Heir and the Isolated Trio (I)

In the days that followed, it felt as though someone had quietly siphoned away a layer of Hogwarts's air.

Not the kind of vacuum that made it hard to breathe, but a slower, subtler kind of pressure. As if someone were slowly building a transparent wall around you. You could see the people outside, and they could see you, but something stood between you that could not be penetrated.

The first place Harry felt that change was in the corridors.

Before, when he walked through the corridors, people pointed and whispered too, but it had mostly been out of curiosity or awe. "That's Harry Potter." "The Boy Who Lived." "The one who defeated Voldemort." Their gazes had held a distant, almost exaggerated admiration, as though they were looking at some rare treasure through a shop window.

Now, things were different.

Those gazes were still there, but they had changed.

It was no longer curiosity, but scrutiny. No longer awe, but suspicion. No longer like looking at treasure through glass, but like watching a wild beast through the bars of a cage, one that might bite at any moment.

Whenever Harry walked down a corridor, he could feel those stares pricking his back like needles. Some students quickly looked away after he spoke, pretending to study the portraits on the walls. Others gathered together and whispered, their voices lowered, though an occasional word drifted into his ears.

"Heir."

"Chamber of Secrets."

"It's him," followed by sudden silence, as if someone had squeezed their throats shut.

What unnerved Harry most was Filch.

The old caretaker seemed like a different person.

Before, Filch had looked at him with disgust—the cat-and-mouse sort of hostility, laced with a twisted sense of pleasure. But now that disgust was gone, replaced by a look Harry had only