It felt weird to be back in Hogwarts without attending Hogwarts. The Great Hall was so familiar to him, but it was still an echo of the previous year — and while he had not been an important component of the previous year, he had at least been a graduate. Now he was just… an adult. He worked at the hospital. He felt like he’d been going mad since July.

Sisse looked beautiful tonight. Lester still missed her — he’d been missing her for years. Now, how was he ever going to be able to tell her? It was strange to look at Calla, too — whenever he saw the two of them, Lester felt as if he was looking at an absence. Sloane was supposed to be here. She was supposed to be nudging him with her elbow, pointing out the slips in people’s outfits, talking excitedly about the Quidditch career she was going to get started on. She was supposed to be alive.

He had been so sure that Miss Sinclair was Sloane.

The Great Hall felt suffocating. Lester slipped out of it, abandoning his brother Josiah. (Josiah, just barely old enough to take a wife, was on a mission tonight.) He’d walked out of the castle nearly out of habit. Lester had half a desire to go somewhere he’d never been, but he found himself walking to the dock on the Black Lake — a dock he hadn’t been on in over a year. It was a location he associated so strongly with Sloane that the thought of going there nearly froze him, but what else was he supposed to do right now?

She was supposed to be here, debuting despite herself, laughing with all of them. She had always been too alive to be dead.

He saw her on the dock, where Sloane had always been — Miss Sinclair. His ghost. Lester sped up, trotted onto the dock, and then she was turning around and running back towards him.

Hatch.

Lester’s heart caught in his throat. He hugged her back before he could even think about it.

”You remember me?” he said, quiet. After the first February twenty-eighth, she’d broken his heart — she forgot the next day, and so did his whole family, and Lester was left thinking that he had dreamed the whole thing up. Maybe this was a dream, too — the familiar weight of Sloane’s hugs.

”Sloane,” Lester breathed, testing the name out — there were tears in the corners of his eyes.