The morning after the clearing felt unreal.
Not dreamlike — too real, as though every sound scraped sharper, every color too vivid. Elias woke with the unmistakable sensation that something had shifted permanently inside him. The presence hadn't returned in the night. It hadn't pressed at the edge of his thoughts. It hadn't whispered or waited or knocked.
But it wasn't gone.
It had simply learned something.
And Elias had learned something too:
He could resist it.
Not easily.
Not safely.
But he could.
He got dressed quietly, listening to Severus's soft breathing from the other bed — steady, peaceful, unaware of how close the world had come to splitting open.
Elias envied that.
Downstairs, the house smelled of burnt toast and stale tea. Tobias sat at the table with a blank expression, stirring his cup long after the sugar dissolved. Eileen moved around him like a ghost, avoiding his eyes, avoiding the boys' eyes, avoiding everything.
"Morning," Severus whispered.
"Morning," Eileen replied automatically, as though the word no longer meant anything.
Elias sat. His stomach twisted. Tobias didn't even glance at him. His mind — the mind Elias had scraped raw — felt… incomplete. Like a broken machine still turning out of habit.
Eileen slid a plate toward Elias. Their eyes met.
Are you still my son?
Are you becoming something else?
Elias didn't know the answer.
Before he could touch the toast, something slapped against the window.
All four of them startled.
Another slap.
Elias rose and crossed the room, lifting the latch. The window swung open, letting in a gust of cold morning wind and—
Two owls flew in, landing heavily on the table.
Eileen gasped. Tobias blinked dumbly.
Severus froze.
The owls stuck out their legs, parchment envelopes tied neatly with twine.
Elias's heart thudded once — hard.
He knew immediately what they were.
Hogwarts Letters.
Severus made a small sound that cracked in the middle — half-laugh, half-sob.
Elias took the first envelope.
Heavy parchment.
Green ink.
Hogwarts crest wax seal.
The second was identical.
"Go on," Eileen whispered, voice trembling.
Severus opened his with shaking hands. His breath hitched. "I got in."
Elias opened his own.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
Dear Mr. Snape,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…
Elias exhaled slowly.
He had known this was coming.
But something in him had always doubted it — not his magic, not his intelligence, but whether he belonged anywhere people didn't fear what lay inside him.
Severus practically leapt across the room and embraced him.
"We both got in!"
Elias hugged him back, but without Severus's fervor. His gaze flicked to the window.
If he left Spinner's End… would the presence follow?
Would the box?
Would he draw darkness into Hogwarts?
His stomach clenched.
Eileen wiped at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. "Both of my boys… going to Hogwarts. Your grandmother would've… she would've been proud."
Tobias grunted, uninterested.
But Eileen beamed, for the first time in months. Pride warred with fear in her eyes, but hope — thin and fragile — flickered behind it.
Severus squeezed Elias again. "We're going to be wizards. Actual wizards."
"You always were," Elias said softly.
"But now we'll be trained!"
Elias only nodded.
Trained.
Shaped.
Watched.
That last word burned.
They spent the rest of breakfast discussing supplies, books, wands, and Diagon Alley. Severus talked so fast he barely breathed. Eileen smiled and corrected him gently. Even Tobias seemed too dazed to interrupt.
But Elias's thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely.
To the clearing.
To the shadow.
To the runes on the box.
To the door inside his mind that had shifted the night before.
And to one truth that lingered like poison on the tongue:
Hogwarts might not be a refuge.
It might be the battleground.
Lily was waiting where she always waited — at the corner near the river, hair catching the sunlight like a living flame.
But today, she looked different.
Brighter.
Breathless.
On the verge of exploding with something.
Before either Snape brother could speak, Lily thrust an envelope at them.
"I GOT IN!"
Severus whooped — an actual whoop — and rushed her with a clumsy, half-panicked hug.
Lily laughed, burying her face in his shoulder.
Elias watched them with something warm and sharp twisting inside him.
She turned to him.
"Well? Did you?"
Elias held up his envelope.
Lily exploded into a grin that could have lit the whole riverbank. "We're going together. All three of us. Can you believe it?"
"Yes," Elias said.
"Elias," Lily huffed, "this is the part where you pretend to be excited."
"I am excited."
"You don't sound excited."
"This is my excited voice."
Lily rolled her eyes — but she stepped closer and touched his arm, her voice softening. "I'm glad you're coming."
The words hit him harder than he expected.
Severus launched into a tirade about which houses they might end up in — Lily insisting on Gryffindor, Severus insisting on Slytherin, Elias refusing to comment.
But then Lily's expression shifted.
She looked at Elias carefully — too carefully.
"You seem… quiet today," she said.
"He's always quiet," Severus muttered.
"No," Lily said firmly. "Something's wrong."
Elias hesitated.
"It came back last night," he said quietly.
The joy drained from Lily's face.
Severus nearly slipped on the dirt path. "WHAT?"
"I stopped it," Elias added.
The shock on their faces turned into fear, then relief, then confusion all at once.
Lily grabbed his hands. "Show me."
Elias blinked. "Show you what?"
"That you're okay."
Elias tried to step back, but Lily wouldn't let him.
"Look at me," she said.
He did.
She held his gaze with bold, burning determination, as if daring the presence — daring the ancient magic — to try and take him from her sight.
"What happened?" she whispered.
Elias didn't sugarcoat it.
"It tried to push through. I closed the door."
"On your own?"
He nodded.
Lily swallowed hard. "Elias… you can't fight something like that alone."
"I did."
"That's not the same thing as being safe."
Elias didn't answer.
Severus grabbed his sleeve. "We're going to Hogwarts soon. Is it going to follow you there?"
"Yes."
The honesty stunned them both.
"We need help," Lily whispered.
"No."
"Yes," she insisted. "If this thing followed you once, it will follow you again. Hogwarts has the strongest wards in magical Britain. Teachers. Books. Knowledge. Someone there might know what this is."
"No one can know," Elias said sharply. "No teachers. No books. No headmasters. This is mine."
Lily took a shaky step back.
Severus paled. "Elias—"
Elias raked a hand through his hair, trying to calm the surge of panic. "If I tell anyone, they'll start watching me. Studying me. Fearing me. They'll see me as a threat before I even set foot in the castle."
He stared at both of them.
"I can't be that. Not yet."
Silence settled heavy between them.
Lily looked torn — furious and afraid and proud all at once.
"Fine," she said at last. "But you're not going through this alone."
Severus nodded, voice trembling. "We're with you. Always."
Elias swallowed.
"That's what I'm afraid of."
They spent the afternoon by the river as though nothing was wrong — skipping stones, climbing trees, arguing about houses, imagining classes and broomsticks and spells.
The illusion was beautiful.
But illusions always break.
At sunset, Lily stood between the boys and squeezed both their hands.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "We'll celebrate properly."
She kissed Severus's cheek — a quick peck that made him flush scarlet — then turned to Elias.
She didn't kiss him.
But she hesitated.
And placed her hand over his heart instead.
"You come back to me," she whispered. "Promise."
His pulse hammered against her palm.
"I promise," he said.
Lily smiled softly and ran home before either boy could process the moment.
Severus stared after her in open disbelief. "She—did she—did she just—?"
"Yes," Elias muttered.
"And did YOU—?"
"No."
Severus groaned dramatically. "You're hopeless."
Elias didn't argue.
That night, Eileen dug out their old travel trunks. Tobias sat silently in the corner, smoking without pleasure or purpose.
Severus spent hours pacing excitedly, imagining robes and cauldrons and potions classes. Elias smiled when he needed to — nodded when expected — but his mind kept circling back to the clearing.
To the presence.
To the box.
To the door inside him.
Would Hogwarts stop it?
Would it hide him?
Would it become a trap instead of a sanctuary?
He didn't know.
He didn't have time to know.
Because near midnight, while Severus snored and the house lay quiet, Elias saw something that made his blood run cold.
A rune appeared on his wall.
Just one.
Not glowing.
Not carved.
Not burned.
Formed in condensation.
The same shape from the box.
The same mark that had appeared on his window days before.
But this time, the meaning struck him instantly:
Soon.
Elias touched the rune lightly.
It vanished.
His breath caught.
The presence was waiting.
Observing.
Preparing.
And Hogwarts — powerful, ancient, warded Hogwarts — would not be the first new world Elias encountered there.
He lay awake until dawn, staring at the empty wall, the letter from Hogwarts still clutched in his hand.
Tomorrow he would celebrate.
Tomorrow he would pretend this was just the beginning of a school adventure.
But tonight, Elias Snape understood something with bone-deep certainty:
He was not going to Hogwarts as a normal boy.
He was going as a battlefield.
And the war had already begun.