The Herbology practical was the easiest—just identifying cuttings and describing their uses—but even there, Hannah Abbott’s quick, confident answers made his own seem sluggish in comparison.
By Friday afternoon, the castle hummed with exhaustion and relief.
Charms results went up first, pinned to the common room corkboard.
Tobias edged through the crowd, found his name near the bottom—Pass, but barely—and exhaled through his nose.
Justin patted his shoulder like it was a consolation.
It wasn’t.
Potions came next.
Transfiguration.
Defence.
Each time, the same: Pass, but never higher.
By the time Herbology appeared, he’d stopped checking his exact position.
The pattern held.
Tonks, lounging on a sofa with her boots kicked up, grinned at him over a scroll of parchment.
“Heard Flitwick almost gave you a T for that Leviosa stunt.” “Fourth try counted,” Tobias said.
“Technically.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“Guess that’s why they call it *practical* and not *perfect*.” He passed everything but at the bottom of the year ranking.
Passed everything—but at the bottom of the year ranking.
The board stayed up all afternoon.
Names shifted in neat columns, ink glinting under the common room’s low lamplight.
Tobias leaned back in his chair, fingertips tapping the armrest in a slow, uneven rhythm.
Hannah’s laugh carried from the other side of the room—sharp with delight, muffled by the press of bodies.
Herbology: third from the top.
History of Magic: seventh.
Everything else dragged him down like stones in his pockets.
Charms, Transfiguration, Defence—all clustered near the base of the parchment, where the ink seemed to bleed a little thicker, as if embarrassed for him.
Tonks had vanished by then, off to spread rumours or steal food from the kitchens.
Cedric drifted past at one point, ruffling Tobias’s hair without breaking stride.
The touch lingered oddly—not pity, not praise.
Just acknowledgment.
By evening, the crowd thinned.
Tobias stood, stretched, and took one last look at the board.
His name sat where it belonged: passed, but no higher.
He exhaled, slow and deliberate, then turned away.
He was content with the results because he had passed and was going to be a second-year.
The rumours started small—whispers between classes, glances cut toward the Gryffindor table—but by Monday evening, the entire castle thrummed with speculation.
Tobias heard it first from a pair of fourth-years near the greenhouse doors: *Dumbledore was gone.
Potter and his lot went down the forbidden corridor.
Something about a stone.* The words slipped past him like water, leaving only a vague unease in their wake.
He chewed his lip, stared at his hands, and wondered why the shape of it felt familiar.
Tonks delivered the full version on Wednesday, flopping onto the common room sofa with the air of someone bearing gifts.
“Alright, listen—third-hand, but it’s juicy.” Her hair flickered between violet and gold as she leaned in.
“Potter, Weasley, and Granger *actually* went for it.
Third-floor corridor.
Quirrell’s dead—properly dead, not just sacked—and there was a *thing* down there, some kind of enchanted rock.
Gone now.” She snapped her fingers.
“Poof.” Tobias listened from his armchair, fingers still against the upholstery.
The details slotted into place with a quiet, distant click—*Quirrell.
The Stone.
The Mirror.* Fragments he’d half-remembered in the dark, wrapped in the gauze of dreams.
He said nothing.
Tonks didn’t expect him to.
By Friday, the whispers had solidified into school-wide fact, polished by retelling.
Tobias let them wash over him, content to watch from the edges.
The event had happened.
He had not been involved.
His half-memory caught up to the events only after the rumours reached him.
The end-of-year feast was the next evening under a clear summer ceiling.
The Great Hall glowed amber with late light, banners swaying gently in the enchanted breeze.
Tobias picked at a roast potato, letting the chatter of the Hufflepuff table roll over him—comfortable, aimless, edged with the giddy exhaustion of surviving exams.
Cedric leaned over from the senior end of the bench, ruffling his hair in passing, and Tobias didn’t flinch this time.
Dumbledore stood.
The hall quieted.
“Ah,” he said, adjusting his spectacles.
“A minor revision.” The Cup decorations shimmered midair—green to scarlet in a single ripple.
The Slytherin table went rigid.
A beat of silence, then Gryffindor’s cheer erupted loud enough to rattle the cutlery.
Hufflepuff clapped politely.
Tonks, halfway down the bench, let out a theatrical gasp and yanked Tobias’s scarf down over his eyes.
He laughed.
The laughter faded into the general din of celebration, leaving Tobias blinking against the sudden brightness as Tonks yanked his scarf back up.
She grinned at him, her hair now settling into a deep, satisfied blue.
Across the dormitory that night, trunks stood packed at the foot of each bed, latched and ready for the morning train.
The air smelled faintly of soap and summer—linen fresh from laundry, the lingering sweetness of treacle tart smuggled up from the feast.
The moon hung low in the round window, casting long shadows across the wooden floorboards.
Ernie propped himself up on one elbow, breaking the comfortable silence.
“D’you reckon we’ll get Flitwick again next year?
Or do they switch?” Justin snorted, tossing a pillow at him.
“Who cares?
As long as it’s not Snape.” A ripple of laughter.
Tobias lay still, listening as the conversation wound through professors, exams, the absurdity of Quirrell’s turban in retrospect.
He added a quiet observation about Sprout’s hat collection—how she never wore the same one twice—and Ernie clapped his hands like it was a revelation.
They talked until the moon climbed higher, voices softening as drowsiness crept in.
Justin yawned first, then one of the others, then Ernie with a theatrical stretch.
The beds creaked as they turned over one by one, murmuring goodnights.
Tobias stayed awake a little longer, staring at the ceiling.
The year stretched behind him in fragments—failed spells, shared meals, Hannah’s laughter, Cedric’s absentminded hair-ruffles.
He hadn’t been good at any of it.
But he’d been *there*.
He fell asleep with the moon in the round window.
The platform at Hogsmeade shimmered with the restless energy of departure—trunks wheeled over cobblestones, owls hooting in protest as cages jostled, laughter scattering like dropped sweets.
Tobias adjusted the strap of his satchel, the weight of it familiar against his hip, and scanned the crowd for Hannah’s straw-blonde braid.
She waved from beside a compartment door, her free hand already unwrapping a chocolate frog.
Ernie and Justin were hauling their trunks up the steps behind her, bickering amiably about Quidditch stats.
A Bones girl—Susan, Tobias recalled after a beat—perched on the seat inside, her nose buried in a dog-eared copy of *Fantastic Beasts*.
The compartment smelled of varnished wood and the faint, sweet tang of Drooble’s gum.
Tobias shoved his trunk onto the rack with a grunt, then slumped into the window seat as the train gave its first, shuddering lurch forward.
The countryside unspooled beyond the glass, fields giving way to patches of woodland, sunlight pooling in the hollows between hills.
Hannah tore the chocolate frog into uneven pieces, passing them around without ceremony.
Justin produced a pack of Exploding Snap from his pocket, but after two rounds and a near-miss singeing Susan’s sleeve, they abandoned it in favor of lazy speculation about summer holidays.
“Mum’s taking me to Crete,” Ernie announced, puffing his chest slightly.
“Historical wizarding sites.
Very educational.” Susan wrinkled her nose.
“Sounds dusty.” “You’re just jealous.” “Of your mum dragging you through a thousand-year-old ruin in July heat?
Obviously.” Hannah giggled, kicking her feet against the seat edge.
Tobias watched the light shift across her freckled cheeks—gold to amber as the train curved south—and realized, with a quiet, unshaped certainty, that he would miss this.
The hours blurred.
The chocolate ran out.
The conversation ebbed into comfortable silence, punctuated only by the rhythmic clatter of the tracks.
At some point, Justin dozed off against the window, his breath fogging the glass.
Susan returned to her book.
Ernie dug through his trunk for quills he swore he’d packed.
Hannah leaned her shoulder against Tobias’s, warm and solid, and didn’t pull away when the train jolted.
He thought of Cedric’s hand ruffling his hair in the Great Hall.
Tonks yanking his scarf down with a cackle.
Sprout praising his repotting technique with dirt-streaked enthusiasm.
Small, unremarkable kindnesses—given casually, taken for granted until now.
The compartment hummed around him, alive with the drowsy contentment of summer’s approach.
Tobias closed his eyes, let the warmth of Hannah’s shoulder seep into his, and exhaled.
He had done a year at Hogwarts and was going home for the summer.
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.