If being watched had a sound, Steve thought it would resemble the quiet that followed him now, the way conversations softened when he entered a room and resumed only after he had left, altered just enough to signal that something unsaid had passed between the speakers. It was not hostility, not yet, but a recalibration, the community subtly adjusting its behavior to accommodate a variable it could not classify, and the effect was far more suffocating than open suspicion would have been.
Clara tried to shield him from it in small ways, redirecting visits, cutting conversations short, offering explanations before questions could be asked, but protection built on denial was fragile, and Steve could see the strain wearing on her and the way her smile tightened each time someone's eyes lingered too long on him. Edmund, for his part, grew quieter, spending long hours reviewing old notes and damaged enchantment manuals, as if searching for a framework that could explain what he had witnessed without breaking everything he believed about magic.
Steve did not interrupt them.
He spent his days reading, observing, and thinking, the system idling in a low-energy state while he focused on understanding the social structures around him rather than the magical ones. Power was easy to model; people were not. Every interaction now carried weight, every action was interpreted through the lens of anomaly, and Steve understood with growing clarity that passivity would not return him to obscurity, because obscurity required consensus, and consensus had already fractured.
The Ministry's presence remained indirect but persistent. Letters arrived addressed to Edmund, phrased politely, requesting updates, offering resources, and reminding him of reporting obligations that had never existed before. None of them demanded Steve's immediate relocation or registration, but all of them implied a future in which choices would narrow if left unaddressed.
It was Graves who broke the stalemate.
He arrived alone this time, without ministry robes or official instruments, dressed instead in simple traveling attire that suggested intent rather than inspection. Steve sensed him before the knock, the lattice detecting a familiar pattern of disciplined magic held tightly under control, and when Clara opened the door, Graves inclined his head respectfully before asking if he might speak with Steve privately.
They walked together along the edge of the property, the late afternoon light stretching their shadows across the grass as silence settled comfortably between them, not awkward but deliberate. Graves did not rush to fill it, and Steve appreciated that more than he would have admitted aloud.
"You are being discussed," Graves said eventually, his tone neutral. "In rooms you will never enter, by people who believe they are being cautious."
Steve nodded. "Caution can still be dangerous."
Graves smiled faintly. "Exactly."
They stopped near the old boundary marker at the far edge of the land, where wards faded into natural terrain, and Graves turned to face him fully. "You have three paths available to you right now," he said. "None of them are ideal."
Steve waited.
"You can allow the Ministry to formalize their oversight," Graves continued. "Regular assessments, controlled environments, supervision. Safe, predictable, and ultimately restrictive. You will be studied, not taught."
Steve felt no need to respond.
"Or," Graves went on, "you can withdraw entirely, remain unofficial, untrained, and hope that the world loses interest before fear replaces curiosity. That path depends on other people's restraint, which is rarely a reliable foundation."
"And the third?" Steve asked.
Graves's eyes sharpened. "You place yourself somewhere the rules already bend."
-Hogwarts Without Romance-
Steve did not react immediately to the word, but internally, the system flagged it as a strategic node of immense significance, a place where anomalies were tolerated not because they were safe, but because they were contained within tradition and precedent. Hogwarts was not merely a school; it was a controlled chaos engine, a space designed to normalize the abnormal through structure.
"I don't have a core," Steve said. "I don't cast."
"No," Graves agreed. "But you interact with magic in a way that makes it behave, and that alone is enough to justify your presence. Officially, you would be listed as a special case, observational placement, non-standard curriculum."
"Unofficially?" Steve asked.
Graves's mouth curved slightly. "Unofficially, you would be close to the largest concentration of magical theory, failure, experimentation, and institutional blindness in Britain."
Steve considered that.
The choice was not about safety or opportunity; it was about narrative control. At Hogwarts, his existence would be contextualized as education rather than anomaly and curiosity rather than threat. The scrutiny would intensify, but it would be diffuse, divided among dozens of unusual children rather than focused narrowly on him.
"I won't be a specimen," Steve said.
Graves met his gaze steadily. "Then don't be."
They returned to the house in silence, the decision not spoken aloud but already forming, solidifying not as surrender but as positioning. Steve understood now that hiding was no longer viable, but that did not mean he had to reveal everything; the art lay in choosing where to be misunderstood.
That night, as Steve lay awake, he allowed the system to simulate the environment Graves had described, projecting models of Hogwarts not as a place of wonder, but as a complex ecosystem of magic misuse, half-learned spells, and structural inefficiencies waiting to be corrected. The lattice pulsed once, registering the conclusion with something close to anticipation.
He would go.
Not to learn magic.
But to learn the world that wielded it so poorly.