The night had settled heavy on his shoulders, a slow, grinding weight that seemed to thicken with each step as he made his way back. By the time he crossed the threshold of the safehouse, it was nearly unbearable, a presence that pressed into the muscles of his neck and spine as though the darkness itself had found a home inside his bones. The scent hit him first. Damp stone and old smoke, sharp and familiar, the ghost of burning wood curling in slow spirals through the stale air. It caught in his throat before he could stop it. Something about the smell made the skin at the back of his neck prickle. It was not new. None of this was new. And yet.
He stood in the doorway longer than he should have, boots half-slick with rain, the heel of his left foot grinding absently against the warped floorboard beneath him. The cold outside had bitten through the fabric of his coat, left his hands aching and raw, but the shift in temperature as he entered did nothing to ease it. The warmth of the room was thin, almost false, the kind that skims over skin but fails to reach beneath it. Inside him, the cold had sunk deeper. It had its claws in him now.
Behind him, the door swung shut with a low, aching groan that made his teeth clench, the sound swallowed almost instantly by the house's oppressive hush. Not simple silence. No. This was something heavier. The kind of silence that listened. That waited. That seemed to curl itself around the edges of the room like smoke in a sealed jar. He exhaled, slow, shallow, as if afraid that too loud a breath might wake something best left sleeping. The very walls felt close tonight, close and watchful, and though he knew it was madness to think it, the thought refused to leave him. He was not alone in here.
He had done this before. Merlin, he had done this so many times it should have been nothing by now. The taking of a life had long since become a familiar thing, as common as drawing a blade or buttoning his coat, a task performed by a version of himself that no longer flinched, no longer bled in ways that mattered. It had settled into him like a second skin, a dull presence that hovered somewhere beneath muscle and bone, an old friend, perhaps, or an old wound. Years of training had carved him into this shape. Years of cold whispers in darker rooms. Of hands moving without thought, steel sinking through the softest places, eyes watching the precise moment when the body gave out and the mind followed. He knew where to strike. How deep. How fast the blood would come, how long it would take before the light behind the eyes was gone. He had learned how to ignore the shift that rippled through the air each time a life was pulled from it. How to shut it out. Mission first. Survival first. Another day won. Another threat erased.
And yet.
Tonight was not like the others.
He could feel it in the sharp ache of his knuckles, in the way his breath caught too shallow in his throat. In the way his fingers twitched against the worn leather of his gloves even now, long after they should have stilled. He could feel it beneath his skin, a current of wrongness that refused to be ignored. Something had followed him back. Not a man. Not a shadow. Not anything he could name. It pressed at the edges of his mind now, soft as a whisper, sharp as broken glass. Each step further into the house seemed to pull it closer, a tether stretched too thin, ready to snap.
He paused at the foot of the stairs, fingers flexing once, twice, as if that might shake the thing off. As if it would be so simple. The air felt heavier here, thicker, as though the house itself were bracing against some unseen weight. And still, the silence watched him. He swallowed hard, the motion rough, unsteady.
He had done this before.
But this was different.
And whatever had followed him through the dark was not finished with him yet. It was with him still, clinging beneath the surface of his skin like frost that refused to thaw, coiling tighter with each shallow breath he took. It had threaded itself between the brittle spaces of his ribs, wound through the soft meat beneath his sternum, pulling him inward, tighter, with a pressure too subtle to name and too persistent to shake loose. He told himself it was nothing. Of course it was nothing. The aftermath, that familiar creeping residue of adrenaline giving way to exhaustion, the body trying to remember how to stand still after so many hours moving through shadows. He had felt it before. Every operative did. It always passed.
Only this time, it wasn't passing.
He could feel it in the way his shoulders refused to unknot, in the way his breath kept hitching, too sharp, too fast, as though some invisible hand still lingered at the base of his throat. He could feel it in the phantom weight of his blade, long since wiped clean and stowed away, but somehow heavier now than it had been when it was slick with blood. The blood on his hands should have meant nothing. Another stain, another night's work completed. A line drawn through a name. One less enemy for the Order to fear. That was the goal, was it not? That was the life. He had signed away his conscience long ago. He had made peace with that. And yet.
And yet.
For the first time in years, a cold knot of doubt had begun to unfurl inside him, slow and relentless. He couldn't shake it, couldn't reason it away, no matter how he turned the facts over in his mind. It wasn't logic that troubled him. Logic told him he had done the job. Perfectly. The kind of kill that left no room for ghosts. He had been so certain. Certain when the blade slid home with practiced ease. Certain when the man's body convulsed once, twice, then sagged like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Certain when the final breath rattled loose from his chest in a thin, broken sound that barely seemed to belong to a living thing. He had watched the light leave those eyes. He had been trained to do so. There had been no question.
And yet, here he was. Questioning everything.
The scene had been clean. Flawless, by any standard. No witnesses. No sound. No trace left behind but cooling blood on stone and a single life snuffed out as though it had never mattered. He had slipped back into the city's undercurrent before the body had even settled, moving with the fluid confidence of someone who knew the weight of a thousand similar nights. Streets turned beneath his feet like pages in a well-read book. No one had seen him. No one had known. By the time the city stirred again, his shadow would be long gone.
He had followed protocol. Every step exact. Every rule observed. He had done everything right.
Then why, for the first time in all these years, did it feel as though something had gone terribly, irreversibly wrong?
He could feel it in his blood now, humming low and restless, as if some unseen current had taken hold and was pulling him toward a truth he didn't want to face. The house around him seemed to pulse with it, a faint vibration beneath the floorboards, as though the very stones knew more than he did. He had done this before. Too many times. And never—not once—had the darkness followed him back quite like this.
But tonight, it had.
His movements remained deliberate as he stepped further into the room, each gesture measured as though he were afraid to break the fragile stillness that had settled over the house. He stripped off his gloves with slow, practiced care, fingers tugging at the leather one inch at a time, skin prickling beneath the cool air. His breath was even. Controlled. The kind of breath that came from years of conditioning, from knowing that panic served no one, that calm could be manufactured if one forced it hard enough. But beneath the veneer of control, his pulse betrayed him. It remained elevated, the faint thrum of blood moving too fast through his veins, each beat a subtle reminder that something inside him had not yet let go of the night.
His chest felt too tight. Each breath drew a little shallower than the one before, as though the air itself had thickened, turning to smoke inside his lungs. And deep within the marrow of his bones, beneath muscle and skin and sinew, something had begun to hum. A low, insistent vibration, not unlike the faint buzz of a wire pulled too taut, quivering on the verge of snapping.
It was not fear. He knew fear. Fear was sharp and immediate, a blade drawn against the throat, a cold flash of instinct screaming run. This was slower. Older. Something that had begun long before he stepped through the door and that refused now to fade. Nor was it exhaustion. The weight that pulled at his limbs was familiar enough, the dull ache of a body that had moved too long through the night. But this was something else. Something deeper.
It was a warning.
A slow, insidious pulse at the very edge of his awareness, soft as a whisper beneath his skin, rising now with each passing second. He could feel it pressing against the boundaries of his mind, a pressure that did not belong to him, something unseen that pushed and stretched at the edges of thought until he could no longer be certain where it ended and he began. It spoke of unfinished things. Of doors left open. Of shadows that had followed him when they should not have.
He had not turned on the lights. Some part of him could not bear to. The dim glow of the fireplace was enough, its amber light breathing in slow pulses against the walls. The flames shifted and swayed, casting the room in restless hues, bending the darkness into long, stretching shapes that writhed across the floorboards and climbed the beams overhead. The firelight caught at the edges of the furniture, painting the worn wood in gold and shadow. It should have been comforting. It had been once. The soft crackle of burning wood, the familiar warmth of a hearth long kept, a sound to ground him when the world outside offered no anchor.
But tonight, the warmth did nothing. The crackling seemed distant, thin, almost brittle beneath the weight of his thoughts. The heat reached only his skin, leaving the cold beneath untouched. The shadows moved too strangely now, too alive beneath the fire's sway, curling in patterns that made the eye flinch and the stomach tighten. They stretched toward him in long, spindled fingers, twisting into forms his mind refused to name, half-shapes that flickered and vanished when looked at too directly.
He told himself it was imagination. Fatigue. The lingering ghosts of adrenaline playing their tricks.
But deep beneath the practiced calm, beneath the steadied breath and methodical movements, a single truth remained.
The night was not yet finished with him.
And whatever watched from within the shifting dark was waiting still.
His muscles refused to loosen. No matter how many times he rolled his shoulders or flexed his hands, they remained drawn too tight beneath his skin, each nerve pulled taut and trembling just beneath the surface. The tension sat in him like a coiled wire, ready to snap, too ready, as though something unseen would come crawling from the edges of the room at any moment. The thought was absurd. He knew it was absurd. The knowledge did nothing to ease the grip it had on him. The old instincts were still firing, still screaming at him to move, to brace, to fight or run or vanish into the dark before it was too late. He had lived too long with those instincts to ignore them entirely, even when they betrayed him. Even when they made him feel like a fool in his own home.
It grated against what little calm he still held. He should not be this rattled. He had done this for too long. There were rules to this life. Patterns. He knew them as well as he knew the lines of his own palms. You finished the job, you slipped away, you came back to the safehouse and let the night strip itself away, piece by piece, until you were yourself again. He had never allowed one mission, one kill, one night to undo him. And yet here he was, standing like a man waiting for a blow that had not yet fallen, breath too sharp in his throat, hands curling and uncurling at his sides.
He had always been careful. More careful than most. Precision was what kept you alive. You learned the rhythm of the work and you followed it until it became a part of you. Every step counted. Every breath. You left no room for mistakes. Mistakes got you killed. Mistakes got others killed. And he did not make them.
Only tonight, the certainty that should have settled in his chest like a familiar, grounding weight, the certainty he had come to rely upon, would not come. In its place was something jagged and raw, something that pressed beneath his ribs and refused to shift no matter how many times he inhaled. It clawed at him from the inside, slow and steady, a presence that seemed to move closer each time he thought he had it contained. The satisfaction of a clean job was absent. In its place, unease had bloomed and taken root. He could feel it there now, growing with each second that passed, winding itself tighter.
With a sharp exhale, he shook his head, the motion quick and almost violent, as though he could shake the feeling loose through sheer force of will. It did not work. The hum of unease remained beneath his skin, low and insistent. A rhythm he could not silence.
Routine. That was what he needed. The familiar steps. The grounding tether that reminded him he was still here, still in control, still real. He needed the feel of the blade being cleaned and stowed, the slow counting of rounds in the magazine, the heat of scalding water against cold hands, the ritual of shedding the night's skin piece by piece until there was nothing left but the man beneath. Routine was what kept the darkness from bleeding too far inward. It was the thing that had saved him time and again. It would save him now.
He swallowed once, hard, throat dry, and moved toward the side table where his kit waited. One step, then another, the floorboards creaking softly beneath his boots. His body moved as if through water, every motion deliberate, every breath measured. There was no room for hesitation. Not tonight.
Removing his coat. Setting his weapons aside. Peeling bloodstained fabric from skin that still felt too raw beneath the weight of the night. These were the steps that tethered him back to himself, the rituals that marked the space between what had been done and what remained, the simple process of pulling away the last frayed edges of the mask he wore out there. One movement at a time, one breath at a time, he forced his body through the motions. The coat slid from his shoulders with a slow pull, the lining catching for half a second before falling limp over the back of the chair. The holster came next, fingers working at the buckles with methodical ease. Then the blade. Then the blood. The sleeves of his shirt were dark with it, patches that had dried stiff and patches still damp enough to cling coldly to his arms. He stripped it away piece by piece, each layer falling to the floor like a discarded skin.
This was the ritual. It always had been. The one thing that remained constant when the rest of the world blurred at the edges. You cleaned up after a job, you moved forward. You did not look back. You did not allow the night to follow you into the light. And yet tonight, as he moved through these familiar steps, there was something different in the air. A shift he could not name.
It began as movement. Not the sharp snap of wood beneath a careless foot, not the groan of old floorboards or the brush of fabric against the walls. No sound marked it. It was quieter than that. Subtler. A shift in the weight of the room itself, as though the air had thickened in the space behind him, pressing softly at the edges of his awareness. A delicate disturbance, the kind of thing one sensed in the skin before the mind caught up. His shoulders tightened instinctively.
He did not have to turn.
He already knew she was there.
Lovegood had always been there. Somehow, always. Even when the others faded into the noise of the house, when the safehouse itself seemed to swallow them whole, she remained. As though the walls themselves allowed her passage, as though the dark had made some quiet truce with her presence. And now she was here again, as inevitable as the pull of gravity. The faint glow of the fire caught in strands of her pale hair, catching light in a way that seemed almost otherworldly, casting her in hues that blurred the line between flesh and dream. She sat by the window, posture loose, one knee drawn close to her chest, her fingers moving in slow, absent patterns against the wood beneath them. She might have been tracing runes. She might have been drawing nothing at all.
Her gaze drifted. Unfocused. Thoughtful. Impossible to tell whether she was looking at him or through him. Perhaps at some thing only she could see, something folded within the dark that the rest of them could not name. He wondered, not for the first time, what world it was she moved through, what visions her mind followed when her eyes seemed to see so little of this one.
She did not speak. Of course she did not. That was her way. Words came when they were needed, and no sooner. And when they did, they often arrived soft and strange and sharp in the places one least expected. But for now, there was only the silence. And she had always had a way of filling it. Stretching it until it became a shape of its own, something that pressed into the space between them, something that made the air feel too thick, too full of things left unsaid.
He let the silence stand. Part of him did not trust what voice might come from his throat just yet.
And part of him wondered, with a cold certainty he could not name, whether she had felt it too.
And then, finally, her voice came. Quiet. Distant. Soft as ash drifting through a still room. No louder than the crackle of the fire. No stronger than a breath exhaled beneath it. The words unfurled into the air between them with a weight that seemed far too heavy for such a gentle sound.
"The crows have been talking."
That was all. No more. Four simple words, spoken without emphasis, without flourish, as though she were remarking on the weather or the shape of the shadows cast across the floor. They should have meant nothing. He told himself as much. Another of her strange musings, another fragment of thought wrapped in the half-shape of a truth that would never be fully explained. He had heard enough of them before. Enough to know when to let them pass without tethering himself to their meaning.
And yet. The way she said them. The way her voice seemed to settle over the room like a second skin, light and thin, but clinging. The way the fire's glow seemed to waver in that exact moment, as though responding to something unseen. That was harder to dismiss. A cold ripple traced its way down his spine, slow and deliberate, every vertebra seeming to lock tighter beneath the weight of it.
He clenched his jaw, grinding teeth against the pressure that now pulsed low behind his temples. Willed his muscles to release, to soften. They did not. His shoulders remained coiled. His breath remained shallow. He told himself it was nothing. He told himself that he was tired, that the edges of the night had blurred his thoughts and left his body heavy with fatigue. He told himself that the thick pull in his limbs was exhaustion, nothing more, that the quickened pace of his heartbeat was the natural echo of adrenaline, not fear, not unease, not the lingering echo of her words now spiraling through the air between them.
But none of it held.
He could feel her gaze on him still, that quiet way she watched, head tilted slightly as though already hearing the words he would not speak, seeing the truths he refused to face. She had always seen too much. That was what made her dangerous. Not her magic. Not her knowledge. The way she looked at you as if the thin layer of skin and bone between you and the rest of the world was no barrier at all.
He did not ask what she meant. He did not want to know. The shape of those words already sat too heavy inside him, a hook lodged beneath thought that would not be easily shaken loose. Instead, with the same deliberate calm that had carried him through a thousand darker nights, he forced his body into motion, one step after another. Past her. Past the pull of her voice and the question that threatened to root him in place.
He moved toward the small basin tucked in the far corner of the room. The wash basin was old and shallow, worn from years of use, the metal edges cool beneath his fingertips. He turned the tap with more force than necessary. Water sputtered at first, then flowed clear and cold, a sound that should have been grounding but rang thin in his ears.
He plunged his hands beneath it. The initial shock of cold made him flinch, skin tightening over bone, but he did not stop. The water ran clear for a moment, pooling beneath his fingers in thin ripples. Then pale pink began to spread through it, spiraling outward, delicate as smoke in air. Then darker. Red. Deep red swirling in thin ribbons that curled and vanished down the drain.
He scrubbed. Harder than needed. Nails biting into the worn bristles of the brush, dragging it over skin already raw, already aching. The bristles caught at the lines of his palms, scraping at the thin creases between knuckles, tearing at the place where blood still clung. The water turned redder still, a thin stream that seemed to stain the metal as it passed. He kept going. Too long. Too hard. As if the act itself could strip away the thing lodged inside him, could cleanse not just skin but thought, could scour away the whisper that echoed in the back of his mind.
Something was wrong.
The words rose unbidden. No matter how hard he ground the brush into flesh, no matter how deep he dug beneath the surface, they remained. Quiet. Certain. Unshakeable.
Something was wrong.
And the crows had been talking.
Behind him, she shifted.
It was a sound so soft it might not have been real, a faint stirring of fabric against worn floorboards, no louder than the hush of the fire that cracked and whispered behind him. Yet somehow he felt it. Not just heard it, but sensed it in the tight pull of skin across his shoulders, in the way the hair at the nape of his neck prickled beneath the unseen weight of her movement. His fingers curled tighter around the basin's edge, the cold porcelain biting into his knuckles. His body stilled, breath caught somewhere between inhale and exhale.
Then her voice came again, quiet, smooth, spoken as if she were remarking on nothing at all.
"You killed the wrong man."
The air shifted at once. Thickened. A sudden tightness gripped the room, sharp and cold, as though something unseen had wrapped itself around his ribs, pressing inward until each breath scraped raw against his lungs. The silence that followed was not empty. It thrummed with weight, with meaning, as though the house itself had drawn in a breath and held it fast.
His grip on the basin tightened, muscles straining beneath the skin. The cool press of porcelain beneath his palms was the only thing anchoring him now, the only point of contact that remained solid in a room where everything else seemed to tilt and blur. His breath came slower, each inhale drawn in with careful control, but the pulse in his throat told another story, loud and fast and ungoverned.
The weight in his chest grew heavier, sharp edges blooming beneath the breastbone, making the simple act of standing feel suddenly immense.
He turned.
Not quickly. Not with the sharp reflex of a man preparing to fight. Slowly. Deliberately. Every movement measured with care, as though the air itself might shatter if disturbed too harshly. He let his hands fall to his sides, fingers flexing once in the open air, then stilling. His stance was steady, shoulders drawn back with the same controlled precision he carried through every mission, every interaction. But it was not his body that betrayed him.
It was his eyes.
The rest of him remained unreadable, the familiar mask worn well and worn often, but in his gaze the truth seeped through, unbidden. A flicker of something sharp, something uncertain, something that had no place in the life he had built so carefully. His gaze caught hers across the dim space, drawn like a thread between them, and in that instant, the distance between word and meaning collapsed.
You killed the wrong man.
The words reverberated through him still, soft and relentless, as if spoken beneath his skin.
"I do not make mistakes." The words left his lips with the same cold, practiced finality that had carried him through too many nights like this one, through war and through blood and through the kind of missions that demanded a man carve away anything soft or human within himself in order to walk away alive. The tone was even, sharp, the blade he had always kept sheathed behind each word now drawn with deliberate ease. It was the kind of thing that once would have ended the conversation. The kind of truth that was not meant to be questioned.
But Luna did not flinch. She did not startle or soften, nor did her gaze waver beneath the weight of his words. She met his eyes with that same unhurried steadiness she had always carried, her silver-blue gaze catching the light of the fire in strange, molten flickers, as though the flames themselves had threaded through her irises. There was something moving beneath the surface of that gaze, something old and quiet and unreadable, a patience that unnerved more than the sharpest blade.
She tilted her head the barest fraction, not in challenge, not in deference, but in the kind of small, deliberate motion that told him she was listening in ways few ever did. The air between them felt too still, as if the house itself had ceased to breathe. Her gaze lingered on his face, tracing the set of his mouth, the hollow beneath his cheekbone, the faint strain at his temples that he could not fully mask. There was no judgment in her expression, nor pity. Only a sharp, soft patience that felt heavier than either.
The moment stretched, long enough that his pulse began to slow in his ears and each passing second seemed to weigh more than the last. Then she spoke, voice low and even, so quiet it barely seemed to disturb the thick air between them.
"No. You do not."
The words should have settled something in him, should have anchored that old certainty he had leaned on for so long, but they did not. Instead, they landed with the barest echo of finality, a truth wrapped not in reassurance, but in something deeper, something colder. Because she had not looked away. Because her gaze remained steady on his, unblinking, unyielding, and in that silence beneath her words there was no comfort to be found, only a quiet invitation for him to hear what she had not spoken aloud.
And beneath the practiced stillness of his breath and body, he felt it again. The slow, cold slide of doubt winding its way further beneath his ribs, loosening the grip of the certainty he had once held so tightly, the certainty that had long been his shield. He could feel it slipping now, further and further from reach, each breath carrying it farther until there was nothing solid left beneath it. And still, she waited. Not pressing. Not forcing. Only watching, knowing, as if the truth would find him in its own time whether he willed it or not.
He ascended the narrow staircase with deliberate slowness, feet heavy, breath shallow, each step chosen with the kind of measured care he usually reserved for unfamiliar ground. Tonight, the house felt unfamiliar. The air had changed. He could feel it against his skin, clinging cold and thin, thickened with something unseen, a pressure that seemed to settle at the base of his neck like a breath exhaled too close, not quite touching, but present all the same. His hand skimmed the railing, fingertips grazing the worn wood, grounding himself in the rough grain beneath them. Every instinct screamed caution, though no threat showed its face. Not yet.
The corridor at the top stretched ahead in crooked shadow. Candlelight flickered low along the walls, the flame bending oddly, pulling shapes where no shapes should have been, twisting the wooden beams into long fingers that curled and shifted as he watched. He blinked, forced himself to move forward, but the silhouettes seemed to follow, curling tighter at the edges of his vision, as if something unseen wove itself through the air between each breath.
Floorboards gave beneath his boots, groaning softly in protest, each creak quick to vanish beneath the weight of the hush that pressed against him. It was not the silence of a house at rest. This was a silence that filled the gaps where life should have existed, thick and unnatural, as if the walls themselves strained beneath its weight. There were voices somewhere below, faint and distant, the murmur of conversation drifting upward through the bones of the house. He caught the occasional sharp word, the brief flare of laughter cut short, but none of it reached him. The sense of solitude wrapped tighter, more suffocating with each step.
It had only been a week since Draco dragged him through the threshold of this so-called sanctuary. A mere seven days since the eight of them had been forced beneath the same roof, thrown together in fragile, uneasy proximity, a handful of reluctant allies bound by circumstance more than choice. And yet, despite the familiar names, the old acquaintances, the shared history that should have bred some comfort in the gathering, it had not. If anything, it had made the place feel thinner. Brittle.
And in all of it, it was her presence that unsettled him most.
She was a constant hum beneath the skin of the house. A specter woven through the grain of the floorboards, lingering at the edge of every room, an ever-present pull just beyond sight. Even now, with the corridor stretched empty ahead, he could feel her. A soft weight in the back of his mind. The prickling sensation that came when eyes found you in a crowd. Except there was no crowd. There was no gaze. Only the awareness of her. Always there.
He told himself it was nothing. An old reflex, a trick of memory and exhaustion, but the lie wore thin with each passing day. No matter how hard he tried to shake it, no matter how carefully he rebuilt the walls around himself, he could feel her. Not in sight, not in sound, but in the air itself. Her presence lived there now. Threaded through the stillness. Folded into every breath he took within these walls.
She was not the same girl he remembered from Hogwarts.
That much had been clear from the moment he had seen her again. Something in the way she moved. In the way silence bent around her. In the way her gaze seemed to slip beneath the surface of things with quiet ease. Whatever softness had once defined her had grown sharper, stranger, laced through with an unsettling calm. She did not belong to the version of the past he remembered. And he could not seem to decide whether that truth unnerved him more than it should, or whether some part of him had been waiting for it all along.
But now, standing beneath the same roof, walking these halls where her presence hung in the air like the faint trace of a song half-remembered, he found her far harder to dismiss. She was no longer a figure caught on the edges of memory, no longer the strange, bright girl from school whose oddities could be brushed aside as youthful whim or the harmless drift of a mind untethered. That version of her had vanished somewhere between the wreckage of the war and the broken, shifting present they now inhabited.
She was not a little girl anymore. That much was undeniable.
Something had changed in the space between then and now, in the dark spaces where time had folded and cracked and left them all carrying more than they could name. Somewhere in that unspoken stretch of years, she had become something else entirely. Something that unsettled him far more than he would ever admit aloud, something that defied the easy categories of understanding he had relied on for so long to navigate the world.
She had become ethereal.
Not in the soft, untouchable way of a girl untouched by sorrow or war, not in the brittle delicacy of something that might shatter beneath the wrong kind of gaze. No, hers was the kind of presence that carried weight in its stillness. The kind that moved through rooms with the surety of something that saw far more than it spoke. She seemed in tune with things that remained hidden from the rest of them, as though her senses reached into a plane just out of reach, pulling back pieces the rest of them could not grasp. There was nothing fragile in her anymore. There was nothing that could be dismissed.
And she was beautiful now. That word caught in his mind before he could push it away, before he could dress it in something safer, something less dangerous. Beautiful, though not in the way that invited closeness or warmth. Not the kind of beauty that softened the eye or drew the hand. Hers was a beauty that made the pulse jump in the throat, that unsettled as much as it caught. Something sharp, cold at the edges, edged in a strangeness that felt neither entirely human nor entirely apart from humanity. Something that seemed borrowed from a place just beyond the reach of this world.
It was in the way she moved, slow and unhurried, each step deliberate, as though the very air shifted to accommodate her, as though the space around her bent and folded without resistance. As if some deeper current carried her through each room with a grace that had nothing to do with flesh and bone. It was in the way she tilted her head at those odd angles, gaze drifting toward unseen corners of the room, not absentminded, not lost in thought, but with the deep attentiveness of one who heard things the rest of them could not, who listened to voices too soft or too strange to be caught by ordinary ears.
She had changed.
Her presence had changed.
There was something in the way she carried herself now, in the unspoken weight of her movements, in the way her voice had changed, shaped by years that had hardened the rest of them in different ways. It had deepened, smoothed into something quieter, something richer, no longer the light, airy cadence of a girl lost in half-dreamed thoughts. Now it was threaded through with meanings that lived beneath the surface of each word, subtle and precise, a softness that held the bite of truth within it, meant for those who could hear what was not spoken aloud. It was not the voice of a child. It was the voice of a woman who had seen too much and carried it well, a voice that made you lean in without realizing it, made you listen even when you told yourself not to.
She was angelic, but not in the way one would speak of innocence or untouched beauty. No softness of skin or sweetness of smile could define her presence now. No. She was angelic in the way of ancient things, beautiful yet distant, carved into the fabric of the world like the worn figures that adorned cathedral walls, eyes hollowed with a wisdom too deep to meet directly, hands extended in strange gestures whose meanings blurred between salvation and judgment. There was a holiness to her presence that felt less like grace and more like a warning, a sense that to look too long, to reach too far, might uncover something one was not meant to know.
And yet, there she was. Among them. Moving through the rooms of this broken house, speaking with the others, existing in the same frail space they all inhabited, as though the blood and dust and ruin of this world had not touched her in the same way it had touched them. As though she did not belong anywhere, and somehow belonged everywhere all the same. There was an ease to her presence that defied sense, as though she walked through the cracks in the world while the rest of them remained trapped beneath its weight.
He told himself it was unease. That was the reason. The reason his gaze lingered longer than it should when she passed through a room. The reason his body tensed with a strange, restless energy whenever her voice slid through a conversation, low and unhurried, threading beneath the noise and finding its way to him no matter how he tried to resist. The reason he found himself listening for her footsteps when the house grew too quiet, waiting for the small shifts in air that marked her passage. The reason his mind caught on the memory of her voice, her eyes, the curve of her hand trailing across a table's worn surface as if it were the most fragile thing in the world.
It was unease. That was the easy answer. The natural discomfort of sharing space with someone who blurred the line between what was real and what was not. Someone whose presence made the air feel thinner, whose movements seemed to tilt the edges of reality. Someone who unsettled the ground beneath his feet with every passing glance.
But deep down, beneath the explanations he told himself, beneath the shields he kept in place, he knew better.
It was not unease alone.
She unsettled him, yes. But it was not fear that kept him watching. It was not wariness that left his gaze searching for her in rooms too full of shadows. It was something deeper. Something slower. Something that reached beneath the ribs and curled there, patient and silent and dangerous. And still, he could not look away.
No matter how much he wanted to.
~~~
The water ran hot. Too hot. Scalding against his skin in a steady, relentless stream that battered down from the cracked showerhead above. But the sting of it barely registered. His nerves had dulled somewhere along the way, blunted by exhaustion or something deeper, something colder that had settled beneath the surface of his awareness. He stood beneath the torrent with his head bowed, strands of dark hair plastered to his forehead, breath dragging slow and shallow from his chest. His hands were braced against the cool, slick tiles of the wall, fingers spread wide, palms aching from the pressure of holding himself upright.
Steam coiled thickly around him, heavy and cloying, turning the small, dimly lit space into a world removed from anything real. The edges of the room blurred behind the fog, warped and shifting, as though he were standing inside some forgotten dream that refused to let him wake. Each breath pulled in the taste of iron and stone, sharp against the back of his throat. The scent clung to him. Metallic. Foul. A tang of blood woven with soap and damp tile, and no matter how many times he tried to breathe past it, it remained. The air itself seemed tainted now.
He had been here for what felt like hours, time stretched thin and meaningless. Long enough for the water to run in lazy spirals down the drain, pale at first, then pink, then red. A slow, hypnotic dance of color he could not look away from. No matter how many times he scrubbed, no matter how hard he pressed the soap into skin rubbed raw beneath his touch, the stain lingered. It refused to be washed away.
And this time, it was different.
Not like before.
He had done this ritual more times than he could count. Had stood beneath showers just like this, night after night, letting the heat burn against muscle and bone, letting water strip away the evidence of what had been done. Blood came easily enough. Water took it. Heat masked the cold it left behind. It had always been enough. The illusion of cleansing. Of control. Of leaving it all behind once the drain ran clear. You learned not to think too hard about it. You learned to believe the lie.
But tonight, the water did not lie.
Tonight, the blood clung to him with a weight that made his stomach twist, thick and unyielding, seeping deeper than the skin. No amount of heat seemed to loosen it. No amount of scrubbing could tear it free. It pressed beneath his fingertips as he dragged his hands over his arms, across the hard lines of his chest, again and again. Nails dug into flesh without meaning to, leaving faint crescents in skin that no longer felt like his own. He could feel it there. In the pores. In the grooves between ribs and sinew. A sickness soaked into the very core of him.
It should be gone by now.
It always was.
But not tonight.
And the more he scrubbed, the more the wrongness seemed to settle deeper, blooming slow and cold beneath the heat of the water. As if the blood was no longer a thing outside of him, but something within, something that had marked more than skin. Something that had claimed a place he could not reach.
And still the water ran red.
The heat of the shower did nothing to chase away the cold that had settled beneath his skin, a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room and everything to do with the way the night refused to let go of him. The memory of it sat heavy in his mind, the way the body had crumpled, the way the air had shifted in the seconds after the kill, the way something had lingered in the silence that followed. He had walked away. He had done what needed to be done. But something had changed, something had unraveled in the moment when his blade had slid through flesh, and now, standing beneath the water, watching the last remnants of red disappear into the drain, he couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't over.
He tipped his head back, letting the water cascade over his face, his breath slow, steady, controlled, but beneath it, beneath the rigid restraint he forced himself to maintain, the unease gnawed at him, refusing to be ignored.
The blood should have washed away by now.
But somehow, he could still feel it.
~~~
After pulling on a pair of worn sweatpants, threadbare at the knees, and an equally loose t-shirt that clung damply to his still-warm skin, Theo moved barefoot to the top of the staircase. For a moment he stood there, one hand on the rail, breath low, as though the simple act of descending might demand more strength than he cared to give. The lingering heat from the shower clung to him in uneven patches, a thin film of warmth that did nothing to ease the cold knot lodged beneath his ribs. His hair remained damp, steam still curling from the strands, brushing cool against his temples and dripping the occasional bead of water down the side of his face. He wiped it away absently with the heel of his palm, but the ache in his chest remained unmoved. A dull, heavy presence pressed beneath the bone, slow and relentless. No amount of heat had touched it. No deep breath had loosened it.
The staircase creaked beneath his weight, boards groaning softly in the way old wood did when forced to hold what it was never meant to. The house had fallen quiet in that particular way it always seemed to at this hour. A hush born not from peace but from exhaustion, a kind of collective pause when its inhabitants retreated to their corners to nurse their wounds or drown themselves in whatever distraction kept the dark at bay. Yet even in that stillness, life lingered at the edges.
As he moved toward the kitchen, a faint sound carried through the thin air. The soft clink of a spoon against ceramic, a rustle of parchment sliding across wood. Not loud. Not insistent. But enough to mark another presence awake when the rest had surrendered to sleep.
Hermione.
She sat at the long wooden table, posture slightly hunched, shoulders pulled inward in the way of someone lost to thought. A steaming cup of tea rested in her grasp, thin trails of vapor rising to catch in the dim light. The flame of a single candle flickered nearby, its glow casting uneven shadows across her face, catching the sharp lines of cheekbone and brow, painting her features in shifting contrast. Her eyes tracked the intricate blueprints spread before her with steady focus, skimming the dense tangle of lines and notations with a precision that spoke to long habit.
He paused in the doorway, shoulder resting against the frame, letting his weight lean into it as though that small act might buy him another moment before stepping into the room. For a long beat he stood there, watching her move through the familiar motions of her quiet ritual, her attention fixed so sharply on the papers beneath her that the world beyond the flicker of candlelight seemed to fall away entirely.
She muttered something beneath her breath, words too soft to catch, brow furrowing as she adjusted a note in the margin with the slow precision of someone who could not bear to leave any line unchallenged. The scratch of quill against parchment was the only sound that broke the hush between them, a small, steady rhythm. After a moment, she paused, fingers curling around the handle of her mug, lifting it to her lips for a slow, unhurried sip.
It was the same scene he had walked in on more times than he cared to count. Her mind always working, always spinning far ahead of the rest of them, incapable of yielding to the pull of sleep when there was still some thread left to unravel. There was something almost grounding in that. Predictable in a house where so little seemed to stay the same.
Finally, he pushed off the frame and stepped forward, muscles loose, stretching his arms overhead in a slow arc to shake off the stiffness that had set in. His voice came low, touched with a familiar drawl that was equal parts habit and the faintest thread of amusement.
"Granger."
At the sound, she glanced up, eyes sharp and clear despite the hour. The corners of her mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile threatening to form, though she did not roll her eyes as she often might have at his deliberate lack of formality. Instead, she exhaled softly, a small sigh that seemed to settle the space between them. Shifting in her seat, she cupped the mug between her hands, fingers curling around the worn ceramic as though drawing warmth from it.
"Theodore," she returned, her voice light but edged with that pointed clarity she never quite set aside. "I think we are well past the stage of calling each other by surnames, don't you?"
He smirked, a flicker of something unspoken rising in his chest. Moving to the chair opposite hers, he pulled it out with a low scrape of wood against the floor and sank into it, limbs folding with the kind of ease that came only from long nights spent in this exact place. The seat felt too familiar beneath him, worn in ways that mirrored the grooves beneath his skin.
"Hermione," he said finally, letting the name settle on his tongue, shaping it carefully, almost testing it, as though speaking it aloud changed something fundamental between them. There was a strangeness to it, and yet, it fit. More than it should have.
She hummed, a small sound of approval that did not quite reach a smile. Tilting her head, she regarded him with that particular gaze of hers, sharp and quiet, sweeping over him with a kind of measured curiosity that made his skin prickle. Not judgment. Not pity. Just the unyielding attentiveness of someone who saw more than others wanted her to.
She had a way of doing that. Of seeing through the space between words, of watching the places where the cracks showed. Of cataloging the truths people kept buried before they were ready to have them seen. He met her gaze without flinching, though some part of him itched to look away, to shift beneath the weight of it.
Instead, he leaned back in the chair, breath settling low in his chest, hands loose against the arms of the seat. For a moment, they simply regarded each other across the battered surface of the table, the candlelight flickering between them, the night holding its breath around their unspoken words.
"Are you all right, love?" she asked, the word slipping free without hesitation, warm and familiar, the kind of endearment that came naturally from her when the walls between her and the people she cared about thinned. She did not seem to think twice about it. Her voice held none of the usual sharp edges, just a low softness that caught faintly in the space between them.
He leaned back in his chair, breath slow, shoulders settling into the worn curve of the seat as though the motion alone might dislodge the weight still coiled inside him. Crossing his arms over his chest, he offered a shrug that looked far easier than it felt, the gesture loose, casual, practiced. He had worn that posture often enough to know how to shape it on command.
"Yeah," he said, voice steady, too steady. "Of course. Everything went as planned. No mishaps."
The words tasted strange in his mouth, brittle beneath their even delivery. But he gave no sign of it, keeping his gaze easy, his body still. If he could convince himself of the lie, perhaps it would begin to hold.
Across the table, Hermione narrowed her eyes slightly, the shift in her gaze too subtle to be called suspicion, yet enough to tell him she was searching. Looking for the edges of whatever truth he was leaving unsaid. She had always been too sharp for comfort, too attuned to the spaces where words faltered. He held her gaze, steady and unflinching, until she exhaled softly, shoulders easing. Not a surrender, but a temporary reprieve.
Before she could speak again, her eyes flicked toward the doorway, focus sharpening for a moment as she caught some unseen cue beyond the room.
"Draco will be down soon," she said, voice dipping back into something more businesslike, though the faint sigh that followed hinted at some private weariness beneath it. "He wants to have a quick meeting."
Theo arched a brow, the motion slow and deliberate, a flicker of mischief tugging at the corner of his mouth. Leaning forward, he braced his forearms against the worn wood of the table, voice dropping just enough to draw her gaze back to him.
"Draco, is it now?"
The faintest flush touched her cheeks. She groaned, lifting one hand to rub at her temple in a familiar gesture, fingers pressing against skin as though trying to ward off an oncoming headache.
"Oh, gods, Theo, stop," she muttered, voice low and roughened with the edge of resignation rather than true annoyance. There was no heat behind it, only the tired, familiar cadence of someone who knew it was already too late to undo what had been said. "That is his name."
But even as the words left her mouth, her face betrayed her, flushing a deep, unmistakable crimson. She lifted her mug too quickly, trying to hide behind the rim, but the effort backfired. A sharp cough tore from her throat as she choked on the tea, setting the cup down with a clatter that sent a thin arc of liquid spilling across the edge of her notes. Her eyes widened, horrified, as she coughed again, breath catching.
"Theodore," she gasped out between coughs, voice pitched with the sharp warning of someone scrambling to regain control.
He only grinned wider, slouching deeper into his chair, every line of his body radiating lazy amusement. The rare opportunity to catch her off balance was one he was not about to waste.
"Might want to practice your silencing and contraceptive charms," he said smoothly, lifting his own mug in a slow, exaggerated toast. His eyes gleamed with mischief, the kind of irreverent spark that he usually kept well-guarded beneath sharper layers of self-preservation.
"Nothing happened!" she sputtered, too fast, too loud. Her voice cracked just slightly at the edge, veering into a register a touch too defensive to sound convincing. The words hovered between them, brittle with the weight of denial.
Theo chuckled, unhurried, shaking his head as he took a slow, deliberate sip of his tea, letting the silence stretch between them just long enough to make her squirm.
"I may be inexperienced, Hermione," he drawled, voice dropping a fraction lower, laced with that infuriating note of mock innocence. "But I am not deaf."
She groaned, a long sound of surrender that seemed to drag from somewhere deep in her chest. Dropping her face into her hands, she pressed her palms hard against her cheeks, as though willing the flush to fade by sheer force. Her voice emerged muffled and small through her fingers.
"Keep that between us?" she mumbled. "I don't want the others to know."
He watched her for a beat, amusement flickering and fading into something quieter beneath his gaze. There was a softness there, a thread of understanding that he rarely allowed to surface. For all the teasing, he knew where the line stood. And he knew when not to cross it.
"If it helps you sleep better at night," he said softly, the smirk slipping from his mouth into something steadier, more sincere, "sure."
Her shoulders sagged in visible relief, though when she finally lifted her head, the pointed glare she sent across the table was sharp enough to draw blood.
"You are insufferable," she said, tone flat but lacking true venom.
"And yet," he murmured, mouth quirking into a crooked smile as he reached for one of the blueprints, sliding it closer with two fingers, "you would be lost without me."
He skimmed the lines lazily, eyes tracing the ink with practiced disinterest before nudging the parchment back toward her with a flick of his wrist. The casual ease in his movements undercut the sharp edges that had laced the air between them only moments before.
She rolled her eyes, the motion slow, but this time there was no tension in it. No fight. Instead, without looking up, she nudged his foot beneath the table, the smallest of gestures, her bare toes brushing against his ankle in silent gratitude.
Draco arrived at last, footsteps sharp against the wood, each one striking with a deliberate rhythm that spoke of a man who had spent too many nights commanding attention when he would rather have vanished into the dark. The sound carried through the hush of the kitchen before his figure appeared in the doorway, presence shifting the air with that quiet authority he had always worn like a second skin.
His platinum hair was slightly disheveled, strands askew in a way that suggested more than one hand had been dragged through it in frustration. The sharp angles of his face were drawn tighter tonight, a shadow of exhaustion etched deep beneath his eyes, as though sleep had become a foreign language to him in recent days.
Without a word, he crossed into the room, movements clipped, parchment gripped tightly in one hand, the other pressed against the bridge of his nose as though bracing himself for the headache he clearly expected this conversation to bring. His eyes flicked once toward Theo and Hermione, barely lingering, before he dropped the stack of parchment onto the table with a dull, weighted thud that sent a thin cloud of dust scattering across its surface.
The sound seemed to mark a shift in the room. He pulled out a chair and dropped into it with a weary exhale, bones settling into place like a man who had been standing far too long.
"We need to go over the details," he said at last, voice clipped, every word shaped by the bone-deep fatigue threaded beneath it. Business, all of it, though something brittle lingered beneath the tone, a tension that had not eased even now.
Theo leaned back in his chair with practiced ease, limbs loose, spine angled against the seat, expression laced with that familiar, lazy amusement he wore when the room grew too heavy. He reached for his tea, fingers curling around the mug with deliberate slowness, as if the simple act of drinking from it might shield him from the inevitable.
"Good evening to you too, Your Majesty," he drawled, lips curving into a smirk that did not quite reach his eyes.
Draco's mouth twitched, the faintest flicker of irritation flashing beneath his otherwise unreadable expression, though he resisted the urge to roll his eyes outright.
Across the table, Hermione shot Theo a glance sharp enough to draw blood. Her gaze lingered for a beat, silent warning clear in the tilt of her brow before she turned her attention back to Draco, her posture straightening, voice smoothing into its familiar cadence of command.
"Alright," she said, tone brisk, all traces of the earlier warmth gone. "Let's start from the beginning. What do we know?"
Draco exhaled, fingers lifting to rub at his temple with slow circles before he reached for the parchment. With a flick of his wrist, the top sheet spread itself open, a detailed map blooming across its surface, ink bleeding into sharp, precise lines and notations. The candlelight caught on the wet edges of the fresh ink, making the map pulse faintly beneath their gaze.
His eyes flicked to Theo, gaze sharpening.
"The hit was clean?"
Theo exhaled through his nose, fingers drumming once against the arm of his chair before he shifted forward, elbows braced against the table.
"As clean as it could be," he said, voice even. "No collateral. No loose ends."
But he hesitated, the words hanging in the air between them. A pause too long to go unnoticed. His gaze dropped to the map, to the neat lines that traced the alleys and rooftops he had moved through hours ago, but all he could see was the blood pooling too thick against the stone. The air folding in on itself. The wrongness that had lodged in his skin and refused to fade.
His jaw tightened. Breath caught shallow in his throat.
"But something felt off," he said at last, the admission tasting sour.
Draco's gaze sharpened further, shoulders tensing beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. "Off how?"
Theo did not answer immediately. The words snagged in his mind, fragments that refused to settle into shape. He stared at the map, fingers curling against the grain of the table. For a moment the room seemed to fade around him, the sound of water against stone filling his ears, the ghost of iron thick on his tongue.
"The blood," he said finally, voice low. "It was wrong."
Draco's fingers stilled against the parchment, jaw ticking once. His expression remained unreadable, but the tension in his posture spoke plainly enough.
"You're saying—"
"That's exactly what I'm saying." Theo cut in, voice steady now, breath falling into an uneasy rhythm.
Draco leaned back, chair creaking beneath him as he ran a hand down his face, weariness pulling at his features.
"You weren't followed," he said, words clipped. "So it's not the Death Eaters."
A pause followed, drawn out and pointed. His gaze fixed hard on Theo.
"Why don't you just get some sleep, Prince."
The title landed sharp, deliberate, an edge to the words that made Theo's teeth clench. But he said nothing. Only exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes still fixed on the map as if it might yet give him an answer he could not name.
Theo barely muttered an excuse, the words thin and half-formed, already forgotten by the time he pushed himself up from his chair. His movements were measured, every line of his body held in check, but beneath the calm, something restless simmered. He needed space. Space from the conversation unraveling in the room below, from the sharp focus of Draco's eyes narrowing over each word, from the weight of Hermione's concern bleeding into every glance. Most of all, from the gnawing coil of his own unease that refused to settle no matter how tightly he drew himself inward.
It felt as if the walls were pressing closer with every breath, the air thickening, each voice in the room layering one more weight upon his shoulders. He needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Away from the scrutiny. Away from the sound of his own voice trying to explain what he could not name. Away from the thought of blood that would not wash clean.
His boots barely made a sound against the worn wood of the stairs as he climbed, steps fluid, almost too quiet, as though his body had slipped into the old rhythm of escape without waiting for permission. Muscle memory drove him forward, breath falling shallow and quick despite every effort to force it calm. He moved as if pursued, though no one followed. Not yet.
By the time he reached his room, he was not sure how many steps he had counted. His hand closed over the handle, cold beneath his palm, and with one smooth pull he slipped inside, shutting the door behind him with a soft, final click. The sound echoed through the stillness, too loud in the quiet. It should have brought relief, should have marked the boundary he needed between himself and the weight pressing down in the rooms below. But it did not. If anything, the silence here felt thicker, folding around him like smoke, clinging to skin and bone. The tension in his chest did not ease. It burrowed deeper.
Solitude. Finally.
But the calm he chased did not come. Time bent strangely in his exhaustion, each moment stretching thin and weightless. Minutes slid past in a haze, or perhaps it had only been seconds. He could not tell. The ache behind his eyes deepened, breath slowing but never fully settling. The room blurred at the edges, shapes softening beneath the dim light, as though the house itself exhaled in his absence.
And then came the knock.
Light. Deliberate. Not hurried. A sound that seemed to enter the space before it landed fully against the wood. It came not as a surprise, not truly, for even before the knock settled into the air, he had felt the shift. The same subtle change in pressure that always preceded her presence, that slight pull at the edge of awareness that had become as familiar as his own breath in the past week.
He did not need to turn. He did not need to ask. He already knew. The knowing sat low in his gut, sharp and certain.
She was standing in his doorway when he finally turned, her figure half-silhouetted by the faint spill of light from the corridor behind her. She had not knocked again. Had not spoken until he faced her.
"Theodore."
His name slipped from her lips with the quiet certainty of something already decided, as though this moment had been written into the bones of the night long before he had climbed the stairs, long before the blood had stained the stone beneath his feet. There was no question in her voice, no hesitation. Just inevitability.
He met her gaze, breath caught too high in his chest, trying and failing to ignore the way his name sounded when shaped by her voice. It did not feel like his own, not in her mouth. It felt older, heavier, as though she spoke to something beneath the man he was trying to hold together.
"Lovegood," he returned, voice carefully measured, each syllable wrapped in a thin shell of neutrality. A barrier. Or the pretense of one. He was not sure it would hold. Not with her. Not tonight.
She watched him in silence, gaze unblinking, unreadable, her expression held in that infuriating stillness that made it impossible to tell what she was thinking, what she knew. Her head tilted slightly, the smallest motion, as though she were listening to some sound beyond the walls, beyond the reach of his hearing. The gesture sent a prickle across his skin.
And then, with that same soft, unwavering voice, she said the words he had no wish to hear.
"You killed the wrong person."
His shoulders stiffened, breath locking in his throat, jaw tightening against the sharp spike of frustration that flared beneath his ribs. Not this. Not her, of all people, feeding the doubts he had spent the last hours trying to drown beneath silence and scalding water. He exhaled hard, forcing the breath free, forcing himself to keep the surface calm, to hold his body still even as the coil of tension wound tighter with each beat of his heart.
"Stop this," he said, voice low, clipped. "I don't make mistakes. I told you already. He is dead."
She did not flinch. Did not blink. Did not shift a single inch. Her gaze remained steady, her posture unchanged, as though the world itself could crack and splinter around her and she would remain just as she was, watching the pieces fall without moving to catch them.
"That's not what I heard."
The words landed sharper than they should have, sinking beneath the thin armor of composure he fought to maintain. His fingers curled before he could stop them, nails pressing into his palms, fists clenching tight at his sides. The tension wired through his frame like a blade drawn taut, each muscle pulled too tight, ready to snap.
He should have ignored her. Should have stepped past her, shut the door, silenced her words the way he had silenced countless others that had no place inside his mind. But he didn't. Couldn't. Something in the way she had said it, the certainty in her tone, left his stomach twisting in a way he could not explain, in a way he did not like.
His breath left him in a sharp, forced exhale. "From who, pray tell?"
She answered without pause. Without a flicker of doubt.
"From the crows."
The laugh rose in him almost reflexively, brittle and bitter, but it caught in his throat before it could break free. The sound died unformed, swallowed by the thick air between them. He stared at her instead, eyes narrowing, searching her face for any trace of mockery, any hint of amusement, any sign that this was just another one of her strange games, meant to unravel him one thread at a time.
But there was none.
She was serious.
And that, more than anything, sent an icy shiver along his spine, cold and slow, settling deep in the space between breath and bone.
Because if she believed it, if she was certain, then some part of him feared it might already be true.
Luna stepped forward. Just slightly. Barely enough to cross the invisible line between them, barely enough for the dim spill of candlelight from the hallway to catch and catch again in the pale strands of her hair. The silver gleamed where it should not have, the faint glow folding over her in strange, soft waves, as though the shadows themselves bent around her without resistance. The light made her look untouched by the weight of what she was saying, untouched by the hour, untouched by the blood and the doubt that clung to him still. She looked eerily calm, impossibly steady, as though this conversation were nothing more than breath moving through the quiet, as though the words she carried could not fracture the ground beneath them.
"The person isn't there anymore," she said, voice flat, without inflection, each word falling clean into the space between them as if it were simply fact. Not threat, not warning. Just truth. Cold and unadorned.
As if she were not shattering the last fragile grip he held on certainty. As if she were not cracking the thin shell he had built around the night, the one he had wrapped so tightly around himself that it had begun to feel like skin.
For one breathless second, something inside him faltered. A single slip beneath the weight of her words. His carefully built conviction, the shield forged from years of training and colder truths, cracked at the edge, just enough to let something else seep through. Not doubt. Not yet. But something close to it. Something colder.
He had seen the body fall. He had felt the blade move through flesh with the practiced ease of a hundred such nights. He had watched the man's body crumple to the stone, slack and final. He had seen the light fade from his eyes, a flicker, then nothing. He had stood in the silence afterward, breath slow, heartbeat steady, the shape of the kill settling into him with the same clean weight it always did.
He had walked away knowing. Knowing the job was done. Knowing there was nothing left to fear in the space he left behind.
And yet, here she stood, pale and still and calm as bone beneath water, speaking of crows and whispers and impossibilities as if they were truths carved into the very fabric of the world. As if the laws he lived by, the rules that had kept him breathing when others had fallen, meant nothing at all beneath the weight of what she knew.
Bloody hell.
Theo exhaled sharply through his nose, breath flaring too hot against the back of his throat. His fingers rose without thought, pressing the heel of his palm hard against his brow, as though the simple pressure might force the creeping unease from his skull, might stem the slow trickle of something colder winding its way into the spaces thought should have filled.
He was exhausted. That was all. This was exhaustion.
Hours without sleep, the weight of adrenaline still poisoning his blood, the sharp edge of his nerves stretched thin enough to tear. He had let her words catch because his mind was tired, because the night had not yet left his bones. That was all it was.
Nothing more.
"Everything is fine, Lovegood." The words came heavier than he meant them to, weighted in a way he could not quite disguise, each syllable landing slow and thick in the air between them. They sounded like a lie even to his own ears. Or worse, like something spoken not for her, but for himself. He could hear it in the hollow of his voice, in the too-casual cadence that did not quite hold. "I am fine. Nothing happened."
She did not argue. Did not press. Did not do what any other person in this house might have done—demand more, lean closer, fill the space with questions sharp as knives. She simply watched him, eyes moving slow across his face, gaze sweeping as though she were reading beneath the skin, searching through the cracks he had not meant to show. And in that moment, standing beneath her regard, he realized with sudden clarity that some part of him did not want her to find what she was looking for. Not tonight.
And yet she did not look away.
Then, finally, her head inclined by the barest fraction, a motion so subtle it might have passed unnoticed if he had not been watching her so closely. The ghost of a smile touched the corner of her mouth, faint and knowing, not unkind but unsettling in its certainty.
"If you say so."
The words were soft, almost gentle, but something beneath them caught like a thread pulling loose inside him.
Without another sound, she turned. Her steps were light, near soundless, as if the floor beneath her feet offered no resistance. Within moments, her figure slipped back into the dim stretch of the corridor, her pale hair catching the last flicker of candlelight before it vanished entirely. She moved as though she had never truly been there at all. As though the space she left behind had only briefly remembered her shape.
The moment the shadows swallowed her, Theo let out a long breath he had not realized he had been holding, exhaling slow through parted lips, the sound catching slightly in his throat. His hand dragged down the length of his face, fingers splaying across tired skin, the motion meant to clear his mind, though it failed. The room felt altered now, wrong at the edges. The space where she had stood seemed to hum faintly, as if something invisible remained, something heavier than her presence alone.
He swallowed once, hard, the motion thick and slow. His gaze drifted to the doorway, to the empty frame that had held her only moments ago, to the thin line of shadow that now pressed against the threshold. His chest rose and fell in a shallow rhythm, the knot beneath his ribs tightening once more.
And for the first time since stepping back into the supposed safety of this house, he was no longer sure if he was alone.
~~~
Sleep refused to come.
No matter how many times he shifted onto his side, no matter how deeply he inhaled in search of calm, no matter how forcefully he willed his mind to quiet, his body remained taut beneath the sheets, breath thin, heart pacing a step too fast. The room was dark, thick with a silence that should have been restful, the kind of hush that wrapped old wooden beams and plaster in soft edges, the kind of hush that promised sleep if only one surrendered to it. But it was no comfort tonight. Not when the weight of her words still clung to him like damp fabric, pressing against his skin, winding slow and unrelenting through muscle and bone.
You killed the wrong person.
The phrase echoed through him, looping endlessly, not as thought but as sensation, as if someone had spoken it into the marrow of his bones, as if it had rooted itself beneath his breath and blood. Every inhale seemed to pull it deeper. Every exhale failed to purge it.
He lay flat on his back, eyes open, gaze fixed on the ceiling where faint patterns of shadow shifted against the warped beams overhead. He counted them without meaning to, letting his eyes trace the crooked lines of wood as though their familiarity might anchor him, might keep his mind from folding in on itself. But all he could see was her face. The way she had looked at him. Calm, clear, certain in a way that left no space for doubt to be questioned.
So sure.
So goddamn certain.
His jaw clenched, frustration curling cold in his gut. With a low breath, he rolled onto his stomach, pressing his forehead into the pillow hard enough to feel the pressure bloom sharp behind his eyes, as if the weight alone might suffocate the thought before it could fully take root. But the moment his eyelids slipped shut, the past rose unbidden to meet him, vivid and unrelenting.
A flash of silver in the dim alley light—his blade, steady in his grip, its edge clean and sharp, cutting through the cool air before sinking into flesh. The faint resistance of muscle giving way, the sharp intake of a final breath that stuttered, caught, stopped beneath his hand. The body slackening beneath him. The warmth of life fading too quickly, pooling in the stone beneath. He had moved without hesitation. Clean. Precise. As he always did.
It had been over in seconds.
No hesitation. No mistakes.
That was the truth he held to. The truth that had kept him alive through darker nights than this one.
His jaw tightened further, teeth grinding against the building pressure behind them. Fingers twisted into the sheets, knuckles whitening beneath the grip, as if he could ground himself in the feel of the fabric alone. He threw one arm over his eyes, breath flaring, heart hammering an uneven rhythm beneath his ribs. But the images did not fade.
They replayed with perfect clarity. Every motion of the kill. Every beat of the moment he had walked away. Except now, beneath the familiar rhythm of memory, something shifted. A pulse of wrongness bloomed within the frame, subtle but sharp. A detail askew. A shadow where none should be.
He could not name it, but it was there.
And try as he might, he could not look away.
The way the blood had pooled had been off, the scent of iron thicker than usual, clinging to the back of his throat. The moment the body hit the ground, the air had shifted—not just in the way it always did after a kill, but in a way that felt different.
Tonight, she had spoken with such certainty. And that, more than anything, unnerved him.
His gaze flicked toward the window, toward the endless black beyond the glass, where the reflection of the room blurred faintly across the surface, pale against the deeper dark. The house remained still around him, untouched, silent, every creak of wood and sigh of air muted beneath the weight of the hour. Yet the cold knot in his gut refused to loosen, pulling tighter with every second that passed, breath thinning beneath it.
The person isn't there anymore.
He did not want to believe her. Could not afford to. That was the truth of it. If he let that thought take hold, even for a moment, everything that tethered him would begin to unravel.
And yet, the words circled back. Again and again. Each time sharper. Each time sinking deeper. They pressed into his ribs like a blade lodged beneath the skin, impossible to pull free.
Another memory surged, sharp and sudden.
The man's face.
Not the act of the kill, not the practiced rhythm of movement and strike. The face. The moment just before. The way the man's eyes had widened, not with fear, not with the hollow resignation Theo had seen in so many others, but with something else.
Recognition.
As if he had known something in that final instant. As if there were words caught behind parted lips, something on the verge of being spoken that had never made it free. A flicker of something unreadable, gone too fast to name, burned too deep to forget.
Theo exhaled harshly, the sound raw in the stillness. His hand dragged down his face, fingers splaying across skin that felt too tight, as if the edges of his thoughts pressed outward through bone and sinew, trying to find release.
He was being ridiculous.
Exhaustion. That was all. Fractured thoughts spun from hours without rest, from nerves frayed thin by too many nights spent walking the edge of what the mind could bear. He needed sleep. Needed to shut his eyes and let the world blur into something softer, something less sharp.
But still.
Still, the thought would not let him go.
Still, it coiled tighter, cold as wire beneath the ribs.
With a low breath, he threw back the covers, the sudden shift sending a ripple of chill through the air. His feet found the floor, skin meeting the cool press of worn wood with a shiver that climbed through muscle and spine. He rose, restless, breath shallow in his throat.
He did not know where he was going. Did not care. Remaining in this room, caught beneath the weight of shadow and silence, trapped beneath the echo of her voice and the ragged loop of memory gnawing at the edges of his mind, was no longer an option.
Perhaps a walk through the safehouse would clear the static from his thoughts. Perhaps the slow stretch of his limbs through the empty halls would ground him again, would pull him back into the body he could no longer feel fully anchored within.
Perhaps, if he stayed awake long enough, if he moved through enough darkened rooms, the words would lose their hold.
Perhaps the night would forget him.
Or perhaps not.
Because beneath it all, beneath every step he took, beneath every breath drawn sharp into lungs that did not want to settle, the memory remained.
The way the night had seemed to breathe when the life left his target's body.
And somewhere deep beneath that memory, beneath the words he refused to believe, another truth waited.