firecracker ???

It was Christmas.

But not like the ones before.

There were no Ministry summons. No dark marks. No screaming portraits or nights without sleep. There was just warmth. Crackling fires. The smell of cinnamon and smoke. Laughter in every hallway. Light in places that had only known shadow.

For the first time in years, Grimmauld Place had felt full with everyone returned.

And now, Hogwarts did too.

The castle welcomed them back like an old friend—its stones humming with enchantments and something quieter beneath, something older. A soft sort of promise: You are safe here. For now.

Classes resumed with familiar chaos. Sirius bewitched his syllabus to sing itself. Regulus took to dueling students in mock battles before breakfast. Lupin handed out parchment sheets with riddles about wand law and war ethics, grading them with the gentleness of someone who had once answered them wrong.

The Great Hall buzzed. The Slytherin table had stopped sneering. The Gryffindors had stopped suspecting. People smiled more. Sat beside each other. The Houses were still divided, but only by colours—no longer by fear.

Harry, for his part, returned to school exactly as he'd left it.

Loud. Radiant. Incorrigible.

He kissed Lyra in the entrance hall the second they stepped off the train. Held her hand through every corridor. Whispered dramatics into her ear just to make her roll her eyes and mutter idiot before kissing him again.

"You're embarrassing," she told him one morning after Transfiguration, as he pulled her back by the waist and kissed her cheek in full view of a group of fourth-years.

"I'm in love," Harry said simply. "I have to be unbearable."

And he was. Perfectly, gloriously unbearable.

He matched Sirius in sarcasm. Topped Draco in dramatics. Had entire rows of students timing how long he could go without making some dramatic speech about his girlfriend. His record, so far, was seven minutes.

And still—

Sometimes, when the snow thickened across the windows... when the sun dipped early and the lake froze... Harry found himself quiet.

Looking to the mountain ridges where something stirred.

He couldn't explain it at first. A twitch behind his scar. Not pain. Just a flicker. Like someone brushing the back of his mind with cold fingers.

It didn't frighten him.

But it made him still.

One night, as he sat alone at the Astronomy Tower wrapped in Lyra's scarf, he squinted toward the distant peaks and whispered, "Nagini?"

Nothing came. Just silence.

But the chill deepened.

He said nothing about it to anyone.

Not yet.

Let the world stay warm just a little longer.

Let them believe the quiet would last.

-

In the depths of Hogwarts, beneath the illusion of peace, Dumbledore moved through shadow.

Not as a ghost.

But as a man who knew they didn't have much time left.

The old study was quiet—Snape's now, in all but memory. Dumbledore lit the candles himself. The walls hummed with new magic. Wards layered over old ones. The kind of protections one only used when death was no longer theoretical.