#gauntlow

[Maybe the translation into English will not be quite right, sorry]

September was hanging the first dewdrop-silvered webs along the edges of the Forbidden Forest, and the air no longer smelled of summer freedom, but of the dense, watery freshness of the coming autumn. At that very hour, when the sun bent toward the mountain ridges, painting the Black Lake the color of molten gold, Sebastian came down to the water. His shadow, long and stubborn as himself, crawled ahead along the wet pebbles. He was not searching for treasures in the ordinary sense. Sharp and precise gaze was seeking not glitter but a certain matte quality, not color but essence. What he needed were stones. Grey as the February sky above Hogwarts, the day he first learned what it was like to be truly seen — without eyes.

He bent down again and again, and fingers accustomed to gripping the handle of a wand now learned a new kind of magic — the reading of the earth. He would take a stone, run the pad of his thumb across its surface, and close his eyes, trying to see with his skin. Too rough. Too smooth. No, not this one. And then — the right one. Cold, almost glasslike to the touch, flat, a perfect canvas. Sallow put it in his pocket, and the stone responded with a soft, hard thud against the other treasures he had already found.

Evenings in the Slytherin common room were now filled with a new ritual. Sitting in an armchair by the fire, while Ominis read a Braille textbook on Potions nearby, Sebastian would draw out his secret labor. No magic. Only sandpaper, a piece of leather, and patience. For hours he guided the stone across the rough surface, the whisper of friction merging with the crackle of the logs. He polished until the edges turned silky, until the stone began to rest in his hand as if it were a part of it.

And then — the heart of it. The chisel. His breath would falter as he etched with the tip of the tool a barely visible design. He was carving not lines but feelings. The winding path of a serpent — a tribute to their shared secret, the language that wove their souls together. An angular zigzag of lightning — an echo of that very escape into the grotto during a storm, after which Ominis, clutching his hand, had said between gasps of laughter: “I would never trade this for sight!”. On another stone he carved three dots in a triangle — their secret code, a sign that the two of them and Anne were the best of friends. On the fourth — an outline of a quill, in memory of all those moments when he read aloud while Ominis wrote, and learning became easier. Every jagged stroke, every hollow was a word in a letter that his friend would read with his fingers. A letter that said: “I remember. I value you. You matter to me.”

And when in February, on the day of his friend’s fourteenth birthday, when the air will ring with frost and the windowpanes will bloom with icy flowers, he will present that modest gray bracelet, and Ominis will trace the polished stones with the pads of his fingers, feeling the markings meant for him, his face will light up with a smile brighter than any light spell. He will see it all. Absolutely everything.