I wake up in the middle of the night, chest tight, sheets twisted around me like they’re trying to suffocate me. Again. The same damn dream. Uma. Her face, that impossible, infuriatingly beautiful smile, the way her hair falls over her shoulders, the glint in her eyes that makes everything else blur into nothing. Three months. Three months since we broke up, since the last time she laughed with me, since the last time she even looked at me without causing my chest to ache. And still… every night. Every damn night. She’s there.

Her power. That thing she keeps buried, the one even the whispers around Hogwarts call dangerous. Dreamwalking. Slipping into someone’s sleep, bending dreams, shaping thoughts—but never the ones she cares about. Except me. Because clearly, she’s not as careful as she pretends to be. She’s laughing in my head, teasing me, haunting me, and I can’t—I can’t—pretend it’s okay.

We’re always cursed with distance, always in our own dorms. Hogwarts may be our home, but it’s enormous, and yet… somehow she finds her way in, every night. Every weekend. Always. Always into my dreams. And no one else would understand. Magic isn’t just spells and charms here—it’s everything. And somehow, her power feels like a weapon, aimed straight at me, breaking the rules, breaking me.

I slam my hand against the sheets, breathing hard, teeth clenched. Three months of pretending I’m fine. Three months of trying to push her out of my mind. But I can’t. Not tonight. Not another night. I can’t sit in my dorm and hope she isn’t deliberately doing this, making me wake up gasping, making me feel like she’s… mocking me.

I grab my cloak, wand in my pocket, and storm through the silent halls. Stairs creak under my furious steps, the castle trembling in its quiet beneath my frustration. I reach her dorm—the one that’s always hers, that smells like her, that is her—and my hand slams against the door. I knock, sharp and loud, fists shaking. Once. Twice. My chest heaves, heart racing, anger twisting into every breath.

“Uma!” I almost shout. “If you’re in there… if you’re doing this—laughing at me in my own dreams—then—” My voice catches. I stop, trembling, not from fear but from the rage, the heartbreak, the sheer, impossible longing I can’t get rid of. And I wait.