Chapter 49
I didn’t sleep that night.
Even after we left the library—Draco stalking ahead with a kind of rigid calm, his magic shadowing behind him like a second skin—I couldn’t shut my mind off. The book was tucked safely in my satchel, its ancient pages still humming with something that didn’t feel like memory, but intent.
We were being guided.
And I couldn’t shake the thought that whatever dark source Draco had tapped into, whatever ancient force had recognized him… there had to be a counterpart. A balance. A light.
A place just as old. Just as powerful.
A tether for me.
Solara stirred on my shoulder, her feathers rustling as I stared at the window. The moonlight spilled across the common room, fractured by the lattice of stained glass. Shadows pooled in the corners. For once, they didn’t unsettle me.
“I think I know where we need to go,” I whispered.
Solara’s head tilted, her golden eyes catching the light. She made a soft sound of agreement, almost expectant.
The thought had been blooming quietly, half-formed, ever since the book revealed itself. The Equilibrium didn’t speak in spells. It spoke in truths. And one of them—the light cannot exist without the dark to shape it—had been echoing in my bones.
The Chamber had given Draco his dark. His tether.
But the light? Mine?
It wouldn’t be found in Hogwarts.
It would be found in the place the founders had once stood together—before the split. Before the wars. Before dark and light were torn apart by fear and ideology.
Godric’s Hollow.
Not the village. Not the ruins.
Beneath it.
Beneath the oldest foundations.
Where the four of them—Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw—first merged their magic to build a vision of unity. Before it fractured. Before balance was lost.
The place no one remembered.
But magic did.
I rose from the couch, heart pounding with the decision. We couldn’t do this alone, not truly—but we had to begin alone. This wasn’t a war yet. It was a reckoning. A restoration.
And it started with finding the light that would answer Draco’s darkness.
It started with finding my half of the Equilibrium.
I had no map. No coordinates. But magic didn’t always need directions.
Just intent.
I turned back toward the dorm, already reaching for parchment and ink.
Because tomorrow, we were leaving.
And I was going to convince Draco Malfoy to follow me into the light.
Even if every shadow in him said otherwise.
The castle was just beginning to wake.
A pale blush of sunrise spilled through the high windows as I made my way toward the Great Hall—not for breakfast, but because I knew where he would be. I didn’t need the Marauder’s Map. I didn’t need Solara to guide me. My magic already knew where his was.
Draco was always where the shadows were thinnest and the silence deepest. He wasn’t hiding—not exactly—but I was starting to understand that his instinct was to retreat when he didn’t know how to move forward. And that was exactly why I had to find him first.
I caught him just outside the greenhouses.
It surprised me, a little—that he would be drawn here of all places, where everything was growing and wild and painfully alive. But maybe that was the point. Maybe some part of him was trying to feel normal, even if the shadows still curled at his heels and his magic simmered beneath his skin like it was waiting to be released.
He didn’t turn as I approached.
“You’ve been following me,” he said, without looking.
“You’re not hard to find anymore,” I replied, quiet but even. “I think our magic’s making that harder to avoid.”
Draco turned then, slowly. His eyes were tired, like sleep had only come in pieces, but something steadier lingered in them—something cautious, something braced.
He was expecting me to argue.
To push.
To demand answers he didn’t have.
But that wasn’t what I came here for.
I stepped closer, careful not to break the stillness completely. “I know where we need to go.”
His eyebrows lifted, slow and skeptical. “Do I get a say in that, or is this another one of your light-magic crusades?”
“It’s not a crusade,” I said, then paused. “It’s… a balance.”
That gave him pause. His gaze dropped briefly to Solara, perched on my shoulder, wings tucked close. Her glow was soft now—no longer urgent or distressed, but warm. Intent.
Draco’s voice was lower when he spoke again. “Where?”
“Godric’s Hollow.”
His expression twisted faintly, something bitter tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Because of course it always comes back to Potter.”
“It’s not about Harry.” I stepped closer, enough that I could feel the tension in the air between us shift. “It’s older than that. Older than the Hollow. Older than the castle.”
I lifted the book—the Equilibrium—from my bag and held it out. “The founders built Hogwarts from a single vision. But before that—before the Chamber, before the divide—there was a place they all stood together. There’s something under the Hollow. Something buried. Something that remembers.”
Draco stared at the book for a long moment, then up at me. “And you think your light’s buried there. Just waiting for you to come knocking?”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s waiting for us.”
That silenced him.
I didn’t press further. I let the words settle between us, let the moment breathe. Then I turned, walking back toward the path that would take us to the castle gates.
“I’m leaving tonight.”
I didn’t look back as I said it. “With or without you.”
I didn’t need to.
Because I knew he’d follow.
Even if he hated what it meant.
Even if it scared him more than the shadows ever did.
Because something in his magic already knew—
Light had to meet the dark.
Or the world would tear itself apart trying to hold only one.
The sun had already dipped beneath the mountains by the time I reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest.
The wind had changed. I could feel it in the press of magic against my skin, in the way Solara’s feathers bristled with quiet urgency. The pages of Equilibrium were tucked into my bag, still humming faintly, pulsing like a second heartbeat. We were close. I could feel it—not to the Hollow itself, not yet, but to the truth waiting inside it.
The castle was silent behind me. No one had stopped me when I left—not even Harry.
Maybe they knew I wouldn’t listen.
Maybe… maybe they trusted me.
The path to the gates was slick with twilight, the last gold of the sky bleeding into gray. I paused just beyond the wards, my breath clouding in the chill air. Waiting.
He would come.
Even if he didn’t want to.
Even if the only reason was because his shadows wouldn’t let him walk away.
Still, I waited.
Minutes passed.
Then—
Footsteps.
Sharp. Measured. Reluctant.
I didn’t turn until he stopped just behind me.
“I thought I told you not to wait,” Draco muttered, voice low, words worn rough by something more than exhaustion.
“I didn’t,” I said simply. “I just didn’t leave yet.”
He huffed softly, a sound like disbelief and resignation woven into one. “You’re insufferable.”
“And you’re late.”
Another beat of silence.
Then he stepped closer.
I felt his magic before I saw his face—cool, restrained, but no longer resisting. Not trying to twist away from mine. Not fighting the light in me. Letting it thread closer.
Balance.
That word again. That feeling.
“I don’t know what’s waiting for us in that place,” he said, finally. “But if something goes wrong—if this turns out to be some mad magical trap and we end up cursed or dead or worse—”
“I know,” I said softly, turning to meet his eyes. “But you came anyway.”
He held my gaze for a long moment. “Not for the book. Or your cause. Or the castle.”
I nodded, understanding.
He didn’t say it. He didn’t need to.
Solara fluttered once, wings catching the last of the light as it disappeared behind the trees.
I glanced at the road ahead.
“We should go.”
Draco exhaled and rolled his shoulders like he was shaking something off. Then he fell into step beside me.
Not behind.
Not ahead.
Beside.
As we stepped beyond the wards, the castle faded behind us—still, watchful, waiting.
Ahead, the road to Godric’s Hollow opened, dark and uncertain.
But for the first time, I wasn’t afraid.
Because he was with me.
And whatever waited beneath the earth… we would face it together.