What the Stones Remember

The ancient stone beneath the soles of my shoes felt colder than it should, a deep, unwelcoming chill that had nothing to do with the Scottish autumn air. Professor McGonagall stood beside me, her posture as rigid as the castle walls, her lips a thin, unreadable line. We were waiting just outside the enormous oak doors of the Great Hall, and the sound from within was a dull, rumbling beast—the collective noise of hundreds of students who belonged here, who had belonged here for years. I was the anomaly. The sixth-year transfer. An awkward, ill-fitting cog tossed into a machine that had been running smoothly for centuries.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm of pure dread. At Ilvermorny, I had friends. I had a history. Here, I was a ghost before I’d even properly arrived, a curiosity to be stared at and whispered about.

“They are ready for you, Miss Vance,” McGonagall said, her voice cutting through my anxiety with sharp precision. The great doors swung inward on their own, and the dull roar swelled into a symphony of chatter and laughter.

Every head turned. It was not a gradual thing; it was a sudden, unified swivel of hundreds of faces, all directed at me. A thousand candles floated in the enchanted air below a ceiling that mirrored a star-dusted night sky, but I saw none of their beauty. All I could see were eyes. Curious, indifferent, some openly assessing. My cheeks burned with a heat that felt invasive. I forced my chin up, my gaze fixed on the worn, three-legged stool at the far end of the hall. It seemed a mile away.

The walk was the longest of my life. The stone floor stretched before me, an endless grey path through a sea of black robes and house colors. I could feel their stares like physical touches, tracing the unfamiliar cut of my robes, the nervous tension in my shoulders. My hands were balled into fists at my sides, my knuckles white. Just get to the stool, I told myself. Just get through this.

Professor McGonagall gestured for me to sit. The wood was smooth and cool. She picked up the Sorting Hat, a piece of frayed, decrepit-looking magic that seemed to sag with the weight of all the minds it had touched. As she lowered it, the brim fell over my eyes, plunging me into a dusty-smelling darkness.

Well now, this is unusual, a small voice whispered inside my head. It was ancient and weary. A mind already so full. Not a blank slate, are we? Not a child. Ilvermorny… a fine school. But you left. Why?

The question was not accusatory, merely curious. It sifted through my thoughts, my memories of home, the reasons for my transfer that I kept locked away. It saw the loneliness already taking root.

There is courage here, yes. A deep well of it, though you doubt it yourself. And a mind eager to prove its worth. But there is a loyalty that runs deeper than anything else… a fierce, protective instinct. It could only be…

“GRYFFINDOR!” the hat bellowed to the silent hall.

A wave of applause erupted from the long table to my far left, the one decked in scarlet and gold. It was polite, welcoming, but I could still feel the undercurrent of sheer curiosity. Professor McGonagall lifted the hat from my head, and the light of the hall felt blinding. I slid off the stool, my legs unsteady.

As I turned toward the cheering table, a girl with brilliant red hair and startlingly green eyes stood up. A silver Prefect badge was pinned neatly to her robes. She offered a small, kind smile as I approached, waiting for me at the edge of the table.

“Welcome to Gryffindor,” she said, her voice clear and pleasant. “I’m Lily Evans. We’ve saved you a spot.”

Her welcome was genuine, but her eyes kept flicking for a fraction of a second toward the end of the table, a flicker of annoyance briefly clouding her expression before it was smoothed away. Her attention was divided, her politeness a practiced shield. I murmured my thanks, my own voice sounding foreign and small in the cavernous room. Lily gestured to an empty space on the bench, her duty done, before sitting back down herself. I was in. Sorted and seated. But as I looked down the long line of unknown faces, the feeling of being an outsider didn't fade. It solidified.

I sat on the very edge of the bench, my body angled slightly away from the girl next to me, trying to make myself as small as possible. The empty golden plates before us suddenly filled with food—roast chicken, potatoes, gravy, every kind of vegetable imaginable. The magic was seamless, breathtaking, but my stomach was a tight knot of anxiety. I couldn’t imagine eating a single bite.

The noise was relentless. It wasn’t just chatter; it was a physical presence, a wall of sound built from hundreds of conversations, clattering silverware, and booming laughter that echoed off the high stone walls. I felt utterly adrift in it. At Ilvermorny, the dining hall had been a place of comfort, of familiar faces and inside jokes. Here, every face was a stranger’s, every laugh a reminder that I was on the outside looking in. I picked up a fork, the silver heavy in my hand, and pushed a single roasted potato around my plate.

A sudden, explosive peal of laughter cut through the general din, louder and more arrogant than the rest. It came from the far end of the Gryffindor table. My eyes, against my will, were drawn to the source.

There were four of them, a tight knot of boys who commanded the space around them with an effortless, almost obnoxious, confidence. They were the clear epicenter of the noise, a vortex of energy that drew glances from all over the hall. One of them, a boy with untidy black hair that fell into his eyes and a pair of glasses perched on his nose, had his wand out. He flicked it casually, and a stream of golden sparks shot from the end, swirling into the shape of a stag before dissolving over the table. He was looking directly at Lily Evans, a wide, hopeful grin on his face. Lily, however, was now deep in conversation with the girl beside her, her back angled in a way that was deliberately, pointedly ignorant of his display. The boy’s grin faltered for only a second before he turned back to his friends, undeterred.

Beside him sat another boy, the one whose laugh had first caught my attention. He was leaning back on the bench, one arm slung over the back, radiating a kind of lazy self-assurance that was both infuriating and magnetic. He had long, dark hair that fell in a careless curtain around a face of sharp, aristocratic lines. His grey eyes were alight with amusement as he said something to the boy with the glasses, who immediately broke into a laugh. There was something wild about him, a reckless energy that seemed barely contained by his school robes.

The third boy was quieter. His face was framed by light brown hair, and even from this distance, I could see the faint, silvery lines of scars tracing across his skin. He looked tired, older than the others, but he was smiling at their antics—a small, fond smile that reached his gentle eyes. He seemed like the anchor of the group, the calm center to their storm.

The fourth was smaller, with watery eyes and a nervous energy. He watched the other three with an expression of pure, unadulterated adoration, his laughter a beat behind theirs, a little too loud, as if trying to ensure he was part of the joke.

They were a unit. Complete. They passed plates, stole food from each other’s forks, and spoke in a shorthand of shared glances and half-finished sentences. The space they occupied was theirs and theirs alone, an impenetrable bubble of history and friendship. Watching them, I felt a sharp, painful pang of loss for my own friends, for the easy comfort of knowing and being known. These boys, with their casual magic and roaring laughter, seemed to represent the very soul of Hogwarts—a history I had no part in, a confidence I could not imagine feeling. They were everything I wasn’t: home.

I looked away, my gaze dropping back to the cold potato on my plate. The food suddenly seemed tasteless, the golden plates garish. The knot in my stomach tightened. I didn’t belong here. The hat had made a mistake. I was an intruder in this world of scarlet and gold, and the boisterous life at the end of the table was the clearest proof of it.

When the last of the treacle tart vanished from the golden platters, Professor Dumbledore rose, his long silver beard glinting in the candlelight. His announcements were brief, something about the Forbidden Forest and the usual start-of-term warnings, but I barely registered the words. My focus was a pinpoint of anxiety trained on Lily Evans. She was my only guide, my only hope of navigating this labyrinthine castle without making a complete fool of myself.

The moment Dumbledore dismissed us, a roar of scraping benches and chattering voices filled the hall. Students surged to their feet like a single organism, a river of black robes flooding the aisles. I scrambled up, trying to keep Lily’s vibrant red hair in sight, but she was immediately swallowed by the crowd. I pushed forward, jostled on all sides by unfamiliar shoulders and elbows, my polite murmurs of “excuse me” lost in the din.

For a moment, I caught sight of her again near the great oak doors, but then a group of hulking seventh-year boys cut in front of me, and she was gone. Panic, cold and sharp, pricked at my throat. I was swept out of the Great Hall with the rest of the student body into an entrance hall teeming with life. Students branched off in every direction. I stood frozen for a second, a rock in the middle of a stream, before the current forced me to move. I chose a direction at random, following a group of Gryffindors up a grand marble staircase.

The portraits on the walls whispered and pointed as I passed, their painted eyes following my solitary journey. The staircase began to move. It shifted with a low grinding of stone, carrying me away from the landing I’d been aiming for and depositing me in a corridor I didn’t recognize. The group I had been following was gone, their laughter already fading down a different hall.

I was utterly alone.

The silence that descended was more unnerving than the noise had been. My footsteps echoed on the flagstones, the sound seeming to accuse me of being out of place. Every tapestry seemed to hide a secret passage, every suit of armor seemed to watch me. I walked for what felt like an eternity, taking turns that only led me to more identical, empty corridors. The castle was a maze, and it was alive, and I was certain it was enjoying my confusion.

A wave of exhaustion washed over me, so potent it made my knees feel weak. It was more than just physical tiredness from the journey; it was the crushing weight of the entire day—the staring, the sorting, the profound and suffocating loneliness. I felt a stinging behind my eyes, and the sheer frustration of it all was overwhelming. My breath hitched. I needed to stop, just for a second.

I reached out, my fingers trembling slightly, and pressed my palm flat against the cold, rough-hewn stone of the wall to steady myself.

The world fractured.

It wasn’t a thought, or a memory. It was a complete sensory assault. The cold stone under my hand was suddenly gone, replaced by the feeling of rough, scratchy wool against my cheek. The air in my lungs turned thick with the scent of rain and old dust. A sob, thick and gut-wrenching, tore through a throat that wasn’t mine but felt like it was. The taste of salt—of tears—flooded my mouth, hot and bitter.

For a sliver of a second, I saw her. A girl, no older than me, with a dark braid hanging down her back. She was pressed into this very corner, her face buried in her hands, her body wracked with silent, convulsive sobs. The light was wrong, flickering and orange, the light of a torch, not the steady magical glow of the corridor I was in. The pain I felt was hers. A deep, hollow agony of betrayal.

Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

I snatched my hand back from the wall as if I’d been shocked, a gasp tearing from my own lungs. I stumbled back, my heart hammering against my ribs. The corridor was exactly as it had been a moment before—empty, silent, lit by the same soft, magical light. I touched my own cheeks, my fingers searching for the wetness of tears. They were completely dry. The salty taste was gone, replaced by the faint, metallic tang of fear.

My mind raced, trying to build a logical wall against what had just happened. It was nothing. It was a hallucination. The stress, the lack of sleep, the disorienting effects of international Portkey travel—my brain had simply short-circuited for a moment. It had to be that. These ancient, magical castles were probably prone to making newcomers feel strange. I took a deep, shaky breath, forcing the air into my tight chest. It was nothing. I would not let my own tired mind frighten me. I had to find the common room. That was the only thing that mattered.

Forcing the unsettling vision from my mind, I started walking again, this time with a desperate, almost frantic, purpose. I kept to the main corridors, ignoring the branching hallways, praying that sheer persistence would lead me somewhere recognizable. After another wrong turn that ended at a tapestry of dancing trolls, I finally heard it—the faint sound of voices and laughter.

I followed the sound like a lifeline, my steps quickening until I rounded a corner and saw it. A portrait of a very large woman in a pink silk dress, guarding a circular door. A handful of older students were gathered in front of her, one of them saying the word “Balderdash” with a clear voice. The portrait swung forward, revealing a gaping hole in the wall, and the students clambered through.

Relief washed through me so completely that I felt dizzy again. I waited until the students were gone before approaching the portrait myself.

“Password?” the woman demanded, her painted eyes scrutinizing me.

“Balderdash,” I repeated, my voice barely a whisper.

She gave a curt nod and swung open for me. I ducked through the hole and found myself stepping into warmth and noise.

The Gryffindor common room was a circular, cozy space, filled with squashy armchairs and tables. A fire roared in the grate, casting a flickering, golden light over everything, making the scarlet tapestries on the walls seem to glow. The air smelled of woodsmoke and old parchment. For a moment, it felt like a haven. But it was a haven full of strangers. Every chair was occupied, every corner filled with conversation. My arrival had gone mostly unnoticed, but I still felt a hundred pairs of eyes on me as I stood awkwardly just inside the entrance, unsure of where to go next.

And then a voice cut through my paralysis, low and smooth, laced with an amusement that grated on my raw nerves.

“Lost already?”

I turned. Lounging in one of the armchairs closest to the fire was the boy from dinner. The one with the long, dark hair and the reckless energy. Up close, he was even more striking, in a way that was almost offensive. His face was all sharp angles and pale skin, a stark contrast to the black silk of his hair. But it was his eyes that held me. They were a startling shade of grey, like a stormy sky, and they were fixed on me with an unnerving, knowing confidence. He hadn't even bothered to sit up completely, one long leg draped over the arm of the chair as if he owned the entire room. He was waiting for my response, a faint, self-satisfied smile playing on his lips. It was the smile of a boy who was used to getting a reaction, who expected to charm or fluster.

The ghost of the crying girl’s agony still clung to the edges of my mind. My nerves were frayed thin, my patience nonexistent. The last thing I had the energy for was this boy and his polished arrogance.

So I gave him nothing.

I didn’t blush. I didn’t offer a witty retort. I didn’t even acknowledge his question. I simply looked at him. I let my eyes, tired and cold, meet his. I held his gaze, my expression completely blank, my posture still and unimpressed. I let the silence stretch, letting him see that his easy charm had found no purchase, that it had slid right off me like water off stone.

The smirk on his face faltered. It was just for a second, a barely perceptible shift, but I saw it. The amusement in his grey eyes flickered, replaced by a flash of surprise, and then something else—a flicker of irritation. His confidence had met a wall, and he didn't seem to know what to do with it. He finally straightened in his chair, swinging his leg to the floor, the lazy posture gone. The silent challenge had been received.

“Elara?”

Lily Evans’s voice was a welcome interruption. She was standing by the staircase to the dormitories, a slight frown of concern on her face. “There you are. We were wondering where you’d gotten to.”

I finally broke my gaze from the boy in the chair, turning to her with a sense of profound relief. “I got a bit turned around.”

“The staircases do that,” she said with a sympathetic smile. “Come on, I’ll show you our room.”

I followed her without a second glance back, but I could feel his eyes on me. It wasn't an admiring look, or even a curious one. It was weighing, assessing, and sharp. The air between us was suddenly charged, a quiet friction that had sparked into existence with nothing more than a look.

The girls’ dormitory was another circular room at the top of a winding stone staircase. Five four-poster beds with deep red velvet curtains were arranged around the perimeter. Moonlight streamed in through a tall, narrow window, silvering the floorboards. Four of the beds were already occupied, their curtains drawn. The only sounds were the soft, even breathing of sleeping girls and the distant, muted roar of the party still going on in the common room below.

My trunk had been placed at the foot of the one empty bed. Seeing it, a familiar dark wood chest covered in scuffs from years of travel, sent a sharp, painful pang of homesickness through me.

“That one’s yours,” Lily whispered, gesturing to the empty bed. “The others are Mary and Marlene. They’re usually up later than this, but I think the feast knocked everyone out.” She offered another small, polite smile. It was kind, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She was preoccupied, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. “My bed is just here. If you need anything, just… ask. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” I murmured back. She disappeared behind her own curtains, and a moment later, the light from her wand went out.

I was alone again, in a room full of people.

The silence felt heavier now. I moved as quietly as I could, not wanting to wake anyone. I opened my trunk, the familiar creak of the hinges sounding deafeningly loud. I pulled out my nightgown, the soft, worn cotton a small comfort against my skin. I didn't bother unpacking anything else. It felt too permanent, like admitting I was staying.

After changing, I slipped between the cold sheets of the bed, the mattress unfamiliar and stiff beneath me. I pulled the heavy velvet curtains shut, enclosing myself in a small, dark space that offered no comfort, only confinement. The sounds from the common room were fainter here, just a dull thrum of bass and the occasional burst of laughter that felt a