Lustful Alchemy

50. EPILOGUE

The warm light filters in through the open window, brushing the stone floor with golden fingers as a mild breeze stirs the white curtains. It's a spring warmer than we're used to at Hogwarts, the air scented with orange blossoms and sand. From the armchair, I watch the garden below: a lush expanse of greenery and wildflowers that opens like an embrace, threaded with white decorations that cross this oasis of nature before giving way to the dunes, swaying just beyond the edge of the property. It's a contrast that never fails to fascinate me — the opulence of life against the starkness of the desert. As if the world itself wants to remind me that beauty often blooms right there, where you least expect it, from hardship.

I smile to myself, thinking how fitting that concept is, considering all that's happened in the past few years. Oh, how much effort it took to keep an eye on those two! Cassandra, with her stubborn head and a heart brimming with fears. Aesop, with his armor of cynicism and a wounded soul that was only looking for a safe place to finally rest. It wasn't easy, no. I would have gladly done without a few worries along the way. But deep down... I knew. I knew it would end like this. That the story had already been written, stitched together in silences, in held breaths, in glances that spoke louder than words.

Time, in the end, proved me right.

A sudden thud tears me away from the thread of my thoughts. The door flies open with force, slamming against the wall, and into the room bursts a crystalline laugh, a joyful cry that slips between the curtains like a living breeze.

A child — all tousled curls and bare feet — runs toward me with a butterfly-shaped hair clip clutched in his hand as if it were a trophy. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes shine with precocious intelligence and a kind of enthusiasm the world hasn't yet had the time to dim.

He laughs with the kind of freedom only children — and perhaps lovers who have finally chosen each other — know how to allow themselves. And in that laugh, I hear the echo of everything that has been. Of everything we've built, all of us, in greater or smaller part. Because even those who simply believed in it helped make sure this story could have the happy ending it deserved.

I watch the little one run, his legs quick and still a bit unsure, that funny and determined gait of his that never fails to make me smile. His energy is overwhelming, as if every corner of the house were a discovery, every object an adventure. And as he clutches the hair clip in his fingers — a small, sparkling trophy — I hear his bare feet drumming against the floor with a rhythm all his own.

«Elias!»

A familiar voice rings out, followed by the face it belongs to. She appears in the doorway, breathless, a little flustered—but radiant.

Cassandra.

She wears a long white dress, as light as the season itself, embroidered with delicate patterns: winding vines of green twine along the hem and sleeves, dotted with soft pink butterflies that look freshly landed, balanced in perfect stillness. The same glimmers of pink as the hair clip Elias clutches tightly in his small hands.

Her shoulders are kissed by a soft tan that blends into cheeks tinged with pink. Her hair, once long spirals of curls, now falls in looser waves across her shoulders, tousled slightly by the warm breeze drifting through the window. With one hand she lifts the hem of her gown so it doesn't brush the floor as she walks toward her son, while the other keeps in place a veil of sheer tulle—resting gently on the nape of her neck, where the butterfly clip must have sat only moments before.

I lean forward just enough to meet those dark, mischievous little eyes sparkling with childish glee. Elias still clutches the clip tightly, as though it were the most precious treasure, his laughter chiming through the sun-warmed air of the room.