It watched him with the same glass-eyed intensity as always—not hostile, but wary in a way that felt deliberate, like it knew something he didn’t.
Tobias held its gaze for three slow breaths before turning back to the textbook.
The paragraph described the Water-Making Charm in looping, academic prose.
He traced the incantation with his fingertip—*Aguamenti*—then flicked his wand in the prescribed counterclockwise arc.
Nothing happened.
The cat didn’t even twitch.
The blackbird, though, startled at the motion and fled in a clatter of wings.
Tobias sighed and tried again.
This time, a single drop beaded at his wand tip before evaporating in the midday heat.
Progress.
Sort of.
Inside, the kitchen clock ticked.
Somewhere beyond the fence, a lawnmower droned.
He could’ve gone to the park, could’ve borrowed one of Daniel’s old footballs from the cupboard under the stairs—but the textbook lay heavy on his knees, and the sun warmed the back of his neck, and the cat kept watching.
A neighbour’s cat watched him from the back fence with the wariness cats gave him.
Tobias marked his place with a scrap of parchment and stood, stretching his arms overhead until his shoulders popped.
The cat tensed but didn’t move—its tail flicked once, decisively, like a metronome marking time.
Inside, the kitchen smelled of burnt toast and lemon cleaner.
He poured himself a glass of water first, gulping it down in three long swallows, then set the Charms book flat on the table again.
His mother had left a note by the fruit bowl: *Back by seven.
Try the mending charm on your school robes if you’re bored.* He wasn’t bored.
He traced the illustration of the Reparo wand movement with his index finger—a precise clockwise spiral—then practiced it empty-handed six times before picking up his wand.
The teaspoon he’d used at breakfast lay bent near the sink.
Tobias pointed his wand at it, breathed in through his nose, and executed the motion perfectly.
Nothing happened.
Outside, the cat yawned.
He tried again, slower this time, enunciating each syllable as he’d read them aloud earlier: “*Reparo.*” The teaspoon shuddered, then straightened with a faint metallic ping.
Tobias blinked.
He turned the spoon over in his hands, running his thumb along what should’ve been a crease.
Smooth.
The clock ticked.
The cat’s ears twitched at a sound Tobias couldn’t hear.
He set the spoon down very carefully and reached for the Transfiguration book.
The chapter on inanimate-to-animate transfiguration was predictably dense, but he found the margins filled with his mother’s neat script—*less wrist flick, more intention*—and something loosened in his chest.
He practiced the wand movement twice more before glancing up at the window.
The cat was still there.
Tobias exhaled through his nose, pressed his thumb against the textbook’s spine until the leather creaked, and stood.
The dishcloth from breakfast hung over the sink’s edge, torn along one seam.
He laid it flat on the table, wand hovering above the frayed edge.
“*Reparo,*” he murmured.
The threads shivered.
One inch of the tear knitted itself together with a sound like rustling paper.
Outside, the blackbird returned to its perch on the fence.
The cat’s ears flattened.
Tobias wiped his palms on his trousers and tried again.
This time, the charm held for a full three seconds—the tear closed another inch before the magic sputtered out.
He got none of the new spells fully right, but he got most of them half right.
By late July, the routine had settled into something almost comfortable—the cat on the fence, the failed spells, the small victories that felt less like progress and more like the slow turning of a gear he couldn’t see.
The kitchen table bore the scars of his attempts: faint scorch marks from a mispronounced *Incendio*, a teacup with a handle that refused to stay mended no matter how many times he tried.
Eleanor came home at half past seven, as she always did, her robes smelling of parchment and the faint metallic tang of St.
Mungo’s wards.
She kicked off her shoes by the door, a habit Tobias had inherited without realizing it, and padded into the kitchen where he was stirring a pot of reheated stew.
“You’re burning it,” she said, not unkindly, and took the spoon from his hand.
“I was reading.” She hummed, scraping the charred bits from the bottom of the pot.
“What today?” “Charms.
Again.” He hesitated.
“I’ve read it twice now.” Eleanor ladled stew into two bowls.
The steam curled between them, obscuring her expression for a moment.
“Going for a third?” Tobias pressed his thumb against the edge of the table, where a splinter had worked itself loose.
“Yeah.” “Go ahead,” she said, and that was that.
They ate in silence punctuated by the scrape of spoons and the distant thump of the neighbor’s washing machine.
Outside, the cat’s silhouette cut a sharp line against the fading light.
Eleanor didn’t ask about the spells.
She didn’t have to.
Later, when the dishes were drying on the rack and Tobias was halfway through the Charms textbook for the third time, she paused by his chair.
Her hand hovered near his shoulder—not quite touching, just close enough for him to feel the warmth.
“The teaspoon was good,” she said, and then she was gone, her footsteps quiet on the stairs.
Tobias stared at the page without seeing it.
Outside, the cat blinked once, slowly, and vanished into the dark.
She was quietly noting the progress and the lack of progress without pushing him on either.
The teaspoon sat gleaming in the dim kitchen light, its surface unmarred, proof of something Tobias couldn’t quite name.
He turned back to the textbook, tracing the diagrams with his fingertips, the ink slightly raised where his mother had underlined key passages years ago.
The cat’s absence left the garden unnaturally still, as if the evening had been holding its breath.
He woke the next morning to rain tapping against the windowpane, a sound like distant Morse code.
The cat wasn’t on the fence—likely sheltering somewhere dry—but the Charms book lay open on his desk, a scrap of parchment marking the page on atmospheric conjuration.
Tobias dressed slowly, layering shirts out of habit, then padded downstairs to find Eleanor already gone, a note propped against the kettle: *Grocery run after work.
Try the water charm in the rain if you’re feeling bold.* He wasn’t bold.
But he stood at the back door with his wand raised anyway, watching the downpool in the cracked paving stones.
“*Aguamenti,*” he muttered, wrist twisting as the textbook had instructed.
A thin spray arced from his wand tip—more of a mist than a stream—but it lasted a full second before fizzling out.
The rain swallowed the evidence before it could even hit the ground.
Inside, the kettle whistled.
Tobias left his damp shoes by the mat and made tea with the methodical care of someone following a recipe.
The steam curled around his face as he sipped, bitter and scalding.
Outside, the rain eased into a drizzle.
The cat reappeared on the fence, its fur slicked dark with water, watching him through the glass with the same unblinking intensity.
Tobias raised his mug in silent salute.
The cat flicked its tail once, a punctuation mark, and vanished into the wet hedge.
The hedge rustled long after the cat had gone.
Tobias set his mug down, the ceramic clicking against the countertop louder than he’d intended.
The rain had stopped, leaving the garden damp and quiet.
He could hear the distant hum of traffic from the high street, muffled by wet pavement and brick.
His wand lay on the kitchen table where he’d left it—holly wood gleaming faintly under the overhead light.
Tobias picked it up, turning it over in his hands the way he’d seen his mother do when she was thinking.
The weight of it had grown familiar over the summer, the notches in the wood mapping to the grooves of his fingers.
Outside, dusk settled in early, the August light thinning by the minute.
Tobias stepped onto the back step, the wood cool under his bare feet.
The air smelled of wet earth and something sharper—ozone, maybe, or the ghost of a storm that hadn’t quite broken.
He raised his wand.
The motion was practiced now, almost automatic: wrist straight, elbow bent just so.
“*Lumos.*” The light bloomed at the tip, steady and bright.
Tobias counted silently—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—until the ten-second mark, when the light dimmed on cue and vanished without a flicker.
He exhaled.
Tried again.
The second attempt held just as long.
The third.
The fourth.
The cat didn’t return.
The garden stayed empty.
Somewhere beyond the fence, a car door slammed, and a radio switched on, tinny with distance.
Tobias sat on the back step, wand balanced across his knees, and watched the last of the light drain from the sky.
He sat on the back step until full dark with the wand in his lap.
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.