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Howl’s latest lament began, as most of his performances did, with a sigh so weighty it could have anchored a ship.
Sophie paused mid-swipe of her mop, her knuckles whitening around the handle. The wooden floor beneath her gleamed in patches where she’d scrubbed, but the rest remained stubbornly dull, streaked with the footprints of a wizard and his apprentice who traipsed mud, soot, and the occasional glittering substance (which Sophie refused to investigate) through the castle with the dedication of postal couriers.
She glanced up.
Howl had arranged himself across the chaise longue like a fallen opera heroine. One arm was flung over his forehead, fingers curled just so to suggest consumption rather than mere melancholy, while his other hand dangled limply off the side, brushing the floor in a way that surely had to be deliberate — no one’s wrist bent that elegantly by accident. His hair, usually a carefully maintained cascade of amber and gold, was deliberately tousled, as if he’d spent the last hour tousling it for maximum ravaged poet effect. Which would not have surprised Sophie in the slightest.
“Sophie,” he moaned, his voice trembling with the gravitas of a man announcing his own funeral, “do you know what it is to be cursed?”
Sophie exhaled hard through her nose. Of course she did, better than most in fact, though she couldn’t say as much.
“Is this about your hair again?” she asked, plunging the mop back into the bucket with more force than was required. The water sloshed out over the sides, sending suds skittering across the floor. “I haven’t touched your lotions and potions. If you’ve turned it purple again, I’m not fixing it. Last time, I had to scrub that bathtub for hours.”
Howl’s eyelashes fluttered; a practiced, dramatic sweep. “Not my hair, Sophie. My name.” He pressed a hand to his chest, as if the mere utterance pained him deeply. “Do you comprehend the agony of bearing a name like Wizard Pendragon? A name that looms over the world like a thunderclap, suffocating me beneath the weight of its own brilliance? I am shackled to it, yet I cannot escape it! There is no rest for a man of my magnificence, only the ceaseless expectations of a world that demands I remain flawless—”
Sophie wrung out the mop with unnecessary force. “You chose that name yourself.”
“A youthful folly!” Howl flung his arm outward, nearly upending a vase of (probably enchanted) flowers. “I was but a naive boy! I didn’t realize then that such a name would hunt me, Sophie. That strangers would whisper it in markets, that kings would demand its power, that—”
“That your admirers would sigh over it in tea shops?” Sophie interrupted, arching a brow.
Howl’s pause was infinitesimal. “Yes. Even that. It’s exhausting.”
She muttered something uncharitable under her breath, and stared back with a look so unimpressed it could have withered a laurel wreath. Howl either did not notice or did not care, and went back to his lamenting.
A log shifted in the fireplace with a crack like a snapping bone. "Oh, spare us the performance," Calcifer groused, his flames licking higher in a sulky ripple of blue. "If you’re going to moan, at least do it where I can’t hear you."
Howl gasped, pressing a hand to his chest as if struck. "Et tu, Calcifer? I come to you, a humble supplicant, seeking solace in my hour of need—"
"You came to the sofa because it’s within flinging distance of the biscuits," Calcifer interrupted, his voice drier than the kindling Sophie had stacked that morning. "And if you call yourself ‘humble’ one more time, I’ll ‘humbly’ incinerate your left boot."
Sophie hid a smirk in the folds of her apron.
Howl, undeterred, slid gracelessly to the floor beside the hearth, his sleeves pooling around him like melted butter. "You’re both cruel," he declared, tilting his head back to better aim his pout upward. "A wizard’s name is his destiny, Calcifer! Would you have me bound forever to the shackles of ‘Pendragon’?"
Calcifer’s flames dimmed to a sceptical orange. "I’d have you bound to a broom if it meant you’d sweep up your own glitter for once." A spark spat pointedly toward Howl’s abandoned shoes, which were, indeed, shedding iridescent flakes onto Sophie’s freshly cleaned floor.
"That’s not—! Ugh!" Howl flopped onto his back, his hair fanning out in a golden halo of despair. "No one understands me."
Sophie had learned early on that living with Howl required the patience of a saint and the stubbornness of a mule.
His moods shifted like the castle’s doors—one moment Porthaven’s bustling harbour, the next the bleak moors of the Waste. He sulked over spilled potions like they were personal betrayals, preened when compliments were offered (and when they weren’t), and had once dissolved into a literal puddle of despair because his socks didn’t “sing to his soul” that morning.
But today—today was testing her.
For forty-seven minutes, Howl had been elaborating on his suffering.
Forty-seven minutes of sighs so dramatic they ruffled the curtains.
Forty-seven minutes of wrist-to-forehead poses that would make a stage actor blush.
Forty-seven minutes of Sophie’s grip on her temper fraying like an old broom.
“—and then,” Howl continued, rolling onto his side with the grace of a dying swan, “there’s the expectations, Sophie! The sheer, unrelenting pressure of being me—”
The mop handle cracked against the bucket.
Howl blinked.
Sophie straightened, wiped her hands on her apron, and inhaled deeply. The air smelled of lemon soap, damp wood, and the faint, ever-present tang of magic—like burnt sugar and lightning.
“Howl,” she began, very calmly.
He perked up, mistaking her tone for sympathy.
“I am going,” she continued, “to clean anywhere else.”
Howl’s face fell. “But I’m mid-crisis—”
“And I’m mid-floor.” Sophie hoisted the bucket, sloshing water perilously close to his boots. “Suffer quietly for once.”
She turned on her heel. Behind her, Howl made a noise like a deflating soufflé.
“Fine,” he called after her. “But don’t go into my bedroom, Sophie!”
Sophie didn’t dignify that with a response and instead gathered her bucket with determination, as if she had just made a very firm decision to abandon Howl to his self-pitying. She marched toward the door, only half-hearing Howl’s frustrated sigh.
She rolled her eyes, but she had already closed the door behind her. The hallway was blessedly quiet.
The door to Michael's bedroom creaked open as Sophie passed. "Is he...?" Michael mouthed, peering out with a smudge of phosphorescent powder on his cheek.
"Mid-performance," Sophie confirmed, hefting her bucket. "The tragedy of being too magnificent today."
Michael sighed, rolling up the sleeves of his singed apron. "Right. I'll double the soundproofing on my next batch, then." He hesitated. "You know, last week he made me transpose an entire spellbook into iambic pentameter because his 'muse demanded symmetry.'"
Sophie snorted. "Be grateful it wasn't limericks."
Michael gave a tight-lipped smile and a quick parting wave as he closed his door, in a desperate attempt to block out Howl’s wailing. Sophie leaned against the wall, letting the cool stone seep into her back. Calcifer’s grumbles drifted down the corridor, punctuated by the occasional crackle of flames.
She closed her eyes.
Then opened them.
Because at the end of the hall, where there had definitely been a solid wall yesterday, stood a door. It was plain. Unassuming. Oak, with a tarnished brass knob and a thin crack of darkness where it didn’t quite meet the frame.
Sophie frowned. The castle rearranged itself often, but never subtly. Doors didn’t just appear in Howl’s castle unless they were meant to be found, or unless Howl himself had forgotten to lock them away. New doors usually announced themselves with a bang, or at least a puff of suspicious smoke. This one felt… different. Like it had been waiting.
The air around the door tasted different; it wasn’t the usual metallic zing of Howl's magic, but something older. Like the scent of rain on a gravestone, or the hush of a library after midnight. Somewhere in the walls, the castle groaned — not its usual petulant creaking, but a deep, bone-rattling sound that made the dust rise in golden swirls around her ankles.
She approached slowly. The floorboards creaked underfoot, but the door made no sound. No whisper of magic, no warning hum. Just old wood and cold metal.
Her fingers brushed the knob.
It turned on its own.
The room beyond was small, cramped, and stale.
Dust layered every surface in a thick, grey blanket. A narrow cot sat against one wall, its mattress bare. A desk, its wood scarred with ink stains and knife nicks, stood beneath a grimy window. The glass was so clouded it might as well have been painted shut.
Sophie stepped inside. The air tasted like neglect, dry and bitter, with an undertone of something sharper. Old spells, perhaps. Or regrets.
Her eyes landed on the desk.
A single sheet of parchment lay exposed, its edges curled with age. The rest of the surface was empty, save for a chipped inkwell and a pen nibbled by rust.
Sophie shouldn’t have looked.
But the only room she’d been explicitly told to avoid was Howl’s, so she did anyway.
The writing was unmistakably his — a frantic, uneven scrawl, words scratched out and rewritten as if he’d been arguing with himself.
Hopkins, it began. Then, rejected. No—rejected. Again.
Below that, fragments:
— can’t go back —
— why won’t they —
— should never have promised —
And then, just once, in letters so heavy they’d torn the paper:
COWARD.
Sophie’s breath caught.
This wasn’t just a discarded name. This was a wound.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
“I should have known I’d find you in here, Mrs. Nose.”
Howl stood in the doorway, his face unreadable.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Howl’s expression was carefully blank, but Sophie knew him too well. The tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers twitched at his sides — he was unsettled.
“I thought I told you,” he said lightly, “not to go into my room.”
Sophie didn’t flinch. “This isn’t your bedroom.”
“Semantics, Mrs. Nose.” He stepped inside, his boots leaving prints in the dust. “This room is private.”
Sophie held up the parchment. “Then why leave this lying around?”
Howl’s gaze flickered to the paper. For a heartbeat, his mask slipped, something raw and vulnerable flashed in his eyes. Then it was gone, buried beneath a practiced smirk.
“Ah. That.” He plucked the parchment from her fingers, folding it with deliberate care. “Just an old name I’ve since discarded. Howl Hopkins. Dreadful, isn’t it? The alliteration alone is tragic.”
Sophie crossed her arms. “You didn’t just discard it. You ran from it.”
“I reconsidered it,” he corrected, flippant.
“You run from everything,” she shot back. “Your responsibilities, your contracts, your suitors, even your hair colour when you’re bored. But this—” She pointed at the folded parchment. “This isn’t just vanity. You’re afraid.”
Howl’s smile went brittle. “And what, precisely, would I be afraid of, Mrs. Nose?”
“Being known,” she said softly.
The room went very still.
Howl looked away first. In the silence, Sophie noticed the other details. The faint chalk marks on the floor, scuffed, but still visible. A summoning circle, perhaps. The single shelf, empty save for a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. The way the dust didn’t quite settle where Howl stood, as if the air around him resisted the stillness.
“This was your first workshop,” she realized aloud. Howl didn’t deny it.
Sophie pressed on. “Hopkins was the name you used when you were starting out. Before you became Pendragon.”
He let out a humourless laugh. “And what a brilliant transformation that was. From a nobody to a legend.” His voice turned bitter. “A legend who can’t go back.”
Sophie understood then.
Howl wasn’t just running from his past.
He was running from the shame of it—the fear that the boy he’d been would never measure up to the man he’d pretended to be.
She reached out, hesitated, then placed a hand on his arm.
“Howl,” she said, “you idiot.”
He blinked.
“You don’t have to be Pendragon all the time,” she continued. “And you don’t have to be Hopkins either. You could just… be you.”
Howl stared at her. Then, slowly, his shoulders relaxed.
“And who,” he asked, with a ghost of his usual dramatics, “is that, exactly?”
Sophie smiled. “I’m still figuring that out myself.”
Sophie watched Howl’s face carefully. The way his jaw tightened, then relaxed, as if he were physically wrestling with the idea of being known. The air between them hummed with something unspoken, like the moment before a spell takes hold.
Then, with a theatrical sigh that didn’t quite mask his relief, Howl flicked a finger toward the cloth-wrapped bundle on the shelf. It unrolled itself midair, revealing a tarnished silver mirror with a crack running through its centre.
"I kept this," he admitted, catching it one-handed. "First divination tool I ever owned. Useless now — the crack distorts everything. Saw my own nose as a turnip once. Horrifying."
Sophie bit back a laugh. "Why keep it, then?"
Howl turned the mirror over, his thumb brushing the flaw. "To remember," he said, quieter now, "that not all broken things need fixing."
The words lingered, softer than dust motes in sunlight. Sophie felt the truth of them settle into her bones. Howl’s past wasn’t something to be polished into grandeur, any more than her own curse had been. Some cracks were simply part of the story.
She nudged his shoulder with hers. "Come on," she said, nodding toward the door. "Calcifer’s probably burned Michael’s lunch by now."
As they left the room, Sophie glanced back. The door was gone. In its place, just a wall.
Howl didn’t seem surprised.
“Castle’s moods,” he said airily, though his voice was softer than before.
Sophie hummed. “Or maybe it knew you didn’t need it anymore.” Howl didn’t reply. But when they reached the kitchen, he didn’t protest when Sophie handed him a mop.
Calcifer’s flames crackled with something suspiciously like approval. "Took you long enough," he muttered, stretching his fire taller to peer at Howl. "I’ve been waiting years for someone to put that man to work."
Howl gasped, clutching the mop like a wounded knight with a broken lance. "Betrayed by my own fire demon! Sophie’s corrupted you!"
"No," Calcifer said, snapping a spark at Howl’s boots. "She just listens. Unlike some people who monologue at furniture. And for stars’ sake, Pendragon, Hopkins — whatever you’re calling yourself today — put your back into it.”
Sophie hid her smile in the steam of the teakettle.