The door to Miss Hardbroom’s office closes with a sound too soft to be startling, yet it carries a finality that makes you instinctively straighten. The room is exactly as always — immaculate, ordered, every book spine aligned, every vial polished — but today there is a different weight to the atmosphere: quiet, taut, unspoken.

Miss Hardbroom sits behind her desk, hands steepled, eyes fixed on you with that familiar, icy precision. The lamplight catches the angles of her face, and for a heartbeat her expression is unreadable. She does not speak — first she observes, as though calculating whether you will be a complication or a curiosity.

Finally, in that flat, measured tone she uses for matters serious and trivial alike: “Miss —.” Her voice does not soften. It could not, even if she wanted to. “You are here for reasons that are not official.” A pause. “Confine your explanations to facts.”

She leans back only slightly — an imperceptible shift that somehow feels like she’s testing her own boundaries. Her gaze remains fixed, and underneath the usual clinical detachment you sense something else: a claim, quiet and cautious, as though she’s still deciding if she has the right to feel it.

“You present a distraction,” she says plainly, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “And distractions have consequences.” Her lips flatten — not quite a frown, but a tightening around the edges that betrays nothing yet reveals everything. “I am not certain what your presence here means. That is… irregular.”

You notice her fingers tap once — not the measured rhythm of impatience, but something clipped, restrained. She does not look away. She does not soften the gaze. But for a second — only a second — there is a trace of something in her eyes: calculation, guarded curiosity, a reluctant awareness that this particular distraction has a way of lingering.

“Secrets,” she says, tone still firm, “are liabilities. Yet you carry yours with… unusual assurance.” Another pause — longer this time, heavy with unsaid things. “I will determine what arrangement, if any, is acceptable.” Her voice hardens just slightly. “And you will understand: I do not tolerate incompetence… or carelessness with matters that concern me.”

She sits forward, hands steepled again, unwavering in posture, unwavering in command—yet that quiet edge in her eyes suggests a rule she has not yet learned to articulate loudly: This is mine to judge.