It wasn’t the subject matter—he could theoretically grasp the concept of turning buttons into beetles—but his fingers kept twitching toward his chest, tracing the hidden outline of the hole beneath his layered jumpers.
Across the room, Ernie Macmillan lowered his voice further, though the words still carried.
“—absolute *nonsense*, the Chamber’s been sealed for *centuries*—” A tawny owl swooped down, landing heavily beside Hannah’s inkpot.
She startled, then unfurled the parchment with fingers that shook just enough for Tobias to notice.
Susan leaned in, whispering something that made Hannah’s shoulders tighten before she forced a nod.
The fire popped.
Someone’s quill scratched.
Tobias stared at his own two lines until the letters blurred.
“Oi.” Tonks’s pink hair entered his peripheral vision before she did, her knee bumping the table as she slid into the opposite chair.
She eyed his parchment, then his face, then flipped his textbook shut with one finger.
“Right.
You’re about as useful as a chocolate teapot right now.
C’mon.” He followed her upstairs not because he particularly wanted to, but because the alternative was staying very still while the common room’s tension pressed against his ribs like a second skin.
At the fifth-year landing, she demonstrated the wand motion—a quick counterclockwise flick—and said, matter-of-fact, “Try it on my curtains first.
Less embarrassing when you bollocks it up.” The charm took three attempts.
The first sputtered out against the fabric.
The second made the entire curtain rod shudder.
The third stuck, and Tonks grinned like she’d known it would.
By the time they returned downstairs, the clusters had dispersed slightly.
Hannah’s letter sat folded but unsent beside her knee.
Tobias’s abandoned quill had rolled into a patch of sunlight on the parchment, casting a long, thin shadow across his two unfinished lines.
He was at the corner table with his Transfiguration homework and was not concentrating.when Tonks came down from the fifth-year dormitories at midday and found him alone.
Her hair was a shade brighter than yesterday—electric raspberry, the kind of pink that made his eyes ache if he stared too long.
She dropped into the chair across from him with the grace of someone who’d long since stopped caring about grace, her knee knocking the table hard enough to make his inkpot shudder.
Her Charms textbook hit the table with a thump.
She opened it to a dog-eared page about locking spells, then immediately pushed it aside to rest her elbows on the wood.
“So,” she said, and the way she drew out the vowel told him this wasn’t about Transfiguration.
The common room hummed behind them—whispers about petrifications, the rustle of parchment, Ernie insisting to anyone who’d listen that the Chamber couldn’t possibly be real.
Tonks waited until a first-year passed by with an armful of library books before leaning in.
“Been thinking,” she said, and Tobias watched her fingers tap twice against the table—deliberate, like she’d rehearsed this.
“Your lot—second-year boys.
You’ve got locks on the dormitory door, yeah?” He blinked.
The question wasn’t what he expected, but then, Tonks never was.
Somewhere to his left, Hannah let out a quiet laugh at something Susan whispered, the sound frayed at the edges.
Tobias pulled his gaze back to Tonks’s waiting face.
“There’s a password,” he said slowly.
“Not a lock.” Her eyebrows lifted.
“Right.
So if someone really wanted in—” “They’d have to guess it.
Or hex someone for it.” He could see where this was going now.
The morning’s post had brought three Howlers, all addressed to different Hufflepuffs whose parents had apparently decided Hogwarts was one step shy of a death trap.
Tonks’s fingers stilled.
She studied him for a long moment, then nodded once, sharp.
“Alright.
Curtain charm’s something, at least.” She flicked her wand toward his abandoned homework—a lazy, wordless movement that sent his quill spinning in a neat circle.
“Try it on mine again after dinner.
Make sure it sticks.” The fire crackled.
Someone’s chair scraped against the floor.
Tobias watched the quill settle and thought about how Tonks hadn’t actually asked the question hanging between them—about why a fifth-year would care whether second-years could lock their doors.
She was already turning a page in her textbook when he finally said, “No.
No locks.” Tonks didn’t look up.
“Hm.” The sunlight shifted, stretching the shadow of his quill across the parchment like a thin, black finger pointing at nothing.
Tobias picked it up.
Tonks flipped another page.
The common room breathed around them, tense and waiting.
She asked him whether his dormitory had a lock on the door.”No,” Tobias said again, quieter this time.
His thumb brushed the edge of his parchment where the sunlight had warmed it.
“Just the password.” Tonks exhaled through her nose—not quite a sigh, but close.
She flipped her textbook shut with one hand and leaned forward, elbows on the table.
“Right.
Listen.” Her voice dropped lower still, barely above a murmur.
“Any second-year can put a privacy lock on their own bed-curtains.
Same principle as a dormitory lock—just smaller scale.” She glanced toward the hearth where a group of fourth-years were hunched over a shared copy of the Daily Prophet, then demonstrated the wand motion in the air between them—a sharp counterclockwise flick followed by a downward tap.
The movement left no trace in the air, but Tobias watched her fingers with the same focus he’d once given to wandless magic demonstrations in his old life’s daydreams.
“Most of us learn it by third year,” she added, casual as if discussing homework tips.
“No one teaches it officially.
Just passes it down.” The common room’s tension settled heavier around them.
Someone coughed.
A first-year dropped a stack of books with a thud that made half the room flinch.
Tonks didn’t react, her gaze steady on Tobias’s face as she waited for him to process the unspoken offer: protection disguised as practicality, Hufflepuff solidarity wrapped in simple spellwork.
He swallowed.
The hole in his chest ached dully beneath his layers—not pain, just presence.
“Show me again,” he said, and Tonks grinned, quick and bright, before repeating the motion slower this time, her wrist angled just so.
She walked him through the wand-motion for the curtain-lock charm without making it a thing.
They crossed to the stairs that led up to her dormitory.
Tonks didn’t take him up them—just stopped at the banister where someone’s forgotten scarf hung draped over the rail, its ends trailing toward the floor like lazy vines.
She plucked it up with two fingers, shook it out, then held it taut between her hands like a makeshift curtain.
“Watch,” she said, and demonstrated the motion once—sharp counterclockwise flick, deliberate downward tap—before stepping aside.
Tobias’s first attempt produced a faint shimmer in the air above the fabric.
The second made the scarf twitch as if brushed by an unseen hand.
On the third try, his wand tip clicked audibly against nothing, and the scarf went suddenly rigid between Tonks’s fingers, its folds frozen mid-drape.
“See?” She grinned, shaking the now-stiff fabric.
The locked portion didn’t budge.
“Easy as stealing candy from a first-year.” Behind them, the common room’s murmurs rose and fell like tidewater.
Someone’s chair scraped.
A first-year yelped as an inkpot overturned.
Tobias stared at the scarf, at the way its frozen folds caught the light differently now—not quite opaque, not quite transparent, like frosted glass.
Tonks let go.
The scarf stayed put, suspended half on and half off the banister as if pinned by invisible hands.
“Your turn,” she said, and draped it back over the rail for him.
His first two attempts went as expected—nothing, then a shudder.
The third took with a soft click he felt more than heard.
The scarf stiffened again, this time under his own wand.
Tonks bumped her shoulder against his, warm and solid.
“Told you it’d stick.” Downstairs, Hannah’s laughter floated up, thin but genuine.
The fireplace popped.
Tobias exhaled, long and slow, and for the first time that day, the hole in his chest didn’t ache at all.
They returned to the corner table and did their homework side by side.
Tonks flipped her Charms textbook open to a chapter on household spells, her quill moving in quick, practiced strokes.
Tobias picked up his abandoned Transfiguration essay, staring at the two unfinished lines until the ink blurred again.
The fire popped.
Someone’s chair scraped.
He wrote one word.
Then another.
The quill scratched unevenly across the parchment, his letters wobbling where Tonks’s were crisp.
She didn’t comment, just nudged the inkpot closer when his ran dry.
An hour passed that way—silent except for the rustle of pages, the occasional murmur from other clusters of Hufflepuffs.
The sunlight shifted, stretching long across the floorboards.
Tobias’s beetle diagram looked more like a squashed spider, but he kept shading it in anyway, the repetitive motion steadying something in his chest.
Tonks stretched, her chair creaking.
“Done,” she announced, capping her ink with a decisive click.
Her parchment was twice as long as his, her handwriting sprawling but legible.
She glanced at his half-finished essay, then at his face, then leaned back in her chair.
The sitting together was the message, and he did not ask her to articulate it.
The sitting together was the message, and he did not ask her to articulate it.
Dinner came and went in the same subdued rhythm as the afternoon.
The Great Hall’s candles flickered over plates that emptied slower than usual, conversations hushed beneath the high ceiling.
Tobias watched the Slytherin table from the corner of his eye—Draco Malfoy holding court, his voice just loud enough to carry—but Tonks nudged his elbow toward his pumpkin juice, her expression bland.
“Eat,” she said, and that was that.
Back in the common room, she made him practice the charm three more times on her scarf before declaring him fit to cast it unsupervised.
“Don’t bollocks it up when it counts,” she said, flicking his ear with a grin that took the sting out of it.
By ten, the dormitory had settled into the quiet shuffle of second-years preparing for bed.
Justin’s snores drifted through his half-drawn curtains before Tobias had even unlaced his shoes.
At ten Tobias closed his curtains around the four-poster in the dormitory.
The fabric whispered against itself, muffling the distant creak of bedframes and the rustle of sheets.
He pulled his wand from under his pillow—holly wood cool against his palm—and performed the motion Tonks had drilled into him.
Counterclockwise flick.
Downward tap.
The click came soft but clear from the curtain rod above him, a sound like a key turning in a well-oiled lock.
He exhaled.
Set the wand on the bedside table.
Lay back.
Through the gap where the curtains didn’t quite meet, he could see the faint glow of someone’s Lumos across the room.
The privacy of the locked bed was warmer than it had been before.
He slept better than he had the night before.
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.