The room still held the smell of yesterday's air.
Rowan opened his eyes without moving anything else. Light from the narrow window pressed along the wall in a pale strip, not eager to go further. The weight under his pillow hadn't shifted during the night, though his awareness of it had. It was not the sort of presence that kept you awake — more like something waiting for you to be ready.
He reached under the pillow and drew the wand out without uncoiling the rest of himself. Blackthorn. Thestral tail hair. Eleven and three-quarters. The grain was fine, the color holding in the dimness like it meant to keep secrets.
He rolled it between his fingers. The wood seemed to know how much pressure belonged there. He turned it once in his palm, then again, slower, as if seeing whether the balance changed with patience.
The threads in the air — faint as smoke, finer than spider silk — had always been there. He had grown used to their quiet motion, the way they went about their own business unless he tried to pull them, guide them, gather them into shape. Doing so with only his will had been like working a tool you couldn't hold, hands moving in air and never quite finding the right grip. The wand changed that. It was not just a grip; it was a line drawn from him to them, clean, direct.
He let the tip drift toward a thin, wavering line that hung near the foot of the bed. It wasn't attached to anything obvious — just floating, content in its own light drift. He angled the wand without thinking, the way you turn your head to listen more closely. The thread tightened, almost imperceptibly, as if the wand had whispered something to it.
Rowan didn't pull. He waited. The thread began to move toward him, no slack, no slackening. It came like a line reeled in by someone who knew the feel of their own weight on the water.
That had taken seconds, not minutes. Before, it would have been an effort. Now the wand seemed to meet him halfway — sensing his intent and giving the threads a clearer path.
He tried another — one that ran from the desk leg up toward the window latch. The moment the wand's tip passed close, the thread shivered and angled toward him of its own accord, as if recognizing something familiar.
He didn't smile, but his chest made the faint upward motion that comes before a smile when you're alone.
The quiet of the morning suited it. The rest of the house was slow to wake; Mrs. Whittaker would be in the kitchen, moving at her deliberate pace. No doors banged. A sparrow tapped at the glass once, decided against further introductions.
He practiced until the light grew warmer and the air shifted toward the smell of toast. No spells, no incantations — just guiding lines, seeing how much was him and how much was the wand, how the two blurred at the edges. Sometimes he led, sometimes it seemed to lead, and he was content not to keep count.
Three days sat between him and the first of September.
They passed like afternoons when you're waiting for a knock you know is coming: everything ordinary, but stretched thin by expectation.
He didn't say much to the other boys in the orphanage; they didn't ask much. A few knew he was leaving, though not where to. In a place like this, departures happened without ceremony. New faces came in; old ones left with a bag and maybe a wave.
Mrs. Whittaker, to her credit, treated him no differently than she had before the letter. She reminded him to clear his plate, told him when it was his turn to sweep the hall, commented on the weather in the same flat, practical way. If she noticed he was quieter, she didn't say. If she saw the wand — which he kept hidden well — she made no sign.
But he found moments.
The desk drawer in the boys' room had been sticking for weeks; yesterday, with the wand in his hand and the threads along its seam visible, he eased it open without the sharp tug it used to demand. The wooden chair by the window had a wobble; a thread near its front leg slid back into place, and the chair stood level. The corner of a torn book cover mended itself with a single pass of the wand's tip, though the thread didn't quite match the original grain.
He didn't do it for thanks. In fact, no one noticed. That was fine. The wand knew. The threads knew. And knowing was enough.
At night, he would lie on his side with the wand balanced across his palm, watching the way the faintest touch toward a thread would shift it, sometimes in invitation, sometimes in retreat. There was no hurry. He had learned early that hurrying broke things.
On the morning of the thirtieth, an owl arrived.
It came in through the window with the authority of someone walking into a room they had paid for in advance. A parchment envelope was tied neatly to its leg; the handwriting was precise, angular.
Mr. Von Vey,
Please be at King's Cross Station at eleven o'clock on the first of September. Your ticket is enclosed. I will meet you in the main concourse.
M. McGonagall
The ticket was a sturdy rectangle of cream card, the letters Hogwarts Express — Platform Nine and Three-Quarters printed in ink that caught the light like old gold. He turned it over in his hand. There was nothing on the back, but the air around it held a faint current, as if it knew where it was meant to go.
The owl waited long enough to see if there would be a reply. Rowan shook his head slightly. The bird accepted this, gave a short, professional hoot, and left.
The day before departure, he began to pack.
The bed became an ordered mess of the things from Diagon Alley — his robes, folded but not too neatly; the cauldron, wrapped in brown paper so it wouldn't scuff anything else; a set of glass phials; the spellbooks with their stiff new spines. His eyes lingered on the bag of quills and ink, the fresh parchment. Ordinary tools in appearance, but the threads around them whispered of work they were meant to do.
He placed the wand last, sliding it into a narrow, padded case before setting it in the side pocket of his bag. Even then, he kept a hand on it for a moment, feeling the way the threads in the room seemed to adjust when it moved out of sight — not gone, just set aside.
Mrs. Whittaker came in once, glanced at the bag, and gave the smallest of nods. "You'll want to be ready early," she said, then left without waiting for him to answer.
That evening, he sat on the edge of his bed with the wand balanced lightly in his hand.
He wasn't testing anything. Just holding it, letting the room be the room, the threads go about their drifting. Once or twice, a line brushed against the wand's tip and stayed there a moment longer than it needed to, like a thread touching a knot to see if it could remember how it was tied.
When he set it down, the air felt fractionally different, as if some agreement had been reached between them.
The morning of the first of September came without ceremony. Grey light. A thin chill that would burn off by noon. He dressed without rushing, ate the toast Mrs. Whittaker handed him without speaking much. She didn't press him.
The bag was heavier than it had been yesterday. Not in weight — in fact, it might have been lighter — but in what it meant to carry. He checked the wand's place in the side pocket, the ticket in the inner flap.
When the knock came at the door, it was McGonagall, her expression exactly as it had been the first time they met — steady, taking the measure of the morning without commenting on it.
"Ready?" she asked.
"Yes."
She glanced at the bag, then at him. "We'll walk."
They stepped out into the street. The air smelled faintly of damp stone. A tram rattled somewhere further off. Rowan kept pace with her, the bag strap across his shoulder, the wand resting in its place.
The orphanage door closed behind them. No one had come to wave. That was fine. It was how things worked here.
At the corner, he looked back once. The threads from the building — thin, unshowy — stretched toward him for a moment before settling back into the brick.
They walked on. The city's noise gathered as they went, folding them into its larger rhythm. By the time they turned toward the train station, the air had shifted — busier, sharper, full of the motion of people going where they needed to be.
They were nearly at the doors when McGonagall spoke. "You've got your ticket?"
"Yes."
"Keep it where you can reach it," she said, and left it there.
The high glass of the station roof caught the light, spilling it down over the concourse. The sound of trains moving somewhere below echoed up like distant, steady thunder. Rowan adjusted the bag on his shoulder.
McGonagall paused before the entryway. "This will be simple," she said, though her eyes carried more than the words.
Rowan nodded. His fingers brushed the side pocket where the wand lay, not for reassurance, but to acknowledge that it was there.
Then they stepped inside.