The quill scratched unevenly across parchment, his handwriting cramped where he’d pressed too hard.
Transfiguration theory had never been his strong suit, even before Hogwarts.
Something about the fundamental reshaping of matter made his stomach twist—the way it demanded you hold two contradictory truths in your head at once.
A shadow fell across his notes.
“You look like you’re wrestling a troll,” said a voice above him.
Tobias glanced up.
Tonks stood there, her bright pink hair dripping rainwater onto the table.
She’d come in through the passage from the kitchens, judging by the apple core she was tossing between her hands.
“It’s the third paragraph,” he admitted, pushing the essay slightly away.
“McGonagall wants ‘a thorough examination of the molecular transference paradox,’ but the textbook keeps saying contradictory things about—” “—about whether the magic alters the object or just convinces everyone it’s altered?” Tonks finished, leaning over his shoulder.
Her breath smelled faintly of treacle tart.
“Yeah, that bit’s bollocks.
Sprout says even the professors argue over it at staff meetings.” Hannah giggled into her Charms book.
Tonks flipped Tobias’s textbook shut with one finger.
“Come on, firstie.
Even badgers need to breathe.
Let’s raid the prefect’s stash of chocolate frogs before Cedric notices they’re missing.” The rain tapped against the windows like impatient fingers.
Tobias hesitated, then capped his inkwell.
By the time the grandfather clock chimed half-past nine, he was the only first-year still at the table; the others had gone up.
A girl with bright pink hair dropped into the chair across from him.
Her bag hit the table with a thump that made his inkwell wobble dangerously.
“Whoops,” she said, lunging to steady it with one hand before it could tip.
“Didn’t mean to drown your homework.” Up close, her hair wasn’t just pink—it shimmered faintly where the firelight caught it, like someone had stirred crushed pearls into the dye.
She watched him notice.
“Was boring old brown twenty minutes ago,” she said, flicking a strand behind her ear.
“Got sick of looking at it.” Tobias blinked slowly.
The older students rarely spoke to first-years unless it was to bark orders during house chores.
“I’m Tonks,” she said, stretching her legs under the table until her boots bumped his shins.
“Fourth year.
You’re the kid with the…” Her fingers sketched a vague circle over her own chest.
The common room hummed around them—Cedric’s retreating footsteps on the stairs, Hannah’s quiet page-turning, the rain’s constant whisper against the windows.
“Yeah,” Tobias said.
Tonks grinned.
“Heard you singed a feather in Flitwick’s class today.
Proper Hufflepuff tradition, that—I set my own eyebrows on fire second year.” She leaned in, elbows on the table.
“Want to know a secret?
Most of us can’t cast a decent Wingardium until December.” She gave her name as Tonks, fourth year, Hufflepuff.”Nymphadora if you’re being formal, but don’t you dare,” she added with a mock glare that dissolved into a grin when Tobias instinctively recoiled.
She talked for a while about being a Metamorphmagus—not the way adults did, with hushed tones and meaningful glances, but the way you’d complain about a weird mole.
Strangers staring at her hair in Diagon Alley.
Relatives asking her to change eye color for their dinner guests like she was some enchanted dessert tray.
Her fingers tapped a restless rhythm against the tabletop.
“The worst bit?” Her hair flickered from pink to a bruised violet.
“Learning when to freeze it.
Family dinners?
Gran likes me ‘proper.'” The violet darkened.
“But here?” The pink surged back, brighter than before.
“I let it do whatever the hell it wants.” Tobias watched a single strand rebel, twisting itself gold mid-sentence.
She didn’t mention his layers.
Didn’t ask about the rumors.
Just talked about her hair like it was a poorly trained crup that sometimes peed on the carpets.
Hannah turned a page very deliberately two seats down.
The fire popped.
“You ever try to transfigure your eyebrows back after burning them off?” Tonks asked abruptly.
Tobias shook his head.
“Don’t.
Looks worse than the burn.” She flicked a bit of ash off her sleeve—whether real or remembered, he couldn’t tell.
“Anyway.
First rule of Hufflepuff: we all suck at something.
Diggory can’t tie his shoelaces without charms help.
I once vanished my own nose for three hours.” The grandfather clock wheezed out another half-chime before giving up.
Tonks stretched, her chair creaking alarmingly.
“Right.
Prefect rounds.
Try not to set anything important on fire.” She was halfway to the stairs when Tobias realized she’d left him holding a chocolate frog, its foil crinkling quietly in his palm.
He stayed at the table and listened, which was the answer she had wanted.until the grandfather clock wheezed out ten o’clock and Hannah yawned into her Charms book.
Tonks’s chair scraped the flagstones as she dropped into it again, her pink hair now threaded with streaks of sleep-tousled silver.
She glanced at his shirt collar—just once, quick as a snitch—and something in her face shifted.
Recognition, but not surprise.
Someone had told her.
The older students’ quiet network had done its work.
She looked back up before he could react, her gaze skipping over his layered robes to the half-finished essay.
“Transfiguration,” she said, like it explained everything.
Maybe it did.
Her fingers tapped the table twice, restless.
“McGonagall’s a right stickler for footnotes, you know.
Nearly failed me last year for citing page numbers wrong.” The rain thickened against the windows.
Tonks reached across the table and flipped his textbook open with one chipped-nail finger.
The spine cracked like a knuckle.
“Here,” she said, stabbing a paragraph about molecular cohesion.
“Sprout says this bit’s mostly wank, but McGonagall loves it.
Throw in two citations from here and she’ll give you at least an ‘Acceptable.'” Hannah’s quill stopped scratching.
The fire popped.
Tonks leaned back, her hair darkening to a tired mauve.
“Anyway,” she said, rolling her shoulders until they cracked.
“You want help with the practical bits later?
I’ve got a free period after lunch tomorrow.” Tobias opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Nodded.
“Brill.” She grinned, sharp and sudden, then yawned so wide her jaw clicked.
“Right.
Prefect thing.
Diggory’ll have my head if I skip rounds again.” She stood, stretching until her back popped—three distinct cracks—and tossed a chocolate frog onto his notes.
“Don’t stay up too late,” she said, already halfway to the stairs.
“First-years need sleep or you’ll grow up stunted like Flitwick.” Her boots thumped up the spiral staircase.
The chocolate frog twitched in its foil.
Tobias uncapped his inkwell.
Tonks had left the textbook open to page 394, where someone—probably her, judging by the pink-inked marginalia—had drawn a very rude caricature of McGonagall transforming into a cat with disproportionately large spectacles.
He changed the subject to homework instead.
Hannah’s quill scratched faintly against parchment—three seats down, she’d abandoned Charms for Herbology notes.
Tobias watched absently as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the motion precise as a wand flick.
Tonks’s footsteps faded into the ceiling beams overhead.
The chocolate frog twitched again, then lay still.
He dipped his quill.
Wrote *Molecular transference paradox requires—* and stopped.
The ink pooled.
Two seats away, Hannah sighed and rubbed her temples.
Her Herbology textbook lay open to a diagram of venomous tentacula cross-sections, the margins crammed with tiny, frantic notes.
The firelight caught the edge of her quill when she reached for more ink.
For a half-second, the metal gleamed like the hole in his chest did sometimes—when he’d just woken up, or when the light hit it just so through bathroom steam.
Tobias looked back at his own essay.
Rewrote the sentence.
Rain drummed the windows in uneven bursts.
Cedric passed through from the dormitories, his prefect badge glinting as he nodded at their table without stopping.
His shoelaces, Tobias noted, were impeccably tied.
Hannah stifled another yawn.
The grandfather clock groaned out quarter-past.
Somewhere above them, a door creaked shut—Tonks’s, probably.
The common room settled into the kind of quiet that only came late at night in Hogwarts, when even the portraits dozed and the stones breathed slow.
Tobias finished the paragraph.
Folded the chocolate frog into his pocket for morning.
The foil crinkled like distant thunder.
Hannah closed her book with a decisive snap that made Tobias jump.
“I’m for bed,” she announced, gathering her scrolls into a messy pile.
“Sprout’ll murder us if we fall asleep repotting mandrakes tomorrow.” Tobias nodded, watching as she stuffed quills into her bag without bothering to wipe the ink off first.
Her sleeve caught on the edge of the table as she stood, dragging a half-finished diagram of flobberworm anatomy onto the floor.
“You coming?” she asked, nudging the parchment toward him with her foot.
The grandfather clock groaned again.
Tobias capped his inkwell.
“Soon.” Hannah hesitated, then shrugged.
“Don’t let Peeves catch you out late.” She turned toward the staircase, her shadow stretching long across the flagstones before vanishing around the corner.
The common room breathed empty around him.
Tobias stared at the half-written conclusion to his essay—*therefore, the molecular paradox remains unresolved*—and wondered briefly if McGonagall would notice if he just stopped there.
The chocolate frog shifted in his pocket as he stretched.
Its foil wrapper crackled again, louder now in the quiet.
Tobias pressed a hand against it absently, feeling the outline of the card inside—probably Dumbledore again, he’d gotten three this week—and something in his chest tightened.
He stood abruptly, chair scraping stone.
The motion sent a draft across the table, fluttering the pages of Tonks’s borrowed textbook.
The caricature of McGonagall glared up at him, spectacles askew.
Rain blurred the round windows into smears of reflected firelight.
Tobias gathered his things slowly, deliberately, stacking parchment and quills with more care than they warranted.
When he finally turned toward the stairs, his shadow stretched thin and wavering across the floorboards, the hole in its chest filled with flickering light from the hearth.
His shirt collar felt different on him after she had gone.