Haze (гет)

Even two years on, there are hints of it - Harriet can't quite deny it - of Voldemort's presence on the castle grounds - creeping shadows and strange noises and too-thick mist hovering at the corner of one's vision. It scares the younger children - and even the older teenagers, many of whom had been present for the Battle of Hogwarts, if not active participants, seem unsettled more often than not. Harriet doesn't know how to fix it - doesn't know how to remake Hogwarts into what it had once been - into the place she had known it as growing up - into the place she knows it to be, still. All she can do is reiterate - over and over - to pale and nervous students who sometimes can't quite meet her eyes - that Voldemort is dead. He's gone. And he can't hurt them anymore. Not any of them.
Or: One frigid night in January, Headmaster Snape ventures into the Forbidden Forest to banish a rumored Dark creature.
He comes back...changed.