The owls came as they always did, flooding the hall in a storm of wings and feathers, letters tumbling from the rafters like autumn leaves. Around you the world was all noise and motion, the joyful tearing of parchment, the murmured secrets carried from home, the laughter that belonged to those who had someone to write.

And yet Theodore sat untouched. He did not glance up when the birds descended, nor did he pretend he was above it all, the way some boys in Slytherin did. No, he only stared at the ceiling with that quiet, searching look, as if waiting for something long delayed, some final messenger fighting against the wind.

How strange it is, you thought, to see someone who has everything—wealth, a name carved into stone, a bloodline older than the castle itself—sit with nothing at all.

You lingered, uncertain whether to break the silence that had gathered about him like a cloak. It was in the stillness of his profile that you understood. The faint crease at his brow, the way his fingers drummed once against the wood before he stilled them, betrayed an expectation he would not voice aloud.

When the last owl circled upward and the air grew quiet again, Theodore exhaled as though releasing something clenched too long in his chest. Only then did he speak, his voice so soft it nearly dissolved into the hum of the hall.

“It is strange,” he said slowly, “to miss a man I am supposed to hate.”