Maurice slipped out of his dormitory and stepped into the Ravenclaw common room.
The morning sun had already begun its ascent, casting a pale, clinical light through the arched windows that illuminated the entire chamber. It was far too quiet. Maurice knit his brows in confusion. Normally, the Ravenclaw common room was a hive of quiet desperation even at this ungodly hour. There were usually at least three or four overachievers hunched over ancient tomes, frantically trying to out-study one another before breakfast.
Today, however, the room was a ghost town. Even more unsettling was the silence from outside. The usual morning cacophony of hooting owls and rustling trees had vanished entirely.
He walked to the window and gave it a firm shove. It swung open, but the view nearly stole the breath from his lungs.
The familiar sight of the rolling Hogwarts grounds, the Great Lake, and the dark eaves of the Forbidden Forest were gone. In their place lay a desert that stretched into infinity. It was white, flat, and hauntingly empty.
The lighting was the strangest part. There was no sun in the sky. Instead, the heavens were a vast, pearlescent canvas of grey and white, draped in a thin, shimmering veil of mist.
Despite the lack of a sun, everything was brightly lit. It was a world without shadows.
At that moment, Maurice knew for certain that he had left the physical world behind. He was standing in the interstice between life and death. The "Door Between Worlds" ritual had actually worked.
"Brilliant," Maurice said, a sudden grin breaking across his face.
His heart began to hammer against his ribs, the sound echoing loudly in the oppressive silence. This wasn't the thumping of fear. It was something far more volatile, something hot and soaring. It was a cocktail of pure adrenaline, scientific triumph, and the kind of thrill that usually gets wizards into a lot of trouble.
He turned on his heel and marched out of the common room, eager to see the rest of the wreckage.
Peering through the corridor windows, he confirmed that the castle was an island in a sea of pale sand. The interior of Hogwarts remained largely unchanged. The stone walls, the scowling statues, and the dusty tapestries were exactly where he remembered them.
However, the life had been sucked out of the architecture. The portraits were nothing but empty canvases, the suits of armor stood like hollow shells without their usual clanking complaints, and not a single ghost drifted through the halls.
The Great Courtyard, once lush with grass, was now filled with the same pale, powdery grit that covered the desert outside. The stone gargoyles remained at their posts, staring blankly into the void.
Maurice didn't linger. He made a beeline for the massive front doors of the castle, pushed them open, and stepped out onto the "sand."
He walked a few hundred paces away from the school, his boots leaving deep, crisp imprints in the fine white dust.
Eventually, he stopped and looked back.
Hogwarts stood alone in the desert, immense and magnificent, yet utterly hollow. It was like looking at a discarded toy left in a sandbox.
"Spectacular," he whispered.
The logic of this place escaped him. He knew, theoretically, that this was the limbo between the living and the dead, but the "why" was missing. Why was there a replica of Hogwarts here? Why the desert? What was the purpose of this metaphysical waiting room?
Questions swirled in his mind like a localized storm, but the desert offered no answers.
"Well, might as well have a look around," he decided.
He wandered aimlessly for a while, testing the laws of physics. He pulled out his wand and cast a few basic charms. To his relief, the magic held. The sparks from his wand were vibrant against the grey sky, proving he wasn't entirely defenseless in this pale purgatory.
He picked a direction and walked. After a few minutes, he spotted something on the horizon. A small, dark speck against the white. As he drew closer, he realized it was a small wooden cabin, standing solitary and defiant in the middle of nowhere.
Just as he reached out to investigate the structure, a wave of nausea hit him. It felt as though his center of gravity had suddenly shifted forty-five degrees to the left.
The Draught of Living Death was wearing off.
His vision went dark, his body felt like it was being squeezed through a very narrow straw, and in a flash, he was back in his dormitory.
He blinked, refocusing on the familiar surroundings. The ritual circle was still etched into the floorboards, though the glowing runes had dimmed significantly. The clock on the wall informed him it was barely two in the morning.
"Meow?"
A sharp cry came from his bedside. A second later, something cold and furry collided with his chest. His cat, Tin, had launched itself into his arms with uncharacteristic urgency.
"Easy there, you tubby menace," Maurice groaned, patting the cat's head.
Through their bond, he could sense the cat's frantic confusion.
"You're saying... I just vanished?"
Tin nodded vigorously, his yellow eyes wide with feline indignation.
"Don't worry about it," Maurice soothed, though his mind was already racing. It hadn't been a dream. It was a physical displacement. He had entered that space in the flesh. It was a tangible, reachable dimension.
Exhaustion finally caught up with him. The mental toll of bridging two worlds was like a physical weight on his eyelids. He collapsed onto his bed and was asleep before his head even hit the pillow.
Maurice didn't wake up until nearly noon the next day. Fortunately, it was Saturday, meaning he didn't have to explain his lethargy to a professor.
His head felt like it was stuffed with wet wool, but the itch of curiosity was stronger than the hangover of the ritual. He reached for the "Grimoire of Magi" that sat on his nightstand.
As he flipped to the final page, new ink began to bleed through the parchment.
"Energy Convergence?" he muttered, reading the title of the new spell.
It was an odd piece of magic. According to the text, the spell was designed to draw in and concentrate ambient magical energy from the atmosphere.
Maurice decided to postpone his second trip to the Interstice. If he was going to explore a dead world, he needed every tool at his disposal. He spent the next two hours locked in his room, meticulously visualizing the spell's geometric structure.
Learning a new spell was like building a clock in your head. The first time was an agonizing process of trial and error, but once the gears clicked into place, it became muscle memory.
He could cast a Shadow walk or a Weakness Curse now without even thinking about it, but this... this was complex.
Finally, he felt the mental "click."
"Zhaj... Vok... Thur!" (Energy Convergence) he intoned, holding his right hand out, palm up.
For a moment, the air above his hand shimmered. Pale, almost invisible wisps of light began to spiral toward his palm, swirling like a miniature galaxy.
Was this raw magic? It had no color, no scent, and no heat. It just... existed. The light spun faster and faster, becoming an unstable marble of pure potential. Maurice watched it, mesmerized, for nearly a minute.
Then, with a pathetic pop, the energy dissipated into the air, leaving nothing behind but the faint smell of ozone.
Maurice scowled. The convergence had failed.
Was the ambient magic in the air too thin? Or was his technique lacking? He tried a few more times, but the result was always the same: a brief flash of hope followed by a disappointing "fizz out."
"Fine," he sighed, dropping his hand. "We'll try that again later."
He grabbed a quick bite of cake from the Great Hall, then hurried back to his room.
The ritual circle on the floor was fading, but there was enough juice left for one more trip.
After giving strict instructions to Tin and his owl, Cinder, to keep watch over his sleeping body, Maurice stepped into the center of the runes. He uncorked a fresh vial of the modified Draught of Living Death and tilted his head back.
Down the hatch.