The Absence.
When Harry woke up, the first thing he noticed was how light he felt.
The crushing weight of exhaustion had lifted, and while he still felt weak, the fever that had wracked his body the night before had all but vanished. He sat up slowly, expecting the dizziness to return—but it didn’t.
The second thing he noticed was the silence.
No whispers. No shadows clinging to the corners of his vision. No suffocating presence lurking just beyond his sight.
For the first time in what felt like weeks, the air around him felt… normal.
Harry blinked, looking around.
This wasn’t the same room.
Gone were the cold stone walls and the eerie flickering candlelight of the back room. Instead, he found himself in a different part of the church—one of the guest rooms meant for traveling clergy. The bed beneath him was plain but soft, the wooden furniture simple but sturdy. The room smelled of lavender and old books.
And above the bed, hanging on the wall, was a large, polished cross.
Harry stared at it for a long moment, something deep inside him stirring.
The realization crept in slowly.
The nun—she hadn’t come last night.
After weeks–no, years–of haunting visions, of seeing her twisted, pale face and feeling the ice-cold weight of her presence pressing against his very soul—last night, there had been nothing. No nightmares. No attacks. No suffocating black magic curling at the edges of his senses.
And the only thing that had changed…
Was the cross.
Harry frowned, his fingers gripping the blanket beneath him. He didn’t know what she was—he had never truly understood what she was—but something about that cross had kept her away.
That much was undeniable.
He shivered slightly, running a hand through his messy hair. He wasn’t religious, not really. He had been raised in this church, surrounded by prayers and rituals, but he had never put much thought into them. Magic had always been his truth, the only thing that had ever made sense.
But magic had never been able to keep her away.
The cross, however…
Harry swallowed. His thoughts were racing.
What was she?
Not a ghost. He had seen ghosts before at Hogwarts—they were cold, yes, but they were not like her. They did not carry the crushing, black weight of something wrong.
Not a poltergeist. Peeves was a menace, but even he wasn’t that.
Not a wixen, either.
Then what?
His mind whispered the word before he could stop it.
Demon.
Harry clenched his jaw, shaking off the thought. He didn’t know that. He couldn’t know that. But the possibility lodged itself in the back of his mind, an undeniable, creeping certainty.
If the cross could keep her away…
Then maybe she was something worse than a simple ghost.
Maybe she was something much, much worse.
Harry exhaled slowly, staring at the wooden symbol above his bed.
For the first time in a long while, he felt like he could breathe. But he knew it wouldn’t last.
She–no, it– would come back.
And when it did, he needed to be ready.