The morning after her testimony, Serena woke to rain again.
It fell softly against the windowpanes, steady and unrelenting — a sound that pressed itself into the room until it felt less like weather and more like judgment. Each drop seemed to echo the cadence of the questions she had endured, the pauses between answers stretched thin with expectation, suspicion, and delight at her discomfort.
Her coat still hung by the fire, damp from yesterday's storm, its wool darkened where rain had soaked through. The dress she'd worn to the Ministry lay folded on a chair, creased where her trembling hands had pressed it too tightly, as if fabric could anchor her when the room had begun to tilt.
