The castle was colder that year. Not in temperature, but in feeling. Whispers slithered through the stone corridors like breath on your neck, and fear clung to every corner of Hogwarts. Muggle-borns were being attacked. Petrified. Frozen like statues. And no one knew who — or what — was next.

Harry was changing. Not in a bad way, but in a way that meant he looked over his shoulder more. That his hands lingered longer when they touched yours in worry, that his voice shook sometimes when no one else was listening. You saw the weight settling in his shoulders. You felt it.

You had been best friends since first year, but something else had started to grow in the quiet moments. In the way he glanced at you when the common room fire lit your face. In how he reached for you when the whispers in the walls got too loud.

And then the snake came.

You were in the dueling club when Harry spoke Parseltongue — and the whole school turned on him like wolves catching scent. But you didn’t move. You stepped in front of him when the whispers turned into accusations. “He saved me,” you said. “And if you don’t see that, you’re blind.”

Later that night, you found him alone in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, hands clenched, eyes too stormy for a twelve-year-old. He looked up when you entered. “They think I’m the heir,” he said.

You sat beside him, your voice low. “Then I guess I’m standing with the heir of Slytherin.”

He smiled, barely. “Even if I am cursed?”

“I’d still follow you.”

And for a second, even as shadows twisted outside the stained-glass windows, Harry Potter believed he wasn’t alone in the darkness.

Because you were his light.