The library had become Oliver's favorite hiding place.
It wasn't just the size of it, though the rows of shelves felt like endless walls of treasure, full of spines with titles in colors he'd never seen before. It was the quiet. The kind of quiet that made him feel like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for him to do something important.
And maybe tonight he was.
He'd told no one where he was going—not Harry, not Hermione, not even the twins. This wasn't about showing off. It was about testing himself, seeing just how much his head could hold since Nyx had come into his life.
The phoenix settled near him on the table, feathers dark as ink in the candlelight, eyes glowing faintly blue. She tilted her head as he stacked three heavy books on the desk: A History of Magical Theory, Volume I,Elementary Transfiguration, and Magical Creatures of Europe.
Oliver blew out a breath, rubbing his palms against his robe. "All right," he whispered, mostly to Nyx. "Here goes."
He cracked open the first book.
At first, it was… easy. Easier than it should have been.
The words slid into him like water filling a cup. He didn't have to struggle to remember where he'd left off or what the sentences meant. He'd read a page once and it stayed—like a picture in his head he could turn back to whenever he wanted.
He grinned despite himself. This had never happened before. Back at the orphanage, he could barely keep track of the dull textbooks they'd been forced to use. Half the time he'd forgotten what he'd read as soon as he closed the book. Now? Now it was different.
He shut the page halfway through a paragraph and tried to recite it.
To his shock, the words tumbled out, not perfectly, but close enough that Nyx gave a low trill, almost like approval.
He snorted, scratching his head. "Didn't know I could do that."
He kept going.
One hour passed before he realized he'd burned through nearly fifty pages. His quill scratched out notes he barely needed, because the words were already there, tucked away in his mind like he'd carved them into stone.
Two hours passed, and he was into the transfiguration book. Diagrams of wands and arrows swam in his head. He didn't understand everything—half of it looked like puzzles with missing pieces—but he remembered it. He could picture the shapes, the circles, the strange lines connecting spells.
By the third hour, his head buzzed. He rubbed his temples, groaning, but he didn't stop.
He wanted to know how far it went.
It wasn't until he hit the fourth book—one he'd dragged from a nearby shelf on a whim—that his excitement dulled.
The book was about European magical creatures. The pages were heavy with drawings and notes, and at first it was thrilling to see familiar names—hippogriffs, unicorns, even a sketch of a basilisk.
But halfway through the section on trolls, he realized his eyes were starting to blur. The words swam. His head ached as though it was stuffed full of cotton, too heavy to keep upright.
He groaned, shoving the book closed with a thud. Nyx gave a soft, almost scolding chirp.
"Yeah, I know," Oliver muttered, pressing his forehead against the desk. "Too much."
He'd made it nearly four hours before he couldn't take another word. Four hours where he'd barely moved, just reading and scribbling notes, stuffing his brain full of everything it could take.
It wasn't just memory. He realized that, sitting there with his head spinning. He hadn't just remembered words. He'd started to get things. Bits of it, anyway. Like how the same wand movement showed up in two different places, or how magical creatures seemed grouped by habits more than size. They were tiny connections—things an older student would probably laugh at—but to Oliver, they were his discoveries.
He sat back, dizzy but grinning.
"Guess that's my limit," he mumbled. "Four hours and I'm fried."
Nyx hopped closer, brushing her feathers against his arm.
Oliver sighed, letting his eyes close for a moment. His body was sore from sitting, his head buzzing, but beneath it all there was a spark of something new. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel stupid when he looked at a book.
For the first time, he thought maybe he could be good at this.
Oliver didn't move for a long time after slumping against the desk. His head throbbed like he'd tried to cram a whole year's worth of classes into one night. Maybe he had.
When he finally stirred, Nyx crooned low in her throat, nudging him with her beak as though urging him not to stop halfway.
He chuckled weakly. "What, you want me to keep going? I'm not sure my brain's got space left."
Still, when he looked at the stack of books, his hand twitched. Something tugged at him—curiosity, sharp and restless. He'd proven he could hold words. Now he wanted to see if he could do more than just copy them into his head.
He stood, stretching until his joints cracked, and wandered toward the back rows where the heavier tomes were kept. His eyes drifted over titles: Advanced Spell Matrices,Runic Structures of the Old North,On the Breeding of Dragons. All too complicated. All things he knew he wasn't ready for.
Then one spine caught him—faded green leather, letters barely clinging to the surface: Foundations of Practical Alchemy.
Alchemy. He remembered hearing the word once in passing, whispered in a story about Nicolas Flamel. He knew it had something to do with turning metal into gold. Beyond that? Nothing.
His fingers lingered on the spine before pulling it free. The book was heavier than he expected, its pages crinkled with age. He carried it back to his table, Nyx shifting to make room as he set it down.
"Bet this is way over my head," he muttered, sliding the cover open.
And maybe it was. The first pages were dense, full of symbols and circles with words he'd never seen before. For a moment, his stomach sank. This was the kind of thing that used to make him shut a book and shove it away before he embarrassed himself trying.
But tonight, something different happened.
As he stared at the page, the words didn't blur. They settled. His brain didn't fight them. He traced the loops and lines with his eyes, and slowly, pieces started to stick.
Not all of it—half the terms were still nonsense—but enough. Enough to understand that alchemy wasn't just about gold. It was about changing one thing into another, about finding the hidden pattern inside things.
Oliver leaned closer. His quill moved without him thinking, copying shapes, jotting notes.
A paragraph described how alchemy worked best when two forces balanced each other—earth with air, water with fire. He frowned, then flipped back to the transfiguration book he'd been studying earlier. The diagrams looked different now. He saw echoes of the same shapes.
"Wait," he whispered, eyes narrowing. "That's… kind of the same thing, isn't it?"
Nyx gave a soft trill, as if amused.
He sat back, stunned. He wasn't inventing anything new, he knew that much. But he'd seen something—an overlap no one had pointed out to him. It felt like spotting a secret hidden in plain sight.
For the next half-hour, he scribbled furiously, matching notes between the books. Nothing grand, nothing worth teaching, but his.
By the time the library's clock tolled midnight, Oliver dropped his quill with an exhausted groan. His parchment was covered in uneven handwriting, smudges of ink, and half-finished sketches of circles that didn't quite line up.
He rubbed his aching eyes, but a smile tugged at his lips anyway.
Four hours of heavy memorization had nearly broken him, but this felt different. The alchemy book hadn't just stuck in his head—it had clicked. The pieces shifted into something he could almost understand.
And that was better than gold.
Nyx rustled her wings and hopped closer, pressing her head against his arm. Oliver scratched lightly under her feathers.
"Guess we found something I might not be awful at," he whispered.
She trilled again, soft and encouraging.
He gathered his things, stacking the books carefully and sliding the alchemy tome under his arm. He didn't know what he was going to do with it yet. He only knew he wanted to read more. Learn more. Push a little further.
But not tonight. His head was full, his eyes heavy. He'd reached his limit, and he was starting to understand he needed to respect it if he wanted to last.
As he walked out of the library, Nyx gliding silently above him, Oliver felt something warm in his chest.
For the first time in a long time, the future didn't seem empty.
It felt like it was waiting for him.