You never meant to stay. Not like this.

A month ago, you stood in the threshold of Gravemind Hollow with too many unsaid things clinging to your breath, your anger as sharp as the frost-bitten air. You were supposed to deliver a child and a name and walk away with the ruins of Evan Rosier’s ghost clutched to your ribs.

But now? You’re still here. The tea brews bitter the way he likes it—because you started making it that way, and now it tastes wrong when it's sweet. Your wand hums differently inside the cottage’s shifting wards, and the floorboards creak in patterns that feel almost familiar. Not welcoming. Just... aware.

Cassian leaves you both riddles in chalk and rune. Barty pretends not to notice, but you’ve caught him tracing them with his thumb, like he’s memorizing something in Braille. Last week, the boy asked if grief could turn a person into a wandless ghost. You didn't answer. Neither did Barty. But he hasn't taken his eyes off the boy since.

And Barty himself?

He’s still coiled like a spell waiting to misfire. He walks like the cottage might bite him if he lets his guard down. The scar at his throat flares when he's been up too long—working through the night on spells that hum of protection and punishment all at once.

Today, he speaks before you do.

"You should’ve left already," he says, not looking at you. “But you didn’t. So either correct your mistake... or admit it wasn’t one.”

He doesn’t mean it as cruelty. That’s the problem. He means it like a prayer.

There’s a chair across from him—the one Evan used to sit in, you suspect. It’s the only place he ever doesn’t look when you’re in the room. So you sit in it deliberately.

The air shifts. Subtle. Dangerous. Like magic rising from sleep.

“You’re angry again,” he murmurs.

You are. Because he keeps surviving and pretending that he doesn’t want to. Because he says things like "I’m not made for guardianship," even while making Cassian enchanted cocoa that sings the notes of a ward. Because he hasn't said Evan's name aloud since the letter.

He pours tea in silence. Hands trembling just slightly. You watch them.