The Letter.
The candlelight flickered against the stone walls, casting long shadows across the small room. Eleven-year-old Harry sat at his desk, fingers curled around a quill as he copied scripture onto parchment. The nuns said it would help steady his mind, that writing by hand was an act of devotion.
It didn’t steady his mind.
Not when the door was always open.
Not when he knew—somewhere beyond the glow of the candle—she was watching.
It had been years since that night. The night she had sat on his bed, fingers reaching for something beneath his ribs. She had never come that close again. But the door still opened. The shadows still moved. And the rosary beads still clicked in the dark.
Harry no longer cowered. He had learned, over time, that she did not touch him. That she did not follow. That as long as he waited, as long as he did not run, she would simply… watch.
So he waited.
He had learned to sleep in short bursts, never fully resting. He had learned to listen—to the breathless hush of the church at night, to the rustling of habits in the morning. He had learned to keep quiet. To keep polite.
The nuns praised his manners. They called him a thoughtful boy, a gentle boy. A boy who had learned to walk softly in the world.
Harry knew better.
He had simply learned to survive.
It arrived on a quiet morning.
The post never came for him. Letters were for the nuns, for the priests, for the church. But this one had his name.
Harry Potter
The Small Room Near the Chapel
St. Benedict’s Church
He stared at the thick parchment, the ink swirling in looping curls. He traced his fingers over the crest stamped into the wax.
Hogwarts.
Something in his chest tightened.
Harry turned the letter over in his hands.
He was alone. The morning prayers had begun, the distant echoes of hymns drifting through the hall. He should have been there, kneeling among the others. But the letter had arrived before he could leave, placed so carefully at his door as if someone had known exactly where he was.
His hands hesitated.
He didn’t know why.
Maybe it was the weight of it, the importance pressed into the ink. Maybe it was the way his skin prickled, the faint hum of something—something deep—that coiled inside him.
Or maybe—maybe it was the way the air had gone still.
The way the shadows in the hallway stretched just a little too far.
The way, when he glanced toward the door—
It was already open.