The first thing I felt was light.

  Golden sunlight streamed through the tall windows, warm and insistent, like it had been waiting all morning just for me. It painted lazy streaks across the wooden floorboards, catching on floating dust like little spells hanging in the air. The kind of light that made everything feel soft around the edges. Safe, almost.

  Somewhere outside, the world had already begun. I could hear it—cars rumbling to life, someone calling out good morning from across the street, the shrill burst of a child’s laughter carried on the breeze. It was strange how ordinary it all sounded. Like I was waking up in someone else’s life.

  For a moment, I just sat there on the edge of the bed, feet brushing the cool floor, trying to shake off the weight of sleep. My head was foggy, like I’d been underwater too long and hadn’t quite surfaced. The room—my room, for now—looked peaceful in the sunlight. The Quidditch posters on the wall rustled faintly as if stirred by some invisible breath. A figure on one of them—Krum, I think—looped lazily on his broomstick. He looked relaxed. Effortless. Free.

  I envied him.

  On the desk, my owl ruffled her feathers and gave me a pointed look, as if to say I’d already slept too long. I gave her a weak smile but said nothing. Even now, it felt strange to talk aloud in the mornings. Words were heavy before breakfast.

  I dragged myself to the trunk at the foot of my bed. The thing was still half-packed—shirts crumpled into corners, parchment stuffed between books, potion vials clinking faintly as I shifted the mess. My life, it seemed, would always be halfway in and halfway out of a suitcase. I grabbed whatever clothes were closest, not bothering to check if they matched. Didn’t matter. Not here. Not today.

  As I padded down the stairs, the creak of each step greeted me like an old friend. This cottage had a way of making noise feel like comfort. Everything about it felt lived in, grounded. Not grand or magical, just… human. It was enough.

  The scent of breakfast hit me before I even reached the kitchen—warm toast, something slightly sweet, and the sharp herbal curl of tea steeping just right. I could’ve floated the rest of the way.

  Remus was already at the stove, sleeves rolled up, wand hovering lazily beside him as a kettle whistled in mid-air.

  “Good afternoon, Harry,” he said with a sly smile, not turning around.

  I snorted. “Barely.”

  He handed me a mug without looking, like he’d done it a hundred times. The tea was perfect—sweet with a touch of chamomile. Calming. He always seemed to know what I needed before I did.

  I took a long sip and let the warmth fill me from the inside out. It didn’t make the ache go away completely, but it dulled the edges and softened things just enough to make the morning bearable.

  “Toast?” he offered. “Or feeling fancy today—scrambled eggs?”

  “Eggs,” I said quickly. It wasn’t really about the food. It was the ritual. The small comfort of a question asked and answered. Of someone standing at a stove who wasn’t preparing for a battle.

  I leaned against the counter, letting my eyes wander. Outside the window, the village rolled on without us. Gardens blooming, neighbours chatting, everything blissfully unaware of who we were and what we carried.

  For a while, the silence was companionable. Just the quiet hum of cooking and the occasional crackle of the pan. But Remus, ever perceptive, broke it gently.

  “You’re quiet today,” he said, not accusing—just noticing.

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to lie, but I didn’t want to say it either.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, too quickly. I hated how flat it sounded, like I was trying to convince myself.

  Remus didn’t push. He never did.

  Still, the words slipped out before I could stop them. “Just… a bad dream.”

  His posture changed—just a little. A shift in his shoulders. He turned slightly, giving me a full look. His eyes, kind as ever, narrowed with concern.

  “Harry,” he said gently, “that’s not nothing.”

  He stepped closer, lifting my chin with a finger like he used to when I was younger—like he still thought I might look away and bury whatever was bothering me. And maybe I would have. But not now. Not today. The warmth of his hand, the steadiness of his voice—it all chipped away at the wall I’d built up while I slept.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know it’s not easy. Especially here. Especially now.”

  I looked at him, really looked. The lines on his face seemed deeper today. The hollows beneath his eyes were darker. He looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. The kind of tired that came from carryingpeople. From constantly keeping others safe, no matter the cost to yourself.

  He turned away and stirred the eggs again. The motion felt like punctuation.

  “We’re only here temporarily,” he said after a pause, his voice almost lost to the breeze through the open window. “You know that.”

  I nodded, but my chest tightened. Of course I knew. We never stayed anywhere long. Safety was fleeting, borrowed. No matter how nice the house or warm the tea or sunny the morning, it was always just a pause between escapes.

  “I just…” I started, then stopped. The words got tangled in my throat. I just want to stay. I just want this to be real. I just want to stop running.

  Instead, I gave a small nod—barely more than a dip of my chin. I hoped it said everything I couldn’t.

  Remus noticed. Of course he did.

  “There’s no need to worry,” he said, a bit softer this time. “We have plenty of time to talk later.”

  Later. The word hung in the air like a spell, fragile and hopeful.

  I repeated it in my mind, like it might hold back the restlessness rising inside me. Later meant tomorrow. It meant possibility. It meant, maybe, if we were lucky—a little longer here.

  I clung to that.

  Because for now… it was all I had.

  Staying with Remus had become a necessity. A calculated precaution. I knew that. But knowing didn’t make the weight of it any easier to carry.

  He said it was for my safety, and maybe that was true. But with every passing day, I felt more like a burden—an obligation tethered to a man who had already borne too much. His curse hovered like a storm cloud above us, always present, even in silence. The full moon might not be due for weeks, but I could feel it in the air, in the set of his jaw, in the flickers of pain that ghosted across his face when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  I studied him now, from across the kitchen.

  The morning light filtered through the curtains and fell across his face, casting faint shadows in the hollows beneath his cheekbones. His clothes hung loosely on him—worn brown trousers and a linen shirt so faded it seemed almost translucent in the sunlight. It was a far cry from the image of a powerful protector. And yet, there was something unshakably dignified about him, something in the tired grace of his movements, the quiet determination in the way he carried himself. Battle-worn, yes. But never broken.

  And I wondered—not for the first time—how he could protect me when he was barely holding himself together.

  I dropped my gaze, shame prickling at the back of my throat. In the cracked mirror above the sink, my reflection stared back at me. Narrow frame. Pale skin. Jet-black hair that refused to be tamed. And those eyes—green, bright, too much like hers. My glasses perched crookedly on my nose as always, the thin wire frames a constant reminder that I was fragile. Breakable. Human.

  People called them my mother’s eyes. But all I ever saw in them was expectation.

  When I looked back at Remus, I saw him carefully place his plate—half-eaten, of course—into the sink. He moved with a kind of practised slowness, like each step had to be measured so it wouldn’t break him. Then he crossed the room and sank onto the window seat with a quiet groan, unfolding the Daily Prophet as if bracing for impact.

  “What’s new?” I asked, already dreading the answer.

  He didn’t speak. Just held the paper aloft, the front page tilted toward me. I didn’t need to read the words to know the story. The image said enough—a smouldering ruin, a pale green skull twisting above it. The Dark Mark, etched into the sky like a brand on the world’s skin.

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  “Muggles live in fear now,” he said at last, voice low, frayed.

  The guilt twisted in me like a blade. I looked around at the little kitchen—the lingering smell of toast still hanging in the air. How dare we have this peace when others had none?

  “What can we do to help them?” I asked, barely above a whisper. “While we sit in safety, they’re out there fighting for their lives.”

  Remus turned to me slowly, his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. “Your path has already been laid out before you,” he said. “Even if you can’t see it yet.”

  The words sank in like lead. I didn’t want a path that was already laid out. I didn’t want fate or prophecy. I wanted choice. But that luxury had never belonged to me.

  And in the quiet that followed, the fear crept in. Not just for myself—for the world, for the people who looked to me like I had the answers. As if being Harry Potter meant I could save them. I wasn’t sure I could save anyone.

  “They’re scared,” I murmured. “And we can only watch, powerless to help.”

  He said nothing at first. Just folded the paper slowly and set it aside, his expression unreadable.

  Then, softly: “Fear can be a powerful thing. It can paralyse. But it can also move people to act. You’ve seen it, Harry. You’ve lived it. And more importantly, you’ve inspired it—hope, I mean. Even in the darkest moments.”

  Hope.

  The word struck something inside me—something too tender, too fragile. I thought of all the people who had believed in me and died anyway. Their faces flashed in my mind like photographs curling in fire.

  “I don’t feel like hope,” I whispered. “I feel like a mistake. A name in a story I don’t know how to finish.”

  He turned to face me more fully now, his gaze quiet and steady.

  “There has to be something we can do,” I pressed, my voice rising, desperation bleeding into every syllable. “Anything.”

  He smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was the kind of smile that held too many ghosts. “Perhaps. But it starts here,” he said, tapping his chest lightly. “Changing the world begins with learning to change yourself.”

  I looked out the window. Trees bent beneath the wind, their branches shivering. Even nature seemed unsettled.

  Remus’s voice softened. “Master your magic. Become the kind of wizard who doesn’t just react but who leads. The kind of man who can carry what’s coming.”

  I bit my lip. “You really think I can do this?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “But not all at once. Today, practise the spell I showed you. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about what comes next. One footfall at a time, Harry.”

  His voice grounded me. His words pulled me back from the spiral.

  One step.

  One breath.

  One spell.

  I nodded slowly, the knot in my chest loosening just slightly. Outside, the wind howled. Inside, the warmth held.

  The village had a rhythm of its own—slow, unhurried, like the steady beating of a distant drum. And though Remus and I tried our best to blend into its quiet song, we moved slightly out of step, like a melody half a note too sharp.

  Ottery St Catchpole was lovely, almost heartbreakingly so. It held a softness I wasn’t used to. Its cobbled streets curved gently around ivy-covered cottages, and every morning the world seemed to exhale in birdsong and the scent of blooming jasmine. There were no urgent footsteps or hurried glances here—just neighbours pausing on stoops, milk bottles left without worry, and dogs dozing under dappled sun.

  And yet, beneath that quiet surface, I could feel it—the tension. The sideways looks. The polite curiosity barely veiling suspicion. We were newcomers. Unfamiliar faces in a place that rarely changed. A boy with too-wide eyes and an older man with tired bones. They didn’t know who we were, only that we didn’t quite belong.

  If they only knew. We weren’t tourists or distant relatives looking for a quiet escape—we were fugitives. Ghosts in plain sight.

  Sometimes, when the wind shifted just right, I imagined I could hear it—the faint crack of Apparition, the cruel laughter of Death Eaters in the distance, the low rumble of a world unravelling. But here, on this hilltop overlooking rolling fields and windmills turning lazily in the breeze, it all seemed impossibly far away.

  I wanted to believe in the peace of it.

  Remus’s voice pulled me from my drifting thoughts.

  “Do you agree, Harry?”

  I blinked. “Sorry—what?”

  He gave me a look—not angry, but weary, like a man carrying too many things for too long. A frown tugged at the corner of his mouth. It reminded me of how often I left him to carry the weight of our safety alone, even in small moments like this.

  “We were talking about Hogwarts,” he said patiently. “About keeping a low profile.”

  Right. Hogwarts. The return.

  It felt strange to think of going back. Stranger still to go as someone pretending to be normal when everything about me screamed otherwise. But Dumbledore had arranged it. It was safer, somehow—being surrounded by professors, ancient spells, and enchanted walls. Danger would have to knock before it entered those gates.

  Still, the idea of being back among students my age, of pretending I was just another seventeen-year-old, felt like trying to fit into shoes I’d long since outgrown.

  “We’ll be students and staff,” Remus continued, the edges of his words clipped with caution. “That gives us opportunity—but it also means scrutiny. Hogwarts is… a place full of secrets. You’ll need to be vigilant.”

  I nodded slowly, the weight of it all beginning to settle in. “Sounds thrilling,” I muttered, unable to hide the twinge of excitement threading through the anxiety.

  Remus raised a brow at me, lips twitching into something caught between amusement and disapproval. “Enthusiasm can be… dangerous,” he said. “Attention brings questions. Questions you may not be ready to answer.”

  I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Alright, I get it. Keep my head down.”

  “Self-control,” he said again, more gently this time. “Not silence. Just… awareness.”

  I knew he was right. But it was hard. My name had always preceded me—etched in prophecy, whispered in corridors, splashed across newspaper headlines. Hiding had never come naturally.

  “It’s just… harder for me than it is for you,” I said quietly. “You’ve always known how to disappear into a room. I’ve never had that luxury.”

  He turned fully then, studying me with that unreadable intensity of his. “It’s not about luxury. Or ease. It’s about necessity.”

  The softness in his eyes startled me. It was the look of someone who saw too much and said too little. “You’ve done hard things before, Harry,” he said. “Harder than this. And you’ll do more because you have to. But there’s strength in patience, too. In knowing when to wait.”

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to say I was tired of waiting. Tired of hiding and running and pretending not to care. But I saw the lines on his face, the flicker of concern he tried to hide, and I swallowed the words.

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you,” he said simply.

  There was no fanfare in his voice. No false praise. Just quiet certainty. And somehow, that steadied me more than all the roaring speeches in the world ever could.

  I looked back at the village then, at the way the sun spilt across the rooftops like gold poured from the sky. For a moment, the world held still. And I told myself—one breath at a time, one day at a time.

  I would find a way to make it through. To blend in. To become what was needed of me.

  Even if everything inside me longed to be something else entirely.

  There was a rhythm to Remus—measured, methodical, maddening. His calm wasn’t just composure; it was a discipline, honed through years of necessity. Watching him was like observing someone who had long since accepted the rules of a cruel game and learnt how to survive without protest. He moved through this life like someone perpetually prepared to lose everything again.

  And me? I felt like I was still scrambling to find the rules, let alone play by them.

  Remus wore ease like a second skin, and that very grace grated on me. No matter the identity we assumed, no matter the story we spun in the latest town where we were ghosts among the living, he never faltered. While I itched under false names and shallow pleasantries, he settled into each role like slipping into an old coat.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Loneliness had begun to gnaw at me like a slow rot. I craved connection—real, unfiltered moments of laughter, of shared stories over warm drinks, of someone calling my name not because they recognised it from headlines but because they knew me. In those rare stolen moments—on benches beneath rustling trees or inside quiet cafés steeped in the hum of Muggle mundanity—I could almost believe I wasn’t being hunted. That I was just another boy with bad eyesight and a sharp ache in his chest.

  But fantasy was fickle. The more I reached out, the more danger curled its cold fingers around us. And Remus, always watching from the shadows, would wordlessly pull us away again, slipping into yet another life, leaving behind the fragile beginnings of something that could’ve been real.

  This time was supposed to be different.

  But the word Hogwarts didn’t sit easily in my mind. It clanged like an echo from a former life. As Remus spoke about safety and permanence, I found myself involuntarily tightening my jaw. How could he be so certain? A school full of sharp-eyed students and secret passageways didn’t feel like sanctuary—it felt like a slow trap, closing in.

  Still, his voice was like the low notes of a cello—steady, calming. “Hogwarts is the safest place for you,” he said, with that maddening certainty of his. “The headmaster has ways… protections you haven’t even imagined. If you stay there, you won’t have to run again.”

  I wanted to believe him.

  He urged me to change into my school uniform, and I obeyed, each garment feeling like a relic from another life. The robes draped oddly on my frame—taller now, leaner, and wearier. They didn’t quite belong anymore. Or maybe I didn’t.

  Downstairs, Remus stood waiting, no longer the tattered traveller but something altogether more formal. There was a quiet dignity in his appearance—a blend of polished robes and the same tired eyes that had seen too much.

  He helped me adjust my tie, his fingers surprisingly deft. I caught a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror: the Hogwarts crest stark against my chest, the hat perched uncertainly atop unruly black hair. I looked like a boy playing dress-up, a ghost of someone I used to be.

  “There,” Remus said with a dry chuckle. “From wandering nomad to prestigious schoolboy.”

  I flinched at the joke. Wandering nomad. The words stung, not for their truth, but for how casually he wielded them. I wasn’t sure if he meant it as fondness or mockery—but the reminder of how rootless I’d become hit harder than I wanted to admit.

  I turned to him, uncertainty rising in my throat like bile. “I’m not so sure about this,” I admitted, voice soft and strained. “What if I’m just… not ready?”

  He stepped closer, eyes kind despite the heaviness in them. “You are. I’ve seen it. Every step you’ve taken—every sacrifice, every choice—it’s brought you here. You’re stronger than you know.”

  The words were meant to bolster, but they echoed inside me like prophecy—you will do great things. I hated that phrase. It always sounded less like encouragement and more like expectation, like a promise I’d never agreed to make.

  “It’s one thing to live in hiding,” I said slowly, “watching the world from the outside. But now… this feels like stepping into the centre of it all.”

  “It is,” Remus replied, without hesitation. “But you deserve more than the shadows, Harry. You deserve to belong.”

  I looked away, my voice barely above a whisper. “And what if something goes wrong?”

  He didn’t flinch. “Then Hogwarts will help make it right.”

  His faith in that place was almost enviable—like believing in the constancy of the stars. I wanted that kind of faith. I needed it.

  “But it feels dangerous,” I murmured, haunted by the weight of my past and the dark things that always seemed to follow.

  Remus placed a hand on my shoulder, grounding me. “That’s why I’m with you. That’s why Dumbledore’s watching. You don’t have to face this alone—not anymore.”

  His words settled over me like a spell, one that didn’t erase the fear but dulled its sharpest edge. Maybe he was right. Maybe there was still a place for me within those stone walls. A place where I could breathe, at least for a while.

  Remus smiled faintly, the lines around his eyes softening. For the first time in what felt like years, I let the quiet comfort of his presence be enough.