The quill lasted until the first tunnel.
Fred had just finished explaining that McGonagall’s correction ought to make the charm more consistent when George lifted it from his knee and produced a noise loud enough to bring someone to their compartment door.
All four looked up.
Percy stood in the doorway, one hand still on the handle.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing home,” Fred said, holding out his empty hand for the quill.
Percy looked at the parchment on George’s knees, then at Cedric, who had made the mistake of trying to stop laughing without first taking a breath.
“Do try to remember there are other people on this train.”
“We noticed,” George said.
“One of them’s holding the door open.”
Percy’s expression suggested that he was considering whether the argument would be worth it.
Apparently deciding otherwise, he shut the door with more force than necessary.
Fred waited until the footsteps had receded before reaching for their notes.
“Right.
That works.”
Adrian leaned across to look at the correction McGonagall had written beneath their wand diagram.
“We should probably stop before he comes back.”
George tucked the quill into its box, still grinning.
“We’ll try the rest at home.”
“You can write to us,” Cedric said.
“Provided the letter doesn’t do that.”
The remainder of the journey passed with considerably less noise, although Fred occasionally glanced at the box as though disappointed in everyone’s restraint.
They compared holiday plans over the remains of their sweets, and Adrian promised to send the next version of their map once he had copied it somewhere that didn’t require turning the notebook sideways.
By the time the train reached London, he had packed and checked his bag twice.
He spotted his mother before she saw him.
Marisol stood beside Edmund beyond the crowd, searching the carriage windows with an expression Adrian recognised from years of being collected from places she thought had kept him too long.
He raised his hand, and she was already moving by the time he reached them.
Her arms closed around him tightly enough to squeeze the air from his chest.
“Hey, Mom.”
She held him another moment before drawing back to examine his face.
“Let me look at you.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m looking anyway.”
Her hands moved to his shoulders, then briefly to the back of his head before she pulled him close again.
Over her shoulder, Edmund gave him a small smile and took charge of his trunk.
Cedric waited nearby with his own parents, politely pretending not to watch.
Adrian managed a wave before his mother released him.
Behind them, Fred called, “Happy Christmas, Adrian!”
George lifted a hand beside him, and Marisol turned toward the two identical redheads.
“Those are your friends?”
“Fred and George.”
Her eyes returned to Adrian with immediate interest.
“The ones with the quill?”
He glanced toward his father.
Edmund adjusted his grip on the trunk.
“You did write about it.”
“Right.”
His mother slipped an arm around his shoulders as they started toward the barrier.
“I’d like to hear how that turned out.”
Home smelled of warm food, laundry, and the soap his mother kept beside the kitchen sink.
Adrian hadn’t realised how much he remembered through smell until he stood in the doorway, listening to Edmund carry his trunk upstairs while Marisol told him where to put his shoes.
Everything was familiar enough that he nearly went straight to the cupboard for a glass, then stopped to look around properly.
His notebook still lay beneath his arm.
He put it on the kitchen table.
Marisol noticed.
“You can unpack your homework later.
Wash your hands.”
“It’s not homework.”
“That makes it even easier to leave there.”
Dinner began with classes and reached Kettleburn before Adrian had finished his first helping.
His mother asked what creatures he had been working with, while Edmund wanted to know how much of the care he was allowed to do himself.
Adrian described the feeding, the cleaning, and the difference between watching a creature because it was interesting and watching closely enough to notice when something had changed.
“Professor Kettleburn says I need to separate what happened from what I think it means,” he explained.
“Otherwise I go back later and can’t tell which parts I actually saw.”
Edmund nodded.
“That sounds sensible.”
“It usually does when somebody else says it.”
His father smiled, but Marisol had been watching Adrian’s right hand as he reached for his glass.
After they had cleared the dishes, she took the chair beside him.
“All right.
Show me.”
Adrian held out his hand, turning it over without waiting to be asked.
She ran her thumb lightly over his knuckles, then had him open and close his fingers.
“Does anything still hurt?”
“No.
Madam Pomfrey fixed it.”
His mother released his hand, though she left hers on the table near it.
For a moment, the kitchen was quiet.
Then Adrian looked at her.
“Everybody heard the letter.”
Marisol closed her eyes briefly.
“Your father explained that part afterward.”
“I explained it before we sent it,” Edmund said from the counter.
“You said it would be loud.”
“It was pretty loud,” Adrian told her.
“I think the people at the back got most of it.”
“I was scared, mijo.
The school wrote that you’d been fighting, and you were somewhere I couldn’t get to you.”
He looked down at the table.
He had understood that in principle while sitting beneath the Great Hall’s enchanted ceiling, but it felt different hearing it in her ordinary voice.
“I know.
I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you standing there while somebody hurts you,” she said.
“But once you can leave, you leave.
You understand?”
“Yeah.”
Edmund came over and sat opposite them.
“Your mother and I agree on that part.”
Adrian glanced between them.
“Just that part?”
Marisol gave him a look he had missed considerably less than the rest of her.
“Don’t push it.”
He smiled, and this time she did too.
Later, when she asked him to tell the whole story, he did.
He explained the blocked corridor, Cedric trying to reach him, and the wand coming up close enough that he had reacted before thinking.
He also told them about continuing after the older boy hit the wall.
Neither interrupted.
By the end, the knot beneath his ribs had loosened enough that he could lean back in his chair.
Edmund remained thoughtful for a while before asking, “And the electricity?”
“I didn’t know it was happening.
Professor Flitwick’s helping me catch it sooner, but we’ve only worked with small amounts.”
“Then we’ll keep to what the school has asked,” his father said.
“No experimenting here.”
Adrian nodded.
For once, having the decision made for him was almost a relief.
The first morning home, he woke expecting Cedric to be moving around the dormitory.
Instead, there was a familiar crack in the ceiling and the sound of his mother opening a cupboard downstairs.
He lay still for a minute, then climbed out of bed and searched for clothes.
His sneakers were exactly where he had left them beneath the wardrobe.
After pulling on a sweatshirt, he went downstairs and opened the back door, letting in a gust of cold air that brought Marisol out of the kitchen.
“Adrian.”
“I’m just gonna work out for a little while.”
She looked him over, taking in the sweatshirt, then pointed toward the coat hooks.
“Put a jacket on.”
“I’ll be fine once I start moving.”
“You can start moving in something warmer.”
He took one.
The small paved area behind the house felt different from the Hogwarts courtyard.
There were no passing students, no moving portraits visible through distant windows, and no possibility of Snape appearing beneath an archway to comment on his technique.
Adrian worked slowly through his warm-up before beginning his footwork.
He kept his punches loose and controlled, paying more attention to balance than speed.
After a few minutes, his breathing deepened and the cold stopped bothering him.
His body still couldn’t do everything his memory expected of it, but he was getting better at recognising the difference before it put him on the ground.
When he came back inside, his mother handed him a towel and directed him toward breakfast.
A mug waited beside his plate.
Adrian stopped.
She watched him notice it, clearly pleased with herself.
“You haven’t forgotten what that is, have you?”
He picked it up, breathing in the smell of coffee before taking a careful sip.
There was more milk in it than he would have chosen.
It tasted like home anyway.
Across the table, Edmund lowered his newspaper.
“Shall we give you a moment?”
Adrian took another sip.
“That would be great.”
Cedric came over three days later with a roll of parchment beneath his arm and the expression of someone trying not to admit he had been looking forward to homework.
Marisol let him in, asked after his parents, and set biscuits on the kitchen table before either boy had opened a book.
“I thought we could finish the Transfiguration essay,” Cedric said as Adrian cleared space.
Adrian looked at the parchment.
“You came over voluntarily to write about Transfiguration?”
“I’d rather finish it now.”
That was difficult to argue with, particularly when Adrian’s own essay still needed most of its final section.
They worked for nearly an hour before Edmund passed through and stopped beside the table.
Cedric had been explaining why Adrian’s description of the reversal was incomplete, using two rough diagrams to show the difference.
His father studied the page.
“That’s a good explanation.”
Cedric straightened slightly.
“Thank you, Mr.
Clarke.”
Edmund moved on after asking whether they needed anything, leaving Adrian to look between his friend and the diagram.
“You know he’s gonna use that against me.”
Cedric smiled as he returned to his own parchment.
“You could finish it before he gets the chance.”
Once the essays were put away, Adrian brought out the creature notes Kettleburn had asked him to organise.
Cedric helped divide the pages, reading through the Bowtruckle account while Adrian copied his direct observations into a separate section.
Halfway down the page, Cedric stopped.
“What does this mean?”
Adrian looked over.
His friend had placed a finger beneath a line recording what Adrian thought the Bowtruckle had said.
He had meant to explain eventually.
He had also discovered that eventually was a very convenient place to keep difficult conversations.
“I think it was telling me to move away from something.
Cedric read the line again.
“You mean you understood it?”
“Part of it.”
The chair creaked as Cedric turned toward him.
Adrian set down his pencil.
“I know I’ve said I can talk to animals.
I don’t think I explained that very well.”
“No,” Cedric said after a moment.
“I don’t think you did.”
Adrian told him about the sounds becoming meaningful with practice and the difference between a language he knew and one he had only begun learning.
He explained that making a friendly noise wasn’t the same as holding a conversation, even if both looked much the same to someone standing nearby.
Cedric listened with the same concentration he brought to a difficult demonstration.
“So when you were talking to the owl—”
“Yeah.
I was actually asking it.”
“And it answered?”
“Mostly it wanted to know what I had for it.”
Cedric sat back, looking faintly betrayed on behalf of several years of ordinary conversations.
“I thought you were joking.”
“I know.”
A scratching sound came from the fence beyond the kitchen window.
Both boys turned as a small bird landed on the top rail, paused, and dropped into the garden.
Cedric looked expectantly at Adrian.
He laughed.
“I don’t know that one.”
“You haven’t even heard it.”
“I’ve heard them before.
I still don’t know what they’re saying.”
That seemed to help more than the rest of the explanation.
Cedric leaned forward again and turned to the next page.
“Show me which parts you did understand, then.”
They worked until Marisol returned to find the table covered with loose sheets and the biscuits gone.
Christmas morning arrived with rain against the windows and his mother calling upstairs that breakfast would not improve by waiting for him.
Adrian came down to find his father already at the table, turning a small parcel over in his hands.
“This arrived for you.”
The wrapping bore two sets of handwriting.
Adrian stopped halfway to his chair.
Marisol noticed immediately.
“What?”
“Nothing.
I just wanna open it carefully.”
Edmund moved his mug.
Inside lay a new quill, a folded letter, and a small box that Adrian recognised far too well.
He read the first line and began laughing.
Don’t let your mother open it.
We’ve heard her.
George had added a longer account beneath Fred’s warning, explaining that they had managed to keep the charm working for several minutes before it faded.
Their latest problem was persuading it to stop at all.
Adrian left the box closed.
Cedric’s present was waiting beneath the tree: a sturdy notebook with enough room for proper maps, accompanied by a note asking him to leave margins this time.
Owen had sent a copied reference to another castle cabinet, while Beatrice’s contribution was a set of directions with one sentence beneath them.
The pointed window.
I checked.
His parents’ gifts were less likely to make noise.
Marisol had found him warmer gloves and a jumper that she insisted would fit beneath his school robes, while Edmund gave him a magnifying glass in a leather case for examining the details he kept describing in his letters.
Adrian turned it over in his hand, testing the weight.
“I can take this to Kettleburn’s.”
“That was the idea,” his father said.
For a while afterward, the living-room floor disappeared beneath wrapping paper, and his school notebook remained closed on the table.
He had missed this more than he had understood while he was away.
By the time they returned to King’s Cross, Adrian’s trunk contained finished homework, reorganised creature notes, and enough food from his mother to suggest she remained unconvinced that Hogwarts fed him.
She adjusted his scarf while he stood beside the trolley.
“Write.”
“I will.”
“And more than ‘everything’s fine.'”
“I wrote you, like, four pages last time.”
“Those were mostly about a tree.”
“There were creatures on it.”
Edmund intervened before she could respond, drawing Adrian into a brief hug and reminding him to give their regards to Professor Sprout.
A few minutes later, Adrian and Cedric were moving along the train in search of an empty compartment.
They found Owen first, struggling to persuade a case to fit beneath a seat, and Beatrice already sitting opposite him with a book open on her knees.
She moved her bag to make room.
“How many tokens have you got now?”
Cedric answered before Adrian had put his own bag down, and within minutes the new notebook was open between them.
Owen unfolded a page covered with directions, while Beatrice corrected the position of a staircase with the blunt end of her quill.
Fred and George arrived just as Adrian began explaining the cupboards they had ruled out.
Fred took one look at the spread of papers.
“Good.
You’ve started.”
George slid the compartment door shut and produced another folded map from inside his coat.
“We found something before we left.
Didn’t have time to follow it.”
Adrian moved the food aside.
Outside, parents were stepping back from the train as the final doors closed.
He caught one last glimpse of his mother beside Edmund, raised his hand, and waited until she saw him.
Then the platform began to move.
Across from him, George unfolded the map.