Nothing happened on the third attempt either.
Justin’s grin faltered.
Tobias lowered his wand slowly, fingertips pressing into the holly grain where unicorn hair pulsed faintly beneath the surface — a heartbeat he could feel but never harness.
At the front of the classroom, Flitwick floated from desk to desk on his conjured stepping stones of light, nodding at Susan Bones’ successful Lumos before pivoting toward their corner.
Justin straightened, eager to demonstrate again now that he’d gotten it right.
Tobias kept his wand hand flat against his thigh.
“Ah!
Mr.
Finch-Fletchley, splendid work,” Flitwick chirruped as Justin’s wand tip bloomed gold once more.
The professor’s gaze slid to Tobias’s motionless wand, then up to his face.
“And you, Mr.
Vesper?” Three breaths passed before Tobias answered.
“No light, Professor.” Flitwick’s smile didn’t dim.
He adjusted his half-moon spectacles with a tap of one stubby finger.
“First week jitters, perhaps.
Try rotating your wrist just so—” He demonstrated a minute clockwise twist that made Justin’s next attempt flare brighter.
Tobias copied the motion.
His wand stayed dark.
The bell rang before Flitwick could suggest another adjustment.
As the class shuffled out, Justin bumped shoulders with Tobias in what might have been camaraderie or consolation.
Hannah waited by the door, her own wand still glowing faintly in her palm like a captured firefly.
His wand produced nothing on the first attempt, and nothing on the second and third.
Hannah curled her fingers around her wand, extinguishing the light without comment.
They walked to lunch in silence broken only by Justin’s chatter about the upcoming Quidditch trials—he’d heard Diggory was a shoo-in for Seeker.
The Great Hall smelled of roast chicken and burnt pastry.
Tobias took his usual seat midway down the Hufflepuff table, flanked by second-years who barely glanced up from their mutton pies.
Hannah settled opposite him with a bowl of stew that steamed faintly in the September chill.
She stirred it twice clockwise before eating, which was all the commentary she’d ever make on his failed Charms lesson.
Three tables over, Cedric Diggory leaned back from a debate with his fellow third-years, sunlight catching the prefect badge pinned to his robes.
His gaze skimmed the first-years’ end of the table before landing on Tobias.
A slight lift of his chin, one hand raised just high enough to clear the bread basket—acknowledgment without expectation.
Tobias mirrored the gesture with less height and more hesitation.
The soup cooled faster than he ate it.
Between spoonfuls, Tobias pressed his left thumb against the holly wand in his pocket, tracing the whorls in the wood where his magic kept refusing to wake.
He thought magic must take something out of you even when it didn’t work.
The afternoon bell rang with the same dull chime as always, signaling the end of lunch and the march to Transfiguration.
Tobias pushed his half-finished soup away and followed the current of students toward the North Tower, where McGonagall waited with her tartan robes and sharper-than-knives gaze.
Transfiguration in the afternoon was a different shape of difficulty.
The Ravenclaws had already claimed the left side of the classroom when the Hufflepuffs filed in.
Anthony Goldstein sat primly at a shared desk, his wand laid parallel to the edge like a surgeon’s scalpel.
Tobias slid into the seat beside him without ceremony.
Anthony’s fingers twitched toward his inkpot, as if considering note-taking before instruction even began.
McGonagall did not waste time.
“Transfiguration is not spellwork,” she said, pacing the front of the room with a matchstick pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“It is will made manifest.
Precision.
Clarity.” She held the matchstick aloft.
“Watch.” Her wand flicked—once, sharp, like the snap of a taut wire.
The matchstick shimmered silver from tip to base, elongating, thinning, until a needle gleamed in its place.
Anthony inhaled sharply.
Tobias kept his hands flat on the desk.
“You will attempt this transformation fifteen times today,” McGonagall continued, distributing matchsticks with a wave of her wand.
“Focus on the needle in your mind before you speak.
Mr.
Goldstein, demonstrate the incantation.” Anthony cleared his throat.
“*Mutatio acus*,” he recited, crisp as parchment.
“Correct.
Begin.” Tobias rolled his matchstick between his fingers.
He pictured the needle—silver, sharp, cold—and raised his wand.
Nothing happened.
Anthony’s second attempt produced a faint silver sheen near the match head.
By his fifth, the tip had tapered slightly.
Tobias’s fifteenth try left his matchstick unchanged, save for a faint scorch mark where his wand tip had pressed too hard.
McGonagall passed behind him twice and made no comment.
The bell rang its dismissal before McGonagall could assign remedial practice.
Anthony pocketed his half-transformed matchstick without looking at Tobias, who left his own charred stick on the desk where it lay.
Greenhouse one waited the next morning like a reprieve.
Wednesday’s air clung damp to Tobias’s sleeves as he crossed the dew-heavy grass with Hannah trailing two steps behind, her breath fogging faintly in the September chill.
Sprout met them at the greenhouse door in patched robes that smelled of earth and something peppery—wolfsbane, maybe, though Tobias only knew the name from half-remembered fiction.
“Right then!” Sprout clapped her hands once, sending a shower of potting soil onto her boots.
“Devil’s Snare today, and mind the seedlings—they bite.” The Gryffindors jostled for front-row positions while the Hufflepuffs hung back.
Neville Longbottom tripped over his own shoelaces three steps in, earning a chuckle from Seamus Finnigan that Sprout silenced with a look.
She led them down the central aisle, naming plants as they passed: “Flitterbloom to your left, venomous tentacula behind glass—yes, Mr.
Thomas, *that* means don’t touch—and these,” she stopped before a trough of writhing tendrils, “are why we wear gloves on Wednesdays.” Sprout demonstrated the pinch-and-twist method for pruning Devil’s Snare, her thick fingers moving with surprising delicacy.
The seedlings recoiled from her touch, then relaxed when she murmured something that sounded like “*Easy now*” in a language Tobias didn’t recognize.
Her pause at Tobias’s station lasted half a breath longer than necessary.
She watched his hands—small, pale, ungloved—as he separated a seedling’s strands with more patience than skill.
The plant shuddered but didn’t constrict.
“Good wrist angle,” Sprout said, too quiet for the others to hear.
Her gaze flicked to his chest and away.
“Bubotubers next, if you’ve the stomach for them.” Tobias liked the greenhouse air, which was warm and smelled of green things.
Sprout handed him a pair of dragonhide gloves without comment.
The leather creaked as Tobias pulled them on, the fingers slightly too large for his hands.
Across the aisle, Hannah’s seedling recoiled from her touch with a hiss that sounded almost human.
“Loosen your grip,” Sprout murmured as she passed.
“Plants know fear.” Tobias exhaled through his nose and tried again, fingers gentler this time.
The Devil’s Snare quivered but didn’t retreat.
Its vines felt oddly warm through the gloves—not the damp heat of the greenhouse, but something deeper, like embers banked beneath soil.
Friday afternoon found him back in Charms with feathers on the desks and failure in his hands.
Flitwick demonstrated the swish-and-flick with a flourish that sent his own feather spiraling to the ceiling.
“Precision, not power!” he chirped from atop his book tower.
“The wrist does the work, not the wand!” Tobias held his wand in the prescribed form.
First attempt: nothing.
Second attempt: a faint tremor along the feather’s spine that might have been a draft.
Third attempt: stillness.
Justin’s feather danced three feet above his desk by the fifth try.
Hannah’s hovered at eye level, steady as a suspended breath.
Sixth attempt: Tobias’s feather lifted half an inch with a sound like tearing paper, then fell as if cut.
Seventh attempt: a thin curl of smoke rose from the feather’s edge.
The smell reminded him of his mother’s hair when she leaned too close to candlelight.
Flitwick appeared at his elbow so suddenly Tobias nearly dropped his wand.
“May I?” The professor’s stubby fingers closed around the holly wood with surprising delicacy.
He examined the wand tip, then Tobias’s face.
“Describe the sensation, Mr.
Vesper.
When you cast.” Tobias counted heartbeats before answering.
“Like…
trying to pour water through a closed fist.” Flitwick’s eyebrows lifted.
He turned the wand over once more, thumb brushing the faint scorch marks near the tip.
“Interesting metaphor.” A pause.
“Does it hurt?” “No.” The professor nodded as if this confirmed something.
He handed the wand back with care, as though returning a borrowed book.
“Keep practicing.” The dismissal bell rang before Tobias could ask what exactly he was meant to practice—the spell, or the act of holding magic without spilling it.
The corridor outside Charms filled with first-years chattering about weekend plans—Hannah mentioned a trip to the greenhouses, Justin boasted about Quidditch trials.
Tobias tucked his wand into his sleeve and let the current of students carry him toward dinner.
The Hufflepuff common room smelled of burning cedar and the faint herbal tang of Sprout’s latest greenhouse experiments.
Tobias sank into the deep yellow armchair nearest the fire, its upholstery worn smooth by generations of Badgers.
He withdrew parchment from his satchel—cream-colored, slightly wrinkled at the edges from herbology notes—and laid it across his knees.
Three breaths passed before he dipped his quill.
*Dear Mum*, he wrote, the letters precise as McGonagall’s matchstick-needle demonstration, *I’m in Hufflepuff with Hannah Abbott.
The food is good.* The fire popped.
A first-year by the window shrieked at some prank.
Tobias watched ink dry in the creases of his parchment.
*Charms is difficult.
Professor Flitwick says I’ve got potential but need to practice my wrist movement.
Transfiguration is worse—Anthony Goldstein managed half a needle by lesson’s end.* He paused.
The quill hovered above *Herbology is interesting* before committing the lie to paper.
A shadow fell across his parchment.
Cedric Diggory leaned against the armchair’s high back, holding two steaming mugs.
“Writing home?” Tobias nodded.
Cedric set one mug on the side table—chamomile, judging by the scent—and ruffled Tobias’s hair with the easy affection of an older brother before moving on to his study group.
Tobias added *Tell Mrs.
Pickering the castle has proper plumbing* before sanding the page.
He folded the edges precisely, tucking the corners as his mother had taught him, until the letter became a neat rectangle no thicker than three sheets of parchment.
He folded the letter for the morning owls and went up to bed.