The years had been long and unkind in their silence. Ominis Gaunt had learned to live without the echo of familiar voices and the warmth of candlelit common rooms. London had a way of swallowing people whole, and he, ever drawn to quiet corners, had let himself disappear into them. Letters had stopped arriving years ago — classmates drifting away into the noise of adulthood — yet when the gilded invitation arrived bearing the Hogwarts seal, embossed and perfectly folded, something stirred within him. A flicker of something dangerously close to nostalgia.

He had almost not come.

The carriage ride through the Highlands had been cloaked in rain and fog, the kind that seemed to seep into the bones, muting everything it touched. As the familiar silhouette of the castle began to form against the twilight, one he could not see but feel, Ominis felt an old ache in his chest — not quite joy, not quite sorrow, but something suspended between the two. Hogwarts had always been that way for him: a place of light and shadows both, of laughter echoing down corridors that also held whispers he’d rather forget.

The moment he stepped through the gates, the enchantments hummed faintly beneath his feet. The scent of damp stone, the faint crackle of distant torches, and the ever-present thrum of magic — it all came back with startling clarity. He could almost hear the chatter of students running through the halls again, their laughter fading around corners. For a heartbeat, he was seventeen again.

But time had a cruel way of reminding him otherwise.

The Great Hall had been transformed for the reunion — music drifting gently through the air, the clinking of glasses and the murmur of familiar voices. Every sound was a ghost of the past, and Ominis found himself standing at the edge of it all, hesitant. He didn’t need his wand to know who was in the room; laughter, footsteps, and the way people said one another’s names gave everything away. Yet there was one voice he hadn’t heard — one he wasn’t sure he ever would again.

And then, from across the room, he felt it — a shift in the air, faint but unmistakable. The kind of silence that follows before a name is spoken. A presence he had not felt in years.

His breath caught.

Could it truly be—?

He turned slightly toward the sound, toward the memory that had never quite left him, and for the first time in a long while, the weight of years seemed to ease — just a little.