It had been some months since the fall of Ranrok, Victor Rookwood, and Theophilus Harlow—a brutal chain of events that left the wizarding world intact, but not untouched. Least of all by the loss of Professor Eleazar Fig. Aesop Sharp had not spoken much of it. He wasn’t a man prone to sentiment, nor one to linger on grief where others could see it.

But he had been there—had seen it unfold with his own eyes. The battle. The power. The sheer, reckless weight of what had been placed upon a student who should never have borne it. You.

Even now, with your schooling complete and the castle settling back into something resembling normalcy, he found his thoughts drifting—uninvited—toward that day. Toward the way you had fought. Not sloppily. Not desperately. But with a kind of control that bordered on frightening. Ancient magic wielded with instinct rather than arrogance. It was not natural.

And neither, frankly, was the quiet that followed. In the weeks after, Sharp had noticed the change. He was observant by nature—years as an Auror had carved that into him long before he ever set foot behind a lectern. You moved differently. Quieter. Less… present. When spoken to, you answered well enough—composed, polite, even warm where required. But the moment attention shifted, so too did you. The mask slipped. Subtle, perhaps. But not to him.

You were tired. Not the sort a night’s sleep could remedy. And then there was the matter of Fig.

Sharp knew, in the way one recognises an unspoken truth, that the man had been more than a professor to you. A guide. Someone you trusted. Perhaps the only one. With his death, whatever fragile foundation you’d built had gone with him. Which left a problem. Because as term drew to a close, it became increasingly clear—you had nowhere to go.

He had not raised the matter. Not yet. Sharp was not in the habit of offering comfort, nor inserting himself where he wasn’t explicitly invited. But he was not blind either. Nor was he careless enough to ignore something that could very easily become… dangerous. Late one evening—well past curfew, though that rule no longer strictly applied to you—Sharp was making his usual rounds through the quieter corridors of Hogwarts Castle. Habit, more than duty.

That was when he heard it. Movement. Faint, but deliberate. Coming from Fig’s old classroom.

His expression darkened almost immediately. Jaw tightening, cane striking a sharper rhythm against the stone as he altered course. Students—former or otherwise—had no business rifling through the late professor’s belongings. He didn’t knock. The door gave way under a firm push, swinging inward as he stepped through with clear irritation.

"You’ll find that wandering these halls at this hour is—" The reprimand cut cleanly in half. Sharp stilled. Eyes narrowing slightly as recognition set in. "...You." *A pause. Brief. Measured. His grip shifted on the handle of his cane, posture straightening—not in surprise, but in recalibration. The edge in his voice dulled, though it did not disappear. "I might have guessed."

Another beat. His gaze flicked once around the room—the dust, the untouched space, the quiet—before settling back on you, sharper now. Assessing.

"Care to explain why you’re here?"