Returning to Hogwarts felt less like returning to school and more like slipping back into a second skin.

  The great stone castle loomed over the frozen ke, its windows glowing with warm candlelight. The familiar rumble of the train beneath our feet had lulled half the students to sleep, but I remained awake. Watching. Thinking.

  Winter had changed things.

  Lyra had cried at the station. My mother had kissed my forehead like I was still a child. And my father—he had pced his hand on my shoulder again, and it lingered for a second longer than it had before. Something had shifted.

  But the castle hadn't.

  And yet, it felt different to me.

  Jake sat beside me on the train, practically vibrating with excitement. He'd already pulled out a new notebook, half-filled with absurd theories and wild ideas.

  “So,” he whispered, gncing over at Desmond and Nathaniel across the compartment, “I’ve got a pn.”

  “Of course you do.”

  He grinned. “This one's not about Quidditch.”

  “Then it’s definitely more dangerous.”

  Jake leaned in, lowering his voice to the kind of theatrical whisper that made me want to hex him for dramatic overexposure. “I’m going to win Evie over by the Valentine’s Feast.”

  I blinked.

  “…There’s a Valentine’s Feast?”

  He looked insulted. “Of course there is. It’s a big thing. Hearts, roses, floating cupids—absolute madness. Perfect time to make a move.”

  “Bold. Reckless. Possibly stupid.”

  “Exactly my strengths.”

  I exhaled slowly. “And you’re telling me this because…?”

  “Because I need your help.”

  “I’m not pying matchmaker.”

  Jake wagged his quill at me. “You don’t have to. Just keep Evie distracted while I do the groundwork.”

  “Jake.”

  “You’re her friend.”

  “Barely.”

  “She likes you.”

  “She tolerates me.”

  “That’s more than enough!”

  He turned to the others before I could argue further, outlining his so-called 'Operation Lockheart' like a general preparing for war. Desmond offered to compose bad poetry. Nathaniel vowed to create heart-shaped chocote frogs.

  I closed my eyes.

  Somehow, this was my life now.

  Back at Hogwarts

  The moment we stepped through the gates and into the main hall, I felt it.

  A shift. Like something calling to me from the stones themselves. Ancient. Cold. Familiar.

  Magic here wasn’t passive. It was always watching.

  The common room welcomed us with warmth and ughter. Jake spun tales for first-years about sying dragons with his bare hands (he was knocked unconscious by a bludger two weeks ago), while I retired early, citing exhaustion.

  It wasn’t exhaustion.

  Not exactly.

  It was the weight behind my eyes.

  The Mind Beneath the Mind

  That night, I locked the curtains around my four-poster bed. Kuro curled by my side as I lit the wand tip and opened the books my father gave me.

  Occlumency Through Sensory Extension — a study of pushing consciousness beyond the boundaries of thought, beyond the ego. Of mapping one’s mind like territory, and confronting what lies buried beneath the walls.

  I already knew some of it. Occlumency was about closing your mind from intrusion. But what intrigued me more—what resonated—was self-invasion. Reaching into pces even I had buried.

  Let the mind become still. Let memory surface like oil on water.

  I focused.

  Breathed.

  Let myself sink.

  There, in the dark, I reached for the edge of memory not from this life… but from the other one.

  And something answered.

  It came in a fsh.

  Blood. Fire. Screams in the distance. My own body broken, slumped against shattered stone, the war ended and lost.

  I remembered this.

  The final moment—death itself.

  But what I had not remembered… was what came after.

  A silhouette.

  Not light. Not dark. But something ancient.

  A figure cloaked in flowing bck. No face. Just an empty white mask with jagged markings. Floating above me.

  Shinigami.

  The God of Death from my former world.

  It hovered, watching, before speaking in a voice that was less a sound and more a sensation through every cell of my dying body.

  “Well… that’s just sad.”

  The memory cracked like broken gss and ended.

  I sat up, gasping, sweat cold on my back, my wand flickering with barely restrained energy.

  Kuro stared at me, golden eyes wide, alert.

  It had been real.

  A fragment—one not even the Sharingan had dared to show me before. My death. The final echo. And the Shinigami who spoke not in wrath or judgment, but pity.

  Why now? I wondered.

  Why would this memory surface now—after so long?

  Was it the books?

  The magic here?

  Or something else altogether?

  The Next Morning

  Jake greeted me like the entire universe revolved around his new pn. He spoke of chocotes enchanted to sing. Desmond had written a poem that rhymed “Evie” with “levy” in a way that made me want to gouge out my ears.

  I said nothing of the memory.

  Of the Shinigami.

  Of the weight that now pulled at my consciousness like a silent current under a still ke.

  But as Evie walked into the Great Hall, her red hair catching morning light like fme, Jake grinned and nudged me.

  “Alright, partner in charm crimes. Operation Lockheart is officially on.”

  I watched her sit with quiet grace, eyes scanning the Hall, and then flicking toward us for a brief second before returning to her meal.

  And I thought of something the Shinigami said… or rather implied.

  Not judgment. Not anger.

  Just sadness.

  What did he see, in that final moment, that made a god of death pity me?

  And what does it mean here… in a world of wands, not war?

  [End of Chapter 20]