In the morning, I touched my cheek before I even opened my eyes.
The skin was dry.
I moved my hand higher, carefully avoiding the eyelid itself.
Nothing.
Only then did I breathe out.
Greenish light slipped through the gap in the bed curtains.
Someone rolled over in the next bed, the mattress creaked, and everything went quiet again.
I sat up.
My left eye stung a little, but I could see normally.
The trunk was where I’d left it.
The box with the needle lay on the bedside table, and my robe hung over the chair.
Everything looked much less troubling than it had a few hours earlier.
That helped.
I got up and went to wash.
At the mirror, I checked for blood again.
Then I realised I was standing with my face a few centimetres from the glass, trying to make something out in my own eye.
Yesterday, that sort of close examination had ended exceptionally badly.
I moved back.
“No bathrooms today,” I muttered.
I looked at the sink in front of me.
“Not that bathroom.”
***
At breakfast, Malfoy was telling Crabbe about yesterday’s flight.
In his version, everything had been under control throughout.
Especially when McGonagall arrived.
I sat beside Blaise and reached for some toast.
“Do you think they’ll really expel him?” Crabbe asked.
Malfoy shrugged.
“Hooch was quite clear about what she’d do if anyone got on a broom.”
I looked up at him.
“That included you.”
“McGonagall didn’t take me away.”
That was hard to argue with.
I buttered my toast.
Harry sat at the Gryffindor table, talking to Ron.
He didn’t look like someone about to pack his trunk.
I knew why.
For now, I kept that knowledge to myself.
“How’s your head?” Blaise asked.
“Better.”
“You look better.”
“Thanks. Must have been really bad yesterday, then.”
He passed me the juice jug.
Malfoy started saying something about the school brooms.
I looked towards him, initially just to listen.
A thin wisp appeared near his shoulder.
It came and went as he moved.
Usually, I wouldn’t have paid much attention.
I saw similar things everywhere at Hogwarts.
This time, though, it seemed unusually clear.
I tried to work out whether it was the light.
I focused.
Tension built in my left eye.
Malfoy stopped mid-sentence.
“What?”
I blinked.
“Nothing.”
He touched his cheek as though checking for something on it.
“Have I got something on my face?”
“No.”
“Then stop staring.”
I looked down at my plate.
The tension vanished.
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
Draco watched me for another moment, then returned to the conversation.
I drank some juice.
Perhaps I’d simply been staring too long.
I’d have said something too.
I just didn’t understand why, for a moment, it had felt as though I was tensing more than the muscles around my eye.
***
In the first lesson, I caught myself trying to recreate the feeling instead of listening.
Not on someone.
I was looking at my inkwell.
Black ink.
The reflection of a window.
A small chip in the rim.
Nothing unusual.
When I raised my head, there were two sentences on the blackboard that weren’t in my notebook.
Blaise nudged his parchment towards me.
I took advantage of it.
Then I stopped examining the inkwell.
One pair of eyes behaving strangely was enough.
I didn’t need to add falling behind in my first week of school.
***
After lessons, several boys were heading out to the grounds.
One I recognised from the common room stopped by the door.
“Coming with us? We’re going to practise flying.”
I looked at him.
“On what?”
“Hooch said we could use the school brooms. Same clearing as yesterday, while she’s on the pitch.”
That sounded better than stealing equipment on our second day of using it.
Blaise fastened his bag beside me.
“We could try turning. Apparently, that’s useful too.”
I’d intended to go to the Room of Requirement.
Read something, write down yesterday’s events and think about my eye.
I looked through the window.
Sunlight shone on the lawns.
“All right.”
***
The school broom still looked as though it should have been replaced several generations earlier.
Even so, when I kicked off, it lifted me obediently.
This time, I had longer to enjoy it.
I didn’t want to try any height straight away.
A short flight a few feet above the grass was plenty, especially when it came to turning.
I leaned too far.
The broom turned much more sharply than I’d intended.
I straightened abruptly and flew past Blaise with my legs spread wide, as though trying to brake by digging my heels into the air.
“Easy!” he called.
“I am!”
I didn’t sound it.
At the far side of the clearing, I finally managed to turn.
On the next attempt, I moved more carefully.
The broom responded with a gentle curve.
Better.
Much better.
A few minutes later, I could fly from the tree to the rock, turn and come back without feeling I was about to meet the ground face first.
I laughed when the wind pushed my hair into my mouth.
I spat it out and raised my head.
Hogwarts looked different from here.
Still enormous, but at last I could see a whole wall instead of a single corridor where I was trying to find the right door.
One of the towers cast a long shadow over the grass.
I thought that, one day, I’d like to see it from above.
Not today.
Today, I mostly needed to learn to stop.
***
When I handed back the broom, I felt a familiar tiredness in my thighs and hands.
A pleasant one.
One whose cause I understood.
Blaise rubbed his fingers.
“I didn’t know sitting down could be tiring.”
“Try History of Magic.”
He snorted.
Several of us walked back to the castle together.
The conversation jumped between brooms, Herbology homework and speculation about Potter.
The group split on the stairs.
I took what I thought was the shorter route to the dungeons.
Before one of the turns, I heard a stammering voice.
Quirrell stood by a window with a Ravenclaw student.
The boy held an open textbook and pointed to a passage.
The professor bent over the page.
I meant to walk past.
Really.
Then something shifted beside Quirrell’s turban.
***
It wasn’t like the wisp near Malfoy’s shoulder.
I glimpsed a brief dark displacement, as though two images had overlapped slightly out of alignment.
My gaze moved higher.
I knew what was supposed to be there. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
That was precisely why I couldn’t stop looking immediately.
I took two more steps, but more slowly.
For a moment, I saw the professor’s ordinary face.
A nervous smile, pale skin, fingers adjusting the fabric at his temple.
Then I focused harder.
The tension came almost at once.
The same strange tightness in my left eye.
This time, something answered.
I saw no clear shape.
Darkness moved beneath the turban, and pain stabbed through me so suddenly that I stumbled.
I grabbed my bag strap.
Quirrell raised his head.
For a fraction of a second, he didn’t look distracted.
He was looking straight at me.
I lowered my gaze.
“Good afternoon, Professor.”
His answer came after a moment.
“G-good afternoon.”
I didn’t stop.
Around the corner, I put a hand against the wall and waited for the sharp pain to become a dull burning.
There was no blood.
I checked, even with people walking past.
What had I actually been trying to do?
Look under his turban with my eyes?
Make sure the story I knew was still following its course?
I had no answer that sounded sensible.
What I did know was that the professor had noticed me at exactly the moment I’d felt the pain.
That might have been enough for him to remember my face.
I pushed away from the wall and headed downstairs.
I didn’t look back for the rest of the way.
***
That evening, I sat in the common room with my notebook on my knees.
At the top of the page, I wrote:
**After the bathroom.**
I stared at those words for a long time.
Then I described breakfast.
I didn’t write that I’d affected Malfoy.
I didn’t know whether that was true.
I noted only what I’d done, what I’d felt and when he’d spoken.
Quirrell was harder.
I’d sensed a response.
Something directed at me.
But if I tried to explain it to anyone, I’d have to begin by saying that, for several days, I’d been staring at people so hard that my eye hurt.
I closed the notebook for a moment.
Across the fireplace, Goyle was trying to read the homework from Crabbe’s parchment.
“What’s that word?”
“Roots.”
“Looks like ‘cauldron’.”
“That’s the line above.”
I heard laughter.
I leaned back in the armchair.
I didn’t want to spend half of tomorrow wondering whether someone was looking at me because I’d done something to them.
I opened the notebook.
Added one sentence.
**Do not try again on Quirrell.**
That, at least, I could stick to.
***
Nothing unusual happened at breakfast the next day.
I talked to Blaise.
Malfoy asked me to pass the jam.
I looked at him, handed over the jar and waited for a moment for the stab in my eye.
It didn’t come.
After a few minutes, I stopped thinking about it.
Lessons were normal too.
I saw faint wisps around spells, sometimes something brighter near a teacher’s wand.
I didn’t focus on them.
By late morning, I felt a little foolish about my notes.
Perhaps my eyes were simply strained after the bathroom.
Perhaps Quirrell had noticed me staring, just as Draco had.
I very much wanted that explanation to be enough.
After lunch, I went to the library.
***
I needed a book for my Herbology homework.
I found three.
One contained the chapter I wanted.
The second had much better illustrations.
In the third, I saw a plant that could move along with its pot and decided to at least find out how far it could escape.
I sat at the end of a table.
For a while, the work went well.
I copied the information I needed, drew a clumsy cross-section of a root and corrected a label so it no longer suggested the plant absorbed water through its leaves.
Then I went to return the first volume.
In the aisle between the shelves, my shoulder collided with someone else’s.
The book struck a shelf.
The folded parchments beneath it scattered across the floor.
“Sorry! I didn’t see—”
I looked up.
The boy wore a red-and-gold tie and held a stack of books against his chest.
I was irritated.
Not furious.
I’d simply spent the past half-hour trying to copy my homework legibly, and now one of the pages lay beneath his shoe.
I looked him in the face.
The tension in my eye appeared at once.
The boy fell silent.
His brow furrowed, as though he’d suddenly failed to understand something.
Then he stepped back until his back touched the shelves.
“I…” He stopped.
The books shifted in his arms.
I saw him go pale.
I looked away.
The sensation faded.
One of his books hit the floor with a loud crack.
***
“Hey. Are you all right?”
He braced a hand against the shelf.
“I felt dizzy.”
His voice was quieter than before.
For a moment, I stood helplessly with my own book in my hand.
It had lasted perhaps two seconds.
Long enough for me to want them back at any cost.
I put my book in an empty space and picked up the one he’d dropped.
“Do you want to sit down? There’s a chair over there.”
I pointed to the end of the shelves.
He shook his head, but a moment later, he went that way anyway.
I followed, looking at the books I carried.
I was afraid to look him in the eye.
He sat and took a deeper breath.
“Better now.”
I put his things on the table.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I think I turned too quickly.”
For a moment, I hoped that was really it.
But I remembered Malfoy’s face.
And the moment Quirrell had looked up.
“I could get Madam Pince,” I said.
“No need.”
Just then, the librarian looked towards us from her desk.
Apparently, dropping a book was more effective than calling.
The boy noticed her and automatically straightened.
“I’m all right,” he repeated.
“Sorry about your parchments.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I went back for my things.
Part of a footprint marked one of the pages.
A minute earlier, it would have annoyed me a great deal.
Now I didn’t even try to rub it off.
***
I didn’t leave the library until the boy stood and returned to browsing the books.
He didn’t look back at me.
He had no reason to.
As far as he was concerned, we’d bumped into each other between the shelves, he’d felt unwell for a moment, and that was all.
I couldn’t leave it at that.
On the stairs, I stopped by a window.
I tried to remember exactly what I’d done.
Raised my head.
Looked at him.
I hadn’t been searching for wisps of magic.
Hadn’t tried to activate anything.
Hadn’t even been thinking about my eyes.
Yet I’d felt the same tension.
I rested my hands on the sill.
Yesterday, I could tell myself I only had to stop staring at people.
A simple plan.
Now, suddenly, it wasn’t enough.
***
At dinner, I tried to behave normally.
It didn’t go particularly well.
When Blaise asked me a question, I answered while looking at my plate.
I did the same with the next one.
Eventually, he put down his fork.
“Are you listening to me at all?”
I raised my head.
“Yes. Sorry.”
I looked at his face and immediately wanted to turn away.
Not because there was pain.
Because I was afraid there would be.
Blaise waited.
Nothing happened.
“I asked whether you’d finished Herbology.”
“I have.”
“Then why do you look as though you’ve just remembered a second assignment?”
I smiled faintly.
“Because you’re about to make me believe there was one.”
“There wasn’t. I don’t think.”
He shifted his plate to make room for a serving dish.
I watched him for another moment.
He was talking to me perfectly normally.
I could look someone in the eye without doing anything to them.
That ought to have been obvious.
Only then did I notice how tightly I was gripping my fork.
***
After dinner, I went to the seventh floor.
This time, I wasn’t thinking about new spells or a moving target.
I needed somewhere quiet to understand what I was doing.
The door appeared after the third pass.
A desk, armchair and lamp waited inside.
The dummy stood by the wall.
I put my bag on the chair.
For a moment, I looked at the shelves.
I had an absurd hope that one might contain a book about my eyes.
Preferably a thin one, with simple instructions and a chapter titled ‘How to Stop’.
I saw nothing of the sort.
I sighed and sat down.
***
I described the incident in the library.
This time, I couldn’t honestly put everything down to persistent staring.
The boy hadn’t merely been annoyed.
He’d felt ill.
The moment I looked away, the pressure had vanished and he’d begun to recover.
I underlined that sentence.
Then put down the quill.
I didn’t know whether I was doing something to his magic, causing fear or whether my gaze itself caused physical pain.
I hadn’t asked him.
How could I?
*Sorry, when I looked at you just now, did you feel more frightened or more ill?*
I rubbed my face, avoiding my left eye.
I wanted to know more.
Still.
That was perhaps the most irritating part.
Fear hadn’t removed the curiosity.
They sat side by side, both demanding attention.
But I wasn’t going to need a random student to test my next ideas.
I looked at the dummy.
It had no face.
It didn’t breathe.
Even when I hit it with spells, it simply returned to its place.
At least I could start with that.
***
I stood a few paces from the mat.
First, I looked normally.
At the wood, the shoulder joints, the pale circle on its chest.
Nothing.
I tried to see the magic that made the dummy move.
After a moment, a pale wisp appeared beside one of the joints.
I focused harder.
My left eye responded.
A slight tension.
No pain yet.
I immediately looked at the floor.
It subsided.
I stood still, listening to my breathing.
The dummy hadn’t even twitched.
I hadn’t learnt whether I could affect it at all.
But for the first time, I’d tried to stop before anything unpleasant happened.
I looked back at the wood.
Ordinary looking.
Still nothing.
Then I tried to examine the wisps again.
The feeling grew slowly, like the tension just before a sneeze.
Familiar enough to recognise, but difficult to describe to someone who’d never felt it.
I lowered my gaze.
This time, I didn’t need to see a face turning pale.
The warning alone was enough.
***
After several attempts, I sat down.
I began rubbing my thumb along the edge of the notebook.
I could bring on the feeling deliberately.
I could also stop it.
At least here, standing calmly in front of an unmoving piece of wood and thinking of nothing else.
In the library, everything had happened before I’d decided anything.
I didn’t want to pretend a few minutes of practice had solved the problem.
I added what I’d done to my notes.
Left some space beneath it.
Then I looked at the wand lying on the desk.
I hadn’t used it once all evening.
I picked it up and turned it between my fingers.
“Lumos.”
Light appeared.
Familiar and steady.
I moved it across the desktop, the closed book and my notebook.
Not a twinge.
“Nox.”
I sat for a while longer with the wand in my hand.
Tomorrow, I wanted to do more than find out whether I could safely look at people.
I had lessons.
Books I actually wanted to read.
A broom I still couldn’t land properly.
I wasn’t going to give all of that up.
But I needed a way to stop this strange tension appearing whenever I got upset.
***
In the dormitory, Malfoy was trying to close his trunk with a sleeve hanging out of it.
He pressed the lid.
It didn’t help.
“You’ve caught your robe,” I said.
He looked down.
Pulled the fabric free and tried again.
This time, the catch clicked shut.
“I know.”
“You do now.”
He shot me a brief look.
For a moment, we looked at each other.
Nothing hurt.
Nothing changed.
I took off my bag and sat on the bed.
Later, when I drew the curtains, the face of the boy in the library came back to me.
I didn’t even know his name.
But I remembered him apologising for my parchments before the colour had returned to his face.
I rolled onto my side.
Tomorrow, I’d try again to recognise the moment the pressure began.
In an empty room.
I wanted to learn to stop it sooner.