Chapter Two

The Room Behind Her Eyes

The cupboard was cold, but Elizabeth no longer noticed.

The chill had seeped so thoroughly into her bones that it no longer registered as discomfort — only as another constant, like the creak of wooden boards or the cobwebbed dust that gathered in the corners like a permanent frost. She sat cross-legged on the blanket that lined the floor, a threadbare square worn soft by time and weight. Its edges had begun to curl and fray like leaves left too long in the sun. The wood beneath was unforgiving, pressing into her joints without care, but she had learned how to sit just so — to tilt her hips, to fold her legs, to shift her weight so that the bruises didn't scream. Her toes tucked into one another automatically, not to warm herself, but because that's what her body did when left too long in the cold.

The air hung flat around her, lifeless and unmoving. It carried the familiar tang of bleach and rust, of old soap that never quite cut through the sour scent beneath. But there was always something else — a metallic sharpness that clung to the walls like a warning. It reminded her of copper and pain, of blood not fresh but dried, the kind that flaked off skin and settled into fabric. It lived here with her, quiet and ever-present. Even when the cupboard was still, that smell lingered.

Her ribs throbbed with dull consistency, the bruises having passed through the darkest stages of blue and black into the yellowed, sickly hues of healing. They bloomed beneath her skin like the last breath of something once violent. On her arms, the impressions of fingers remained — faded, yes, but not gone. The grip had been so tight it had shaped itself into her like a memory her body couldn't quite erase. And beneath those fresh marks, older ones still lingered — pale lines, rough patches, places where skin had split and healed without care. A scattered constellation of scars, some thin as thread, others ragged and small, covered her like a map she had never been allowed to read aloud. Her flesh tried to forget. Her mind refused.

Since that night, Vernon had kept his distance. Not because he felt remorse. He didn't. She would have known — would have felt it bleeding off him like sour heat if it had been there. No, what followed wasn't apology. It was satiation. He had taken what he needed from her, and for now, that need had gone quiet. That part of him, the part that fed on domination and impact, had curled in on itself and slept. He was heavy afterward. Not tired. Not sorry. Just full. She had seen it before — the way the violence ran its course like a fever, and left him thick with its residue. And always, there came the silence.

He still moved about the house. Still barked at the television like it owed him something. Still cursed when the kettle squealed too loud or when his newspaper had the wrong crossword. But his shadow no longer reached for her. His voice no longer curved in her direction. She knew his patterns — the clatter of his keys, the growl in his throat as he turned the lock, the thunder of his steps on tile. And yet lately, those sounds passed her like echoes in an empty room. They happened. And then they didn't. And she remained untouched.

He didn't look at her anymore. Not when she scrubbed floors. Not when she passed him on the way to the bin. Not when she stood beside Petunia, silent, holding a plate too large for her hands. There was no eye contact. No muttered command. No grunt. Just space — thick and taut, like air stretched too thin.

She moved around him like a shadow. Unseen. Weightless. She didn't speak. Didn't meet his gaze. But neither did she recoil. They coexisted now like lines on a map that no longer intersected. There was no more breaking glass. No more reaching fists. Only absence — precise and intentional.

Petunia had changed, too, in her own way. She still gestured when something needed scrubbing. Still snapped when the dishwater cooled or the sponge was wrung too dry. But she no longer met Elizabeth's eyes. When she passed her a broom, their hands didn't touch. When she slid a plate across the floor, her gaze stayed fixed on the wall. It was different from before — not rage, not punishment. It was hesitation.

They weren't ignoring her. They were avoiding her. And she understood the difference.

Because something had changed.

Not something they could name. Not something they could punish. There were no new bruises, no raised voice, no defiant glare. But there was a shift — subtle, creeping, and undeniable. Elizabeth had not grown louder, but she had grown still. Still in a way that unnerved them. Still in a way that suggested presence, not absence. Like something watching behind the eyes of a child.

She moved with purpose now — not boldly, not with pride, but with a deliberate grace born of necessity. Her steps were placed with care. Her breathing quieted itself. She made no sound unless summoned. Not because she was afraid of being noticed — but because she had learned to prefer silence.

Her hands still trembled sometimes. When Petunia's voice rose too sharp. When the cupboard door slammed harder than expected. When the world shifted suddenly and her body hadn't been warned. In those moments, her thumb moved in a slow, unconscious loop across her palm — not in thought, not in fear, but in muscle memory. It was the motion of someone casting an invisible ward, repeating a ritual she didn't know the name of, only that it kept her upright.

And yes — she still flinched.

Not obviously. Not in ways they would catch. But deep down, in the marrow of her reaction. She tensed when dishes clattered. When Vernon cleared his throat. When the world made itself known too loudly. The reaction wasn't gone. It had just gone quieter. And that, perhaps, was the scariest part of all.

They saw it. They felt it, even if they didn't know what to call it. Petunia lingered longer near the kitchen sink now, hands busy with nothing at all, eyes flicking toward the girl who had stopped apologizing. Vernon double-checked the cupboard latch before bed — not once, but twice. Sometimes more. Not because she had tried to flee. But because she didn't fight it anymore. Because she entered that dark space without question. Without voice. Without fear.

And that terrified them.

They hadn't broken her in the way they expected. She hadn't cried louder or collapsed or begged. She had simply stopped reacting. Stopped pleading. Stopped giving them anything to push against.

And now… they didn't know what to do.

They didn't understand how a child could go that still.

Didn't know what it meant when she didn't shrink back or lash out or reach for anything at all.

But they felt the cold that came with her presence.

Felt it in the way a room quieted when she entered. In the way her eyes, when they rose, seemed to look through them — not with hatred, not with pain, but with nothing at all.

And so, they kept their distance.

Not because they'd forgiven. Not because they had grown remorseful.

But because the thing they had tried to silence hadn't died.

It had adapted.

And they didn't know what it had become.

Elizabeth did not mourn their distance.

She noticed it, of course. She was too perceptive not to. She saw the way their eyes slid past her — not with disdain, not even with fear, but with avoidance, like glancing too long might invite something they didn't understand. And in truth, it might have. Their thoughts brushed against her now, faint and jumbled, like passing drafts through a cracked door. She didn't reach for them — not anymore — but they came anyway. Shards of unease. Half-formed images. The frayed edge of a question neither of them dared ask aloud. What is she becoming? The words were never clear, but their weight always was.

She felt the shift in their footsteps too — the way they slowed near the cupboard door, hesitated mid-stride, then kept walking without speaking. She heard Petunia thinking about chores while her fingers curled tighter than needed around a teacup. Heard Vernon's irritation spike for no reason at all when he passed her in the hall. Their minds were noisy in ways their mouths weren't. Tense. Off-balance. They didn't know she could hear them — not really. But something in them sensed it, the way animals sense a storm before the sky splits open.

Still, she did not ache for their voices. Did not miss the shape of their presence. They had never been safe to begin with. Their attention had always been edged, jagged, something that cut when it came too close. Their silence now, though heavy and unnatural, was quieter than the storm. It carried no blows. No commands. No claws buried in her arms or shame pressed into her spine. It was cold, yes. But it was still.

She let them fade from her world like objects left too long in sunlight — colorless, brittle, already cracking at the edges. They dulled around her, their thoughts growing less distinct with every passing day, like old smells she no longer noticed or dreams that fell apart in the light. There was no grief in the letting go. Just relief. Subtle. Steady. Like breath held too long finally, finally being released.

She stopped reaching.

She no longer watched their faces for softness or hesitated in case they showed a flicker of guilt. She had stopped expecting apologies or explanations or anything that might resemble closure. They had never offered it before. They would not begin now. And in giving up that hope, something inside her unknotted. What remained was not emptiness.

It was space.

In that silence, she turned inward — not to flee, but to return. Her thoughts no longer scattered in panic or curled tight around fear. They gathered now, heavy and slow like water settling in a deep basin. She found the place inside herself where their thoughts could not reach her. Where her own voice rose clearer than theirs. Down she went, deeper into the corners of her mind where cruelty could not follow. Into the silence beneath the silence — not the kind used to hurt her, but the kind she had carved out with will.

The cupboard, once a cell, began to dissolve around her. Not abruptly. Not like breaking chains. But like mist burning off in early morning light. The smell of mildew, the cracked grain of the wood, the gray light through the slats — all of it lost its grip. It faded, not because she forced it to, but because it no longer belonged. Even the walls, it seemed, had grown tired of pretending they still held her.

And in their place: stone.

Not the slick, damp stone of basements or abandoned places. No. This stone was solid. Etched. Cold with purpose. It bore the weight of memory, not rot. Her bare feet pressed into it as if returning to something ancient — something forged before her and now reshaped in her image. It gave no warmth, no comfort, but it did not lie. And that alone made it sacred.

The mindscape did not greet her.

It did not rise in welcome, did not stir at her presence, did not shift to acknowledge her return. It offered no comfort, no invitation — and none was expected. It simply was — vast and unmoved, eternal in its quiet discipline. A place of order and weight. Of structure without chaos. Of silence that did not suffocate but steadied. This was not a sanctuary shaped by fear. It was a stillness chosen. Forged. Demanded. She entered not with hesitation, and not with reverence either — but with something quieter. Recognition. The way one recognizes the rhythm of their own breath in the dark.

This was not her escape.

This was her home.

There were no doors here. No hinges to creak. No locks to snap. No slats of wood to separate the inside from the world outside. Nothing to close behind her or keep her in. The space didn't divide. It unfolded — thought by thought, breath by breath. It was all her, through and through. Not a place built from imagination, but one drawn from depth. It stretched into long corridors where ideas echoed in clean lines, where focus traced itself into structure. Where the silence did not press in, but radiated outward — humming softly, like breath held between steady hands. It asked nothing of her except presence.

Here, she was not small. She was not hiding.

The change wasn't loud. It wasn't sharp. It didn't arrive like lightning or burn like fire. It moved the way roots move — deep and slow, steady in the dark. It began with stillness. With breath. With the refusal to bend. There was no audience to see it happen, no mirror to reflect it back to her. Only space. Only silence. And in that silence, she found the outline of something new. Something unfolding.

And far ahead, beyond the bend in the path her thoughts hadn't yet named, past the unlit fire whose warmth was not needed to feel its power, past the space where meaning gathered like dust before creation — she felt him.

Not like a shout, not like a shadow, but like gravity. She did not see him. She did not need to. His presence was not something that announced itself — it simply was, steady and silent, woven into the air around her like pressure before a storm. He was there, waiting. Certain.

Elizabeth stood in the echo of her own mind — not within a dream, not inside a separate world, but in a space born of her, shaped by her, made of her. She didn't fully understand it, not yet, but she knew it belonged to her in a way nothing else ever had. This was no illusion. No trick of magic. It was her — her thoughts given form, her instincts carved into structure, her will pressed into shape beneath the weight of pain and survival.

It had not always been like this.

At the beginning, there had only been darkness. Not comforting, but endless — the kind of dark that stretched without edge or end. Then, slowly, came impression. Not light, but definition — a floor that caught her when she stepped, air that didn't suffocate, space that recognized her without question. Structure emerged next, piece by piece, not summoned consciously but felt into existence. A ceiling that hung too far to see. Stone beneath her feet that remembered every step. She hadn't dared to touch it at first — hadn't dared think too loudly, afraid that naming it would unmake it. That acknowledging it would cause the fragile reality to splinter.

But it hadn't.

It had accepted her.

Solidified around her.

Responded not to her fear, but to her presence — as though her arrival had simply confirmed what was already true. The mindscape didn't bloom like something new. It unfolded like something long buried that had finally been given permission to rise. She had not imagined this place.

She had remembered it.

And it remembered her.

As it deepened, its scent became clearer — not with sharpness or sweetness, but with meaning. It clung to the inner rim of her awareness like dust on old shelves: parchment, ash, smoke, and ink. The kind of ink that stained skin, used not for letters but for binding, for command. There was power in it — quiet, dangerous power — the kind drawn in runes and sealed in silence. Beneath it was something cooler, subtler. Moss. Stone. Magic unspoken, resting beneath memory. Not alive, but not dead either. Dormant. Waiting.

Time bent here, but not in ways she could track. There were no clocks, no hours. Just breath and thought and stillness. She knew without knowing how that this space obeyed its own rules. One hour in the waking world could stretch into a full day within. Tom had told her this once — calmly, without ceremony — as if he were stating a law of nature. A function of the mind. A rare gift of magical thought: accelerated perception, uninterrupted practice. A place where growth outran the clock.

She didn't question it.

Because this was her mind.

And in her mind, things did not have to obey the world. Only her.

In the three weeks since Vernon's last punishment — since blood had soaked into the carpet and no one had come to stop it — she had lived what felt like months here. Months of silence. Of study. Of creation. She spent hours each day in the cupboard, unmoving, unblinking. But in her mind, she had walked miles. Built rooms. Filled pages.

She was transforming.

And then — as always — he came.

No footsteps. No announcement. No warning. He emerged from the edge of shadow like the space itself had breathed him into being. The stone didn't echo beneath him. The air didn't stir. But the silence shifted — pulled tighter, more focused — as if even the mindscape paused to acknowledge his presence.

Tall. Cloaked. Face obscured. Still. He never demanded space. The room simply gave it to him. The shadows softened where he passed. The walls stood straighter. The quiet deepened.

She didn't see his face. Not yet. Not because he hid it, but because she wasn't ready. And in this place, readiness mattered. Nothing here moved before its time. He had made that clear.

His presence wove into the fabric of the space like a thread pulled taut — a tension she felt in her bones. Not cruel. Not comforting. Just exact. There was no wasted breath in him. No indulgence. Every movement was calculated, stripped of anything unnecessary. His mind, she thought, moved like a machine — quiet, brutal, logical.

"You've survived longer than I expected," he said, voice cold but not disapproving. Crisp. Controlled. Like polished glass.

Elizabeth didn't bow. But she inclined her head — a small, deliberate tilt. A gesture of recognition. Of earned respect.

She spoke now. Not always aloud, but more often than before. In the beginning, she'd remained silent, unsure if words would break the delicate balance between them. But he had never punished her for speaking. Never mocked a question. He responded when he deemed it necessary. And so slowly, word by word, she began to open her mouth again.

"You said I was weak," she said softly. Her voice didn't shake. Not here. Not anymore.

His gaze met hers. She could not see his eyes, but she felt the weight of them — sharp, assessing, unmoved. As unmistakable as sunlight through stone.

"You still are," he replied, without cruelty. "But now you understand it."

Something tightened in her chest. Not shame. Not pain.

Clarity.

The truth of it settled like a stone placed precisely on a scale. She had survived not because she was strong — not yet — but because she knew what weakness was now. She had bled for it. Starved for it. Been broken by it. But knowledge changed everything. Even agony had taught her things.

Her breath caught — not because the words hurt, but because they didn't.

She understood.

And understanding, he had told her once, was the first kind of power.

He turned from her, stepping into the center of the space. As he moved, her mind responded — walls shifting, shelves rising, the floor expanding outward like a cathedral waking from sleep. Books slid into place, summoned from the depth of his memory. Dozens. Hundreds. Not merely conjured — remembered. Reconstructed.

"This is where we begin," he said. "With what magic is. Before technique. Before structure. Before spells and incantations."

She followed him, quiet, watchful.

"The Light will tell you magic is love. Or purity. Or faith," he continued, tone clipped. "They will teach you to suppress what you feel and call it control. To wield magic as if it owes you something."

She furrowed her brow. "The Light?"

"You'll learn," he said, and though the words could have been dismissive, his tone wasn't unkind. "Soon."

She let it go — for now.

Instead, she reached for one of the nearest books. The leather was cracked with age, the spine creased and softened. Its title was carved in runes she didn't recognize — deep, deliberate marks that seemed to shift slightly as her eyes lingered.

"You may ask questions," he said, his eyes following the slow brush of her fingers along the spine. "I haven't harmed you. There's no reason to fear my answers."

She opened the book, careful, silent. The pages rustled like dry leaves, and the runes shimmered faintly in the low light, as if acknowledging her touch.

"Do you have a name?" she asked.

A pause followed — not hesitant, but measured.

Then came his voice, low and clear:

"Tom."

She didn't question it. Didn't blink. Didn't even pause.

It suited him.

Unadorned.

Sharp.

True.

She nodded once, and turned the page.

They began with foundations.

Not spells, not incantations — not the things she'd seen in books left half-burned in the attic or glimpsed in dreams too tangled to hold. There were no swishing wands, no spoken phrases to mimic. No lessons delivered in cheerful tones or carefully organized by subject. Whatever other children might have learned — in proper wizarding homes with eager parents or polished tutors — she knew nothing of it. Tom never spoke of those things. Never compared, never mocked, never indulged curiosity about how others were taught. And she didn't ask. Because somehow, she knew: what he offered her was different. And perhaps, more dangerous.

What he gave her was older. Simpler. Harder.

It wasn't the kind of magic she imagined from fairy tales or even nightmares. It didn't sparkle. It didn't flicker prettily at her fingertips. This magic was weight — a presence that lived under her skin. It wasn't technique. It wasn't memorized. It was born in her bones, thrumming like a second heartbeat in moments of stillness, or fear, or fury. It was the way her skin prickled when someone was about to shout. The way her breath held in her chest just before something broke. It was instinct, coiled and waiting — the kind that didn't need rules or names or permission to exist.

It was the kind of magic that didn't ask to be noticed.

It dared you to ignore it.

Feeling sharpened to focus.

Will turned into command.

And she was learning — slowly, haltingly — to listen for it. To reach, not outward like someone hoping for a gift, but inward. Into the tangled thread that coiled deep in her chest like silver wire, woven with memory and pain and something unshaped. Tom didn't ask her to recite. He didn't ask her to imitate. He asked her to understand. To notice the flicker of tension that came just before power stirred. To feel the pressure behind her eyes and know what it was before it unraveled.

"Everything they teach," he said once — voice calm, almost distant — "is layered in softness. Safety. As if power were a candle to shield, rather than a fire to master."

She had not grown up with candles.

She knew fire.

He didn't teach her safety.

He taught her truth.

And the truth was not gentle.

Tom did not begin with definitions. He did not walk her through lists or diagrams. He didn't begin with rules. He began with sensation. With weight. With silence. With questions she had to answer with her body before her mouth. With stillness so heavy it made her ears ring, until she could feel the power within her start to shift — slow, reluctant, like something half-woken.

This was not about control.

Not yet.

It was about knowing it was there.

And daring to meet it.

"What is magic?" he asked once, his voice echoing against the walls of her mindscape. Then, without waiting for an answer: "It is instinct, sharpened by will. Power given shape by understanding. It is not learned the way a child learns to read. It is remembered. Reclaimed."

Elizabeth sat on the floor then, spine straight, parchment rolled out before her like a canvas. The stone beneath her had cooled her legs to near numbness, but she didn't shift. She was listening.

"There is no separation," he said. "Between magic and language. Between thought and command. Words were made to cage it — and later, to channel it. Runes are the skeleton beneath it all. And so we begin there."

He conjured the first book from memory.

It didn't fall from the sky or appear with a flash. It simply was — one moment not there, and the next, resting on the desk before her like it had been waiting all along. It shimmered faintly in the dim light, not with spectacle, but with age. Weight. Authority. The leather was thick, nearly black, its surface marbled with cracks and deep lines where time had worn its mark. Engraved into the cover were sigils she couldn't name — sharp and looping, almost alive — each one pulsing faintly beneath the surface, as though inked in something that still remembered blood.

Fundamenta Arcanum, the title read, carved in deep runic Latin, the kind of language that didn't just speak — it bound. The ink shimmered in black and silver, shifting when her eyes moved over it, refracting like oil on water.

She opened it with both hands.

Not cautiously.

Reverently.

The pages crackled beneath her fingertips, their texture dry and fibrous, like leaves pressed for centuries beneath stone. It didn't smell like any book she'd ever touched — there was no paper, no glue, no cheap ink. Instead, it breathed out a scent older than any library: ash, dried herbs, metal, smoke. The coppery undertone of ancient ink. The faint grit of something scorched. Magic lingered in the spine, not fresh and alive, but dried and dormant — like bones that still remembered motion.

The first pages were diagrams — not pictures, but structures. Spellwork reduced to architecture. Raw intent rendered in geometric form. There were circles made not for decoration, but containment. Triangles like blades. Grids like veins. The patterns didn't just represent magic. They held it. Even in ink, they hummed.

She reached out and traced the first symbol with her finger — slow, deliberate, half-afraid it might burn.

It didn't.

Tom said nothing at first. Only watched.

Then, with a flick of his hand, he summoned a quill and a roll of parchment nearly as wide as her chest. The feather was pale, long, too fine to have come from any ordinary bird. She took it with both hands.

He said nothing of praise. Nothing of beginning.

Only: "Wrist relaxed. Grip low. The line must be one motion. No hesitation."

Her first attempts were clumsy.

The lines jagged. The pressure uneven. Circles collapsed in on themselves or leaned like wilted plants. Her hand cramped. Her jaw clenched. She pressed too hard, too fast, and the ink bled into the parchment in angry blots that spread like bruises across her careful lines. The parchment was too smooth. The quill too sensitive. Every flaw was visible.

He didn't sigh.

Didn't scold.

He corrected.

Quiet. Exact.

Again.

She practiced for hours.

Until her shoulders burned and her fingers throbbed. Until her back ached from holding the wrong posture too long. Her fingertips stained black and violet, wrists smudged with ink she didn't remember spilling. She tried to adjust on her own, but when she faltered — when the symbols began to warp from exhaustion — Tom stepped in. He took her hand and repositioned it, not gently, but not cruelly either. Clinical. Intentional. Like resetting a joint.

"You must teach your muscles to remember what your mind cannot yet command," he said once, adjusting her grip again. "Precision must begin with the body."

Only after her lines began to flow — when her hand no longer trembled and her circles held their shape — did he introduce language.

Not just Ancient Runes.

But the ones the Light had buried.

Old Greek, the kind that split meaning across breath and tension. High Latin that scraped like glass against the tongue. Classical Arabic, full of curves and cuts that moved like dancing blades. Fragments of Sanskrit, scattered like starlight across the page, as elegant as they were merciless.

"The Ministry deems them obsolete," he told her. "Which means they are powerful."

Elizabeth didn't ask what the Ministry was. The word meant nothing to her — not yet. It sounded official. Heavy. Like law spoken in polished shoes and gilded walls. But she didn't interrupt to ask. If it mattered, Tom would explain. If it didn't, it would come eventually. So she filed the word away like an untranslated rune — noted, acknowledged, set aside for later.

She focused on the shapes.

On the weight of language.

On the way every script demanded a different breath. Arabic danced like flame — quick and sinuous. Sanskrit moved like vines, each character coiling in on itself. Latin struck hard, full of edges. Every line she copied taught her something about pressure. About structure. About restraint.

She traced until the calligraphy lived in her wrist.

Until the loops stopped shaking.

Until the angles turned deliberate.

Each script was a door.

And she would learn to open them all.

Sometimes she asked questions. Not many — just enough. "Why this curve?" "Why that stroke instead of a line?" "Why does this one close when others don't?" And always, Tom answered. Not with stories. Not with metaphor. With reason. With clarity.

"Because intent must be honored," he said once, adjusting the angle of her elbow. "Even in ink."

By the end of the first few months — or what felt like months inside the mindscape — her strokes no longer resembled a child's. The lines held shape. The spacing sang. The weight of each mark had been earned.

They were elegant.

Sharp.

Beautiful.

Every one of them carried purpose — not only in meaning, but in execution. The pressure of the quill, the speed of the stroke, the intention behind the breath that led into each line. These weren't just letters anymore. They were declarations.

Her quills grew finer. Her scrolls longer. Her language deeper.

Tom rarely commented. But sometimes he stood behind her as she worked — a silent shadow, watchful. And when she completed a scroll with enough precision — when every mark aligned, every symbol resonated — the parchment would glow faintly at the edges. Subtle. Soft. Like approval held just beneath the surface.

When it didn't glow, she didn't complain.

She rewrote it.

Line by line.

Until it did.

Because here, perfection wasn't praise.

It was the floor.

More weeks passed.

Then months.

Or so it felt.

In the cupboard, little changed. The stale air remained. The thin blanket still curled at the edges. Petunia's voice still barked commands from above like distant thunder, and the smell of bleach and burnt toast drifted down through the floorboards each morning. But those sensations belonged to another life — another version of her. One who flinched at footfalls and spoke in half-breaths. One whose world was measured in shadows, silence, and the soft rustle of rats behind the wall.

In truth, it had only been a matter of a couple months. A handful of short rotations of the sun. A few evening meals scraped together from the remnants of someone else's dinner. But time had begun to bend around her — or perhaps within her — ever since the mindscape took shape. Inside that space, time no longer obeyed the sun. It flowed like a deep river through hidden stone — steady, vast, and untouched by the outside world.

By now, Elizabeth had spent what felt like months beneath its arching halls, walking barefoot through corridors of thought and learning shaped by memory and will. The stone beneath her feet was cool, smooth — etched with runes she had memorized through repetition. The air inside was always quiet, but not empty. It hummed faintly, like the inside of a bell. A place tuned to magic, not sound.

She no longer dreamt of Vernon. Not of hunger. Not of the brittle cold or the soft itch of carpet against open wounds. Those things had been burned away — not forgotten, but reshaped. Transmuted. What once haunted her now lay buried beneath a growing architecture of knowledge. A quiet fortress. A sanctum carved from trauma and layered with discipline. She no longer closed her eyes to escape. She closed them to arrive.

And when she did — when the cupboard dissolved behind her and the ancient stone greeted her soles like a familiar welcome — she breathed deeper. The breath that filled her chest was fuller, cleaner, almost sacred. Her thoughts, which so often tangled and tripped over themselves in the waking world, became sharp, ordered, deliberate.

She began to dream of ink.

Of runes curling in perfect sequence across scrolls as wide as her arms.

Of alphabets that pulsed beneath the surface of the parchment — not symbols, but systems. Precise. Ancient. Logical. Magic etched in the language of consequence.

She studied glyphs that whispered back when drawn properly.

Scrolls that smelled of ash, parchment, and something older — something metallic and faintly sweet, like blood left too long in the open air.

No screams. No sirens. No noise.

Only pattern. Structure. Intention.

She dreamt of diagrams too intricate to draw without calculation, of equations that required both mind and will to balance.

Of ritual circles etched in salt and chalk — each line a promise.

Of spells that built like engines, slow and methodical, humming with dangerous beauty.

Of parchments that resisted her fingers until she earned the right to read them. Some required her blood. Others, her full name. Some only unfurled in the presence of shadow.

And always, there was Tom. Watching from the edges of her awareness, stitched into the fabric of the mindscape itself. He was the only constant aside from the stone. A presence like gravity, unyielding and cold. He didn't hover. He didn't comfort. But he was present — and real in a way nothing else in her life had ever been.

She saw him only when he chose to be seen. One moment an empty archway — the next, his silhouette, emerging like a thought given form. He conjured chalk into her palm without a word. Corrected her grip with a look. Sharpened her technique by expectation alone. His silence carried weight. When he did speak, it was never wasted.

Their time together was rarely gentle. But it was never cruel.

He did not insult her for failing. He made her repeat it until she didn't.

He pushed her to memorize full spell matrices in ancient tongues — languages whose grammar bent around magical law instead of logic. He demanded she translate scrolls, written in layered dialects that shifted mid-sentence. She was not allowed to guess. She had to know. And when she didn't, she studied. Until she did.

She copied these texts for hours. Days, perhaps. Her fingers grew cramped, ink soaking into the creases of her knuckles like something permanent. It stained her wrists, her nails. Smelled of old iron. She learned to breathe through the ache in her hand, to stretch each finger, to shake out the tremor in her wrist. She adjusted. And kept writing.

Her posture was corrected dozens of times a day. Her elbow nudged. Her spine lengthened. Her wrist lifted just so.

"You write with your whole body," he had told her once, voice low but precise. "Sloppiness is weakness."

So she wrote like she was building something.

And in truth… she was.

Her studies did not remain on parchment alone.

As the scrolls grew more complex and her mind steadier beneath their weight, Tom began to introduce something else — something quieter, far more dangerous.

Wandless magic.

He did not announce it. There was no name given at first. No dramatic shift in tone or lesson title. It simply began. Subtle. Unmarked. He led her deeper into focus, into breath and thought and tension. He set an object on the stone floor — a pebble, a quill, a candle with an unlit wick — and then stepped back.

"Move it," he said.

Not with touch. Not with spell. Not even with words.

It wasn't about magic in the traditional sense. There were no incantations. No flowing wandwork. No script to follow. Only will. Only the raw, invisible act of reaching inward and pulling — not at something external, but at a current she had only barely begun to feel threading through her own bones.

It was like trying to lift a building with her breath.

The first few times, nothing happened.

Then, something did.

The pebble shook.

The quill twitched.

A candle flame flickered into life, then instantly snuffed out.

"There is magic in your blood," Tom said one day, as a glass vial floated for half a second between them before falling and shattering at her feet. "But blood is only the fuel. Mind is the flame."

She tried again.

And again.

And again.

At first, she overreached. Always. The magic slipped through her grasp like oil, like smoke. Her nose bled from the strain. Her temples ached. The stone cracked more than once beneath her feet. Her muscles seized from the tension of trying to will something to move — anything — only to find herself exhausted and unchanged. And yet the moments it responded — the quiver of energy in the air, the pulse of movement without her hand — they stayed with her. They hooked into something deep and wordless inside her.

Tom never flinched. Never scolded. Never reassured.

He simply watched.

And corrected.

Her spine too tight? Adjust. Her breathing too shallow? Stop and begin again. Her focus frayed by stray thought? Let it go or leave. She was not allowed to "try." She was to do. With clarity. With command.

"You're not coaxing it," he told her. "You're not begging it. Magic is not a child or a friend. It answers precision. Nothing else."

She began to feel it, slowly — that second presence beneath her skin. Like breath that didn't belong to her lungs. Like a thread wound too tight in her chest. At first, it came only in moments of stillness. Then, gradually, it began to stir when she called for it. She could now hold a flame between her palms without it guttering. She could lift a quill from across the room with a glance, draw it through the air and lay it down without a sound.

And then one night, after a particularly long session where she managed to keep a glass vial levitating for nearly a minute, he finally spoke — not with instruction, but with warning.

"Wandless magic is not taught in schools," he said. "Not anymore."

She turned, breath still shallow from the effort. "Why?"

"Because it's dangerous."

He stepped closer, gaze sharp, tone quiet — but edged.

"Too many accidents. Too many who believed will alone was enough. Hands melted. Fingers blown off at the joints. Limbs torn open by misfires. There were dueling accidents, collapses of magical fields, feedback so violent it liquefied bone. The Ministry outlawed formal instruction a century ago. The Light called it barbaric. Undisciplined. Uncivilized."

She listened, eyes wide, fingers still tingling from the magic she'd just channeled.

"They say it's too primal," he continued. "Too unpredictable. That only wands can contain magic safely. But that isn't the truth."

"What is?"

"It isn't about safety," Tom said. "It's about control. The wand is a leash. It channels power — yes — but it also restricts it. Regulates it. Records it. You can trace a wand's spellwork. You can assign blame. You can take it away. But wandless magic?" He looked at her, eyes cold and full of something ancient. "It belongs to the caster alone. No wand. No trail. No law."

He let the silence hang.

Then, softly: "You will never speak of this. Not in dreams. Not in thought. Not to anyone."

She swallowed.

"But—"

"They will not understand," he said, cutting her off without raising his voice. "And what they do not understand, they fear. And what they fear, they destroy."

Elizabeth nodded once.

And never asked again.

From then on, she treated wandless magic as something sacred.

Not in the way of reverence — but in the way that dangerous things are sacred. Wild things. Sharp things. She trained in it only when Tom allowed it. She reached for it only when her mind was still enough to hold its shape. Some days it was as easy as exhaling. Other days, she felt as though she were trying to tame a storm inside her chest.

But it was hers.

Not learned.

Not granted.

Hers.

It was harder than the scrolls. Harder than the runes. Harder than the ancient languages she etched until her fingers went numb. Because wandless magic demanded not just knowledge or will — but mastery of self. The kind she had never been taught. The kind no one wanted her to have.

She practiced until her arms trembled, until her breath faltered, until her legs gave out beneath her. She pushed past frustration, past failure, into something colder. Sharper. She learned how to hold a single spark in place for over a minute. How to lift and lower objects with the slightest shift in thought. How to pour energy into a task without losing herself in it.

And through it all, Tom watched.

Corrected.

Pushed.

But never once praised.

Because this power was not something to be praised.

It was something to be survived. Something to be sharpened until it no longer cut the wrong target. Something to be wielded — not displayed.

It became the most sacred of all her lessons.

Not because it was the most powerful.

But because it was the most forbidden.

And the most undeniably hers.

She no longer measured time in days or meals or punishments. She measured it in scrolls completed. In incantations internalized. In how many times she could draw the five-line binding sigil before her lines wavered. In the number of languages she could now read without pausing. In the number of seconds she could hold a candle's flame frozen in place — suspended between thought and fire, between silence and breath.

And slowly — imperceptibly at first — the silence inside her changed.

It was no longer the silence of terror, of waiting for the next blow, the next insult, the next slammed cupboard door. It became a silence of choice. A stillness forged from concentration, from focus so intense the world faded.

Her old habits remained — the thumb rubbing slow circles into her palm when thoughts tangled, the slight hunch of her shoulders when something too loud echoed from above — but they no longer ruled her. They were echoes. Faint. Like marks left on stone after the tide had gone.

In the mindscape, she began to construct herself anew — line by line. Quill by quill. Breath by breath.

Magic was not an escape.

It was not a dream or a destiny. It was not kindness.

It was structure. It was logic. It was a puzzle with consequences.

And in a world that had never made sense — in a life shaped by cruelty and chaos and the scraping of others' thoughts pressing against her skull like broken glass — structure was salvation. She understood now why Tom had begun here.

Not with power.

Not with spells.

But with control.

Control over self. Over body. Over thought. Over instinct.

And now, over magic.

She craved it. Not to harm. Not to rule. But to become someone who could not be unmade. Someone who could not be shattered by a raised voice, a slammed door, or a cruel smirk.

The library inside her mind grew with each passing week. Bookshelves climbed higher. Scrolls stacked themselves into towers that never fell. A desk formed from solid oak, polished and wide, bearing not a single scratch. There she practiced her lettering, every stroke deliberate — every curl, every loop, every rune etched with the steadiness of breath and repetition.

At the top of every page, her name now appeared.

Elizabeth Lily Potter.

Written in ink that never smudged. In a hand she had forged into elegance.

And for the first time in her life… she believed it belonged to her.

Time moved differently now. Not faster. Not slower. Just… differently.

Elizabeth had stopped trying to count it. In the waking world, the cupboard still creaked when she moved, and the hollow ache of hunger lingered like a ghost behind her ribs. But in the mindscape, time bent around her concentration. A single lesson could feel like a week. A scroll could take hours to absorb. Or seconds. She never quite knew.

She had made progress — undeniable, real progress — but it had come in waves, not strides.

Some days were maddening. Her thoughts tangled. Her hand shook. She'd forget a symbol she had practiced a dozen times the day before. There were moments she buried her head in her arms, teeth clenched, furious at herself for not being better — not fast enough, not sharp enough. She was only a child, after all, and some of the texts Tom had her translating were etched in dialects of Latin long buried by time. And yet she was expected to understand. To learn. To keep going.

And she did.

Not because it was easy — but because it was hers. This knowledge, this place, this discipline. No one could take it from her.

Her library expanded even more. Her quill strokes grew neater. The diagrams she once smudged now bloomed with precision, each line drawn with intent. She stopped counting scrolls and began organizing them — not by subject, but by use. Practical magic. Structural theory. Psychological defenses. She'd even begun copying passages in her own words, explaining concepts back to herself as she might to someone younger. Not because Tom asked her to — but because it helped her remember.

And through it all, one fascination quietly took root: potions.

It had started simply — a glossary of magical plants, tucked between two scrolls on wand movement. She opened it idly. Then read it twice. Then a third time.

There was something in the nature of potion work that calmed her. It wasn't about brute power. It didn't rely on a wand or a duel of wills. Potions required control. Measured timing. Focused movement. Each ingredient had properties, temperaments, limits. There was logic in the ratios. There was beauty in the rhythm. She began to fill the margins of her notes with ingredient sketches and temperature conversions. She memorized the shimmer curve of distilled fluxweed, the difference between powdered nettle leaf and crushed, the three types of mistletoe and when they turned toxic.

It became a quiet obsession.

She imagined brewing in her dreams — the bubble of cauldrons, the hiss of reaction, the dark satisfaction of watching color shift as it should. She imagined the quiet of it. The solitude. The power of building something that no one else could see until it was done.

And Tom noticed.

He always noticed.

That day, he appeared while she was seated on the floor, parchment curled in her lap. She had been copying a sequence from memory, barely aware of the ache in her hand. Her posture was tense, her lips pursed in concentration. Her notes were covered in potion-related references, most of which she hadn't consciously realized she was writing.

"You're ready," Tom said from behind her.

Elizabeth froze. Her quill paused mid-stroke. She turned her head slowly, heart already quickening.

"For what?" she asked. Her voice was quieter than she meant it to be.

Tom didn't answer. Not directly.

He raised a hand.

And the floor shifted.

From smooth stone erupted a long, rectangular table — solid, gray, carved with shallow alchemical markings along the edges. A second gesture, and a cauldron appeared on top — round-bellied, blackened pewter with reinforced handles. The surrounding space shifted. Shelves grew from the walls. Hooks unfolded above for tools. A cutting board, a silver stirring rod, brass scales, a row of clean vials.

And then the ingredients.

They shimmered into existence all at once — not in a flash, but like mist condensing into form. Shelves lined themselves with glass jars, neatly labeled, their contents ranging from shriveled herbs to fine crystalline powders. Bottles of elixirs gleamed softly under the mindscape's ever-present glow. Even a small basin of magically purified water appeared beside the table, its surface perfectly still.

Elizabeth rose slowly to her feet, her eyes wide.

"Potions?" she breathed.

Tom nodded. "You'll begin here."

She stepped forward, drawn by something she didn't have words for. The cauldron was real beneath her fingers — warm, as if it had only just cooled from its last use. The bench was smooth, clean, expectant.

"I don't..." she hesitated, glancing at the shelves, "I've never..."

"You've studied," Tom said. "You understand the theory. You know the ingredients. You've memorized more recipes than most forth-year students."

"But that's just... paper," she said. "It's not the same."

Tom's gaze sharpened. "Theory is the skeleton. Action is the flesh. You will not perfect anything today — nor should you. But you'll begin."

Elizabeth stared at the cauldron again. Then at her hands.

They were stained with ink. Calloused from hours of grip and strain. Small, yes. But capable.

"What if I ruin it?" she asked quietly.

Tom's tone didn't change. "Then you will ruin it. And you will start again. That is how we learn."

Her breath caught.

She looked back at the shelf, at the careful rows of ingredients he had conjured for her.

No spell. No incantation.

Just intention.

She didn't reach for anything yet. She wasn't sure which recipe to start with — or whether he expected her to choose.

But as she stood there, the weight of all her studies pressing into her back like wind, she realized something had changed. The books, the notes, the scrolls — they were no longer just information. They were tools. The cauldron before her wasn't a symbol. It was a mirror. And what it reflected back was possibility.

Not power.

Not yet.

But something better.

The chance to become.

The first fire hadn't been lit.

But already, she felt the heat waiting.