It came back all at once.

  A bright light and a white ceiling. The sharp scent of healing potions and fresh linen.

  The Hospital Wing.

  Rowan blinked, trying to focus. Every part of him ached in a way that had nothing to do with physical injury. His magical core felt enormous. Swollen, raw, like a muscle that had been stretched far beyond its normal range and was only now beginning to settle into its new shape.

  He tried to sit up and managed it, barely. His arms trembled with the effort.

  "Oh, good. You're awake."

  A woman in healer's robes approached his bedside. She was middle-aged, with capable hands and sharp dark eyes that assessed him with quiet efficiency. A badge on her robes bore the name Noreen Blainey, Head Healer.

  "How long was I out?" Rowan asked. His voice came out rough, barely above a whisper.

  "Twenty-four hours. One of your dormitory mates, Hector Fawley, found you on the bathroom floor yesterday morning and carried you here himself." Blainey checked a diagnostic charm, frowning slightly at whatever it showed her. "You gave everyone quite a fright, Mr. Ashcroft. Magical exhaustion severe enough to render you unconscious for a full day is rare in students your age."

  Hector had carried him. Not levitated him, not called for help first. Picked him up and carried him.

  Rowan filed that away, and found it wouldn't stay filed.

  "What happened to me?"

  "That's rather what I was hoping you could tell me." Blainey's tone was patient but firm. "Your magical core is showing signs of significant expansion. Dramatic expansion. The kind of change we normally associate with major magical trauma or—" She paused, choosing her words carefully. "—deliberate intervention."

  Rowan said nothing.

  Blainey studied him for a moment, then pulled up a chair and sat down beside his bed. "I'm here to make sure you're not dead, Mr. Ashcroft, and right now you're alive and your core is stabilizing, which is the best possible outcome given what I'm seeing. But I need to understand what happened so I can monitor you properly."

  "I was studying," Rowan said. "A theory I found in the restricted section. I think I pushed too hard."

  It was vague enough to be plausible. Blainey didn't look entirely convinced, but she didn't press.

  "All right. We'll revisit that when you're feeling better." She made a note on her clipboard. "For now, you need rest. Fluids. And I'm going to run monitoring charms every two hours to track your core stabilization."

  Rowan nodded. He was about to ask when visiting hours were when the door to the Hospital Wing burst open.

  Iris.

  She was still in her school robes, her hair disheveled, her eyes red-rimmed. She spotted him immediately and crossed the room in quick strides.

  "You promised."

  The words came out raw. Angry and relieved and hurt all at once.

  Rowan opened his mouth. Closed it. There was nothing to say to that. She was right.

  "You promised you'd tell me before you did anything reckless. You looked me in the eye and promised."

  "Iris—"

  "You've been unconscious for a day," she continued, her voice shaking now. "A full day, Rowan. Hector found you collapsed on the bathroom floor and had to carry you here because you wouldn't respond to Rennervate. Do you have any idea—" She stopped. Took a breath. Her hands were gripping the edge of his bedpost hard enough to whiten her knuckles. "What happened?"

  Blainey, reading the room with the practiced ease of someone who'd seen this scene a hundred times, quietly excused herself and moved to the other end of the wing.

  Rowan looked at Iris. At the fear she was barely holding back, the anger underneath it, the stubborn refusal to cry that was so characteristically her.

  "I found what was in the centaurs' box," he said.

  He told her everything. The Spore Scrolls. The fungus. The stabilizer potion. The decision to drink it, alone, in the bathroom, at half past eleven on a Friday night.

  He didn't edit it. Didn't shape the order or soften the edges. He just told her.

  Iris listened without interrupting. Her expression shifted through several stages: shock, disbelief, a brief flash of fury, and then a complicated quiet that Rowan couldn't quite name.

  When he finished, she was silent for a long time.

  "You could have died," she said finally.

  "I know."

  "You knew that going in, and you did it anyway."

  "Yes."

  "Alone. Without telling anyone." Her voice was very quiet. "Without telling me."

  Rowan didn't reach for an answer. Didn't deflect. He let the silence sit.

  "Yes," he said. "I did."

  She met his eyes. The fury was still there, but underneath it, relief. The raw kind that comes after genuine fear.

  "Did it work?" she asked, after a moment.

  Rowan held out his hand and cast a simple Lumos.

  The light that erupted from his wand was blinding. He cut it off immediately, squinting against the afterimage, and heard Iris's sharp intake of breath.

  "That was a Lumos," he said quietly.

  "That was not a normal Lumos."

  "No. It wasn't."

  They sat with that for a moment.

  "Your core expanded," Iris said. It wasn't a question.

  "Significantly. Blainey said the readings are far beyond normal for my age."

  Iris was quiet again, processing. Then: "You need to be careful. With how much power you're putting into things. Until you adjust."

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "I know. I felt it when I woke up. Everything feels amplified. I'll need to recalibrate."

  "Good." She leaned back in her chair, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. Then, quieter: "Next time you decide to fundamentally alter your magical core, you tell me first."

  "Next time I fundamentally alter my magical core, I'll tell you first."

  "There won't be a next time."

  "There won't be a next time," he agreed.

  And this time, he meant it.

  Hector came by that afternoon, ducking through the Hospital Wing door with the particular awkwardness of someone who wasn't sure if they were intruding. He was carrying a stack of notes and a wrapped sandwich from lunch.

  "Brought your Charms homework," Hector said, setting them on the bedside table. "And food, in case Blainey's still feeding you that broth."

  "Thank you." Rowan paused. "And thank you for carrying me here. Blainey told me what you did."

  Hector shrugged, but the casual gesture didn't quite reach his face. "You weren't breathing right. I didn't know what was wrong with you, and I couldn't wake you up. Rennervate didn't work, nothing worked. So I just picked you up and ran." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Scared the life out of me, honestly. You were completely limp."

  "I'm sorry," Rowan said. "For putting you through that."

  Hector looked at him for a moment, and the worry that had been sitting under his composure surfaced briefly. "I'm just glad you're all right, mate. Don't do it again."

  "I won't."

  Hector stayed for twenty minutes, filling Rowan in on what he'd missed in classes with a steadiness that was clearly more for his own reassurance than for Rowan's benefit. When he left, he clapped Rowan on the shoulder with a firmness that said more than the visit had.

  The next morning, Rowan was feeling well enough to sit up properly and eat breakfast, which Blainey delivered to his bedside with a stern instruction to finish every bite.

  While he ate, he watched her work. She moved between monitoring charms and potions with quiet efficiency, making small adjustments without seeming to think about them. There was a satisfaction in watching someone do difficult work well.

  "Madam Blainey," he said, when she came to check his monitoring charms again. "The healing spells you're using. The diagnostic ones, and the ones you used to stabilize me yesterday. I don't recognize most of them. Are they taught at Hogwarts?"

  Blainey glanced at him, a flicker of surprise crossing her face. "Not in the standard curriculum, no. Healing magic is a specialist field. You'd study it after Hogwarts, at St. Mungo's or one of the other certified programs."

  "Is there reading material? Anything I could look at while I'm recovering?"

  Blainey studied him for a moment. Her expression was guarded, cautious in a way that came from experience rather than unfriendliness.

  "You're a Muggleborn," she said. It wasn't a question.

  "Yes."

  Her face shifted. The caution didn't disappear, but it became closer to recognition.

  "So am I," she said quietly. "Took me three attempts to get my healer certification. The examiner kept finding reasons to fail me until I challenged the results publicly." She was quiet for a moment. "So I understand what it's like to have to work twice as hard for half the credit."

  She disappeared for a few minutes and returned with a thick, leather-bound volume.

  "Principles of Magical Healing: Theory and Application. It's dense, and some of the notation will be unfamiliar, but you're clearly the type who doesn't mind that." She handed it over. "Bring it back when you're done. And Mr. Ashcroft—" She paused. "Don't let anyone tell you healing magic isn't worth studying because you're already good at dueling. They're different skills, and both matter."

  "Thank you, Madam Blainey." He held the book carefully. "I mean that."

  She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded once and went back to work.

  Professor Garlick found him after Herbology the following Monday. Rowan knew the moment he saw her expression that she'd already noticed.

  She didn't look suspicious. She looked heartbroken.

  "The fungus," she said, and her voice was smaller than he'd ever heard it. "It's gone, Rowan."

  "Gone?"

  "Completely. The soil bed is empty, no residue, no spores, nothing." She pressed her hand against the edge of the potting bench, steadying herself. "I went in Saturday morning to check on it, the way I always do with a new specimen. I talk to them, you know. I know it sounds silly, but I've always believed they respond to it. I'd been talking to ours every morning since we planted it." She caught herself. "And it was just gone. The bed was bare."

  She watched his face. "And you ended up in the Hospital Wing on Friday night."

  Rowan had thought about this. He'd had two days to prepare his answer.

  "I was studying it Friday evening, in the greenhouse. Taking measurements, trying to understand the growth rate. I started feeling drowsy. Went back to my dormitory to sleep it off and didn't wake up until Saturday morning."

  "And the fungus?"

  "I don't know what happened to it. When I went back to check on Monday, it was gone." He paused. "Could someone have taken it? It was rare enough to be worth stealing, especially if word got around that we had an uncatalogued specimen."

  Garlick's eyes were bright. "It was responding so well. The growth rate, the way the glow intensified each night under the moonlight. I was going to start a proper research journal for it this week. I'd already picked out a name." She caught Rowan's expression and gave a small, self-conscious laugh. "I name all my specimens. This one I was going to call Lucie. Short for bioluminescence."

  The guilt settled in Rowan's chest like a stone.

  "I suppose it's possible someone took it," Garlick continued, pulling herself together with visible effort. "The greenhouse isn't perfectly secured overnight. We rely on trust, mostly. And an unknown specimen with that kind of magical signature would be valuable to certain collectors." She wiped at her eye with the back of her hand, quick and embarrassed. "I'm sorry. You must think I'm being ridiculous, getting this upset over a plant."

  "I don't think that at all, Professor."

  And he meant it. The guilt was sharp and specific now, the kind that came from knowing exactly what you'd done to someone who didn't deserve it. Garlick had trusted him with her greenhouse, her expertise, her time. She'd enchanted a mirror to redirect moonlight on cloudy nights. She'd been talking to the fungus every morning.

  He could tell her the truth. Right now, in this greenhouse, with the soil still warm where Lucie had grown. He could explain everything.

  And then she'd report it. She'd have to. A student who'd consumed a dark-magic specimen, who'd lied to a professor, who'd used school facilities for an unauthorized and dangerous experiment. Detention at minimum. Worse, it would reach the other professors. The standing he'd built with them, the trust, the access to the restricted section and private instruction, all of it would be questioned.

  He couldn't afford that. Not now.

  "I'm sorry, Professor," Rowan said. "I wish I knew what happened."

  The apology tasted wrong in his mouth. He meant it, but for the wrong reasons, and Garlick deserved better.

  "Don't apologize. It's not your fault if someone decided to help themselves." Garlick managed a small smile, the kind that didn't reach her eyes. "I'll increase security in the greenhouse. And if you come across another specimen, anywhere, I'd very much like to study it properly next time."

  "If I do, you'll be the first person I tell."

  He left the greenhouse with the guilt still sitting heavy in his chest. That was new. A month ago, the lie would have been clean, a necessary tool, filed away and forgotten. Now it lingered.

  The adjustment took days.

  Rowan's magical core had expanded far beyond anything he'd experienced before. The increase was massive. Every spell he cast felt different now, heavier and louder and more than he intended.

  On Monday, he cast a simple Lumos in the corridor and nearly blinded two fourth-years passing by. On Tuesday, he tried to levitate his textbook in Charms and sent it crashing into the ceiling with enough force to crack the binding. Professor Ronen gave him a concerned look but said nothing. The boy was already known for above average magical output.

  Rowan spent hours in the Room of Requirement that week, practicing alone. Casting spells at reduced power, learning to modulate his output, finding the new baseline.

  It was like learning to walk again after growing six inches overnight. The proportions were different. The distances were different. Everything required recalibration.

  He cast a Stunning Spell at a training dummy. Carefully, deliberately, pulling back to what felt like a fraction of his strength.

  The dummy flew backward, hit the wall, and shattered.

  That had been a fraction.

  Rowan stared at the broken pieces for a long moment. Then he sat down on the floor, pulled out his journal, and began writing.

  There was still so much to learn, so much to understand. The power was there now. Raw, enormous, more than he'd dared to hope for. But power without knowledge was just a bigger way to make mistakes.

  He thought about Starweaver's words. Power is neutral. It can build or destroy.

  He thought about Spore's final note. Understand what you are becoming.

  He closed the journal and sat with it for a moment. Then he opened it again and added a note at the bottom of the page: Tell Iris about the power of the Stunning Spell. She'll want to know.

  He wrote it because he promised, not because it was strategic.

  He was becoming something new.