The corridors of Hogwarts had never felt so long.
Stone swallowed every sound except the quiet rhythm of three sets of footsteps — Dumbledore's soft and measured, Snape's clipped and deliberate, and Harry's uneven, dragging faintly with each turn of the staircase. The torches along the walls burned low, their orange light licking the edges of shadow.
Harry's hand brushed the banister as they descended. He wasn't sure if the tremor in his fingers was from exhaustion or the memory still crawling beneath his skin — the graveyard, the screams, Alden's body collapsing against the marble.
They had left the Pensieve behind, but the weight of it hadn't left him.
Dumbledore slowed just enough to glance back at him. The Headmaster's expression was unreadable — a mixture of sorrow and weary understanding, the kind that came from seeing too many endings. His blue eyes, dulled by candlelight, studied Harry for a long moment before he spoke.
"Rest is what you need now, Harry," he said softly. "Not questions. There will be time for understanding when you are strong enough to bear it."
Harry's throat felt dry. "Sir…"
Dumbledore stopped. Snape halted beside him, his robes whispering against the floor.
Harry forced the words out. "Alden — is he—"
Snape turned, eyes narrowing, the lamplight catching on their black depths. "Alive," he said curtly, though the word carried little certainty. "For now. The infirmary will tell us more."
Harry's pulse stuttered. He hadn't realized until that moment that he'd been holding his breath since the graveyard.
Dumbledore inclined his head, the faintest nod of approval toward Snape's restraint. "Let us find out for ourselves," he said.
They resumed walking.
The castle seemed to hold its breath around them. Tapestries that normally whispered and shifted now hung motionless, heavy with unseen weight. The portraits watched in silence, eyes following Harry with expressions that blurred somewhere between pity and reverence. Word of what had happened — what had returned — was already seeping into the stone.
As they crossed the landing outside the Great Hall, Harry heard it: the echo of voices. Distant. Faint. Students whispering behind closed doors. Someone said his name, another said Voldemort, and another whispered the Dreyse boy.
The sound made his stomach turn. He pressed his hands into his robes and kept walking.
Snape, beside him, said nothing, though his expression darkened slightly at the whispers.
When they reached the lower hall, Dumbledore paused by a window. The moon hung fractured over the lake, its reflection rippling where the giant squid disturbed the surface. He stood there for a long moment, gazing outward, as though the weight of everything pressed between his shoulder blades.
Harry waited, unsure if he was meant to speak.
Dumbledore didn't look at him when he said, "There are nights, Harry, when even victory feels like mourning. Tonight is one of them."
The words sank into the air like a spell. Harry couldn't answer — didn't know how.
Snape's voice broke the stillness, low and sharp. "The boy — Dreyse — his body cannot have withstood that degree of magical contact. You saw the residue on his wand. If the Dark Lord—"
"—had finished what he began," Dumbledore interrupted quietly, "we would not be walking toward the infirmary."
Snape's mouth pressed into a thin line. He gave a stiff nod, though his eyes betrayed a flicker of something — not disagreement, but worry.
They passed through the final archway. The familiar scent of antiseptic potions and lavender salve began to fill the corridor — the unmistakable prelude to the hospital wing.
Harry hesitated. "Professor," he said again, voice rough. "Why did he do it? Alden. He could've run. He should've run."
For a moment, neither of the men answered. Dumbledore's gaze softened, but it was Snape who spoke.
"Because," he said, his tone quiet but sharp as glass, "he is more like you than you care to admit."
Harry looked up at him, startled, but Snape didn't elaborate. His face remained a mask, though something in his voice lingered — not accusation, but recognition.
Dumbledore's hand came to rest briefly on Harry's shoulder. "Come," he said. "Let us not make Madam Pomfrey wait. She is formidable when kept from her patients."
As they turned the final corner, the sounds grew clearer — murmuring voices, the shuffling of feet, the faint scrape of a chair being dragged across the floor. Harry glanced at Dumbledore, who inclined his head toward the doors ahead.
They stood slightly ajar, golden light spilling into the corridor. Through the narrow gap, Harry could hear two distinct cadences of sound: the anxious buzz of Gryffindor voices on one side and the lower murmur of Slytherin tones on the other.
The moment he pushed the door open, the room fell silent.
Every face turned toward them.
And at the far end, hidden behind a drawn curtain, the boy who had faced Voldemort lay beyond reach of both sides — guarded by Crabbe and Goyle like sentinels carved from stone, with Hagrid hunched nearby, eyes red-rimmed, his massive hands clutching a mug of untouched tea.
The hush that followed was total.
Dumbledore stepped inside first, his presence alone enough to part the crowd. Snape followed, black robes whispering across the tiled floor. Harry trailed behind them, heart hammering.
Madam Pomfrey looked up from a desk laden with vials and charts. Relief flickered across her face — and then sternness, as if she'd just remembered how little patience she had for interruptions.
"Headmaster," she said briskly. "You're just in time."
And the next chapter of the night began.
The light inside the hospital wing was all wrong—too gold, too soft for what had happened tonight. It spilled across the tiled floor like liquid warmth, at odds with the ruin that clung to everyone who entered. The scent of antiseptic balm and burnt linen hung faintly in the air.
Madam Pomfrey was standing in the center of it all like a general holding back chaos. She looked as though she hadn't sat down in hours. Her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, her hair pinned back in a hasty twist, and the lines around her mouth were tight from strain.
The moment Dumbledore stepped through the door, she was on him."Headmaster. Thank Merlin. You'd best see for yourself before this entire wing turns into a duel arena. I've kept the students separated, but their tempers—"
Her gaze flicked toward the far end of the room, and Harry followed it.
The hospital wing was divided clean down the middle, invisible but absolute.
To the left, a cluster of scarlet and gold. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, the twins, Neville—all gathered close to one another, whispering in the kind of voices people use around fresh graves. Their faces were pale and drawn, eyes flicking every few seconds toward the curtained bed at the other end of the room.
To the right, the green and silver of Slytherin—Daphne Greengrass, Theo Nott, Draco Malfoy, Tracey Davis, and Pansy Parkinson, gathered together like a court around their fallen king. Crabbe and Goyle stood as sentinels before the drawn curtains, thick arms folded, their faces grim for once. Hagrid sat slumped on a stool nearby, looking far too large and sorrowful for the tiny chair. His eyes were rimmed with red.
"'E's a tough one," Hagrid murmured, catching sight of them. "Tougher'n most grown wizards I ever seen. Don' reckon he'll give up easy."
Madam Pomfrey clucked her tongue sharply. "That's enough, Hagrid. We'll have no more of that talk. He's not giving up at all."
Dumbledore's expression softened. "How is he, Poppy?"
She hesitated, and even that pause was enough to drain what little color was left from Harry's face."Alive," she said finally. "But narrowly. Whatever that boy endured in that graveyard, it tore him apart. Every muscle, every nerve. Magical trauma, curse corrosion, physical lacerations, fractured ribs… he's holding together because I'm forcing him to. And even then—" She shook her head. "I haven't seen magic backlash like this since—well, since You-Know-Who was at his height."
Harry's stomach twisted. He swallowed, voice hoarse. "He hasn't woken up?"
Pomfrey turned her eyes on him, gentler now. "Not a flicker. But he breathes. That's more than I expected when they carried him in."
Snape stepped closer, the hem of his robe brushing the floor. His tone was low, professional, but something in it was taut."Magical collapse? Or deliberate overchanneling?"
Pomfrey exhaled through her nose. "Both. His core's unstable, but there's residue I can't identify. It's… old magic. The kind that leaves a scar on the air."
That made Snape's brow furrow, the faintest line between his eyes. "I'll examine it myself," he murmured, almost to Dumbledore.
The Headmaster inclined his head. "Of course."
Harry stood rooted to the spot. His gaze kept dragging back to the curtains—thin, white, softly billowing from the cross-draft. The faint glow from within painted silhouettes on the fabric: figures moving, bending over the bed. He could hear a voice through the hush—low, rhythmic, almost chanting. Theo Nott. Whispering.
Daphne's voice followed, quiet but steady: "He'll wake up. He promised. He always keeps his promises."
Harry glanced at Dumbledore. "Can I—"
"Not yet," Pomfrey interrupted briskly. "They've been sitting with him since we brought him in. I won't break that now. Let them have this moment."
From the other side of the room, Ron shifted uneasily. "Blimey, look at them," he muttered. "It's like—like they're protecting him."
Hermione's elbow found his ribs. "Maybe because he saved Harry's life, Ron."
Ron's mouth opened, then shut again.
Snape's gaze swept over the Gryffindors and then back to the curtained corner. "So even the serpents learn loyalty," he said softly. "How novel."
Dumbledore didn't answer. His eyes were on the curtain. The lamplight reflected in them, blue and mournful. "Loyalty is a strange thing, Severus. It grows in unlikely places."
Pomfrey sighed, setting aside a stack of clean linens. "All I know is that he needs rest. Weeks of it, if we're lucky. And peace. If that's even possible here."
The Headmaster nodded. "Then peace he shall have."
He turned slightly toward Harry, his voice dropping into that rare, almost paternal gentleness that always made Harry feel both comforted and very small."You will stay here tonight, my boy. There is nothing more for you to do but rest. You and he both carried burdens no child should. Let others carry them for a while."
Harry wanted to argue, but the words caught somewhere in his throat. All he managed was a nod.
Snape's voice broke the quiet. "If he wakes before morning," he said to Pomfrey, "send for me at once."
She gave him a look that almost counted as gratitude. "You'll be the first I call."
Dumbledore placed a hand on her shoulder. "You have done more good than you know tonight, Poppy."
She sniffed, eyes bright behind her spectacles. "Then let's hope he lives long enough to appreciate it."
The curtain rustled again, and through the small gap, Harry saw a flicker of pale hair against white sheets, Daphne's hand curled over his, Draco sitting upright beside her, jaw set, eyes rimmed red. Theo was muttering something that might've been a joke—something about owing galleons, about detentions, about Alden owing him for saving his life once in Potions. Anything to fill the air so silence wouldn't.
And though no one said it aloud, every heart in the room beat the same fragile rhythm: wake up, please wake up.
Harry turned away first, because looking too long made the ache behind his ribs unbearable.
Dumbledore's voice broke softly behind him."Come, Harry. You need rest. The living must keep watch over the living."
Snape followed them to the doorway, then stopped, his shadow cutting a long line across the floor. He didn't look back when he spoke."He shouldn't have survived that magic."
Dumbledore's reply was almost a whisper. "No. But perhaps the world has not yet decided what to do with him."
The hospital wing was quiet again—divided still, yet held together by the fragile breath of two boys who refused to yield to the dark.
The rest of the world had gone still beyond the curtain. Only the soft rustle of bandages and the faint, uneven pull of breath broke the silence.
Alden lay motionless against the white of the sheets, his body a map of ruin. From shoulder to wrist, every inch of skin was marked — burns layered over shallow cuts, the faint shimmer of healing charms flickering like trapped fireflies beneath his skin. His chest rose and fell in jagged rhythm, ribs shifting under the weight of each breath. The scent of spell-salve and iron clung to him.
Daphne sat at his bedside, her chair pulled close enough that her knee brushed the edge of his bed. Her hand was wrapped around his, fingers threaded carefully between his own, afraid that if she let go, he might simply stop existing.
The room was dim—Pomfrey had extinguished most of the lamps, leaving only one low-burning globe above the bed. Its light caught the silver strands of Alden's hair, now dull with ash, streaked faintly crimson where the healers hadn't yet dared to wash away the blood.
Theo sat at the foot of the bed, elbows on his knees, his usual composure hollowed out. Every few minutes, he'd look at Alden's face as if expecting his friend to wake mid-breath and scold him for looking so grim. Draco hadn't moved in an hour. He was perched on the next bed over, hands clasped tightly together, jaw set like a man trying not to break.
For a long time, none of them spoke. There was no need.
It was Theo who broke the quiet, his voice low but steady. "He looks worse than after the dueling trials last year."
Daphne's thumb brushed the back of Alden's hand, tracing the faint pulse beneath the skin. "That's because he is."
Theo gave a humorless laugh under his breath. "He'd be furious if he saw us sitting here like mourners."
Draco's voice was rougher than usual. "Then he shouldn't have gone after him."
Daphne didn't look up. "He didn't go after him. Voldemort came to him."
That silenced Draco for a moment. His eyes flicked toward the curtain, where the faint hum of voices from outside filtered through — Pomfrey moving about, the soft creak of floorboards as others kept vigil. He swallowed hard. "Still. He should've… he should've run when he had the chance."
"He wouldn't have," Theo murmured.
Draco's head snapped toward him. "You don't know that."
"Yes, I do." Theo leaned back slightly, his eyes tired but clear. "He's been like this since his first year. Always taking the hit, always choosing the impossible way. Remember the troll incident? He wasn't even supposed to be there. Remember when he hexed the upperclassman who called Tracey's brother a—"
"I remember," Draco interrupted, his voice tight. "I just didn't think he'd go this far."
Daphne's fingers tightened around Alden's hand. "He always does."
Silence fell again. The sound of Alden's shallow breathing filled it.
Theo's eyes drifted toward the edge of the blanket — to the faint glint of gold half-hidden beneath the folds of his sleeve. He frowned, leaning forward slightly. "Is that—?"
Daphne followed his gaze. The ring, cracked clean through its center, still clung stubbornly to Alden's finger. The metal was scorched, warped by heat and force, but it hadn't broken completely.
Theo let out a slow breath. "He kept it."
"Of course he did." Daphne's voice trembled, just barely.
Theo gave her a sidelong glance. "He told me once," he said quietly, "that when you gave it to him, he'd never take it off. Said it was… something he'd protect always."
The words hung there — fragile, like glass.
Daphne's eyes softened, and for the first time that night, her composure cracked. She leaned closer, brushing a lock of ash-streaked hair from Alden's forehead. Her touch was so careful it was almost reverent. "He's an idiot," she whispered, voice breaking on the edge of a laugh. "A stubborn, reckless idiot."
Theo smiled faintly, though it didn't reach his eyes. "The best kind."
Draco looked away, his throat working. "He's not supposed to be one of the ones that don't wake up," he muttered. "Not him."
"He won't be." Daphne's voice was firm, soft as it was. "He promised."
The lamp above flickered once, its flame dimming before settling again. Shadows moved across Alden's face, making him look almost peaceful — as though the storm had finally passed.
Theo leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. "You know what Pomfrey said? That it wasn't just spell damage. That something else—something older—was clinging to him."
Daphne didn't answer. Her eyes didn't leave Alden's.
"He's always been different," Draco said after a moment, the words quiet, reluctant. "Even when he tried not to be. People look at him and see a Dreyse. But he never… he never acted like one."
Daphne turned to him. "You mean he never acted like what people expected a Dreyse to be."
Draco's jaw tightened, but he nodded. "Yeah. That."
Theo exhaled. "He said once that legacy is just a curse in prettier words."
A faint smile tugged at Daphne's mouth. "That sounds like him."
The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was full of breath and memory, of the unspoken acknowledgment that they were sitting beside something fragile and infinite.
For a moment, Daphne thought she saw his fingers twitch, just barely — a ghost of movement, the smallest tremor against her palm.
Her heart leapt. She leaned forward, whispering, "Alden?"
Nothing.
Only the steady, fragile rhythm of breath.
She stayed like that, hand in his, waiting. Theo and Draco watched in silence — the kind of silence that sits heavy in the chest and refuses to lift.
Outside the curtain, footsteps approached, Pomfrey's sharp voice murmuring something to a house-elf about another round of potions. But in their small corner of the world, time felt suspended.
Daphne brushed her thumb across the ring again, her voice barely more than a breath. "You said you'd come back," she murmured. "So do it. Please."
Theo looked down, eyes distant, then back to Alden. "You know," he said quietly, "if anyone could make Death himself wait, it'd be him."
And for the first time that night, Draco didn't argue.
He just nodded.
And together, the three of them kept watch over the boy who refused to die — as the candles burned lower, and dawn crept toward the castle like the slow return of a heartbeat.