The afternoon shortened, and the snow outside thickened into proper drifts, pressing against the window glass like something alive.
Tobias watched it without comment, fingers curled around his half-eaten Cauldron Cake.
Hannah flipped a page in *Magical Drafts and Potions*, the sound crisp in the quiet compartment.
At one point, she glanced up.
“You’re staring at it like it’s going to jump in here.” “It might,” he said, not entirely joking.
She snorted and went back to her book.
By three, the light had bled into that particular winter grey that made the countryside look like an old photograph.
Tobias dug out his wand—habit more than intent—and turned it between his fingers, watching the grain catch what little light remained.
Hannah didn’t look up this time.
“Still nothing?” “Still nothing.” She nodded, as if this were just another fact of the world—like snow, or train schedules.
They were quieter than they had been on the way down in September.
The train slowed into Hogsmeade Station with the usual clatter and hiss of brakes, the snow still falling in thick, silent sheets outside.
Hannah closed her book with a snap and stretched her arms above her head.
“Back to the castle,” she said, as if announcing some grand inevitability.
Tobias pocketed his wand without reply.
The corridors of Hogwarts had grown teeth in their absence—draughts knife-sharp between the stones, the torches flickering as though fighting for their lives.
Students hunched into their thicker robes, breath steaming in the dim light.
Sprout’s office, at least, was a pocket of warmth when Tobias passed it, the door ajar just enough to see the neat stack of firewood beside her desk, ready for any chilled visitor.
Classes resumed.
Charms.
Transfiguration.
The same spells, the same failures—matchsticks stubby and unimpressive, feathers stubbornly earthbound.
Flitwick’s encouragement was a practiced thing by now, gentle and unyielding.
McGonagall’s lips thinned, but she said nothing.
Herbology, at least, remained Herbology: dirt under his nails, the scent of green things growing, Sprout’s voice warm as the soil she tended.
Every night, Tobias drew his curtains, sat cross-legged on his bed, and tried *Lumos*.
The flicker came, thin and pale, a thing more ghost than light.
It wavered.
It died.
He did not stop.
The work was the work.
He kept trying *Lumos* every evening before bed.
In the first week of February, the wand started behaving slightly differently.
Tobias noticed it on a Tuesday—not that he marked the day as special.
Just another evening, curtains drawn, wand in hand.
He murmured *Lumos*, and the flicker came as it always did: pale, hesitant.
But this time, it didn’t gutter out immediately.
It held.
Two seconds.
Three.
His breath caught.
The light wavered—then held again.
Five seconds this time, steady as a heartbeat, before collapsing back into darkness.
He stared at the tip of his wand.
Tried again.
Two.
Three.
Five.
No change in the wand’s weight, no shift in his grip.
Nothing but the faintest warmth against his palm, like sunlight through a winter window.
He counted the seconds in his head, silent as the snow outside.
By Thursday, the pattern held: two, three, five—then nothing.
No fanfare.
No epiphany.
Just the barest shift in the world’s fabric, unnoticed by anyone but him.
Hannah didn’t ask.
Tonks, sprawled across the common room sofa with her feet propped on the armrest, only ever asked about things that exploded.
Cedric, passing him in the corridor, gave him the same nod he gave everyone—polite, distant.
The plants on the windowsill of the dormitory had begun to tilt, very slightly, toward his bed in the dark.
A slow, imperceptible lean, like trees bending toward a hidden sun.
Tobias didn’t notice.
He didn’t bring it to Flitwick or to anyone else.
It was the Tuesday after that—mid-February, his twelfth birthday passed without ceremony—when the matchstick stayed a matchstick under McGonagall’s watchful eye, when the feather in Charms lifted twice and dropped once, when the roast at dinner tasted of nothing in particular.
The common room buzzed with chatter he didn’t join.
The climb to the dormitory felt longer than usual, his legs heavier.
Ernie was already snoring softly in the next bed.
Tobias sat on the edge of his own, wand balanced across his knees.
The weight of it was familiar now, the grain worn smooth from months of handling.
He drew the curtains around his bed and took out his wand.
He did the wand-motion and the word and the light at the tip came on cleanly.
Not a flicker.
Not a waver.
Just light—small, steady, exactly the pale gold Lumos was meant to be.
Tobias didn’t breathe.
The tip of his wand glowed like a single star cupped in his hand.
Thirty.
Sixty.
The numbers unspooled silently in his head, but the light didn’t falter.
He stopped counting.
The warmth against his palm was sharper now, not quite heat but something alive, threading up his wrist like ivy.
Ernie turned over in his sleep, blankets rustling.
The sound was impossibly loud.
Tobias kept the wand level.
The light kept going.
Outside, the snow had stopped.
The castle held its breath.
The plants on the windowsill leaned another fraction of an inch toward him, leaves trembling in the dark.
He looked at it for a full minute without moving.
Then, very carefully, he let it go.
The light faded the way a candle goes out when someone gentle blows it.
Tobias laid the wand on his bedside table and lay back in the four-poster dark.
The ceiling was just a ceiling again.
Ernie snored softly in the next bed.
Someone shuffled in the bathroom, the sound muffled through the stone.
Tobias pressed his palms flat against the quilt and exhaled.
Morning came with the usual clamor—Ernie’s alarm jangling, the other boys groaning into wakefulness.
Tobias dressed without comment, tucked his wand into his sleeve, and followed the stream of students downstairs.
The Great Hall smelled of toast and bacon, steam rising from the plates in lazy curls.
Hannah slid into the seat beside him, her own plate already piled with eggs.
She glanced at him once, twice, then nudged his elbow with hers.
“You alright?” “Yes.” She squinted at him but let it lie.
Charms was Charms.
Flitwick beamed at them all from his stack of books.
“Now, let’s see those *Lumos* charms, shall we?” Tobias raised his wand.
The flicker came—thin, pale, gone in half a second.
He lowered it before anyone could notice.
Transfiguration was worse.
The matchstick sat stubbornly unchanged on his desk, though the boy beside him managed a passable needle on his third try.
McGonagall’s gaze skimmed over Tobias’s workstation without comment.
He had cast one spell properly, once, in private, and that was enough for now.
If Hollow at Hogwarts has caught your eye and you’d like to keep going, the full story lives on the usual site under TransmigratorTales, alongside my other ongoing serial.
More on the way, and I’m really glad you’re here reading this.