The transition from the humid, predator-rich swamps of the American South to the damp, institutional chill of the Scottish Highlands was always a sensory shock.
For Sunshine Addams, returning to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for her second year felt less like the continuation of an education and more like willingly stepping back into a poorly designed, highly volatile containment facility.
The Hogwarts Express had arrived at Hogsmeade Station under the cover of a torrential, freezing downpour. The platform was a chaotic mass of shivering students, frantic prefects, and the sharp, piercing whistles of the train conductors. Sunshine navigated the throng with her patented Wallflower Protocol fully engaged. She kept her head bowed, her golden curls plastered to her cheeks by the rain, her beige woolen traveling cloak pulled tight around her small frame. She projected an aura of such absolute, miserable insignificance that the pushing crowds naturally parted around her, their brains refusing to register her as an obstacle.
She followed the herd of second-years toward the dark, muddy path leading to the carriages.
"Sunshine! Over here!"
Hannah Abbott was waving frantically from the open door of a carriage, her blonde pigtails dripping wet. Susan Bones sat inside, shivering and clutching her robes tight against the wind.
"Thank you, Hannah," Sunshine murmured, her high voice trembling slightly to sell the illusion of cold and frailty. She allowed Hannah to help her pull herself up into the carriage, bringing the scent of rain and wet wool with her.
As the door swung shut, Sunshine looked toward the front of the carriage.
To the vast majority of the Hogwarts student body, the carriages appeared to pull themselves, enchanted by some invisible, benevolent magic. But Sunshine's bright blue eyes did not see empty space between the wooden traces.
She saw the Thestrals.
They were magnificent, terrifying creatures. They possessed the skeletal frames of starved draft horses, their skin drawn tight like black leather over visible, protruding ribs. Their eyes were white and pupil-less, staring blindly into the Scottish rain, and massive, leathery wings resembling those of a giant bat lay folded against their flanks.
In her past life, she had died. She had been beaten, broken, and left to freeze on a train platform, her last breaths slipping away in agonizing, terrifying isolation. That trauma, that ultimate crossing of the veil, had granted her the ability to see the beasts of death.
To an ordinary child, seeing a Thestral for the first time would be a horrifying experience. To an Addams, they were breathtakingly beautiful.
Sunshine felt a deep, profound urge to reach out and stroke the leathery neck of the creature harnessed to their carriage, to offer it a sugar cube infused with a drop of blood. But she could not.
"I always wonder how they enchant the carriages," Susan said, peering out the window into the darkness as the wooden wheels began to roll forward. "Aunt Amelia says it's a specialized locomotion charm invented in the eighteenth century."
"It's very clever," Sunshine agreed softly, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on her own beige knees.
If she acknowledged the Thestrals, she would have to explain how she could see them. A cherubic, supposedly sheltered Squib who had witnessed death was an anomaly. Anomalies invited questions, and questions invited the gaze of Albus Dumbledore.
The carriage bumped and swayed along the dark road, finally passing through the towering wrought-iron gates flanked by winged boars. The massive silhouette of Hogwarts castle loomed against the stormy sky, its hundreds of windows glowing with warm, inviting light.
To her housemates, it looked like a beacon of safety. To the sixty-year-old survivor, it looked like a highly illuminated target.
The Great Hall was exactly as she remembered it: loud, visually overwhelming, and structurally vulnerable. The enchanted ceiling mirrored the torrential downpour outside, complete with flashes of silent lightning.
Sunshine took her seat at the Hufflepuff table, slipping immediately into the background of the boisterous chatter. She kept her movements precise, polite, and unremarkable. Beneath the high collar of her dress, the golden sunflower locket rested against her scarred sternum. It was heavier this year. The supermassive, necrotic Addams core trapped within the goblin-silver was agitating, reacting to the ambient, ancient magic of the castle like a caged tiger smelling blood.
She forced the mental iron vault shut, burying the sensation.
As the Sorting Ceremony concluded with Ginny Weasley being sorted into Gryffindor, Sunshine's eyes drifted to the Gryffindor table. She cataloged the faces. Hermione Granger was there, looking anxious.
But Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley were absent.
They missed the train, Sunshine realized, her tactical mind instantly recalling the canon timeline. Dobby the house-elf sealed the barrier. They stole Arthur Weasley's flying car. They will crash into the Whomping Willow shortly.
It was a reckless, unimaginably stupid course of action. They could have waited for Molly Weasley. They could have sent a letter via owl. Instead, they had broken the International Statute of Secrecy, risked their own lives, and destroyed a valuable magical artifact out of sheer, childish panic.
These are the soldiers of the Light, Sunshine thought with a cold, cynical sneer buried deep beneath her sweet, dimpled smile. If they were Addams children, Father would have them digging their own graves as an exercise in consequence management.
Albus Dumbledore stood up at the High Table, his silver beard gleaming in the candlelight. He spread his arms wide, offering his usual grandfatherly, benevolent welcome.
"Welcome!" Dumbledore's magically magnified voice echoed through the hall. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our feast, I have a few start-of-term notices..."
Sunshine tuned him out, her gaze sliding down the High Table until it locked onto the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
Gilderoy Lockhart was impossible to miss. He was draped in robes of aquamarine that perfectly matched his eyes. His blonde hair was impeccably styled, and his teeth caught the candlelight with a sickening, manufactured gleam. He looked like a peacock sitting in a row of ravens.
As Dumbledore introduced him, Lockhart stood up and flashed a devastatingly handsome, entirely hollow smile at the student body. The Great Hall filled with the swooning sighs of hundreds of female students, including Hannah and Susan beside her.
Sunshine did not sigh. She did not blink.
Her sixty-year-old mind dissected the man in three seconds. He possessed the posture of a narcissist, the wandering eyes of a con artist, and the magical aura of a wet paper bag. He was a fraud.
Why? Sunshine asked herself, picking up her golden goblet of pumpkin juice. Dumbledore is a master Legilimens. He knows Lockhart is a charlatan. Hiring an incompetent fool during a time when the Dark Lord is actively trying to return is not an oversight. It is a calculated strategy.
By removing competent defensive instruction from the board, Dumbledore was ensuring that the students remained vulnerable, dependent, and fundamentally weak. He was ensuring that when the crises arose, only his chosen, groomed protagonist would be forced to step forward.
It was a staggering display of manipulative cruelty.
"Isn't he gorgeous?" Hannah whispered, clutching her hands to her chest. "I read Magical Me three times this summer."
"He certainly has very nice teeth," Sunshine replied, her voice soft and entirely devoid of inflection.
She turned back to her plate, cutting her boiled potatoes into perfectly symmetrical squares. The second year had officially begun. The castle was under the stewardship of a general who sacrificed his own troops for narrative convenience, and the Defense professor was a preening hazard.
But Sunshine Addams was not a troop, and she was not a hazard. She was a ghost. And as she chewed her unseasoned food, she made a silent vow to her trapped, screaming magic: she would let this castle burn to the ground before she ever allowed them to drag her into the light.