The night by the window stayed with him.
After that, he returned to it whenever the shapes were busy and the air was still. He learned that the threads were different in darkness — slower, more patient, their light muted but somehow deeper, like embers in a fire that never burned out.
When they came, they sometimes hovered close to the glass, sometimes pressed right through it, curling into the room in soft spirals. He didn't always try to touch them. Sometimes it was enough just to watch.
There was no word for the quiet they gave him, but even as a small boy, he recognised it. It wasn't the absence of sound; it was the absence of restlessness — as if the whole world had stopped shifting under his feet for just a moment.
Days passed, and seasons shifted in ways he didn't understand. He noticed it in the air — thicker and warm, then thin and cold — and in the colour of the light through the windows.
The threads changed with the seasons too. In the warm days, they seemed to drift lazily, basking in the light. In the cold, they tightened, coiling in on themselves, as if they were conserving something.
And as he grew taller, more steady on his legs, he began to explore beyond the spaces he'd first known. The halls of the house, the rooms where the bigger shapes gathered, the yard outside where the air stretched endlessly upward — each had their own pattern.
The yard's threads were the hardest to chase. They rose into the open air, carried on invisible currents, sometimes vanishing into the clouds before he could even start after them. Still, he tried, running across the grass until his lungs burned and the cold air stung his throat.
Once, under the wide shade of an old sycamore in the corner of the yard, the threads flared in a way he had never seen before.
It began with a faint hum in the air, one he felt in his teeth and fingertips before he heard it. Then the threads began to bend inward, all at once, like stalks of grass caught in a sudden wind. They twisted, tangled, then exploded outward in a dazzling spray of light.
For a moment, the air was thick with them, each line writhing and curling as if alive. The hum became a low roar, deep enough to make his bones ache.
He reached toward them — and the roar sharpened, the light swelling until it hurt to look. The threads whipped around him, some brushing his skin, some lashing through the air so fast he flinched.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, it was gone.
He stood there in the still air, chest heaving, the smell of something sharp and strange in his nose. The space felt emptier than it ever had before.
After that day, he looked at the threads differently. They weren't always soft. They weren't always safe.
The quiet days became fewer after that.
The shapes around him grew more restless, their movements sharper, their voices quicker. There was tension in the air, like the moments before a storm. The threads seemed to feel it too — they twitched and jerked more often, their curves breaking into jagged angles.
Even at night, the window no longer brought the same calm. The threads outside moved too quickly, as if they were being pulled along by something unseen. Sometimes they didn't come at all.
And then came the night when they came all at once.
It was late. The house was quiet except for the slow creak of wood as it settled in the cold.
He lay awake, eyes on the faint shape of the window. The air felt different — heavier, yes, but not like the soft weight that came before the threads. This was a pressing heaviness, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Then, without warning, the threads burst into the room.
Not drifting. Not curling. Pouring. They streamed in through the cracks around the window, through the doorframe, through the air itself, thick and blinding. Colours he'd never seen before tore through the dark — burning gold, deep violet, a red so sharp it felt like heat against his skin.
He sat up, eyes wide, heart pounding.
From somewhere beyond the walls came a sound — deep and final, like the world itself closing a door. The threads twisted at the sound, pulling toward one point outside, their motion frantic.
Voices rose — one high and desperate, one low and terrible. The low one carried a weight that made the threads bend and writhe.
He slid from the bed without thinking, padding to the door. The wood was warm under his hand, as if heat were pressing against it from the other side.
Another sound — this one a crack, sharp and splitting. Light flashed beneath the door, a light so bright it turned the threads stark white for an instant before colour bled back into them.
He pushed the door open a crack.
The hallway beyond was filled with threads. They writhed around the corners, spilling over the floor and walls. Shapes moved within them — two large, one small — and the air between them was so thick with light it was hard to see.
The smaller shape was backed against the wall, its lines snapping out wildly, lashing against the air. The larger one — the one with the terrible weight in its voice — stood before it, its own lines coiling tight and dark, bending everything toward them.
The smaller shape shouted something, voice breaking. The dark lines struck.
The sound was like stone breaking underfoot. The smaller shape crumpled, its lines shattering and scattering into the air like fragments of glass. The threads around it thrashed, then went still.
Rowan's breath caught in his throat. His feet felt rooted to the floor.
The terrible shape turned. Its lines were colder up close — not absent, but like metal in winter, the kind that burns if you touch it.
For a moment, its eyes fixed on him. The threads between them trembled, taut.
And then —
Another voice, sharp and fierce, rang from the side. The threads around it blazed, so bright it hurt to look. The dark lines turned toward it, lashing out.
The world became sound and colour.
He didn't see the moment it ended. He only knew that someone was lifting him — strong arms, steady steps, the smell of something like smoke in the air.
The threads clung to him as they moved, but not gently — they whipped and snapped, as if caught in a current too strong to resist.
Outside, the night was full of them. They stretched upward into the sky, where clouds glowed faintly with reflected light. Somewhere far off, a cry rose and fell, carried on the wind.
They moved quickly through the dark streets. The arms around him never faltered, but the threads shifted constantly, bending toward and away from different points as they passed. Some corners seemed to glow faintly, others swallowed all colour.
He tried to keep his eyes on the lines, but they blurred in the cold air and the speed of movement. His eyelids grew heavy again, the sounds and colours slipping into a distant haze.
The last thing he saw before sleep took him was a single, thin thread drifting upward — away from the place they had left, into the dark sky.
He woke to noise.
Not the creaks and sighs of the house, but sharper sounds — voices layered on top of each other, feet pounding over hard ground, the clatter of something metallic in the distance.
The air was cold against his skin. He was being carried still, but not by the same steady arms from before. These were smaller, trembling slightly, the fabric against his cheek rough and smelling of damp wool.
He turned his head enough to see shapes moving quickly all around. Some were bent low, others standing tall, their lines flashing and snapping like broken cords in a storm. The space between them was thick with threads — some bright and jagged, others dim and trailing like smoke.
Someone nearby spoke urgently. The sound was tight, forced, the way voices got when the air was too heavy to breathe. The one carrying him replied in short bursts, shaking their head.
He didn't know the words, but the tones made his chest tighten.
The threads shifted constantly, bending toward one point and then another, as if being pulled in too many directions at once. Sometimes they flicked dangerously close to him, and he would flinch, but they never touched.
The movement around him quickened. Shapes passed objects from hand to hand, their lines tangling and pulling apart. A sudden, sharp sound split the air — like stone struck hard against stone — and every thread in the space jumped.
Someone shouted. The one carrying him turned sharply, clutching him tighter, and began to run.
The jostling made his teeth clack together. The air whipped at his face, cold and sharp, and the threads blurred into streaks of colour.
Then, without warning, they stopped.
The arms loosened, lowering him into another's grip. This one was still, breathing slowly, lines gathered close to their body. He was pressed against warm fabric, the scent of something faintly sweet and earthy in his nose.
A voice above murmured something, soft enough to almost be lost in the noise.
The next moments were fractured — a flash of bright light from somewhere above, a dull roar like the sky itself was moving, a sudden press of many bodies close together.
He felt himself lifted again, passed from one warmth to another, and another after that. Each carried its own lines — some smooth and flowing, others jagged, some so faint he could barely feel them.
He was never held for long. The world around him was all motion, as if the ground itself wouldn't stay still.
And then, slowly, the noise began to fade. The bright, snapping threads grew fewer, the sharp smells softened into the damp scent of earth and something old.
He was handed off one final time. These arms were strong, unmoving, and the lines around them were pale, thin, but steady. They didn't reach outward; they only curled around the shape holding him, looping close like a barrier.
The pace slowed. The noise receded entirely.
When they finally stopped, it was in a small, dim space that smelled faintly of dust and paper. He was set down on something soft, and the arms left him.
He sat still, blinking. The threads here were faint — only a few drifting lazily in the corners. The air was calm, but heavy in a different way, as though something had been sealed off from the rest of the world.
Shapes moved around the edges of the room, speaking in low voices. None of them looked at him for long.
He stayed there until his eyes grew heavy and the threads dimmed to nothing.
When he woke, the world had changed again.
The air was brighter, thinner. The sounds were different — no sharp cracks, no low murmurs, just the steady chatter of many voices, high and low, rising and falling.
He was lying in a small bed with thin sheets, the sunlight pooling over the blanket in pale gold.
The room was strange. Its walls were bare, its windows wide. The air carried a faint smell of soap and something metallic.
There were other beds. In them, other small shapes shifted and turned, some sitting up, some still curled under their covers. Their lines were almost invisible — thin, faint things that drifted only a little before fading entirely.
For the first time in his short life, he realised he might be the only one who saw them.
He didn't know it was an orphanage.
All he knew was that new shapes came and went, that there were routines he didn't understand, and that the lines in the air were scarcer than they had ever been.
Some days they didn't appear at all, leaving the world flat and hollow. Other days, a single thread might drift in through the open window, curl once above his head, and vanish before he could reach for it.
He learned quickly that no one else noticed.
If he pointed, the others would squint at empty air. If he reached, they would laugh or ignore him.
So he stopped pointing. He stopped reaching when anyone could see.
The threads became not just his secret, but his only constant.
Time passed in a slow, heavy way here. The voices around him were louder but emptier than before. The older shapes — the ones who moved in and out with keys and papers — spoke to him in simple words, their tones patient but distant.
The other children sometimes tried to speak to him too, but he had little to offer them. Their lines were faint, their air still. Being near them made the space inside him ache with absence.
So he stayed quiet.
He watched the threads when they came, memorising every flicker, every curl, every way they caught the light before disappearing again.
And though he didn't know it, he was waiting — for the day the air would change again, the way it had that night, the way it always did before the threads came in force.
That day would not come for many years. But in the hollow spaces of the orphanage, in the quiet hours by the window, the memory of the night in Godric's Hollow stayed sharp.
Not the fear. Not the sounds.
The light. The threads. The way they had bent and burned and filled the air until there was nothing else.
He didn't know what they were.
But he knew he would see them again.