Hermione Granger did not believe in coincidences.
So when three unrelated incidents crossed her desk within forty-eight hours—each involving magic behaving incorrectly—she stopped calling them anomalies and started calling them symptoms.
The first report came from a village near Tintern Abbey, where a protective charm placed in the seventeenth century had abruptly reversed itself, locking the residents inside their own homes.
The second involved a wizard in Leeds whose Patronus began speaking—in his own voice—before dissolving into mist.
The third was a sealed Department of Mysteries file marked simply: HOGWARTS – WARD INSTABILITY.
Hermione stared at that one for a long time.
Eight years after the war, Hogwarts was supposed to be the safest magical structure in Britain. Possibly the world. Its wards were studied, mapped, cross-referenced. Entire departments existed because of what had been learned rebuilding them.
She stood, already shrugging on her coat.
Croaker barely looked up as she passed his office. "You're not authorized—"
"I am when magic starts forgetting how to work," Hermione said, flashing her badge. "Tell the Minister I'll write a report when reality stops unraveling."
The Floo Network deposited her in Hogsmeade just after dusk. The air felt… thin. Not cold—hollow. Like the world had been stretched.
Students hurried past her, laughing too loudly. Their magic brushed against her senses in uneven pulses. Hermione frowned.
She climbed the familiar path to Hogwarts, heart tightening as the castle came into view. For a moment—just a moment—it looked wrong. Too sharp. Too awake.
At the gates, she stopped short.
The wards shimmered visibly, a faint lattice of blue-white light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
They had never done that before.
"Bloody hell," she murmured.
Inside, the castle hummed. Not audibly, but perceptibly, a low thrumming beneath the stones. Hermione felt it in her teeth.
McGonagall met her in the Entrance Hall, flanked by a woman Hermione didn't recognize—tall, sharp-eyed, with ink-stained fingers and an expression of grim fascination.
"Hermione," McGonagall said, relief flickering across her face. "Thank you for coming so quickly."
"You said the wards flickered," Hermione said. "Minerva, they're breathing."
The woman beside McGonagall smiled thinly. "Excellent. Someone else can feel it."
"This is Professor Elowen Thatch," McGonagall said. "Pre-Foundational Magic."
Hermione's eyebrows shot up. "That's not even an approved—"
"—discipline, I know," Elowen finished. "Neither was Astronomy, once."
Hermione turned back to the wards. "What changed?"
McGonagall's gaze drifted upward, toward the ancient ceiling. "Nothing," she said quietly. "And that may be the problem."
Hermione's blood ran cold.
Magic did not change without cause.
Unless it was correcting something that should never have happened.