The little girl in the next room

Gavin watched her quietly.

She had asked the question calmly, as though she were checking whether it had rained today rather than asking about something to do with death.

"Almost," Gavin replied.

The girl blinked.

"Oh."

She seemed to accept that answer and asked no further questions.

The house-elf beside the bed clutched a tray, ears twitching nervously, clearly unhappy about its young mistress discussing such things with a stranger who had only just woken up.

Gavin turned his head to look at the girl, his voice still rather weak.

"What about you?"

The girl was watching him too, and answered in imitation of him:

"I've always been almost."

The room fell briefly silent again.

Gavin looked at her, feeling a little more awake.

That was not something an ordinary child would say.

At least, not something a child her age would say so naturally, in that tone.

"What's your name?" Gavin asked, a little curious.

She seemed to hesitate.

Then she spoke very softly:

"Cordelia."

She paused, then added:

"Cordelia Rowle."

Rowle.

That surname was clearly no ordinary name in the wizarding world.

But Gavin had only recently entered the wizarding world, and had neither the time nor the energy to study its illustrious pure-blood families.

"Gavin Gu," he replied politely, giving his own name.

"I know." Cordelia nodded.

"You know?"

"Your professors came." She gestured a little. "Grandpa Dumbledore came too. It was very noisy next door to you earlier."

Gavin nodded in understanding.

Cordelia kept watching him quietly, as though she had finally met a living person who did not immediately shy away after her first remark, and wanted another look to make sure it was real.

"Are you a student at Hogwarts?" she suddenly asked.

"Yes."

"Is it fun there?"

That question made Gavin think for a couple of seconds.

"Sometimes it's very interesting," Gavin said, thinking back. "Sometimes it's very easy for things to go wrong, too."

"Like with you?"

"Yeah." Gavin nodded. "I nearly got myself killed having fun."

Cordelia did not smile.

She merely gave a soft hum of agreement, as though she thought that was an accurate assessment.

"I've been here a long time," Cordelia suddenly said.

Gavin raised his eyes to her.

But she offered no further explanation, merely resting her hand lightly on the chair's armrest, her expression as indifferent as ever, as though she were discussing something that had little to do with her.

"The walls here don't move," she said expressionlessly. "The stairs don't wander around, either. Everything is white, white, and more white."

"Sounds better for sleeping than Hogwarts."

"Do the stairs at Hogwarts really wander around?"

"They do."

At last, Cordelia's expression changed a little.

She seemed to picture it briefly, then find it rather unbelievable.

"That sounds annoying." She frowned slightly.

"It is."

"Does your food move too?"

"The food doesn't, but Peeves sometimes smears it all over your face."

Cordelia looked at him, as though trying to decide whether that counted as a joke.

In the end, she offered no opinion.

She merely said very softly:

"You don't talk like other people."

"How do other people usually talk?"

"They usually don't talk to me for this long."

The house-elf beside the bed had been watching the conversation nervously all along, as though wanting to stop something but not daring to speak.

Following its reaction, Gavin's gaze naturally settled on Cordelia's wrist.

A slender silver bracelet circled it.

It was beautiful, covered in intricate patterns.

It did not look like a mere ornament.

While Gavin was considering whether to ask what it was,

Cordelia seemed to have finished everything she had to say that night. She stood up and said:

"You need to sleep."

"How do you know?"

"People who've just woken up can't talk for too long." She pointed at Gavin's face. "Besides, you're paler than the walls."

"Thanks for the reminder."

"You're welcome."

She turned and headed for the door.

At the doorway, she paused and noticed that Gavin was still watching her.

"I'll come again tomorrow," she said gently.

It was as though she were reassuring Gavin so he could settle down and sleep.

Then she left.

Only the house-elf remained, bowing deeply to Gavin and saying in a lowered voice:

"Dibby wishes you good night on behalf of Miss, sir."

With that, it disappeared too.

Gavin lay in bed, looking around the now-empty room, and only slowly closed his eyes after a few seconds.

He was still thinking about that strange little girl.

When he woke the next day, St. Mungo's finally revealed what it was like in daylight.

Unlike the quiet atmosphere at night, St. Mungo's during the day was noisier than the busiest market in the world.

The footsteps of hurrying Healers, the shrill notes from a patient whose head had been turned into a giant horn, and the occasional sound of something breaking woke Gavin straight out of his sleep.

Light from outside fell over the snowy-white walls and bed rails, illuminating everything clearly.

"A rare bit of sunshine."

London seemed to be welcoming Gavin back in its own way, even if he had returned flat on his back.

Gavin tried moving his neck, then his arms.

He felt a little better than he had the night before. At least he could move his upper body.

His head no longer hurt as though it were splitting open, though his mind was still a little muddled.

When the door opened, he was leaning against the headboard, staring blankly out of the window.

It was not a Healer who came in.

It was Cordelia.

Today, she wore a light gray dress and had a hand on a wheelchair, with the house-elf called Dibby following behind her. The bright light in St. Mungo's made her look even paler and thinner, almost as though a touch would shatter her.

"You look less like a ghost than you did yesterday," she said after looking Gavin over.

"That's progress."

"I think so too."

She parked the wheelchair beside the bed, speaking as though this were perfectly ordinary.

"You should get out of bed."

Gavin looked at the wheelchair, then at her.

"Is that an invitation or an announcement?"

"Both." Cordelia looked at him. "Dibby says you should get out for a bit."

Behind her, Dibby immediately nodded, ears bobbing twice.

"Sir needs quiet surroundings and fresh air."

"Does the air outside St. Mungo's count as fresh?"

"A little fresher than the air in your room," Cordelia replied.

Gavin did not refuse.

With nothing he could do right now, having someone to chat with was quite nice.

So, with Dibby and Cordelia's help, he got out of bed and into the wheelchair.

It was not a particularly graceful process.

"You're pushing me?" he asked, a little curious.

"Dibby pushes too fast." Cordelia took hold of the wheelchair and began pushing it. "Last time, Dibby took me into someone else's room."

"Not the best choice, then."

And so she really did wheel Gavin out through the door.

St. Mungo's by day was a little stranger than he had expected.

The corridor was wide, with moving portraits hanging on the walls. Healers in green robes hurried past, while some patients were taking slow walks supported by their families. Farther away, a wizard whose ears were smoking complained that he had only been trying to make his teapot a little smarter; elsewhere, an old woman insisted she had not been cursed, and that the mushrooms growing on her head simply got along very well with her.

"Business is good here," Gavin remarked.

"Yes." Cordelia wholeheartedly agreed. "People are always breaking themselves."

"Does that include you?"

Her hands paused on the wheelchair.

Only briefly.

"I suppose." She gave a faint smile.

They slowly reached the end of a corridor, passed through a door, and entered a courtyard. Sunlight filtered through the lush leaves of the trees, casting dappled shadows on the ground.

Gavin turned his head to look at her.

"You said yesterday that you'd been here a long time?"

"Yes."

"How long?"

"About five years."

"What about your family?"

As soon as he asked, the wheelchair suddenly stopped.

Gavin felt as though the hands pushing his wheelchair had suddenly lost their sense of direction.

Behind them, Dibby grew visibly nervous.

"Miss—"

"My mother died," Cordelia suddenly said.

She said it very calmly.

"My father left me here."

She started pushing Gavin forward again, her voice still perfectly calm.

"Everyone says he's trying to find a way to save me. But he hasn't come back once in five years."

"So you don't believe them?" Gavin asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe I don't. Or maybe... I don't want to believe them anymore."

Other people passed them in the courtyard, their steps hurried. A few sparrows landed on a railing outside the window, then quickly flew away again.

Gavin did not reply.

He did not know how to comfort Cordelia, and was beginning to regret bringing up the subject.

Cordelia did not look at him either. She simply kept pushing the wheelchair, her gaze fixed ahead, as though she were already used to saying things as she walked that no one would take seriously enough to answer.

"When I was little, there was always fighting at home," she suddenly said.

"About what?"

"About dead people," she said. "And about people who were still alive."

In those days, there had been the pure-blood families, Voldemort's downfall, arrests of people from the old guard, and old scores being dredged up. To a child, it was all far too heavy and complicated to understand, but she knew that every argument had something to do with magic. In the end, the only thought she could arrive at was—

If there were no magic, things wouldn't have turned out this way.

The instant that thought flashed through her mind, Cordelia's breathing suddenly faltered.

The air around them suddenly felt wrong.

The temperature seemed to drop several degrees.

The light began to dim.

Dibby's ears sprang upright.

"Miss!"

Cordelia did not answer.

She stood behind the wheelchair, fingers clenched around its handles. Her face was paler than before, her eyes vacant, as though something rising from deep within her had ensnared her.

Gavin turned to look at her.

A faint tremor ran through the air.

The sparrows foraging beneath a tree beside the courtyard took flight all at once.

At Cordelia's feet, something black began to seep out, rising in thin wisps like smoke.

The black smoke roiled violently, like a beast long held captive and about to break free.

"An Obscurus?" Gavin murmured.

Surprise flickered across his otherwise calm face.

It was not that Gavin felt no fear. Fear simply would him no good right now. Unable to move, he had no way to deal with an Obscurus.

Besides, he could not believe St. Mungo's would let a girl who might unleash an Obscurus at any moment wander around.

Since he could not fight back, he might as well take the chance to observe it.

"Interesting." His eyes lit up.

Dibby whipped around to stare at him, utterly dumbfounded.

That remark drew a glimmer of awareness back into Cordelia's vacant eyes.

She raised her head and stared at Gavin. For the first time, unmistakable astonishment appeared in her eyes.

She knew what people looked like when they saw her this way.

Fear. Horror. They ran. They screamed.

No one had ever—

looked at her so calmly, eyes shining, when she was on the verge of losing control.

Beside them, Dibby began to shriek.

"Miss! Miss!"

At the same moment, the silver bracelet on Cordelia's wrist flared to life.

Its countless tiny Runic Runes seemed to ignite at once. A ring of silver light appeared, then snapped tight, savagely forcing the beast about to escape back into its cage.

The heavy, oppressive tremor in the air stopped at once.

Sunlight fell over them again.

It was as though those few seconds had been an illusion.

Cordelia staggered.

Gavin instinctively tried to reach out and steady her, but he was sitting in a wheelchair himself and could not manage it.

Dibby was faster. He rushed forward and caught her.

"Miss, are you all right?"

Cordelia said nothing. She took a couple of breaths, her face so pale it was almost translucent.

She looked at Gavin, who had tried to help her. "Aren't you afraid?"

"Honestly? A little."

"Then why didn't you run?"

Gavin spread his hands. "Do I look like I can?"

He seemed relaxed, without a trace of fear.

People were complicated. A haunted house could scare someone half to death, yet curiosity might still make them want to go inside.

And once Gavin had coolly assessed his situation, curiosity was all he had left.

He had wanted to see an Obscurus ever since his first day encountering magic.

What Gavin did not know was how deeply his reaction affected Cordelia.

Whenever this had happened before, she had fled at once. She could not bear the way people looked at her—with fear, terror, disgust and hatred.

But not this time.

Gavin was calm. He even seemed to want to get a little closer.

"Was that an Obscurus?" Gavin tried to turn his wheelchair toward Cordelia.

Cordelia looked at him, her expression deeply conflicted.

"You really aren't afraid of me?"

"I didn't get a good look at what an Obscurus actually looks like."

Gavin finally managed to turn toward her. "If only—" he said, sounding almost regretful.

"Mr. Gu." A voice came from the other end of the courtyard, gentle but carrying a note of warning.

Gavin turned his head.

Dumbledore was walking toward them, his robes swaying slightly. He looked as though he had been standing there watching for some time.

Cordelia visibly relaxed when she saw him, though she quickly composed herself.

"Grandpa Dumbledore," she greeted him softly.

"Good afternoon, Cordelia." Dumbledore nodded to her.

He came closer and looked first at Cordelia, then at Gavin. At last, his gaze settled on the bracelet that had just gone dark again. A complicated expression flashed through his eyes and vanished.

"It seems I wasn't too late."

"Not bad. I'd say dinner will be ready in a little while."

"..."