Chapter Text
Most people wonder what it would be like to travel to the sun. They imagine the light, the distance, or the impossible glow.
I didn't have to wonder. I woke up and realized the sun was living inside my ribs, and it was trying to melt its way out.
I gasped, but the air I pulled into my lungs felt like it had been scraped across a forge. My vision was a white-hot blur, distorted by a shimmering haze that radiated from my own skin. Every time I moved, the air around me hummed with a dry, suffocating intensity. I felt heavy, yet volatile, like a glass bottle filled with pressurized steam, vibrating on the verge of a shatter.
"Easy, dear, stay still!" a frantic voice commanded.
I blinked, trying to focus. A woman in a white nursing cap was hovering over me, her face slick with sweat. I didn't know her name, but her hands were trembling as she snapped a cloth into a bowl of ice water and pressed it firmly against my forehead.
The effect was violent.
The wet fabric didn't just steam; it groaned. The water evaporated in a hiss of white vapor so thick it blinded me for a second. I watched, paralyzed, as the fibers of the cloth turned grey and rigid. They petrified right before my eyes, hardening into a solid, jagged slab that fell away from my skin with a heavy, dead clatter on the floor.
I stared at the fragments, my heart hammering against my ribs. "What... what was that?"
"Merlin’s beard," the woman whispered, backing away and wiping her brow with a shaking hand. "Albus, the cooling charms aren't holding. She’s localized the heat to her dermis… She’s petrifying the moisture."
I forced my eyes past her. Standing at the foot of my bed was the only anchor I had left in the world: Albus Dumbledore. He looked exactly as he had yesterday; his silver beard damp from the rain that had fallen over my parents’ fresh graves at the Romanian Dragon Sanctuary.
"Professor," I croaked. My throat felt like it was lined with glowing embers. "Why am I here? Yesterday… I was alone at their graves..." My voice cracked before I could form another word. The temperature in the room seemed to rise slightly more, despite the already high one.
Dumbledore stepped closer, his blue eyes uncharacteristically somber. Beside him stood a man I had never seen before; he was sallow-skinned, with greasy black hair and a hooked nose. He watched me with a gaze so piercing and cold I felt an instinctive urge to flinch.
"Stela," Dumbledore said softly, "there was an explosion. You were found unconscious, the only living thing within a mile of the blast.” He contemplated for a second before continuing, “Do you have any recollection of what happened after you left the cemetery?"
I furrowed my brow, trying to push through the white-hot fog in my brain. "After? I haven't left. I was standing by the graves. I remember the smell of the wet earth and your black umbrella before you walked away. That was... that was yesterday. I was just there, in the rain." I mumbled the last part, visibly confused. I kept repeating in my head over and over the day before.
Graves. Rain. Tears. Condolences. Solitude.
I was the last one left at the cemetery. Alone. In the rain.
The room went deathly silent.
The woman in the nurse's cap froze. The sallow man’s eyes flickered toward Dumbledore, a heavy, conspicuous look passing between the three of them; a silent communication that tasted of secrets and a deep, underlying dread.
"Stela," Dumbledore said, his voice dropping an octave, "the funeral was not yesterday. It has been a month."
My world shattered.
"A month?" I tried to sit up, the sheets beneath me yellowing and curling. "That’s impossible. I haven't slept for a month. I remember the rain. I remember the mud on my shoes. I was just there." I kept repeating, over and over. It just didn’t make any sense.
I searched my mind, but there was nothing. It was as if the world had simply blinked. One moment I was an orphan standing in the silence of a graveyard, and the next, I was waking up in this strange, stone room.
There was no passage of time, no dreams.
Just a terrifying, empty void in the place where thirty days should have been.
"A month of total amnesia," the sallow man drawled. His voice was low and silky. "How... convenient for the mind to purge such trauma."
"Severus, enough," Dumbledore cautioned. He turned back to me, his expression softening. "Stela, this is Professor Snape, and the lady tending to you is Madam Pomfrey. You are at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. For your protection, you cannot return to Romania. Those who targeted your parents in the raid for the dragon egg have not been found, and it is no longer safe for you there.”
“But, how, where–”
“You will stay here." His tone was serious, but warm.
My heart rate spiked, and the air around my bed began to shimmer with visible, oily heat. "Stay here? Am I being held? Am I a prisoner?" I looked at the stone walls, feeling the weight of the castle pressing down on me. "You’re locking me away because of… because of what exactly?"
"As a student," Dumbledore corrected gently, his voice firm enough to cut through my rising panic. "You are not a prisoner, Stela. You will be introduced as a transfer student from the Continent; a distant relative of a minor pureblood line. No one will ask further questions; my word will be enough.
I am a pureblood. I wanted to add, but I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t the moment to correct him about my family. He knew them well enough.
“You are sixteen, so you shall enter as a fifth-year." He leaned forward, his half-moon spectacles catching the light of the flickering torches.
When I didn’t add anything, he continued, "Because you have much to catch up on, and because your current condition requires supervision, I will assign a student from whichever House you are sorted into to act as your mentor. They will help you with your coursework and ensure you integrate safely."
I leaned back into the pillows, my jet-black hair fanned out like a dark curtain against the white linen. I felt hollowed out, as if the girl who had stood in the rain a day, no sorry, a month ago had been burned away, leaving only this porcelain shell behind.
"A month," I whispered to myself, turning my eyes toward the window. "I lost a month."
After a few moments, Dumbledore signaled Madam Pomfrey to step outside for a moment, to share a word. The door clicked shut, leaving me alone with the sallow man who hadn't taken his eyes off me.
Professor Snape stepped forward then, his shadow falling long and sharp across my bed. "Control your emotions, Miss Stela," he said, his voice monotone, yet carrying a warning disguised as advice. "Fire is a difficult thing to master once it has tasted the air."
Before I could ask what he meant, he turned on his heel and was gone, his black cloak billowing behind him like a cloud of smoke. I watched the doorway where he had vanished, the air around me still humming with a heat I couldn't understand.
I was alone, a stranger in a strange castle, carrying a fire I didn't ask for and a past that had simply... vanished.