Chapter 1

The marble was warm.

Harry sighed as he laid his hand on the white tomb of Albus Dumbledore. The late spring sun beat down above him. He glanced across the lake for signs of life but saw none. The castle loomed large in the distance. It appeared unchanged despite everything that had happened within its walls. Students would be in class, some preparing for summer and others preparing for what came next in their lives.

Then, new first-years would arrive in the fall.

New dreams would blossom for each student.

While new lives would form for those who left it behind.

Every year, he found himself expecting something different. Perhaps that was why he kept returning, hoping he could finally move on. Instead, he reached into his pocket and leaned down to place a few sherbet lemons at the base of the tomb.

“You’d probably tell me to stop being dramatic,” Harry said softly.

Only the wind answered as he stood back up. Looking across the lake, Harry spoke to his former mentor. “You told me that magic leaves traces.”

A long pause followed as Harry wiped at his tired eyes. “Turns out you were right, in ways neither of us probably expected.”

Harry absently rolled the Elder Wand between his fingers as his thoughts swirled. He had never returned the Elder Wand to Dumbledore’s tomb. After careful consideration, Harry had decided the safest place for it was in his own hands, and after five years, he still couldn’t decide whether its faint pulse was real...or whether he had simply begun imagining it.

Harry spoke softly. “I’ve spent a long time doing exactly what you would have advised against...chasing the oldest trail in Britain.”

“Maybe you would’ve called it curiosity and reminded me that it isn’t a sin.” Harry cracked a slight smile. “But Hermione calls it an obsession.”

The Elder Wand seemed to thrum in his hand, as though the Hallow could sense that he was speaking of it. “The others advised against my research. They think it’s dangerous.” Harry laughed quietly, tracing the Elder Wand across the edge of the tomb. “Maybe they’re right.”

His free hand rested on the marble for another moment. “But I don’t think we’ve understood any of it.” His eyes drifted toward the mountains beyond Hogwarts. “The Hallows. The Peverells. Death. I just want to know what really happened, and I think we only have half the story.”

As his eyes surveyed the Forbidden Forest, Harry whispered, “Maybe even less.”

Harry’s fingers tightened around the wand. “If I’m wrong, I’ve wasted years of my life, and Hermione will never let me forget it.”

His smile disappeared. “But if I am right, then history has been lying to us for nearly a thousand years.”

A trill in the distance brought Harry’s gaze to the horizon. The sound had come from the far side of the castle, but it was unmistakable. Harry’s eyes scanned the empty sky...nothing.

The sound came again, seemingly even farther away this time. Harry smiled despite himself. “He would be proud to know you still look after the place.”

Knowing the sun would soon disappear behind the trees, Harry sighed once more before offering his parting words. “I’d better get back, Professor. I’ll see you soon.”

As Harry stepped away from the tomb, his mind returned to where it usually rested. There was plenty of work waiting for him at home. The laboratory would not organize itself; he still had dozens of journal entries to review, and if his most recent theory was correct...

Harry glanced over his shoulder one last time at Dumbledore’s grave before shaking his head.

A breakthrough might finally be coming.

With a turn, Harry Disapparated.

.o.

Peverell Manor stood alone. Hidden from the world for centuries, it overlooked the valley surrounding Godric’s Hollow, home to the Peverell family long before the Potter name took root there generations later.

The front door unlocked before he reached it. Stepping inside, Harry scarcely glanced at his surroundings. Books lay stacked across the dining room table in uneven towers, several opened to marked passages, while a brass cauldron continued to bubble quietly in the corner, held at a steady simmer by an enchantment exactly as he had left it over a week earlier. It wasn’t clutter. It was progress.

Silence greeted him, broken only by the measured echo of his footsteps against the old wooden floors. Almost absentmindedly, Harry picked up the journal he had been studying the night before and glanced over the hastily scribbled notes in its margins. They blended almost seamlessly with the dozens of pages covering the sitting-room walls, making it difficult to remember which discoveries belonged to last night and which had been made months earlier.

Above the fireplace, suspended within a delicate alchemical frame, hung his first successful transmutation. Imperfect and incomplete, it remained one of the few experiments he had never found the heart to dismantle.

It was a simple creation. His goal had been to carve a rune into a broomstick and transform something wooden and pliant into something nearly indestructible. The journals he had discovered in Peverell Manor taught that certain magically produced temperatures could drastically alter the effectiveness of a rune. From there, Harry began experimenting on old brooms, testing whether the alchemical process could make them invulnerable.

He had failed, technically. Yet the broom above his mantel, glowing faintly gold, had survived a Bludger strike from George and a Blasting Curse from Hermione. It was not perfect, but it was an achievement. Hermione had been impressed at the time, while Harry had become fascinated by what the process might eventually accomplish.

When Harry first uncovered Peverell Manor, he thought he had discovered little more than an abandoned ancestral home. Instead, he found generations of journals and research left behind by some of the greatest alchemical minds in history. Most had nothing to do with the Hallows. They explored transmutation, enchantment, metallurgy, and magic so old that even Hogwarts had long forgotten it.

Harry had been captivated from the beginning.

It all felt like fun and research until he found the notes on the Hallows.

Everything changed after that. The journals stopped reading like the collected works of forgotten alchemists and became something else entirely. Hidden among sketches of transmutation circles and centuries-old observations on metals, magical temperatures, and enchantments were scattered references to three familiar objects. Individually, the passages meant very little, often no more than a sentence or a hastily crossed-out note in a margin, but together they painted a picture that refused to leave Harry’s mind. The Deathly Hallows were never discussed as legends. They were treated as unfinished work.

That realization consumed the next five years of his life. Every surviving Peverell journal, forgotten manuscript, and obscure alchemical text he could beg, borrow, or uncover was compared, translated, and catalogued in pursuit of one question: what had the Peverells actually been trying to accomplish? The deeper Harry dug, the less the Hallows resembled gifts from Death and the more they looked like the culmination of lifetimes of research. That possibility contradicted nearly a thousand years of wizarding history, and if the fragments scattered throughout the manor were to be believed, the truth had never been meant to survive.

Harry tossed the journal onto the table and stared at the symbol sketched across the largest sheet of parchment pinned to the wall. Lines of ink radiated from the familiar triangular mark, each connected to theories, translations, and references gathered from dozens of journals. There was more to this story. There had to be. Was Death truly a metaphor, a story created to explain an achievement people believed impossible?

Over the past five years, Harry had learned enough to understand how little he truly knew. Alchemy was neither wandwork nor potion-making, though it borrowed principles from both. It manipulated the magical properties of a substance through precision, intent, temperature, and transformation. Some journals contained beginner exercises—strengthening iron, preserving wood against decay, or reinforcing enchanted glass beyond the limits of ordinary magic. Others were so advanced that Harry could barely determine where one experiment ended and the next began.

One thing, however, had become impossible to ignore. The closer he drew to the oldest journals, the more frequently the Hallows appeared—never by name, never together, and always hidden within discussions of impossibilities.

Harry reached for another worn leather journal, its pages yellowed with age, and stopped at what he believed were Ignotus Peverell’s final surviving entries. Every note pointed toward the same conclusion. The youngest brother had come remarkably close to creating a cloak that did not merely conceal its wearer but removed them entirely from magical perception. Each experiment built methodically upon the last...until the notes simply stopped.

Harry snapped the journal shut. There were no recorded failures, no abandoned theories, and no explanation that the work had proven impossible. The research simply...ended.

His eyes drifted back to the symbol covering the wall. Three brothers. Three impossible creations. Three sets of notes that vanished just before the answers should have appeared. Coincidence had long since ceased to be a satisfying explanation.

Perhaps the brothers had chosen to bury their greatest achievement, fearing what others might do with it. Or perhaps... Harry’s gaze settled on the Elder Wand resting across his desk. Perhaps someone had ensured the truth would never be written down.

Across the room, Harry’s Invisibility Cloak hung from a brass hook beside the door, always within easy reach. Years of war had taught him that some habits never truly disappeared. The Cloak had carried him through Hogwarts after curfew, hidden him from Death Eaters, and sheltered him during the darkest year of his life. Even after peace returned, Harry had never been comfortable keeping it anywhere he could not reach at a moment’s notice.

His gaze lingered there only briefly before drifting to the small black stone resting inside a glass case upon his desk. For months, after discovering the Peverell journals, Harry had resisted retrieving it. He told himself there was no reason to return to the Forbidden Forest or disturb what he had cast away during the Battle of Hogwarts. The Resurrection Stone had already taught him everything it ever could.

Then he found the notes.

Curiosity became fascination. Fascination became obsession. Eventually, unable to ignore the questions any longer, Harry returned to the forest and recovered the Stone from where he had left it years before. He had not done it to master Death. He had done it because, for the first time in recorded history, someone possessed the opportunity to study all three Hallows together.

Harry had held the Stone in his hands several times over the years, but he had never allowed himself to turn it three times again. He would not disturb the dead on a whim.

Even so, an instinct to keep the three objects apart had always remained. Harry had never held them all at once or even attempted to do so. Logic did not stop him; instinct did. There was something almost reverent about the Hallows when they occupied the same room, something that made him hesitate whenever his hand reached for a second artifact while holding the first. They had rested beneath the same roof for years, yet he had never found the courage—or perhaps the foolishness—to gather them all at once.

Frowning, Harry considered the cowardice of that choice. He did not know whether Death had truly intervened in the creation of the Hallows or whether the brothers had simply accomplished something extraordinary. Either way, the artifacts had occupied the same house for years, and nothing had happened. Perhaps it was finally time to—

The quiet of the manor was broken by three sharp knocks at the front door.

Harry glanced toward the entrance before checking the brass clock mounted above the fireplace. Right on time. With a flick of the Elder Wand, the door swung inward.

Professor Flitwick stepped inside first, balancing a small wicker basket beneath one arm, Hermione close behind with another stack of books cradled against her chest. Neither seemed particularly surprised by the state of the manor anymore. Their eyes swept across the walls plastered with notes, diagrams, and translations before settling on Harry.

“I see you’ve discovered another wall to vandalize with your notes,” Flitwick observed cheerfully.

Hermione sighed. “There were three empty spaces when I was here last week.”

Harry shrugged. “I ran out.”

“I wasn’t referring to parchment,” Hermione replied dryly.

A grin tugged at the corners of Harry’s mouth as Flitwick set the basket on the dining table. “You skipped lunch again,” the Charms professor said matter-of-factly.

“I was busy. I even visited Dumbledore,” Harry returned in the same tone.

“So I gathered.” Flitwick’s eyes moved eagerly across Harry’s notes and those of the Peverells.

One particular page caught the older professor’s attention. He studied it for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Interesting. This rune...looks familiar.”

Harry wanted to press him, but Hermione plucked an apple from the basket and tossed it without warning. Harry caught it one-handed. “Eat,” she ordered.

“I was going to,” Harry promised, his eyes still on Flitwick as the professor shook his head and moved toward their workbench.

“You’ve undoubtedly been saying that for hours,” Hermione replied, fondness softening her voice.

Harry took a reluctant bite, earning a satisfied nod from Hermione before she finally looked toward the newest collection of notes covering the sitting-room wall. Her expression softened. “You’ve found something.”

Harry hesitated before admitting, “A possibility, but maybe it’s just more of an intrusive thought.”

Flitwick’s smile faded ever so slightly.

For years, Harry had carried the weight of the Peverell journals alone. He translated them, tested their theories, and questioned conclusions no historian had ever thought to challenge. Eventually, the work grew too large for one wizard. Even Harry had been forced to admit that he needed another mind—someone brilliant enough to challenge his assumptions, yet humble enough to admit when they had wandered beyond the edge of established magical knowledge.

Hermione remained skeptical of nearly every conclusion Harry reached, but she never stopped reading his translations. If Harry represented curiosity, Hermione represented discipline. She questioned every assumption, demanded evidence for every theory, and happily spent entire evenings explaining why Harry was almost certainly wrong.

It was precisely why he valued her opinion.

But when the questions moved beyond history and into the deepest mechanics of magic itself, there had only ever been one wizard Harry wanted beside him: Professor Filius Flitwick.

Harry had not invited Flitwick because he expected answers. He invited him because the professor was one of the few wizards Harry trusted to tell him he was wrong. The problem was that Flitwick had quietly stopped doing so months ago. Instead, he had begun asking questions of his own. Harry supposed that was inevitable. Some mysteries simply belonged to Ravenclaws.

“You’ve moved the Stone,” Hermione said softly.

Harry froze, and Flitwick’s head whipped toward him. For a moment, the only sound in the room was the quiet bubbling of the cauldron behind him. “I didn’t even realize I had,” Harry admitted.

The admission alarmed both of them. Hermione shook her head. “I told you these items are dangerous, Harry. You shouldn’t be experimenting with them while we aren’t here.”

“They’ve been living in the same house with me for years, Hermione,” Harry snapped tiredly. “Nothing unusual has happened. You were the one who said there had to be a magical explanation behind all of this. If your theories are right, then there is nothing supernatural here.”

Hermione bit her lip, clearly wrestling with an argument they had repeated more than once.

Flitwick defused it with a gentle tone. “We are only worried about you, Harry. Whether the Hallows are historical artifacts or gifts from a supernatural being, they are unquestionably dangerous. We simply want to ensure that you are safe.”

Regretting his sharpness, Harry offered his oldest friend an apologetic look. Hermione dismissed it immediately. “It’s fine. We brought dinner since you skipped the Weasleys’ gathering. Ginny was asking about you again.”

Quick to avoid the subject of his ex, Harry asked, “What about Ron and George? I thought one of them might make an appearance.”

Hermione offered him an apologetic smile. “They’re playing Quidditch. You know what they’re like once they get on their brooms.”

“They’ll play until dawn if Mrs. Weasley allows it,” Harry said wistfully, thinking of the last time he had flown simply for fun.

Flitwick cleared his throat. “You know, Harry, if you wanted to pause this for one evening, we could return to the Weasleys’.”

“Molly was making treacle tart when we left, and I’m sure they could find a place for you on one of the teams,” Hermione offered immediately.

Harry’s stomach dropped slightly. He knew that if Hermione was offering Quidditch, then perhaps he had let the research consume him a little more than he cared to admit.

The silence stretched for another moment before Harry let out a defeated sigh. “You two planned this, didn’t you?”

Flitwick’s eyes twinkled mischievously over the rims of his spectacles. “Miss Granger did.”

“I merely knew Professor Flitwick would be more convincing than I would be,” Hermione replied innocently.

Harry snorted. “Could’ve been in Slytherin. That was manipulative,” Harry protested, though there was no real anger behind it.

“It was effective,” Hermione corrected with a sly grin.

His eyes drifted back toward the wall of notes. Hundreds of pages stared back at him, connected by theories and impossible questions that had occupied nearly every evening for five years. None of it would disappear overnight. Whatever answer he was chasing would still be there in the morning.

“Give me five minutes.”

Hermione smiled in quiet triumph while Flitwick busied himself repacking the basket they had carried inside.

“I’ll put the cauldron back into stasis,” Harry muttered, waving his wand toward the corner. The bubbling cauldron slowed to a lazy simmer before the enchantments surrounding it tightened once more. A second flick extinguished several lamps, bathing half the laboratory in shadow.

He reached automatically for the Invisibility Cloak hanging beside the door, then stopped himself with a faint chuckle. “Old habits.”

Instead, he shrugged on a simple traveling cloak and slipped the Resurrection Stone back into its protective case. His hand lingered on the lid before he closed it with a soft click. His first instinct was to reach for the Elder Wand, but he hesitated and summoned his phoenix-feather wand from the table instead.

“I don’t suppose either of you knew the score when you left?” Harry asked as they made their way toward the front door.

“If Ron’s involved?” Hermione replied. “I’ve learned not to ask.”

Harry laughed. It felt good. As the front door swung open, he glanced back into the quiet laboratory one last time. The Hallows rested exactly where he had left them, surrounded by journals that had waited centuries to be read. They could wait one more evening.

With three sharp cracks, the manor fell silent once again.

The night had been exactly what Harry needed.

Molly Weasley was the first to spot him walking up the garden path. Before Harry could offer a greeting, she wrapped him in a hug that reminded him how long it had been since anyone had fussed over him. She did not ask about alchemy or the Hallows. She simply smiled, declared that he looked far too thin, and marched him into the kitchen before he could object.

Within minutes, a plate had been piled embarrassingly high in front of him.

“You can tell me you’ve been eating properly after you’ve finished all of that,” Molly had informed him, leaving absolutely no room for negotiation.

Harry did not even try to argue. As promised, the scent of freshly baked treacle tart drifted through the house, filling the kitchen with a warmth no spell could imitate. Conversations overlapped in the familiar, chaotic rhythm that only the Burrow could produce. Charlie was telling a story involving a dragon and three Ministry officials, while Percy, despite every attempt to remain dignified, eventually found himself dragged into the argument.

For the first time in weeks, Harry simply listened. Molly eventually settled into the chair beside him, her voice softening while the room carried on around them. “Are you sleeping?”

Harry smiled over the rim of his tea. “I’m trying.”

“And eating?”

“Working on that too,” Harry promised.

She nodded once, satisfied enough to let the answers stand. There was no lecture, no interrogation about his research, and no attempt to pry into the mysteries that had consumed so much of his time. She simply rested a hand against his shoulder before standing to rescue another pie from the oven.

That was enough for Harry.

By the time he wandered outside, dusk had settled over the orchard behind the Burrow. A collection of battered goalposts had been thrown together at the edge of the field, and several broomsticks already circled lazily overhead. The younger Weasleys erupted into cheers the moment they spotted him emerging from the back door.

“Harry’s on my team!”

Before Harry’s feet had cleared the porch, someone tossed him the Firebolt he had bought after the war. He caught it instinctively. Some habits never faded. With a small grin, Harry kicked off the ground, and the familiar rush of wind met him almost immediately. The Firebolt responded as though it had been waiting for him, climbing effortlessly into the evening sky. For a few precious moments, the journals, the Hallows, and the impossible questions waiting at Peverell Manor disappeared beneath him.

George was the first to close the distance. “Good of Lord Peverell to grace us with his presence,” he called, offering an exaggerated bow from atop his broom.

Harry rolled his eyes. “That’s not funny.”

“It absolutely is.”

Despite himself, Harry laughed. A Quaffle suddenly flew toward him. Years of instinct took over before conscious thought could, and he caught it cleanly with one hand.

Across the pitch, Ginny settled onto her broom opposite him, a familiar competitive smile spreading across her face. “You’re on my team, Potter,” she called. “You know I don’t like losing.”

Harry spun the Quaffle once in his hand. “You’re on.”

The game that followed was full of laughter and, naturally, some cheating from Ron and George. After a while, they stopped keeping score and simply enjoyed playing together.

When it was over, Harry felt lighter than he had in some time. They landed on the front lawn of the Burrow, and Ginny bumped him with her shoulder. “I’ve missed playing Quidditch with you, Harry. You should come around more. You know we’ll be playing again next Sunday.”

“That’s right.” Ron threw an arm around both Ginny and Harry. “You know you’re always welcome. It’s been too peaceful without you around.”

“Now he’s just laying it on thick. I haven’t missed you that much, Potter!” George joked, causing the group to groan while Harry smiled.

“I’ll be here next Sunday. I promise.”

The promise brought another cheer from the Weasleys. Arthur, who had been listening from the porch, placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “We’d be glad to have you, son. Molly will be pleased.”

“Just let me know if I need to bring the treacle next week,” Harry offered, making the older man laugh.

They were entering the house when Molly pointed at him. “Don’t you dare! I am perfectly capable of making all my children dessert.”

A surge of warmth moved through Harry. The night had been a blessing he had not expected when he left Dumbledore’s tomb.

After thanking the Weasleys for dinner and the game—and Hermione for insisting that he come—Harry returned to Peverell Manor whistling a soft, melodic tune. He could not remember where he knew it from, but he felt good.

Harry carried a fresh cup of tea to the workbench, allowing its warmth to settle into his hands. For the first time in weeks, he was not studying the walls plastered with notes or comparing another faded journal to a hastily translated passage. Instead, his eyes drifted between the three objects that had quietly occupied the room for years.

The Elder Wand rested upon the table. His Invisibility Cloak still hung beside the door, while the Resurrection Stone sat silently beneath its glass case. Three relics that had shaped wizarding history. Three objects Harry had spent years trying to understand. Three objects he had never once gathered together.

The thought from earlier returned. He and the others had become increasingly convinced that the Hallows were not merely mythical gifts but artifacts of extraordinary alchemical brilliance. If that was true, then placing them together should not invite some supernatural punishment. It should reveal something.

Setting his tea aside, Harry reached first for the Elder Wand. Nothing happened. He lifted the Resurrection Stone from its case, feeling only the familiar coolness of polished rock against his palm. Finally, he removed the Cloak from its hook and stood there for a long moment, holding all three Hallows together—perhaps the first person to do so in a thousand years.

Harry released a quiet breath he had not realized he was holding. “So much for the Master of Death,” he murmured.

The Elder Wand rested in his right hand, the Resurrection Stone in his left, and the Cloak lay across his arm. Still, nothing happened.

The manor remained silent. Harry laughed quietly, more at himself than anything else. “I’ve given the fairy tale a little too much credit.”

He laid the Cloak across the workbench between the Wand and the Stone and studied them together. Three masterpieces. Three impossibilities. Yet side by side, they no longer appeared entirely separate.

If they truly were the culmination of alchemical genius, perhaps they had never been intended to remain divided. Harry’s eyes drifted toward the unfinished transmutation circle covering the center of the table—his latest calculations, his latest theory, and his latest failure. He looked back at the Hallows, then at the notes, and finally at the empty space between the artifacts.

He reached for one journal, then another, scattering them across the workbench until pages covered nearly every inch of wood. Antioch’s measurements. Cadmus’ calculations. Ignotus’ observations. For five years, he had studied them as three separate achievements because history insisted they were. Yet lying side by side, the similarities became impossible to ignore.

“I’ve been approaching this backwards.” The realization struck with such clarity that it stole his breath.

In every experiment and every translation, Harry had treated the Hallows as the destination. They were not the destination. They were steps in a larger process.

Glancing at the symbol displayed upon the wall, Harry shook his head. “They weren’t writing three journals. They were writing one.”

Harry’s breath caught as years of translations, failed experiments, and forgotten theories aligned into something terrifyingly simple. He had not misunderstood the Hallows. He had misunderstood the brothers.

Harry hurried to the wall, pulling pages free almost faster than he could read them. A margin note from Ignotus connected with a symbol Antioch had sketched decades earlier, while a formula Harry had dismissed fit perfectly beside a transmutation sequence that had never made sense on its own.

The answer had been sitting in front of him all along. He had simply needed to see the Hallows together. Harry’s pulse quickened. “We’ve all been looking at this wrong.”

The room seemed to fall away around him. With shaking hands, Harry pulled a fresh sheet of parchment toward himself and began writing furiously. Symbols, runes, temperatures, ratios, and connections poured across the page.

Years of research finally aligned into a single elegant equation. Harry stared at it, his heart pounding. “I know how to test it.”

He tore the same page that had caught Flitwick’s attention from the wall and studied it again. The symbol was not merely a rune; it was a pattern designed to guide several forms of magic toward the same center. Harry selected a wooden stave, carved the pattern carefully into its surface, and carried it to his workstation.

A sheet of glass rested at its center—not conjured but made from sand and fire, its natural origin important to the process. Harry placed the stave upon it, then arranged the three Hallows along the carved lines: the Wand at one end, the Stone at another, and the Cloak folded across the final arm of the design.

Consulting several pages of notes, Harry considered what the Peverells had either missed or never recorded. Each brother appeared to have pursued a separate path, yet their methods complemented one another too precisely to be coincidence. Perhaps they had never shared the entire picture. Harry, for the first time, could see all three.

Or perhaps they had separated the Hallows deliberately and hoped no one would ever repeat what they had done.

The thought made him pause, but only for a moment.

Runes did not create magic; they directed it. Alchemy did not create magic either. It changed the vessel carrying it, using heat, material, and intent to make the impossible capable of enduring.

Harry raised his phoenix-feather wand toward the furnace beneath the glass and ignited it with a controlled flick. The fire spread evenly below the stave, warming the natural glass before touching the carved wood.

He adjusted the temperature in careful increments, watching the rune darken and then begin to glow. The Hallows remained still, but the magic around them tightened, drawn along the carved lines exactly as his calculations predicted.

The room grew warmer. Harry narrowed his eyes and made another delicate correction. His wand obeyed each movement, feeding the furnace without allowing the flame to touch the artifacts themselves.

If his theory was correct, the Hallows had never been three separate conclusions. They were components of a single alchemical process, divided before the final reaction could be understood.

The rune flared gold.

For one breathless moment, everything worked. The glass held. The wood did not burn. Magic flowed from each Hallow toward the center of the pattern, where the three currents met and began to change.

Then the Resurrection Stone turned beneath its own power. The Elder Wand lifted from the stave, and the Cloak stirred despite the still air. The heat vanished from the room so suddenly that Harry’s breath clouded before him. Somewhere beyond the manor—or perhaps within it—a deep phoenix trill sounded, filled with a grief so profound that Harry understood his mistake a heartbeat too late.

The rune Flitwick had recognized blazed white. Magical backlash tore through the laboratory, hurling Harry weightlessly across the room as the world disappeared in light.