprisingly, disturbingly natural, like his body — whatever body this currently was — already understood exactly how to move.

This is a problem, Silver thought, with the same slow, methodical calm he brought to most crises, even now, even as a small woodland creature standing beside his own unconscious human body in an empty potions classroom. A significant problem.

Professor Crewel was still overseeing the ingredient delivery. Nobody else was due back in this wing of the building for at least another twenty minutes, possibly longer. And Silver — currently four inches tall, covered in quills, and entirely without the ability to speak in any language his professors would understand — had absolutely no immediate way of explaining what had happened, or asking for help reversing it.

He glanced over at his unconscious body once more, then down at his own small, prickly paws, and let out a long, quiet, thoroughly exasperated huff that came out, in this form, as something closer to a soft, indignant little squeak.

Riddle's charm did this, he thought, with slow, dawning realization, glancing toward the shattered remains of the cauldron and the faint, lingering shimmer of magic still clinging to the wreckage. The hedgehog quill. It must have reacted with the potion —

He didn't have time to fully untangle the theory. Footsteps, faint but approaching, echoed from somewhere down the corridor outside — Professor Crewel, hopefully, returning from the greenhouse.

Silver looked, with mounting, prickling panic, between his own unconscious body, the overturned cauldron, and his small cluster of deeply guilty woodland friends, and came to a swift, unavoidable conclusion.

I, he thought, with as much dignity as a four-inch-tall hedgehog could reasonably muster, am going to have a great deal of explaining to do. Once I figure out how to explain anything at all.

The footsteps grew closer. Silver braced himself, quills bristling slightly with a nervous energy and waited to see exactly how badly the next few minutes were about to go.

The footsteps that entered the potions lab did not belong to Professor Crewel.

Silver, still processing the sheer, disorienting strangeness of viewing the world from roughly six inches off the ground, watched with mounting alarm as an unfamiliar upperclassman — dark-haired, vaguely irritated expression, clearly here on some unrelated errand — stepped through the doorway, spotted the unconscious body sprawled across the floor, and went instantly, sharply alert.

"Oh — hey, are you—" The student crouched immediately, checking for a pulse with the brisk, practiced efficiency of someone who'd clearly been drilled on basic first aid. "Okay, breathing, good, just unconscious—"

Wait, Silver thought, scrambling forward on four unfamiliar legs, that's me, please don't—

"—gotta get you to the infirmary," the student continued, already hooking his arms carefully under Silver's very much still-human shoulders, hauling the unconscious body up with the slightly awkward, determined effort of someone doing a good deed they hadn't planned for.

Silver squeaked — an actual, undignified squeak, high and small and utterly useless as a form of communication — and darted forward, trying desperately to somehow climb onto his own unconscious form, to hitch a ride toward the infirmary where at least he'd remain in the same general vicinity as his body while he sorted this mess out.

He did not get the chance.

"And what is this," the student muttered, glancing down at the small crowd of woodland animals still clustered anxiously around the overturned cauldron — mice, squirrel, hedgehog, and, unbeknownst to the student, one extremely alarmed silver-haired knight currently occupying a body roughly the size of a teacup. "Ugh, seriously? Someone left the door open again—"

He shifted Silver's unconscious body carefully against one shoulder, freed up a hand, and made a broad, shooing gesture at the entire assembled group, simultaneously pushing them out with his foot. "Out. Go on, shoo, this isn't a petting zoo—"

No, wait—

Silver tried to dodge sideways, tried to make himself small and unremarkable among the other animals so he might slip past unnoticed and follow at a distance, but the student's shooing caught him along with the rest, and Silver found himself swept up in a general tide of scattering woodland creatures, propelled firmly out through the propped door and into the hallway beyond.

The door swung shut behind them with a soft, final click.

Silver sat, stunned, in the middle of an entirely too-large corridor, and watched — with the particular, specific horror of someone watching their own body being carried away by a stranger — as the student's retreating footsteps faded around a distant corner, taking Silver's actual, human form with them toward the infirmary.

Well, Silver thought, after a long, blank moment of simply processing the scale of the disaster. That could have gone better.

The mice and squirrel scattered quickly after that, darting off toward whatever their own business was, leaving Silver alone in the corridor with only the original hedgehog remaining nearby, watching him with the same wide, faintly helpless expression it had worn since the explosion.

Silver took a slow breath — or did whatever the hedgehog-body equivalent of a slow breath was — and forced the rising edge of panic back down into something more manageable.

Think, he told himself, firm and steady, the same calm, methodical focus he'd bring to tracking a lost animal or navigating unfamiliar terrain. Panicking accomplishes nothing. There is a solution here. Find it.

He turned the problem over carefully. He couldn't speak — not in any language the students or faculty here would understand, not in this body. He couldn't write, couldn't gesture in any way that would clearly communicate I am actually Silver, please help me. Simply approaching a random professor was likely to end the same way this whole ordeal had started: someone well-meaning shooing him back outside, or worse, trying to relocate him to some campus wildlife enclosure.

But there was one place, Silver realized, slow and dawning, where that particular problem might actually have a solution.

Heartslabyul.

Most Heartslabyul students took Animal Communication Studies as part of their coursework — a tradition Silver knew well, having heard Riddle mention it more than once, tied to the dorm's long history of small-mammal care and its founding housewarden's own deep fondness for exactly this kind of creature. If Silver could get to Heartslabyul, could find any student there with even passing competency in the subject, he might actually be able to communicate what had happened. Might be able to get word to his father or Malleus or Riddle or anybody really that could help him. Might, eventually, find his way back to his own body and whatever remedy existed for a mishap this specific and strange.

It was, Silver decided, his best option by a considerable margin. Possibly his only option.

Alright, he thought, squaring his small, prickly shoulders with as much resolve as the gesture could carry in this form. Heartslabyul. That's the plan.

He began to walk.

It felt, in the first few steps, almost manageable — his small paws finding an easy, practiced rhythm across the smooth stone floor, the corridor's scale not yet fully registering as the impossible distance it actually represented. Silver walked with steady, determined purpose, quills settling into a rhythm against his back with each stride, mentally mapping the route from the potions lab wing toward the distant courtyard where the mirror portals stood.

He walked for what felt like a genuinely significant stretch of time — long enough that his small legs had begun to ache in a way he'd never once had to consider before, long enough that his breathing had gone from steady to slightly labored, long enough that he finally, reluctantly, decided to pause and assess his progress before continuing on.

He turned, looking back toward the potions lab door, expecting — hoping — to find it comfortably, reassuringly far behind him.

Silver's small heart sank.

The door was, by his best estimate, perhaps five feet away.

He stared at the distance for a long, disbelieving moment, doing the mental math with mounting, creeping despair. Five feet. In several minutes of steady, determined walking. Which meant the distance between here and the mirror portal courtyard — a walk that took him, in his ordinary body, perhaps ten or twelve minutes at an unhurried pace — currently represented, by rough and horrifying calculation, something closer to several hours. Possibly the better part of an entire day, accounting for rest, and the very real possibility of larger, more dangerous obstacles along the way that a person his usual size never had to think twice about.

Stairs, Silver thought, distantly, already dreading the very concept. There are stairs between here and the mirror chamber. Several sets of them.

He sat down, quills drooping slightly with the specific, weary despair of a very small creature contemplating a very large journey, and allowed himself exactly one long, quiet moment of pure, undignified frustration.

Beside him, the original hedgehog — his companion in this whole disaster, still trailing loyally along — nudged gently at his side, as if offering what comfort a hedgehog could offer another hedgehog in this particular, deeply specific crisis.

Silver looked at it, and then looked back down the impossibly long stretch of corridor still ahead of him, and made a decision.

One step at a time, he told himself, firm, pushing himself back up onto four small paws despite the ache already settling into them. That's all this requires. One step. Then another. I have crossed harder terrain than this before.

He had not, in fact, ever crossed terrain quite like this before — but there was no use dwelling on that particular technicality now.

Silver squared his small shoulders, fixed his gaze on the distant end of the corridor, and began, once more, to walk.

Silver was three more grueling, exhausting feet further along the corridor — a distance that had cost him considerable effort and no small amount of quiet, prickly determination — when everything changed at once.

A hand closed around him.

Silver's entire small body seized in immediate, instinctive alarm, and he began squirming with everything he had, quills bristling in defensive protest, small paws scrabbling uselessly against fingers that showed absolutely no sign of loosening their grip. Put me down, he thought, indignant, twisting as best he could manage. This is extremely undignified, and also not particularly gentle—

Whoever had grabbed him was not, in fact, being gentle at all — a brisk, businesslike grip that lifted him without much ceremony, the kind of handling that suggested the person doing the lifting had picked up a great many small, wriggling creatures before and had long since stopped being precious about it.

Silver twisted, straining to see past his own indignant squirming, and managed, finally, to catch sight of his captor.

Oh.

Jade held him at arm's length, eyeing Silver's continued squirming with the mild, faintly amused patience of someone entirely unbothered by a hedgehog's protests, and behind him — Silver registered with a fresh jolt of surprise — stood Azul and Floyd, both peering over Jade's shoulder with matching expressions of idle curiosity.

Jade, Silver said, seizing on the sudden, hopeful possibility of communication. Jade, it's me, it's Silver — there's been an accident, I need you to—

What came out, audibly, was a series of high, urgent squeaks.

One that the mer apparently didn’t understand.

Jade tilted his head slightly, studying him with the same mild curiosity he'd give any unremarkable stray animal. "Odd little thing. Quite feisty, isn't he."

Silver squeaked louder, more insistently, twisting further in Jade's grip in a last, desperate attempt to communicate through sheer volume and body language what words currently could not, and succeeded only in eliciting a faint, unbothered chuckle from Floyd.

"He's mad," Floyd observed, delighted, leaning in for a closer look. "Look at him go. Never seen a dog get this worked up before."

"Where do you suppose he came from?" Azul asked, arms crossed, studying Silver with a faint frown of genuine puzzlement. "This is nowhere near Heartslabyul's gardens. Or any garden, for that matter — we're two full buildings away."

Yes, Silver thought, desperate, thank you, exactly, that is precisely the correct question, if only I could—

He tried, one more time, angling himself as best he could toward Azul specifically, squeaking with as much urgent, deliberate emphasis as his small vocal cords could manage, hoping against hope that some flicker of recognition might surface — that Azul, at least, would understand.

Azul is ranked second in their year, and Silver knows he takes Animal Communication classes as well so maybe, hopefully —

Azul simply blinked at him, unmoved, entirely failing to parse anything beyond ordinary hedgehog noise.

"He's certainly opinionated," Azul said mildly. "Riddle's going to have someone's head over this, whoever let the hedgehogs escape their enclosure. He's fiercely protective of that menagerie."

"Mm, he really is," Jade agreed, adjusting his grip slightly, and Silver's stomach — or whatever organ currently served that function in this body — dropped as Jade's free hand reached toward him with clear, clinical intent, fingers angling toward his underside. "Let's see. Maybe there’s a mark or something on his belly, if we know—"

Silver did not wait to discover exactly what Jade intended to check. He kicked, hard, with all four legs at once, twisting his whole small body into a furious, writhing knot of indignant refusal, quills bristling to their fullest, most uncooperative extent. And when that didn’t work — he bit down.

Absolutely not, Silver thought, with more heat than he generally allowed himself to feel about anything. I do not care what body I am currently in. You are my classmate. This is not happening.

"Ow! Alright, alright," Jade said, withdrawing his hand with a faint, rueful huff, shaking out his fingers on the hand Silver bit. "Have it your way, little troublemaker. You’ll make a nice snack”

The eel’s grin was wide, showing off sharp teeth and Silver squeaked. Especially when Jade tilted his head back and started lifting Silver up. Uh oh.

“Jade” Azul’s voice was entirely exasperated, especially as Floyd howled like a hyena in the background.”I would rather not have Riddle hunting you down if you eat one of his pets”

“Why’d you even wanna eat that one Jade? It’s all spiky” 

“Surely Riddle won’t notice one missing from his little zoo”

Azul gave the smiling eel a baleful look ”Riddle will absolutely notice one missing and then he’ll investigate and he will find out it was you responsible and then we will have an angry Queen on our hands demanding your head as compensation”

”My how little faith you have in me Azul, to believe not only will I get caught but that I would lose against Riddle”

”That’s just rude Azul! We can take on goldfishy!”

“Floyd you aren’t even involved in the hypothetical scenario! And it’s not that I believe you would lose against him Jade but I can’t run that risk. I need that pretty little head of yours”

“Hey! Jade and I have the same looks so why don’t you call my head pretty?”

”Floyd it’s a — ugh nevermind, fine. You have a pretty head too”

Silver was nowhere near Jade’s heart, but he could just tell that it skipped a bit at the compliment from Azul. And Floyd also looked very pleased. Silver let out a squeak of despair. Honestly, when will this trio just date??? Riddle had ranted many times about his frustration with the octopus and the eels for constantly side stepping around each other.

Jade cleared his throat “Fine. The troublemaker lives"

Silver settled, marginally, quills easing back down, satisfied that his dignity — however absurd a concept dignity currently was, given his present circumstances — and his life had been successfully defended.

"Well," Azul voice was very amused, glancing between Jade and the small, still-huffing bundle of quills in his grip, "someone needs to return him to Heartslabyul. I'd do it myself, but Riddle's currently tutoring his dormmates in the library — I saw him on my way here." He paused, considering. "And you know how the pocket dimensions get, when another housewarden's inside without their own present. Heartslabyul in particular doesn't take well to it."

"Fussy dimension. This is why Octa’s better" Floyd stuck his tongue out childishly.

"It is," Azul agreed, tone mild. "Regardless — Jade, would you mind taking him back? Floyd and I have inventory to finish before the lounge opens."

"Not at all," Jade said, adjusting his hold on Silver with the same brisk efficiency as before, apparently entirely unbothered by having been bitten moments earlier. He glanced down, and Silver realized — with a fresh jolt of surprise — that at some point during the commotion, the original hedgehog had made its own way over, settling calmly at Jade's feet with far more cooperative patience than Silver himself had managed. "Ah — and it seems we've got two, not one. I'll return them both."

Azul nodded, already turning toward the lounge with Floyd falling into step beside him, the two of them already drifting back into easy, unrelated conversation about inventory counts and evening shift schedules, the entire hedgehog matter apparently closed and settled in their minds.

Jade adjusted his grip on Silver one final time — considerably gentler now, Silver noted, some small, grudging credit due for that — and reached down to scoop up the second hedgehog into his other hand, before turning and beginning an unhurried walk in the direction of Heartslabyul's grounds.

Silver, cradled somewhat awkwardly against Jade's palm, felt the last of his indignant fight ease out of him, replaced by something closer to weary, pragmatic relief.

Well, he thought, settling as best he could into the admittedly undignified position, watching the corridor's endless stretch of stone floor finally begin sliding past at a speed his own four legs could never have managed. This is, at least, considerably faster than walking.

It wasn't a plan he'd chosen. It wasn't dignified, and it certainly hadn't gone the way he'd hoped — no clear communication, no immediate rescue, simply a mildly irritated eel currently transporting him toward his destination by sheer administrative convenience rather than any actual understanding of the crisis at hand.

But it was, Silver had to admit, exactly where he needed to go.

Heartslabyul, he thought, settling in for the ride, quills gradually smoothing back down against his small back as some of the tension finally eased out of him. At least I'm finally getting there.

Jade's unhurried walk delivered them to Heartslabyul's entrance sooner than Silver had expected, and once inside the dorm's familiar grounds — roses leaning gently along the path, the distant murmur of the hedge maze rustling somewhere off to the side — Jade paused near the common room entrance and called out, easy and pleasant, for whoever happened to be nearby.

Ace and Deuce answered the call, emerging from the common room already mid-argument about something Silver couldn't quite catch, both freshmen skidding to a stop at the sight of Jade holding two hedgehogs.

"Found these two wandering the main academic building," Jade said, transferring both animals carefully into Ace's cupped hands. "Thought they might belong to your menagerie."

"Oh, yeah, definitely ours," Ace was peering down at them and Silver internally prayed to the Thorn fairy that Ace would realize Silver was not a Heartslabyul hedgehog. "Thanks for bringing them back, man."

“Do tell Riddle he owes me as that one bit me”

Ace jolted, and Silver had to scramble to hold on as the freshman lifted Silver up to eye level. “Dude seriously? Do you have a death wish or something?…. Badass of you though, I hope you bit hard”

The last part was mumbled, but was obviously caught by Jade who smiled sharply at the heart card soldier. “What was that little anemone?”

Deuce gave Ace a long suffering look but loyally stepped in front of his friend. “Nothing. He said nothing senpai, thank you for bringing them back. We’ll tell Boss about your help”

“See to it that you do. I look forward to seeing what Riddle will give as compensation for our help”

Jade offered a small, pleasant nod and departed, leaving Silver — still trapped in his small, prickly form — cradled in Ace's hands, staring up at two faces he desperately hoped might understand him.

Ace. Deuce. Silver squeaked, as clearly and deliberately as he could manage, trying to shape the sound into something urgent, something that might read as more than ordinary animal noise. Please. It's Silver. I need help—

"Aw, this one's got a lot to say," Deuce was peering closer, entirely, hopelessly missing the point. "Hey there, little guy. You escape the enclosure again?"

Silver's small heart sank. No, listen—

He tried again, louder, more insistent, and Ace just laughed, gentle and amused. "He's a chatty one. Must be excited to be home."

I am not excited, Silver thought, despair beginning to creep back in at the edges. I am trapped in this body and none of you understand a single word I'm saying.

He supposed, distantly, that he shouldn't have expected differently — Ace and Deuce were only first-years, still working through the early coursework in Animal Communication Studies, and fluency in interpreting small mammal vocalizations wasn't exactly something achieved in a single semester. But then, over Ace's shoulder, Silver spotted two more familiar faces crossing the common room, and something in his chest lifted with fresh, desperate hope.

Trey. Cater. Seniors. Surely — surely, after years of study, either of them would have the fluency Ace and Deuce still lacked.

"Ooh, hedgehog patrol duty," Cater said, wandering over, phone still in hand. "Lemme guess, escaped the enclosure again?"

"Found near the academic buildings," Deuce confirmed, passing Silver carefully into Cater's waiting hands.

Silver seized the moment immediately, pouring every ounce of desperate urgency he had left into a fresh volley of pointed, deliberate squeaks, trying — one final time — to shape something recognizable, something that might catch even a fragment of meaning through four years of accumulated coursework.

Cater blinked down at him, head tilted. "Huh. He's really going for it, isn't he?"

"Maybe he's hungry," Trey offered, leaning over to look as well, entirely, devastatingly unhelpful as he took Silver from Cater. "We should get him back to the enclosure, get some food and water in him."

Silver's last thread of hope, thin and fragile as it had been, finally snapped.

Even the seniors don't understand me, he thought, all the fight and urgency draining out of his small body at once, leaving behind only a heavy, hollow kind of despair. But they should be able to, Father showed me a video once of Cater talking to Heartslabyul’s hedgehogs — maybe because I’m not truly a hedgehog no one can understand me. I'm going to be stuck like this forever, and nobody is ever going to understand a single word I say, and Riddle is going to think I simply vanished, and—

He went limp in Trey's gentle hold, all his earlier scrambling energy simply gone, and let himself be carried the rest of the way toward the hedgehog enclosure without further protest, quills drooping with a despair so complete it had passed clean through panic and out the other side into something closer to numb, resigned exhaustion.

Trey set him down gently in the soft grass and leaves of the enclosure, and Silver simply lay there, unmoving, staring at nothing in particular, thoroughly, comprehensively defeated.

"He seems tired," Trey said, somewhere above him. "Let's leave him be, let him settle."

Footsteps retreated. The enclosure gate clicked softly shut.

Silver lay still for a long moment, alone with his own bleak thoughts, until a small, warm weight settled down beside him, and a soft, clear, entirely comprehensible voice spoke directly into his ear.

"You're very sad. Why are you so sad?"

Silver's whole body went rigid with shock.

He turned — fast, hopeful, disbelieving — and found the original hedgehog, the one who'd followed him from the potions lab all the way through this entire disaster, watching him now with clear, patient concern, and — impossibly, wonderfully — speaking, in words Silver could understand as easily as breathing.

"You can understand me?" Silver managed, hardly daring to believe it.

"Of course," the hedgehog said, tilting her head. "Can't you understand me too? You're speaking just fine."

Silver sat up properly, quills settling in stunned, dawning realization. "I— yes. Yes, I can understand you. I couldn't before, in the hallway"

"Oh, maybe because you weren't in Heartslabyul yet," the hedgehog said, matter-of-fact, as though this explained everything. "The pocket dimension probably linked us. Made it so you can understand the animals who live here, and we can understand back. Doesn't seem to work for the humans though."

Silver felt something in his chest loosen, relief flooding through him so fast and complete it nearly overwhelmed the leftover despair still clinging to his edges. Finally. Someone who understands me.

Around them, several other hedgehogs had begun to notice the commotion, small shapes rustling closer through the enclosure's soft undergrowth, curious dark eyes turning toward the newcomer with open, friendly interest.

"You're new," one of them observed, sniffing curiously in Silver's direction. "Where'd you come from?"

"It's a long story," Silver admitted, and then, remembering his manners despite the circumstances, turned back to the hedgehog beside him. "I don't believe I caught your name."

"Maple," she said, settling comfortably into the leaves beside him with the easy confidence of someone well used to being the one in charge. "I'm the oldest here. And the bravest, which is why I was the one who went looking for you in the first place."

Silver blinked. "Looking for me? Specifically?"

"Mm-hm." Maple's small nose twitched, pleased with herself. "You're the one our Queen gave my quill to, aren't you? I recognized our Queen’s scent on you. We've been trying to figure out how to get you over here for days."

"Why?" Silver asked, genuinely bewildered now.

"For his birthday," Maple said, as though this were obvious. "We all love our Queen very much, you know. He takes such good care of us — sings to us, tends the garden just so we're comfortable, remembers every one of our names even though there's ever so many of us. We wanted to give him something nice this year. Something special."

"And that something involves me?" Silver asked, still not quite following.

"He told us once," Maple continued, warm and a little wistful, "while he was brushing out the garden beds — he didn't know we understood every word even if he’s not using our language — that he wished he could play croquet with you sometime. He sounded so happy thinking about it, and so we thought — well, if he wants that so badly, and won't ask for it himself, why don't we simply arrange it ourselves? A birthday surprise. I went looking for you specifically so I could bring you here, so it could happen."

Silver sat with that for a long, quiet moment, something warm and aching blooming slowly in his chest. Riddle wants to play croquet with me, Silver thought, quiet and soft. And never said a word.

And then, a beat later, the rest of Maple's explanation caught up with him properly, and Silver's whole small body went rigid with fresh, entirely different alarm.

"Wait," he said, urgent. "Birthday. His birthday — that's coming up soon, isn't it?"

"Very soon," Maple confirmed, oblivious to the sudden panic blooming in her audience.

Silver's heart sank straight through the floor of the enclosure.

He hadn't gotten Riddle anything yet. Hadn't even properly started thinking about it, caught up as he'd been in coursework and remedial potions and now, apparently, an entire unplanned adventure as a four-inch-tall hedgehog with no clear way back to his own body. And here was Maple, cheerfully describing an entire thoughtful, carefully arranged surprise the hedgehogs had organized weeks in advance, and Silver had nothing.

Oh no, Silver thought, quills drooping once more, despair creeping firmly back in to replace the warmth of a moment ago. Oh no, I don't have a gift. I don't have anything. What am I going to do.

Silver's despair had reached a level severe enough that several of the nearby hedgehogs had begun nosing gently at his side, quiet little nudges of concern, as though trying to physically push some cheer back into him. It didn't help much. Silver remained curled miserably in the leaves, mind stuck in an unhelpful loop of no gift, birthday soon, no gift, birthday soon, entirely unable to see a way out of any part of his current predicament.

And then, all at once, every hedgehog around him abandoned the effort entirely and bolted.

Silver blinked, startled out of his spiral, and watched in bewilderment as the whole small herd went streaking across the enclosure in a chorus of delighted squeaks, tumbling over each other in their haste to reach the gate.

He lifted his head to see what had caused the commotion, and felt something in his small chest lift immediately, sharp and hopeful.

Riddle.

Riddle had just stepped through the enclosure gate, already crouching down with the easy, practiced fondness of long habit, greeting the surging tide of hedgehogs with soft murmurs and gentle scratches behind their ears. "Hello, hello — yes, I see you, Cinnamon, don't push — good afternoon to you as well Paprika—"

Riddle, Silver thought, scrambling upright with fresh, urgent hope flooding through him. He's my last chance. Surely — surely he'll understand.

Silver pushed his way through the small crowd, weaving between his fellow hedgehogs with more determination than grace, until he'd worked his way right up to Riddle's knee, nudging insistently at the fabric of his uniform.

Riddle glanced down, surprised, and Silver felt a fresh flicker of hope at the immediate warmth and curiosity that crossed his face.

"Well, hello there," Riddle said, gentle, reaching down to scoop Silver up carefully in both hands. "You're a new face. I don't believe I've met you before."

Silver settled into his palms, quills carefully tucked, and allowed himself one brief, undignified moment of simply enjoying being held by Riddle before remembering the actual, pressing crisis at hand.

Riddle turned him slightly, peering closer with the same clinical curiosity Jade had shown earlier, fingers beginning to angle toward his underside. "Let's see, then — are you one of the boys, or—"

Silver thrashed.

Absolutely not. Whatever indignity he'd tolerated from Jade — a mere classmate, someone Silver had no particular feelings toward beyond ordinary friendly acquaintance — was nothing compared to the sheer, mortified horror of Riddle, specifically Riddle, the person Silver had quietly, patiently adored for longer than he was prepared to examine closely, attempting the exact same clinical check. He kicked, twisted, made himself as awkward and uncooperative a bundle of quills as physically possible, and Riddle — startled by the sudden, frantic resistance — immediately withdrew his hand and set Silver back down with careful, apologetic gentleness.

"Oh — I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you," Riddle said, soft and genuinely contrite, settling cross-legged in the grass so Silver could move at his own pace. "Here, that's alright. You don't have to let me look if you don't want to."

He reached out instead with slow, careful fingers, stroking gently along his quills, and Silver — despite the mortification still burning through him, despite the whole exhausting absurdity of the day — felt every ounce of remaining tension simply melt out of his small body at the touch.

Oh, Silver thought, distantly, eyes drifting half-shut despite himself. That's — that's very nice, actually.

Underneath the fur and quills, Silver was fairly certain his face had gone entirely, thoroughly red. It was deeply unfair, he reflected, that Riddle's hands could reduce him to this particular puddle of soft, helpless contentment even in a body that technically shouldn't have been capable of blushing at all.

Mission, he reminded himself, forcing his focus back into place with real effort. I have a mission. Focus.

Silver straightened, shook off the last of the pleasant daze, and tried — with every ounce of urgency and hope he had left — to speak.

Riddle. It's me. Silver. There's been an accident, I need—

Nothing.

Riddle's expression remained warm, curious, entirely uncomprehending, exactly the same blank friendliness he'd shown a stranger's pet. Silver tried again, louder, more deliberate, shaping the sounds as carefully as he possibly could.

Still nothing.

Around them, the other hedgehogs had gone very quiet, watching with visible confusion. Maple pushed forward, tilting her head at the failed exchange with open puzzlement.

"That's strange," Maple said, to the group at large. "Our Queen's always been able to understand us. Every one of us. Why wouldn't he understand him?"

"Maybe it's because he's not really a hedgehog," one of the younger ones offered. "Not truly. Maybe the dimension's bond only stretches to real hedgehogs, not whatever he actually is underneath."

Maple considered this, nodding slowly. "That could be it. He can hear us just fine — but our Queen's understanding might be tied specifically to true hedgehogs. Not to... whatever's happened to you."

Silver's small heart sank all over again. Of course. Of course there would be some frustrating, narrow technicality standing directly between him and the one person who might actually help.

Maple, he said, quick, turning to her with fresh urgency. Can you pass a message for me? Tell him—

He didn't get the chance to finish.

Above them, Riddle was already rising to his feet, brushing grass from his knees with the easy, unhurried motion of someone about to move on to his next task. "Well, I should get back to my rounds — I've got the flamingos to check on next, and I promised Trey I'd help with dinner prep—"

No — wait—

Panic surged through Silver, sharp and immediate. If Riddle left now, the one person who might have eventually helped him would simply walk away, and Silver would be left here, unable to communicate, stuck in this body with no clear path back to himself and a birthday deadline bearing down that he had absolutely no way to prepare for.

He didn't think. He simply acted.

Silver darted forward and bit, gently but firmly, into the hem of Riddle's sleeve.

Riddle startled, freezing mid-step, glancing down in surprise at the small hedgehog now stubbornly attached to his uniform cuff. "Oh — well, that's new."

Silver held on, refusing to let go, staring up at Riddle with as much desperate, pleading intensity as a hedgehog's face could physically convey.

Riddle studied him for a moment, something thoughtful crossing his expression, and then, gently, carefully, reached down and scooped Silver up along with the sleeve he was still attached to, cradling him properly against his chest instead.

"You really don't want me to go, do you," Riddle said, soft, and Silver felt something in his chest twist with equal parts relief and guilt at how easily, how kindly Riddle had simply accepted the strange behavior without complaint. "You must not be settling in well yet — new to the enclosure, I imagine, and a little overwhelmed." He glanced around at the rest of the hedgehogs, still watching with quiet, puzzled interest, before making a small, decisive nod. "Alright. I'll bring you to my room for tonight, then — just until you're more comfortable. Would that be alright?"

Silver, still latched loosely onto his sleeve, blinked up at him in stunned, disbelieving surprise.

That is not remotely the plan I had in mind, he thought, even as Riddle began carrying him gently out of the enclosure, murmuring soft reassurances the whole way. But it appears that is, somehow, exactly where I am going.

Behind them, Silver caught one last glimpse of Maple watching their departure with a small, knowing, distinctly satisfied little gleam in her dark eyes — as though this, too, had simply been part of some larger plan the hedgehogs had quietly set in motion all along.

Riddle tucked Silver carefully into a small, specially-lined pocket sewn into the inner lining of his uniform jacket — the kind of detail, Silver realized with a small pang of fondness, that suggested Riddle had made this exact accommodation before, for exactly this purpose, some previous small creature in need of a gentle, secure ride. The pocket sat high enough that Silver could peer out over the collar's edge, watching the world pass by without being spotted by anyone Riddle happened to greet along the way.

"There," Riddle murmured, adjusting the fabric with careful, practiced fingers. "Comfortable? You can watch, if you'd like. I've got my afternoon rounds to finish."

Silver settled in, quills tucked flat, and found — to his own quiet surprise — that he was rather looking forward to it.

Their first stop was the rose maze, where several Heartslabyul students knelt among the hedges with careful brushes, touching up the perpetual, absurd tradition of painting white roses red. Riddle approached with brisk, familiar purpose.

"How's it coming along?" he asked, crouching to inspect the nearest bush with a critical eye.

"Good, Riddle! Almost done with this row," one of the students reported, and Riddle nodded, reaching out to adjust the angle of a leaning stem with gentle, precise fingers.

"Careful with the thorns near the base — they're sharper on this variety," Riddle said, not unkindly, more instructive than scolding. "And well done. This section looks excellent."

The student beamed, visibly buoyed by the praise, and Riddle moved on down the row, offering the same mixture of correction and genuine, warm approval to each small cluster of students he passed. Silver watched, quiet and attentive from his pocket, and noted — with the same careful observation he brought to everything — how each correction came wrapped in something gentler underneath, how every piece of praise seemed to land with real weight because Riddle so clearly meant every word of it.

Next came the flamingo enclosure, and the greeting there was, if anything, even louder — several long-legged, brilliantly pink birds craning their necks toward Riddle with what looked, unmistakably, like genuine excitement, while the dormmates tending them straightened up with equally bright smiles.

"Riddle! Come see, Persimmon's finally letting me trim her feathers without fussing—"

"That's wonderful progress," Riddle said, warm, watching as the flamingo in question nuzzled affectionately against her handler's shoulder. "You've been so patient with her. She trusts you now."

Silver watched a flamingo bend its long neck down to nudge gently at Riddle's own hair, and watched Riddle laugh — a real, unguarded laugh, rare and lovely — and felt something in his chest tighten pleasantly at the sight.

The dorm mice came next, tucked into their own carefully maintained enclosure near the garden's edge, and the pattern repeated itself in miniature — students proudly reporting progress, mice scurrying eagerly toward Riddle's familiar presence, Riddle crouching low to greet each one by what Silver was fairly certain were individual names, murmured soft and fond.

"This is Biscuit," Riddle said, apparently to Silver specifically now, glancing down toward his own collar with a small, private smile, clearly aware his passenger could see even if he couldn't be seen in return. "She's the naughtiest one. Climbs everything."

Silver watched Biscuit scale determinedly up Riddle's offered finger and thought, distantly, that he understood the impulse completely.

They moved indoors after that, Riddle's rounds shifting from garden to dormitory proper, and Silver found the tour, if anything, growing more affecting rather than less.

In the kitchen, Trey looked up from something simmering on the stove and offered an easy, familiar greeting. "Taste this for me? Not sure I've got the spice balance right."

Riddle obliged, considering carefully before offering a genuinely thoughtful critique — a touch more salt, perhaps, and Trey nodded, already reaching for the spice rack with the easy trust of someone who valued Riddle's opinion without question.

Further down the hall, a cluster of younger students flagged Riddle down with an academic question about a potions assignment, and Riddle paused immediately, patient and thorough, walking them through the problem step by step until understanding visibly dawned on their faces. Another student caught him moments later, practically glowing, to report a passing grade on an exam Riddle had apparently spent hours tutoring him through the week before.

"I told you that you could do it," Riddle said, warm and genuinely proud, and the student's answering smile was radiant.

Silver, tucked quiet and unseen in his pocket, felt something in his chest swell with every single interaction, warm and aching and entirely, hopelessly fond.

This was Riddle in a way Silver had always suspected existed beneath the strict, precise exterior most of NRC saw — but suspecting it and witnessing it, unfiltered and constant and threaded through every single interaction of an ordinary afternoon, was something else entirely. The roses, painted carefully to preserve an old, difficult tradition Riddle had chosen to keep anyway, out of some complicated blend of habit and love. The flamingos, greeted with genuine delight rather than mere obligation. The dorm mice, each with a name, each remembered individually among what had to be dozens. The students — his card soldiers, as Riddle so fondly called them — corrected when they needed correcting, but always, always with warmth underneath, always followed by praise freely and genuinely given the moment it was earned.

He loves all of it, Silver thought, watching Riddle pause to gently right a crooked picture frame in the hallway without even seeming to notice he was doing it, some deep, automatic care for his own space bleeding into every small unconscious gesture. He loves every part of this dorm. The plants and the animals and every single person in it. And he does it so quietly, so consistently, that I don't think most people even realize how much of himself he's pouring into it every single day.

It wasn't a new realization, exactly — Silver had liked Riddle for long enough now that very little about him came as genuine surprise anymore. But watching it in this unbroken, uninterrupted stretch, seeing every small kindness stack one on top of another across an entire afternoon's worth of ordinary duty, Silver felt his own quiet, patient affection deepen into something even more certain than before.

I admire him, Silver thought, simple and clear.

Their rounds finally wound down as the afternoon light began to soften toward evening, and Riddle made his way at last toward his own room, nodding farewell to a few last dormmates along the corridor before shutting the door quietly behind them.

"There," Riddle said, reaching up to carefully extract Silver from his pocket, settling him gently onto the desk instead. "That's the full tour. I hope it wasn't too overwhelming."

Silver looked up at him — tired now, both from the day's endless small disasters and from the sheer, accumulated weight of everything he'd just witnessed — and thought, with quiet, settled certainty, that overwhelming was very much the wrong word entirely.

Wonderful, he thought instead, watching Riddle move about the room with the same careful, unhurried grace he brought to everything. That was wonderful.

The nest Riddle had made was, Silver had to admit, genuinely excellent — a soft, carefully arranged bundle of spare cloth scraps tucked into a small basket beside the desk, warm and comfortable in a way that made the whole disastrous day feel, for one brief stretch, almost bearable. His stomach was pleasantly full besides; Riddle had returned from dinner with a small dish of chopped fruit and vegetables set carefully aside just for him, offering each piece with the same patient gentleness he'd shown all afternoon.

Silver had settled in, quills relaxed, genuinely comfortable for the first time since the potions lab explosion — right up until Riddle, humming softly to himself, began unbuttoning his uniform jacket in preparation for a shower.

Silver dove under the cloths immediately, quills bristling with sudden, mortified urgency.

Absolutely not, he thought, burrowing deeper into the fabric, ears — or whatever passed for ears in this form — burning. I am a gentleman. I will not be looking. This is not happening. I am simply a hedgehog taking a nap, nothing to see here, certainly not peeking—

He stayed resolutely, determinedly buried until he heard the bathroom door click shut, the distant sound of water running confirming it was safe to resurface, and only then did Silver cautiously poke his head back out from beneath the cloths, quills easing slowly back down.

By the time Riddle emerged again — hair damp, sleep clothes soft and comfortable, toweling the last bit of water from his hair — Silver had recovered his composure enough to simply watch, quiet and content, as Riddle settled at his vanity and began the familiar, unhurried ritual of brushing out his hair.

Silver found he could watch this particular sight indefinitely. There was something soothing about it — the slow, even strokes, the way Riddle's shoulders eased with each pass, the soft, unguarded quiet of a moment meant for no one's eyes but his own.

I could watch him do this forever, Silver thought, warm and settled, and meant it.

The peace didn't last, unfortunately.

Once his hair was properly brushed, Riddle rose, crossed to his desk, and produced — from seemingly nowhere, an entire drawer's worth of paperwork — a stack of documents that made Silver's small eyes widen in genuine alarm.

It kept growing. Riddle pulled out folder after folder, ledger after ledger, arranging them into careful, towering stacks across the desk's surface with the brisk, practiced efficiency of someone who did this every single night and had long since stopped finding the sheer volume of it remarkable.

Silver stared, and felt something uneasy settle low in his small chest.

He'd known, in the abstract, distant way anyone knows a fact without truly absorbing it, that housewardens carried heavy workloads. But watching it — watching stack after stack pile up, watching Riddle settle into his desk chair with the resigned, businesslike posture of a man beginning a marathon rather than an evening's work — made the abstraction suddenly, viscerally real.

An hour passed. Then another. Riddle worked steadily, pen moving without pause, only the occasional soft sigh or brief pause to rub at his own eyes marking any acknowledgment of fatigue at all. Outside, the last of the evening light had long since faded to full dark.

Silver watched, quills slowly bristling with a different kind of alarm now — not for himself, but for Riddle, who showed absolutely no sign of stopping, who simply kept working with the same relentless, uncomplaining diligence, hour after hour, as though rest were a luxury that simply didn't apply to him.

This isn't right, Silver thought, watching Riddle's shoulders creep up toward his ears with mounting tension, watching the small, telltale signs of exhaustion Silver recognized from long practice — the slower blinks, the faint tremor in his writing hand, the way he'd started reading the same line twice before moving on. He needs to rest. Someone needs to make him rest.

Silver looked around the room. No one else was here. Housewardens had solo rooms so no dormmate, no concerned friend, nothing but Riddle, his mountain of paperwork, and one small, currently-hedgehog-shaped knight with absolutely no way to voice his concern in words.

Well, Silver decided, with the same steady, immovable determination he brought to every task he'd ever set himself to. It’s up to me I guess.

He began squeaking. Loudly. Insistently, rustling hard against the cloths of his nest, making as much commotion as his small body could physically produce.

Riddle's head lifted almost immediately, pen pausing mid-stroke. "Hm? What's wrong?"

He crossed over, concern evident, checking Silver over with gentle, careful hands — food, water, temperature of the room — finding nothing obviously amiss before offering a few soft, soothing pets and turning, satisfied, to return to his desk.

Silver threw another fit the moment Riddle's back was turned.

Riddle paused, glanced back, checked him over again with the same patient thoroughness, found nothing wrong once more, and returned to his desk a second time.

Silver waited exactly as long as it took Riddle to pick his pen back up before starting a third round, louder and more insistent than before, quills rustling with theatrical, deliberate urgency.

This continued for several more rounds — Riddle checking, finding nothing, returning to work, Silver immediately protesting again — until, on what Silver privately counted as the fifth attempt, Riddle finally paused as he sat down for the nth time at his desk, expression shifting from concerned confusion into something more thoughtful.

"...Are you doing this on purpose?" Riddle asked, studying him with dawning, faintly amused suspicion.

Silver squeaked, as pointedly as he possibly could.

Riddle huffed out something that was almost a laugh, shoulders finally, visibly relaxing for the first time in hours. "You're trying to get me to stop working, aren't you?"

Silver squeaked again, enthusiastic agreement as clear as he could make it.

Riddle looked at him for a long moment, something soft and faintly touched crossing his tired face, before he let out a small, genuine laugh and set his pen down properly, capping the inkwell with an air of gentle surrender.

"Alright," Riddle said, glancing at the stacks still waiting, then back at Silver with something like grudging fondness. "Alright, you win. I suppose it can wait until morning."

Silver relaxed immediately, satisfaction blooming warm through his small chest, watching Riddle rise from the desk and cross toward the nest to gather him up.

He did not, however, set Silver back down in the basket.

Instead, Riddle carried him directly toward the bed, pulling back the covers with his free hand and settling in with the unhurried, easy motion of someone getting ready for a proper night's sleep, Silver still cradled carefully in his palm and then gently set down on the space beside him.

"I imagine you didn't want to be alone in that nest all night," Riddle said, gentle, settling Silver onto the pillow beside his own with careful, deliberate tenderness. "That's why you kept fussing, isn't it? You wanted company."

Silver blinked, genuinely startled by the conclusion — not at all the reasoning behind his protest, but far, far too endearing a misunderstanding to correct even if he'd had the words to do so.

"There," Riddle murmured, already settling back against his own pillow, eyes drifting shut with the immediate, total relaxation of someone who'd been running on fumes for hours and hadn't fully realized it until permission to stop was finally granted. "Better?"

The lights began to dim on their own, and Silver could somehow feel… Satisfaction? But not from him — from Heartslabyul, Silver realized. The pocket dimension clearly approved of Silver’s actions.

Silver, tucked warm and close beside him in the dim, quiet dark of Riddle's room, thought that better didn't even begin to cover it.

I might be stuck as a hedgehog, Silver thought, watching Riddle's breathing slow and even out into genuine, peaceful sleep, close enough that Silver could feel the soft, steady warmth of it. I might have no idea how to fix this, or how long I'll be like this, or what Riddle will think when he eventually finds out it was me the whole time.

But at least, he thought, settling in beside him, quills soft against the pillow, I got this. A soft, unguarded Riddle Rosehearts, finally letting himself rest. Nobody else gets to see this.

Silver closed his eyes, warm and strangely, impossibly content despite everything, and let himself drift off beside the person he loved most.

Silver woke slowly, warm and comfortable, curled protectively around something soft and warm that fit against him with a rightness he couldn't quite place through the fog of half-sleep. He had approximately one full second to simply enjoy it — the warmth, the closeness, the deep, settled contentment of a good night's rest — before that warmth began screaming.

Silver's eyes snapped open.

He was awake and alert in an instant, instincts drilled into him by his father firing before conscious thought could fully catch up, already sitting upright, scanning for threat, hand moving on reflex toward the pen he kept nearby for exactly this kind of emergency.

His hand found nothing. No pen. No cloth at all, in fact, and the realization arrived at almost the exact same moment as three other, considerably more devastating pieces of information, all crashing into him at once.

One: the warm, screaming thing he'd been curled protectively around was Riddle.

Riddle, Silver's mind supplied, with dawning, mortified horror. I was — I was cuddling with Riddle. All night. Curled around him like—

Two: Silver was, quite unmistakably, no longer a hedgehog. He was back in his own body — full-sized, human, every limb present and accounted for exactly where it should be.

Three, and by far the most catastrophic realization of the three: Silver was naked.

Completely, entirely naked, having apparently transformed back sometime in the night with absolutely no clothing to show for it, currently tangled in Riddle's sheets, wrapped around Riddle's own very much awake and very much screaming form, in Riddle's own bed.

Oh Sevens, Silver thought, his entire mind going white with pure, undiluted panic. Oh Sevens, oh no, oh—

"SILVER?!" Riddle's voice cracked with pure, horrified disbelief, scrambling backward so fast he nearly toppled off the far side of the bed entirely, hands clutched instinctively to his own chest even though he, at least, was still fully dressed in his sleepwear as he pressed himself to the headboard. "What — why — how are you — where did — WHY ARE YOU NAKED?!"

Silver glanced down at himself and felt his entire body go cold with fresh, mounting horror.

He was human again. Fully, completely human — no quills, no fur, no small four-legged body, simply his own familiar hands and arms and — Silver's stomach dropped straight through the mattress — absolutely nothing else at all. He was, in the plainest possible terms, entirely naked, sitting in the middle of Riddle's bed at what appeared to be early morning, having apparently transformed back into his own body sometime in the night with absolutely no warning and, evidently, no accompanying clothing.

Oh no.

Silver's hand shot immediately for the nearest available fabric — Riddle's blanket, currently bunched at the foot of the bed from Riddle's frantic scramble — and yanked it around his waist with the desperate, single-minded urgency of a man drowning and reaching for the nearest floating object.

"I can explain," Silver said, though even as the words left his mouth he realized, with fresh despair, that he genuinely, entirely could not explain any of this in the time available, or possibly ever, in a way that wouldn't sound completely, catastrophically insane.

That was, unfortunately, the exact moment the door burst open.

"BOSS?! WHAT'S WRONG—"

Deuce arrived first, Ace half a step behind him, both freshmen skidding through the doorway with the wild, unguarded urgency of people who'd heard their housewarden screaming and abandoned every ounce of caution in favor of immediate response. Cater followed a half-second later, phone still clutched in one hand from whatever he'd been doing before the alarm, and Trey brought up the rear, moving with the same fast, protective instinct as the rest of them.

All four skidded to a stop just inside the doorway.

Silence.

Silver watched, with the slow, horrified clarity of a man witnessing his own life crumble in real time, as four separate expressions cycled rapidly through confusion, shock, and — in devastatingly quick succession — something considerably more dangerous.

Riddle, huddled against his own headboard, blanket-less, visibly shaken.

And Silver. Naked. In Riddle's bed. With only a hastily grabbed blanket currently protecting what remained of his dignity.

"...Oh," Cater said, very quietly, phone lowering slowly to his side.

"What," Deuce said, in a voice gone suddenly, dangerously flat, "is going on here."

Ace's expression had shifted into something Silver had genuinely never seen on the younger boy's face before — sharp, protective, utterly without its usual playful edge. "Silver-senpai. Why are you naked? In Riddle's bed."

"This is — it's not what it looks like," Silver said again, and immediately, viscerally regretted the phrase the moment it left his mouth, because it was, unfortunately, possibly the single worst combination of words available to him in this exact situation.

Trey hadn't spoken yet. That was, somehow, considerably more alarming than if he had. He simply stood in the doorway, arms crossing slowly over his chest, gaze fixed on Silver with a calm, quiet intensity that Silver — despite being an actual trained knight, despite having faced down genuinely dangerous magical threats without flinching — found himself distinctly, thoroughly unsettled by.

"Riddle," Trey said, voice level, not once looking away from Silver. "Are you alright?"

"I—" Riddle's voice came out small, still visibly rattled, gaze darting between Silver and the four dormmates now filling his doorway. "I don't — I don't know what happened, I woke up and he was just — he was suddenly there, and I don't—"

"He doesn't know what happened either," Silver said quickly, desperate to steer this somewhere, anywhere, away from the conclusion he could see forming rapidly behind four separate sets of increasingly furious eyes. "Riddle isn't — nothing happened, I promise you, if you would just let me explain—"

"Explain what, exactly," Ace said, stepping fully into the room now, posture gone tight and coiled. "Explain why our housewarden woke up screaming with you naked in his bed? Yeah, Silver, please, we're all ears."

Deuce had already moved to Riddle's side, positioning himself protectively between Riddle and the rest of the room with the fierce, immediate loyalty of someone who'd clearly stopped thinking and started simply reacting. "Boss, are you hurt? Did he—"

"No! No, nothing like that, I just—" Riddle's face had gone from shocked pale to a deep, mortified red, clearly working through the same rapid-fire horror of implications everyone else in the room had already jumped to. "I don't understand what's happening, I fell asleep and there was a— I had a—"

He stopped. Silver watched, with sinking, mounting dread, as Riddle's gaze drifted, slow and searching, toward the small empty nest of cloths still sitting beside the desk. Toward the space where a small, quilled creature should have been resting and very clearly wasn't.

Riddle's eyes widened.

"Wait," Riddle said, voice gone strange and distant. "The hedgehog—"

"You were the hedgehog?" Riddle's voice climbed another full octave, eyes going impossibly wide as pieces began, visibly, audibly, clicking into place behind his horrified expression. "The one that wouldn't stop fussing, the one I brought into my bed—" He made a small, strangled sound, pressing both hands over his own face. "I fed you fruit. I pet you. I slept next to you—"

"I know," Silver said, miserable, blanket clutched tight, face burning with a heat that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. "I'm so sorry, I didn't — I couldn't tell you, I tried, I tried so many times, nobody could understand me until I got to Heartslabyul and even then only the actual hedgehogs could—"

A firm, fake, cough made Silver shut up, realizing they had an audience.

"I really can explain everything," Silver said, quick, desperate, watching four furious, protective faces continue to close in around the bed with absolutely no sign of patience for whatever explanation he was about to offer. "It's a very long story, and it involves a potions accident, and I promise, I promise, absolutely nothing untoward happened—"

"You've got about ten seconds," Trey voice was quiet and even and considerably more threatening than Silver had ever once imagined the calm, easygoing vice-housewarden capable of sounding, "before I stop being interested in an explanation at all."

Silver, blanket clutched tight around his waist, naked and cornered in his crush's bedroom in front of four of the most protective people currently in Heartslabyul, thought — with the particular, resigned clarity of a man who had genuinely run out of good options — that this was, without any real competition, the single worst morning of his entire life.

The room was, without exaggeration, one of the most uncomfortable spaces Silver had ever occupied — and he'd once spent three hours pinned beneath a collapsed section of the Botanical Garden's greenhouse waiting for rescue, so that was saying something.

He sat on the small couch in Riddle's room, borrowed clothes from Trey hanging slightly loose across his shoulders, hyperaware of every set of eyes currently trained on him from around the room. Riddle sat directly across, resolutely staring at a point somewhere over Silver's left shoulder, face still faintly, persistently pink. Trey and Cater flanked him on either side, both wearing expressions of carefully maintained, deeply unsettling calm. Ace and Deuce stood behind the couch like a pair of extremely young, extremely serious bodyguards. And beside Silver — having been summoned, apparently, the moment Cater decided this situation warranted higher authority — sat Lilia and Malleus, both looking faintly bewildered at having been dragged into whatever this was.

Trey finished pouring the tea, set the pot down on the table with deliberate precision, and took his own seat.

Silence stretched.

"Well," Malleus said, finally, delicate and measured in the way he got when navigating something he suspected might be a social minefield. "Someone might explain the situation. Why is Silver here, in Heartslabyul, wearing Trey's clothing? And why do the four of you," he glanced meaningfully between Trey, Cater, Ace, and Deuce, "appear ready to strike him?"

Cater's smile was sweet. Sickly sweet, the kind of sweet that made Silver's spine straighten with immediate, instinctive alarm.

"We found Silver in Riddle's bed," Cater said, pleasant and light. "Naked."

Lilia choked on his tea.

It was a genuine, full-bodied choke, tea very nearly spraying across the small table as Lilia's whole body seized with shock, eyes snapping wide and immediately, incredulously locking onto Silver.

"Excuse me?" Lilia managed, once he'd recovered enough breath to speak, voice climbing an entire register. "Naked? In whose bed—"

"Riddle's," Cater supplied, helpfully, entirely unbothered by the escalating chaos his phrasing had caused.

Malleus's expression had shifted from delicate confusion into something considerably sharper, gaze swinging rapid-fire between Silver and Riddle like he was trying to physically piece together an explanation from body language alone. "Silver."

"It is not what it sounds like," Silver said, quickly, before anyone else in the room could add further unhelpful commentary to the situation.

"It sounded pretty specific," Ace muttered, from behind the couch, arms crossed.

"Let him talk," Trey said, calm but firm, and though his tone stayed even, Silver noted the way his grip tightened almost imperceptibly around his own teacup. "Go on, Silver. Explain. All of it."

Silver took a steadying breath, and began — haltingly at first, then with increasing detail — explaining the whole disastrous chain of events. The remedial potion assignment. The animals wandering in. The charm — the one Riddle himself had given him only days ago — knocked loose and dropped directly into the cauldron. The explosion. Waking up small, quilled, and utterly voiceless in a world that no longer understood a single word he said.

Riddle listened, color draining slowly from his face as the explanation unfolded, hands clenching and he stared at Silver with a mixture of horror, disbelief, and something that looked distinctly, achingly guilty.

"The charm," Riddle repeated, faint. "My charm did this?"

"It wasn't your fault," Silver said quickly, before the guilt visibly building behind Riddle's expression could fully take hold. "It was an accident. One of the mice knocked it loose, I couldn't react fast enough, and it landed in an unstable potion at exactly the wrong moment. There was no way you could have known—"

"You were turned into a hedgehog for an entire day," Riddle said, voice climbing back toward horrified again, apparently uninterested in absolving himself quite that easily. "You couldn't talk. You couldn't tell anyone what happened. You were carried off by a random student, shooed out of a classroom, picked up by Jade, and then—" He stopped, something new and even more mortified crossing his face. "And then I brought you into my room. I fed you. I pet you. I talked to you like — like a pet, the entire evening, while you were fully aware and unable to say anything—"

"It wasn't unpleasant," Silver said, and immediately, viscerally regretted the phrasing the moment it left his mouth, watching Riddle's face flush an even deeper, more mortified shade of red as everyone in the room made various sounds that indicated they did not like that statement.

"That is not better, Silver—"

"I meant — I meant that you were kind," Silver amended quickly, his own face heating further. "You were gentle. You made sure I was fed, and comfortable, and you even stopped working when I fussed at you, because you thought I didn't want to be alone—"

Riddle made a small, strangled noise and buried his face back in both hands.

"I am never going to recover from this," Riddle said, muffled, mortified. "I brushed my hair in front of you. I got undressed in front of you—"

“You what!?”

Trey looked close to an aneurysm, Cater was gaping, Ace and Deuce looked ready to jump Silver, Lilia choked on his tea and Malleus just stared at Silver.

"I looked away!" Silver said, immediately, urgent. "I promise, I hid under the cloths the entire time, I didn't see anything, I would never—"

Silver took a slow breath. Focus Silver, redirect. "But yes, that’s how I ended up… here. I was a hedgehog."

The room went very quiet.

"...A hedgehog," Malleus repeated, slowly, as though testing whether the words made more sense the second time.

"An actual hedgehog," Silver confirmed. "Small. Quilled. Approximately four inches tall. I have no other way to describe it."

"Why didn’t you tell us? Everyone in Heartslabyul has a passing grade in Animal Communications with small mammals" Trey prompted, tone still carefully even, though Silver noted the faint loosening of tension in his shoulders as the explanation continued to track — plausible, if genuinely bizarre, and entirely lacking in the scandal everyone had clearly braced themselves for.

He looked at Trey, Cater, Ace and Deuce — trying to portray his sincerity.

"I tried to communicate the entire time," Silver said. "With Ace, with Deuce, with Cater and Trey, all of you — none of it worked, maybe because I’m not really a hedgehog. I tried to get Maple to tell Riddle but he had rounds to do and was leaving so I — I panicked"

"Maple," Riddle repeated, soft, something dawning slowly behind his eyes. "That's — that's my favorite. The one who follows me around the garden."

"The very same," Silver confirmed. "She told me quite a lot, actually. About the enclosure. About the other hedgehogs. About—" He hesitated, glancing briefly at Riddle before deciding, given everything else already on the table, this particular detail could hardly make things worse. "About wanting to arrange a birthday surprise for you. Apparently you mentioned, once, that you wished you could play croquet with me. They overheard, and decided to bring me to Heartslabyul themselves as a gift."

Riddle's face went, if possible, even redder, gaze dropping to his own hands. "I didn't know they were listening."

"They love you very much," Silver said, gently, and watched something soft flicker across Riddle's expression before he quickly, deliberately looked away again.

Another beat of silence.

"Silver," Riddle said, finally, voice smaller now, edged with something Silver hadn't expected — not just embarrassment anymore, but something closer to genuine, quiet concern. "Were you frightened? Yesterday, I mean. Trapped like that, unable to explain yourself to anyone?"

Silver considered the question honestly, turning the memory of the day over in his mind — the panic, the endless corridor, the despair of failing to communicate with Ace and Deuce and Trey and Cater in turn.

"At first," Silver admitted. "But then I got to Heartslabyul. And I met Maple." He paused, something warm cutting gently through the lingering embarrassment. "And I got to spend an evening watching you take care of your entire dorm. The roses, the flamingos, the mice, every single one of your dormmates." He met Riddle's eyes properly now, steady despite the blush still burning across his own face. "It wasn't the way I would have chosen to see it. But I don't regret having seen it."

Riddle stared at him for a long moment, something soft and flustered and entirely unguarded flickering across his face before he seemed to catch himself, expression snapping back toward mortified composure.

Silver decided to close the discussion as much as he could because honestly, Trey, Cater and his own father’s faces were doing this Silver had no energy for. "I transformed back sometime in the night. Without warning. Without clothing, evidently, since none had transformed along with me. I woke up already — already in the position everyone found me in, and I swear, on my sword, on my honor and everything I hold dear, that I had no awareness or control over any part of that outcome."

Silence settled over the room once more, considerably different in texture than before — less accusatory now, more simply absorbing the sheer, improbable shape of the whole story.

"...That is," Malleus said, finally, slow and thoughtful, "an extraordinarily specific sequence of events to invent, were it not true."

"It's true," Silver said, firm. "Every part of it."

Lilia, recovered now from his earlier shock, had settled into an expression of delighted, fascinated amusement. "A hedgehog. My own son, reduced to a hedgehog by a potion." He pressed a hand to his chest, visibly charmed by the whole absurd narrative despite himself. "Truly, this is the funniest disaster I've heard all century."

"Father," Silver said, weary.

Cater, meanwhile, had pulled his phone back out, tension visibly draining from his posture now that the explanation had landed somewhere considerably more innocent than the room's initial, furious assumption. "Okay but for real, that's kind of an insane story. Like, genuinely, that could not have been made up"

"I apologize Silver, you were as much a victim in this as Riddle," Trey admitted, some of the guarded protectiveness finally easing from his shoulders, glancing toward Riddle with a faint, teasing smile. "Maybe this will get you to stop sneaking the hedgehogs in your room Riddle."

Ace and Deuce, behind the couch, exchanged a long look before Deuce finally, grudgingly, unfolded his arms. "...Okay, fine. That's — actually kind of believable, given everything we know about this place."

Riddle, still visibly, deeply mortified, finally lifted his gaze properly toward Silver for the first time since the explanation began, something complicated and searching in his expression.

"You made a fuss," Riddle said, quiet, "because you were worried about me overworking myself."

Silver held his gaze, steady despite everything. "Yes."

Something in Riddle's expression flickered — surprise, and beneath it, something softer, warmer, that he seemed to catch himself before it could fully surface, glancing quickly away again with fresh color rising in his cheeks.

"...Well," Riddle said, a little unsteady, clearing his throat. "Thank you. I suppose. For that, at least."

Silver, despite the sheer, exhausting mortification of the entire morning, felt something warm settle quietly in his chest at those words, and decided — all things considered — that perhaps this particular disaster hadn't been entirely without its rewards.

Lilia was having an exceptionally difficult time keeping a straight face.

He'd managed it well enough during the actual explanation — mostly, if one didn't count the initial choke on his tea, which really couldn't be helped given the framing Cater had chosen to open with. But now, watching Silver stand stiffly at Heartslabyul's entrance, mumbling an awkward goodbye to Riddle while Trey, Cater, Ace, and Deuce hovered nearby with the collective energy of four people who had not, in fact, fully forgiven the morning's events, Lilia found his composure fraying rapidly at the edges.

"I truly am sorry for the disturbance," Silver was saying, painfully formal, still visibly uncomfortable in Trey's borrowed clothes. "And for any distress I caused."

"It's — it's fine," Riddle said, arms crossed, gaze fixed somewhere over Silver's shoulder, cheeks still holding a faint, persistent flush. "You didn't do it on purpose. I understand that. It's fine."

"It is not fine," Deuce muttered, just loud enough to carry.

"Deuce," Riddle said, warning.

"I'm just saying," Deuce continued, undeterred, "he could've at least grabbed a blanket faster—"

"He did grab a blanket," Riddle said, exasperated. "Eventually. Please, all of you, let this go."

Trey offered Silver a small, polite nod that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Take care getting home."

Cater's farewell wave was cheerful enough on the surface, though the look accompanying it carried a very clear, unspoken we're watching you that Silver seemed to receive with appropriate solemnity.

Ace didn't say anything at all, simply crossed his arms and watched Silver's retreat with narrow, suspicious eyes.

Lilia bit down, hard, on the inside of his cheek.

Malleus, beside him, was faring only marginally better — Lilia could see the faint, telltale tremor at the corner of his other son's mouth, the particular controlled stillness of someone exercising considerable willpower not to laugh at an entirely inappropriate moment.

The moment they'd cleared Heartslabyul's boundary and Malleus had gathered them both into a swirl of dark green magic — teleporting the three of them directly back to the familiar, gothic quiet of Diasomnia's grounds — Lilia's control finally, completely broke.

"Oh, my boy," Lilia wheezed, doubling over almost immediately, one hand braced against the nearest wall as laughter overtook him in full. "Oh, this is — this is truly, spectacularly funny, I need you to understand that—"

"Father," Silver said, weary, already bracing for exactly this.

"No, no, let me finish," Lilia gasped, straightening just enough to wipe at his eyes, still shaking with barely contained mirth. "I raised you, Silver. Raised you. Taught you manners, taught you honor, taught you to always, always be a gentleman — and here you are, naked, in Riddle Rosehearts' bed, before you've even managed to confess—"

"It wasn't like that," Silver said, flat, though the deepening color in his face rather undermined the attempt at composure.

"I know, I know, hedgehog, potion accident, very tragic, very unfortunate," Lilia said, waving a dismissive hand, entirely unbothered by the actual mechanics of the explanation. "But you must admit, the timing, Silver. The absolute comedic timing of it all. Months of quiet, patient crushing, of soft glances and thoughtful little gestures, and how does fate decide to finally get you into that boy's bed? Not through any confession of your own making. Through a potion mishap."

Malleus, standing a short distance away, had given up entirely on containing his own amusement, shoulders shaking with quiet, helpless laughter.

"It is rather remarkable," Malleus agreed, voice not quite steady. "Of everyone at NRC, I would have wagered you the least likely to end up in such a position by accident, Silver. You are, without exception, the single most careful person I know."

"I had no control over the transformation," Silver said, dignity fraying rapidly under the combined assault. "I did not choose any part of what happened."

"Oh, I believe you completely," Lilia said, still grinning, entirely too delighted by the whole affair to properly stop. "That's rather what makes it so funny! You, of all people — so careful, so composed, so endlessly, patiently in love with that boy for how long now—"

"Father."

"—and the universe simply decided, well, since he's clearly not going to do anything about it himself, let's just skip straight to the bed—"

"Father!"

"I'm only saying," Lilia continued, entirely unrepentant, pressing a hand to his own chest with theatrical, wounded delight, "that I imagined, when the day finally came that my son ended up in Riddle Rosehearts' bed, it would perhaps be the result of an actual romantic confession. A love letter. A quiet, tender moment beneath the stars. Not—" he gestured broadly, helplessly, "—this."

"When you say it like that," Malleus said, still faintly shaking with laughter, "it does sound rather absurd."

"It sounds," Lilia said, wiping fresh tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes, "like the single most Silver way imaginable to accidentally end up in someone's bed. Careful, devoted, entirely by accident, and somehow still managing to be sweet about it. Only you, my dear boy. Only you could turn a magical mishap into an act of quiet devotion."

Silver said nothing for a long moment, face still burning, caught somewhere between mortification and the grudging, helpless acknowledgment that Lilia — infuriatingly, as usual — wasn't entirely wrong.

"Are you quite finished," Silver said finally, flat, "or is there more mockery forthcoming?"

"Oh, there's certainly more," Lilia said, brightening further, looping an arm companionably around Silver's shoulders despite his son's obvious, long-suffering resignation. "I intend to bring this up at every possible opportunity for the foreseeable future. Family dinners. Diasomnia gatherings. Perhaps I'll mention it at your wedding, hm? A charming little anecdote about how it all truly began—"

"There is no wedding," Silver said, immediately, though the deepening flush across his face suggested the mental image hadn't been entirely unwelcome, whatever protest his voice carried.

"Not yet," Lilia agreed, cheerful and entirely unbothered, patting Silver's shoulder with fond, teasing affection. "But you've already gotten the hard part over with, haven't you? Naked in his bed and everything. Really, from here, a confession should feel practically simple by comparison."

Silver groaned, pressing one hand over his own face, and Malleus, still chuckling quietly beside them, made absolutely no move to come to his rescue.