You Only Live Once

CHAPTER 3

The stone beneath Mira's boots felt impossibly solid. That was the first thing that grounded her—the cold, unforgiving reality of granite. In every dream she'd ever had of this place, the floors felt like walking on clouds or shifting sand, but here, each step echoed. The corridors were endless, a labyrinth of shadows and torchlight that smelled of old parchment, ozone, and woodsmoke.

Then there were the stairs. She watched, breathless, as a massive marble staircase detached itself from the landing above and swung lazily through the air like a pendulum, clicking into place with a heavy thud. Above them, people drifted through the air. Not flying on brooms, but simply rising, their robes billowing around them as if gravity was merely a suggestion they chose to ignore.

"It's real," Mira whispered, her voice cracking. "It's actually real."

She looked at the woman walking beside her. The emerald-green robes rustled with a crisp, expensive sound. The woman's posture was as straight as a ruler, her hair pulled into a bun so tight it looked painful. Mira knew that face. She knew the stern set of the jaw and the sharp, perceptive eyes behind the square spectacles.

"Are you..." Mira started, then stopped. Her heart was hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

"Yes, dear?" the woman asked, slowing her pace but not stopping.

"Are you Professor McGonagall?"

The woman stopped dead. She turned, her gaze sweeping over Mira's strange, modern clothes—her hoodie and sneakers—with a look of profound curiosity. "Yes. Yes, I am," she replied slowly. A flicker of something like suspicion or perhaps just deep confusion crossed her face. "How is it that you know my name, child? We have not been introduced, and you are certainly not on any of my class rosters."

"I know everything," Mira said. The words felt heavy, like she was dropping stones into a still pond.

"That is a very bold claim," McGonagall said, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. "Even Albus Dumbledore wouldn't claim to know everything. What exactly does 'everything' include?"

Mira took a deep breath, trying to steady the shaking in her hands. "Look, Professor. Where I come from, Hogwarts isn't a school. It's a story. There are seven books. There are movies. I know the names of the students who haven't even been born yet. I know about the families, the secret passages, the subjects you teach, and the ones you hate. I know what happens forty years from now. I know about the war that's coming, and I know about the things that happened centuries before I was born. I've read your history like it was entertainment. I know where we're going right now. I know who is waiting behind that portrait."

Mira was breathing heavily now, the sheer weight of the future knowledge pressing down on her. It felt like a fever dream, but the air was too cold and the smell of the castle was too vivid.

McGonagall looked as if she had been struck. Her hand tightened on her wand, not in a threatening way, but as if she needed something to hold onto. To be told your entire existence—your grief, your triumphs, your daily breakfast—was just ink on a page in another world was a blow no one was prepared for.

"You truly believe this?" McGonagall asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft.

Mira only nodded, her eyes stinging. "I don't just believe it. I know it."

The Professor stared at her for a long minute, searching Mira's face for any sign of a prank or madness. Finding none, she simply nodded back. She reached out and gently linked her arm with Mira's, a gesture of grounding support. "Then we shall walk and talk. But for now, we must get you settled."

They climbed higher, passing suits of armor that creaked and whispered as they went by. Mira's mind was racing. If she was here, in this specific year, then the people she had cried over in the books were just down the hall. They were teenagers. They were eating toast and worrying about homework.