The Defense corridor hummed with an uneasy quiet. It wasn't the silence of discipline, but of anticipation, the kind that pressed against the ribs. Torchlight wavered over the flagstones, catching motes of dust that hung motionless in the air.
Outside the heavy oak door, a crowd of fourth-years clustered in the half-light, Slytherins on one side, Gryffindors on the other, an invisible fault line between them.
Theo adjusted the strap of his satchel.
"He's late," he murmured. "Or he wants us to think he is."
Draco scoffed softly.
"He's probably polishing that ridiculous eye of his. You'd think a man that paranoid would have retired underground by now."
Theo smirked. "You've met him once, and already he's paranoid?"
"He tried to hex me," Draco snapped. "And I'd rather not be turned into another classroom demonstration, thank you."
Behind them, a nervous Hufflepuff stifled a laugh. Draco spun halfway, glaring, and the sound died instantly.
Alden hadn't spoken since they'd left the dungeons . He stood slightly apart from the crowd, coat neat, posture unbent. His wand was sheathed at his left wrist, invisible but felt. The faint smell of iron polish and old paper clung to him; he looked like he'd already measured the room and found it wanting.
"You could at least say something," Draco muttered, half under his breath."About what?"About him."I already did."
Theo raised a brow.
"You called him reckless, not incompetent."I meant both," Alden replied.
Draco's mouth curved. "Well, let's see if he remembers."
The corridor echoed suddenly the clunk–clunk of a wooden leg on stone. The murmurs evaporated like smoke.
Moody's silhouette appeared at the far end of the hall, bent and jagged in the flicker of torchlight. His cloak dragged faintly, like a whisper of gravel. One normal eye squinted, the other blue and spinning, rotated in slow, unnatural arcs, sweeping across the students like a radar searching for guilt.
When it stopped on Alden, it stayed.
For a heartbeat too long.
Alden didn't move. Didn't blink. He simply met the spin of that magical eye with the same impassive calm he gave to anyone else, a mirror without expression.
Moody's mouth twisted not quite a smile.
"You'll keep your hands to yourselves this time, won't you, Mr. Dreyse?"
The words carried down the corridor like a crack of dry wood.
Draco's smirk faltered. Theo went still. The Gryffindors traded glances; even Ron muttered something under his breath about "Moody getting his own back."
Alden's reply came low, clear, and even:
"That depends on whether there's reason to raise them, Professor."
The silence afterward wasn't empty; it was listening.
Moody's normal eye narrowed; the magical one spun once, twice, and locked forward. Then, with a grunt, he shoved open the classroom door. The hinges shrieked like a warning.
"Inside. Wands out."
Students shuffled forward in a rush, half obedience, half escape.
Theo leaned toward Alden as they entered.
"You do realize he's going to hex you one day."Then he'll have to hit me first."You make friends the same way you make tea, cold and deliberate."And it always works."
Draco sighed, tugging at his sleeve.
"If he curses you, I'm pretending not to know you.""You'd make a convincing liar," Alden said, deadpan.
Draco shot him a glare, then couldn't help a small laugh.
They took the front row, Alden in the middle, Theo to his left, Draco to his right.Behind them, the room filled with the rustle of robes, the clack of chair legs, the whisper of quills being drawn from bags.
Moody limped to the front, cloak dragging, wand tapping against his desk like a gavel before judgment.
"Books away. You won't need them today."
The order came like a verdict.
Wood creaked, pages closed, the room fell still —and the lesson that would haunt the term began.
The door slammed behind the last student, rattling the windowpanes. Dust drifted in the thin bars of sunlight that filtered through the high, slitted windows. The air smelled faintly of oil and ozone—metal, polish, and something burnt.
Moody stumped to the desk, dropped a battered register onto it, and sat. The wooden leg thudded once—clunk—before the other boot scraped to a halt. His wand, gnarled and dark, lay across the parchment like a warning.
"You can put those away," he growled, nodding at the closed textbooks. "You won't need them today."
A few uncertain hands froze mid-motion; a page fluttered and shut. The room quieted to breath and heartbeat.
He flipped open the register.
"Abbott."Here."Bones.""here."Each name sounded like an accusation. His normal eye tracked the list; the magical one spun lazily around the room, clicking faintly as it fixed on faces and lingered there a second too long.
When it landed on Alden, the sound stopped. The spinning eye went perfectly still.
A beat. Two.
Alden didn't look away. His own gaze held steady, polite, impersonal—acknowledgment without submission.
The quill in Moody's hand tapped once. Then the eye whirred again.
"Dreyse," he said, voice dropping a note lower."Present," Alden replied, calm as breath.
Draco smirked faintly beside him; Theo's quill didn't move.
Moody finished the list, snapped the book shut, and shoved it aside with a scrape that made several Gryffindors flinch.
"Right then," he said. "Professor Lupin sent me his notes on what you lot covered last year. Boggarts, Red Caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, kappas, and werewolves. Fine."He leaned forward, both eyes now on the class. "That's creatures. What you're behind on is curses—what witches and wizards do to each other."
The room tensed. Even the torches seemed to shrink from the roughness of his voice.
"I've got one year," Moody went on, "to bring you up to scratch. One year to show you what's out there waiting to hurt you. The Ministry—" he spat the word like a splinter—" says I'm to teach you counter-spells and leave it at that. No demonstrations till the 18th year. Dumbledore thinks you can handle more."A slow, grim smile tugged at his mouth. "So do I."
Ron, half-excited, half-terrified, blurted, "You mean—show us? The real ones?"
The magical eye spun and pinned him. Ron wilted under the stare until Moody's scarred grin surfaced again.
"You'll be Arthur Weasley's boy. Your father got me out of a tight corner last week. You've got his voice when you're nervous. Yes—real ones. Better you see them now than meet them blind."
A faint tremor of whispers rippled through the class—Hermione's quick breath, Parvati's squeak, Seamus's muttered "wicked." The atmosphere thickened, electric, heavy with curiosity and dread.
"But let's make something clear," Moody rasped, rising. The wooden leg hit the stone—clunk, clunk. "This isn't playacting. You'll keep your wands down unless I tell you otherwise. You'll keep your mouths shut unless I ask a question. And you'll learn the difference between courage—" he swept a look across the Gryffindor row "—and stupidity."
His turning pace brought him past the Slytherin bench. The magical eye revolved backward, fixing on Alden again.
"And the difference between discipline—" the normal eye now joined it, both focused—" and arrogance."
The pause that followed was deliberate. Draco shifted; Theo glanced sideways, but Alden simply inclined his head a fraction—acknowledging, not agreeing.
"Understood," he said quietly.
Moody's scarred mouth curved. "We'll see."
He limped back to the front, hauled open a drawer, and produced a glass jar. Three large black spiders scuttled inside, their legs scraping faintly against the glass.
"Let's start with what the Ministry calls Unforgivable. Three curses, three lessons. You'll learn why they're forbidden… and what sort of wizard uses them."
He set the jar down with a decisive thud. The class leaned forward despite themselves.
Moody's voice dropped, low as gravel:
"You might think you know what fear is. You don't. Not yet."
Alden's quill clicked open; he drew a neat line across his page, ready to take notes—not of terror, but of technique.
The first spider twitched inside the jar, as if it already knew what kind of morning it was going to be.
The glass jar gleamed faintly in the torchlight, condensation sliding down its sides. Inside, three black spiders clawed over one another, their legs clicking like tiny metronomes.
Moody unscrewed the lid with a grunt.
"You want to know what the Ministry fears most?" he growled. "Not monsters. Not werewolves. People. Wizards with the will to turn others into tools."
He reached into the jar, caught one spider between his scarred fingers, and set it on his palm. It twitched, legs drawn close, as if it understood the attention of the room.
"The Imperius Curse," Moody said, voice low and hard. "Used right, it'll make you dance, beg, drown, or slit your own throat with a smile."
Several Gryffindors flinched. Even Draco's smirk faltered.
Moody raised his wand.
"Imperio!"
The word struck like a whipcrack. The spider went weightless, dangling from a silver thread of silk before it began to move. It swung like a pendulum, then somersaulted—twice—landing perfectly upright. It began to cartwheel across the desk, then hop, spin, bow.
Laughter broke the tension—nervous, incredulous. Ron half-snorted, Seamus barked out a laugh that turned into a cough.
Moody didn't laugh.
"Think it's funny, do you?" he snarled."Would you laugh if I made you do it? Made you jump out a window? Drown yourself?"
The laughter died instantly.
Moody lowered the spider back onto the desk. It stood frozen, trembling, as though even the air frightened it now.
"That's total control," Moody said quietly. "It feels like freedom while it lasts. A good Imperius makes you want to obey."
He turned back to the class, eyes sweeping over them—one whirling, one sharp.
"They used this one a lot, back in the war. Made decent people murder friends. Made Aurors torture themselves just to stop the noise in their own heads."
A hush fell.
Theo's quill scratched faintly beside Alden, but Alden didn't write. His eyes were fixed on the spider, not in horror, but calculation. Watching how it trembled even after the curse was lifted, how its legs spasmed as though remembering.
"Control without purpose," he murmured.
Theo looked up. "What?"
Alden didn't raise his voice.
"It's a leash. Elegant, yes—but still a leash. It tells you the caster has no vision, only fear. A coward's spell."
The words carried further than intended. A few Gryffindors turned. Dean snorted; Seamus muttered, "Hear that? Slytherin thinks he's braver than Moody."
Moody's head turned sharply. Both eyes locked on Alden.
"Coward, is it?" he said softly.
Alden met his stare without hesitation.
"The act of command isn't power, Professor. It's dependence. The Imperius steals the need for conviction. If you can't inspire obedience without a wand, you deserve none."
The silence that followed felt physical. Even the torches seemed to lean closer.
Moody limped forward until his shadow stretched across Alden's desk. The spider twitched again between them.
"You're clever," Moody said slowly. "But clever gets you killed faster than fear. The ones who think they're above the weapon always end up looking down its barrel."
"Then they should've built a better weapon," Alden replied. His tone never rose, but it landed with the precision of a knife placed gently, edge first, on the table.
Theo's breath caught. Draco's smirk returned—half pride, half disbelief.
Moody's magical eye whirred once, assessing, then drifted away as if filing the boy under dangerous curiosity. He turned back to the desk, scooping the spider up between scarred fingers.
"The Imperius can be fought," he said, resuming the lesson as though nothing had happened. "Takes strength of will. Clarity. Most don't have it. Better to avoid being hit with it at all. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"
The shout hit the walls like thunder. Everyone jumped.
Alden blinked once, unflinching.
Moody tossed the spider back into the jar and snapped the lid shut. The sound echoed like a lock turning.
A ripple of whispers spread as Moody stalked to the board, scratching notes with the tip of his wand—jagged letters sparking into existence.
Theo leaned toward Alden, whispering just loud enough for him to hear:
"You really don't know how to stop, do you?"
Alden's quill resumed its quiet, even strokes.
"If I stop," he said, "they start making assumptions again."
Theo exhaled through his nose, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh.
"And if Moody kills you?"Then I'll die with good data."
Draco muffled a chuckle, earning a glare from Parvati across the aisle.
The class, still shaken, bent back over their notes. Above them, the jar sat on Moody's desk—its glass catching the light—three black shapes crawling restlessly inside.
None of them noticed that one spider, the smallest, had stopped moving entirely.
The class hadn't breathed since the last echo of CONSTANT VIGILANCE!F aded.
Moody set the jar back on the desk. The three spiders inside clambered over one another, panic twitching through their legs. The glass seemed to vibrate faintly with their motion.
"Right," Moody said, voice low, rough with old gravel. "That was control. Now pain."
He reached in again, fingers closing around another spider. It writhed as he dropped it onto the wood.
"Does anyone know this one?"
Silence. Then, unexpectedly —
"Cruciatus," Neville said.
It wasn't loud, but it was clean. A single syllable that cut through the room. Half the class turned. Even Hermione blinked at him, startled.
Moody's mismatched eyes locked on Neville. The magical one stopped spinning; both stared in he same direction for once.
"Your name's Longbottom?"
Neville nodded, throat bobbing. Moody grunted and turned away, rummaging in the drawer for a heartbeat longer than necessary, a pause that carried the weight of something remembered.
When he straightened, the spider sat trembling in the center of the desk.
"The Cruciatus Curse," he said. "Pain beyond nerve or thought. You don't pass out, you just wish you could."
His wand lifted.
"Engorgio."
The spider swelled grotesquely, legs thickening, abdomen pulsing. A few Gryffindors gasped; Ron pushed his chair back an inch.
"Crucio!"
The sound hit like heat. The spider jerked, limbs curling in, rolling over itself. It twitched, spasmed, twisted in silent agony, every movement wrong. The room filled with the dry skitter of claws scraping wood.
Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth . Ron muttered something half-formed, eyes wide.
At the edge of the front row, Alden's quill paused mid-stroke. His eyes weren't on the spider; they were on Neville.
The boy's hands were white-knuckled on the desk, shoulders rigid, jaw clenched so hard the muscle trembled. His eyes didn't blink. They simply stared through the curse, through the memory that wasn't his to relive and yet was.
Alden had read about it. The Longbottom case was buried in a Ministry report he'd found last year while studying postwar sentencing records. Frank and Alice Longbottom. Tortured into madness.
Pain had lineage. And Neville was standing in its shadow.
Alden didn't look at him. He didn't turn, didn't speak. He simply slid his green ledger off his own desk and, with a single motion, set it upright on the edge of Neville's angled perfectly, blocking his line of sight to the desk at the front.
The gesture was so small it barely existed. One saw it, but Hermione, who blinked, mouth parted as if to say something, then stopped.
Neville's fingers loosened. His eyes dropped to the cover of the ledger instead of Axioms of Power, neat lettering inked in black. He stared at the word Power until Moody lifted his wand.
"Reducio."
The spider shrank. Its twitching slowed, then stilled.
"Pain," Moody said softly, almost to himself. "Doesn't need knives or fire. Just intent."
The class didn't move. The torches hissed faintly, a thread of sound in the dead air.
Alden reached forward, reclaimed his ledger, and placed it back on his desk without a word, without a glance. The page he opened to was blank.
Moody's magical eye rolled once, tracing the room, students pale, stiff, staring anywhere but at him. It stopped on Alden for a breath, reading what it could not name, then rolled on.
"That one," Moody rasped, "was popular once. Still is, if you know the right names to ask."
Draco swallowed audibly. Theo's quill hung motionless above his parchment.
Alden's pen resumed its quiet scratch, the ink flowing in perfect lines: Pain = chaos. Chaos wastes clarity. Costis always conserved.
When he finished writing, he capped the pen with a faint click, the sound sharp in the silence, like punctuation to a prayer no one had said aloud.
Moody's hand dipped back into the jar. Only one spider remained, the smallest, pressed flat against the glass, as if trying to merge with its reflection.
"Last one," Moody said. His voice was quieter now, but heavier."The worst. The one you don't come back from."
He set the spider on the desk. It tried to run.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green.Not color, not light green as silence . It cut through the air like a blade through still water. There was no sound but the rush of magic itself. The spider flipped onto its back, unmarked. Dead.
A few students cried out. Lavender's hand flew to her mouth; Seamus swore under his breath. Ron recoiled so fast his chair screeched backward.
Harry didn't move. His face had gone blank, his pupils blown wide. Every head turned toward him, and I'm drawn as if by gravity.
Every head except one.
Alden watched the smoke still curling off the wand tip. His eyes reflected the fading green, unblinking.
Power without precision, he thought. Energy without artistry. Efficient in destruction, wasteful in purpose.
The idea of it bored him. Killing was a choice made by those who'd run out of imagination.
Around him, the room felt thinner, stripped of air. The light from the torches faltered, caught between blue and yellow.
Moody's voice broke through again, harsh and rough.
"No countercurse. No shield. Only one man ever survived it, and he's sitting right here."
Every gaze returned to Harry . The boy didn't look up. His fingers twitched once on the desk, as though gripping something unseen.
Theo murmured under his breath, "Bloody hell."Draco, quiet for once, said nothing.
Alden's quill tapped once against his parchment, ent click, click. He wrote nothing. There was nothing worth recording.
Moody began pacing, wand still in his scarred hand.
"You need to know this," he rasped. "Because one day, you might see it coming for you. And knowing—knowing what it looks like—might buy you a second."
He turned, wooden leg thudding against stone.
"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"
The shout cracked the air again. Hermione flinched. Even the flames shuddered.
Alden didn't move. He watched the teacher, not the wand. He saw not madness, but a man whose whole body had become the weapon he feared. That's the cost, Alden thought. You let violence define you, and eventually, it needs you to live.
Moody's normal eye swept the rows; the magical one spun a slow circle before stopping on Alden once more . Their gazes met two kinds of watchfulness colliding.
The scarred Auror's lip curled faintly.
"Bored, are we, Mr. Dreyse?"
The room froze.
Alden's voice came quiet, measured, but clear.
"No, Professor. Merely cataloguing outcomes."
"And what outcome did you write for that?"
"None worth repeating."
A flicker of something crossed Moody's face, not anger, not yet, but recognition. A soldier, er, seeing the same clarity he'd once had before time burned it away.
He turned sharply, breaking the stare, and barked:
"Quills out. You'll copy this down: all three curses, names, classifications, and Ministry penalties. Move!"
The scrape of chairs and parchment filled the silence.
Alden didn't write immediately. He looked at the empty spot on the desk where the spider had been, at the faint scorch mark the light had left.
Finality, he thought. Neat. Predictable. Beneath ambition.
Then he dipped his quill and began to write, his script steady and clean.
Axioms of Power Supplementary Note: Destruction is the laziest expression of strength. It ends a problem before understanding. No refinement. Only loss.
The scratching of quills filled the room like No one spoke until the bell rang.
When they filed out into the corridor, chatter rushed back in low, urgent, frightened. Draco was talking too fast, and Theo was too quiet. Harry's shoulders were tight as bowstrings, Ron pale, Hermione rigid and blinking too much.
Alden closed his ledger, the cover snapping softly shut.
As they stepped into the torchlight of the hallway, Theo exhaled.
"You really didn't react at all," he said."To what?"To the Killing Curse. Everyone else looked—""Alive?" Alden offered.
Theo shot him a look, but Alden's eyes were elsewhere, following the echo of Moody's wooden leg fading down the hall.
"There's nothing to fear in endings," he said quietly. "Only in what we waste before we reach them."
The storm outside cracked again, faint thunder rolling over the lake . The corridor lights flickered.
And for a moment, even Hogwarts seemed to hold its breath.
The chalk floated on its own at the front of the room, scratching a list across the board in jagged, flickering strokes: UNFORGIVABLES CLASS A ILLEGAL
Imperius control
Cruciatus pain
Avada Kedavra death
Each word left a faint green shimmer, as though the chalk itself was remembering the curse.
Moody's gravelly voice filled the silence.
"Those three alone'll buy you a lifetime in Azkaban," he said. "You lot are too young to know how many cells were filled because of them. They don't just break laws—they break people. Families."
His magical eye spun, sweeping the room. Every student sat stiffly, eyes fixed forward, the smell of ozone still heavy from the last curse.
Except one.
Alden sat perfectly straight, quill idle, gaze distant. His hand rested on a closed notebook as though the lesson had already ended.
Moody's voice roughened.
"Something the matter, Dreyse?"
The class shifted. Heads turned.
Alden's eyes refocused, cool and unhurried.
"No, Professor."Then why do you look like I'm wasting your time?"
There was an edge to the question, not curiosity, but challenge.
Alden didn't flinch.
"Because you are."
Gasps scattered like sparks. Draco froze mid-smirk. Hermione's quill snapped in her fingers.
Moody's scarred mouth twisted.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. You're showing spells that were designed by cowards for cowards," Alden said evenly. "Wizards who had no vision beyond the immediate, no understanding of consequence, and only appetite."
The silence deepened until the torches hissed.
"Cowards?" Moody repeated, voice low.
"The Imperius steals choice. The Cruciatus steals dignity. The Killing Curse steals purpose," Alden said, eyes fixed forward. "Each one removes the need to understand. And anything that removes understanding isn't po,wer it's panic."
No one breathed. Even Theo's hand froze over his parchment.
Moody leaned forward on the desk, wood creaking under his weight.
"You think you understand what it takes to cast them?"
Alden's gaze flicked briefly toward the still-smoldering mark where the spider had died.
"I've read enough to know," he said quietly. "The Killing Curse isn't willpower. It's hatred made efficient. To cast it, you have to want to erase, not overcome. The act demands a fragment of the soul because it leaves nothing of reason behind."
He paused.
"The Ministry bans them because they're dangerous. It should've banned them because they're lazy."
The words fell like stones into still water.
Ron made a strangled noise that might've been a laugh. Seamus elbowed him, eyes wide. Hermione looked torn between awe and horror.
Moody's normal eye narrowed; the magical one spun furiously, focusing and refocusing on Alden's face as though trying to see inside his skull.
"You think there's anything noble about refusing to fight dirty?" he said at last. "You think the Dark cares about your ideals?"
Alden's expression didn't change.
"The Dark doesn't care about anything. That's the point. It consumes the ones who do."
"Big words," Moody said. "Dangerous words."
"Only to those who believe them," Alden replied.
The class sat in absolute stillness. The tension was a living, tangible thing pressing down on their chests.
Moody's scar twitched as he straightened.
"You sound like someone who's thought a lot about these spells."
"Thinking prevents repetition," Alden said. "Someone should have tried it sooner."
The Auror's lips parted, half snarl, half laugh, but before he could answer, the bell rang. Its sharp, metallic chime cleaved the silence cleanly in two.
"Class dismissed," Moody growled.
Chairs scraped. Students moved quickly, too quickly, tripping over benches just to get out. Hermione gathered her things in silence; Ron whispered, "Mental," under his breath.
Draco lingered near the door, watching Alden with something almost like admiration. Theo simply exhaled.
"Do you wake up and plan to annoy people who could kill you?" he muttered.
Alden rose, dusted off his sleeve, and tucked his notebook under one arm.
"Only if they mistake fear for respect."
He walked out first, his steps silent against the stone. Behind him, Moody's magical eye followed until the door shut.
The last thing the class heard before it closed was the faint thunk of the Auror's wooden leg and a voice low enough that it might've been a growl—or a warning.
"You'll learn what fear buys you, boy."
The lake pressed its darkness against the windows, soft ripples turning the torchlight green. The Slytherin common room hummed with faint whispers, gossip threading through the water-thick air.
"…told Moody—called him a coward—"
"…reckons he studied Dark magic—"
"…didn't even flinch—"
Alden sat in one of the far alcoves, where the light faded into cool shadow. A heavy book lay open on the table before him: Advanced Principles of Potion Theory, Volume IV. The spine was cracked and annotated in his neat, narrow script.
He turned a page without looking up. Every so often, the glass window behind him pulsed faintly with the silhouettes of passing grindylows, long fingers dragging across the other side.
Theo sat opposite him, half-distracted, half-staring. The quill in his hand had long since stopped moving.
"You know," Theo said finally, "I can't tell if you're fearless or suicidal."
Alden's eyes stayed on the book.
"Neither. I just dislike inefficiency."
Theo huffed out something between a laugh and a sigh.
"You called the Unforgivables inefficient?"
"What else would you call them?" Alden replied. "Three spells to achieve control, pain, and death outcomes any capable wizard could reach through subtler means."
Theo leaned forward, his voice low.
"You realize half the school thinks you've gone mad, right? Moody's an Auror. They say he's killed Dark wizards with those curses. You can't just—"
"Say what's true?"
Theo's mouth clicked shut.
For a moment, only the soft bubbling of the underwater currents filled the room. Shadows of fish darted across the green glass.
Alden closed the book, fingers resting lightly on the cover.
"You asked me once why I see the world the way I do," he said. "You think it's strange."
"I think it's… detached," Theo said carefully. "You talk about everything like it's an equation. Good and evil don't exist to you, to your inputs and outcomes."
Alden gave a small, almost invisible smile.
"That's because they don't."
Theo blinked.
"Come again?"
"Magic doesn't care who casts it," Alden said. "It doesn't recoil at cruelty or sing for mercy. It's raw will. We're the ones who paint it in color."
He leaned back slightly, eyes following the slow swirl of shadows on the ceiling.
"If someone's bleeding, you use a healing charm to save them. That's good, yes?"
"Obviously."
"But what if you use the same charm to keep them alive to prolong their suffering? Same incantation. Same motion. Only the intent changes."
Theo frowned.
"So you're saying the spell's neutral."
"I'm saying the moral distinction is pathetic," Alden murmured. "You don't divide a blade into good or evil. You just choose where to aim it."
Theo sat back, the words sinking in like cold water.
"That's… dangerous thinking."
"It's honest," Alden replied simply. "The Ministry teaches fear. Hogwarts teaches obedience. Neither teaches understanding."
Theo looked at him a long while.
"And what do you teach yourself?"
Alden's gaze returned to the open book. The reflection of the lake shimmered over his eyes like rippled glass.
"How to see the world without flinching."
Theo exhaled, shaking his head with a faint, rueful smile.
"You're going to scare people if you keep talking like that."
Alden turned another page, quill scratching softly as he made a note in the margin.
"Then they've learned something about fear."
A silence stretched not uncomfortable, but heavy, thoughtful. Outside the glass, a single bolt of lightning flickered through the water, its glow illuminating Alden's face, calm, expressionless, haloed in green.
Theo watched him for a moment longer, then muttered,
"You really don't care what they think, do you?"
"Not if they're wrong."
The light faded. The thunder never reached them. Only the sound of pages turning remained patient, deliberate, and utterly unbothered by the world's noise.
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