The Moon Watches Back.
The sky is vast tonight. A deep, endless black, stitched with stars that have long since burned out. And there, in the center of it all, is the moon—distant, cold, watching.
I wonder if it has always looked this way.
I sit on the edge of the cathedral’s tallest spire, my legs dangling into the abyss below. There is no wind here. No sound. Only the stillness of a place that belongs to no one but me.
The moonlight spills over my skin—if it can still be called that. It shifts and flickers, stretching beyond the shape it is meant to hold. For a moment, I do not resist it.
For a moment, I let myself unravel.
The stars above blur as I begin to curl into myself. I had decided to take on the appearance of when I was just 11 years old. I hope to feel something.
But I don’t.
Because morning will come.
And with it, I must wear the mask again.
I inhale. The air here does not taste like anything, but I imagine it does. Cool, crisp, filled with the scent of damp earth and lingering summer heat. The kind of night where Hogwarts would hum with quiet anticipation—where students would sit by the Black Lake, whispering about the year ahead, about the professors, about the war that is brewing in the background of their young, careless lives.
Somewhere, Tom Riddle is preparing for his sixth year.
Somewhere, he is reading, planning, watching. He does not yet know what he will become. Not fully. But he is already walking the path, the steps set before him like stone laid centuries ago.
And I will be there.
I exhale. The sky shifts. The moon tilts its gaze, as if waiting.
I let my body collapse inward. I trace my fingers on my tired face.
A lie, worn so well it almost feels like truth.
The moonlight brushes against my face. I turn away from it.
Tomorrow, the train will arrive.
And I will return to a world that does not yet know what lurks among them.