As he left the alchemy classroom, the sky had gone dark.
Clearly, it was a pitch-black, overcast night. Peeves was playing tennis against the walls in the entrance hall, and a group of young witches and wizards had no choice but to wait until he finally drifted off.
But when Helena floated through, Peeves let out a shriek, deflated like a punctured balloon, and shot in panic straight into the ceiling.
Under the gaze of her ash-gray eyes, a wizard in black robes, arms full of tiny mirror pieces, approached at an unhurried pace.
Sean planned to give all seven mirrors away. Since each set of seven could call one another independently, and one mirror had already gone to Professor Tayra, he decided to give the rest to the professors.
Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape, Professor Flitwick, Professor Sprout, and Headmaster Dumbledore… plus Professor Tayra and himself—seven in total.
Thinking that, he headed lightly toward the Transfiguration office.
On the way, he heard a voice that startled him—then, unexpectedly, made him happy.
"Green."
Helena called to him. Her voice was soft, like clouds in the sky.
"People always treat the day of death as an anniversary of mourning. But at Ilvermorny, a headmistress told me that for a ghost, it's the best kind of holiday.
Happy holiday, Helena," Sean said quietly.
"Don't make me cry right now, all right?"
Helena showed him a side of herself Sean had never known.
Maybe that was what friendship meant—making someone feel truly alive.
"Then… are you ready?" Sean asked cautiously.
"Should I trust you, Green?"
To trust a child. To trust that he had met her mother in a dream. To trust that her mother had never truly cared about the betrayal…
It was absurd.
And yet—
"They call me 'the Grey Lady.'
Grey—between black and white—like all of this. Not the radiant white light people long for, and not the pure darkness of self-exile. I'm just… a shadow of regret.
Green… and you called me Ravenclaw."
Helena's expression turned distant, as if she were drifting.
Sean didn't know what to say. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
So he simply fell silent, and began preparing the rest ritual.
They passed suit after suit of armor, lantern after lantern.
Time seemed to blur inside those unchanging scenes.
Only after a hundred years as a ghost did Helena Ravenclaw finally dare to drift down the corridor in front of her mother's portrait. In that portrait, Rowena's gaze was still sharp as a hawk's—yet it never once fell upon her daughter.
After eleven hundred years as a ghost, Helena Ravenclaw drifted past that corridor again. This time, Rowena's eyes in the portrait seemed to find their focus.
And then they reached the Hope Cottage.
Raven—Owl Gentleman—didn't stop them. He simply let them in.
Sean instinctively felt it had to be here, the way Isolt had needed to leave from the origin stone cottage.
Inside, everything had changed.
It was no longer the little cottage Sean and the others had decorated. It was somewhere unfamiliar.
The owl portrait leaned against the wall by the fireplace, asleep. Behind it hung all kinds of photographs; beside it sat bottles and jars; and there was a massive wooden table—on it, a diadem.
Near the table, a sliver of sky slipped through heavy curtains, illuminating the blue silk stretched across the dome above.
It was utterly silent, except for Helena's breathing—breathing that shouldn't exist.
Sean quickly realized this must have been Ravenclaw's old office. He also saw countless precious materials and several ancient books.
He didn't linger on the unexpected windfall. He moved at once, setting up the rest ritual.
Helena drifted over every book, sat down on—then rose from—the soft sofa she had once loved most.
At last, she floated to the very center of the ritual.
"It's late," she murmured to herself.
"Tomorrow is a new day," Sean said.
"Everything is becoming more unbelievable… but I believe you, Green. Let that be my last words."
Helena smiled, though something pearly blurred at the corners of her eyes.
She didn't look back.
…
Another ghost had been sent on.
For a while, Sean didn't speak.
He met Owl Gentleman's eyes—and noticed that the owl portrait, now moved here, seemed oddly quiet.
But the moment they returned to the doorway, Owl Gentleman started chattering again:
"Oh, Green—you little wizard—look what you've done. You sent a ghost on, and you think it's funny—"
He sang some song he'd picked up from who-knew-where.
Sean suspected it was Peeves again.
"You're happy too, aren't you, Owl Gentleman?" Sean looked into his eyes.
"Little wizard! I'm telling you—I am not!"
The portrait bristled, flapping furiously as if to peck Sean—only managing to rattle the frame with loud bangs.
His gold-rimmed spectacles fell off again, but the parchment clutched in his talons never slipped once.
"Goodbye, Owl Gentleman," Sean said politely.
"Goodbye, clever little wizard," Owl Gentleman snorted.
…
Dusk fell, and Hogwarts lit up with warmth.
Torches lined the corridors; candles floated in the classrooms.
Everything felt solid and real.
But elsewhere—where fog ruled—everything was blurred.
In that forest, a quiet lakeside did not always exist. More often, the streams ran dry.
Bare earth lay exposed in the riverbed, inlaid with strange, shifting fog-balls.
Far away, in a wasteland, stood a weary witch.
She held a battered old book and stood in silence.
This was the loneliness every wandering soul must endure: any remaining flickers of happiness in their hearts were paid for with the soul-world's solitude.
But this time, Ravenclaw saw something.
She set the book down and walked toward a place she had never seen—just as Sean could always follow a thread to find who he sought, she too seemed to know that more than ten centuries of time had been leading to this moment.
On the white, empty land stood a witch who looked just as lost.
And strangely, from the moment Helena stepped onto that ground, flowers bloomed there—like a miracle.
She tried carefully not to step on them, but still bumped into something.
Helena fell, startled.
The next instant, she was gathered gently into someone's arms.
"It's all right to fall… I'm here to take you home, Helena," a voice said.
Then there was no sound.
Sometimes language was pale and insufficient—but that didn't matter, because tears were the final form of conversation.
After a long time, one sentence finally rose.
"So, my dear Helena—do you know what love is?
It's a cat you meet by chance."
Rowena Ravenclaw laughed, tears sliding down her face.