#3rd year

That shift was felt even in the library as the light faded. Candles along the tables flared to life one by one. This shift didn’t escape Rowan, hunched over a History of Magic book at a table close to a window. She’d always preferred reading in natural light, but the sky clearly had other plans for the end of her afternoon. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looked out, tracking the swollen clouds as they rolled over the valley. This wouldn’t be a drizzle. These were storm clouds, heavy with rain, thunder, and lightning. Rowan took a break in her studies, resting her quill in the gutter of her book, and watched the tempest gather over the grounds. The first drop struck the windowpane.

Andre watched the next drops spatter the windows of the Ravenclaw common room, perched on the sill with his sketchbook balanced on his knees. He knew he should have been studying for his Defense Against the Dark Arts exam, but the day’s gloom had put fabrics and silhouettes in his thoughts. Rain, he decided, could be made fashionable. Rain apparel, but glamourous. Or better yet, looks inspired by rain, meant to be worn on sunny days. Pleated skirts that moved like water. Jackets made to look as though it had just been peeled off a wet windowpane. The contrast would be revolutionary. He hastily started to sketch his future creations, listening to the tap-tap of the rain against the window.

The rain drummed steadily against the greenhouse’s glass roof, and Talbott found himself looking up. He was there to tend Professor Sprout’s plants, far from the chatter of his classmates. He adjusted his gloves and checked the trays along the center table: Horklumps, Puffapods, Chomping Cabbages, and a pot of little blue star-shaped flowers he couldn’t name but liked all the same. Talbott preferred plants to people. Plants just needed good soil, water, and sun. Maybe a few words of encouragement if you were the sort who believed in that. They never talked back. They let you sit with your thoughts. They didn’t call you rude for remaining silent. The rain deepened the calm, turning the greenhouse into its own world of softened sounds. As he worked, a fat droplet slid down a pane overhead and split into thin rivulets, distorting the world outside into wavy greens and grays. Another slipped off the edge of the roof and splashed onto the ground beyond the glass.

Drops of rain slid off Penny’s cloak onto the stone floor as she hurried into the Hufflepuff common room. She had just spent the first half of the afternoon helping Snape sort new potion ingredients he’d received. When she finished, she had thought she would have time to cross the bridge and the courtyard before the weather truly turned. How wrong she had been. The rain had started gently enough, but halfway across, it was as though the sky had opened and poured out everything it held. A damp halo was now forming around her shoes while Chiara quickly handed her a towel and pressed a warm cup of tea into her palms. By the fire, Penny saw Diego with one hand over his mouth, doing his very best not to laugh at her sorry state.

Tulip and Tonks were also covering their mouths, partly to stifle laughter and mostly to avoid being spotted. Tulip had a grudge against Merula Snyde, and Tonks was always up for a good prank. They huddled behind the low stone wall by the gate, not far from the bridge to Hogsmeade, cloaks drawn tight, damp hair plastered to their faces. Two figures in dark cloaks appeared at the far end of the bridge, moving with the urgency of people who didn’t intend on staying in the downpour any longer than necessary. Even from a distance, Merula’s posture was unmistakable. She walked as if the storm ought to move aside for her, chin up, shoulders set. A flick of Tonks’s wand turned a patch of path into a wide muddy puddle. Tulip waited as Tonks bit her sleeve to keep from cackling. Merula’s boot came down, sinking with a wet sound. With a flick of her wand, Tulip tripped the Slytherin into it. Merula fell forward into the mud and caught Ismelda’s sleeve on the way down, dragging her companion into the puddle as well. The two pranksters bolted off, laughing as they tore past the Quidditch pitch.

Charlie Weasley loved practicing in difficult weather. It felt more challenging than flying under a clear sky. After all, Quidditch went on no matter the conditions, so it was better to train in the worst of them. Rain stung his face and flattened his hair in odd angles as he tried to shove wet strands out of his eyes. Any casual observer might have thought him mad, but Charlie knew that spotting the Snitch in weather like this would sharpen his skill. Just as he caught a glint on the far side of the pitch, lightning split the sky, followed seconds later by a thunderous boom. Lightning and thunder. His mum would have shrieked at him to come down this instant. But Molly Weasley wasn’t here, and Charlie thrived on the adrenaline. He dove for the tiny flash of gold, extending his hand, just as a flash of white light surrounded him once more.

Lightning lit the corridor in such a way that Ben yelped as he made his way toward the Gryffindor common room. He could endure the sound of the rain hammering the windows without imagining floods, but thunder and lightning still made him jump out of his own skin. The next crash of thunder elicited another yelp from the poor Gryffindor, and he hurried his steps, desperate to reach the relative safety of his common room sooner rather than later. Another flash. Ben flinched so hard he almost tripped. His footsteps echoed on the stone as he broke into a run toward the Fat Lady’s portrait, just as an umbrella sailed past a window he’d already rushed by.

Two sets of footsteps splashed through puddles near Hogsmeade. Alice and Simon ran, soaked through, the wind having already stolen Alice’s umbrella from her grasp.

“— just a drizzle, you said —”

"Alice —"

“— wouldn't last long, you said —”

“Alice —”

“— I'm going to catch pneumonia, Simon, I'm going to catch pneumonia and die, and when I die I am going to haunt you specifically, I am not going to bother with anyone else —”

They skidded to an intersection. One path led back to Hogwarts, offering almost no shelter. The other dropped down a flight of stone steps. Through the rain, Simon glimpsed the dark shape of a shed.

“Over there!” he said, grabbing her wrist.

“This takes us farther from the castle!”

“There’s zero shelter that way. Either we wait out the storm in that shed down there,” he said, pointing, “or we get even more drenched trying to make it back in this weather.”

Alice looked down at her clothes and at her soaked shoes. “Fine!”

They sprinted down the path and the stairs, trying to make it to the abandoned boathouse as quickly as they could. The stone steps were slick beneath their feet. More than once Alice lost traction and Simon’s hand shot out to catch her arm, steadying her before she could go down. Above them, the trees bent and groaned.

When they arrived in front of the abandoned building, the first thing they noticed was that it had been boarded up.

“Great! Now wh—”

“BOMBARDA!”

The door exploded inward.

“That’s one way to do it.”

Simon stepped through first. “Just get in, Beaumont.”

Alice didn’t need to be told twice.

The boathouse was small and smelled of old wood and humidity. Remnants of equipment lined the walls. The floor was flagstone, slightly damp but not flooded. There was a second door, swollen in its frame, that Alice wrestled open. It looked out onto the lake toward the castle. Simon hauled the shattered front door back into place as best he could, before joining Alice as they looked at the storm unfurling over the lake and Hogwarts.

"Just a drizzle, huh?" she said, glancing at him.

Simon kept his eyes on the water, but one corner of his mouth twitched.

The lake was unrecognizable. Gone was the silver stillness. In its place, a churning black expanse whipped into whitecaps, the water battering the shore with a huge ragged sound that tangled with the wind. The small island with its maples had vanished. The mist was gone too, replaced by a curtain of rain so thick that the far shore existed only as a memory.

Lightning again.

The castle blazed into existence across the water, every spire and tower lit from behind in a blue-white flare that made it look like a thing carved by electricity itself. The silhouette was monstrous in the storm, the countless turrets sharp as teeth against the dark sky. For that one heartbeat it seemed closer than it should have been, as if the storm had dragged it forward across the lake, looming, reaching.

Then darkness.

Then thunder so deep it felt like it shook the earth itself.

The storm did, eventually, what storms do.

It didn’t stop exactly, but retreated, the thunder rolling east, the lightning growing dim and distant. The rain thinned from a solid weight to something more familiar. Trees reappeared. The far bank of the lake emerged from the grey. Somewhere high above the castle, a seam opened in the clouds, and a pale ribbon of late-afternoon light spilled through.

Alice and Simon edged out into the open, cautious as small animals. The path was glossy. Every blade of grass was strung with water. The lake lay flat again, soft and silver, and the trees shed the last of the rain in slow, fat drops that pattered onto the ground in a sound so gentle it felt like music.

Simon walked ahead, stepping around a puddle.

Alice lingered and tilted her face up to look at the sky.

The clouds were breaking. The light filtering through them was that particular gold that only happens after rain. It caught in the wet branches overhead and turned every hanging drop into a glittering bead. She closed her eyes, and drew in a long, slow breath, the air smelling of wet earth and lake water.

One single drop fell from the tree above.

It fell straight onto the tip of her nose.

Alice blinked, mildly surprised. Then, very slowly, she smiled.