The late afternoon sun, fractured by the ancient oak's heavy branches, cast long, distorted shadows across the living room. The air was thick with the scent of pine needles and the subtle, underlying aroma of old parchment – a fragrance Cho had never been able to fully banish from their secluded Scottish cottage. She sat by the window, sketching, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her Muggle name, Claire Wong, felt as thin and transparent as the tracing paper beneath her hand, a fragile shield against a past she prayed would never find them.
Lucien, fifteen now and too tall for the worn armchair, was ostensibly engrossed in a dense Muggle physics textbook. His dark hair, perpetually untidy, brushed the collar of his jumper. His green eyes, however, were not scanning the equations. Instead, they were fixed on the delicate silver locket dangling from his mother's neck – a simple, Muggle-crafted piece, yet he could feel a faint, inexplicable warmth emanating from it, a comforting presence he'd felt his entire life.
"You're distracted, Luke," Cho murmured, without looking up from her sketchpad. Her voice was soft, laced with an undercurrent of exhaustion only a mother carrying such a secret could truly know.
Lucien sighed, closing the book with a soft thump. "It's just… another year, Mum. Another year of feeling like… there's something more." He gestured vaguely at their perfectly ordinary, perfectly mundane cottage. The silence between them, a familiar companion, was suddenly charged with the unspoken truths of his unique existence. He didn't know what that "more" was, but it gnawed at him, a constant, dull ache of unfulfilled potential.
He felt a strange sort of restlessness inside him, a jittery energy that made sitting still difficult. It often manifested as uncanny luck: a broken object mending itself if he focused hard enough, a distant radio clicking on right when he wanted it to, but never anything he could control. He just seemed to influence things, a peculiar quirk he'd learned to dismiss, yet which still nagged at the edges of his understanding.
"We talked about this, Lucien," Cho said, her hand tightening on her pencil. She reached for a small, ornate wooden box hidden beneath her sketchbook. From it, she took a tiny, stoppered vial. The liquid within shimmered faintly, a deep, shifting amber. "Every year. Every day. This life, Lucien, it is everything there is for us." Her eyes, usually so serene, held a flicker of desperation, born of daily deception and constant fear.
Lucien eyed the vial. "The herbal supplement?" he asked, a familiar weariness in his voice. "Do I really need it, Mum? It makes me feel... dull. Like a fog."
"It keeps you healthy, darling. Keeps that… restlessness at bay," Cho insisted, her voice firm. This potion, a secret passed down through generations of Potters for times of dire need, a gift from Harry to her in those last, uncertain days before the Final Battle, was her anchor. It was the only thing preventing the burgeoning magic within Lucien from erupting, from exposing them both. It was a daily dose of betrayal for his own good.
She poured a small amount into his tea, stirring it with a hand that trembled almost imperceptibly. Lucien drank it without further argument, the familiar, cloying taste a bitter reminder of his "differences." As he did, the restless energy he felt began to recede, leaving behind a familiar, almost welcome, sense of calm.
"Safer for who, Mum?" he asked again, the question less fiery now, more tinged with a quiet longing. "For them? Or for me, locked away from… everything I could be?"
Cho's heart ached. Everything you could be, my love, is too dangerous for this world. She managed a wan smile, rising to take his empty mug. "Just... safer, my dearest. Trust your mum."
Later, long after the twilight had deepened into night and Lucien was asleep, Cho sat alone in the quiet kitchen. The Muggle radio, a comfort in its mundane chatter, droned softly in the background. She was making notes in a small, leather-bound journal—not about magic, but about Lucien's growth, his curious "flashes" of luck, the rising potency of the potion she administered. He was growing too fast, the magic too strong. The potion, once foolproof, felt like a straining dam.
Then, the radio broadcast was interrupted. A solemn voice, grave and urgent, spoke over a crackle of static. "We interrupt this program for a major news flash. Sources confirm a high-risk inmate has escaped Azkaban Prison. The Ministry of Magic has issued a level-four national security alert. The fugitive is identified as Ira Riddle, believed to be the non-magical daughter of You-Know-Who."
Cho's tea mug slipped from her fingers, shattering on the flagstone floor. The sound, sharp and sudden, seemed deafening in the sudden silence of the cottage. Her hands flew to her mouth, not to stifle a cry, but to hold back a scream.
Ira Riddle. Escaped Azkaban.
Cho didn't need to hear the rest of the report. She knew. She knew the name, the bloodline, the Ministry's relentless, unbending fear. She knew that Hermione, her brilliant, utterly relentless friend, now Head Auror, would be at the forefront of the hunt.
The fragile peace of their hidden life evaporated like mist in a sudden, brutal wind. The potion in the wooden box felt suddenly useless, powerless. Cho clutched the silver locket around her neck, its warmth a fading comfort, and stared out into the impenetrable darkness beyond their cottage, her mind racing, a terrible premonition coiling in her gut.
The shadow, so long imprisoned, was finally free. And it was heading straight for the light she had so desperately tried to dim within her own son.