The train ride was uneventful.

  Noise. Children. Empty chatter. All predictable. All irrelevant.

  I spent most of the journey watching reflections—not mine, but theirs. Faces in the windows, in the steel of the luggage racks. Fear, excitement, nervousness. Emotion flickered through them like candlelight.

  I remembered feeling once. Curiosity, maybe. Hunger, always. But fear? That had burned out long ago.

  I felt the train lurch. Whistles. Voices rising.

  We were here.

  Hogwarts.

  It rose from the mist like a memory I hadn't earned.

  Not the storybook version. Not the film set.

  This was the real castle.

  Older. Harsher. No music to soften its angles. It looked like something carved from punishment and lightning.

  We crossed the ke in boats. I watched the water. Deep. Bck. Something brushed beneath us once. The boy beside me screamed. I didn’t move.

  The lights on the towers flickered like stars gone wrong.

  Inside the Entrance Hall, they herded us like livestock. Cloaks too long, boots too wet. I kept to the edge of the group. Calcuting.

  First task: Sorting.

  It was a ritual. Symbolic. But symbolism was power made soft.

  The hat waited.

  Frayed. Ancient. Watching.

  Professor McGonagall stepped forward. She held the list. The first names were called.

  A boy stumbled forward. Sat. The hat shouted "GRYFFINDOR."

  Appuse.

  Another girl. "HUFFLEPUFF."

  "RAVENCLAW."

  A pause.

  “Cain Williams.”

  I walked to the stool without hurry.

  McGonagall gave me a gnce. Not suspicious. Not trusting, either.

  I sat.

  The hat dropped over my ears, blotting out the world.

  “Oh… you’re not what I expected.”

  Its voice was dry. Curious. Very old.

  “Not much fear in you, is there? But so much thought. So many yers… clever. Dangerous. Very dangerous.”

  I didn’t reply.

  I let it dig.

  “You’ve done things, boy. Things a child shouldn’t remember. You know what death smells like. You know what cooking flesh sounds like.”

  I smiled. Internally.

  The hat chuckled.

  “You’ve no interest in heroics. No patience for fools. You want to understand everything, don’t you?”

  Yes.

  “Well. That’s easy, then.”

  A pause.

  Then the word came.

  “SLYTHERIN.”

  The table appuded. Some hesitantly. Others loudly. I walked to my seat and took it silently.

  I didn’t look back. I already knew where the others were sitting.

  I focused on my pte. The feast. The absurdity of it. Food piled like monuments. Buttered everything. Gzed meat, sugared vegetables. Magic used not for power—but for pleasure.

  They were soft.

  They were mine.

  Later, in the Slytherin common room, I found a chair near the firepce. Not too close. Enough to watch the room, not dominate it.

  And then I saw him.

  Thin. Pale. Greasy hair like shadows pulled too tight. A face built to scowl. Eyes made for gring.

  Severus Snape.

  He sat alone, book already open. Ignoring the room. Like me.

  I watched him.

  He noticed.

  Didn’t speak. Just looked. Then looked back down.

  Good.

  He remembered the names too. Dumbledore. Voldemort. Lily.

  We were both anachronisms, in our way.

  But he was still raw. Still emotional.

  I was not.

  That night, in the quiet, as the dormitories settled and the boys began to snore, I closed my eyes.

  And the fire came back.

  Fshback – Before RebirthThe manor had smelled of sandalwood and rot.

  The ritual chamber was below the third parlor. Concealed by a blood-lock rune keyed to our family name.

  They thought I was still under control.

  Still obedient.

  They thought I didn’t remember what they'd done to me—what they’d put inside me.

  The day it ended, I walked into the ritual chamber with a vial of fireseed oil. Slow-burning. Smokeless for the first seven minutes. I coated the runes. Each line. Each seal.

  They were preparing a soul-weaving. My sister was the centerpiece.

  I stopped them.

  Not with shouts. Not with pleas.

  With fire.

  I locked the door behind me.

  Lit the match.

  Watched the screaming through the rune-gss.

  She begged.

  I tilted my head, studying the way her vocal cords strained.

  The way her hair curled as it burned.

  The way cooked human flesh changed color by degrees.

  Not hunger this time.

  Curiosity.

  What does it feel like to destroy what made you?

  That was the st question I answered before I died.

  Back to HogwartsI woke before the others.

  Still dark outside.

  The common room was empty, but the fire was lit. Green. Soft. Hissing.

  I sat before it and opened a book I hadn’t checked out. It had no title. Only wards. The restricted section had been easier to access than I expected. A second-year boy left his password in a folded corner of a textbook.

  Children.

  So easy to bend.

  Severus passed behind me, on his way to the vatory.

  He paused.

  “Where did you get that book?” he asked.

  I didn’t look up.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not here to tell.”

  A pause.

  Then: “You’re not like the others.”

  I smiled slightly. “Neither are you.”

  He hesitated.

  Then walked on.

  Good.

  The game had begun.