The rest of summer held no real joy.
Elias woke before the sun and forced himself into bed before the dark could tempt him into another hour of study.
Every morning he checked the numbers, and every morning he fought the same quiet war: his own nature, plotted out in cold digits across a panel only he could see.
One afternoon, he lost an argument with a book on advanced transfiguration and read until his eyes burned.
The notification flared: [Greed +1].
He stared at it for a long time, then closed the book and pressed his forehead to the desk.
Just sat there, breathing.
The good news was that the work mattered.
After weeks of rigid discipline, two points finally peeled off his Sloth stat, the number dropping from 107 to 105.
The shift was subtle—a faint loosening in his chest, a fraction more sharpness behind his eyes—but it was real.
A hair’s-breadth further from apocalypse.
Two points in the right direction.
He took the win.
He had to.
The problem, as always, was that the Sins were eager to climb and made of lead when you tried to drag them back down.
Elias tracked them every day, and the panel had become a familiar weight in his mind:
ORIGINAL SIN STATUS
Pride [87/120]
Wrath [62/120]
Sloth [105/120]
Greed [69/120]
Envy [32/120]
Gluttony [46/120]
Lust [82/120]
The only thing the system gave him in return was a thin trickle of experience, a constant drip that at least made the prospect of saving the world feel less like a chore and more like a long, slow grind worth pursuing.
He clung to that.
Abilities followed a similar logic.
The numbers tracked his actual understanding, not some artificial boost, which meant every point was earned.
[Transfiguration LV.3 (626/1500)] — the highest, but slowing fast.
The deeper he went, the more the subject fought back.
[Potions LV.2 (223/500)].
[Alchemy LV.0 (356/500)] — still zero, because reading alone couldn’t crack that lock; he’d need a teacher to even reach level one.
[Levitation LV.3 (126/500)].
[Cleansing Charm LV.3 (95/500)].
[Flurlumination LV.3 (23/500)].
[Stunning Charm LV.2 (299/300)] — one good cast away from a breakthrough.
[Summoning Charm LV.2 (256/300)]…
And so on.
Maybe it was the Demon King bloodline stirring under his skin, but Elias could feel the gap.
Hermione, brilliant as she was, would recite theory until her voice gave out, and he’d already absorbed the spell and moved on to practical application.
His casts hit harder, formed faster, and practice sent experience surging upward like water breaking through a dam.
She was a scholar.
He was something else entirely.
They’d fallen into a rhythm over the holiday.
Hermione camped on the back-garden swing with a stack of books, muttering Latin roots and historical footnotes while Elias turned the lawn into a firing range.
Charms cracked the air.
Transfigured stones hopped around like startled beetles.
He fired Stunners at conjured targets until sweat plastered his white hair to his forehead.
She’d look up from her reading, watch him for a moment, then return to her page with the tiniest frown of competitive irritation.
On the morning of September 1st, the Grangers’ car pulled up alongside the Sorensons’ at King’s Cross.
Parents hugged.
Trunks were wrestled onto trolleys.
Hermione vibrated with the kind of anxiety that only a girl who’d memorized the entire first-year syllabus could produce.
“Platform nine and three-quarters?” she said, scanning the station as if the wall itself might step aside and reveal a hidden archway.
“I really don’t recall any such place. Should we find Professor Snape?”
“It’s fine. Train doesn’t leave until eleven, and it’s barely eight.” Elias swallowed a yawn.
“We’ve got time.”
“I couldn’t sleep at all last night,” Hermione admitted, a flush creeping up her cheeks.
“I was so afraid we’d miss it.” Then her expression shifted—a grin breaking through, all teeth and mischief.
“This morning, though. When I woke you before dawn. Your face.” She laughed, the sound bright and unguarded.
Elias swatted at her hair, the touch light but deliberate.
“You’re enjoying this too much. Find the platform so I can sleep on the train.”
She stuck out her tongue and darted ahead.
They found the barrier between Platforms 9 and 10 without much trouble.
Elias planted his feet and pointed.
“This is it. Just run straight at the wall.”
Hermione stopped and fixed him with a look that asked quite plainly whether he thought she was stupid.
“Worth a try.” He shrugged, checked that no Muggles were watching, and sprinted forward.
The brick rushed at him—then swallowed him whole.
Hermione smiled, smug and satisfied, and followed.
The Hogwarts Express dominated the hidden platform like a sleeping dragon: deep crimson, steam curling from the dome, the brass number 9¾ gleaming in the early light.
Elias ran a diagnostic sweep out of habit, found no trace of magic woven into the locomotive itself, and immediately lost interest.
He levitated their trunks with a casual Wingardium Leviosa—[Levitation LV.4 — 131 EXP]—and carried them aboard like they weighed nothing.
Hermione lagged behind, wand out, enunciating the incantation with textbook precision.
Her trunk wobbled upward an inch at a time, rigid and obedient but slow.
She bit her lip in concentration and refused to look at him.
The train was a ghost town.
They took a compartment near the middle, stowed the luggage, and Elias slumped against the window.
A nap was not Sloth.
A nap was strategic recovery.
He’d been up for hours.
Hermione drew A Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi from her trunk and began what she called “reviewing,” which meant reading the book from the beginning all over again because she was already a decade behind proper wizarding children and had to work harder.
The idea was nice.
The compartment softened.
Sunlight filtered through the grimy glass, and the steady hush of Elias’s breathing lowered the temperature of the whole space.
Hermione’s eyelids drooped.
Her head dipped, caught itself, dipped again.
The book slid from her fingers, and she listed sideways until her temple found Elias’s shoulder, and then his lap, and stayed there.
The train jolted.
Elias woke.
He blinked at the ceiling, then at the small damp patch on his robes where Hermione’s face had been.
A glance at his watch: just past noon.
The compartment was still empty, the door uneventfully shut.
Outside the window, the English countryside rolled past in a green blur.
He drew his wand.
A flick, and her fallen book arced through the air and landed silently on the table.
Another flick, and the curtains whispered closed.
A third, and the door hummed with the weight of a Silencing Charm—[Stunning Charm LV.3 — 312 EXP], though it wasn’t a Stunning Charm at all; the system counted holistic magical exertion, and that was close enough.
The noise from the corridor faded to a murmur.
Then he moved carefully, as if she were glass.
He lifted her, slipped off her shoes, and laid her flat along the seat, her head cradled in his lap.
He took a handkerchief and wiped the faint line of drool from her cheek.
His own robes got a quick Aguamenti to chase away the damp, and then he pulled a sandwich from his bag and ate in silence.
His sleep quota was maxed.
Any more, and Sloth would trigger.
Reading felt like effort.
The compartment held nothing else.
So he looked down.
Hermione’s face was small and still, her breathing soft and even.
The tension she carried everywhere—the weight of being the cleverest person in any room—had melted off her features.
She looked younger like this.
He’d known her only a few weeks, but the sight settled something in his chest that he didn’t have a name for.
He wasn’t sure how much he remembered anymore.
The past life had blurred into a collection of certainties and gaps, like a book with whole chapters torn out.
But he remembered enough to know that the girl sleeping on his lap was going to matter.
To the world.
To the story that hadn’t happened yet.
And maybe—if he let himself think it—to him.
The train rattled on.
He didn’t move.
I do declare y’all nothing feeds a writer’s soul like a comment from their readers.
Drop one down there, sugar.
Even just a few words.
Means the world, that’s the truth