Penelope Selwyn

The first time Y/N Selwyn imprinted on Draco Malfoy, she was twelve years old and utterly mortified.

It happened in the middle of a Transfiguration lesson, of all places. Professor McGonagall had been mid-sentence about the theoretical principles of turning vinegar into wine when the scent hit Y/N like a stunning spell to the chest. Cedarwood and frost, sharp and cold and absolutely devastating. Her quill clattered to the parchment, splattering ink everywhere, and her eyes snapped up to find the source before her brain could catch up with her instincts.

Draco Malfoy was three rows ahead, laughing at something Blaise Zabini had whispered, his head thrown back in that insufferably arrogant way of his, and Y/N’s entire world tilted on its axis.

The imprint bond snapped into place so violently that she actually gasped, earning a concerned look from Hannah Abbott beside her. Y/N had clapped a hand over her mouth, her cheeks flooding with heat, and spent the rest of the lesson staring blankly at her ruined notes while her omega instincts went absolutely haywire. Every time Malfoy moved, she noticed. Every time he spoke, her ears strained to catch the sound. When he ran a hand through his white-blond hair, her fingers twitched with the inexplicable urge to touch it.

It was, without question, the worst day of her life.

She’d gone straight to her Head of House that evening, trembling and teary-eyed, begging Professor Sprout to tell her there had been some kind of mistake. Imprinting was rare, after all. Surely it couldn’t happen at twelve. Surely there was a way to undo it.

But Professor Sprout had just looked at her with those kind, weathered eyes and explained gently that imprint bonds were powerful things. They weren’t entirely unbreakable, but the only way to overwrite an imprint was through a permanent mating mark from another alpha—a step that was irreversible, deeply intimate, and certainly not something to be considered at twelve years old. As long as Y/N remained unmarked, the bond with Draco would hold.

And so began Y/N Selwyn’s private, three-year-long tragedy of being hopelessly, irrevocably bonded to the one alpha in Hogwarts who seemed to find her very existence an inconvenience.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand why. She was a Hufflepuff, for Merlin’s sake. A soft-spoken Hufflepuff who spent her free time knitting scarves for house-elves and tending to the moonflowers in the greenhouse. She had long, silky hair that she usually wore in a messy plait over her shoulder and eyes that were far too expressive for her own good. She cried at sad passages in books and brought tea to first-years who looked homesick and once spent an entire weekend nursing an injured garden gnome back to health.

Draco Malfoy, by contrast, was the epitome of Slytherin aristocracy. Pristine robes, cutting remarks, and a sneer so practiced it might as well have been carved onto his face. He moved through the castle like he owned it, surrounded by his carefully curated circle of pureblood elites, and he had never once looked at Y/N as anything other than an annoyance to be tolerated.

She’d tried, in the beginning, to stay away from him. She really had. But Hogwarts in the twentieth century was not the Hogwarts of old, where omegas had been expected to suffer their heats in silence and shame. The Omega Welfare Act of 1987 had changed everything. Omegas were to be supported, protected, and accommodated. Their cycles were to be tracked by the school’s matrons, their needs anticipated and met. And if an omega had imprinted on an alpha who was present within the school, that alpha was legally obligated to provide comfort and scenting in the days leading up to their heat, regardless of personal feelings on the matter—at least until the omega was properly mated to someone else.

It was, as Draco Malfoy had loudly declared upon receiving his first official notice from the Omega Welfare Office three years ago, “a complete and utter violation of personal autonomy.”

Y/N had been standing right there in the corridor when he’d said it, clutching the matching notice she’d just received, her face burning so hotly she was surprised her tears hadn’t evaporated on contact. Pansy Parkinson had snickered, Daphne Greengrass had looked vaguely sympathetic, and Draco had crumpled the parchment in his fist and stormed off without even glancing in Y/N’s direction.

That had been the start of it.

Now, at fifteen, the pattern was well-established. Every three months like clockwork, the notices would arrive. Draco Malfoy was hereby required to remain within close proximity of Omega Y/N Selwyn for the seventy-two hours preceding her estimated heat onset. He was to provide scenting upon request. He was to remain accessible at all times. Failure to comply would result in disciplinary action, up to and including suspension of prefect privileges and notification of the Ministry’s Omega Rights Division.

Draco had tested those boundaries exactly once in fifth year, when he’d deliberately sequestered himself in the Slytherin common room and refused to come out. Y/N had endured six hours of mounting distress before Madam Pomfrey had been forced to sedate her, and the subsequent inquiry had nearly cost Draco his position on the Slytherin Quidditch team. After that, even Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had stepped in, their owled letter arriving with the Malfoy crest pressed into emerald wax.

Draco,

We understand your frustration, but this situation is not one you can afford to fight. The Selwyn family is old and respected. The omega welfare laws are ironclad. You will comply. Do not embarrass this family by forcing the Ministry to intervene. You are a Malfoy. Act like one.

Your Mother and Father

Y/N only knew about the letter because Draco had been so furious he’d shoved it in her face the next time he’d been forced to sit with her in the library, his grey eyes blazing with resentment.

“Are you happy?” he’d snarled, the parchment trembling in his grip. “Even my parents are on your side now.”

She hadn’t been happy. She’d been devastated, actually, because the letter made it abundantly clear that Draco wasn’t doing this voluntarily. That he would never do this voluntarily. That every moment he spent with her was being extracted from him through threats and obligation, and that when he looked at her with those storm-grey eyes, all he saw was a cage.

But none of that mattered to her omega.

Her omega, traitorous and desperate and utterly beyond her control, only cared about one thing: the alpha was here. The alpha was close. The alpha smelled like cedarwood and frost and home.

And as her heat drew nearer with each passing day, Y/N’s carefully maintained composure was beginning to crack.

“You’re staring again,” Ernie Macmillan said mildly, not looking up from his Arithmancy homework.

Y/N startled, nearly upsetting her goblet of pumpkin juice. They were sitting at the Hufflepuff table in the Great Hall, the dinner hour in full swing around them, and she had indeed been staring across the room at the Slytherin table where Draco Malfoy was engaged in what looked like a deeply irritating conversation with Theodore Nott.

“I wasn’t staring,” she lied, dropping her gaze to her plate.

Ernie snorted. “Y/N, you’ve been staring at Malfoy for three years. It’s practically your hobby at this point.”

“It’s not a hobby, it’s a medical condition,” she muttered darkly, pushing a roasted potato around her plate. “A very unfortunate, very embarrassing medical condition.”

Hannah Abbott, seated on Y/N’s other side, made a sympathetic noise. “When’s your heat due?”

“Five days.” Y/N’s voice was small. “I got my notice this morning. The accommodations start day after tomorrow.”

“Accommodations,” Ernie said, making air quotes with his fingers. “Is that what we’re calling forced proximity with the prince of Slytherin these days?”

“I didn’t ask for this, Ernie.”

“I know you didn’t.” His expression softened. “I’m sorry. It’s rotten luck, imprinting on someone who’s such an absolute prat about it.”

Y/N didn’t answer. Because the thing was, Draco Malfoy was a prat. He was arrogant and cold and casually cruel, and he’d made his feelings about their situation abundantly clear from the very beginning. But he was also, in the quiet moments that no one else got to see, something else entirely.

During her last pre-heat period, when her distress had spiked particularly badly in the middle of the night, he’d come to the Hufflepuff omega suite without complaint. He’d sat on the edge of her bed and let her curl up against his side, her face pressed into the junction of his neck where his scent was strongest, and he’d stayed there for three hours without moving. He hadn’t said a single word, but his hand had rested on her lower back, steady and warm, and his scent had wrapped around her like a blanket.

The next morning, he’d been back to sneering at her in the corridors, and she’d wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.

It was the inconsistency that was slowly driving her mad. The way he would be cold and dismissive one moment and then, when her omega was truly in distress, he would shift into something almost gentle. Something that made her heart ache with longing for a version of him that didn’t seem to hate her.

“I just wish…” Y/N started, then stopped, shaking her head. “Never mind.”

Hannah squeezed her hand. “Wish what?”

I wish he wanted me. I wish he chose me. I wish I wasn’t just an obligation to him.

“I wish I’d imprinted on someone else,” she said instead, and the words tasted like ash.

The Gryffindor common room was bustling with post-dinner activity, but Harry Potter had carved out a small corner of relative quiet near the window where he was ostensibly working on a Charms essay and actually watching Ron Weasley try to teach Hermione Granger how to play wizard’s chess.

“You’re not supposed to tell her all your strategies,” Ron was saying, exasperated. “The point is to beat her, not give her a manual.”

“I’m not asking for a manual,” Hermione shot back. “I’m asking why the knight can only move in an L-shape. It seems terribly inefficient.”

“It’s chess, Hermione, not a Ministry audit.”

Harry grinned, dipping his quill in ink, when the portrait hole swung open and Neville Longbottom climbed through, looking slightly flustered.

“Alright, Neville?” Harry called.

Neville made his way over, dropping into the chair beside Harry with a heavy sigh. “Just got cornered by Y/N Selwyn in the corridor.”

Harry’s eyebrows rose. “Cornered? By Y/N?” Y/N Selwyn was possibly the least intimidating person in the entire school. She was soft-spoken and gentle and had once apologized to a suit of armor for bumping into it.

“Not in a bad way,” Neville clarified. “She just… she wanted to know if I’d seen Malfoy. She looked really upset, Harry. Sort of pale and shaky. She said she needed to find him.”

Ron, who had apparently been listening despite his chess tutorial, made a disgusted noise. “Don’t tell me it’s that time again.”

“What time?” Hermione asked.

“The time when Malfoy gets even more insufferable than usual because he has to play nursemaid to some omega he can’t stand,” Ron said, moving his rook with a decisive click. “I don’t know why the school keeps forcing them together. It’s clearly miserable for both of them.”

“The school keeps forcing them together because Y/N imprinted on him,” Hermione said, her tone taking on the lecturing quality it always did when she was about to educate someone. “Imprinting bonds are serious magical phenomena. An omega in pre-heat who’s separated from their imprinted alpha can experience severe physiological distress, up to and including cardiac events. The Omega Welfare Act exists to prevent exactly that kind of medical crisis.”

“Yeah, but it’s Malfoy,” Ron argued. “He’s probably the one causing the cardiac events.”

“That’s not funny, Ron.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. The bloke’s a git. He made her cry in the library last term, did you know that? Susan Bones told me. Said he told her she was pathetic for following him around like a lost crup.”

Harry frowned. He didn’t know Y/N well—she was in Hufflepuff, quiet, mostly kept to herself—but he’d seen her around the castle often enough. She always seemed slightly sad, her eyes carrying a weight that didn’t match her gentle demeanor. And he’d noticed the way she looked at Malfoy. Not with the doe-eyed infatuation that some omegas displayed toward their imprinted alphas, but with something more complicated. Longing mixed with resignation. Hope that had been bruised too many times.

“Maybe he’ll come around,” Harry said, though he didn’t quite believe it. Malfoy didn’t strike him as the coming-around type.

Neville shook his head. “I don’t know. I felt bad for her. She kept apologizing for bothering me, even though she was clearly in distress. She’s too nice for her own good.”

“Too nice for Malfoy, that’s for sure,” Ron muttered.

Hermione was quiet for a moment, her brow furrowed in thought. “You know, imprint bonds aren’t random. The magic responds to compatibility on a fundamental level. There has to be something in Malfoy that the bond recognized, something he doesn’t show to the rest of us.”

“Or,” Ron countered, “the magic just has a terrible sense of humor.”

Harry laughed, but his mind lingered on Y/N Selwyn, pale and shaky in the corridor, desperately searching for an alpha who didn’t want to be found.

The next morning, Y/N woke up feeling like her skin was too tight.

It was always like this in the days leading up to her heat. Her senses sharpened until every sound was too loud, every texture was too rough, and the world felt like it was pressing in on her from all sides. The only thing that helped was the alpha’s scent, but she didn’t have that yet. She wouldn’t have it until the official accommodation period began.

She dragged herself through her morning classes, barely absorbing a word. Professor Binns droned on about goblin rebellions while Y/N pressed her palms flat against the cool wooden surface of her desk and tried to remember how to breathe normally. Her omega was stirring restlessly beneath her skin, sending waves of need through her body that she couldn’t control.

Alpha, it whined. Where is alpha? Need alpha. Need alpha now.

“Shut up,” she whispered under her breath, earning a strange look from Justin Finch-Fletchley.

By lunchtime, she was in full distress. Her hands were trembling, her scent had soured with anxiety, and she couldn’t stop the little whimpering sounds that kept escaping her throat. She knew she should go to the hospital wing, but Madam Pomfrey would only send for Draco anyway, and somehow that felt even worse than suffering alone.

She was huddled in an alcove on the third floor, her knees drawn up to her chest and her face buried in her arms, when she heard footsteps approaching.

“There you are.”

Her head snapped up. Draco Malfoy was standing at the entrance to the alcove, his arms crossed over his chest and his expression unreadable. He was wearing his school robes with the Slytherin crest, his tie perfectly knotted, his hair immaculate as always. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a portrait of pureblood perfection, and the contrast between him and Y/N—disheveled, red-eyed, and shaking—couldn’t have been starker.

“You’re not supposed to be here yet,” she managed, her voice coming out embarrassingly wobbly. “The accommodation period doesn’t start until tomorrow.”

“Yes, well.” He shifted his weight, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Your scent spiked about an hour ago. I could smell it from the dungeons. It’s…” He paused, his jaw tightening. “It’s distracting.”

Y/N’s cheeks flamed. Of course. He wasn’t here because he was concerned about her. He was here because her distress was inconveniencing him.

“Sorry,” she whispered, dropping her gaze. “I didn’t mean to… I can’t control it.”

“I know you can’t control it.” His voice was sharp, but when she risked a glance up at him, his expression had shifted into something less hostile. Irritated, yes, but also… resigned. “Come on. Get up.”

“Where are we going?”

“The omega suite, obviously. You’re in no state to be wandering around the castle, and if I leave you here, Pomfrey will have my head on a platter.”

It wasn’t kindness. It was pragmatism, wrapped in annoyance and tied with a ribbon of obligation. But Y/N’s omega didn’t care about the motivation. The alpha was here, the alpha was speaking to her, and the alpha was going to take her somewhere safe. That was all that mattered.

She unfolded herself from the alcove, her legs unsteady beneath her, and Draco’s hand shot out to grip her elbow before she could stumble. The contact sent a jolt of warmth through her entire body, and she couldn’t stop the small, relieved sound that escaped her lips.

Draco’s nostrils flared. He didn’t release her arm.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, but his voice had lost some of its edge. “You’re ridiculous. We still have a full day before your heat, and you’re already falling apart.”

“I know.” Y/N’s eyes stung with unshed tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a burden.”

Something flickered across his face—too quick for her to identify—and then he was pulling her forward, guiding her down the corridor with his hand still wrapped around her elbow.

“Stop apologizing,” he said. “It’s annoying.”

They walked in silence. Y/N focused on putting one foot in front of the other, on the steady warmth of Draco’s grip, on the way his scent wrapped around her like a shield against the overwhelming chaos of her own senses. She was so tired. She was always so tired in the days before her heat, her body burning through energy faster than she could replenish it.

By the time they reached the omega suite—a small but comfortable room off the hospital wing, reserved for omegas who needed private accommodations during their cycles—Y/N was barely upright. Draco had to key in the access code himself, supporting her weight with an arm around her waist, and she was too far gone to even feel embarrassed about it.

The suite was warm and dimly lit, furnished with a large bed piled high with soft blankets, a small sitting area, and an adjoining bathroom. A stack of fresh towels sat on the dresser, and someone—probably Madam Pomfrey—had left a tray of light snacks and a pitcher of water on the nightstand.

Draco deposited her on the bed with considerably more gentleness than she’d expected, then stepped back, running a hand through his hair in a gesture she’d come to recognize as a sign of stress.

“Right,” he said, looking anywhere but at her. “You’re here. You’re safe. I’ll be back tomorrow when the official period starts.”

Panic surged through her. “You’re leaving?”

“I have classes, Selwyn. And a Quidditch practice. And a life that doesn’t revolve around—”

He stopped, but the words hung in the air between them.

Doesn’t revolve around you.

“Right,” Y/N said quietly, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Of course. Sorry. Go.”

Draco stood there for a long moment, his jaw working like he was chewing on something unpleasant. Then, with a frustrated exhale, he crossed the room and dropped into the armchair beside her bed.

“I’ll stay for ten minutes,” he said, not looking at her. “Just until you settle.”

Y/N’s omega purred with satisfaction. The alpha was staying. The alpha was going to watch over her while she rested.

She curled up on her side, her cheek pressed against the cool pillow, and let her eyes drift closed. The panic receded, pushed back by the steady presence of the alpha nearby, and she felt her muscles begin to unclench one by one.

“Thank you,” she murmured, already half-asleep.

Draco didn’t respond. But when she woke up an hour later, he was still there, a book open in his lap and a frown on his face, and his scent had settled over the room like fresh snow.

The official accommodation period began the next morning, and with it came the enforced togetherness that both of them had been dreading.

Madam Pomfrey had informed them that, due to the intensity of Y/N’s pre-heat symptoms this cycle, the standard seventy-two-hour requirement had been extended to a full week. They would be sharing the omega suite for the duration, with Draco permitted to leave only for essential classes and Y/N not permitted to leave at all. Meal trays would be delivered. Visitors would be restricted. And Draco would be expected to provide scenting upon request, which was a polite way of saying that Y/N was going to be clingy and needy and utterly incapable of functioning without him, and he was just going to have to deal with it.

“A week,” Draco said flatly, standing in the middle of the suite with his arms crossed and his expression murderous. “You’re telling me I have to stay here for a week.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Y/N said tiredly from her nest on the bed. She’d spent the morning arranging her blankets into the perfect configuration, and she was too exhausted to deal with Draco’s temper. “Take it up with Pomfrey.”

“I did take it up with Pomfrey. She threatened to write to the Ministry.”

“Then I guess you’re staying.”

Draco made a sound of pure frustration and began pacing the length of the room. He’d done a lot of pacing over the years, Y/N had noticed. It was his default response to situations he couldn’t control, and their situation was very much one he couldn’t control.

“This is absurd,” he muttered. “Completely absurd. I’m missing a week of practice. A week. Flint is going to have my head.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive.”

He whirled on her. “You’re awfully calm about all of this.”

“What do you want me to do?” Y/N asked, her voice sharper than she’d intended. “Throw a tantrum? I’ve had three years to get used to this, Malfoy. You’ve had three years to get used to this. At some point, you have to stop fighting it and just… accept it.”

“I will never accept it.” His voice was cold, but there was something underneath it that she couldn’t quite identify. “I will never accept being forced into a bond I didn’t choose with an omega I didn’t want.”

The words hit her like a physical blow. She’d known, of course. He’d made his feelings abundantly clear over the years. But hearing it stated so plainly, so brutally, still hurt in ways she couldn’t articulate.

“I didn’t choose this either,” she said quietly. “I didn’t choose to imprint on you. I didn’t choose to need you so badly it physically hurts. I didn’t choose any of this.”

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it again. His expression flickered—guilt, maybe, or something adjacent to it—before settling back into its usual mask of irritation.

“Fine,” he said, the fight draining out of him. “Fine. We’re both stuck. Let’s just… get through it.”

He retreated to the armchair, as far from the bed as he could get while still being in the same room, and pulled out a book with aggressive determination.

Y/N watched him for a moment, then turned away, pressing her face into her pillow. Her omega was whimpering with distress—alpha is angry, alpha doesn’t want us, bad omega, bad—but she didn’t have the energy to soothe it. She was so tired. So tired of wanting someone who resented her very existence. So tired of being a burden, an obligation, a problem to be managed.

A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away before Draco could see.

The first two days were the hardest.

Y/N’s symptoms intensified as her heat drew closer, her omega becoming increasingly demanding and difficult to control. She needed constant scenting, constant proximity, constant reassurance. She couldn’t sleep unless Draco was within arm’s reach. She couldn’t eat unless he’d touched the plate first. She couldn’t think unless his scent was thick in the air around her.

It was humiliating.

“Please,” she whispered on the second night, her voice cracking with desperation. She was curled up in her nest, trembling with need, her skin burning and her mind foggy. “Please, alpha. Just… just for a little while. I can’t… I need…”

Draco was standing by the window, his silhouette sharp against the moonlight. He’d been keeping his distance as much as possible, but her distress was clearly affecting him. His scent had sharpened, his movements had become more agitated, and there was a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before.

“You need what?” he asked, his voice rough.

“Scenting.” The word came out as a whine. “Please. Just for a few minutes. I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good.”

He turned to look at her, and something in his expression cracked. She must have looked truly pathetic—red-faced and teary-eyed, her hair a tangled mess around her shoulders, her hands clutching desperately at the blankets.

“Salazar’s sake,” he muttered, but he was already moving toward the bed. “Move over.”

She shifted to make room for him, and he climbed onto the bed with obvious reluctance, positioning himself against the headboard with a pillow between them like some kind of barrier. It didn’t matter. The moment he was close enough for her to press her face against his shoulder, the relief was instantaneous.

His scent flooded her senses—cedarwood and frost, clean and sharp and utterly intoxicating. Her omega keened with joy, and she felt the tension drain from her body for the first time in days.

“Thank you,” she breathed, her words muffled against the fabric of his shirt. “Thank you, alpha. Thank you.”

“Don’t call me that.” But his voice was softer now, and his hand had somehow found its way to the back of her head, his fingers tangling gently in her hair.

She should have been embarrassed by how easily she melted into him. She should have been mortified by the way she was practically purring, her body pressed shamelessly against his side. But she was too far gone to care. The alpha was here. The alpha was holding her. Nothing else mattered.

She fell asleep like that, wrapped in cedarwood and frost, and when she woke in the morning, Draco was still there. He’d fallen asleep against the headboard, his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle, and his arm had somehow ended up around her waist.

Y/N stared at him for a long moment, her heart doing something complicated in her chest. He looked younger in sleep, the perpetual sneer smoothed away, his features soft and almost gentle. She wanted to trace the line of his jaw, to press her fingers against the curve of his lips, to pretend—just for a moment—that this was real.

But it wasn’t real. He was here because he had to be. He was holding her because the alternative was listening to her cry. And when her heat was over and the accommodation period ended, he would go back to ignoring her in the corridors and sneering at her across the Great Hall.

She closed her eyes and let herself pretend anyway.

On the third day, Draco brought her breakfast.

It was a small thing—just a tray from the delivery cart outside the door—but something about the gesture made Y/N’s omega preen with pleasure. The alpha was providing for her. The alpha was taking care of her.

“You need to eat,” he said gruffly, setting the tray on the bed beside her. “You barely touched your dinner last night.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

“You’re never hungry before your heat. That’s why I’m telling you to eat.”

She blinked at him. “How do you know I’m never hungry before my heat?”

He stiffened, suddenly very focused on arranging the toast on her plate. “It’s a pattern. I noticed.”

“You… noticed?”

“Don’t read into it, Selwyn. I notice lots of things. It’s called being observant.”

But Y/N’s omega was already latching onto the revelation, spinning it into something hopeful and dangerous. Alpha pays attention to us. Alpha knows our patterns. Alpha cares.

She forced herself to push the thoughts aside. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t mean anything.

“Thank you,” she said instead, picking up a piece of toast. “For the breakfast. And for…” She gestured vaguely at the bed, at his continued presence beside her. “All of it. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

Draco was quiet for a moment, staring at the wall. “It’s not your fault.”

The words were so unexpected that Y/N nearly choked on her toast. “What?”

“The imprinting. The bond. The…” He waved his hand irritably. “All of it. It’s not your fault. You didn’t choose it any more than I did.”

“I know I didn’t.”

“Then stop apologizing for it.” He turned to look at her, his grey eyes unreadable. “You’re always apologizing. For existing, for needing things, for being an inconvenience. It’s exhausting.”

Y/N didn’t know what to say to that. She’d spent so long feeling guilty for the burden she’d imposed on him that she’d never considered how her constant apologies might affect him.

“I’m sor—” She caught herself, then laughed, a small, surprised sound. “Right. No more apologizing.”

The corner of Draco’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but closer than she’d ever seen directed at her. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh.”

“Is it?”

“In three years? Yes. You’re always either crying or apologizing or looking at me like I’ve personally destroyed your entire world.”

Y/N’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t look at you like that.”

“You absolutely do. It’s very dramatic.”

“I’m not dramatic.”

“You cried for forty-five minutes last term because a first-year gave you a drawing of a bowtruckle.”

“It was a very good drawing,” Y/N said defensively. “And he’d clearly worked so hard on it. His little hands…”

Draco stared at her for a moment, then shook his head, something almost like amusement flickering across his features. “You’re absolutely ridiculous.”

“You’ve mentioned that.”

“It bears repeating.”

But his voice was warm—or as warm as Draco Malfoy’s voice ever got—and when he settled back against the headboard, he didn’t put the pillow barrier between them.

That afternoon, Y/N’s nesting instincts kicked into overdrive.

It happened suddenly, as it always did. One moment she was reading quietly, and the next she was seized by the overwhelming urge to make her nest perfect. The blankets weren’t arranged correctly. The pillows were in the wrong order. Something was missing, something essential, and she couldn’t rest until she found it.

She started rearranging the bed with frantic intensity, pulling blankets this way and that, fluffing pillows and then immediately un-fluffing them, making small distressed sounds in the back of her throat.

“What are you doing?” Draco asked from his armchair, looking up from his book with an expression of mild alarm.

“The nest is wrong,” Y/N said, her voice high and strained. “It’s all wrong. I need… I need…”

She didn’t know what she needed. That was the worst part. Her omega knew something was missing, but it couldn’t articulate what, and the frustration was building into a pressure behind her eyes that threatened to spill over into tears.

Draco watched her for a long moment, his brow furrowed. Then, slowly, he set his book aside and stood up.

“What do you need?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know. Something. Something that smells like…”

She trailed off, but understanding was already dawning on Draco’s face. He looked at the nest, then at her, then at the nest again. His expression cycled through several emotions—resignation, irritation, something softer that he quickly suppressed—before settling on grudging acceptance.

Without a word, he unbuttoned his outer robe and shrugged it off. Then, even more surprising, he pulled his sweater over his head, leaving him in just his white button-down shirt.

Y/N’s brain short-circuited. “What are you doing?”

“You need something that smells like alpha,” he said flatly, holding out the sweater. “This smells like alpha. Put it in your nest.”

She stared at the sweater like it might bite her. Draco Malfoy’s sweater. A soft, charcoal-grey cashmere sweater that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe. He was offering it to her. Voluntarily.

“I can’t take your sweater.”

“You’re about three minutes away from a complete meltdown over a pile of blankets, Selwyn. Take the sweater.”

Her omega didn’t need to be told twice. She snatched the sweater from his hands and immediately pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply. The scent was perfect—cedarwood and frost, pure alpha, pure Draco. She made a sound that was embarrassingly close to a moan, then quickly arranged the sweater in the center of her nest, positioning it with the reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts.

The relief was immediate. Her omega settled, purring with satisfaction. The nest was complete.

“Thank you,” she breathed, turning back to Draco. “Thank you, that was… that was really…”

She stopped. He was looking at her with an expression she’d never seen before. His grey eyes were dark, his jaw tight, and there was something in his gaze that made her stomach flip.

“What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“Nothing.” His voice was rougher than usual. “Just… your scent changed.”

“Changed how?”

“It’s…” He seemed to struggle for words, which was unusual for him. Draco Malfoy never struggled for words. “Sweet. It’s sweet. Like honey.”

Y/N’s cheeks flushed. Sweet was what omegas smelled like when they were happy. When they were content. When their alpha had provided for them.

“Oh,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah.” Draco cleared his throat and abruptly turned away, heading back to his armchair with slightly too much speed. “Oh.”

The tension between them was different after that. Charged in a way it hadn’t been before. Y/N curled up in her nest, Draco’s sweater pressed against her cheek, and tried very hard not to think about the way he’d looked at her.

She failed spectacularly.

The jealousy incident happened on the fourth day.

Y/N’s heat was due to start within the next twenty-four hours, and her omega was becoming increasingly territorial. She wanted her alpha close, wanted his scent on everything, wanted the entire world to know that she belonged to someone. It was primal and irrational and completely beyond her control.

Which was why, when a knock sounded at the door and Draco opened it to reveal Adrian Pucey—a Slytherin alpha who’d graduated two years prior and was apparently visiting the castle on some kind of alumni business—Y/N’s reaction was immediate and overwhelming.

Adrian had always been friendly to her. Too friendly, in her omega’s opinion. He’d offered to help her with Herbology once in fourth year, and her omega had been suspicious of him ever since. Now, standing in the doorway of the omega suite with his easy smile and his curious gaze, he represented a direct threat to everything her instincts were screaming at her to protect.

“Malfoy,” Adrian said, looking surprised. “Didn’t expect to find you here. I heard you were stuck on omega duty, but I didn’t realize it was quite so… literal.”

“What do you want, Pucey?” Draco’s voice was cold, but not as cold as it could have been. He and Adrian had been on the Quidditch team together, Y/N remembered. They were friendly, or at least as friendly as Draco got with anyone.

“Just delivering some paperwork from the alumni office. Thought I’d say hello.” Adrian’s gaze drifted past Draco to the bed, where Y/N was half-hidden beneath her blankets, and his expression shifted into something that made her omega bristle. “Selwyn, right? Y/N? You look… comfortable.”

It was the way he said it. The slight emphasis on comfortable. The way his eyes lingered on the nest, on Draco’s sweater still visible among the blankets, on Y/N’s flushed cheeks and disheveled hair.

Her omega snarled. The sound that came out of her mouth wasn’t words—it was a growl, low and warning, completely involuntary.

Both alphas froze.

Adrian’s eyebrows shot up. “Possessive little thing, isn’t she?”

“She’s in pre-heat,” Draco said, and there was something new in his voice now. Something sharp. “Her instincts are heightened.”

“Clearly.” Adrian’s smile was amused, but there was an edge to it that Y/N didn’t like. “You know, I always wondered why she never accepted any of the offers she got. Plenty of alphas would have been happy to help her through her cycles, imprint or no imprint. But she always refused. Guess I know why now.”

Y/N felt her face flame. It was true—she’d had offers over the years. Kind alphas who’d offered to court her, to help her manage her heats, to give her an alternative to pining after someone who clearly didn’t want her. She’d refused them all, because her omega wouldn’t accept anyone but Draco, and because some small, stubborn part of her kept hoping that maybe, eventually, he might…

“She’s not interested,” Draco said, and his voice had gone dangerously quiet.

Adrian shrugged. “Maybe not. But if you ever get tired of playing nursemaid, Malfoy, send her my way. I’ve always had a soft spot for Hufflepuffs.”

The growl that rumbled from Y/N’s chest was entirely involuntary. But the growl that came from Draco was something else entirely.

It was a full alpha growl, deep and threatening, the kind of sound that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Draco stepped forward, positioning himself between Adrian and the bed, and when he spoke, his voice was ice.

“She’s not going anywhere. She’s mine.”

The words hit Y/N like a physical force. Mine. He’d said mine. Her omega practically sang with joy, even as her rational brain tried to remind her that it was just territorial posturing, that alphas got possessive during pre-heat exposure, that it didn’t mean anything.

Adrian held up his hands in surrender, though his expression was more intrigued than intimidated. “Alright, alright. No need to get territorial. I was just making conversation.”

“Make it somewhere else.”

“Right. I’ll just… leave the paperwork here, then.” Adrian set a folder on the small table by the door, then retreated into the corridor. But before he left, he glanced back at Y/N with a knowing look that made her want to hide under her blankets. “Take care of yourself, sweetheart. And if you ever change your mind…”

Draco slammed the door before he could finish the sentence.

The silence that followed was deafening. Y/N stared at Draco’s back, her heart pounding, her omega still vibrating with possessive satisfaction. He’d claimed her. In front of another alpha, he’d claimed her.

“Malfoy,” she started, her voice uncertain.

“Don’t.” He didn’t turn around. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clenched at his sides. “Don’t read into it. It was just… he was being disrespectful. I wasn’t going to let him talk about you like that.”

“You called me yours.”

“It was territorial posturing. It didn’t mean anything.”

But his voice was strained, and he still wouldn’t look at her, and something in Y/N’s chest cracked open just a little bit wider.

“Okay,” she said quietly, sinking back into her nest. “If you say so.”

She didn’t believe him. And judging by the tension radiating from his frame, he didn’t believe himself either.

Her heat hit early the next morning.

Y/N woke up burning, her skin slick with sweat and her entire body throbbing with need. The world had narrowed to a single point of focus: alpha. She needed her alpha. She needed him now.

“Draco,” she gasped, her voice barely recognizable. “Draco, please.”

He was at her side in an instant, his expression alert despite having been asleep in the armchair moments before. His nostrils flared as he took in her scent—the honey-sweet omega fragrance that had shifted into something deeper, riper, unmistakably in heat.

“It’s starting,” he said, and his voice was rough in a way that made her shiver. “Your heat. It’s starting.”

“I know.” She was crying now, tears streaming down her cheeks, her body arching toward him without her permission. “I know, I know, please, alpha, it hurts, please help me.”

Draco’s face cycled through several emotions—concern, hesitation, something that looked almost like fear—before settling into grim determination. He’d done this before. They’d done this before, three times a year for three years. He knew what she needed.

But something was different this time. Something in the way he looked at her, the way his hands shook slightly as he climbed onto the bed, the way his scent had shifted to match hers.

“I’m here,” he said, and his voice was almost gentle. “I’m here, Y/N. I’m not going anywhere.”

The use of her first name—something he almost never did—sent a spike of warmth through her chest. She reached for him desperately, and he let her pull him down into the nest, let her press her face against his neck, let her wrap herself around him like he was the only solid thing in a world that was rapidly dissolving into fire.

“Scent me,” she begged. “Please, please, I need your scent on me, I need everyone to know…”

“Shh.” His hand found the back of her head, cradling it gently. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He scented her slowly, methodically, his wrists dragging across her neck and shoulders, his chin rubbing against her hair. It was clinical at first—the perfunctory motions of an alpha fulfilling an obligation—but as Y/N’s distress began to ease and her omega began to purr, something shifted.

His movements became slower. More deliberate. His nose traced the line of her jaw, and she felt him inhale deeply, taking in her scent.

“You smell…” he started, then stopped.

“What?” she whispered, barely able to form the word.

“Nothing.” But his voice was strained, and his arms had tightened around her, and when she risked a glance up at his face, his eyes were dark with something that made her stomach flip.

“Draco.”

“Don’t.” His voice cracked on the word. “Don’t, Y/N. Not like this. Not when you’re in heat and I’m… I can’t think clearly. I can’t trust myself.”

“What do you mean?”

But he didn’t answer. He just held her tighter, his face buried in her hair, and let her omega soak up his presence like a starving thing.

The next three days passed in a blur of heat and need and the steady, grounding presence of her alpha. Draco never left her side. He fed her when she could eat, held her when she cried, scented her whenever her omega demanded it. He slept beside her in the nest, his body curved protectively around hers, and when the worst of the heat finally broke, Y/N woke up to find herself tangled in his arms, her head on his chest, his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.

She should have pulled away. She should have given him space, retreated to her side of the bed, pretended that the intimacy of the past few days had been nothing more than biological necessity.

But she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here forever, wrapped in cedarwood and frost, pretending that she was more than just an obligation to him.

“You’re awake,” Draco said, and his voice was sleep-roughened and soft.

“Barely.” She tilted her head to look up at him. “How long was I out?”

“About twelve hours. The heat broke around midnight.”

“Oh.” She should move. She really should move. But his arm was still around her waist, and he wasn’t pushing her away, and maybe… maybe…

“Y/N.”

“Yes?”

He was quiet for a long moment, his grey eyes searching her face. “I need to tell you something.”

Her heart stuttered. “Okay.”

“I’ve been…” He stopped, frustration flickering across his features. “Salazar, this is difficult. I’m not good at this.”

“At what?”

“At feelings.” The word came out like it was being dragged from him by force. “At admitting when I’m wrong. At… at any of this.”

Y/N held very still, afraid that any movement might break whatever spell had fallen over them.

“I’ve been angry for a long time,” Draco continued, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. “About the imprint. About being forced into this. About not having a choice. And I took all of that anger out on you, because you were the easiest target.”

“It’s okay,” she started, but he cut her off.

“No. It’s not okay. I made you cry. Repeatedly. I called you pathetic. I made you feel like a burden, when the truth is…” He took a shaky breath. “The truth is, I was scared. I’ve always been scared. Because from the moment that bond snapped into place when we were twelve years old, I knew that you were going to mean something to me. Something significant. And I didn’t know how to handle that.”

Y/N’s throat was tight. “Draco…”

“Let me finish. Please. If I don’t say this now, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.” He finally looked at her, and the vulnerability in his eyes made her heart ache. “You’re not a burden, Y/N. You’ve never been a burden. You’re kind, and you’re gentle, and you cry at drawings of bowtruckles, and you’re the only person in this entire castle who’s ever looked at me like I might be capable of being something other than my father’s son.”

“You are capable of that,” she whispered. “You’ve always been capable of that.”

“I’m starting to believe that. Because of you.” His hand came up to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing away a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen. “I’m sorry it took me three years to figure it out. I’m sorry I made you feel unwanted. I’m sorry for every single time I made you cry.”

“You already said I’m not allowed to apologize anymore,” she said, her voice wobbling. “So you’re not allowed either.”

A surprised laugh escaped him. “That’s not how that works.”

“It is now. New rule.”

“You can’t just make up rules.”

“I just did.” She was smiling now, despite the tears still tracking down her cheeks. “No more apologies. From either of us. We just… move forward. Together. If you want to.”

Draco stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, hesitantly, he leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead.

It was the softest kiss Y/N had ever received. Barely more than a brush of warmth against her skin. But it sent a cascade of sensation through her entire body, and her omega practically melted with happiness.

“I want to,” Draco murmured against her skin. “I want to try.”

She reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer. “Then try.”

The days that followed were strange and wonderful and entirely unexpected.

The accommodation period officially ended, but Draco didn’t move back to the Slytherin dorms. He stayed in the omega suite with Y/N, ostensibly because she was still recovering from her heat and needed continued support. Madam Pomfrey raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Professor Sprout gave Y/N a knowing smile that made her blush.

They settled into a new rhythm. Draco walked her to her classes, his hand resting on the small of her back. He sat with her at meals—not at the Slytherin table, but not at the Hufflepuff table either. They carved out their own space at the end of the Ravenclaw table, and if anyone found it strange, no one said anything.

Pansy Parkinson did try to say something, once. She’d cornered Draco in the corridor, her expression venomous, and demanded to know what he thought he was doing with “that Hufflepuff charity case.”

Y/N had been standing right there, her hand clasped in Draco’s, and she’d felt him tense beside her.

“That’s my omega you’re talking about,” he’d said, his voice quiet and deadly. “Choose your next words very carefully, Parkinson.”

Pansy had gone pale and retreated without another word. Y/N had stared up at Draco with wide eyes, her heart pounding.

“Your omega?” she’d repeated, once Pansy was out of earshot.

Draco had looked at her, his expression somewhere between embarrassed and defiant. “That’s what the bond says, doesn’t it? You’re my omega. I’m your alpha. Might as well start acting like it.”

And then he’d kissed her—a real kiss, right there in the middle of the corridor, in front of a group of gobsmacked third-years and a very surprised Professor Flitwick.

It was, without question, the best day of her life.

The jealousy incident, as it came to be known, was only the beginning of Draco’s possessive streak. He developed a habit of glaring at any alpha who so much as looked at Y/N for too long, and his scent would spike with territorial aggression whenever someone tried to flirt with her.

“You know I’m not going to run off with Cormac McLaggen,” Y/N said one evening, thoroughly exasperated. They were sitting in the library, ostensibly studying, though Draco had spent the past twenty minutes scowling at the Gryffindor alpha three tables over. “He’s not even my type.”

“What is your type, then?” Draco asked, his voice carefully casual.

She smiled, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek. “Arrogant Slytherins with white-blond hair and a pathological inability to express their emotions.”

“I express my emotions.”

“You told me you ‘tolerated my presence’ yesterday. That was your idea of a romantic declaration.”

“It was accurate. I do tolerate your presence. More than tolerate it, actually. I find it…” He seemed to struggle for the right word. “Acceptable.”

Y/N burst out laughing. “Acceptable. I’m acceptable.”

“Stop laughing. I’m trying to be sincere.”

“I know you are. That’s what makes it so funny.” She sobered, reaching across the table to take his hand. “I find your presence acceptable too, Draco. More than acceptable. I find it…”

She trailed off, suddenly shy.

“You find it what?” he prompted, his voice softer now.

“Essential,” she admitted. “I find your presence essential.”

He stared at her for a long moment, something shifting in his expression. Then he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, his eyes never leaving hers.

“Essential,” he repeated. “I think I can work with essential.”

Spring arrived, and with it came the Hufflepuff versus Slytherin Quidditch match.

It was, historically, one of the least competitive matches of the season. Hufflepuff and Slytherin had very different approaches to the game, and the rivalry between them was more good-natured than the Gryffindor-Slytherin blood feud. But this year, something was different.

This year, Draco Malfoy was dating a Hufflepuff.

The stands were buzzing with speculation. Would Draco go easy on Hufflepuff because of Y/N? Would Y/N cheer for Slytherin because of Draco? Would the whole thing devolve into a romantic spectacle that made everyone uncomfortable?

Y/N sat in the Hufflepuff section, wrapped in a yellow scarf that Draco had grudgingly scented for her before the match. She was surrounded by her housemates, who had taken the news of her relationship with Draco with varying degrees of acceptance. Ernie had been skeptical. Hannah had been cautiously supportive. Susan Bones had asked, with genuine concern, if Y/N had been confunded.

“I’m happy,” Y/N had told them. “I know it’s strange, and I know he hasn’t always been kind, but he’s trying. He’s really trying. And I…” She’d ducked her head, her cheeks flushing. “I love him. I’ve loved him since I was twelve years old, and I don’t think I can stop.”

That had mostly silenced the objections. Ernie had muttered something about “imprint bonds making people irrational,” but he’d also clapped Draco on the shoulder the next time he’d seen him and told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he hurt Y/N, the entire Hufflepuff house would come for him.

Draco had looked genuinely alarmed. It was the first time Y/N had ever seen him intimidated by a Hufflepuff.

Now, watching him soar through the air on his broom, his Slytherin-green robes billowing behind him, Y/N felt her heart swell with pride. He was beautiful like this—confident and focused, every inch the aristocratic alpha he’d been raised to be. But there was something different about him now. Something softer around the edges.

He caught her eye as he circled the pitch, and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a small smile. It was barely there, gone almost before she registered it, but it was for her. She knew it was for her.

Hufflepuff won the match—barely—and Draco took the loss with surprising grace. He even shook the Hufflepuff captain’s hand without sneering, which Y/N considered a major victory.

“You played well,” she told him afterward, finding him in the corridor outside the changing rooms. His hair was still damp from the shower, and he smelled like soap and cedarwood and something uniquely him.

“We lost.”

“I know. But you still played well.”

He looked at her for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then he stepped forward, backing her up against the stone wall, his hands coming to rest on either side of her head.

“You cheered for your house,” he said, his voice low.

“I… yes? I’m a Hufflepuff.”

“I saw you. Cheering when they scored. Waving your little yellow scarf.” His eyes were dark, but there was humor lurking at the corners. “Traitor.”

Y/N grinned up at him, unrepentant. “You knew what you were getting into when you decided to date a Hufflepuff.”

“Did I?” He leaned closer, his nose brushing against hers. “I’m not sure I did. I think you’ve been secretly corrupting me this whole time.”

“Corrupting you? I’m the nicest person in this entire school.”

“Exactly. It’s insidious.” He kissed her then, soft and sweet, right there in the corridor where anyone could see. When he pulled back, his expression had shifted into something more serious. “I’m proud of you, you know.”

“For what?”

“For being you. For being kind, even when people don’t deserve it. For putting up with me for three years when I was an absolute prat. For giving me a chance when I finally pulled my head out of my arse.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re remarkable, Y/N Selwyn. And I don’t tell you that nearly enough.”

Y/N felt tears prick at her eyes. “You’re going to make me cry.”

“You cry at everything.”

“I do not.”

“You cried at breakfast this morning because your toast was shaped like a heart.”

“It was a very good piece of toast.”

Draco laughed—a real laugh, bright and unguarded—and pulled her into his arms. She buried her face in his chest, breathing in his scent, and marveled at how different everything was from a few short months ago.

The world had shifted. The axis had tilted. And somehow, against all odds, Draco Malfoy had learned to love her.

The end of the school year approached, bringing with it the inevitable conversation about what came next.

They were sitting by the Black Lake, Y/N’s head resting on Draco’s shoulder, watching the giant squid wave its tentacles lazily above the water. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold, and the air was warm with the promise of summer.

“My parents want to meet you,” Draco said, breaking the comfortable silence.

Y/N tensed. “They do?”

“Officially. As my intended omega.” He glanced down at her, his expression uncertain. “I told them about us. About… everything. How I feel about you. That I want to make this permanent.”

“Permanent?” Her voice came out slightly strangled.

“Not right away,” he added quickly. “We’re still young. We have time. But eventually. When we’re ready. I want…” He took a deep breath. “I want to bond with you. Properly. A full mating bond. If you’ll have me.”

Y/N’s heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could hear it. “You want to mate with me?”

“I’ve wanted to mate with you since the moment I realized I was in love with you,” he said, his voice quiet but steady. “Which, for the record, was approximately three days into our last accommodation period, when you reorganized your nest for the seventh time and then fell asleep with your face pressed against my sweater. You looked so peaceful, and you smelled so happy, and I thought… this is it. This is what I want. This is what I’ve always wanted, even when I was too stubborn to admit it.”

“Draco…” Tears were streaming down her cheeks now, but she was smiling so widely her face hurt. “I’ve been in love with you since I was twelve years old. I’ve wanted you since the moment I imprinted on you. I never thought… I never dreamed that you might actually want me back.”

“I do want you.” He cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing away her tears. “I want all of you. Your ridiculous kindness, your impossible optimism, your absolutely infuriating habit of apologizing for things that aren’t your fault. I want your hair and your eyes and your nest-building and your moonflowers and your drawings of bowtruckles. I want everything.”

“Even the crying?”

“Especially the crying. It’s very endearing, in an exasperating sort of way.”

She laughed, the sound wet and wobbly. “You’re such a romantic.”

“I’m trying.” He pressed his forehead against hers. “I’m trying, Y/N. For you. I’ll keep trying for the rest of my life, if you’ll let me.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

He kissed her then, deep and thorough, and when they finally broke apart, the sun had fully set and the stars were beginning to emerge overhead.

“I suppose I should warn you,” Draco said, his voice dry, “my mother is going to be insufferable about this. She’s been dropping hints about grandchildren since I was fourteen.”

Y/N’s cheeks flushed. “Grandchildren?”

“Not immediately,” he assured her. “She can wait. We have time.” He paused. “Though she did mention something about a family heirloom she wants to give you. Some kind of betrothal necklace. It’s been in the Malfoy family for generations.”

“She wants to give me a family heirloom?”

“She’s very excited about this, Y/N. My father is too, though he’d never admit it. The Selwyns are an old pureblood family. It’s a good match, politically speaking.”

“Is that the only reason they’re excited?”

“No.” Draco’s voice softened. “They’re excited because I’m happy. They haven’t seen me happy in… a long time. Maybe ever. And they know it’s because of you.”

Y/N leaned into him, her heart so full it felt like it might burst. “I’m happy too,” she said. “Happier than I ever thought I could be.”

“Good.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “That’s all I want. For you to be happy.”

They sat there by the lake, wrapped in each other, as the stars wheeled overhead and the castle glowed warm and golden behind them. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. The giant squid splashed lazily in the water. And Y/N Selwyn, omega of Hufflepuff, finally felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

Three years of pining. Three years of heartache. Three years of wanting someone who seemed determined to push her away.

But he’d come around in the end. Her alpha. Her Draco. Her grumpy, stubborn, secretly soft-hearted alpha who’d spent so long fighting the bond only to discover that surrendering to it was the best thing he’d ever done.

The next morning, Y/N woke up in her nest to find Draco already awake, propped up on one elbow and watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read.

“What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No.” He reached out to trace the curve of her cheek. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how lucky I am.” The words were simple, but the way he said them made her breath catch. “I spent three years being angry about this bond. Three years resenting you for something that wasn’t your fault. And somehow, despite all of that, you still gave me a chance. You still let me in. You still…” He shook his head. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Draco…”

“I know. No apologizing. New rule.” He smiled—a real smile, soft and unguarded. “I’m not apologizing. I’m just… grateful. Grateful that you imprinted on me, even though I made it miserable for you. Grateful that you didn’t give up on me, even when I gave you every reason to. Grateful that I get to be your alpha.”

Y/N reached up and pulled him down into a kiss. “You’re being very sincere this morning. It’s slightly alarming.”

“I’m trying something new. It’s called emotional honesty. I read about it in a book.”

She laughed against his lips. “You read a book about emotional honesty?”

“Hermione Granger recommended it. I think she was trying to be helpful. It was deeply uncomfortable.”

“Poor baby.”

“Don’t patronize me, Selwyn.”

“I would never.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “Thank you. For trying. For being emotionally honest. For… all of it.”

He pulled her closer, settling back into the nest with her body tucked against his. “You’re worth it,” he murmured into her hair. “You’ve always been worth it. I was just too stupid to see it.”

They stayed in the nest for most of the morning, talking about nothing and everything, trading lazy kisses and softer words. Outside the window, the sun climbed higher in the sky, and the sounds of the castle waking up filtered through the door. But inside the omega suite, time seemed to slow to a crawl, stretching out like honey.

Eventually, Y/N’s stomach growled, and Draco reluctantly disentangled himself from her arms to retrieve their breakfast tray. They ate sitting cross-legged on the bed, sharing toast and fruit and stolen glances that made Y/N’s heart flutter in her chest.

“I have a question,” she said, nibbling on a piece of bacon.

“Mm?”

“When you said I was yours. To Adrian Pucey. Did you mean it? Even then?”

Draco was quiet for a moment, considering the question. “Yes,” he said finally. “I think I did. Even then. Even when I was still fighting it, still telling myself it was just territorial instinct. Some part of me already knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That you were mine. That you’d always been mine. That the bond didn’t force anything—it just recognized what was already there.”

Y/N’s eyes welled up with tears, because apparently that was just her default state now. “That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying.”

“You’re absolutely crying.”

“It’s just…” She sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I spent so long thinking I was a burden to you. An obligation. Something you tolerated because you had to. And now you’re saying things like that, and I don’t know how to process it.”

Draco set aside his plate and pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. “You were never a burden,” he said, his voice fierce. “You were never an obligation. You were a gift that I was too blind to appreciate. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making up for it.”

“The rest of your life?”

“Is that not clear enough for you?” He tilted her chin up so she had to meet his eyes. “I’m going to mate you, Y/N Selwyn. I’m going to bond with you and marry you and give you as many children as you want, and I’m going to spend every single day telling you how much you mean to me. Is that clear enough?”

She stared at him, her heart pounding, her omega practically singing with joy. “That’s… very clear.”

“Good.”

“Very clear and very… very…”

“Very what?”

“Very unexpected from the boy who told me I was pathetic for following him around like a lost crup.”

Draco winced. “I was hoping you’d forgotten about that.”

“I will never forget about that. I’m going to bring it up at our bonding ceremony. In my vows.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I absolutely would.” She was grinning now, bright and mischievous. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the bonding of Y/N Selwyn and the alpha who once told her she was a pathetic lost crup…”

“I’m going to regret telling you about emotional honesty, aren’t I?”

“Probably.”

He groaned, but he was smiling too, and when he kissed her, she could feel the laughter rumbling in his chest.

This was it, she realized. This was what happiness felt like. Teasing and bickering and soft kisses and the steady, grounding presence of her alpha. This was what she’d been waiting for, what she’d been hoping for, what she’d been dreaming of since she was twelve years old and her world had tilted on its axis in the middle of Transfiguration.

She’d imprinted on Draco Malfoy, and it had been the worst day of her life.

But it had also, in ways she couldn’t have imagined then, been the best.

Because without the imprint, without the bond, without three years of forced proximity and reluctant care and slowly, grudgingly softening hearts, she might never have found her way here. Wrapped in his arms, bathed in morning light, loved more completely than she’d ever thought possible.

“I love you,” she said, the words easy and natural and true. “I love you, Draco Malfoy.”

“I love you too, Y/N Selwyn.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead, gentle and reverent. “My omega. My heart. My impossible, ridiculous, absolutely essential Hufflepuff.”

And outside the window, the sun continued to rise, and the castle stirred to life, and somewhere in the distance, a bowtruckle drawing was probably making someone cry.

It was, Y/N thought, absolutely perfect.

The summer after sixth year was, by all accounts, the best summer of Y/N’s life.

She spent most of it at Malfoy Manor, getting to know Draco’s parents in a way she’d never expected to. Narcissa Malfoy turned out to be warm and welcoming, delighted by her son’s happiness and thoroughly charmed by Y/N’s gentle nature. She taught Y/N the Malfoy family traditions, showed her the gardens, and presented her with the promised betrothal necklace—a stunning piece of silver and emeralds that had been worn by Malfoy omegas for six generations.

Lucius Malfoy was more reserved, his approval given in clipped words and formal gestures rather than open warmth. But Y/N caught him smiling once, watching her and Draco walk through the rose garden hand in hand, and she understood that this was his way of showing acceptance.

And Draco himself was… perfect. Not in the polished, aristocratic sense he presented to the world, but in the small, private moments that no one else got to see. The way he brought her tea in the morning, remembering exactly how she liked it. The way he read to her when she couldn’t sleep, his voice low and soothing. The way he held her during the thunderstorms that rolled across the Wiltshire countryside, knowing she was afraid of the lightning even though she’d never told him.

He’d learned her, she realized. In three years of forced proximity, in all those hours spent together during her pre-heat periods, he’d learned her habits and her preferences and her fears. He’d been paying attention all along, even when he’d pretended not to care.

“You know,” she said one evening, curled up beside him on the sofa in the Manor’s library, “I used to think you hated me.”

Draco’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “I never hated you.”

“You were very convincing, then.”

“I was very stupid.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I thought if I pushed you away hard enough, I could break the bond. I thought I could make you stop wanting me.”

“That was never going to happen.”

“I know that now.” His voice was quiet, contemplative. “I think I knew it then, too. That’s why I was so angry. Because no matter how hard I tried to fight it, some part of me wanted you too. Some part of me recognized what we could be, and it terrified me.”

Y/N twisted to look up at him. “What could we be?”

“This.” He gestured vaguely at the two of them, the library, the warm summer evening beyond the window. “Happy. In love. Building a life together. Becoming the kind of alpha-omega pair that people write stories about.” He paused, a hint of his old sneer flickering across his features. “Not that I would ever admit to reading those kinds of stories.”

“Draco Malfoy, have you been reading romance novels?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You have! You’ve been reading romance novels!”

“I was doing research,” he said stiffly, a flush creeping up his neck. “On appropriate courtship behaviors. It’s important to understand the expectations.”

Y/N burst out laughing, joy bubbling up inside her like champagne. “You read romance novels to learn how to court me.”

“I will deny this to my dying breath.”

“It’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I am not adorable. I am a Malfoy. Malfoys are not adorable.”

“You’re adorable.” She climbed into his lap, draping her arms around his neck. “You’re the most adorable alpha in the entire world, and I’m going to tell everyone.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.”

He glared at her, but the effect was somewhat undermined by the way his hands had settled on her hips, pulling her closer. “You’re a menace, Y/N Selwyn.”

“A menace you’re going to mate.”

“A menace I’m going to mate,” he agreed, and kissed her before she could say anything else.

Later, much later, when the stars had come out and the Manor had settled into its nighttime quiet, Y/N lay in Draco’s arms and thought about the future.

There would be a bonding ceremony, probably next summer, after they’d both finished their seventh year. There would be a life built together, a home filled with laughter and love and probably a truly excessive number of plants, given Y/N’s Herbology inclinations. There would be children, eventually—little Malfoys with white-blond hair and Y/N’s eyes, or maybe her hair and grey eyes, or some combination thereof.

But more than any of that, there would be this. This quiet, steady, bone-deep certainty that she was exactly where she was meant to be. That the bond that had caused her so much pain had also brought her the greatest joy she’d ever known. That the alpha who’d once called her pathetic was now the alpha who held her like she was precious, who looked at her like she was the sun, who loved her with a fierceness that took her breath away.

“What are you thinking about?” Draco murmured, his voice sleepy.

“The future,” she said. “Our future.”

“Mm. What about it?”

“How happy I’m going to be. How happy I already am.” She pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. “I used to think the imprint was a curse. The worst thing that had ever happened to me. But it wasn’t. It was a gift.”

“A gift,” Draco repeated, his hand coming up to stroke her hair.

“A gift,” she confirmed. “Because it brought me you.”

He was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. “I don’t deserve you.”

“New rule,” she reminded him. “No apologies, no self-deprecation. Just… this. Just us.”

“Just us,” he echoed. “I can do that.”

“Good.” She snuggled closer, breathing in his scent. “I love you, Draco.”

“I love you too, Y/N.” His arms tightened around her. “My omega. My heart. My everything.”

And as sleep claimed her, wrapped in cedarwood and frost and the steady beat of her alpha’s heart, Y/N Selwyn smiled.

The worst day of her life had turned out to be the best thing that had ever happened to her.

And she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The Hogwarts Express pulled away from Platform 9¾ at the start of their seventh year, and Y/N found herself tucked into a compartment with Draco, his arm draped possessively over her shoulders and his expression daring anyone to comment.

No one did.

Crabbe and Goyle had been relegated to another compartment, at Y/N’s gentle request. Pansy Parkinson had taken one look at them and retreated with a sniff. Even Blaise Zabini, who’d always been Draco’s closest friend among the Slytherins, had merely raised an eyebrow and settled into the opposite seat with a book.

“You’re hovering,” Y/N murmured to Draco, though she made no move to dislodge his arm.

“I’m not hovering. I’m providing appropriate alpha support during travel.”

“You’re hovering.”

“You like it.”

She did. She absolutely did. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

The train ride passed pleasantly, with Blaise making dry observations about their fellow students and Draco occasionally interjecting with scathing commentary that made Y/N laugh despite herself. By the time they reached Hogsmeade station, she was feeling more relaxed than she had all summer.

The new accommodation arrangement had been approved by Madam Pomfrey before the start of term. Given the established nature of their relationship and the strength of the imprint bond, Draco and Y/N would be sharing a private suite near the hospital wing for the duration of their seventh year. It was unprecedented—normally such arrangements were only made for mated pairs—but the school had made an exception in light of the “extenuating circumstances.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Ernie Macmillan had repeated when Y/N told him. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“What else would we call it?”

“I don’t know. Fate? Destiny? The universe’s very pointed attempt to get you two idiots together?”

Y/N had blushed and changed the subject.

Now, settling into the suite that would be their home for the next year, she felt a sense of rightness settle over her. The room was larger than the omega suite, with a proper bed and a sitting area and a small kitchenette. There was even a fireplace, crackling merrily, and a window that looked out over the Black Lake.

“It’s perfect,” she breathed, turning in a slow circle to take it all in.

Draco was watching her from the doorway, his expression soft. “I made some requests. For the furnishings. I hope you don’t mind.”

She looked at the bed—already piled high with soft blankets and pillows in shades of yellow and grey—and felt tears prick at her eyes. “You nested for me.”

“I attempted to nest for you. I’m told my technique is ‘adequate but lacking in omega intuition.’” He looked slightly embarrassed. “You’ll probably want to rearrange everything.”

“I love it.” She crossed the room and threw her arms around him. “I love it, I love you, I love everything.”

“You’re crying again.”

“Happy tears. The best kind of tears.”

He held her close, his chin resting on top of her head. “Welcome home, Y/N.”

And it was home. For the first time in seven years, Hogwarts felt like home in a way it never had before. Because she wasn’t just Y/N Selwyn, the soft Hufflepuff omega who’d imprinted on the wrong alpha. She was Y/N Selwyn, Draco Malfoy’s intended mate. His partner. His love.

His.

And he was hers.

The months that followed were some of the happiest of her life. They fell into a rhythm of classes and meals and quiet evenings by the fire, of study sessions in the library and walks by the lake and lazy Sunday mornings spent tangled in their nest. Draco’s possessiveness mellowed into something steadier, more secure. Y/N’s anxiety eased, her constant need for reassurance fading as she grew more confident in his love.

They still fought, of course. Draco was still Draco—prickly and proud and occasionally insufferable. Y/N was still Y/N—sensitive and emotional and prone to crying over things that didn’t warrant tears. But their arguments were different now, underpinned by the knowledge that they would always come back together. That the bond between them was strong enough to weather any storm.

“You’re infuriating,” Draco told her one evening, after a particularly heated disagreement about whether or not she should be allowed to adopt the stray cat that had been hanging around the greenhouses.

“You love me anyway,” she shot back.

“Against all reason and logic, yes.” He pulled her into his arms, his frustration visibly draining away. “I do.”

The cat, as it turned out, was adopted. Draco named it “Pestilence” and pretended to hate it, but Y/N caught him sneaking it treats when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Winter brought snow and holidays and a memorable Christmas at Malfoy Manor, where Y/N was formally introduced to the extended Malfoy family as Draco’s intended. There were curious stares and whispered comments and one particularly uncomfortable conversation with Draco’s great-aunt Walburga’s portrait, which had shrieked about blood purity until Narcissa had firmly covered it with a velvet cloth.

But there were also moments of genuine warmth. Draco’s younger cousins, fascinated by Y/N’s gentle manner and her willingness to play games with them. Narcissa’s quiet pride as she showed Y/N the Malfoy family tapestry, where her name would eventually be woven alongside Draco’s. Lucius’s grudging toast at Christmas dinner, acknowledging the “fortuitous nature” of the bond that had brought their families together.

And through it all, there was Draco. Steady and present and increasingly, surprisingly, openly affectionate. He held her hand during the formal dinners. He pressed kisses to her temple when he thought no one was looking. He told her he loved her, every single day, without fail.

“Who are you,” Y/N teased him one night, “and what have you done with the alpha who told me he’d never accept the bond?”

“He grew up,” Draco said simply. “He realized what he had. And he’s never letting it go.”

Spring came, and with it, the anniversary of their first real kiss. Draco, in a display of romanticism that would have shocked his younger self, arranged an elaborate picnic by the Black Lake. There were floating candles and a charmed blanket that stayed warm despite the evening chill, and a spread of all Y/N’s favorite foods.

“You’re spoiling me,” she said, utterly delighted.

“You deserve to be spoiled.” He poured her a glass of sparkling elderflower wine. “Besides, this is nothing compared to what I have planned for our bonding ceremony.”

“Our bonding ceremony?”

“Next summer. At the Manor. My mother is already planning it.” He looked at her, something vulnerable flickering in his grey eyes. “Assuming you still want to.”

“Draco.” She set down her glass and took his hands in hers. “I have wanted to bond with you since I was twelve years old. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change.”

The vulnerability in his expression melted into something softer, something almost awed. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I think the question is how did I get so lucky? You were the one who had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this relationship. I was just… here. Waiting.”

“You were patient.” He lifted her hands to his lips, pressing kisses to her knuckles. “You were impossibly, inexplicably patient with me when I didn’t deserve it. And I will spend the rest of my life being grateful for that.”

“No more gratitude. No more apologies. Just…” She smiled, leaning forward to press her forehead against his. “Just us. Just this.”

“Just us,” he agreed. “Forever.”

“Forever,” she echoed.

And somewhere in the castle behind them, a portrait of an old headmaster smiled knowingly, and the Black Lake rippled gently in the moonlight, and two hearts that had been bound together since childhood beat in perfect synchrony.

It was, Y/N thought, the beginning of everything.

The bonding ceremony took place on a warm June afternoon, in the rose garden at Malfoy Manor.

The roses were in full bloom, their fragrance perfuming the air, and the guests were seated in rows of white chairs arranged around a flower-bedecked arbor. Narcissa had outdone herself with the decorations—floating candles and enchanted butterflies and ribbons in soft shades of yellow and silver, a nod to both Hufflepuff and Slytherin.

Y/N walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, her hair woven with baby’s breath and her dress a simple column of ivory silk. Draco was waiting for her under the arbor, resplendent in formal robes of deep green, and the look on his face when he saw her made every hardship, every heartache, every moment of doubt worth it.

He looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

He looked at her like he couldn’t believe she was real.

He looked at her like he loved her, completely and unconditionally, and always would.

The ceremony was traditional, the bonding vows ancient and solemn. They spoke the words together, their hands clasped and their eyes locked, and when the magic of the bond settled over them—deeper than the imprint, stronger than anything Y/N had ever felt—she felt tears spill down her cheeks.

“I love you,” Draco whispered, wiping them away with gentle fingers. “I love you, my omega. My mate. My Y/N.”

“I love you too,” she managed, her voice wobbly. “My alpha. My Draco. My everything.”

The reception was a blur of congratulations and dancing and champagne. Ernie Macmillan gave a speech that was equal parts heartfelt and embarrassing. Narcissa cried, elegant tears that didn’t smudge her makeup. Lucius shook Draco’s hand and said something that made Draco’s expression flicker with surprise and something almost like hope.

And then, when the party was over and the guests had departed and the Manor had settled into its nighttime quiet, Draco carried Y/N over the threshold of their new quarters—a suite in the east wing that Narcissa had decorated especially for them—and laid her gently on the bed.

“Mrs. Malfoy,” he said, testing the words. “Y/N Malfoy.”

“That’s going to take some getting used to.”

“You have the rest of your life to practice.”

She pulled him down beside her, curling into his warmth. “The rest of my life. I like the sound of that.”

“So do I.” He pressed a kiss to her mating mark—the fresh one, still tingling with magic—and she shivered. “So do I.”

Outside the window, the stars wheeled overhead. The roses bloomed in the garden. And somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted, as if offering its own quiet congratulations.

Y/N closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of her alpha—cedarwood and frost, now mingled with her own honey-sweet fragrance—and smiled.

The worst day of her life had become the best.

And the best was only just beginning.

Years later, when their first child was born—a daughter with Draco’s white-blond hair and Y/N’s eyes—they named her Aurora, for the dawn.

“Because that’s what you are,” Draco said, cradling the tiny bundle in his arms with a tenderness that still, after all these years, made Y/N’s heart ache. “My dawn. My new beginning. The light that came after the darkness.”

“You’re going to make me cry,” Y/N warned, even though she was already crying.

“You always cry.”

“Because you always say things like that.”

He looked up at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears of his own. “I mean every word. You saved me, Y/N. From myself, from my family’s expectations, from the path I was on. You saved me, and you keep saving me, every single day. And I am so, so grateful that you imprinted on me in the middle of Transfiguration when we were twelve years old.”

“Even though you were mortified?”

“Even though I was mortified.” He laughed softly. “Especially because I was mortified. It’s a good story. We’ll tell it to Aurora when she’s older.”

“We’ll tell her everything,” Y/N agreed. “The forced proximity, the nesting, the jealousy. All of it.”

“Maybe we’ll skip the part where I called you a lost crup.”

“Absolutely not. That’s the best part.”

Draco groaned, but he was smiling, and when he leaned over to kiss her, Aurora made a small, contented sound between them.

And Y/N thought, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that the magic of the imprint bond was a strange and wonderful thing. It had caused her so much pain, once upon a time. It had brought her so much joy.

It had given her a grumpy, stubborn, secretly soft-hearted alpha who’d fought the bond for years before finally surrendering to it.

It had given her a home, a family, a future.

It had given her Draco.

And that, she decided, was worth every tear she’d ever cried.

“I love you,” she said, the words as easy and natural as breathing. “I love you, Draco Malfoy.”

“I love you too, Y/N Malfoy.” He kissed her forehead, gentle and reverent. “My omega. My heart. My dawn.”

And outside the window, the sun began to rise.

The first time anyone noticed something odd was during a Hogsmeade weekend in late October. The Three Broomsticks was packed with students escaping the chill, butterbeer foam clinging to upper lips, laughter bouncing off the low beams. James Potter was mid-rant about Quidditch formations when Sirius Black kicked him under the table and nodded toward the corner booth.

Barty Crouch Jr. had just returned from the bar carrying three drinks, but only one of them was for himself. He set a steaming mug precisely in front of Evan Rosier—black coffee, no sugar, a curl of steam rising into Evan’s impassive face. Evan didn’t thank him, just wrapped his fingers around the mug and took a sip, eyes flicking up to meet Barty’s for a fraction of a second. Meanwhile, (Y/N) was wearing a jacket that was unmistakably Barty’s—the worn leather one with the singed cuff from a Potions mishap. (Y/N) had it draped over their shoulders, sleeves dangling past their fingertips, and Barty didn’t seem remotely bothered that his favourite jacket was being held hostage.

“That’s new,” Sirius murmured, chin propped on his hand. “Barty Crouch Jr. being thoughtful. Did hell freeze over?”

James squinted. “Maybe he’s just sucking up. Rosier’s family is terrifying.”

Remus Lupin, who had been quietly nursing his drink, observed the corner booth with a more measuring gaze. Evan Rosier reached across Barty’s plate without asking and stole a chip, eating it with the slow deliberation of someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Barty didn’t protest, just grinned and nudged the plate closer. Then, so casually it might have been a trick of the light, Evan turned his head and pressed a kiss to (Y/N)’s temple. (Y/N) didn’t even look up from their drink, just smiled faintly and leaned into the touch.

“Did Rosier just—” Peter started.

“Yes,” Lily Evans said, having appeared behind them with Marlene McKinnon and Dorcas Meadowes. She slid into the booth, green eyes sharp with interest. “He did. And yesterday I saw (Y/N) hand Barty a quill and call him ‘starlight.’ Starlight. Barty Crouch Jr.”

Marlene drummed her fingers on the table. “But last week, (Y/N) was wearing Evan’s scarf. And Evan calls them ‘sweetness.’ I heard it outside the library. ‘Come along, sweetness.’ Like some sort of Victorian suitor.”

Dorcas hummed. “It’s a love triangle. Has to be.”

The word landed like a dropped snitch. Suddenly the entire table was leaning in, voices low and thrilled. A love triangle. Barty Crouch Jr., Evan Rosier, and (Y/N) tangled up in some messy, dramatic, potentially explosive romantic disaster. It made perfect sense. The way they orbited each other, the casual intimacy that blurred every line. The three of them arrived at every common room party together and left together, laps constantly reshuffled—sometimes (Y/N) would sit on Evan’s lap while Barty sprawled at their feet, other nights Barty would be draped across both of them, and once, memorably, Evan had sat sideways in Barty’s lap while holding (Y/N)’s hand across the table. Nobody sat normally in that group.

“They’re all over each other and no one’s picked?” James said, baffled. “That’s mental. It’s going to explode.”

“Or implode,” Sirius said, eyes alight with mischief. “Think of the drama. The pining. The jealousy.”

Remus took a long sip of his butterbeer. “I don’t think it’s jealousy.”

Everyone ignored him.

The betting pool began that very night. It was Peter, surprisingly, who pulled out a scrap of parchment and started scribbling categories. Team Barty/Evan argued that the intensity between them was too potent to ignore—the way Barty always knew Evan’s coffee order, the way Evan’s cold exterior cracked just slightly when Barty made him laugh. Team Evan/(Y/N) pointed to the temple kisses, the soft names, the quiet way Evan watched (Y/N) when they weren’t looking. Team Barty/(Y/N) had the jacket evidence, plus the fact that Barty had once hexed a fifth-year who tried to flirt with (Y/N) at a party, and (Y/N) had just laughed and pulled Barty away by the wrist, calling him something that sounded very much like “my dramatic fool.”

“There’s also the possibility,” Marlene said thoughtfully, “that Barty and Evan date first, break up explosively, and then Evan ends up with (Y/N).”

Lily stared at her. “That’s horribly specific.”

“I’ve got five Galleons on it.”

Peter created a spreadsheet. An actual, colour-coded spreadsheet that tracked lingering glances, borrowed clothing, physical contact, and what he ominously titled “Jealousy Incidents.” The Gryffindor common room became a hub of quiet espionage, with Sirius and James engineering situations to push their favoured pairings together. Sirius, a devoted Team Barty/Evan shipper, kept trying to lock them in broom cupboards. James, convinced Barty/(Y/N) was the slow-burn romance of the century, kept arranging study groups that mysteriously excluded Evan.

None of it worked. Or all of it worked, depending on your perspective.

The throuple discovered the betting pool approximately four hours after it was created, because Barty had excellent hearing and an even better instinct for gossip. He slid into the Slytherin common room that evening, threw himself onto the sofa between Evan and (Y/N), and announced, “We are the subject of a gambling ring.”

(Y/N) looked up from their book. “Are we?”

“Apparently we’re a love triangle. A tragic, fraught, will-they-won’t-they disaster. They’re tracking our ‘lingering glances.’” Barty’s grin was feral with delight. “Pete’s got a colour-coded system. Green for jealousy, yellow for physical touch, red for ‘potential confessions.’”

Evan’s lips quirked. He set down his coffee—black, no sugar, because Barty had brought it to him without being asked—and draped an arm along the back of the sofa. “How much is in the pot?”

“Eleven Galleons and counting. They’re taking it very seriously.”

(Y/N) closed their book, a slow smile spreading across their face. “We’re not going to tell them, are we?”

“Absolutely not,” Barty said. “This is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me, and I once watched a hippogriff chase Mulciber across the grounds.”

So the game began.

Evan, who had always possessed a gift for unsettling stillness and intense eye contact, started staring. Not just looking—staring, with the full weight of his dark-eyed attention, whenever the amateur detectives were nearby. In Potions, he fixed his gaze on (Y/N) with such naked longing that Lily dropped her ladle. In Charms, he stared at Barty like he was a puzzle he desperately wanted to solve, jaw tight, fingers drumming once against the desk. The Gryffindors took furious notes. Peter’s parchment gained three new red marks.

Barty, for his part, embraced the role of the tormented soul with theatrical abandon. He’d sigh heavily in the middle of meals and murmur things like, “I just don’t know how much longer I can keep living like this.” The first time he did it, James nearly choked on his pumpkin juice, convinced Barty was about to confess his feelings for someone. Barty was, in fact, staring at a plate of treacle tart that house-elves had failed to provide. The next time he said it, he was looking directly at his Potions essay. The third time, he said it while gazing at Evan’s profile, then immediately ruined it by winking at (Y/N) when he thought no one was looking.

(Y/N) played the innocent card to devastating effect. They flitted between the two boys with an air of oblivious sweetness, holding Evan’s hand during a study session one week, then curling up against Barty’s side in the common room the next. They called Barty “my sun” and Evan “my moon” within the same hour, both delivered with such casual affection that Marlene had to physically restrain Sirius from marching over and demanding clarity. Once, when a Ravenclaw boy approached (Y/N) after class and asked them to Hogsmeade, Barty and Evan materialised on either side of (Y/N) with identical expressions of amused possession. There was no jealousy, no glares, no territorial posturing. Just a quiet, shared smirk that suggested they knew something no one else did.

“They’re not jealous,” Remus said one evening, flipping through Peter’s spreadsheet with a bemused expression. “Look at the data. Zero jealousy incidents. The ‘green’ column is completely empty.”

Peter frowned. “Maybe they’re repressing it.”

“Maybe it’s something else entirely.”

Remus was, once again, ignored.

The intervention happened in early December, when the betting pool had swelled to thirty-four Galleons and the Marauders’ meddling had reached a fever pitch. Sirius had attempted to serenade Barty and Evan with a love ballad in the Great Hall, which resulted in Barty laughing so hard he slid off the bench, and Evan staring at Sirius with a look that could curdle milk. James had cornered (Y/N) in the library and earnestly advised them to “follow their heart,” which (Y/N) had reported back to the other two with tears of mirth streaming down their face. Peter’s spreadsheet was now three feet long and required a colour legend.

“Enough is enough,” Lily declared, and she meant it. She gathered the core conspirators—James, Sirius, Peter, Marlene, Dorcas—and together they ambushed Barty, Evan, and (Y/N) in an empty classroom on a Tuesday afternoon.

The three of them were already there when the door swung open. Barty was perched on a desk, legs swinging. Evan leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, expression unreadable. (Y/N) sat cross-legged on the teacher’s chair, looking entirely too serene.

“We need to talk,” Lily said, and closed the door.

Barty’s eyes lit up. “Oh, finally. We were wondering when you’d crack.”

James stepped forward, trying to look stern. “This has gone on long enough. You three can’t keep playing with each other’s feelings. It’s not fair to anyone.”

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Marlene added. “The pining, the mixed signals—just pick and be done with it.”

“We’ve got a chart,” Peter said, holding up the parchment. “There are patterns. Compelling patterns.”

(Y/N) tilted their head, the picture of innocence. “Patterns?”

“Yes,” Sirius said, gesturing wildly. “You’re clearly torn between them. Evan stares at you like you’ve personally broken his heart and he’s grateful for it. Barty looks at Evan like he wants to either kiss him or duel him. And you—” He pointed at (Y/N). “You’re wearing Barty’s jumper right now, but I saw you kiss Evan’s cheek this morning. It’s chaos. Beautiful, tragic chaos.”

A beat of silence. Barty snorted.

Evan uncrossed his arms and moved with his usual fluid grace, crossing the room to stand at (Y/N)’s side. Barty hopped off the desk and joined them, slinging an arm around Evan’s shoulders. The three of them exchanged a look—a long, speaking look that communicated an entire conversation in the span of a single breath.

(Y/N) spoke first, voice gentle. “Okay, first of all, nobody’s feelings are being played with.”

Evan’s voice was dry as kindling. “Second, you all lost.”

Barty, grinning so wide it looked painful, delivered the final blow. “We’re all dating each other. The three of us. Together. As a unit. A set. A matched collection, if you will.”

Complete, ringing silence.

Peter’s parchment crinkled in his frozen grip. James’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Sirius blinked as if the words had been a physical blow. Marlene slowly lowered herself into a chair. Dorcas started laughing, low and incredulous, while Lily pressed her fingers to her temples.

“All three,” James repeated faintly. “That’s—that’s not even on the chart.”

“We know,” Barty said, delighted. “That’s what makes it brilliant.”

Sirius grabbed Peter’s spreadsheet and flipped it over frantically, as if the correct answer might be hiding on the back. And there, written in tiny, neat letters that had been obscured by a smudge of ink, was a single line: All three — 5 Galleons — R.J.L.

Everyone stared at Remus.

Remus Lupin, who had been leaning against the doorframe with his arms loosely crossed, offered a mild smile. “I did try to tell you. Multiple times.”

“You knew?” James demanded, voice cracking. “This entire time?”

“I pay attention,” Remus said simply. “No jealousy incidents, no tension, always leaving together. They all wore each other’s rings last month in a rotation that only made sense if all three were involved. It wasn’t subtle.”

Barty pointed at him. “I like him. He can stay.”

Evan pulled (Y/N) closer with one arm and extended the other hand toward Peter, palm up, in a clear demand. “The pot. Now.”

“That’s not—we didn’t—Remus won, technically,” Peter sputtered, clutching the parchment protectively. “The rules state—”

“The rules,” (Y/N) said, sliding off the chair and walking forward with a sweet smile, “don’t account for emotional damages.” They plucked the money pouch from Peter’s unresisting fingers and weighed it in their palm. “Consider this compensation for being subjected to your matchmaking, your serenades, and the time Sirius locked Evan and Barty in a broom cupboard and they had to stand there for ten minutes pretending they weren’t already perfectly comfortable with close quarters.”

Sirius went scarlet. “You knew about that?”

“We orchestrated it,” Evan said flatly. “Barty wanted to see how long it would take you to unlock the door.”

“Forty-seven minutes,” Barty supplied cheerfully. “We played Exploding Snap.”

(Y/N) tied the money pouch to their belt and returned to their partners, slotting neatly between them. Evan’s arm settled around their waist. Barty dropped a kiss to the top of their head, then reached across to flick Evan’s ear, which Evan accepted with the long-suffering patience of someone who had chosen this chaos and would do so again.

“Skill issue,” Barty told the stunned group. “Honestly. You all had the data right in front of you. We weren’t even subtle.”

Lily let out a shaky laugh, shaking her head. “I hate that he’s right. The jacket, the coffee, the lap-switching—it was obvious in hindsight.”

Marlene groaned. “I lost ten Galleons.”

“Five here,” Dorcas said, still grinning. “Worth it for the show.”

James looked at Remus, betrayal writ large on his face. “You bet on all three and didn’t tell us?”

“You wouldn’t have listened,” Remus said calmly. “Besides, I needed the money for Christmas presents.”

(Y/N) patted the pouch at their hip. “And now we have Christmas presents covered too. Thank you all for your generous contributions. We’ll think of you fondly when we’re buying each other gifts with your gold.”

Evan steered them both toward the door. Barty offered the room a jaunty salute. “Better luck next time, lads. Try a four-way romance next. Really make your heads spin.”

They swept out together, a united front of intertwined limbs and shared smirks, leaving the Marauders and their friends in a state of stunned, bankrupted silence. Peter was still staring at the blank side of the spreadsheet, where Remus’s tiny bet had upended the entire game. Sirius had his face in his hands. James looked like he needed a lie-down.

Lily was the first to speak after the door clicked shut. “We are never going to live this down.”

Remus pocketed his wand, a ghost of a smile still lingering. “Probably not. But at least I’m five Galleons richer in spirit.”

He wasn’t, of course. The throuple had taken every last Knut. But as Remus walked out of the classroom, he could still hear Barty’s cackle echoing down the corridor, and (Y/N)’s laughter winding through it, and Evan’s low, quiet voice saying something that made the other two laugh even harder. That, Remus thought, was worth more than gold.

Not that he’d tell them that. They were insufferable enough already.

The eighth-year common room was an oddity, a patchwork space the castle had coughed up somewhere between the old Arithmancy corridor and a forgotten spiral staircase that hadn’t been used in centuries. Returning students, those who had survived the war and chosen to finish their education rather than leap straight into rebuilding the Ministry, found themselves granted a sanctuary that felt defiantly provisional—mismatched armchairs in faded crimson and gold, a scattering of Hufflepuff-yellow cushions, a single Slytherin-green throw draped over the back of a velvet settee like a flag of truce. The ceiling was enchanted to show a perpetually golden autumn afternoon, leaves drifting lazily across an imagined sky, and the fire crackled with a warmth that no one had bothered to charm silent. After a year of hiding in shadows, the noise was welcome.

Y/N Malfoy paced the length of the rug like a general surveying a battlefield, which, in her mind, she very nearly was. She was a compact figure, barely clearing five feet, with the platinum blonde hair and sharp grey eyes of her house, and a posture so rigid it practically declared war on slouching. Her robes were immaculate, her shoes polished to a mirror shine, and her voice could cut glass when she chose. She chose now.

“—and I’m telling you, Potter, the Wronski Feint is not a desperate stunt, it’s an art form, and if I’d been Seeker against Ravenclaw in fifth year, I would have pulled it off in under ninety seconds. Malfoys don’t fail at anything, least of all Quidditch.”

James Potter, sprawled upside-down on a squashy armchair with his legs hooked over the backrest and his hopelessly untidy black hair brushing the floor, grinned up at her. The grin was infuriatingly lazy, as if the very concept of an argument was a mild amusement invented solely for his entertainment. “You’d have been a menace, no doubt. But you’re also, and I say this with love, about the size of a decent Bludger. Crosswind on the pitch would’ve sent you into the Astronomy Tower.”

“Size has nothing to do with alpha prowess,” Y/N snapped, grey eyes flashing. “I’d have intimidated the wind into submission.”

Lily Evans, seated cross-legged on the settee with a heavy tome on advanced Transfiguration balanced in her lap, didn’t look up, but the corner of her mouth twitched. Her deep red hair was pulled back in a practical plait, a few strands escaping to frame a face that had seen too much death for someone not yet twenty, but her green eyes held a quiet, resilient light. She was an alpha, like James, and the quiet authority she carried made the air around her feel grounded, safe. “The wind, Y/N? You’d intimidate the wind. That’s a new one even for you.”

“Naturally. I’m exceptional.” Y/N stopped pacing and folded her arms, chin tilted high. Her scent—something she always doused with an aggressive, spicy cologne that she insisted was pure alpha musk—couldn’t quite hide the faint undertones of something sweeter, like honeyed tea left to cool. The pack had noticed it years ago. They’d never said a word.

Regulus Black, lounging by the window with one leg drawn up and a book dangling forgotten from his fingers, watched the exchange with the half-lidded expression of a cat observing a particularly noisy flock of birds. He was a beta, all sharp cheekbones, dark curls, and a wit honed to a razor’s edge during his years navigating the snake pit of Slytherin house and, more precariously, the expectations of a family steeped in darkness. He had defected from the Death Eaters six months before the war’s end, bringing with him a cache of intelligence that had saved countless lives, including those of the three people in this room. His bond with them was forged in fire and secrets, and it was unbreakable. “Y/N, you’re hardly an alpha,” he said, his voice silken and amused. “You’re a tiny tyrant with a superiority complex and a frankly alarming amount of hair product. The wind might mistake you for a decorative weather vane.”

Y/N rounded on him, nostrils flaring. “At least I have hair to product, Black. Your family’s curls are one bad potion away from a nesting Kneazle.”

James let out a bark of laughter, nearly toppling off his chair. Lily finally looked up, her smile breaking free. Regulus inclined his head, conceding the hit with a ghost of a smirk. This was their rhythm—sharp-edged and warm, a pack that had learned to hold each other together with banter because sentiment still felt too raw, too close to all they’d lost. The war had ended, but the echoes of it lived in the shadows under their eyes and the way James’s hand drifted unconsciously to his wand when someone entered a room too quietly. Here, in this patchwork common room, they could pretend they were just students again, young and stupid and in love with the sound of their own voices.

Y/N, satisfied with her verbal victory, dropped onto the arm of James’s chair with the regal air of a queen mounting a slightly lopsided throne. “Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the strategy for next week’s pick-up match against the seventh-years is non-negotiable. I’ve charted the flight patterns, accounted for the Hufflepuff Keeper’s blind spot, and drafted a play that will leave them weeping into their butterbeer. As the alpha of this pack, I expect you all to—”

“The alpha,” Regulus murmured, just loud enough to be heard.

Y/N’s head whipped toward him. “Yes, Regulus, the alpha. Do keep up. I know it’s difficult for you, what with all that brooding you mistake for a personality.”

James righted himself in the chair, his grin softening into something fonder. He reached out and ruffled Y/N’s hair, ignoring her outraged squawk. “You’re the boss, little alpha. Whatever you say.”

Lily exchanged a glance with Regulus, a silent conversation that lasted barely a second. They all knew. They had known for years, long before the war ended, long before Y/N had started puffing herself up like a defensive Puffskein every time the topic of secondary genders came up. Her scent, beneath the artificial spice she layered on, carried the unmistakable sweetness of an omega—faint, yes, buried, but there, like the first hint of spring under frozen ground. Her stature, her fierce protectiveness of the pack, the way she unconsciously nested in their shared spaces, draping blankets over chair arms and hoarding cushions—it all pointed to the truth she refused to see. They had never pushed. Some truths, they understood, needed to be discovered on one’s own terms, and Y/N Malfoy’s pride was a delicate, explosive thing. The war had taught them patience; loving Y/N required a great deal of it.

So they humored her. They let her call herself alpha, let her boss them around, let her believe she was the fearsome commander of their little unit. It cost them nothing, and it kept her steady. And if, in quiet moments, James sometimes caught a whiff of that hidden sweetness and felt his alpha instincts stir with a protectiveness that went beyond friendship—well, he kept that to himself. They all did. The pack was complete, almost. They were three and one, and the one didn’t yet know where she truly belonged. They could wait. They were good at waiting.

The next week dawned grey and damp, the Scottish autumn settling into Hogwarts’ stones like a chill that couldn’t be shaken. Y/N had been… off. She’d snapped at a first-year who merely looked at her in the corridor, then spent an entire breakfast glowering at her porridge as if it had personally insulted her ancestry. Her cologne was heavier than usual, applied with a frantic urgency that left a cloying trail wherever she walked. James noticed the way she flinched when he draped an arm around her shoulders. Lily noticed the faint flush that crept up her neck during Charms. Regulus noticed everything, his grey eyes—so like Y/N’s own—tracking her with a quiet intensity that he masked behind lazy barbs.

“You smell like you’ve bathed in a Potions accident,” he remarked on Wednesday afternoon, as the pack settled into their usual corner of the eighth-year common room. Most of the other students were out—Hogsmeade weekend had drawn a crowd despite the drizzle—leaving the sprawling space quiet and still. The fire burned low and golden in the grate, and the squashy sofa they had long since claimed as their own was piled with cushions that Y/N had unconsciously arranged into something resembling a nest. A low table sat cluttered with half-hearted attempts at studying: a few books, a scatter of parchment, a quill that had rolled onto the floor and been forgotten. Rain drummed softly against the tall windows, and the enchanted ceiling had dimmed to match the grey sky outside.

Y/N stiffened, a book on Ancient Runes clutched to her chest like a shield. “It’s a new cologne. Expensive. You wouldn’t understand, you’ve been wearing the same cravat since fourth year.”

“It’s a classic.”

“It’s a cry for help.”

James threw himself onto the sofa, pulling Lily down beside him with an easy grace that still made her roll her eyes even as she smiled. “Play nice, you two. Y/N, come sit. You’re hovering like a Dementor with a scheduling conflict.”

Y/N opened her mouth to retort, but the words died in her throat. A wave of heat crashed over her, sudden and disorienting, as if someone had poured warm honey into her veins. The book slipped from her fingers and hit the rug with a dull thump. Her vision swam. The room, which a moment before had been cool and dim, now felt stifling, the fire too bright, the air too thick. Her skin prickled, and beneath the cloying mask of her cologne, something else bloomed—something unmistakable.

Lily was on her feet instantly, the book in her lap forgotten. “Y/N? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Y/N managed, but her voice came out breathy, unsteady. She pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling the heat coil and spread, a deep, instinctive ache she had never felt before. Her scent spiked—sweet, so sweet, like jasmine and vanilla and something wilder, something that called to the alphas in the room like a siren song. The cologne shattered under the onslaught, and for the first time in years, Y/N Malfoy’s true scent flooded the space, undeniable and devastatingly omega.

James inhaled sharply, his hazel eyes widening behind his glasses. He felt it in his chest, a pull so primal it stole his breath—the recognition of a pack omega, his omega, their omega, finally, finally revealing herself. Relief crashed over him, immediate and profound, followed almost instantly by a cold spear of dread as he saw the panic contorting Y/N’s face.

Regulus went very still. His book hung forgotten in his hand, his expression unreadable but for a flicker of something fierce and tender in the depths of his eyes. He had always known. They all had. But knowing and seeing were two different things, and seeing Y/N like this—terrified, trembling, her carefully constructed armour shattering around her—made something twist painfully in his chest.

“What’s happening to me?” Y/N gasped, stumbling backward. Her back hit the wall beside the fireplace, and she pressed herself against the cool stone as if it could anchor her. Her body was rebelling, heat pooling low in her belly, a slickness she didn’t understand gathering in her underwear. Her omega instincts, dormant for eighteen years, were waking with a vengeance, and she had no idea how to stop it. “This isn’t—I’m not—I’m an alpha, I’m supposed to be an alpha—”

“Y/N,” Lily said gently, approaching with the slow, careful steps of someone calming a cornered animal. She kept her hands visible, her posture open, her alpha presence dialled down to the barest hum. “It’s okay. You’re presenting. It’s normal, it’s natural, you’re safe.”

“Presenting?” The word came out as a snarl. Y/N’s grey eyes were wild, darting between the three of them like a trapped fox. “Presenting as what? Because if you say omega, Evans, I swear to Merlin I will hex your eyebrows off.”

James winced. “Love, maybe don’t threaten Lily’s eyebrows right now. She’s very attached to them.”

“Shut up, Potter!” Y/N’s voice cracked, and the sound was so raw, so unlike her usual imperious command, that the room fell silent. Her hands were shaking. She could smell herself now, could smell the sweetness that she had spent years drowning in spice and denial. It was undeniable. It was humiliating. It was the death of everything she had told herself she was. “This is a mistake. A potion gone wrong, or—or a curse. Someone’s cursed me. The war’s barely over, there are still Death Eaters who’d love to see a Malfoy brought low, and this is—this is an attack on my reputation!”

Regulus, who had been silent, closed his book with a soft snap. “It’s not a curse, Y/N. You know it’s not. You’ve known for years, you just didn’t want to admit it.” His voice was calm, but there was a bite underneath, the familiar edge of his wit. “Frankly, I’m relieved. You made a terrible alpha. All that posturing gave me a headache.”

The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic. Y/N’s face went white, then red, a furious, humiliated flush that spread from her cheeks to her throat. “How dare you,” she whispered, and the venom in it made James flinch. “How dare you stand there and—and mock me while my life is falling apart. You knew? All of you knew? And you just—what, you let me make a fool of myself? You let me believe I was something I’m not, just so you could have a good laugh?”

“No one’s laughing,” Lily said firmly, shooting Regulus a look that promised retribution. “Regulus, that was unhelpful.”

Regulus had the grace to look abashed, but his jaw remained set. “I wasn’t mocking. I was trying to lighten the situation. Clearly, I miscalculated.”

“Clearly,” Y/N spat. Tears were gathering in her eyes, and that only made her angrier. She blinked them back furiously, refusing to let them fall. A Malfoy did not cry in front of an audience. A Malfoy did not fall apart. And yet here she was, pressed against a wall in the common room, her body betraying her with every shuddering breath, her scent screaming omega to everyone within a hundred-metre radius. “I hate you. I hate all of you. Stay away from me.”

She bolted. She wrenched open the common room door and fled into the corridor, the slam of it echoing behind her. James moved to follow, but Lily caught his arm.

“Give her a minute,” she said quietly, though her own heart was pounding. “If we chase her now, she’ll only run harder. She needs to feel like she has some control.”

James dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it messier than ever. “She’s terrified, Lils. You saw her. She looked like her whole world just ended.”

“It did, in a way,” Regulus said, and his voice had lost its edge. He was staring at the door, his expression hollow. “She built her entire identity on being an alpha. We let her. We thought we were being kind, but maybe we were just cowards. Now she thinks we’ve been laughing at her.”

Lily shook her head. “She doesn’t think that. She’s lashing out because she’s hurt and scared. We’ll fix this. We’re her pack. That’s what packs do.”

James nodded, though the tension in his shoulders didn’t ease. “We’ll give her tonight. Tomorrow, we start again. She’s not facing this alone, whether she likes it or not.”

The night was long. Y/N barricaded herself in her dormitory, a small single room the castle had provided for those who preferred solitude. She cast every locking and silencing charm she knew, then sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the dark window, and tried very hard not to think about the way her scent had changed, the way her body had responded to the presence of her packmates, the way a part of her—a traitorous, instinct-driven part—had wanted to burrow into their warmth and never leave.

She was an omega. The word tasted like ash. All her life, she had been told that Malfoys were alphas—powerful, dominant, destined to lead. Her father had drilled it into her before he was sent to Azkaban. Her mother, distant and cold, had only ever valued strength. Y/N had built herself into a weapon of pride and sharp edges, and now biology had come along and stripped it all away. What was left? A small, trembling girl who smelled like a flower shop and whose body was preparing to beg for a knot. The thought made her stomach turn.

She didn’t sleep. By the time dawn bled grey through the window, she had made a decision. If she couldn’t be an alpha, she would be the next best thing: utterly unreadable. She would bury this omega nonsense so deep that no one would ever dare mention it again. She would be Y/N Malfoy, untouchable and terrifying, and if her scent gave her away, then she would simply drown it in enough potions to choke a Hippogriff.

The next morning, she descended to the common room in a cloud of aggressive cologne and even more aggressive attitude. Her robes were crisp, her hair was perfect, and her expression could have curdled milk. James, Lily, and Regulus were already there, nursing cups of tea and looking like they hadn’t slept either. They looked up as she entered, a cautious hope flickering across their faces.

“Good morning,” Y/N said, her voice clipped. “I trust we’re all ready for breakfast. I’ve revised the Quidditch strategy overnight, and I expect full compliance. As your alpha, I won’t tolerate insubordination.”

The word hung in the air like a challenge. James opened his mouth, closed it, and looked helplessly at Lily. Lily’s expression was a careful mask of neutrality, but her eyes were sad. Regulus simply raised an eyebrow.

“Of course, alpha,” he said, and the title was delivered with such impeccable dryness that it could have been a taunt or a peace offering. Y/N chose to interpret it as the latter.

“Good,” she said, and swept out the door.

This became the pattern. For three days, Y/N Malfoy performed alpha-ness with the desperate intensity of a stage actor on opening night. She barked orders, she criticised tactics, she corrected James’s Quidditch grip in front of a gaggle of amused seventh-years, and she wore so much scent-masking potion that her skin developed a faint, irritated rash. She flinched whenever anyone touched her, then overcompensated by clapping them on the shoulder hard enough to bruise. She was exhausting herself, and everyone could see it.

The pack watched, and worried, and tried to find a way through the walls she was building. Lily attempted reason, cornering Y/N in the library with a stack of books on omega biology and a gentle, “We should talk about what happened. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Y/N had stared at the books as if they were venomous spiders, then informed Lily that she had no idea what she was talking about and flounced away, leaving Lily sighing into a tome on scent gland health.

James tried humour and unrelenting positivity. He brought her favourite pastries from the kitchens, challenged her to mock duels, and loudly proclaimed in the Great Hall that no one in the history of Hogwarts had ever looked as terrifying in a scarf as Y/N Malfoy. She had thrown a bread roll at his head, but her lips had twitched, and for a moment, the brittle mask had cracked. He counted it as a win.

Regulus, predictably, took the most direct approach. He found her on the fourth morning, huddled in her bed with the curtains drawn, having sent word via a trembling first-year that she was “gravely ill” and would not be attending classes. The pretence was thin; her scent, despite the potions, had begun to seep through the fabric of the hangings, a persistent, sweet reminder of the truth she was trying to escape.

Regulus pulled back the curtain without ceremony. Y/N was a lump under a mountain of blankets, only the top of her platinum head visible. The room smelled like a greenhouse and a patisserie had collided.

“You’re not ill,” Regulus said, leaning against the bedpost. “You’re hiding.”

“I have a fever,” came the muffled reply. “Go away.”

“You have a pre-heat. There’s a difference.” He crossed his arms, his grey eyes cool but not unkind. “Your scent is stronger than ever, and you’re nesting. I count at least four blankets that weren’t on this bed yesterday, and one of them appears to be James’s Quidditch jumper, which he’s been looking for. You’re not subtle, Y/N.”

The blankets shifted. One grey eye peered out, baleful and bloodshot. “I am not nesting. I am simply cold. And the jumper was a strategic acquisition. It’s hideous, and I’m doing him a favour by removing it from circulation.”

“You’re pressing your face into it every time you think no one’s looking.” Regulus’s voice softened, just a fraction. “Y/N, this isn’t sustainable. You’re making yourself sick trying to be something you’re not, and we’re all going spare watching you. James is stress-baking. Lily has read the same paragraph of that Transfiguration book for three days. I’m being nice, which should terrify you.”

Y/N sat up slowly, the blankets pooling around her. She looked small and tired and furious, her hair a tangled mess and her cheeks flushed with the low-grade heat that had been simmering under her skin since the presentation. “I don’t want your pity, Regulus. I don’t want any of your pity. I’m a Malfoy. I’m supposed to be powerful, and commanding, and feared. Omegas aren’t feared. Omegas are—they’re coddled and protected and patronised, and everyone looks at them like they’re something to be managed. I refuse to be managed.”

“Then don’t be,” Regulus said simply. “Being an omega doesn’t erase your personality, much as some of us might wish it did. You’re still the most insufferably bossy person I’ve ever met. You’re still terrifying. You still made a seventh-year cry last year just by looking at him. None of that goes away because your scent changed. The only thing that’s changed is that you can’t lie to yourself anymore, and frankly, the lying was the weakest thing about you.”

Y/N stared at him, her expression unreadable. For a long moment, the only sound was the crackle of the dormitory fire and the distant hum of the castle’s magic. Then, quietly, she said, “You’re a terrible comforter.”

“I’m not trying to comfort you. I’m trying to be honest. The rest of them are tiptoeing around your feelings because they love you and they’re afraid of breaking you. I think you’re harder to break than that. I think you’re scared, and you’re embarrassed, and you’re handling it badly, but I don’t think you’re fragile.” He paused, then added, “Also, if you don’t get out of this bed and face the world, I’m telling Peeves you have a crush on the Fat Friar.”

Y/N’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.”

She didn’t get out of bed that morning, but she did stop pretending to be ill. The next day, she appeared in the common room without her cologne, her natural scent—soft and sweet and unmistakably omega—wafting around her like a declaration of war. She was pale, and her hands trembled slightly, but her chin was high and her eyes were defiant. “If anyone comments on my scent,” she announced to the room at large, “I will hex them into next week. Are we clear?”

James, Lily, and Regulus exchanged a look. “Crystal,” James said, beaming.

The fragile peace lasted approximately six hours. Hogwarts, as ever, was a crucible of gossip, and the story of the Malfoy omega who had spent years pretending to be an alpha was too juicy to contain. Y/N heard it first in the corridor outside the Charms classroom, a whisper that wasn’t quite quiet enough.

“—and they say she still insists she’s an alpha, can you imagine? A Malfoy omega, it’s almost poetic. After all that blood purity rubbish, she ends up at the bottom of the pack hierarchy. My mother says it’s karma.”

Y/N didn’t see who spoke. The words hit her like a physical blow, and for a moment, the world tilted. The bottom of the hierarchy. Karma. The implication that her designation was a punishment, a cosmic joke at the expense of her family’s sins. Her hands clenched at her sides, and the heat that had been simmering under her skin flared into something closer to rage.

She found her pack in the common room that evening, huddled by the fire in a quiet conference that stopped abruptly when she stormed in. James half-rose from his chair, concern etched on his face. “Y/N? What happened?”

“What happened?” Her voice was brittle, cracking at the edges. “What happened is that the entire school is talking about me. The Malfoy omega who can’t accept her place. The joke of Slytherin house. The pathetic little girl who thought she could be something more.” She laughed, a sharp, humourless sound. “I suppose you’ve all had a good chuckle about it. The mighty alpha, brought low. It must be very satisfying.”

Lily stood, her expression pained. “No one is laughing, Y/N. We’ve been trying to protect you from exactly this.”

“I don’t need your protection!” The shout echoed off the stone walls, and Y/N’s chest heaved. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to be—to be this. I spent my whole life being told that strength is everything, that Malfoys don’t submit, don’t yield, don’t break. And now the whole world is going to look at me and see something weak, something to be pitied, and I can’t—I can’t bear it.”

The words tumbled out, raw and unguarded, and in the silence that followed, something cracked open. Y/N’s eyes were wet, and this time she didn’t have the strength to blink the tears away. They spilled over, tracking hot down her cheeks, and she hated them, hated herself, hated the way her body kept betraying her again and again.

James moved first. He closed the distance between them in two strides and pulled her into his arms, solid and warm and smelling of broomstick polish and the particular cedar scent that had always meant safety to her, even when she was too proud to admit it. She struggled for a moment, a token resistance, and then collapsed against him, her fingers clutching the front of his jumper. “I’m scared,” she whispered into his chest, the admission so quiet it was almost swallowed by the fire. “I’m scared that without the alpha act, I’m nothing. I’m scared no one will respect me. I’m scared that… that you won’t want me anymore. That I’m not what the pack needs.”

James’s arms tightened around her. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” He tilted her chin up, his hazel eyes fierce and tender all at once. “You have always been exactly what this pack needs. Not because you were pretending to be an alpha, but because you’re you. Bossy, brilliant, terrifying you. We didn’t love you for the act, Y/N. We loved you in spite of it, and because of it, and around it. We’ve been waiting for you to see yourself the way we see you. As ours.”

Lily came to stand beside them, her hand coming up to smooth Y/N’s hair back from her damp face. “You’re not weak. Omegas aren’t weak. Look at what you’ve survived. Look at what you’ve done. You walked out of a war with your head held high and your wand arm steady. You’ve faced down Death Eaters and disapproving pureblood matriarchs and James’s cooking. This is just one more thing, and you don’t have to face it alone.”

Regulus, still by the window, watched the scene with an expression that was uncharacteristically soft. He didn’t come closer—he wasn’t the type to pile onto a group embrace—but when Y/N’s gaze flickered to him, he gave a small, crooked smile. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “you’re the least pathetic person I know. Infuriating, yes. Dramatic, absolutely. But never pathetic.”

Y/N let out a wet, shaky laugh. “You’re all insufferable.”

“Takes one to know one,” James said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

They stayed like that for a long time, a tangle of limbs and quiet reassurance, until Y/N’s tears dried and her breathing steadied. When she finally pulled back, her eyes were red-rimmed but her spine was straight. “I’ve been awful,” she said bluntly. “To all of you. I’m sorry. I’m not good at this—vulnerability, feelings, any of it. But I’m trying. I’ll keep trying.”

Lily smiled, and it was like the sun coming out. “That’s all we’ve ever wanted.”

The days that followed were different. Not magically fixed, not instantly easy, but different. Y/N stopped drowning herself in potions. She stopped claiming to be an alpha. She still snapped and bossed and critiqued, but there was less desperation in it, less fear. She let James drape an arm around her shoulders without flinching. She allowed Lily to brush her hair one evening, a quiet, intimate gesture that left her feeling strangely peaceful. She even, once, fell asleep against Regulus’s shoulder in the common room, and when she woke, she didn’t immediately insult him.

The pack, in turn, adjusted. They still let her lead when it mattered, still treated her as an equal, but they also began to care for her in the ways her omega instincts craved. James brought her tea without being asked. Lily made sure her favourite blanket was always on the sofa. Regulus, in his own peculiar way, started leaving small, sharp-witted notes in her books—You’re still short, but your scent is acceptable today—that made her snort with laughter when she thought no one was looking.

The pre-heat symptoms grew stronger. Y/N’s scent ripened, deepening into something so alluring that other students began to glance her way in the corridors, their expressions curious or covetous. James’s alpha instincts went into overdrive; he found himself positioning his body between Y/N and any unfamiliar alpha with a possessiveness that startled even him. Lily, calmer but no less affected, took to walking on Y/N’s other side, her presence a quiet deterrent. Regulus, as a beta, was less affected by the pheromones, but he watched the alphas with a sharp, assessing gaze, ready to intervene if anyone got too close.

The turning point came on a golden afternoon in late October, when the pack decided to escape the castle’s growing claustrophobia. Regulus knew a place—a hidden clearing deep in the Forbidden Forest, accessible through a passage behind an old tapestry on the seventh floor. It was a secret he’d discovered during the war, a sanctuary where the trees parted to reveal a natural spring, its water clear and impossibly blue, fed by a vein of magic that kept it warm even in the depths of winter. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in dappled patterns, and the air smelled of moss and wildflowers.

They brought a picnic: sandwiches stolen from the kitchens, a flask of pumpkin juice, a blanket charmed to repel damp. Y/N had been quiet all morning, the heat under her skin a constant, throbbing presence that she was learning to endure rather than fight. She wore a simple sundress under her robes, a concession to the warmth of the spring, and when they reached the clearing, she paused at the edge of the water, suddenly self-conscious.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, and her voice was softer than usual.

“We thought you’d like it,” Lily said, already spreading the blanket on the mossy bank. “Regulus has been hoarding this place like a dragon with a treasure. We had to bribe him with chocolate frogs to get him to share.”

Regulus, shrugging off his outer robes, shot her a dry look. “The chocolate frogs were a formality. I’ve been meaning to bring you all here for months.”

James was already pulling his shirt over his head, revealing the lean, Quidditch-toned muscles of his torso. “Last one in is a Flobberworm!” he shouted, and cannonballed into the spring with a splash that sent water cascading over the bank.

Lily laughed, shucking her own clothes to reveal a practical green bathing suit. “He’s such a child.” She waded in after him with more dignity, her red hair floating behind her like a flame.

Y/N hesitated. Her robes felt heavy, her body hypersensitive. The sundress underneath was modest, but the thought of exposing so much skin, of releasing her scent unchecked into the open air, made her stomach twist. She was so tired of being afraid.

Regulus, still fully dressed, appeared at her elbow. “You don’t have to swim if you don’t want to. We can just sit.”

She looked up at him, at the familiar sharp lines of his face and the unexpected gentleness in his eyes. “I want to. I just… I feel like I’m leaking pheromones everywhere. It’s mortifying.”

“Your scent is lovely,” Regulus said, and the sincerity in his voice made her blink. “It’s not mortifying. It’s you. And out here, there’s no one to judge but a few squirrels and possibly a disgruntled bowtruckle. So if you want to swim, swim.”

Y/N took a breath. Then, with the decisive movement of someone steeling themselves for battle, she pulled her robes over her head and let them fall to the moss. The sundress was pale blue, the straps thin, and it left her shoulders and collarbone bare. The moment the fabric settled, she felt her scent bloom—jasmine and vanilla and warm honey, potent and unshielded. In the spring, James and Lily both paused, their heads turning toward her with an instinctive, almost involuntary attention.

“Wow,” James breathed, and then flushed. “I mean—you look nice. The dress. It’s nice.”

Lily elbowed him, but she was smiling, and her green eyes held a heat that made Y/N’s pulse quicken. “You look beautiful, Y/N.”

Y/N ducked her head, a rare blush staining her cheeks. “I’m getting in the water before I lose my nerve.” She stepped into the spring, and the warmth of it wrapped around her like an embrace. The water was silky, the magic that heated it tingling faintly against her skin. She let herself sink in up to her shoulders, her hair floating around her, and for the first time in weeks, the tension in her body began to ease.

They swam and splashed and laughed, the afternoon stretching golden and lazy around them. James attempted to teach Y/N a silly game involving diving for stones, which devolved into a splashing war that left them both breathless. Lily floated on her back, her eyes closed, a small smile on her lips. Regulus sat on the bank with his trousers rolled up, his feet dangling in the water, occasionally offering sarcastic commentary on James’s technique.

As the sun began to dip lower, painting the clearing in shades of amber and rose, Y/N climbed out of the spring and settled on the blanket. The heat that had been a low hum all day was building, a pressure under her skin that she recognised now. Her pre-heat was shifting into something more urgent. She lay back on the blanket, staring up at the canopy, and when Lily came to sit beside her, she didn’t flinch away.

Lily’s hand found hers, their fingers lacing together. “Y/N,” she said quietly, her voice gentle but certain. “You’re close. Your scent has changed again. You’re going into heat soon.”

The words hung in the air, and Y/N felt the old panic rise—the urge to deny, to deflect, to fight. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her. Then, quietly, she said, “I know.”

It was a surrender, but not a defeat. It was an acceptance, quiet and profound, of the truth she had been running from for years. She was an omega. She was going into heat. And she was surrounded by the people who loved her most in the world.

The reaction was immediate. Lily shifted closer, her hand releasing Y/N’s to cup her cheek. “We’ve got you,” she murmured, and then she was leaning in, her lips brushing the sensitive skin just below Y/N’s ear. The contact was light, almost reverent, but it sent a shiver down Y/N’s spine. Lily’s scent—fresh and green, like rain on clover—enveloped her, and she breathed it in, letting it steady her.

James was there a heartbeat later, dripping spring water and radiating warmth. He knelt on the blanket, his hazel eyes dark with a mix of concern and desire. “You’re okay,” he said, and it was half a question, half a promise. He lifted Y/N’s hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist, right over the scent gland, and the feel of his lips on that sensitive patch of skin made her gasp. He smiled, a little shaky, and then he was leaning in too, his mouth trailing a line of kisses along her collarbone, up the column of her throat, until he reached the curve of her shoulder. He sucked lightly, not enough to hurt, just enough to leave a faint mark, a claim.

Y/N’s head fell back, her breath coming faster. The two alphas were scenting her, their wrists rubbing against her neck and shoulders, their cheeks brushing her skin, their lips pressing warmth and promise into every inch of exposed flesh. It was overwhelming—the scents, the touches, the sheer focused attention. She felt surrounded, cocooned, cherished. And then Regulus was there, kneeling on her other side, his grey eyes dark and intent.

He didn’t say anything. He just cupped her face in both hands and kissed her.

The kiss was deep and slow, his lips moving against hers with a deliberate thoroughness that left no room for doubt. He kissed her like he had been waiting for this moment for years, like he was memorising the shape of her mouth. One hand slid into her damp hair, tilting her head to deepen the angle, and she made a sound against his lips—a soft, surprised whimper that she would never, in a million years, admit to.

When he finally pulled back, she was dazed, her lips swollen and her heart pounding. “What was that for?” she managed, and her voice came out embarrassingly breathy.

“For being you,” Regulus said, and his smile was the real one, the rare one, the one that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish. “For finally letting us in.”

James, still pressed against her side, laughed softly. “We’ve been wanting to do this for ages, you know. All that ‘alpha’ nonsense was really getting in the way.”

Lily hummed in agreement, her lips brushing Y/N’s shoulder. “You were very convincing. Very terrifying. Very… prickly.”

“I’m still prickly,” Y/N said, but there was no heat in it. The alphas’ scenting was working its way into her very bones, soothing the frantic edge of her pre-heat, grounding her in her body. She felt safe. She felt wanted. She felt, for the first time in her life, like being exactly what she was might not be such a terrible thing after all.

James pressed another kiss to her throat, right over her pulse point. Lily’s hand traced a gentle pattern on her arm. Regulus settled beside her, his shoulder a solid, warm presence against hers. The sun was setting, the spring was murmuring, and the clearing was drenched in gold. Y/N closed her eyes and let herself simply feel.

“Damn,” she whispered, half to herself. “All this attention… it’s actually pretty good being an omega.”

James’s laugh was a bright, joyful thing that echoed through the trees. Lily smiled against her skin. Regulus snorted, but his arm came around her, pulling her closer.

“Told you,” he said, his voice dry but undeniably fond. “Insufferable to the very end.”

Y/N smiled, a real smile, small and private and completely unguarded. “I learned from the best.”

The pack stayed in the clearing until the stars came out, wrapped in the blanket and in each other, the water of the spring reflecting the first pale glimmer of the moon. The war was over. The future was uncertain. But here, in this hidden corner of the world, there was warmth, and there was love, and there was a pack that had finally found its way home. And for an omega who had once sworn she would never yield, it turned out that yielding—just a little, just to them—was not a surrender at all. It was a beginning.

The stone floor of the Slytherin dormitory was cold under Draco Malfoy’s bare feet, but he barely noticed. He was eleven years old, standing in front of the long mirror in the changing alcove, his uniform shirt bunched in his hands, while Blaise Zabini leaned against the doorframe with the kind of casual patience that always made Draco’s shoulders tighten. The dormitory was otherwise empty; the other boys had already gone down to the common room, their voices echoing off the green-tinged stone. Draco had lingered behind, seized by a familiar, private ritual that he would never have admitted to under pain of torture.

He turned slowly, lifting his arms, craning his neck, scanning every visible patch of skin in the mirror’s reflection. His back, his ribs, the soft underside of his arms. Nothing. Not a single ink-black letter. The skin that should have held his soulmate’s first words to him remained as pale and unblemished as new parchment. He had been doing this since he was old enough to understand what a soulmate mark was, and every single time, the result was the same.

“Still nothing?” Blaise asked, his voice deliberately light. He knew the answer. Everyone in their year knew the answer.

Draco didn’t turn around. He let his arms drop and reached for his shirt. “Obviously,” he said, his voice clipped. “If anything had appeared, you’d have heard about it. I’d have had it embroidered on my school robes. Possibly on a flag.” He pulled the shirt over his head and smoothed the collar, finally meeting Blaise’s eyes in the mirror with a smile that was all sharp edges and no warmth. “Besides, soulmate marks are sentimental nonsense. I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Blaise didn’t push. He simply nodded and pushed off the doorframe, and they walked together to the flying lesson, Draco’s chin held high because that was what Malfoys did. But the familiar weight of the blankness settled on him like a second skin, heavier than any ink. He could already feel the sidelong glances from the other first-years, the whispers that trailed behind him like a persistent draft. Poor Malfoy. No soulmate. Do you think he’s cursed? My mother says it’s impossibly rare. Maybe his soulmate died before they could meet. He had heard every variation. He had perfected the art of the icy stare that made the whisperers falter and look away, but it didn’t stop the words from burrowing deep, burrowing into the soft, hidden part of him that still secretly, desperately, wanted to belong to someone.

In the stands before the flying lesson began, Theodore Nott sat down beside him, tugging up his trouser leg to show the words on his calf. “Watch where you’re going,” Theo read aloud, grinning. “I’m hoping it’s a veela. Can you imagine? Colliding with a veela and those are her first words? Brilliant.” Crabbe and Goyle lumbered closer, and Crabbe muttered something about his own mark being so mortifying he’d never reveal it, which prompted a cascade of crude speculation. Draco joined in with a sneer and a few well-aimed barbs, because that was expected of him, but his mind was elsewhere.

Late that night, long after the greenish glow of the lake had dimmed and the other boys were snoring softly in their four-posters, Draco lay awake and let the mask slip. He stared at the underside of his canopy and let himself wonder what it would feel like. To carry a sentence on your skin that proved, beyond any doubt, that someone in the world was destined to speak to you and change everything. He had grown up on stories of his parents’ marks—his mother’s elegant, curling script on her collarbone, his father’s sharp, possessive declaration on his wrist—and the certainty in their voices when they spoke of it had always made something ache fiercely behind Draco’s ribs. He pressed his palm flat against his own blank chest, right over his heart, and imagined the warmth of a hand that wasn’t his own. The ache sharpened into something close to grief. He never told anyone how much it mattered. He never let the mask slip in daylight. But in the dark, with the lake pressing against the windows and the silent company of sleeping boys, he let himself believe, just for a moment, that he might be empty forever.

Miles and miles away, in a quiet house with a wildly overgrown garden and a fireplace that was always lit, another eleven-year-old was tracing the words on her shoulder for the ten-thousandth time. She sat cross-legged on her bed, her back to a tilted mirror, her neck twisted so she could see the reflection of the script that curved in a severe, elegant slant just below her left shoulder blade. The letters were not hers; they had appeared when she was very small, blooming across her skin like frost on a windowpane, and they had never faded. Can’t you even answer?

She traced the cruel, slanting question mark with the pad of her index finger. The words were not kind. They were not the sort of greeting that made a young heart flutter with romantic hope. They were the words of someone irritated, dismissive, possibly even cold. But she had spent years thinking about them, turning them over in her mind like a smooth stone, and she had come to a decision a long time ago. First words were not a verdict. They were not the entire story. People snapped at strangers in moments of stress. People had bad days. People said things they did not mean. First words were simply the beginning, and she had decided—quietly, firmly—that the rest of the story could be different. She would make it different. She was not afraid of those words. She was ready for them.

Because she was a girl who could not speak, she had always imagined the moment of meeting her soulmate with a kind of fierce, hopeful determination. She couldn't give him words, but she could give him her hands, her drawings, her silent, steady attention. She had planned it a hundred different ways. She would hear the words—those exact words—and she would not freeze. She would smile, she would pull out her charmed notepad, and she would write something back to him. I'm sorry. I can't answer. But I wanted to. I've been waiting for you. She would show him her shoulder, where his words were written, and then she would show him that she was not broken. That silence did not mean absence.

The fact that he would have no mark of his own—that his skin would be blank because of her—was a guilt she had learned to carry. But it had never dimmed her resolve. If anything, it made her more determined. She would make up for every missing word. She would prove to him that a soulmate who couldn't speak could still be a soulmate worth having. She traced the words one last time, a small, private smile touching the corner of her mouth, and then she pulled on her nightgown. Somewhere out there, a boy was waiting for her. She would find him. She would not let him down.

Hogwarts arrived with a blur of steam and scarlet and green, and she was sorted into Hufflepuff, a house that suited her quiet, steady nature. She threw herself into the rhythms of the castle with the same quiet determination she applied to everything. She learned the corridors, found her favourite corners of the library, and filled sketchbook after sketchbook with drawings of the world around her. She watched people. She was good at that. And like everyone else in the castle, she noticed Draco Malfoy.

He was impossible not to notice. The pale-haired Slytherin boy who swept through the corridors with his sharp smile and his sharper tongue, a small court of admirers and sycophants already trailing in his wake. She saw him in the Great Hall, holding court at the Slytherin table. She saw him on the Quidditch pitch, a blur of green and silver. She heard the things people said about him—that he was cruel, that he was arrogant, that he believed blood purity was everything and anyone less than pure was beneath his notice. She, a Muggle-born Hufflepuff who had never spoken a word in her life, could not have been further from his world if she had tried.

But she never once connected him to the words on her shoulder. Why would she? Draco Malfoy was a distant, glittering figure, the sort of boy who sneered at people like her. Her soulmate, wherever he was, was going to be someone who had a bad moment, a sharp first sentence, but who would prove to be kind underneath. Someone who was just having a rough day. She was not naïve—she knew the words were cutting—but she believed, with the stubborn optimism of someone who had spent her whole life overcoming silence, that the person behind them would surprise her. Draco Malfoy, with his casual cruelty and his pureblood posturing, was simply not a candidate. She had never imagined her soulmate could be someone like him.

So she went about her life, drawing and studying and learning sign language with the small group of friends who had made the effort to understand her, and she kept her eyes open for the moment when someone would snap Can’t you even answer? and the world would shift. She was ready. She was almost eager. She walked through the corridors with her charmed notepad always in her pocket and a quiet, humming anticipation in her chest. Any day now. Any moment.

The moment came on a grey October afternoon in their third year. The kind of day when the castle smelled of old stone and rain-soaked robes, and the light that filtered through the high windows was thin and watery. She was hurrying back from the library, her arms loaded with heavy Herbology tomes and a precarious stack of parchment that blocked half her vision. Her mind was elsewhere—on the essay she needed to finish, on the drawing she had started of Professor Sprout’s newest Fanged Geranium—when she rounded a corner near the Transfiguration courtyard and collided directly with someone solid and warm.

The books tumbled. The parchment scattered like startled birds. She stumbled backward, her shoulder catching the rough stone wall, and looked up into a pair of sharp grey eyes.

Draco Malfoy stood before her, still in his Quidditch robes, his hair windswept and damp with drizzle. The practice had been miserable; Slytherin’s Chaser formation had been a disaster, Flint had spent an hour bellowing, and Draco’s mood was a dark, churning thing just barely contained behind his eyes. Being knocked into by some clumsy girl with an armful of books was the final straw on an already broken back. He opened his mouth, and the words came out cold and clipped, exactly the way they were written, exactly the way she had always imagined they would sound, except for one terrible, catastrophic detail.

“Can’t you even answer?”

Time stopped. The corridor, the scattered books, the distant murmur of students—all of it fell away. She felt the words land on her like a physical blow, and at the same time, she felt the unmistakable pulse of magic deep in her bones, a resonance that confirmed everything and shattered everything at once. Soulmate. The word bloomed in her mind, bright and devastating. Her soulmate was Draco Malfoy. The cruel boy. The pureblood prince. The person who sneered at people like her as if they were nothing. And his first words to her were exactly as dismissive and cutting as she had always feared, but the man behind them was not a stranger having a bad day. He was a boy she had watched for two years, a boy whose casual cruelties were not exceptions but habits.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t reach for her notepad. She just stood there, frozen, her mouth open slightly, her eyes wide with horror and recognition. She couldn’t speak—she never could—but in that moment, even if she had possessed the most beautiful voice in the world, she would not have been able to make a sound. Because the boy she had been ready to love, the boy she had been ready to prove herself to, was Draco Malfoy. And he was looking at her with cold, dismissive irritation, already stepping around her as though she were nothing more than an inconvenient piece of furniture.

“Honestly,” he muttered, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. “Some people.” He didn’t glance back. He rounded the next corner and disappeared, his footsteps fading into the distant murmur of the castle.

She stood there, alone in the corridor, surrounded by her fallen books, and the tears came without permission. They slid silently down her cheeks, hot and fast and utterly soundless, because of course they did. Everything about her was silent. She knelt and gathered the books with shaking hands, her vision blurring, and all she could think was that her soulmate—the person she had spent her whole childhood waiting for, the person she had been so determined to love—was a boy who would never want her. He was a Malfoy. He believed in blood purity. He surrounded himself with people who would mock her for her silence, her Muggle-born status, her quiet Hufflepuff existence. And beyond all of that, beyond the politics and the prejudice, he had walked away without a second glance. He had no idea what had just happened. And if he ever found out—if he ever discovered that his blank skin was because of her, that the universe had tethered him to a mute Muggle-born who couldn’t even give him words—he would be disgusted. He would feel cheated. He deserved someone who could match him, someone with a voice and a name and a place in his world. Not her. Never her.

She pressed her hand flat against her shoulder, over the place where his cruel, beautiful words were written, and let herself cry until the tears stopped. The hope she had carried for so long, the fierce, bright anticipation that had kept her tracing those words with affection, curdled into something heavy and cold. She had been so ready to meet her soulmate. She had planned a hundred different greetings, a hundred different ways to show him that silence didn’t mean absence. And now she could do none of them. Because her soulmate was Draco Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy would never, ever accept her.

By the time she stood up, her knees aching from the cold stone, she had made a decision. She would avoid him completely. He would never have to know. And she would find some other way, some small, secret way, to love him from a distance. It was the only thing she could give him now.

Draco, for his part, forgot the incident almost immediately. It had been nothing—a minor irritation, a clumsy Hufflepuff who couldn’t be bothered to open her mouth. He had far more pressing concerns: the Quidditch Cup, his Potions marks, the never-ending task of maintaining his status. But over the following weeks, a strange pattern began to emerge, one that tugged at the edges of his awareness like a persistent thread. The same girl. The Hufflepuff with the wide, expressive eyes and the perpetually ink-stained fingers. He kept seeing her. And every single time, she was already looking away.

It began in the library. He would walk in, scanning for an empty table, and catch a flicker of movement from the stacks—a head ducking behind a shelf, a figure vanishing deeper into the aisles just as he entered. Then it was the Great Hall. Seated at the Slytherin table with his back straight and his breakfast untouched, he would let his gaze drift toward the Hufflepuff table, and without fail, she would be staring fixedly at her porridge, her cheeks faintly pink. In the greenhouses, she would become suddenly, intensely interested in the far end of the Venomous Tentacula bed the instant he walked in, her fingers busy with her sketchbook. It was so consistent, so deliberate, that it began to grate on him.

He told himself it was good. She was afraid of him, as she should be. He was a Malfoy, a Slytherin, a force to be reckoned with. Quiet little Hufflepuffs with ink-stained fingers should be afraid. But the avoidance still needled at him in a way he couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t the usual fear; it was something more personal, more pointed. It was as if she was reacting not to the idea of him, but to him, specifically, and he couldn’t fathom why. He started watching her without quite meaning to. He noticed the graceful, rapid movements of her hands when she communicated with the few friends who understood her signs. He noticed the enchanted journal she carried, the one that transferred her handwriting into shimmering gold letters in the air. He noticed that she drew constantly, the tip of her quill moving in quick, sure strokes, and that her drawings were full of small, telling details—the exact way Professor Sprout’s hat sat askew, the particular curve of a thestral’s wing, the shy smile of a first-year who had just made a friend. She was observant. She was quiet. And she had, for some inexplicable reason, decided that Draco Malfoy was to be avoided at all costs.

He did not know, could not know, that she had spent the weeks since the corridor collision in a fog of heartbreak. She had mourned the soulmate she had imagined—the kind stranger having a bad day, the person who would be surprised by her silence but would learn to love her anyway—and she had tried to replace that imagined figure with the reality of Draco Malfoy. It was impossible. The gap between them was too wide. He was a pureblood who looked down on everyone; she was a Muggle-born who couldn’t even speak. He moved through the castle like he owned it; she moved through it like she was trying not to be seen. The only thing she could do, the only thing that felt right, was to remove herself from his path entirely. She owed him that much. He deserved the chance to find someone worthy, and she deserved the chance to forget him.

But forgetting him was impossible. She saw him everywhere, and every time, her heart gave the same sickening lurch. She noticed things about him she had never noticed before, now that she was watching him through the lens of soulmate. The way his smirk faltered when he thought no one was looking. The way his friends’ sycophantic laughter sometimes made his jaw tighten. The way he flew, up on the Quidditch pitch, with a freedom and a joy that seemed to strip away all the sharp edges. He was still cruel, still arrogant, still everything she disliked. But she began to see, in the quiet moments between his performances, a boy who might be lonely. A boy who might be carrying a weight of his own. A boy who, like her, had grown up with a soulmate-shaped absence.

The first drawing came to her almost without conscious thought. She was sitting in the library, her quill moving over parchment, and without quite meaning to, she had drawn a ferret. A small, smug ferret with a tiny silver medal around its neck. Beside it, a cheerful rabbit was clapping its paws together with obvious delight. She stared at the drawing for a long moment. It was ridiculous. It was childish. But it made her smile, just a little, and it captured something true. He had made a brilliant catch at practice yesterday; she had seen it from across the pitch, had seen the brief, unguarded flash of pride on his face before he had smoothed it away. No one had praised him for it. No one ever seemed to praise him for the things that actually made him happy.

She folded the drawing carefully and slipped it into his Potions textbook the next day, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might burst. It was a small thing, an anonymous thing. He would never know it was from her. But maybe, just maybe, it would make him smile.

Draco found the drawing three days later. He flipped open the page to the chapter on shrinking solutions, and a folded piece of parchment slipped out, fluttering toward the dungeon floor. His hand shot out with Slytherin seeker reflexes and snatched it before Snape’s sweeping gaze could land on it. He unfolded it under the desk, his heart beating inexplicably faster.

It was a drawing. Simple, clean lines in black ink, but brimming with personality. A ferret wearing a tiny medal, a rabbit clapping enthusiastically, and the words: Great catch today. He stared at it for a long moment, the dungeon around him fading into irrelevance. Someone had noticed. Someone had drawn him a picture. It was absurd, and it was childish, and he did not crumple it. He did not throw it away. He folded it carefully, more carefully than he had folded anything in his life, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his robes, right over his heart.

Crabbe leaned over, already reaching. “What’s that? A drawing? Someone’s sending you pictures, Malfoy? That’s childish.”

“It’s nothing,” Draco said, his voice carefully dismissive. “Probably Pansy’s idea of a joke.”

But Pansy, when asked, denied all knowledge. Theo laughed for a solid minute and declared that Draco had acquired a secret admirer. Draco threatened to hex him, but the threat came out half-hearted, and Theo’s grin only widened.

The drawings kept coming. They were never signed, but the little ferret was unmistakably him—the way it held its head, the particular arrogance in its tiny posture—and the rabbit, the devoted, cheerful rabbit, was unmistakably someone who had been watching him very, very closely. Each new drawing appeared in a place only Draco would find: tucked between the pages of a library book on ancient curses, slipped into his Quidditch locker between his gloves, folded inside his Transfiguration essay just before he handed it in. He started to look for them. He would open his textbooks with a small, secret flicker of anticipation that he would never have admitted to under Veritaserum, and when he found one, the warmth in his chest would expand just a little more.

After a triumphant Quidditch win against Ravenclaw that kept Slytherin in the running for the Cup, he found one waiting in his broom compartment: the ferret holding a tiny golden trophy, the rabbit waving an enormous green flag with Slytherin’s serpent on it, and beneath them the words You looked happiest in the air. During the brutal exam season that followed, a drawing appeared in his Arithmancy chart: the ferret asleep on a stack of books, his quill still clutched in one paw, while the rabbit placed a tiny blanket over him. Don’t forget to rest. When winter descended on the castle and the corridors turned draughty and bitter, he found a parchment in his scarf drawer: the ferret drowning in an oversized green-and-silver scarf, the rabbit offering a steaming cup of cocoa. Cold hands make bad handwriting. And after a devastating loss to Gryffindor that left Slytherin’s Cup hopes shattered and Draco’s temper flayed raw, he returned to the dormitory to find a drawing on his pillow. The ferret sat alone, his ears drooping, a dark cloud hanging over his head. Beside him, the rabbit was offering a single, tiny flower, its expression infinitely gentle. One bad day isn’t the whole story.

Draco collected every single one. He kept them in a polished wooden box he had charmed with a locking spell, hidden under his bed. On the nights when the whispers about his blank skin grew too loud, or his father’s letters were too cold, or the weight of being Draco Malfoy pressed down on him like a physical force, he would open the box and look through them. Someone, somewhere, saw him. Not the heir, not the Malfoy name, not the sharp edges he had spent years honing into weapons—but him. The boy who made a good catch at practice. The boy who forgot to rest. The boy who was happiest in the air. Someone believed he was worth cheering for, worth blankets and cocoa and small, gentle flowers after a loss. Someone thought he deserved kindness. And he had no idea who it was.

The girl who drew the pictures watched him from the edges of rooms and the shadows of corridors, and she saw the change. She saw the way his shoulders relaxed when he found a new drawing. She saw the small, private smile he tried so hard to hide. She saw him pause before snapping at a younger student, as though remembering something. And every time, it made the ache in her chest a little more bearable. She had started the drawings as a way to love him from a distance, a way to pour out all the affection she couldn’t give him openly. She had expected nothing in return. But seeing him soften, seeing him become a little less sharp, made something fierce and protective bloom in her chest. He was still Draco Malfoy—still proud, still capable of cruelty—but there were cracks in the armour now. And she was the one who had made them.

It was enough. She told herself it was enough, and she almost believed it.

Then, inevitably, Draco decided to find the artist. It started as a casual curiosity and quickly hardened into a quiet obsession. He began to pay attention to the timing of the drawings, the places they appeared. He questioned his housemates with a studied casualness, but his eyes were too sharp, his questions too persistent. He cornered a few startled Ravenclaws in the library, interrogated the house-elves who cleaned the Slytherin common room, even asked Madam Pince if she had noticed anyone lingering near the restricted section. No one knew anything. The artist remained a ghost, a phantom who left behind small miracles and vanished without a trace.

The girl grew more cautious. She varied her routes through the castle, timed her deliveries for moments of maximum chaos—between classes, during Quidditch matches, in the drowsy lull after dinner when the castle’s attention was scattered. She never lingered. She never made eye contact. But one afternoon in late March, as she was slipping a new drawing into the outer pocket of his bookbag where it leaned against a library table, she glanced up and found him staring straight at her from across the room.

Their eyes met. The world stopped. She saw recognition flicker in his grey eyes—not the full, terrible truth, but the dawning awareness that she was someone he had seen before, someone who was always looking away. Her heart seized. She snatched her hand back and fled, her soft-soled shoes making no sound on the stone floor. She vanished around a corner, through a tapestry, down a hidden passage she knew well, and she didn’t stop running until she was safe in the Hufflepuff common room, her breath coming in ragged, silent gasps.

Draco stood frozen in the library, the echo of her movement still hanging in the air. He had seen her. The quiet Hufflepuff. The one who never spoke, who always ducked away, who communicated with flying hands and a charmed notepad. And in her hands, just before she ran, he had seen a notebook—a worn leather notebook with a familiar cover. He didn’t understand it yet, not fully, but something had shifted. Some piece of the puzzle had clicked into place, and it left him restless and unsettled for days.

The notebook appeared three days later, abandoned on a library table in the alcove she often used. Draco spotted it from across the room, his heart giving a strange, heavy thud. He approached slowly, as if it might vanish if he moved too fast. He recognised the worn leather cover, the ink stains on the edges. He told himself he would simply return it. He told himself he would not look inside. It would be dishonourable. But the name written in tiny, precise letters on the inside flap—her name—made his breath catch in his throat, and the temptation was a living thing, clawing at his resolve. He opened it.

The first page was a ferret in Quidditch robes, diving for a snitch. The second was a ferret studying by candlelight, his brow furrowed in concentration. The third was a ferret laughing, and a rabbit smiling quietly beside him. Page after page, hundreds of them, a sprawling, lovingly rendered world in which a ferret and a rabbit lived side by side in a hundred moments of quiet devotion. Ferret sleeping, rabbit reading beside him. Ferret flying on a broom, rabbit cheering from the stands. Ferret studying, rabbit leaving a pile of snacks. Ferret laughing, rabbit watching with an expression of pure, radiant affection. Draco’s hands started to shake as he turned the pages.

Then one page fell open differently. It wasn’t tucked neatly among the others. It was crumpled, water-damaged, the ink slightly blurred in places as though tears had fallen on it and been hastily, imperfectly wiped away. The drawing was not cute. It was not gentle. It showed a ferret with an angry expression, his sharp teeth bared, and beside his mouth a speech bubble contained the words: Can’t you even answer?

Across from the ferret, a tiny rabbit. Crying. The rabbit held a small wooden sign, and on the sign, in letters that trembled slightly: I wanted to. I just couldn’t.

Below that, smaller, messier, written and rewritten until the parchment was almost worn through in places: I wish I could tell you that I wasn’t ignoring you. And even smaller, tucked into the corner as though the writer was trying to hide it: I wish my first words to you could have been hello.

Draco stared at the page. The corridor. The collision. The books falling. The girl’s wide, panicked eyes and her silent, trembling mouth. Can’t you even answer? He had said that. He had looked her in the eye and said those exact words, and she had stood there frozen because she couldn’t answer, and he had walked away without a second glance. He had walked away and she had gone back to her common room and drawn this, crying so hard the parchment had warped, and then she had still, impossibly, started sending him drawings of ferrets and rabbits and hot cocoa and flowers.

Everything crashed together in a single, devastating wave. The avoidance. The silence. The writing. The anonymous rabbit. His blank skin. Her silence. His soulmate marks had never appeared because there had never been any words to write. She would never speak. She would never give him first words, so the magic had left him empty, and he had spent his entire life believing no one in the world belonged to him. But someone did. She did. She had been here all along, drawing him into existence on parchment because she couldn’t speak him into existence with her voice, and she had believed—she had actually believed—that he deserved better.

And she had known. She had known the moment he spoke those words that he was her soulmate, and she had decided, in that instant, to hide herself away. Not because she didn’t care—God, she clearly cared more than anyone had ever cared about him—but because she thought he would reject her. Because she thought a Malfoy could never accept a mute Muggle-born as his soulmate. And the worst part, the part that made his stomach drop through the floor, was that he couldn’t even argue with her assumption. He had spent years sneering at people exactly like her. He had built his reputation on cruelty. She had every reason to believe he would be disgusted.

Draco closed the notebook with hands that were no longer shaking because they had gone perfectly, terribly still. He tucked it carefully into his robes, and then he ran.

He searched the castle with a desperation that bordered on unhinged. The Astronomy Tower, the greenhouses, the courtyard, the edge of the Forbidden Forest where the ground was soft from the morning’s rain. He asked portraits, who tutted and pointed vaguely. He nearly knocked over three separate first-years. He didn’t care. He needed to find her. He needed to find her now.

He found her at last on the low stone wall near the boathouse, where the lake lapped gently against the shore and the sky was the soft grey of impending dusk. She sat with her back to him, her sketchbook open on her lap, a quill in her hand. She must have heard his footsteps crunching on the gravel, because her shoulders stiffened and she turned, and when she saw him, the colour drained from her face. She moved to stand, to flee, just as she always did.

He stepped into her path, and he did it gently. For the first time in perhaps his entire life, there was no arrogance in his posture. No sneer, no sarcasm. Just guilt, vast and aching, written plainly across his features like a confession.

“Wait,” he said, and his voice came out rougher than he intended. “Please. Please don’t run.”

She stopped. Her hands were trembling so badly the quill slipped from her fingers and landed in the grass.

“I found your notebook,” Draco said, and the words felt inadequate, clumsy, nothing like the grand speeches he had always imagined himself capable of. “I saw the drawings. All of them. And the one page. The one you cried on.” He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat nearly choking him. “I said those words to you. I said them, and I didn’t even look back. And you still—” His voice cracked. “You spent months making me smile after I made you cry. Why?”

She couldn’t answer with her voice. Her hands moved, quick and desperate, shaping signs he could not yet understand. Seeing his confusion, the frustration that flickered across his face, she fumbled for the charmed notepad in her pocket and wrote with a hand that shook so violently the letters were barely legible: You deserved someone better.

Draco shook his head, a short, sharp motion. “No.”

She wrote again: You deserved someone who could talk to you.

“I deserved you,” he said, and the words came out fierce, almost angry, but the anger was not at her. It was at himself, at the universe, at every moment he had wasted believing he was empty. “I deserved you, and I didn’t even know it. I walked right past you, and I didn’t know.”

The tears were falling again, silent as always, tracing silver paths down her cheeks. She reached up slowly, carefully, and pulled aside the collar of her robes just enough to reveal the words written on her shoulder. Can’t you even answer? The cruel, slanting script she had traced a thousand times, the words she had once regarded with hope and then with despair. The first thing he had ever given her.

Draco looked at the words on her skin, his own words, and something inside him broke apart and reassembled into something entirely new. He reached out, his hand hovering just above her shoulder, his eyes asking a silent question. She nodded, barely perceptibly. He let his fingertips brush the script, feather-light, as though he were touching something sacred. The words were warm from her skin, and they felt like a wound and a gift all at once.

“Those were the first thing I ever gave you,” he whispered. His voice was barely audible, but in the quiet of the lakeside, it carried like a bell. She nodded again, her eyes bright with tears.

He let his hand fall, but he didn’t step back. He didn’t want to step back ever again. “Then let me spend the rest of my life giving you better ones.”

She stared at him. Her lips parted, though no sound came, and then—slowly, like the sun breaking over the horizon—she smiled. It was the first real smile she had ever given him, and it was brighter than every spell he had ever learned, warmer than every fire in every common room, worth more than every Galleon in the Malfoy vault. Draco felt his own face shift in response, a smile that was raw and unguarded and entirely new.

The weeks that followed were a slow, careful dance. They met in quiet corners of the library, by the lake, in the greenhouses when no one else was around. Draco began learning magical sign language—the kind that used a wand’s subtle glow to enhance the meaning of each gesture, a language as complex and beautiful as any spoken tongue. He was terrible at it at first. His fingers fumbled, his grammar was atrocious, and he accidentally signed cabbage instead of good morning one day, a mistake that left her laughing so hard she had to brace herself against the greenhouse bench. Her laughter was silent, a shaking of shoulders and a bright, radiant expression, and Draco discovered that watching her laugh was his new favourite thing in the entire world. He practiced constantly, muttering to himself in the dormitory, drilling signs with Theo, who found the whole situation endlessly amusing but helped anyway because Theo, for all his cynicism, was still his friend.

She drew for him constantly now, not anonymously, but openly, sliding sketches across the library table with a shy smile. Ferrets and rabbits doing increasingly mundane, domestic things—making tea, folding laundry, arguing over the last biscuit. And Draco, who had once believed himself incapable of softness, found that he was, in fact, full to the brim with it.

One morning, nearly two months after the lakeside, he found a familiar folded parchment tucked into his Transfiguration textbook. His heart gave the same old flutter as he opened it, and there they were: the ferret and the rabbit, side by side, as they had always been. But this time, the rabbit was not holding a written note. Her little paws were raised, moving through the shapes of sign language, the faint glow of magic sketched around her fingers. The ferret was signing back, his own paws determined and a little clumsy, just like Draco’s. The caption below was simple, and it stole the breath from his lungs: Now you can hear me.

Draco smiled, the wide, unguarded smile that only she ever got to see. He folded the drawing with the same meticulous care he had used for the very first one, and he slipped it into the inside pocket of his robes, where it joined the small, cherished collection he still carried with him always. He didn’t need the drawings anymore to know she was there. But he kept them because they were a map of how they had found each other—a map drawn in ink by a girl who had been brave enough to love him from the shadows even when she believed he would never love her back. And as he walked through the sunlit corridors toward the library where she was waiting, he thought that the deepest magic of all had never been the words on his skin, but the quiet, stubborn hope that had found a way long before either of them had the language for it.

The library at Hogwarts could be considered a living thing.

It breathed in dust motes and exhaled candlelight, its stone ribs arching overhead like the skeleton of some vast, slumbering creature. Most students never learned its true geography—they clung to the well-lit tables near the front, the popular study nooks, the places where Madam Pince's glare could find them easily. But the library had depths, and those depths had secrets, and those secrets had occupants who preferred not to be found...or bothered.

Regulus Black was one of them.

He had discovered the alcove in his third year, tucked behind a false shelf in the Restricted Section's shadow, accessible only if you knew to press your palm flat against the spine of a particularly unremarkable copy of Hogwarts: A History and wait for the wall to sigh open. The room beyond was small—barely large enough for two armchairs and a low table—but it had a window. A real window, not one of those charmed things that showed whatever weather the enchanters fancied. This one looked out onto the Black Lake proper, its glass permanently pressed against the dark water, and during the day a murky, green-gold light filtered through, casting everything in shades of deep emerald and pale jade.

He had never told anyone about it. The room was his, a hermitage carved out of the castle's noisy heart, and he guarded its secrecy with the same possessive instinct that made him lock his trunk and ward his journals and never, ever let anyone see the drafts of letters he wrote and burned to his brother.

So when he pushed through the false shelf one evening in late September of his sixth year and found someone already occupying his armchair, his first instinct was something close to violence.

The girl looked up.

She had a book open in her lap—one of the ancient, iron-bound tomes from the back corner of the Restricted Section, the ones that occasionally whispered to themselves—and her expression was not apologetic. It was not welcoming, either. It was the careful, guarded blankness of someone who had been intruded upon and was waiting to see whether the intruder would be a problem.

"Occupied," she said.

Regulus knew her. Not by name, exactly, but by reputation. The girl who never ate. The girl who moved through the corridors like a shadow, silent and unhurried, her skin catching the torchlight in ways that made the paintings whisper. Pale—not the fashionable pallor of girls who stayed out of the sun, but something more fundamental, as if colour had never been part of her composition. Neat hair pulled back severely from a face that was all sharp angles and still lines. Eyes that were, in the green underwater light, the colour of old gold.

The vampire, the whispers said. Vampire, vampire, vampire.

"You're in my chair," he said.

"And you're in my light."

He wasn't, but he understood the sentiment. He understood, too, that he had two choices: he could assert his claim, demand she leave, and poison this place with the memory of conflict, or he could adapt.

Regulus had spent his entire life adapting.

He crossed to the other armchair—the smaller one, the one with the worn velvet and the slight list to the left—and sat down. He did not speak. He did not introduce himself. He simply pulled out his own book and began to read.

The silence that descended was not comfortable, but it was not hostile, either. It was the silence of two people who had both come here for the same reason, and who recognized that reason in each other, and who were willing to ignore the other's existence as long as the other's existence remained quiet.

An hour passed. He turned pages. She turned pages. The window shifted its murky light. Neither spoke.

When Regulus finally rose to leave—Prefect rounds, unavoidable—the girl did not look up. But as he pushed through the false shelf, he heard her voice, quiet and flat:

"The chair is yours. I didn't know."

He paused. "You can stay."

A beat of silence. Then: "I know."

He let the shelf close behind him and stood in the corridor for a long moment, staring at nothing. His heart was beating slightly too fast, and he didn't know why, and he didn't examine it.

The next evening, she was there again. This time, she had taken the smaller chair.

He didn't thank her. She didn't expect him to. They read in silence until the lake outside the window went from green to black, and then he left, and she left, and the whole strange, wordless ritual settled into something that felt almost like routine.

Her name, he learned eventually, was (Y/N). Not from her—she didn't offer it, and he didn't ask. He overheard it in the common room one night, whispered between two fourth-years who had made the mistake of sitting too close to her corner and had been treated to a single, flat stare that apparently sent them scrambling. "(Y/N) (L/N)," one of them hissed, "my brother says she's a—" and then the other one shushed her, and the conversation died.

A vampire. Everyone knew. The skin, the food, the way she moved through the castle at hours when no one else was awake. The paintings gossiped, and the ghosts were worse—Nearly Headless Nick had once held forth at a Deathday party about "that pale Slytherin girl" who "didn't seem quite alive," and the story had spread through the student body like fire through dry grass. The staff, when asked, neither confirmed nor denied, which was confirmation enough for anyone with half a brain.

Regulus thought it was probably true. He'd seen stranger things in his family's drawing room before he was old enough to hold a wand. And besides, she was a student, and a Slytherin, and a person who appreciated silence. That was enough.

He didn't ask. That was the key to their arrangement, the unspoken contract that governed their evenings in the alcove. They did not talk. They did not acknowledge each other beyond the minimal gestures required by two people sharing a confined space. They read, and they existed, and they left each other alone.

It was, Regulus thought, the most peaceful relationship he had ever had.

The first time he saw her eyes change colour, he nearly dropped his book.

It was a Tuesday in early October, and the alcove was particularly dim—the lake outside was thick with autumn silt, the water a murky brown that let almost no light through. (Y/N) was reading as usual, her posture perfect, her breathing slow and shallow. Regulus had grown accustomed to the rhythm of it: inhale, pause, pause, pause, exhale. Sometimes whole minutes passed between breaths. He'd stopped finding it unsettling.

But when she looked up from her book to turn the page, he caught the light catching her eyes at a different angle, and they were not gold. They were crimson. A deep, vivid red, like blood on snow, like the heart of a dying fire.

He stared. He couldn't help it.

(Y/N) noticed. Her eyes—red, red, red—flicked to his face, and her expression shuttered instantly. "What."

"Your eyes," he said, because he had never been one for pretense. "They're different."

"I know."

"They were gold before."

"I know." Her voice was flat, but there was tension in it now, a coiled readiness. She was waiting for him to flinch, to recoil, to do what everyone else did when they saw proof of what she was.

Regulus did none of those things. He simply nodded, filed the information away, and returned to his book.

The silence stretched. He could feel her gaze on him, heavy and assessing. Finally, she spoke.

"You're not going to ask?"

"Ask what?"

"Why they're red. What it means. If I've just eaten someone."

He looked up. Her expression was still guarded, but there was something else beneath it now—curiosity, maybe, or confusion. He'd surprised her.

"It's none of my business," he said. "But if you want to tell me, I'll listen."

She stared at him for a long moment. Then, very slowly, the tension bled out of her shoulders.

"I had a feeding this morning," she said. "Human blood. Madam Pomfrey keeps stores for me. When I drink human blood, my eyes go red for a few hours. Animal blood makes them gold. When I'm… hungry, they turn black." She paused, her jaw tightening. "Is that enough detail, or do you want a diagram?"

Regulus considered this. "The black is a warning, then?"

"Something like that."

"Good to know." He turned a page. "I'll keep an eye out."

"That's it? 'Good to know'?"

"What else would it be?"

(Y/N) shook her head slowly, something almost like wonder flickering across her sharp features. "You're very strange, Regulus Black."

"So I've been told."

She didn't answer. But when he glanced at her a few minutes later, she was still looking at him, her red eyes unreadable, her book forgotten in her lap. The silence between them had shifted—less of a wall now, more of a bridge. He didn't know where it led, but he found he wanted to find out.

November brought the first real test of their strange, silent alliance.

It came in the form of Amycus Carrow, who had apparently spent his free time working himself into a state of righteous indignation about the "creature" attending Hogwarts and who had decided, with the unearned confidence of the truly mediocre, to do something about it.

Regulus was in the library when he heard the commotion. Raised voices, the scrape of a chair, and then Carrow's voice, loud and ugly: "I'm not going to sit here while it just lurks about. Everyone knows what she is. Why does the school allow this?"

He was moving before he'd consciously decided to, his wand already in his hand. He rounded a shelf and found Carrow standing over (Y/N)'s usual table in the back corner, his face flushed, his fists clenched. (Y/N) was still seated, her book open in front of her, her expression utterly blank. She looked like a statue—beautiful and remote and completely unaffected by the boy shouting in her face.

"—unnatural," Carrow was saying, "and everyone knows you don't eat, and your eyes change colour, and I heard you don't even sleep, you just wander around at night like some kind of—"

"That's enough."

Regulus's voice cut through the tirade like a blade. It wasn't loud—he never raised his voice—but it carried, and Carrow spun around, his face cycling through surprise and annoyance and finally settling on a sneer.

"Black. Of course you'd defend it. Your family's always been friendly with the Dark creatures, haven't they? My father says—"

"I don't care what your father says." Regulus stepped closer, positioning himself between Carrow and (Y/N)'s table. "I care that you're disrupting the library and harassing a student. That's ten points from Slytherin and a detention with Filch. You can argue it with Professor Slughorn if you like, but I suspect he'll agree with me."

Carrow's face went redder. "You can't—"

"I'm a prefect. I can. Leave. Now."

He left. He did it poorly, with a lot of muttering and dark looks and one final, venomous glance at (Y/N), but he left. The library settled back into its usual hush.

Regulus turned to (Y/N). She hadn't moved. Her book was still open, her hands still resting on the pages, her face still blank. But her eyes—her eyes were black. Not the dark brown that some people called black, but true black, flat and depthless and utterly alien.

"I didn't need your help," she said.

"I know."

"Then why did you intervene?"

He considered the question. He could say it was his duty as a prefect. He could say that Carrow was an idiot who needed to be put in his place. He could say what he was actually thinking, which was that the sight of that boy leaning over her, threatening her, had made something hot and violent flare in his chest, something that felt dangerously like protectiveness.

"The alcove," he said instead. "It's ours. If someone disrupts that, I take it personally."

(Y/N) stared at him. Her eyes were still black, but something in them shifted—a flicker, a softening, a crack in the perfect blankness of her expression.

"Ours," she repeated.

"Yes."

"You've never said that before."

"I'm saying it now."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she closed her book, stood, and gathered her things with the same slow, deliberate movements she always used. "I'm going to the alcove. The light in here is too bright."

It wasn't—the library was dim, the candles guttering low—but Regulus understood. She needed the quiet, the dark, the space that was theirs.

"Go," he said. "I'll be there in an hour."

She paused at the end of the shelf, her back still to him. "Regulus."

It was the first time she'd said his name. It sounded strange in her flat, low voice—strange, but not unpleasant.

"Thank you," she said, and then she was gone.

Regulus stood in the library for a long moment, staring at the empty space where she had been. His heart was beating too fast again, and his hands were trembling slightly, and he had no idea what to do with any of it.

He went to find Carrow and make sure the detention stuck.

The pattern of their evenings changed after that.

Not dramatically—they still sat in silence, still read their books, still existed in the quiet bubble of the alcove with the lake pressing cold and dark against the window. But the silence was different now. It was a shared silence, a chosen silence, rather than the wary truce it had been before. And sometimes, increasingly, they talked.

It started small. A question about a book. A comment on the weather. A dry observation about a particularly useless professor. But it grew, slowly and steadily, until Regulus found himself looking forward to the conversations as much as the quiet.

He learned things about her. That she had been turned when she was eleven, just before her Hogwarts letter arrived—"Bad timing," she said, with the ghost of a sharp smile. "I'd already bought my robes." That the school made arrangements for her, the same way they did for Remus Lupin, with regular check-ins with Madam Pomfrey and a supply of blood that kept the worst of the hunger at bay. That she didn't sleep, ever, and that the nights were long and strange and she'd read more books than anyone else in the castle simply because there was nothing else to do.

"You could talk to the paintings," Regulus suggested one night, half-joking.

(Y/N) gave him a look. "Sir Cadogan tried to challenge me to a duel last week. He said my 'unnatural pallor' was an insult to chivalry."

"What did you do?"

"I told him I was older than his horse and twice as deadly. He hasn't spoken to me since."

Regulus laughed. It was a small sound, rusty from disuse, but it was real. (Y/N)'s eyes—gold tonight, bright and warm—flicked to his face with something that might have been surprise.

"You should do that more often," she said.

"What?"

"Laugh. It suits you."

He didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. But he thought about it later, lying in his bed in the Slytherin dormitory, staring at the green-tinged darkness of the ceiling. He thought about her eyes and her voice and the way she said his name, and he thought about the word ours, and he thought about the strange, unfamiliar feeling that had taken up residence in his chest, growing a little bigger every time he pushed through the false shelf and found her waiting for him.

He didn't have a name for it yet. But he was starting to suspect.

December came, cold and dark and full of the strange, suspended quiet that always settled over the castle in the weeks before the Christmas holidays.

Regulus had started finding (Y/N) in places other than the alcove. The common room at three in the morning, when his insomnia drove him out of bed and into the green-tinged darkness, and there she would be—curled in the corner armchair nearest the dying fire, a book in her lap, her pale skin luminous in the ember-glow. She never looked surprised to see him. She would simply lift her head, meet his eyes, and shift slightly to make room on the armchair beside her.

They didn't always talk. Sometimes they just sat together, her cool shoulder pressed against his arm, their breathing falling into a slow, synchronized rhythm. Regulus had never been comfortable with silence before—silence in his house had always been a weapon, a warning, the calm before the storm—but with (Y/N), silence was different. It was a gift. A space to breathe.

"Does it bother you?" he asked one night, his voice low in the quiet of the common room. "The way people talk about you?"

(Y/N) didn't look up from her book. "It used to. Now I just find it tedious." She turned a page. "They're not wrong, exactly. I am what they say I am. The only thing they get wrong is the part where I'm supposed to be a monster."

"You're not a monster."

"You don't know that. You've never seen me hungry."

The words were flat, but there was something beneath them—a warning, maybe, or a test. Regulus heard it and chose to ignore it.

"How bad does it get?" he asked instead.

She was quiet for a moment. Then she closed her book and turned to face him, her golden eyes unreadable. "Bad. The animal blood keeps me functional, but it's like… surviving on bread and water. It sustains the body, but it doesn't satisfy the instincts. I need human blood once in a while, or the hunger builds until I can't think straight. Until everything smells like prey." She paused, her jaw tightening. "Madam Pomfrey gives me blood bags. Donated. Ethical. I drink them in the Hospital Wing like a good little vampire, and no one gets hurt. But sometimes, if I go too long between feedings, the thirst gets… difficult."

"Difficult how?"

"I lose control." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "The vampire instincts take over. I stop being (Y/N) and start being the thing that killed my parents. The thing that everyone's afraid of." She looked away, her fingers gripping her book so tightly that the leather creaked. "That's why I keep my distance. Why I don't get close to people. If I ever hurt someone—someone I care about—I don't think I'd survive it."

Regulus sat with that for a moment. The fire crackled softly, the only sound in the empty common room. Outside the windows, the Black Lake pressed dark and silent against the glass.

"You're not going to hurt me," he said.

(Y/N) laughed—a short, humourless sound. "You can't know that."

"I do know that." He reached out and took her hand, her cool fingers stiff with surprise. "You've been hungry before. You've been angry before. You've had every opportunity to lose control, and you never have. That's not luck. That's strength."

She stared at their joined hands, her expression unreadable. "You're very strange, Regulus Black," she said again, but her voice was softer this time, almost fragile.

"So you keep telling me."

She didn't pull her hand away. They sat like that until the fire burned down to embers, her cold fingers slowly warming against his palm, the silence between them full of things neither of them was ready to say.

The first time Regulus saw her truly thirsty, it was January, and it nearly undid him.

He had been in the alcove for perhaps an hour, working through a particularly dense Arithmancy equation, when he noticed that (Y/N) had stopped turning pages. She was sitting perfectly still in her armchair—too still, even for her—and her hands were gripping the book in her lap with a tension that whitened her knuckles.

He looked up. Her eyes were black.

Not the warm gold he was used to, not the deep crimson that appeared after her monthly human blood feeding. Black. Flat and depthless and hungry, the way they had been the day Carrow cornered her in the library. But this was different. This was worse. There was a tremor running through her, barely visible, and her breathing—usually so slow and controlled—was coming in short, shallow gasps.

"(Y/N)."

"Don't." Her voice was strained, barely recognizable. "Don't come closer. I'm—I skipped my feeding this week. I thought I could manage. I was wrong."

"When was your last human blood?"

"Three weeks ago. Maybe four." She closed her eyes, her jaw clenching so hard he could see the muscles jump beneath her pale skin. "I need to go. I need to get to the Hospital Wing before I—"

She tried to stand, but her legs didn't seem to want to cooperate. She swayed, one hand shooting out to grip the arm of the chair, and Regulus was on his feet before he could think better of it.

"Stay back," she hissed, and her voice had gone sharp in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Her eyes snapped open, and they were black, black, black, her pupils blown so wide that they'd swallowed the iris completely. "Regulus, I mean it. I can smell you. Your blood. Your heartbeat. It's—" She shuddered, a full-body convulsion that looked almost painful. "Please. I don't want you to see me like this. I don't want you to be afraid of me."

He should have been afraid. Any sensible person would have been afraid. But Regulus had never been sensible about her, and he wasn't going to start now.

"I'm not afraid," he said.

"You should be."

"Too late." He took a step closer, then another, until he was standing right in front of her chair. She looked up at him with those terrible black eyes, her expression a mask of desperate, barely-contained hunger, and he could see the war playing out behind her gaze—the instinct screaming at her to attack, to feed, against the iron will that was holding her back.

"You need blood," he said.

"I can't—I'll hurt you—"

"You won't." He reached up and, very deliberately, bit down on his own lower lip.

The pain was sharp and immediate, a bright flare of sensation that made his eyes water. But it did what he needed it to do. Blood welled up from the split skin—just a few drops, but enough. Enough for the scent of it to hit the air between them.

(Y/N) made a sound. It was not a human sound. It was low and ragged and full of a hunger so primal it made something deep in Regulus's chest tighten with something that was not quite fear.

And then she moved.

She was fast—faster than he could track—and suddenly she was on her feet, her hands fisting in the front of his robes, her face inches from his. Her eyes were black pits, her fangs extended and glistening, and her whole body was trembling with the effort of not lunging for his throat.

"Why," she choked out. "Why would you—I could kill you—"

"You won't," he said again, and his voice was steady even though his heart was pounding. "I trust you. Now stop fighting and drink."

She broke.

Her mouth crashed into his, and it was nothing like a kiss. It was desperate and violent and hungry, her lips sealing over the split in his lower lip as she sucked and licked and drew the blood from the wound with a ferocity that made his head spin. He felt her fangs graze his skin—not piercing, but close, so close—and her hands were gripping his robes so tightly he could hear the seams straining.

Regulus didn't pull away. He brought his hands up to cup her face, his thumbs stroking over her cheekbones, and kissed her back.

Not the way she was kissing him—not with hunger, not with desperation—but with something else. Something soft. Something steady. He kissed her like she was a person, not a monster, like this was a choice and not a compulsion, like he wanted her exactly as she was, fangs and black eyes and all.

The effect was immediate.

(Y/N) made another sound—this one smaller, more fragile—and her grip on his robes loosened. The frantic sucking slowed. The trembling in her body began to ease. Her lips, still pressed to his, softened from desperate to something almost tender.

And then she was kissing him back.

Really kissing him. Her mouth moved against his, slow and careful, and he could taste the copper of his own blood mingled with something else—something cool and faintly sweet. Her fangs retracted. Her hands slid up from his chest to his shoulders to the back of his neck, her fingers threading through his hair. She kissed him like he was the only solid thing in the world, like she was drowning and he was air.

When she finally pulled back, her eyes were crimson. Deep, vivid red, but no longer black. No longer hungry.

She stared at him for a long moment, her expression dazed. Then her face crumpled.

"Oh god," she whispered. "Oh god, Regulus, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to—I lost control, I could have hurt you, I—" Her voice cracked, and he saw the tears welling in her crimson eyes, spilling over and tracking down her pale cheeks. "I'm a monster. I'm a monster, and you saw it, and now you're going to leave—"

"Stop." He cupped her face in his hands, tilting her chin up so she had to meet his eyes. "Stop. You didn't lose control. You stopped. You drank exactly what you needed and then you stopped. That's the opposite of losing control."

"But I—your lip—"

"Will heal. It's a split lip, (Y/N), not a severed artery." He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone, wiping away a tear. "You didn't scare me. You didn't hurt me. You were hungry, and I helped. That's all."

She shook her head, her breath hitching. "It's not that simple. I could have killed you. If you hadn't kissed me back, if you hadn't grounded me, I might have—"

"But I did. And you didn't." He leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. "You are not a monster. You are the most beautiful, extraordinary, infuriating person I have ever met, and I am not going anywhere. Do you understand me?"

She stared at him, her tears still falling, her crimson eyes wide and vulnerable in a way he had never seen before. "Beautiful?"

"Beautiful. Your skin like moonlight on water, your eyes like stained glass, the way you exist so quietly and so fiercely at the same time. All of it. Even the parts that scare you. Especially those."

Her breath caught. "Regulus…"

"I mean it." He pressed his forehead to hers, their noses almost touching. "I know we haven't known each other that long. I know there are a hundred reasons why this is a terrible idea. But I also know that the past few months have been the best of my life, and I don't want them to end. I don't want to go back to being the person I was before I met you."

"What kind of person was that?"

"Lonely. Angry. Scared." He closed his eyes. "You make me feel like I'm allowed to want things for myself. You make me feel human."

She laughed—a wet, broken sound that was half sob and half something else entirely. "I'm a vampire. I'm the least human person in this castle."

"You're the most human person I know." He pulled back to look at her, letting her see the truth of it in his eyes. "You feel everything so deeply. You care so much. You're so afraid of hurting people that you've cut yourself off from the whole world. That's not monstrous. That's the opposite of monstrous."

(Y/N) looked at him for a long, long moment. Then she leaned forward and kissed him—softly, gently, with none of the desperate hunger of before. It was a real kiss, a human kiss, and he felt it all the way down to his bones.

"Okay," she whispered against his lips. "Okay. I believe you."

"Good."

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late."

She laughed again, and this time it was a real laugh, bright and startled and beautiful. Regulus pulled her into his arms and held her, her cool body pressed against his chest, her face buried in the curve of his neck. They stood like that for a long time, the alcove quiet around them, the lake pressing dark against the window, and Regulus thought that he had never felt so terrifyingly, wonderfully alive.

The Hospital Wing at three in the morning was a different creature than it was during the day.

Gone were the bustling matron, the sniffling first-years, the Quidditch injuries and potion mishaps. At night, the ward was silent and still, the long rows of beds empty and pristine, the torches burning low in their sconces. The only sound was the soft, rhythmic tick of the clock on Madam Pomfrey's desk, and the only movement was the slow drift of moonlight across the stone floor.

(Y/N) was sitting on the edge of one of the beds, her legs dangling, a blood bag in her hands.

Regulus stood beside her, one hip leaning against the bed frame, watching her with the quiet fascination that had become second nature. The blood bag was charmed to look like a mundane medical supply—a clear plastic pouch filled with dark red liquid, connected to a tube and a mouthpiece. She drank from it slowly, methodically, her throat working in steady swallows, her eyes closed with an expression that was almost peaceful.

"It's strange," she had told him once, "drinking it cold. It's not the same as fresh. But it keeps the hunger at bay, and it doesn't hurt anyone. That's what matters."

He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face, his fingers trailing down to trace the curve of her jaw, the cool, smooth skin of her neck. She didn't flinch. She had stopped flinching at his touch weeks ago, had learned to lean into it instead, to accept the warmth of his hands against her perpetual chill.

"This is very distracting," she murmured, not opening her eyes.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're standing there looking like that. It's distracting."

Regulus felt the corner of his mouth twitch. "Like what?"

"Like you're cataloguing me. Like I'm a particularly interesting potion ingredient."

"You are far more interesting than any potion ingredient."

She did open her eyes then, and they were gold—bright, warm gold, the colour of sunlight through honey. The feeding was almost done. The blood bag was nearly empty, and her skin had taken on a faint, almost imperceptible flush, the closest thing to colour he had ever seen on her.

"Flatterer," she said.

"I never flatter. I simply observe."

She snorted, a surprisingly undignified sound, and set the empty blood bag aside on the bedside table. "You're ridiculous."

"And yet here you are, letting me stand in your personal space at three in the morning."

"You're warm." She reached out and caught his hand, lacing her cold fingers through his. "It's nice. Like having a portable fireplace."

"A portable fireplace."

"The highest compliment I can give."

He laughed, low and quiet, and stepped closer, positioning himself between her knees. Her legs parted to make room for him, her thighs cool against the fabric of his trousers, and she tilted her head back to look up at him. In the dim torchlight, her skin was luminous, almost glowing—that strange, crystalline pallor that marked her as something other than human. It was stark against the dark fall of her hair, the deep crimson of her lips (stained from the blood, still), the gold of her eyes.

"You're staring again," she said.

"I'm admiring."

"There's a difference?"

"Staring is rude. Admiring is romantic."

"And you're an expert on romance, are you?"

"I'm learning." He brought his free hand up to her face, tracing the line of her jaw with his fingertips. "You're beautiful. I don't think I say it enough. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I want to look at you all the time, and I don't care if that makes me sound like a lovesick fool."

(Y/N)'s breath caught. Her eyes, golden and luminous, searched his face. "Regulus…"

"I mean it." He leaned down, his forehead nearly touching hers. "I used to think beauty was something cold. Something untouchable. My mother's porcelain masks, my father's austere portraits. But you—you're beautiful like a winter sky. Like the lake at midnight. Like something ancient and powerful and completely, utterly alive."

She reached up and cupped his face in both hands, her cool palms pressing against his cheeks. "You say things like that," she murmured, "and you expect me to remember how to breathe?"

"You don't need to breathe."

"I need to breathe around you."

He kissed her.

It was soft at first—a gentle press of lips, a question more than a statement. She answered by pulling him closer, her fingers sliding into his hair, her mouth parting under his. He tasted the faint copper of the blood she'd been drinking, but it didn't bother him. It was just another part of her, another piece of the impossible, extraordinary creature he had somehow fallen in love with.

His hand slid from her jaw down to her thigh, his palm resting on the cool, smooth skin where her skirt had ridden up. She made a small sound against his mouth—surprise, maybe, or encouragement—and he deepened the kiss, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her leg. Her skin was cold, always cold, but he didn't mind. He liked the contrast between them, the way his warmth seeped into her, the way she shivered when he touched her even though she couldn't feel temperature the way he did.

"I could do this forever," he murmured against her lips.

"Forever is a long time."

"I'm counting on it."

She laughed, low and warm, and pulled him down for another kiss—

And that was when they heard the door.

It wasn't the quiet click of Madam Pomfrey returning from a late-night errand. It was a heavy, shuffling, grunting sound—the unmistakable noise of people trying to move quietly and failing spectacularly. Regulus pulled back from (Y/N) just as the Hospital Wing doors swung open, and his blood ran cold.

Sirius.

His brother was staggering through the doorway, one arm slung around the shoulders of a very battered Remus Lupin, who was barely conscious and bleeding from a dozen shallow gashes across his arms and chest. Both of them were disheveled, exhausted, and clearly fresh from the aftermath of a full moon.

Sirius looked up, saw Regulus, and froze.

Regulus, for his part, was already panicking. The blood bag was still on the bedside table. (Y/N)'s lips were still faintly stained red. Her eyes—thank Merlin—were gold, not crimson, but the scene was incriminating enough. If Sirius saw, if Sirius put the pieces together, if the already-rampant vampire rumours got any more ammunition—

But (Y/N), utterly unruffled, simply looked past Regulus at the newcomers, raised a hand in a casual wave, and said, "Hey, Remus. Rough night?"

Regulus's brain short-circuited.

Remus, despite looking like he'd gone three rounds with a Blast-Ended Skrewt, managed a weak grin. "(Y/N). Fancy seeing you here. Feeding schedule off?"

"Something like that." She tilted her head toward the blood bag, completely unconcerned. "You look terrible, by the way. Did Sirius at least try to keep up this time?"

Sirius, who had been staring at Regulus with an expression of utter bewilderment, transferred his gaze to (Y/N). "You know Remus?"

"Of course I know Remus." (Y/N) said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We're the two resident freaks of Hogwarts. Vampire, werewolf—we have a standing appointment with Madam Pomfrey every month. It's practically a social club."

Regulus found his voice. "You know Lupin?"

"Since fourth year. He's the only other person in this castle who gets what it's like to be looked at like a monster." She shrugged. "We keep each other company during our respective moon-related medical crises. It's nice."

Sirius was looking between Regulus and (Y/N) with the expression of someone who had walked in on a situation he did not have the mental capacity to process. "Okay," he said slowly. "So Remus's secret vampire friend is apparently dating my little brother. That's… that's a thing that's happening."

"We're not dating," Regulus said, at the same moment (Y/N) said, "We're definitely dating."

Regulus looked at her. She looked back at him, one eyebrow raised.

"We're dating," he amended.

"Right." Sirius's voice was strangled. "And how, exactly, did that happen?"

"We share a library alcove," (Y/N) said. "He's very quiet. I like quiet."

"He's never quiet."

"He's quiet around me."

Sirius stared at her, then at Regulus, then back at her. His mouth opened and closed a few times. "I have so many questions."

"Ask them later," Remus groaned, his weight sagging more heavily against Sirius's shoulder. "I'm bleeding on the floor, Padfoot."

That snapped Sirius back into action. He hauled Remus toward the nearest bed, his healer instincts—such as they were—kicking in. Regulus watched him go, his mind still struggling to catch up with the events of the last thirty seconds.

"You know my brother's boyfriend," he said to (Y/N).

"Apparently."

"And you didn't think to mention this?"

(Y/N) gave him a look that was equal parts amused and exasperated. "Regulus, you didn't exactly advertise that your estranged brother was Sirius Black. I thought you'd have figured it out by now."

"How would I have figured it out?"

"Because we're the two freaks of Hogwarts. Of course we know each other." She laughed—that bright, startled sound he loved—and shook her head. "What, did you think I was the only creature in the castle with a standing Hospital Wing appointment? Remus and I have been comparing notes on moon phases and blood cravings for years. Madam Pomfrey practically has a schedule for us."

Regulus processed this. Then, very slowly, he started to laugh.

It wasn't a big laugh. It wasn't the kind of laugh that drew attention or demanded an audience. But it was real, and it was helpless, and it was full of the absurdity of the situation. Here he had been, panicking about vampire allegations, and (Y/N) had been casually friends with his brother's werewolf boyfriend for years.

"What's so funny?" Sirius demanded from across the room, where he was helping Remus onto a bed.

"Nothing." Regulus wiped his eyes. "Everything. It doesn't matter."

"It definitely matters. You're dating a vampire."

"You're dating a werewolf."

Sirius opened his mouth, closed it, and made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "Fair point."

(Y/N) hopped off the bed, smoothing down her skirt with the same calm, deliberate movements she always used. "I should go. Madam Pomfrey will be back soon, and I've already finished my feeding." She glanced at Remus, who was now lying on the bed with his eyes closed, Sirius fussing over him with a wet cloth. "Take care of him, Black. He always overdoes it on the full moons."

"The other Black, or me?" Regulus asked.

"Both." She leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, her cool lips leaving a faint tingling sensation behind. "Come find me in the alcove tomorrow. We can compare notes on our respective brothers."

"You don't have a brother."

"No, but I have a front-row seat to yours. It's very entertaining."

She slipped out of the Hospital Wing like a shadow, silent and graceful, leaving Regulus standing in the middle of the ward with his brother, his brother's werewolf boyfriend, and the dawning realization that his life had become infinitely more complicated.

Sirius cleared his throat. "So. You and (Y/N)."

"Don't."

"I'm not saying anything."

"You're thinking it very loudly."

"I'm thinking," Sirius said, and his voice was strange—not mocking, not angry, but something softer, something that sounded almost like approval, "that you actually look happy. I didn't think you knew how."

Regulus didn't know what to say to that. So he said nothing, just stood there in the dim torchlight of the Hospital Wing, his lip still slightly tender from where (Y/N) had kissed him, his heart still beating too fast in his chest.

"I'm going to bed," he said finally.

"Goodnight, little brother."

Regulus paused at the door. "Goodnight, Sirius."

It was the first civil exchange they'd had in three years. It felt, he thought, like the beginning of something.

The alcove was quiet when he found her the next evening.

(Y/N) was curled in the larger armchair—the one that had been his, once, before it became theirs—a book open in her lap, her golden eyes fixed on the dark water outside the window. She didn't look up when he entered, but she shifted slightly, making room for him.

He sat on the arm of the chair, close enough that their shoulders touched. "You and Remus Lupin."

"Me and Remus Lupin."

"For years."

"For years." She turned a page. "Is this going to be a whole conversation?"

"It might be."

She sighed and closed her book, tilting her head back to look up at him. "What do you want to know?"

"How did it start?"

"Fourth year. I was in the Hospital Wing for my monthly feeding, and he was there recovering from the full moon. We were the only two people in the ward, and it was three in the morning, and we just… started talking." She shrugged. "Turns out being a supernatural creature is lonely. Who knew."

"And you never mentioned it because…?"

"Because it never came up." She raised an eyebrow. "You're not exactly forthcoming about your personal life, Regulus. I didn't know Sirius was your brother until last night."

"Fair." He was quiet for a moment. "Does it bother you? That my brother is dating your friend?"

"Why would it bother me?"

"I don't know. It's strange."

"Regulus, I drink blood and don't sleep and haven't aged since I was eleven. Strange is my baseline." She reached up and took his hand, her cool fingers threading through his. "I don't care about strange. I care about you. And I care about Remus having someone who loves him, even if that someone happens to be your idiot brother."

"He's not an idiot."

"He's definitely an idiot. A lovable idiot, but an idiot."

Regulus laughed. It was becoming easier, he realized—the laughing. Like a muscle he'd forgotten he had, slowly waking up.

"I love you," he said.

The words came out before he could stop them, raw and terrifying and true. (Y/N) went very still, her golden eyes fixed on his face.

"You don't have to say it back," he added quickly. "I just—I needed you to know. I've never said that to anyone before. Not like this. Not and meant it."

(Y/N) stared at him for a long, suspended moment. Then she rose from the chair, her book falling forgotten to the floor, and she cupped his face in both hands and kissed him.

It was not desperate, like the feeding. It was not gentle, like the Hospital Wing. It was fierce and certain and full of something that felt almost like defiance—as if she were daring the world to tell her this was wrong, as if she were claiming him the way he had claimed her.

"I love you too," she said against his lips. "I don't know how to be loved. I don't know how to do this. But I love you, and I want to try. If you'll have me."

"Always," he said. "Forever. However long that is."

"Forever is a long time."

"Good. I'm planning on it."

She laughed—bright and startled and beautiful—and kissed him again, and the alcove was quiet around them, and the lake pressed dark against the window, and somewhere in the depths of the castle, a werewolf and a Black brother were probably having a very similar conversation.

The world outside was complicated. There was a war coming, and family expectations, and a thousand reasons why this shouldn't work. But here, in the small, secret room behind the false shelf, none of that mattered. Here, there was only the girl with the crystal-pale skin and the eyes like stained glass, and the boy who loved her, and the quiet, impossible, extraordinary thing they were building together.

It wasn't a fairy tale. But somehow that makes it better because it was real.

The Selwyn name carried weight in certain circles—old magic, old money, old expectations that pressed down on the shoulders of every child born into that particular shade of wizarding aristocracy. Y/N Selwyn had learned early that invisibility was its own kind of armor, that if she stood very still in the corners of ballrooms and spoke only when directly addressed, no one would look too closely.

No one would notice the way her eyes lingered on the Black heir's elegant fingers wrapped around a crystal glass, or how her breath caught when the Rosier boy laughed with his whole chest, head thrown back and throat exposed. The pureblood gatherings were a circuit of calculated marriages and political maneuvering disguised as dinner parties, and the Selwyns attended them all, dragging their painfully awkward daughter from manor to manor where she learned to make herself small and quiet and forgettable.

The other children of their generation had formed their alliances early. Regulus Black, Evan Rosier, Barty Crouch Jr., Dorcas Meadowes, and Pandora Lovegood-before she'd shed that name like a snake shedding skin and insisted on being called only by her given name-had gravitated toward each other with the inevitability of celestial bodies finding their orbits. They were sharp-tongued and beautiful in the way that old portraits were beautiful, something slightly dangerous lurking beneath the surface polish.

Y/N had watched them from behind her mother's skirts, had catalogued the way Evan's hand always found the small of Barty's back in crowded rooms, the way Dorcas and Pandora shared looks that contained entire conversations, the way Regulus commanded attention without ever raising his voice. She had been seven years old when she first realized she wanted to be consumed by them, wanted to be drawn into their gravitational pull and devoured entirely, and she had been seven years old when she first learned to hide that wanting behind a book and downcast eyes.

Hogwarts should have been an escape, a chance to reinvent herself away from the weight of the Selwyn expectations. Instead, the Sorting Hat had barely grazed her head before shouting "HUFFLEPUFF!" and Y/N had felt the last door slam shut on any possibility of belonging with them. The Slytherin table had barely glanced up, and why would they? She was a Hufflepuff now, the only pureblood of their generation to be sorted into the house of badgers and loyalty and hard work, and the shame of it burned in her chest every time she passed her cousins in the corridors and saw the disappointment in their eyes.

Her parents had sent a Howler that first week, the sound of her mother's mortified screaming echoing through the Great Hall while Y/ N stared at her untouched breakfast and wished the floor would swallow her whole. After that, invisibility became more than a habit-it became a survival mechanism, a way of moving through the castle like a ghost, present but never truly seen.

The Slytherins, by contrast, were impossible not to see. They moved through Hogwarts like they owned it, six feet of aristocratic disdain wrapped in green and silver, cutting down anyone foolish enough to cross their path with surgical precision. The other students called them the Slytherin Skittles behind their backs—a joke about the rainbow of their varied aesthetics, the way Evan's golden hair contrasted with Barty's dark intensity, Dorcas's rich brown skin against Pandora's ethereal paleness, Regulus's sharp monochrome elegance tying it all together like a black ribbon.

Some whispered that they were more than friends, that the way they touched each other went far beyond platonic affection, but no one dared say it to their faces. No one dared do anything but watch them from a safe distance and pretend they weren't desperately curious about what happened behind the closed doors of the Slytherin common room.

Y/N watched more than anyone. She had memorized their schedules by third year, knew that Regulus took his coffee black in the mornings and that Evan skipped breakfast entirely, that Barty smoked behind the greenhouses between third and fourth period, that Dorcas and Pandora always sat together in the library on Thursday evenings with their heads bent close over shared textbooks. She knew the sound of Evan's laugh and the particular way Regulus's jaw tightened when he was annoyed and the exact shade of pink that Pandora's lips turned after Barty had been kissing her.

She knew things she shouldn't know, things that made her cheeks burn and her stomach clench with something that felt like hunger but sharper, more desperate. By fifth year, she had started writing it down-at first just observations, clinical notes about their habits and movements, but that had quickly devolved into something far less innocent. Her journals had become repositories of fantasy, pages and pages of increasingly explicit scenarios featuring the five of them in various combinations, and eventually featuring herself slotted between them like she belonged there, like she was wanted, like the Hufflepuff in her blood didn't make her unworthy of their attention.

She had filled three journals by the time seventh year began, and her artistic skills had improved dramatically from all the practice. Charcoal sketches of Regulus's profile, watercolor studies of Dorcas's hands, detailed anatomical drawings that would have gotten her expelled if anyone ever found them. She worked on them in the library during her free periods, tucked into the most isolated corner she could find, and no one ever bothered her because no one ever noticed her.

That was the one advantage of being invisible-she could sit three tables away from the Slytherins in the library and watch Barty's fingers trace patterns on Evan's thigh under the table while Regulus pretended to read and Pandora braided tiny flowers into Dorcas's hair, and none of them even glanced in her direction. She was furniture to them. She was less than furniture. She was nothing, and the ache of that nothingness was what drove her to follow them at night, to learn their secret places, to press herself into dark corners and watch them be beautiful and terrible and utterly unattainable.

The greenhouse at the end of the east corridor had been abandoned for decades-some incident with venomous tentacula that had never been properly resolved-and the Slytherins had claimed it as their own sometime during fourth year. Y/N had discovered their usage of it during fifth year, on a night when she couldn't sleep and had been wandering the castle under her invisibility cloak (a gift from a grandmother who had always been slightly more sympathetic to her peculiarities than the rest of the family).

She had smelled the smoke first, sweet and cloying, and had followed it to find them sprawled across conjured cushions on the greenhouse floor, passing a joint between them while Dorcas complained about the upcoming Transfiguration exam and Pandora hummed tuneless and strange. Y/N had pressed herself against the outer wall, heart hammering so loudly she was certain they must hear it, and had watched through a crack in the grimy glass as Barty had leaned over and kissed Evan with the casual intimacy of long practice, as Regulus had pulled Dorcas into his lap and buried his face in her neck, as Pandora had watched them all with those unsettling pale eyes and smiled like she knew secrets the universe hadn't yet revealed.

After that night, Y/N had returned to the greenhouse every chance she got. It became an addiction, a compulsion she couldn't control, the only thing that made her feel alive in the gray monotony of her solitary existence. She learned their rhythms-the way they always started with complaints about their days, the way the conversation would gradually give way to touch, the way Regulus would eventually grow impatient with talking and simply take what he wanted, the way the others would follow his lead like planets orbiting a dark sun.

She watched Barty go to his knees for Evan more times than she could count, watched Dorcas and Pandora kiss with a tenderness that made her chest ache, watched Regulus fuck into Barty while Evan whispered filth into both their ears and Dorcas and Pandora touched each other nearby like a living piece of art. She watched, and she burned, and she went back to her dormitory and touched herself with her teeth buried in her pillow to muffle the sounds she couldn't stop making, and she hated herself for being a Hufflepuff, for being invisible, for being too pathetic and awkward to ever be worthy of what they had.

It was a Thursday night in late October when everything changed. The air had that crisp autumn edge that promised frost by morning, and Y/N had been watching them for nearly an hour, crouched behind a half-rotted potting bench with her latest journal open on her knees.

They were particularly beautiful tonight-Barty in those gray sweatpants that hung obscenely low on his hips, Dorcas in a thin camisole that did nothing to hide the way her nipples peaked in the cool air, Evan with his shirt half-unbuttoned and his hair disheveled like he'd just rolled out of bed, Regulus in his usual immaculate black with his sleeves rolled up to reveal the dark mark on his left forearm that no one was supposed to know about, and Pandora in something floaty and pale that made her look like a ghost or a goddess depending on the light. They were passing a bottle of firewhisky between them, and Pandora was sitting in Dorcas's lap, and Evan had his hand down the back of Barty's sweatpants in a way that made Y/N's mouth go dry.

She was sketching Regulus's profile, trying desperately to capture the way the moonlight caught the sharp angle of his jaw and the slight curl of his hair where it brushed his collar. She was so focused, so completely absorbed in getting the shading right, that she didn't notice the conversation had stopped. She didn't notice the sudden silence or the way five heads had turned in her direction. She didn't notice anything until a shadow fell over her journal and a hand reached down and plucked it from her grasp, and by then it was far too late.

"What are you drawing, hm?" Barty's voice was pure amusement, dark and rich like expensive chocolate, and Y/N's blood turned to ice in her veins. She looked up-way up, because Barty was tall and she was still crouched on the ground like a frightened animal—and saw her journal open in his hands, saw his eyes scanning the page, saw the exact moment his casual curiosity shifted into something far more dangerous. He turned the journal toward the others, and Y/N watched her own destruction unfold in slow motion. "Well, well. Look what our little Hufflepuff has been up to."

Evan appeared at Barty's shoulder, and his eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. "Is that supposed to be Regulus?" He tilted his head, examining the sketch with the critical eye of someone who had grown up surrounded by fine art. "It's actually quite good. Look at the detail on the hands. Very anatomically correct, Selwyn."

"Give it back," Y/N choked out, finally finding her voice and scrambling to her feet. She was shaking, actual tremors running through her entire body, and her face was so hot she thought she might spontaneously combust. "Please, I'm-I'm sorry, I'll stop, I swear I'll stop, just please give it back—"

But Barty was already flipping through the pages, and his expression was shifting from amusement to genuine interest to something that looked almost like admiration. "Evan Rosier moaned out as Barty licked a long stripe along his abs, stopping on his nipple and sucking it lewdly," he read aloud, his voice carrying in the sudden silence of the greenhouse. Evan made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been something else entirely.

Barty flipped to another page. "Regulus groans as Dorcas and Pandora place kisses and kitten licks all over his cock." He looked up, meeting Y/N's eyes with an expression that made her knees feel dangerously weak. "Oh, you've got the complete collection. Very thorough. Very detailed." Another flip of pages, and his grin widened. "Oh look, you've written some with yourself in it. 'Y/N pressed between Evan and Barty, sandwiched so tightly she can barely breathe, their hands everywhere, their mouths on her neck, her thighs, her-'''

"Please!" The word tore out of Y/N's throat, desperate and broken, and she lunged for the journal, but Barty held it easily out of her reach.

She was crying now, tears streaming down her face, humiliation burning through her like fiendfyre. She was so small compared to all of them, barely reaching Barty's shoulder, and she had never felt more pathetic in her entire life. "I'm begging you, please, I'm sorry-"

"What’s with all the apologies?" Dorcas had appeared at Barty's other side, and her voice was dripping with mock sympathy, the kind of condescending sweetness that made Y/N want to crawl into a hole and die.

She clapped her hands together slowly, the sound echoing in the greenhouse. "Wow, the last thing we expected was how much of a pervert the little Hufflepuff from the noble and most sovereign house of Selwyn is. What would your parents say?" she turns to face Y/N but she could barely manage eye contact with anyone.

"Sorry for what?" Regulus whispered, and suddenly he was right behind her, his breath hot against her ear, his presence a wall of heat at her back that made her entire body break out in goosebumps. She hadn't even heard him move.

"Stalking us? Invading our privacy? Drawing and writing lewd things about us?" His voice was silk and steel, soft and utterly devastating, and Y/N squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see the disgust she was certain was on his face.

"Look at me when I'm speaking to you."

She opened her eyes. Regulus had moved around to stand in front of her, and his expression was unreadable, gray eyes studying her like she was a particularly interesting specimen he'd found under a microscope. Pandora was watching from her spot on the cushions, head tilted at an angle that seemed almost unnatural, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips that didn't reach her eyes. Dorcas had her arms crossed over her chest, and Evan was leaning against Barty's shoulder, and Barty was still holding her journal like it was the most entertaining thing he'd ever encountered.

"Y-yes," Y/N stammered, her voice barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry. For all of it. I'm so sorry."

"Hmm." Regulus considered her for a long moment, his gaze dropping from her eyes to her trembling lips to the frantic pulse beating in her throat. "What should we do with her, Evan?"

Evan pushed off from Barty's shoulder and approached with the lazy confidence of a predator who knew its prey had nowhere to run.

He was smirking, that particular smirk that had made half the students at Hogwarts weak in the knees, and Y/N couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but stand there frozen as he stopped directly in front of her. "I have an idea," he said, and then he was leaning down, and his hand was cupping her chin, tilting her face up, and his mouth was on hers.

The kiss was nothing like Y/N had imagined-and she had imagined it, countless times, in countless variations. It was surprisingly gentle, a soft press of lips that tasted faintly of firewhisky and something sweeter, and it lasted maybe three seconds before Evan pulled back with that same mocking smirk. "Happy now, you little freak?" He tapped her cheek lightly, a patronizing gesture that should have been humiliating but instead sent a bolt of something hot and electric straight through her core.

Something warm and wet dripped onto her upper lip. Y/N reached up with shaking fingers and touched it, and when she pulled her hand back, her fingertips were red. She was having a nosebleed. She was having an actual nosebleed because Evan Rosier had kissed her, and she could feel the blood running down toward her mouth, and she couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but stand there in mortified silence while Pandora glided over and and swiped her thumb through the crimson trail.

Pandora brought her bloodied thumb to her lips and licked it clean with a thoughtful expression, like she was tasting a particularly interesting wine.

"Interesting," she murmured, and her voice was dreamy and detached but her eyes were razor-sharp. "She tastes like iron and desperation. I like it."

The world was spinning. The edges of Y/N's vision were going gray and fuzzy, and the last thing she was aware of before everything went dark was several pairs of arms reaching out to catch her, and someone-she thought it might have been Dorcas-making a soft sound that was almost tender.

She woke up in the alcove near the Hufflepuff common room with a house elf gently shaking her shoulder and a pounding headache behind her eyes. The elf told her she'd been found there, asleep, and shouldn't she be getting back to her dormitory before curfew? Y/N had nodded numbly and stumbled through the barrel entrance, up the stairs to her empty dormitory (her roommates had long since stopped trying to include her in anything), and into the bathroom where she'd stared at her reflection in the mirror and seen the dried blood crusted under her nose, proof that it hadn't been a dream, proof that it had all been terrifyingly real.

She touched her lips with trembling fingers, remembering the pressure of Evan's mouth, the sound of Barty's voice reading her most private fantasies aloud, the heat of Regulus at her back, and something cracked open inside her chest-something that felt terrifyingly like hope.

But her journal was gone. Her journal with all its damning evidence, all its explicit confessions, all its detailed accounts of her obsession with the five Slytherins who now held her entire reputation in their hands. She was completely and utterly at their mercy, and as she crawled into bed and pulled the covers over her head, she couldn't decide if she was more terrified or more aroused by that realization.

She didn't see them for three days after that.

The first day, she didn’t leave her dormitory. She told her roommates she was ill—something she’d eaten, perhaps—and spent the hours curled beneath her blankets, replaying every excruciating moment in her head. The way Barty’s voice had curled around her words. The dry brush of Evan’s lips. Pandora’s thumb, slick with her blood, disappearing into that serene smile. She touched her own mouth a hundred times, still half-convinced she’d imagined the whole thing, but the faint copper taste still lingered on her tongue when she ran it over her teeth. Proof.

The second day, she forced herself to go to breakfast. It was a mistake. The moment she stepped into the Great Hall, her eyes betrayed her, seeking them out at the Slytherin table before she could stop herself. Regulus was sipping his coffee, black, just as she’d catalogued years ago. Dorcas was laughing at something Pandora had whispered in her ear. Evan and Barty sat pressed together from shoulder to hip, their food untouched, their attention on each other. None of them looked at her. Not once. She spilled pumpkin juice on her robes because her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and one of the Hufflepuff prefects sighed loudly and spelled it clean for her with a look that said useless.

The third day, Barty passed her in the corridor between Charms and Transfiguration. His shoulder brushed hers—deliberately, she was certain—and he didn’t stop walking, didn’t turn his head, but she heard it anyway: a low hum, barely audible, the melody of something dark and old. She froze in the middle of the corridor until a first-year bumped into her from behind and snapped her out of it.

That night, she dreamed of the greenhouse again, except this time she wasn’t hiding behind the potting bench. She was in the center of the room, on her knees, and all five of them were looking at her with expressions she couldn’t decipher. She woke up with her thighs pressed together and her pillow clenched between her teeth, and she hated herself for it. Hated herself more when she realized the dream hadn’t frightened her at all.

Three days of jumping at every shadow, of flinching whenever someone walked past her in the corridor, of barely sleeping and barely eating and spending every waking moment convinced that today would be the day they exposed her to the entire school. But nothing happened. No one pointed and laughed. No one whispered behind their hands.

The Slytherins continued their usual routine, cutting a swath through the castle with their particular brand of elegant cruelty, and they didn't so much as glance in Y/N's direction. It was almost worse than if they'd confronted her directly-the not knowing, the waiting, the constant state of hypervigilant terror that left her exhausted and frayed and desperately, shamefully aroused by the memory of Evan's lips and Pandora's thumb and Regulus's voice in her ear.

On the fourth day, she found a note tucked into her Transfiguration textbook. The handwriting was elegant and unfamiliar, and it contained only two words: Greenhouse. Tonight. No signature, no explanation, but Y/N knew exactly who had sent it and exactly what it meant. She spent the rest of the day in a haze of anxiety and anticipation, completely unable to focus on her classes, her mind spinning through every possible scenario of what might happen when she walked into that greenhouse.

Would they hex her? Blackmail her? Humiliate her in some creative and devastating way that would leave her social standing in ruins? Or would they simply kill her and be done with it? None of the possibilities stopped her from carefully selecting her nicest undergarments and spending an hour on her hair before she left the dormitory that night.

She stood in front of the small mirror above her dresser, the one with the chipped frame and the old photograph of her grandmother tucked into the corner, and she looked at herself. Really looked. The girl in the mirror was trembling. Her pupils were blown wide despite the brightness of the lamp, and her carefully styled hair only made her look more fragile, like a doll dressed up for a tea party. The note was still clutched in her hand, the elegant script already smudged from how many times she’d touched it, traced it, pressed it to her racing pulse.

Greenhouse. Tonight.

She could tear it up. She could burn it in the candle flame until it was ash and smoke and nothing, and she could go back to being invisible. It wasn’t too late. She could tell a professor, tell her parents, tell anyone. Regulus Black and his friends are threatening me. But the words wouldn’t come. The thought felt wrong, misshapen, like putting on a dress that belonged to someone else. She didn’t want to tell anyone. She wanted to go to the greenhouse. She wanted to kneel at their feet and let them do whatever they pleased with the desperate, pathetic creature she’d become.

That was the worst part. Not the fear—the wanting.

She folded the note carefully and tucked it into the pocket of her robes. She pinched her cheeks to bring some color back into them. She practiced her breathing until the tremor in her hands subsided, and then she whispered to her reflection, “Okay. Okay. You’re going. You’re doing this.” Her reflection didn’t argue back. Didn’t tell her she was making a mistake. Her reflection just stared at her with eyes that were already half-surrendered, and Y/N turned away before she could change her mind.

They were waiting for her when she arrived, arranged across their usual cushions like a court of dark royalty. Regulus was in the center, naturally, with Evan and Barty flanking him and Dorcas and Pandora draped elegantly on either side. The greenhouse was lit with floating candles that cast dancing shadows across their faces, and there was a bottle of wine open on the floor, and Y/N's journal was sitting in Regulus's lap like a prop in some elaborate theatrical production.

"Little Selwyn," Regulus said, and his voice was cool and measured, giving nothing away. "We've been discussing what to do with you."

"I-" Y/N swallowed hard, her throat dry as parchment. "I said I was sorry. I meant it. I'll do anything. Just please don't-"

"Anything?" Barty interrupted, leaning forward with an expression that made Y/N's stomach flip.

"That's a dangerous word to use around us, sweetheart. You might want to be more specific."

"We've decided not to expose you," Dorcas added, her tone dripping with that same condescending sweetness from before. "We're not monsters, despite what everyone says. And honestly, your little journal is rather flattering. The attention to detail is impressive."

"But we do expect compensation," Evan said, and his smirk was back, sharper than before. "You've been watching us for years. You've seen things that no one else has seen. You've written stories about things you want us to do to you, with you, for you." He paused, letting the weight of his words settle over her. "We think it's only fair that you get to experience some of them."

Y/N's brain short-circuited. "What?"

"We're going to keep your journal as collateral,"

Regulus explained, his fingers tracing the leather cover with a possessiveness that made her shiver.

"And in exchange, you're going to give us what you've been offering in these pages. Your obedience. Your submission. Your complete and utter devotion." His gray eyes met hers, and the intensity in them was like a physical force. "You want to belong to us, Selwyn. It's written all over every page of this journal. So now you're going to get your wish. Unless you'd rather we take this to the headmaster?"

It wasn't really a choice. They all knew it wasn't really a choice. Y/N had been theirs from the moment she'd first laid eyes on them, years before she'd ever put pen to paper, and they'd known it from the moment they'd found her journal. This was just the formal surrender, the signing of terms, the acknowledgment of what had always been true.

"Okay," she whispered, and the word felt like falling off a cliff. "Okay. I'm yours."

The smile that spread across Regulus's face was the most terrifying thing she'd ever seen. "Good girl. Now come here."

What followed was a blur of sensation, of hands and mouths and whispered commands that she obeyed without hesitation. They didn't take her virginity that night—Regulus said that was something to be savored, something to be earned—but they took everything else. They stripped her down to her carefully chosen undergarments and arranged her across their laps like a doll, and they touched her everywhere, mapping her body with the same attention to detail she'd once devoted to sketching theirs.

Barty's fingers found the wet heat between her thighs and praised her for how ready she was, how responsive, how perfectly desperate. Evan marked her neck with bruises that would be impossible to hide. Dorcas and Pandora kissed her tears away while Regulus watched with dark satisfaction from his throne of cushions, directing the others like a conductor leading an orchestra.

By the time they let her stumble back to her dormitory, Y/N was a wreck of hickeys and trembling muscles and a desperate, aching emptiness between her legs that they had deliberately refused to satisfy. "You'll come when we say you can come," Regulus had told her, and she had nodded frantically, willing to agree to anything if it meant they would keep touching her, keep wanting her, keep seeing her. "And you haven't earned that yet."

She woke up before dawn, tangled in her sheets with the distinct, bone-deep ache of someone who had been thoroughly handled the night before. For a long moment, she just lay there, staring at the canopy of her four-poster bed, cataloguing each individual throb and sting. Her wrists were faintly bruised. Her neck was a map of possessive mouth-shaped marks that no amount of scarf would entirely hide. Between her legs was a slick, empty, desperate heat that had never been satisfied, exactly as Regulus had commanded.

She should have felt ashamed. She braced herself for the shame to crash over her like it always did, the familiar wave of self-loathing that had been her constant companion since childhood. But it didn’t come. In its place was something else entirely—a strange, quiet contentment, like a cat that had been stroked and fed and left to sleep in a sunbeam. She was sore and unsatisfied and completely, terrifyingly happy.

At breakfast, her roommate Hannah asked if she was feeling all right. “You look different,” Hannah said, her brow furrowed with genuine concern. “Did you… sleep okay?” Y/N managed to nod and mumble something about a late-night walk, but she could feel the heat creeping up her neck, could feel the phantom pressure of their hands still mapping her skin. She didn’t notice Pandora until the other girl was already standing beside her, a dreamy smile on her pale lips and a folded piece of parchment in her outstretched hand.

“Regulus asked me to give you this,” Pandora said, her voice carrying the way it always did, as if she were speaking from very far away. “He says you’re to read it in private and then burn it.” She tilted her head, studying Y/N’s face with those unsettling silver eyes. “You look pretty this morning. All flushed and used. It suits you.” And then she drifted back to the Slytherin table, leaving Y/N clutching the parchment with trembling fingers and Hannah staring at her like she’d grown a second head.

She excused herself to the bathroom and unfolded the note with her heart in her throat. It was written in Regulus’s precise, elegant script, and it contained a list. Rules. One: You do not speak of this arrangement to anyone. Two: You will follow all commands without hesitation. Three: You will wear what we choose for you and nothing else. There were more, each one more invasive and possessive than the last, and at the bottom, in a slightly less formal hand: Welcome to the skittles, little Hufflepuff. Don’t disappoint us. She read it three times, committed it to memory, and then lit the corner with a quick Incendio, watching the ash scatter into the sink. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she was smiling.

The weeks that followed were a masterclass in torment. The Slytherins took their new role as Y/N's owners very seriously, and they were creative in their methods of keeping her in a constant state of desperate arousal. They would corner her between classes, pressing her against cold stone walls while Barty's hand slipped under her skirt and found her bare-they'd forbidden her from wearing underwear, a rule she followed with a mixture of shame and excitement that made her cheeks burn every time she walked through the castle.

They would pass her notes in the Great Hall with explicit instructions written in elegant script, things like "touch yourself in the library during your free period and write down exactly what you thought about" or "meet us in the abandoned classroom on the fourth floor at midnight and don't bother wearing anything under your robes." They would sit near her in classes they didn't even share, just to watch her squirm under their collective gaze, knowing she was thinking about what they'd done to her the night before and what they might do to her later.

There was a Tuesday in late November when she thought she might actually lose her mind. The Slytherins shared Potions with the Hufflepuffs that term, a scheduling disaster that Professor Slughorn thought would foster inter-house unity and that had instead turned Y/N’s favorite class into a weekly exercise in barely-suppressed hysteria. She sat at a workstation in the middle of the room, her cauldron simmering with a Draught of Peace that was supposed to turn turquoise and had instead gone a murky gray. It was hard to concentrate on brewing instructions when Barty Crouch Jr. had slid onto the stool directly behind her, so close she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

“Your stirring technique is all wrong,” he murmured, his voice pitched low enough that only she could hear. “You’re supposed to stir clockwise for seven rotations, then counterclockwise for three. Unless you’re thinking about something else? Something distracting?” His knee pressed against the back of her stool, a firm, insistent pressure. “I wonder what it could be. Do you think it might have anything to do with what Evan did to you in the greenhouse last night? I watched, you know. I always watch. You make the prettiest faces when you’re begging.”

Her hand slipped. The stirring rod clattered against the rim of the cauldron, and a puff of acrid smoke rose from the potion’s surface. Across the room, Regulus looked up from his own perfectly brewed, precisely turquoise Draught of Peace. His gray eyes found hers, and one elegant eyebrow rose just a fraction of an inch—a silent question, or perhaps a warning. She didn’t know which. She didn’t know anything anymore, except that she was wet and shaking and her potion was ruined.

Dorcas appeared at her elbow before she could even start to clean up the mess. “Oh dear,” she said, her voice dripping with saccharine sympathy. “That’s a tricky potion. Here, let me help you.” She reached past Y/N to adjust the flame, her body pressing briefly against Y/N’s side, and whispered directly into her ear: “You’re doing so well. Regulus is very pleased with you. We all are. Now fix your potion, and try not to come before dinner.” She pulled back with a bright, innocent smile and walked back to her own station. Y/N spent the remaining hour of class with her thighs clenched together under the table and her potion an unsalvageable gray sludge. Slughorn gave her a Troll and a pitying look but she barely noticed anyway.

The first time they fucked her properly was in the Hospital Wing, of all places. Y/N had been sent there after a minor potions accident-nothing serious, just a burn that needed to be salved and bandaged-and Madam Pomfrey had left her alone in one of the curtained beds with instructions to rest. She'd been drifting in and out of a light doze when the curtains parted and all five of them slipped inside, silent as shadows, their expressions ranging from predatory hunger to amused anticipation.

"Madam Pomfrey's busy with a Quidditch injury," Barty whispered, his breath hot against her ear as he climbed onto the bed beside her. "She won't be back for at least an hour. Plenty of time."

"You're going to be quiet," Regulus added, his voice low and dangerous as he positioned himself at the foot of the bed. "Absolutely silent. If you make a single sound, we stop. Understood?"

Y/N nodded frantically, already trembling with the anticipation she'd been living with for weeks, the desperate need that had been building and building with no release. They'd kept her on edge the entire time, bringing her to the brink over and over and then pulling back, leaving her whimpering and desperate and utterly at their mercy. She was so wet she could feel it soaking through the thin hospital gown, and she could tell from the way Evan's nostrils flared that he could smell it too.

What followed was the most intense experience of her life. They took their time with her, drawing it out with the practiced patience of people who knew exactly what they were doing. Pandora kissed her with surprising gentleness while Dorcas's clever fingers worked between her legs, spreading her open and teasing at her entrance without ever quite pushing inside.

Barty sucked marks onto her collarbone that would be visible for days, and Evan pinched her nipples through the thin fabric of the gown until she had to bite her own hand to keep from crying out. And through it all, Regulus watched from his position at the foot of the bed, gray eyes tracking every expression that crossed her face, cataloguing every stifled whimper and desperate gasp.

"Please," she finally begged, the word muffled against her own palm. "Please, Regulus, I can't-l need-"

"Need what?" His voice was calm, almost bored, but his eyes were blazing with something that made her stomach clench. "Use your words, little Hufflepuff. What do you need?"

"I need you inside me. Please. Any of you. All of you. I don't care. Just please-"

Regulus smiled, slow and devastating, and nodded once. What followed was a blur of sensation-Barty's cock pushing into her while Evan held her legs open and Dorcas whispered filthy encouragement in her ear and Pandora stroked her hair and Regulus watched, always watching, his hand wrapped around his own cock but not moving, just holding, waiting for something only he understood. Barty fucked her with a rhythm that was almost punishing, fast and deep and exactly what she'd been craving for weeks, and when she finally came-her first orgasm at anyone else's hands, after years of nothing but her own fingers—it was so intense that she blacked out for a few seconds, coming back to awareness with Evan's hand clamped over her mouth and Barty still moving inside her and Regulus's voice saying "Good girl, that's our good girl, now you're going to take all of us."

Barty pulled out with a wet, satisfied sound, and Y/N whimpered at the sudden emptiness, her body clenching around nothing. She was still shaking, still floating somewhere between the orgasm that had blacked out her vision and the overstimulation that was already building again. The hospital cot creaked as Barty shifted aside, and she felt Evan’s hand on her hip, turning her, positioning her for whatever came next.

“Wait.”

The word was quiet, but everyone stopped. Even Evan’s hands stilled. Regulus moved from his position at the foot of the bed, and the others parted for him without being asked, a path opening between them like water dividing around a stone. He lowered himself onto the edge of the cot, close enough that she could smell the clean, expensive scent of his cologne, and he cupped her chin in his hand, tilting her face up until her glassy eyes met his.

“Look at me,” he said, and she did, because she would always do what he said. “We’re going to keep going. More of them are going to take you. But first, I want you to tell me something.” His thumb traced her lower lip, feather-light. “What’s your color?”

She blinked, confused for a moment, and then remembered a conversation from weeks ago, in the greenhouse, when Pandora had explained it in that drifting, otherworldly way of hers. Green means keep going. Yellow means slow down. Red means stop. Y/N had never needed to use it, had never wanted to use it, but the fact that they’d given it to her had settled something deep in her chest that she hadn’t even known was broken.

“Green,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, wrecked, but steady. “Green, Regulus. Please. I want—I need more.”

His expression didn’t change, but something flickered in the depths of his gray eyes—approval, or satisfaction, or something softer that she was too far gone to name. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, so gentle it made her want to cry, and then he pulled back and nodded at Evan. “You heard her. She wants more. Give it to her.”

And he did. Evan going slower and more deliberate, taking his time with her overstimulated body until she was sobbing with overstimulation and begging for him to stop even as she arched into his thrusts. Then Dorcas's fingers, more gentle than the others but no less thorough, finding spots inside her that made her see stars.

Pandora's mouth on her cunt while Regulus finally, finally pushed into her from behind, and the combination of sensations was so overwhelming that she forgot to be quiet, forgot where she was, forgot everything except the feeling of being completely and utterly owned by the five people she'd been obsessing over for years. Regulus's hand covered her mouth, muffling her screams, and his voice was dark and satisfied in her ear.

"That's it. Let go. We've got you."

By the time Madam Pomfrey came to check on her an hour later, Y/N was tucked back into bed with the curtains drawn, her body covered in marks that the hospital gown couldn't quite hide and her legs so weak she wasn't sure she'd be able to walk to her next class. The nurse commented on how flushed she looked and checked her temperature for fever, never noticing the five Slytherins slipping out through a side door with satisfied smiles on their faces.

She was limping. Not dramatically—not enough to draw attention—but there was a definite tenderness in her stride, a careful way of walking that spoke of muscles she hadn’t known she possessed being put to enthusiastic use. Madam Pomfrey had released her that morning with a clean bill of health and a puzzled comment about how her burn had healed remarkably fast. The marks on her neck, the bruises on her hips, the soreness between her thighs—those hadn’t been noticed, or if they had, the matron had chosen not to mention them.

The corridors were empty this early, most students still in their first classes, and Y/N was making her slow, careful way toward the library when a hand caught her elbow and steered her gently but firmly into an alcove behind a tapestry of a rather ugly medieval wizard.

Evan looked her up and down, his lips quirking into that familiar, mocking smile. “You’re walking like a newborn fawn. It’s a good look.” He didn’t release her elbow. If anything, his grip tightened slightly, steadying her when she wobbled. “Barty was worried. He thinks we might have broken our new toy already.” The word toy should have stung, but the way he said it—almost fondly—made her stomach flip instead.

“I’m not broken,” she managed, and her voice came out steadier than she expected. “I’m fine. I liked it.”

Evan’s smile shifted, losing some of its sharp edge. “Yeah. We noticed.” He reached up and tugged at her scarf, pulling it aside just enough to expose the edge of a purpling bruise on her collarbone. His thumb traced it once, feather-light, and then he smoothed the scarf back into place. “You did well last night. Better than any of us expected. Don’t let it go to your head.” He leaned in, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he just murmured against her ear: “Regulus is pleased. Barty’s already planning something for this weekend. Rest up, little Hufflepuff. You’re going to need it.”

And then he was gone, slipping back into the corridor with the casual grace of someone who had never once doubted his place in the world, and Y/N leaned against the cold stone wall and pressed her hand to her pounding heart and smiled.

It was only the beginning. Once they'd had her, once they'd tasted her submission and her desperation and her complete willingness to do whatever they asked, they became insatiable. They fucked her in empty classrooms after curfew, bent over desks with her skirt pushed up and Barty's hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet. They summoned her to the Slytherin common room one night during a party, draped a robe over her head and pushed up and Barty's hand clamped over her mouth to keep her quiet.

They summoned her to the Slytherin common room one night during a party, draped a robe over her head and pushed her under a table and made her suck Evan's cock while the rest of them played cards above and pretended nothing was happening. She choked and gagged and tears streamed down her face, and when Evan finally came down her throat with a muffled groan, Dorcas slid under the table to take his place, and then Barty, and by the time they let her crawl out from under the table, her jaw was sore and her throat was raw and she had never felt more used or more wanted in her entire life.

The springs near the Forbidden Forest became a regular destination. It was far enough from the castle that they didn't have to be quiet, and the natural hot springs created pools of steaming water that were perfect for late-night excursions.

They would strip her bare and make her kneel at the edge of the largest pool while they lounged in the water like dark gods, passing her between them like a toy. Regulus particularly enjoyed making her ride him in the water, her buoyancy making it impossible to get the leverage she needed, reducing her to desperate grinding while he watched her with those unreadable gray eyes and refused to help. "You wanted this," he would remind her when she begged. "You wrote entire stories about this. So take what you want, little Hufflepuff. Show me how badly you want it." And she would, gasping and sobbing and working her hips until her thighs burned and her cunt clenched around him and the orgasm crashed through her like a wave.

They got more creative as time went on, more demanding, more possessive. Barty was the freakiest by far, constantly coming up with new ways to push her boundaries and test her limits.

He was the one who first suggested the plug—a pretty little thing made of polished obsidian with an emerald at the base, Slytherin colors, "so you'll always remember who you belong to." They made her wear it to classes, to meals, to pureblood gatherings, the constant pressure a reminder of her place. He was also the one who insisted on collaring her, a delicate chain of silver that looked like jewelry but was spelled with tracking charms so they always knew where she was. "Can't have our little pet wandering off," he'd said with that manic grin of his, and Y/N had nodded eagerly, tilting her head back to give him better access to her throat.

Evan was the cruelest, always pushing just a little too far, always testing to see what would make her break. He'd make her kneel on the cold stone floor of the Slytherin common room for hours while he studied, ignoring her completely except to occasionally press the toe of his boot against her cunt and laugh when she whimpered. He'd make her write lines—"I belong to Evan Rosier" over and over until her hand cramped-and then

make her read them aloud while the others watched. He'd bring her to the edge of orgasm and then stop, over and over, until she was sobbing and incoherent and promising him anything, everything, just please let her come.

And when he finally did let her, it was always on his terms, always in some humiliating position that left her feeling like exactly what she was: their toy, their pet, their plaything.

Dorcas was the one who gave her mock sympathy and condescending praise, cooing over her when she cried and telling her what a good little slut she was while simultaneously doing things that made her cry harder. "Oh, sweetheart," she'd murmur, wiping tears from Y/N's cheeks while her other hand worked furiously between her legs. "You're doing so well. Taking us so perfectly. Regulus, look at how well she's taking it. She was made for this, wasn't she?" And Regulus would look, and Y/ N would come apart under the combined weight of his gaze and Dorcas's fingers and her own overwhelming shame and arousal.

Pandora was the one who unsettled her the most.

Not because she was cruel-she wasn't, not exactly-but because she was so utterly strange, so detached, so prone to saying the most devastating things in that dreamy voice of hers as if she were commenting on the weather. "You know, you're going to die for us someday," she said once, completely out of nowhere, while she was braiding Y/N's hair with flowers she'd picked from the greenhouse. "Not literally, I don't think.

But the person you were before-she's already dead. We killed her. And this new person, the one who kneels and begs and spreads her legs whenever we tell her to, she belongs to us completely. Isn't that beautiful?" She'd smiled then, serene and terrifying, and Y/N had nodded because it was true, all of it was true, and she had never been happier in her entire life.

Regulus, though-Regulus was the center of gravity, the anchor that held everything together.

He was the ultimate authority, the one whose word was law, the one whose approval she craved more than oxygen. One look from him could stop her in her tracks, could silence any protest before it formed, could make her drop to her knees without being asked. He was not the loudest or the most dramatic or the most physically aggressive of the group, but he was unquestionably the most dominant, exuding an aura of quiet power that demanded complete submission. He called her "little Hufflepuff" in that low, cultured voice, and she melted every single time.

The Christmas holidays brought the first major test of their arrangement outside the safety of Hogwarts. The pureblood families gathered at Malfoy Manor for the annual winter ball, a glittering affair of ice sculptures and champagne flutes and political machinations disguised as holiday cheer.

Y/N attended with her parents, wearing a modest navy gown and the silver collar hidden beneath a high-necked lace choker, and she spent the first hour of the party clinging to the edges of the ballroom, watching the Slytherins hold court across the room. They were stunning in their formal wear—Regulus in sharp black dress robes, Evan in midnight blue, Barty in charcoal gray, Dorcas in emerald that matched her House pride, Pandora in something shimmery and pale that seemed to float around her like mist. They were untouchable, unapproachable, every inch the aristocratic pureblood royalty they'd been raised to be.

And then Regulus caught her eye from across the room and tilted his head almost imperceptibly toward the hallway, and Y/N found herself excusing herself from her parents and slipping out of the ballroom without a second thought. She followed them through the winding corridors of Malfoy Manor, past portraits that whispered and pointed, until they reached a small parlor that had been prepared for guests. There was a fire crackling in the hearth and a thick rug on the floor and a chaise lounge positioned perfectly in the center of the room, and Y/N knew without being told exactly what was expected of her.

"Kneel," Regulus said, and she did, dropping to the rug with her skirts pooling around her like spilled ink. "We've been watching you all night, little Hufflepuff. Watching you pretend to be a proper pureblood lady while we all know exactly what you are underneath that pretty dress. Evan, show her what she is."

Evan crossed the room and knelt beside her, his hand tangling in her hair and pulling her head back. "You're our whore," he said, his voice a low growl against her ear. "Our pet. Our dirty little secret. Say it."

"I'm your whore," Y/N gasped, the words coming easily now after months of practice. "Your pet. Your dirty little secret."

"And what do we do with our pets?" Dorcas asked, settling onto the chaise lounge with Pandora beside her.

"Whatever you want," Y/N answered, and it was the truest thing she'd ever said.

What they wanted, it turned out, was to ruin her completely. They stripped her out of her expensive dress and arranged her on the chaise lounge with her legs spread and her arms pinned above her head, and they took turns with her while the fire crackled and the portraits watched from their frames with expressions ranging from scandalized to intrigued. Barty fucked her mouth while Evan worked his cock into her cunt, and the sensation of being so completely filled from both ends was so overwhelming that she nearly passed out. Dorcas and Pandora kissed each other above her, occasionally leaning down to bite at her nipples or whisper filthy encouragements. And Regulus watched from an armchair by the fire, stroking himself lazily, his expression one of dark satisfaction.

"You're going to come back to the ballroom when we're finished," he told her, his voice cutting through the haze of pleasure and pain. "You're going to walk through that crowd of pureblood elites with our come still inside you, still dripping down your thighs, and no one is going to know. No one is going to suspect that the quiet little Selwyn girl is actually a desperate little slut who lets five Slytherins use her however they want. And you're going to smile at your parents and make polite conversation and pretend to be the perfect pureblood daughter, and all the while you'll be thinking about this moment, about what we did to you, about who you really belong to. Understood?"

"Yes," Y/N sobbed, on the verge of yet another orgasm that she knew she wasn't allowed to have without permission. "Yes, Regulus, I understand, please-"

"Please what?"

"Please let me come. Please. I've been good. I've been so good."

He considered her for a long moment, during which Barty chose that exact moment to thrust particularly deep and Evan's fingers found her clit and Pandora leaned down to lick a stripe up her throat. "Come," Regulus said finally, and Y/N shattered, her vision going white, her body convulsing between them, her scream swallowed by Barty's cock in her throat.

True to his word, Regulus sent her back to the ballroom half an hour later, her hair redone and her dress smoothed down but her thighs sticky with evidence and her mind still floating somewhere far away. She made polite conversation with Lucius Malfoy, complimented the ice sculptures, accepted a glass of champagne from a passing house elf, and all the while she could feel their eyes on her from across the room, could feel the phantom pressure of their hands on her skin, could feel the ache between her legs that was already beginning to build again.

She caught Pandora's eye at one point, and Pandora smiled that serene, unsettling smile and raised her glass in a mock toast, and Y/N felt herself blush so hard she had to excuse herself to the powder room.

This was her life now. This was who she had become. And as she stared at her reflection in the ornate bathroom mirror-her eyes too bright, her lips too swollen, the edge of a bruise just visible above her choker-she couldn't bring herself to regret a single moment of it. She had wanted to belong to them for as long as she could remember. She had written stories about it, drawn pictures of it, touched herself to the fantasy of it for years. And now the reality was so much better than anything her imagination had ever conjured, so much more intense and consuming and absolutely devastating. She was theirs, completely and irrevocably, and they were never going to let her go.

The first evening back at Hogwarts after the Christmas holidays was cold and clear, the castle still drowsy with the quiet of half-empty corridors. Y/N had barely set her trunk down in the Hufflepuff dormitory when a house elf appeared with a summons: the Slytherin common room, ten o’clock. She changed into the clothes they’d left for her over the break—a soft, simple dress in dark green that fell just above her knees, no underwear, as per the rules—and made her way through the quiet castle with her heart beating a steady rhythm of anticipation.

They were waiting for her by the fire, arranged across their usual furniture like a painting she’d spent years memorizing. Regulus rose when she entered and crossed the room to meet her, and the others fell silent as he stopped in front of her. “You were very good at the Malfoys’ party,” he said, his voice low and intimate. “You followed every instruction. You didn’t break character once. We think you’ve earned something.”

Pandora appeared at his shoulder with a small velvet box, her pale eyes gleaming. “We made it together,” she said. “A little bit of magic from each of us. So you’ll always know.” She opened the box, and inside was a necklace—a delicate silver chain that matched the collar she already wore, but with a small locket in the shape of a serpent swallowing its own tail. It pulsed faintly with enchantment, warm to the touch.

“Open it,” Dorcas urged, her voice genuinely eager for once.

Y/N’s fingers trembled as she worked the tiny clasp. Inside the locket was not a portrait but a piece of something intangible—a swirl of dark smoke that smelled faintly of Barty’s cigarettes, a spark of green light that crackled like Evan’s magic, a whisper of Regulus’s cologne, a thread of melody from Dorcas’s hum, and at the center, a tiny, glowing flower petal that she recognized from the braids Pandora had put in her hair months ago.

“It’s a piece of each of us,” Barty said, and for once there was no mocking in his voice. “You can open it whenever you’re scared, or alone, or just feeling pathetic. It’ll remind you who you belong to.” He grinned, but the grin was softer than usual. “And it’s also a tracking charm, obviously. We’re not that sentimental.”

Y/N clutched the locket in her fist and felt tears prick at her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t—I don’t know what to say.”

Regulus reached out and fastened the chain around her neck himself, his fingers brushing her skin. “Don’t say anything. Just don’t take it off.” And then he kissed her, slow and deep, right there in front of all of them, and when he pulled back his expression was almost tender. “Merry Christmas, little Hufflepuff.”

The winter term brought new challenges and new adventures. They fucked in the Prefects' bathroom during a party, the water turning pink and gold from the enchanted bubbles while Evan pressed her against the side of the enormous tub and took her from behind. They summoned her to the Astronomy Tower at midnight and made her strip naked under the stars, touching herself while they watched and critiqued her technique. They snuck into the restricted section of the library and bent her over a table of dark magic texts, Barty reading aloud from a book on forbidden rituals while Regulus fucked into her slow and deep and Pandora traced patterns on her back with something that might have been blood or might have been ink, it was hard to tell in the dim light.

The plug became a permanent accessory, only removed when one of them wanted to replace it with something else. The collar never came off, spelled to be invisible to anyone outside their group but always present, always reminding her of her place. She stopped wearing underwear entirely, stopped wearing anything that might impede their access to her body, stopped thinking of her body as her own at all. She was theirs-theirs to use, theirs to pleasure, theirs to punish, theirs to show off or hide away as they saw fit.

And she had never been happier.

It wasn't just sex, though the sex was frequent and intense and increasingly creative. There were softer moments too, moments that confused her almost as much as the cruelty turned her on.

Pandora would sometimes pull her aside just to braid flowers into her hair and talk about nothing in particular. Dorcas would help her with her homework, patient and thorough, praising her when she got answers right. Evan would save her a seat next to him in the library, his hand resting possessively on her thigh under the table while they studied in companionable silence. Barty would bring her little gifts—a rare book, a pretty quill, a piece of jewelry that matched her collar.

It was a miserable Tuesday in late February when Y/N finally cracked. She’d received a letter from her mother that morning—cold, formal, expressing “disappointment” at some rumor about her behavior that had apparently reached pureblood circles—and she’d botched a Charms practical so badly that Flitwick had asked if she was feeling unwell. By the time she dragged herself to the library for her free period, she was fighting back tears with the last shreds of her dignity.

Evan had saved her a seat—a habit now, so ingrained that she didn’t even question it—but when she sank into the chair beside him, her movements were jerky and her breath was unsteady. He glanced at her once, sharp, and then exchanged a look with Dorcas across the table.

Pandora materialized behind her without a sound. “You’re sad,” she observed, tilting her head like a curious bird. “Your aura is all gray and spiky. I don’t like it.” Without asking, she pulled a handful of dried flowers from the pocket of her robes—she always had flowers somewhere—and began weaving them into Y/N’s hair with quick, practiced fingers. The repetitive motion was strangely soothing, and Y/N felt some of the tension in her shoulders begin to ease.

Dorcas slid her chair closer and pulled Y/N’s abandoned Charms essay toward her. “You’re overthinking the wand movement,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. “Look, it’s a swish and a flick, but the angle matters more than the force. Try it like this.” She demonstrated, patient and clear, and Y/N found herself actually understanding the concept for the first time.

Evan said nothing, but he pushed a sugar quill across the table—her favorite kind, the ones from Honeydukes that changed flavors as you sucked on them. He didn’t look at her when he did it, just kept reading his book as if nothing had happened, but the gesture made Y/N’s throat tight.

Barty appeared a few minutes later, fresh from whatever trouble he’d been causing, and took one look at the scene before dropping into the chair on her other side. “Who upset her?” he demanded, loud enough to draw glares from the nearby Ravenclaws. “Was it a person? Do I need to hex someone?”

“Barty,” Regulus’s voice cut through, quiet but commanding. He’d appeared from the stacks without anyone noticing, a stack of books under his arm, and he took the seat directly across from Y/N. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He just looked at her for a long moment, and then he reached across the table and took her hand. Held it. Right there in the middle of the library, where anyone could see.

“Whatever it is,” he said, “it doesn’t matter. You’re ours. Nothing your mother says, nothing some idiot professor says, none of it touches you unless we allow it. Do you understand?” His thumb traced circles on her palm, a slow, grounding rhythm. “You’re not alone anymore. You haven’t been for a long time.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice, and Pandora finished braiding the last flower into her hair. They stayed like that for the rest of the hour—studying, occasionally bickering, touching her in small, casual ways that didn’t demand anything—and by the time she left for her next class, the gray spiky feeling in her chest had softened into something warm and golden.

And Regulus-Regulus would look at her sometimes with an expression that was almost soft, almost tender, before it hardened back into its usual cool command. He never said anything, but she felt it anyway, felt the shift in the air between them that suggested she was becoming something more than just a pet, something more than just a toy, something that might actually matter to them.

By spring, the entire school had noticed that something had changed. The Slytherins had always been insular, had always kept to themselves, but now there was a Hufflepuff trailing after them like a lost puppy, and people talked. Y/N's former invisibility was gone, replaced by a notoriety she had never wanted. People whispered when she walked past, speculating about what the Slytherins wanted with someone like her, whether she was their hostage or their pet or something even stranger. A few brave souls tried to ask her directly, but she just stammered and blushed and excused herself, and the Slytherins would glare at the questioners with such malice that no one asked twice.

The other Hufflepuffs were the worst. They had never paid much attention to her before, content to let her fade into the background, but now they looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion and something that might have been disgust. She was fraternizing with the enemy, spending all her time with the people who tormented Hufflepuffs for sport, and her Housemates didn't understand it. Y/N didn't bother trying to explain. She couldn't explain, not really, not in a way that would make sense to anyone who hadn't lived it. How could she describe the feeling of Regulus's hand on the back of her neck, firm and grounding, a silent reminder that she belonged to someone? How could she convey the rush of kneeling for them, of offering herself up and being accepted, of finally being seen after years of desperate invisibility?

There were no words adequate to the task, so she said nothing and let them think what they would.

The climax of their seventh year, the culmination of everything they had built together, came at the end of spring term during one of the last pureblood gatherings before graduation. The Malfoys were hosting again, this time a garden party to celebrate Beltane, and the grounds of the manor had been transformed into a fairyland of floating candles and flowering vines and tiny enchanted lights that danced through the trees like living stars. Y/N arrived with the Slytherins this time-her parents had stopped asking questions months ago, too busy with their own social climbing to worry about what their peculiar daughter was doing-and she wore a gown of pale gold that Dorcas had picked out for her, her collar hidden beneath a ribbon that matched the dress.

They kept her close all evening, a hand always on her somewhere-the small of her back, the nape of her neck, the curve of her hip. She was introduced to people she'd known her entire life as their companion, their partner, their girlfriend, the word falling from Regulus's lips with a possessiveness that made her shiver. The older purebloods raised their eyebrows but said nothing—the Selwyns were a good family, if slightly eccentric, and if the Black heir and his associates wanted to claim their daughter, who were they to object? Y/N's parents looked startled but not displeased, already calculating the social advantages of such a connection.

As the night wore on and the younger guests separated from their parents, the Slytherins pulled Y/N deeper into the gardens

The sounds of the party faded slowly, the laughter and clinking glasses and polite political murmurings dissolving into the rustle of leaves and the distant call of a night bird. The path they walked was lined with flowering hedges that glowed faintly in the dark, enchanted to bloom out of season, and the air smelled of jasmine and something darker, richer—incense from the Beltane bonfires, perhaps, or just the intoxicating scent of a spring night in full bloom.

No one spoke. It was the kind of silence that was rare for them, for Barty in particular, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It felt… deliberate. Sacred. Like the moment before a ritual, when everyone was holding their breath and waiting for the magic to begin.

Pandora drifted ahead, her pale dress catching the moonlight like mist, occasionally pausing to touch a flower or hum a few notes of a melody that didn’t quite sound human. Dorcas walked beside her, their fingers loosely intertwined, and every so often she would glance back at Y/N with an expression that was softer than the mocking sweetness she usually deployed. Barty and Evan brought up the rear, their shoulders bumping, murmuring to each other in voices too low for her to hear.

And Regulus was at her side. He hadn’t taken her hand, not yet, but his arm brushed hers with every step, and his presence was a steady, grounding warmth against the cool night air. She thought about all the years she’d spent watching them from corners and shadows, memorizing the way they moved and breathed and existed in the world. She thought about the girl she’d been—the girl who hid behind her mother’s skirts and flinched at loud noises and believed, with every fiber of her being, that she was too Hufflepuff, too awkward, too nothing to ever be seen.

That girl was gone now. Pandora had been right, all those months ago in the dormitory, when she’d said that the old Y/N had died. The new Y/N walked through moonlit gardens with five Slytherins who had unraveled her and remade her and given her a purpose she never could have imagined. The new Y/N wore their collar around her throat and their marks on her skin and their locket over her heart, and she was not afraid.

They passed a hedge maze, its entrance a dark archway that whispered of secrets and wrong turns. They passed a fountain with a statue of a veiled woman whose marble hands held a bowl of starlight—real starlight, trapped and liquid and impossibly beautiful. Y/N paused for a moment to look at it, and Regulus paused with her, his gaze following hers.

“Beautiful,” she murmured, and she wasn’t sure if she meant the fountain or the night or all of it.

“Yes,” Regulus agreed, but he was looking at her, not the statue. Just for a moment. Then he turned away, his expression smoothing back into its usual unreadable mask, and he continued down the path. “Come along, little Hufflepuff. We’re almost there.”

She followed, as she always would, and the moonlight painted everything silver and gold as they walked the last stretch of path toward the clearing where her future was waiting.

They reached a secluded clearing lit by nothing but moonlight and the faint glow of distant floating candles. There was a blanket spread on the grass and a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket and five expressions that ranged from hungry to tender to something in between.

"We've been discussing your graduation present,"

Regulus said, pulling her down onto the blanket beside him. The others arranged themselves around them, a circle of warmth and want and something that felt almost like love. "You've been very good for us this year. Very obedient. Very devoted."

"Very much ours," Evan added, his hand finding her ankle and sliding up her calf.

"We think you've earned something special,"

Dorcas said, her voice honey-sweet.

Barty leaned forward, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. "We're going to make you come until you can't remember your own name. Until you forget you were ever anyone but ours. Until the only thing left in your head is us."

"And then," Pandora added serenely, "we're going to do it again."

Y/N looked at them-her tormentors, her owners, her entire world-and felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes. "I love you," she whispered, the words slipping out before she could stop them. "All of you. I know I'm not supposed to-l know I'm just-but I love you, and I don't care if that makes me pathetic, I don't care if you don't feel the same, I just needed you to know-"

Regulus cut her off with a kiss, deep and consuming and possessive. When he pulled back, his gray eyes were softer than she'd ever seen them. "We know," he said simply. "We've always known. It's written all over every page of that journal of yours, little Hufflepuff." He traced her lower lip with his thumb. "And we've kept you anyway. What does that tell you?"

It told her everything. It told her more than words ever could. And when they spent the next several hours making good on Barty's promise, taking her apart piece by piece until she was nothing but sensation and surrender and a litany of their names falling from her lips, she knew that this was what she had been made for. Not the pureblood expectations, not the Selwyn legacy, not the Hufflepuff values of loyalty and hard work and fair play. This-kneeling in the moonlight with five Slytherins surrounding her, their hands and mouths and bodies claiming every inch of her-this was her true purpose. This was her home.

They fell asleep eventually, tangled together on the blanket under the stars, and Y/N drifted off with Regulus's arm around her waist and Pandora's hair tickling her cheek and the distant sound of Evan and Barty still murmuring to each other in the dark. She didn't know what the future held-graduation was only weeks away, and the war outside Hogwarts was escalating, and nothing was certain except that she would follow them anywhere, do anything they asked, be whatever they needed her to be. She was theirs, now and always, and that was the only certainty she needed.

Regulus Black was impossibly close—close enough that you could count his eyelashes, close enough that the faint scent of parchment, expensive cologne, and something cold like winter air wrapped around you like a blanket. His hand had found its way to your cheek, thumb tracing a slow, deliberate arc across your cheekbone, and his lips were parting, about to say something, about to—

SNNRRRK-K-K-K.

Your eyes snapped open.

The enchanted ceiling of the Hufflepuff dormitory glowed a gentle pre-dawn grey, and the sound that had ripped you from the arms of Regulus Arcturus Black was, unmistakably, the sound of Beatrice Willoughby snoring like a wounded Graphorn.

SNNRRRK. SNRRR-K-K-K. HHHHNNNNGGGK.

You lay there, motionless, staring at the canopy above your bed as the last wisps of your dream evaporated like morning mist. Regulus’s face dissolved. His hand on your cheek became your own pillow crease. The almost-kiss—the almost-kiss—receded into the cruel, unreachable realm of things that had never actually happened.

For a moment, you experienced a thought that was deeply, profoundly un-Hufflepuff-like.

You imagined walking over to Beatrice’s bed. You imagined your hands. You imagined them around her throat. You imagined squeezing until the only sound in the room was blessed, golden silence.

The thought passed.

You were a Hufflepuff, after all. You didn’t actually do things. You just… thought about them. And then cried about thinking about them.

Speaking of which.

You squeezed your eyes shut and willed yourself back to sleep with the desperate intensity of someone trying to apparate without a license. Go back, you commanded your brain. Return to the dream. Regulus was right there. His lips were—

SNRRRRRRRRK.

Your eyes flew open again. This time, Lenora Puckle had joined in, creating a two-part harmony of nasal devastation that would have made even the Bloody Baron plug his ears.

“Right,” you whispered to the ceiling. “Fine. Okay.”

You sat up.

Your feet found your slippers—charmed to look like tiny badgers, because of course they were—and you shuffled out of the dormitory, through the barrel entrance (you barely remembered to tickle the pear), and into the silent, torch-lit corridors of Hogwarts.

The thing about being Y/N Selwyn was that you existed in a perpetual state of watching.

You’d been watching the same five people for as long as you could remember. Not in a creepy way. Well. Maybe in a slightly creepy way. But it wasn’t your fault that your family ran in the same pureblood circles, that you’d grown up attending the same tedious garden parties and Yule balls, that you’d watched five Slytherin children coalesce into an untouchable constellation of coolness while you hovered at the edges, clutching your pumpkin juice and trying not to step on anyone’s robes.

Barty Crouch Jr., who had once set fire to his own napkin at a Ministry gala and laughed while his father had a coronary. Evan Rosier, who could make any insult sound like a compliment until you realized, ten minutes later, that you’d been eviscerated. Regulus Black, who was so beautiful it made your teeth hurt, all sharp angles and quiet dignity. Pandora Lovegood, who spoke to plants and once told your great-aunt that her aura was the colour of digestive biscuits. And Dorcas Meadowes, who had punched a boy twice her size for calling Pandora a name and then stepped over him like he was a decorative rug.

They were Slytherins. All of them. Of course they were.

And you?

You were a Hufflepuff.

The night of your sorting, you had walked up to that stool with your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your ears. The Sorting Hat had barely grazed your head before it bellowed “HUFFLEPUFF!”—and you had smiled, because that’s what you were supposed to do, and you had walked to the yellow-and-black table while cheers erupted, and you had sat down, and you had waited until everyone was distracted by the next sorting before you let yourself cry.

Just a little. Just a few tears, quickly wiped away. Because you’d watched the five of them get sorted—one after another, green and silver, green and silver—and you’d realized, with a dull, sinking certainty, that you would never be one of them.

You would never be cool. You would never be magnetic. You would never sit at the Slytherin table and laugh at some private joke while the rest of the school wondered what you knew. You were kind, and loyal, and hardworking (allegedly), and you collected magical creature sketches in the margins of your notes, and you were, according to your own very honest self-assessment, a bit of a loser.

But a loser who could bake.

Which was why, at five-thirty in the morning, you found yourself standing in the Hogwarts kitchens, surrounded by house-elves who were staring at you with expressions ranging from confusion to deep concern.

“Miss is needing something?” squeaked a small elf named Tinky, who had clearly drawn the short straw.

“I’m baking,” you said.

Tinky blinked. “Baking, Miss?”

“Yes. Baking. It’s a coping mechanism.”

You had commandeered a corner of the enormous kitchen, where you’d gathered flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and a jar of honey that you’d brought from your personal stash. (Your grandmother sent you honey every month—it was from the Selwyn estate’s bees, and it was the only thing about your family you genuinely enjoyed.)

The house-elves watched as you began mixing ingredients with the slightly manic energy of someone who had just been denied a dream-kiss from the most beautiful boy in school.

Your mind, still foggy with sleep and longing, drifted back to the dream. Regulus’s hand on your cheek. The way his eyes had softened. And before that—because it had been one of those dreams, the kind that played like a greatest-hits compilation of your deepest desires—Barty had been playing with your hair, twisting strands around his fingers while he whispered something ridiculous in your ear. Evan had been lounging nearby, watching you with that lazy smile, occasionally reaching out to adjust your collar or brush a crumb from your lip. Dorcas had pressed a kiss to your temple, casual and possessive at the same time. And Pandora had been braiding flowers into your hair, humming a tune you’d never heard but somehow knew.

They had all been touching you. All five of them. Like you were precious. Like you belonged.

Delusional, you thought, cracking an egg with perhaps more force than necessary. Completely delusional. Mentally unwell. A danger to yourself and possibly others.

“Miss is adding… flour?” Tinky squeaked, watching you pour in what might have been a third cup of salt instead of sugar.

“Mm,” you said, not really paying attention.

“And… Miss is adding cinnamon?”

You glanced down. You had, in fact, just dumped an aggressive quantity of cayenne pepper into the bowl.

“It’s an experimental recipe,” you said.

The house-elves exchanged looks that suggested they were mentally drafting an incident report.

By the time you were done, you had produced a batch of cookies that, frankly, looked like they had been dropped from a great height. They were lumpy, unevenly browned, and had a suspicious shimmer to them that suggested the cayenne pepper had not been the only mistake. You’d also, at some point, added the entire jar of honey, because the dream had faded enough that you were now just Sad and honey made everything better.

You boxed them up anyway. Waste not, want not, or whatever.

“Thank you for the kitchen,” you told the elves, bowing slightly. “Sorry for the… everything.”

Tinky looked like she wanted to suggest you never return.

Breakfast in the Great Hall was, as always, a masterpiece of atmospheric perfection. The enchanted ceiling showed a sky streaked with pink and gold, the floating candles cast a warm glow over the four long house tables, and the smell of porridge, toast, and bacon filled the air.

You sat in your usual spot: the one at the Hufflepuff table that offered an unobstructed, completely-not-stalkerish view of the Slytherin table.

They were all there.

Regulus was sitting with perfect posture, eating a single piece of dry toast like it had personally offended him. Barty had his chair tilted back dangerously, gesturing wildly about something while Evan watched with amused contempt. Dorcas was braiding a section of Pandora’s hair while Pandora, in turn, appeared to be conducting a very serious conversation with her goblet of pumpkin juice.

You watched them with the longing of a dog that had been told it couldn’t have the steak on the counter.

“Who needs honey,” you murmured to yourself, drizzling your seventh spoonful of honey onto your porridge, “with a view this sweet?”

You giggled.

Then you realized you had giggled out loud.

Then you realized your friends were staring at you.

“Are you fucking okay, Selwyn?” asked Maeve Callahan, a fellow Hufflepuff who had the dubious honour of sitting next to you every morning.

“What?” You blinked, your spoon hovering mid-drizzle. “Yes. I’m fine. Why?”

“You just poured honey into your juice,” said Heidi MacDougal, pointing.

You looked down. You had, in fact, just drizzled a substantial amount of honey into your goblet of pumpkin juice.

“I like sweet things,” you said weakly.

“You were giggling at nothing,” Maeve pressed. “And you’ve been staring at the Slytherin table for five straight minutes.”

“I was… meditating.”

“On what?”

“The… architectural features of the far wall.”

Maeve followed your gaze to the Slytherin table, where Evan Rosier had just said something that made Barty cackle so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.

“Right,” Maeve said slowly. “The architectural features named Regulus Black.”

You shoved a spoonful of honey-drowned porridge into your mouth and rolled your eyes.

Your first class of the day was Potions, and you arrived at the dungeon classroom already dreading the next two hours.

It wasn’t that you hated Professor Slughorn. He was fine. Jovial. A bit obsessed with collecting famous students like trading cards, but generally harmless. The problem was that Potions was a class that required focus, precision, and an attention span longer than that of a concussed goldfish—all qualities you possessed in precisely zero quantities.

The other problem was that none of the Slytherin Skittles were in this section. They were all in the advanced Potions class, because of course they were. Regulus brewed potions like he’d been doing it in the womb. Barty was brilliant when he bothered to apply himself. Evan had the steady hands of a surgeon. Pandora approached potions like art. Dorcas was just effortlessly competent at everything.

You, meanwhile, had once melted a cauldron trying to make a simple Cure for Boils.

“Partners today,” Slughorn announced as students filed in. “Pair up with whomever you like, but do try to balance your strengths, yes?”

You looked around for a potential partner, but everyone already seemed to be pairing off. Maeve had partnered with Heidi. The Ravenclaws had clustered together. You were about to resign yourself to working alone (which, honestly, was probably safer for everyone involved) when you noticed a dark-haired boy sitting by himself at a table near the back.

Severus Snape.

You didn’t know him well. He was in Slytherin, but he wasn’t one of them. He was skinny, pale, with a curtain of black hair that hung in his face and an expression that suggested he found the entire world personally disappointing. You’d seen him talking to Regulus a few times, and you’d heard rumours that he was some kind of potions prodigy.

A Slytherin. Not one of your Slytherins, but a Slytherin nonetheless. Maybe you could make a friend.

You slid into the seat beside him and offered your brightest smile. “Hi! I’m Y/N. Do you want to be partners?”

Snape didn’t look at you. “I’m here to study potions. Not make friends.”

The smile froze on your face. “…Oh.”

He flipped open his textbook—the standard Advanced Potion-Making by Libatius Borage—and began reading as though you had ceased to exist.

“Right,” you said, because apparently you were a glutton for punishment, “well, I’m here to study potions too, so maybe we could—”

“You failed your last three practical exams,” Snape said flatly, still not looking up. “You’re a liability. Work alone.”

You stared at him. Your mouth opened, closed, then opened again.

“Okay,” you said. “Wow. Um. Good talk.”

You turned back to your own cauldron, your cheeks burning. A few people nearby had clearly heard the exchange—a Ravenclaw boy was smirking into his textbook—and you wanted nothing more than to sink through the stone floor and disappear.

Not all Slytherins, you reminded yourself. Just that one. That one particular Slytherin, who is a huge arsehole.

The lesson dragged. You tried to focus on the Draught of Peace Slughorn had assigned, but your mind kept wandering. You doodled a small dragon in the margin of your notes. Then a hippogriff. Then, almost unconsciously, you found yourself sketching five tiny figures: one with wild hair (Barty), one with a smirk (Evan), one with a crown (Regulus), one with flowers (Pandora), and one with a knife—just a little one, for self-defence—(Dorcas). You surrounded them with little hearts before you realized what you were doing and hastily crossed them out.

When the class finally ended, you packed up your things as quickly as possible. Snape was already gone—he’d swept out the door the moment Slughorn dismissed them, not a single backward glance. Your cauldron was emitting a thin plume of purple smoke, which you were fairly certain wasn’t supposed to happen, so you left it and hoped Slughorn wouldn’t notice.

You were about to follow the rest of the class when something caught your eye.

On the desk where Snape had been sitting, half-hidden by a discarded quill, was his Potions textbook.

You hesitated. You should return it. That would be the decent thing to do. The kind, loyal, helpful thing. Even if he had been a complete dick to you.

You picked up the book. It was battered, obviously secondhand, the cover worn and stained. You flipped it open to the first page, looking for a name.

Instead, you found a handwritten inscription:

This book is the property of the Half-Blood Prince.

Below that, in the same cramped handwriting, someone had drawn a small heart containing the letters S + L.

You snorted.

“What a fucking dork,” you murmured, though not without a certain fondness. It was exactly the kind of embarrassing, self-important nonsense a teenage boy would write in his book. You’d done worse. Much worse. Your own notebook had “Y/N Selwyn-Black-Rosier-Crouch-Meadowes-Lovegood” written in elaborate calligraphy on at least seven different pages. Sometimes with little wedding bells drawn around it.

(Mental illness. You had it.)

You flipped through the book, curious despite yourself. And then you stopped flipping, because what you were looking at was…

Incredible.

The margins were crammed with notes—corrections to the printed instructions, alternative methods, additional ingredients. Every potion had been annotated and improved upon. The handwriting was spiky and intense, and the changes were brilliant. Even you, with your history of failing practical exams, could see that.

You were about to close the book and put it on the shelf of lost textbooks when a slip of parchment fluttered out from between two pages.

You caught it before it hit the floor.

It was a recipe. Handwritten. And the title at the top, in that same spiky script, read:

Amortentia — Refined Method

You stared at it.

Amortentia. The most powerful love potion in existence. The one that didn’t create real love—couldn’t create real love—but produced an obsession so intense it was indistinguishable from the real thing. The one that was, by all rights, far too advanced for a student to brew.

And here was a recipe. With notes. And improvements.

Don’t, said a small, rational voice in the back of your mind. Put it back. Put the whole book back. Walk away.

You folded the parchment carefully and slipped it into your pocket.

What are you doing?

You placed the textbook on the shelf of old, forgotten books where students sometimes left things they didn’t care about. Snape could find it if he came back. If he even noticed it was missing.

What are you DOING?

You walked out of the Potions classroom, your heart hammering with something that felt terrifyingly like excitement.

The next two hours were a blur of skived classes and sneaking.

You’d never skipped a lesson before. You didn’t skip lessons. But you found yourself ducking into empty corridors, avoiding prefects, and making your way to the greenhouses for ingredients you didn’t have. Then to the supply cupboard for a small cauldron. Then to the prefects’ bathroom on the fifth floor—you knew the password because Maeve was a prefect and had a terrible memory for secrets—where you locked the door and set up your illicit potions operation.

The recipe was complicated, but not impossibly so. Whoever the Half-Blood Prince was, his notes made everything easier: adjustments to stirring patterns, alternative ingredient preparation, a clever little trick for stabilising the mother-of-pearl sheen that Amortentia was famous for.

And the smell.

When the potion was finally, miraculously complete and spiraling in your cauldron like liquid moonlight, you leaned over it and inhaled.

The first thing you smelled was honey. Your grandmother’s honey, thick and golden and familiar.

The second thing was smoke. Not unpleasant—like a bonfire at the end of a long summer evening, or the faint, lingering scent of something that had burned long ago but left its warmth behind.

Then came old books. Parchment and leather bindings and the particular musk of a library that hadn’t been disturbed in centuries.

Then something green and wild—freshly crushed herbs, dewy grass at dawn, the indefinable scent of growing things.

And finally, the sea. Salt and spray and the clean, dangerous smell of deep water.

Five scents. Five people. You knew them without having to think about it. They were exactly what you’d imagined, and somehow better.

You leaned closer, breathing it in, and felt tears prick at the corners of your eyes because it smelled like them, like all of them, like the five people you’d been watching and admiring and hopelessly, pathetically longing for your entire life.

Then you did something very stupid.

You reached into your bag and pulled out the box of this morning’s baking disaster—the lumpy, cayenne-laced, honey-drowned butter cookies you’d somehow forgotten to throw away. You’d been carrying them around all day, because you carried things around, because you couldn’t bear to waste food even when that food was objectively inedible.

The Amortentia shimmered in its cauldron. The cookies sat in their box. And a thought—a terrible, awful, no-good, very-bad thought—bloomed in your mind.

What if…?

“No,” you said out loud. “Absolutely not.”

But what if—just to see what happens? Just a tiny bit? Just one cookie?

“That’s a crime,” you told yourself. “That’s, like, several crimes.”

They don’t even have to know. You could just leave it somewhere. See if someone finds it. You don’t have to give it to anyone specific. You’re just… experimenting.

You stared at the cauldron.

The cauldron shimmered innocently back.

“I’m a monster,” you whispered.

And then you picked up the box of cookies.

You didn’t mean to give them to the Skittles.

That was the thing. You really, truly didn’t plan it. You’d drizzled the Amortentia over the cookies—the whole vial, because you’d gotten distracted by how pretty the potion looked and your hand had slipped and suddenly the entire batch was soaked—and you’d told yourself you would throw them away. You would find a bin and you would dispose of the evidence and you would never speak of this again.

But then you were walking through the corridors, and you turned a corner, and there they were.

All five of them.

They were lounging in an alcove near the dungeons, clearly supposed to be in class but just as clearly not caring. Barty was sitting on the windowsill, kicking his heels against the stone. Evan leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, looking bored. Regulus was reading a book that looked ancient and probably cursed. Pandora was braiding a strand of Dorcas’s hair while Dorcas sharpened a quill into what was definitely a weapon.

They were so beautiful it made your chest ache.

And then Barty noticed you.

“Oi,” he said, pointing. “You. Hufflepuff. What’s in the box?”

Your mouth went dry. “Um. Cookies.”

“Cookies?” Evan raised an eyebrow. “What kind of cookies?”

“Butter. Honey. Butter-honey cookies.”

Laced with the strongest love potion known to wizardkind, your brain helpfully supplied. You absolute lunatic.

“Why are you carrying around a box of cookies?” Dorcas asked, her eyes narrowing with something that might have been suspicion or might have been mild curiosity. It was hard to tell with Dorcas.

“I… baked them.”

“You baked cookies,” Regulus said slowly, finally looking up from his book, “and you’re carrying them around the castle. In a box.”

“I was going to eat them,” you said, which was definitely not true. “Myself. Alone. In my room. All of them.”

Pandora tilted her head, her pale eyes unnervingly bright. “That’s a lot of cookies for one person.”

“I’m very hungry.”

There was a pause. The five of them exchanged glances—that wordless, imperceptible communication they’d perfected over years of friendship—and then Barty hopped off the windowsill and sauntered toward you.

“Let’s see them, then,” he said.

Your survival instincts, which had apparently been on holiday all day, chose that moment to return. “No! They’re—they’re not good. They’re terrible, actually. I’m a bad baker. I put cayenne pepper in them by accident. You wouldn’t like them.”

“Cayenne pepper?” Evan’s lips twitched. “Now I’m curious.”

“Don’t be,” you said desperately. “Curiosity killed the kneazle. That’s a saying. I’m not making it up. Please don’t eat the cookies.”

But Barty had already plucked the box from your hands.

“Barty, I’m serious, don’t—”

Too late. He’d flipped open the lid, grabbed a cookie, and bitten into it before you could finish the sentence.

His face contorted. “Merlin’s balls, this is vile. What did you put in this?”

“I told you,” you said weakly. “Cayenne. And maybe salt instead of sugar. I was… distracted.”

“This is the worst thing I’ve ever tasted,” Barty announced, but instead of throwing the cookie away, he took another bite. “Absolutely rank. Give me another.”

“Wait, what?” you said.

“I want to try,” Pandora said, reaching into the box. “I like terrible things. They’re interesting.”

“Me too,” Dorcas said, and suddenly all five of them were eating your disaster cookies, making faces of disgust and then immediately taking more bites, and you were standing there frozen because you knew—you knew—what was about to happen.

“These are genuinely appalling,” Evan said, but his voice had gone strange. He was staring at you with an expression you’d never seen on his face before, something soft and wondering, and oh no.

Oh no.

“Y/N,” Barty said. His voice had dropped half an octave. He was looking at you like you’d personally hung the moon. “Y/N Selwyn.”

“That’s my name,” you squeaked.

“You’re so pretty,” he said. “Has anyone ever told you you’re so pretty? Because you are. So pretty. Come here.”

He reached for you, and you were too stunned to move, and then his hands were on your waist and he was pulling you toward him and his face was buried in your neck and he was kissing your neck, soft and reverent, while you stood there making a sound like a deflating balloon.

“What the fuck,” you whispered.

“I want to hold her too,” Pandora announced, and then she was on your other side, her arms winding around your arm, her cheek pressed to your shoulder. “You smell like honey. You smell like home. Why have I never noticed that before?”

“Because you’ve never been this close to me,” you said, your voice faint, “and also because I’ve committed a crime.”

“You’re so beautiful when you admit to crimes,” Dorcas said, and then she was right there, cupping your face in her hands, her thumbs brushing your cheekbones. “I want to kiss you. Can I kiss you? Please say yes.”

“I—what—”

“Let her breathe,” Regulus said, and for one wild moment you thought he was immune, that the potion hadn’t worked on him, that he was going to save you—but then he added, “I want to kiss her too. We should form a queue.”

And then Regulus Black, the boy from your dreams, the boy you’d been pining after since you were old enough to understand what pining was, stepped forward and took your hand and pressed his lips to your knuckles like you were a princess in a storybook.

You made another deflating-balloon noise.

“This is bad,” you said, even as your entire body was screaming this is the best moment of your life. “This is very, very bad. You’re all under the influence of—”

“Your beauty,” Evan said, appearing at your elbow. Evan Rosier, the biggest dickhead in the entire castle, was looking at you with undisguised adoration. “Your absolutely staggering beauty, which I have somehow been blind to for six years. How is that possible? How did I not see you?”

“I’m very unremarkable,” you managed.

“You’re the most remarkable person I’ve ever met,” he said, and he sounded so sincere it made your heart crack right down the middle. “Your eyes. Your nose. The way you stand there holding boxes of terrible cookies. I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed, Y/N.”

“Okay,” you said, because what else could you say? “Okay. Um. We have class.”

“Skip it,” Dorcas said, still holding your face. “Stay with us.”

“I can’t—we can’t—people will notice—”

“Let them notice,” Barty murmured against your neck. “I don’t care who notices. I want everyone to know you’re ours.”

Ours.

The word hit you like a bludger to the chest.

Ours.

As in, belonging to all five of them. As in, the thing you’d been dreaming about literally every night for years. As in, everything you’d ever wanted, delivered on a silver platter that was, unfortunately, soaked in an illegal love potion.

You were going to Azkaban. Definitely. There was no way around it. But if you were going to Azkaban anyway…

“Class,” you said, your voice coming out strangled. “We have class. Divination. Barty and Evan are in my section. And Dorcas has Arithmancy. And Pandora has Ancient Runes. And Regulus has—”

“I don’t care,” Regulus said. He was still holding your hand. “I’ll skip.”

“No!” The word came out louder than you intended. “No skipping. You’re all top students. You can’t miss class because of—because of me. People will ask questions. Questions I really, really don’t want to answer.”

They all looked at you with varying degrees of disappointment. Pandora’s lower lip actually wobbled.

“Please?” you said, and your voice cracked a little, because they were all still touching you—Barty’s arms around your waist, Pandora clinging to your arm, Dorcas’s hands on your face, Evan’s fingers brushing your elbow, Regulus’s grip on your hand—and you had never been touched like this in your life. Not by one person, let alone five. It was overwhelming. It was addictive. It was going to destroy you.

“Fine,” Barty sighed, pulling back just enough to look at you. His eyes were glassy and adoring. “But you’re sitting between me and Evan in Divination.”

“I—okay. Yes. Fine. Between you and Evan. Let’s just—let’s just go to class.”

Divination was, predictably, a disaster.

The classroom was in the North Tower, all incense and draped fabrics and Professor Trelawney’s wavering voice. You usually spent the lesson doodling in your textbook and trying not to fall asleep. Today, you spent it trying to prevent a public scandal.

Barty had taken “sitting next to you” to mean “attaching himself to your side like a limpet.” His chair was pressed so close to yours that you were practically in his lap. His arm was around your shoulders. His face kept finding its way into the crook of your neck, and every time he exhaled, you felt it all the way down to your toes.

On your other side, Evan was being marginally less physical but somehow more intense. He was just… staring at you. His elbow on the table, his chin propped on his hand, his head tilted at an angle, a small, wondering smile on his lips. Every few minutes he would reach out and touch you—a brush of his fingers against your wrist, a hand on your knee, a thumb tracing the curve of your ear.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, not for the first time.

“You’ve said that,” you whispered back, your face burning.

“It bears repeating.”

Barty lifted his head from your neck. “Stop hogging her, Rosier. She’s my Y/N too.”

“I’m not hogging her. I’m appreciating her. There’s a difference.”

“Your hand is on her thigh.”

“Appreciatively.”

“Shh,” you hissed, glancing around. Maeve was sitting three tables away, and she was definitely giving you a very confused look. “Both of you, shh. People are looking.”

“Let them look,” Barty said, and pressed a kiss to your jaw.

You made a sound that was half-squeak, half-groan, and buried your face in your hands.

The lesson crawled by. Trelawney was droning on about the meaning of tea leaves, and you were supposed to be interpreting your partner’s cup, but Barty had drunk his tea in three seconds flat and then started trying to interpret the freckles on your arm instead.

“This one looks like a heart,” he said, tracing a pattern on your forearm. “And this one looks like a wedding ring. And this one—”

“Is a freckle, Barty. They’re all freckles.”

“Prophetic freckles.”

Evan leaned closer, his breath warm against your ear. “Ignore him. Look at me instead.”

“I can’t look at you, you’re too close to my face.”

“That’s the point.”

You were going to spontaneously combust. Right there in the Divination classroom. Professor Trelawney would probably see it coming, but she wouldn’t do anything to stop it.

By some miracle, you made it through the rest of the lesson without anyone besides Maeve noticing that anything was amiss. When the bell rang, you practically launched yourself out of your chair, but before you could make a break for the door, a hand closed around your wrist.

Dorcas.

She’d appeared from nowhere—she must have been waiting outside—and before you could say a word, she was pulling you out of the classroom and into the corridor, and then you were being pressed against the stone wall and Dorcas Meadowes was kissing you.

She was kissing you.

Her lips were soft but insistent, one hand braced against the wall beside your head and the other gripping your hip. You made a muffled noise of surprise that quickly melted into something embarrassingly close to a whimper, because Dorcas kissed like she did everything else: with absolute, unwavering confidence.

When she finally pulled back, you were gasping.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” she said, her voice low and rough. “Ever since the cookies.”

“The cookies,” you repeated, dazed. “Right. The… yes.”

“You taste like honey,” she said, and leaned in again.

“Okay, my turn,” came Barty’s voice, and then he was tugging Dorcas away and replacing her, his lips finding yours with a playful enthusiasm that was entirely different but no less devastating.

“This is—mmf—a public—corridor—” you tried to say between kisses.

“Don’t care,” Barty said.

“We’re blocking the view,” Pandora’s voice chimed in, and you realized, with a fresh wave of horror, that all five of them had arranged themselves around you in a loose semicircle, effectively shielding you from the rest of the corridor. Regulus and Evan were standing guard like royal sentinels. Pandora was beaming at you over Dorcas’s shoulder.

“You’re all insane,” you said.

“Insanely in love with you,” Pandora corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Love doesn’t have to make sense.”

You opened your mouth to argue, but then Evan was tilting your chin up and kissing you too, and all coherent thought evaporated.

Dinner was, somehow, even worse.

You’d tried to sit at your own house table. You really had. You’d made it three whole steps toward the yellow-and-black benches before Pandora had grabbed your hand and pulled you toward Slytherin instead.

“Sit with us,” she said. “Please? I’ll cry if you don’t.”

“You’re already crying,” you pointed out.

“These are happy tears,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “Because you’re here. But they’ll turn into sad tears if you leave.”

So now you were sitting at the Slytherin table. Between Regulus and Pandora. In full view of the entire Great Hall.

The other Slytherins were staring. You didn’t blame them. Someone from another house had never sat at this table in living memory. The yellow trim on your robes stood out like a beacon against the sea of green and silver. Several people were whispering. A fifth-year boy openly pointed at you. You wanted to die.

But Regulus was feeding you.

“Open,” he said, holding a spoonful of soup to your lips.

“I can feed myself.”

“I know you can. But I want to do it. Open.”

You opened your mouth. The soup was tomato basil. It was delicious. You hated everything.

On your other side, Pandora was dabbing at the corner of your mouth with a napkin. “You had a little drop,” she said, her voice full of tender concern. “There. All better.”

“Thank you,” you said miserably.

Across the table, Dorcas, Barty, and Evan were watching you with expressions of naked adoration. Barty was resting his chin on his hands, his eyes practically heart-shaped. Dorcas was absently stirring her soup with one hand while the other reached across the table to rest on top of yours. Evan was just smiling that small, private smile, like you were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

“You’re not eating,” Pandora said, noticing your untouched plate. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m… not sure,” you said honestly. Your stomach was in knots.

“You should eat,” Regulus said. “You’re perfect, but you’d be even more perfect if you were properly nourished.”

“Did you just call me perfect?”

“Yes.” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You are. Now eat your soup.”

You ate your soup.

As the meal progressed, you became aware that the whispers around you were growing louder. A group of Slytherin girls at the end of the table kept glancing your way and then putting their heads together. At the staff table, Professor Slughorn was frowning in your direction, his walrus moustache twitching. Even Professor Dumbledore seemed to be watching you with a benign, knowing smile that you did not trust one bit.

“People are noticing,” you hissed to Regulus.

“Let them.”

“Regulus, I’m not supposed to be here. At the Slytherin table. Being hand-fed soup by you. People are going to ask questions.”

He considered this for a moment. “We’ll tell them you’re… an honoured guest.”

“An honoured guest who’s never spoken to any of you before today?”

“An honoured guest who we’ve admired from afar and finally worked up the courage to approach.”

Your heart, despite everything, did a little flip. “Have you? Admired me from afar?”

Regulus’s grey eyes met yours. There was a flicker of confusion there, like he wasn’t entirely sure of the answer, but the potion smoothed it away almost instantly. “Yes,” he said, with absolute certainty. “Of course.”

And you knew it was the Amortentia. You knew none of this was real. But Merlin help you, you almost believed him.

You needed to fix this.

The thought had been growing in the back of your mind all day, but it wasn’t until after dinner—after Pandora had kissed your cheek goodbye and Regulus had pressed his lips to your forehead and Dorcas had whispered something in your ear that made your entire face turn red—that you finally managed to act on it.

You slipped away from them with a mumbled excuse about needing to study, and you fled to the library.

The library was quiet at this hour, most students still lingering in the Great Hall or already retreating to their common rooms. You made your way to the Potions section and started pulling books off the shelves with shaking hands.

Love Potion Antidotes: A Practical Guide.

Counter-Agents and Cures for Common Enchantments.

When Love Goes Wrong: Reversing Magical Infatuations.

You spread them across a table and began frantically flipping pages.

“Wiggentree twigs,” you muttered. “Castor oil. Powdered moonstone. Mandrake root… no, that’s for petrification…”

A shadow fell over your table.

“What are you doing?”

You looked up. All five of them were standing there. Barty was holding a book upside-down. Pandora had somehow acquired a flower crown since you’d last seen her. Dorcas was leaning against a bookshelf with her arms crossed. Regulus and Evan stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at you with matching expressions of affectionate curiosity.

“Studying,” you said. “Alone. By myself. In solitude.”

“You said you were studying,” Evan said, sliding into the chair next to you. “But you didn’t say we couldn’t join you.”

“That was implied.”

“Implied things are so boring,” Pandora said, sitting down on your other side. “We prefer explicit things.”

Barty, without any hesitation whatsoever, dropped into your lap.

“Barty,” you wheezed. “You’re heavy.”

“I’m perfectly proportioned. Now what are we studying?” He squinted at the book you’d been reading. “Antidotes for Love Potions? That’s random.”

You slammed the book shut. “Just curious! Just… academically curious. About potions. And antidotes. In general.”

Dorcas had moved behind your chair. She leaned down, her braids brushing your shoulder. “You’re a terrible liar,” she murmured, and pressed a kiss to your temple.

“I’m not lying. I’m just… not telling the truth very well.”

Regulus had taken the book from your hands. He was flipping through it, his brow furrowed. “Wiggentree twigs. Castor oil. Gurdyroot extract. You were looking for an antidote to Amortentia.”

Your blood ran cold. “No I wasn’t.”

“It says ‘Amortentia Antidote’ at the top of the page you were on.”

“That was… a coincidence.”

He looked at you. There was something sharp behind the adoring haze of the potion—a flicker of the real Regulus, the one who was too clever by half and never missed a detail. “Y/N. What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Y/N.”

“I baked cookies,” you said, your voice climbing into a register normally reserved for frightened mice. “And I may have… accidentally… added a potion to them. By mistake. A potion I definitely didn’t brew myself using a stolen recipe that I found in a book that didn’t belong to me. None of that happened.”

There was a long silence.

Then Barty, still sitting in your lap, said, “That’s so hot.”

“It is NOT hot, it’s a crime!”

“Crimes can be hot,” Pandora said thoughtfully.

“You drugged us,” Evan said slowly. He didn’t sound angry—the potion wouldn’t let him—but there was a note of confusion in his voice, like he was trying to work through a very difficult puzzle.

“Accidentally!” you said. “Well. Not accidentally. But I didn’t mean for you specifically to eat them. I was going to throw them away. And then Barty took the box, and—”

“I ate your cookies,” Barty said dreamily. “Your terrible, terrible cookies. And now I love you. Best decision I’ve ever made.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m helping,” Dorcas said, still behind you, her fingers now tracing patterns on your shoulders. “You’re stressed. I can feel how tense you are. Let me help.”

“You can help by letting me find the antidote.”

“But we don’t want an antidote,” Regulus said. He had set the book down and was now holding your hand again. When had he taken your hand? “We want you.”

“You don’t actually want me. You want a chemically-induced facsimile of wanting me. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?” Pandora leaned her head on your shoulder. “Wanting is wanting. Feeling is feeling. Does it matter where it comes from?”

“Yes! It matters very much! It matters morally and legally and also my mother will literally disown me if she finds out I’ve been dosing the heirs of five ancient pureblood houses with illegal love potions!”

“Five?” Barty perked up. “Who’s the fifth?”

“All of you! You’re all here! Being dosed!”

“I’m not an heir,” Pandora said. “The Lovegoods don’t really do inheritance. We just sort of… float.”

“That’s not the point!”

You were spiraling. You could feel it. Your breathing was getting shallow, your vision was blurring at the edges, and you were fairly certain you were about to have a full-blown panic attack right there in the Hogwarts library, in Barty Crouch Jr.’s lap, surrounded by the five most attractive people in school, all of whom were currently under the influence of a potion that you had illegally brewed.

This was, without question, the worst thing you had ever done.

Also the best thing, if you were being honest, but mostly the worst.

“Okay,” you said, forcing yourself to take a deep breath. “Okay. I need to find the antidote ingredients. Wiggentree twigs—those are easy, I can get those from the greenhouse. Castor oil—the supply cupboard. But gurdyroot extract…”

“Grows near the Forbidden Forest,” Evan said. He was still watching you with that small, wondering smile, even as he talked about antidotes. It was deeply unsettling. “You’d need to go at night to harvest it without being seen.”

“At night,” you repeated. “In the Forbidden Forest.”

“You can’t,” Dorcas said immediately, her hands tightening on your shoulders. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I have to. I have to fix this.”

“We don’t want you to fix it,” Regulus said.

“I know. That’s the potion talking.” You gently extracted your hand from his grip. “You’re all going to hate me when it wears off. You’re going to hate me so much. And I deserve it. But I have to at least try to—”

A sob interrupted you. Not your own sob. Pandora’s.

She was crying. Fat, glistening tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her lower lip was trembling, and she was looking at you with an expression of absolute heartbreak.

“You don’t love us,” she whispered. “You want to take it away. You want us to stop loving you.”

“No,” you said, panicked. “That’s not—Pandora, please don’t cry—”

“You’re going to make us forget,” she wailed, her voice echoing through the quiet library. Madam Pince’s head snapped up from her desk. “You’re going to make us forget how much we love you and we’ll go back to being strangers and I don’t WANT to be strangers, I want to braid your hair forever!”

“Pandora, please keep your voice down—”

But she was properly crying now, loud, hiccuping sobs that were definitely going to get you thrown out of the library, and the others were rallying around her, shooting you reproachful looks, and Barty was saying “Look what you did, you made her cry,” and Evan was murmuring something soothing to Pandora while simultaneously reaching out to stroke your arm, and the whole scene was so chaotic and overwhelming that you wanted to cry too.

“Fine!” you said, throwing your hands up. “Fine! No antidote tonight! I can’t get the gurdyroot anyway! Just—please stop crying, please, I’ll do anything!”

Pandora’s sobs subsided almost immediately. “Anything?”

“Within reason.”

“Stay with us tonight. In our dorm. Sleep over.”

“Absolutely not.”

The tears started again.

“I can’t sleep in the Slytherin dorms! My roommates will notice I’m gone!”

“Tell them you were… studying late,” Regulus suggested. “In the library. And you fell asleep.”

“They won’t believe that.”

“Then tell them the truth,” Dorcas said, her voice a low murmur in your ear. “Tell them you were with us.”

“That’s even worse!”

But they were all looking at you now—five pairs of eyes, glassy with potion-induced adoration, pleading and hopeful and impossible to resist—and you were so tired, and so guilty, and so desperately, pathetically in love with all of them that you couldn’t bring yourself to say no.

“Fine,” you whispered. “One night. And then tomorrow I’m finding that gurdyroot.”

Pandora beamed through her tears. “I knew you loved us.”

You didn’t deny it.

The Slytherin dormitory was nothing like your own.

For one thing, it was underwater. The windows looked out into the murky green depths of the Black Lake, and occasionally the shadow of a giant squid would drift past, which was equal parts terrifying and cool.

For another, it was much nicer. The furniture was dark wood and green velvet. The fire in the hearth burned with a greenish tint. The beds were enormous four-posters hung with silver curtains, and there was a distinct smell of old books and expensive cologne and something faintly smoky.

And, apparently, all five of them shared a single room.

“How did you manage this?” you asked, staring at the five beds arranged in a semicircle. “I thought Slytherins had roommates like everyone else.”

“We asked nicely,” Barty said.

“He means we blackmailed the prefects,” Evan clarified.

“Same thing.”

You stood in the middle of the room, clutching your robes around yourself like a shield. You had never been in a boy’s dormitory before. You had never been in a Slytherin dormitory before. You were fairly certain this violated about fifty school rules and at least three laws of basic decency.

But you were here now. And they were all looking at you with expressions of such naked adoration that your guilt and your longing and your sheer, overwhelming exhaustion finally crashed together into a single, inescapable wave.

You were going to Azkaban. Definitely. But right now, you were too tired to care.

“Where do I sleep?” you asked.

“With us,” Pandora said, as if it were obvious. “We’re making a cuddle pile.”

“A cuddle pile.”

“Yes. It’s like a normal pile, but with cuddling.”

Within minutes, they had somehow arranged themselves into a configuration that seemed physically impossible but was, in practice, incredibly comfortable. You ended up in the center—because of course you did—with Pandora curled against your right side and Dorcas pressed against your left. Regulus had claimed the spot above your head, his fingers absently stroking your hair. Barty had draped himself across everyone’s legs like a human blanket. And Evan had positioned himself directly in front of you, so close that you could see the flecks of amber in his dark eyes.

The fire crackled. The giant squid drifted past the window. And you lay there in the warm, breathing darkness, surrounded by the five people you’d been admiring from afar for as long as you could remember, trying very hard not to think about what tomorrow would bring.

It was impossible. Your mind kept circling back to the inevitable: the potion would wear off. They would remember everything. They would be furious, and humiliated, and they would never speak to you again. They might report you. Your family might get involved. You could be expelled. You could be arrested. You could—

“You’re thinking too loud,” Dorcas murmured, her lips brushing your ear. “Go to sleep, baby.”

You shivered. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because tomorrow you’re all going to hate me.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she pressed a kiss to the curve of your jaw, so soft and sweet that it made your eyes sting. “Then let us love you tonight,” she said. “While we still can.”

Evan’s hand found your face in the darkness. His palm was warm against your cheek, his thumb tracing the bridge of your nose, the arch of your brow, the bow of your lips. You had never seen him like this—gentle, reverent, stripped of all his usual sharp edges. The Evan Rosier you knew was a weapon. This Evan was a shelter.

“I like your eyes,” he said quietly, as though he were cataloguing you. “They’re so expressive. I can always tell what you’re thinking.”

“That’s not a good thing,” you whispered. “My thoughts are usually embarrassing.”

“I like your nose,” he continued, ignoring you. His thumb traced down the slope of it. “It scrunches up when you laugh. I never noticed that before, but now I can’t stop noticing it.”

“Evan…”

“And your mouth.” His touch ghosted over your lips. “You bite your lip when you’re nervous. You’re doing it right now.”

You stopped biting your lip.

“I like all of you,” he said, and his voice had gone rough, almost wondering. “Every part. I don’t understand how I didn’t see it before.”

The others hummed in agreement—a soft, sleepy chorus of affirmation. Pandora tightened her grip on your arm. Barty made a muffled noise against someone’s knee. Regulus’s fingers stilled in your hair, then resumed their gentle stroking.

And you, Y/N Selwyn, lifelong loser and recent felon, felt tears begin to slide down your cheeks.

“You really think so?” you whispered, your voice cracking. “You really… all of you…”

“We really do,” Evan said, and he leaned in and kissed you—just a brief press of lips, feather-light, there and gone. “Now stop worrying and go to sleep.”

You didn’t stop worrying. But eventually, wrapped in warmth and the steady rhythm of five heartbeats, you did go to sleep.

You woke to silence.

Not the comfortable silence of the cuddle pile, which had been full of soft breathing and the occasional murmured endearment. This was a different silence. A cold silence. A silence that felt like a held breath before a storm.

You opened your eyes.

The fire had burned down to embers. The window showed the dark green of the lake at dawn. And the five people around you were no longer wrapped around you.

They were sitting up. All of them. Staring at you.

Regulus was the first one you focused on. He was sitting at the edge of the bed, his back rigid, his hands clenched on his knees. His grey eyes—no longer hazy with potion-induced adoration—were sharp as broken glass, and they were fixed on you with an expression of cold, incandescent fury.

“You,” he said.

The word hit you like a slap.

“I can explain,” you said, scrambling upright. The blanket fell away from your shoulders. You were still in your rumpled robes from yesterday. You looked, you were certain, like absolute hell. “It’s not—I didn’t mean—”

“You dosed us,” Regulus said. His voice was quiet, controlled, and somehow more terrifying than if he’d been screaming. “You brewed Amortentia. You put it in cookies. You fed them to us.”

“I didn’t feed them to you! Barty took the box!”

“You didn’t stop him,” Evan said. His voice was different from last night—no warmth, no wonder. Just the familiar, cutting edge of Evan Rosier at his most dangerous. “You stood there and watched us eat them. You could have said no.”

“I tried! I told you they were terrible!”

“You didn’t tell us they were drugged,” Dorcas said. Her face was stone. “You let us kiss you. You let us fawn over you. You let us fall all over ourselves for you, and you just… let it happen.”

“I know,” you whispered. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Pandora wasn’t looking at you. She was staring at the window, her pale eyes fixed on the murky water, her face expressionless. That was somehow the worst part. Pandora, who had cried when you tried to leave, who had braided your hair and called you home—she couldn’t even bear to look at you.

“Get out,” Regulus said.

“Please, let me explain—”

“I said get out.” He stood up, and even though he wasn’t particularly tall, he seemed to tower over you. “You violated our minds. You took away our ability to consent. Do you understand what you did? Do you have any idea?”

“I know it was wrong,” you said, and now you were crying, ugly tears that you didn’t bother to wipe away. “I know. I’m horrible. I’m a horrible person. I just—I didn’t think—I wasn’t thinking at all, I was just so—”

“Pathetic,” Evan finished, and the word cut deeper than any curse. “So desperate for attention that you resorted to drugging people. That’s what you are.”

You flinched like he’d hit you.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” you said, your voice barely a whisper.

“But you did,” Dorcas said. “You made us… you made us love you. And none of it was real.”

It felt real, you wanted to say. It felt real to me.

But you didn’t say it. Because it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. They were right. You had done something unforgivable, and now you had to live with the consequences.

You stumbled out of the bed, grabbing your shoes from the floor. No one tried to stop you. No one reached for you. You were halfway to the door when Barty’s voice stopped you.

“Y/N.”

You turned. He was still sitting on the bed, his hair a mess, his eyes tired. He wasn’t looking at you with fury like the others. He was just… looking at you. Confused. Maybe a little hurt.

“Was any of it real?” he asked. “Anything you said? Or was it all just… an experiment?”

You opened your mouth to answer, but the words wouldn’t come.

What could you say? That you’d been in love with all of them for years? That you’d dreamed about them, sketched them in your notebooks, written their names with little hearts around them? That the past twenty-four hours had been the best of your entire life, even knowing it was all a lie?

It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t change anything.

“I’m sorry,” you said, and fled.

You made it back to the Hufflepuff dormitory just before dawn.

Your roommates were still asleep—Beatrice was snoring, Lenora was mumbling something about toadstools, Maeve was sprawled across her bed like a starfish. None of them stirred as you crept to your bed, pulled the curtains shut, and collapsed onto the mattress.

You didn’t cry. Not yet. You just lay there, staring at the canopy, listening to the familiar sound of Beatrice’s snoring and Lenora’s sleep-talking and the distant, muffled noises of the castle waking up around you.

This was reality. This was your life. A plain, boring, unremarkable girl who wasn’t good at academics or sports, who was known by the professors mostly for slacking off and falling asleep in class, who belonged to the house that the Slytherins called “the worst house you could possibly be placed in.”

And you had been so desperate for a taste of something different—something exciting, something magical—that you had committed an actual crime. You had drugged five people. You had violated their trust, their autonomy, their minds. You had let them kiss you and hold you and call you beautiful, knowing full well that none of it was real.

Pathetic, Evan had said.

He was right.

You were pathetic. A pathetic, desperate, lonely girl who had wanted so badly to be noticed that she had done something unforgivable.

The tears came then, silent and hot, soaking into your pillow. You didn’t bother to wipe them away. You just let them fall.

You didn’t go to breakfast.

You didn’t go to your first class. Or your second. You stayed in your bed with the curtains drawn, pretending to be asleep when your roommates came back between lessons. Maeve called your name once, but you didn’t answer, and eventually she left.

By lunchtime, you were hungry. You ignored it.

By dinner, you were ravenous. You ignored that too.

You couldn’t face the Great Hall. You couldn’t face the Slytherin table. You couldn’t face them. The thought of walking into that room and seeing the five of them—seeing the hatred in their eyes, or worse, the indifference—made your stomach clench so hard you thought you might be sick.

So you stayed in bed. And you waited for the other shoe to drop. For a summons to Dumbledore’s office. For a letter from your parents demanding to know why they’d been contacted about a love potion incident involving their daughter and five heirs of ancient pureblood houses. For the Aurors to arrive and drag you away in handcuffs.

But nothing happened.

The day passed. Then the next day. Then the day after that. And no one came for you.

You started leaving your bed, but only for classes, and only the ones you couldn’t afford to skip. You ate meals at odd hours, slipping into the Great Hall when it was mostly empty and grabbing whatever was left on the tables. You took different routes through the castle, ones that avoided the dungeons and the Slytherin common room and anywhere you might run into them.

You didn’t speak to anyone. You didn’t make eye contact. You became a ghost, drifting through the corridors with your head down and your robes pulled tight around you.

And all the while, you thought about them.

You thought about Barty’s laugh, wild and infectious, even when it was directed at something stupid. You thought about Evan’s sharp wit, the way he could cut someone down with a single sentence and then smile like he’d done them a favour. You thought about Regulus’s quiet intensity, the way he moved through the world like he was carrying a weight no one else could see. You thought about Pandora’s whimsy, her absolute refusal to conform to anyone’s expectations. You thought about Dorcas’s fierce loyalty, the way she would fight for the people she loved without hesitation.

You thought about how they had looked at you that night. How they had touched you. How they had called you beautiful and precious and theirs.

And you thought about how none of it was real.

On the fourth day, you were sitting in a deserted corner of the library, staring blankly at a book you hadn’t turned a page of in an hour, when you heard footsteps.

You didn’t look up. You had perfected the art of not looking up. If you didn’t make eye contact, people usually left you alone.

But these footsteps stopped. Right in front of your table.

“You’ve been avoiding us.”

Your head snapped up.

All five of them were standing there. Regulus at the front, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. Evan beside him, looking… not angry. Not quite. Pandora was half-hiding behind Dorcas, peeking out at you with an expression you couldn’t decipher. Barty was fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve. And Dorcas—Dorcas was staring at you with something that almost looked like concern.

“I…” Your voice came out raspy from disuse. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”

“We didn’t,” Regulus said. “For three days, we didn’t.”

“That’s—that’s fair. That’s completely fair. I’ll just—” You started gathering your books, your hands trembling. “I’ll go. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Sit down, Selwyn.”

You sat.

Regulus pulled out the chair across from you and sat down. The others arranged themselves around the table—Evan on one side, Pandora and Dorcas on the other, Barty perching on the edge of the table itself because apparently chairs were beneath him.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The library was quiet except for the distant scratching of Madam Pince’s quill and the soft whisper of the torch flames.

Then Regulus said, “Why?”

You blinked. “Why what?”

“Why did you do it? And don’t say it was an accident. We’ve had three days to think about it. We want the truth.”

The truth. The messy, embarrassing, pathetic truth. You had nothing left to lose. They already hated you. The worst had already happened. You might as well be honest.

“Because I’ve been in love with you for years,” you said.

The words hung in the air.

“All of you,” you continued, your voice shaking but determined. “Ever since I can remember. Since we were children at those awful pureblood gatherings. Since we started at Hogwarts. I’ve been watching you—not in a creepy way. Well. Maybe a slightly creepy way. But I couldn’t help it. You were all so… cool. And beautiful. And untouchable. And I was just… me. A nobody.”

You took a shaky breath.

“I dreamed about you. All the time. I have notebooks full of sketches of you. I wrote my name with all of your last names in little hearts. Multiple times. In multiple combinations. It’s really embarrassing. You can laugh if you want.”

No one laughed.

“And then I found that stupid recipe,” you said. “And I brewed the potion, just to see if I could. Just to smell it. And it smelled like all of you. Honey and smoke and old books and herbs and the sea. It smelled like everything I’ve ever wanted. And then I had those terrible cookies, and I was holding the potion, and I just…”

You closed your eyes.

“I wasn’t thinking. I know that’s not an excuse. There is no excuse. What I did was wrong. It was criminal. It was a violation. You have every right to hate me. You should hate me. I hate me. I’ve barely eaten in three days because every time I think about what I did, I want to throw up. So. Yeah. That’s why. Because I’m a pathetic, desperate loser who wanted five seconds of your attention and was too much of a coward to try to get it the normal way.”

Silence.

Then, very quietly, Pandora said, “You haven’t been eating?”

Of all the things you’d just said, that was what she focused on?

“Not… really,” you admitted. “It’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

“You’re lying,” Dorcas said. “Your hands are shaking.”

You looked down. Your hands were, in fact, shaking.

“Look,” you said, your voice cracking. “I know you probably came here to yell at me some more, or to tell me you’re reporting me, or whatever. And that’s fine. I deserve it. I will face all the consequences, I swear”

But Regulus didn’t yell. Instead, he exchanged a glance with Evan—that wordless communication they’d perfected—and then he leaned back in his chair and sighed.

“We’re not reporting you.”

You stared at him. “What?”

“We talked about it,” Evan said. “Extensively. For three days, actually. Dorcas wanted to hex you into next week. Barty wanted to prank you back. Pandora cried a lot.”

“I wasn’t sad-crying,” Pandora said. “I was confused-crying. There’s a difference.”

“And Regulus,” Evan continued, “wanted to have you expelled.”

“I still might,” Regulus muttered, but there was no heat in it.

“But then we started talking about… the things that happened,” Evan said. His voice had gone strange—less sharp, more uncertain. “While we were under the potion. The things we said. The things we did.”

Your stomach dropped. “I’m so sorry. I know it was all fake, I know you didn’t mean any of it—”

“That’s the thing,” Barty interrupted. He had stopped fidgeting and was looking at you with an intensity that made you want to hide under the table. “Was it fake?”

“Yes? Obviously? You were under the influence of Amortentia!”

“Amortentia doesn’t create feelings,” Pandora said softly. “It just… amplifies what’s already there. Lowers inhibitions. Brings things to the surface.”

You shook your head. “That’s not—no. You didn’t have feelings for me. You barely knew I existed.”

“Did we?” Dorcas tilted her head. “Or did you just assume we didn’t notice you?”

“I… what?”

“You sit in the same spot at breakfast every morning,” Regulus said. “Facing our table. You put honey on everything. You doodle in your textbooks. You snort when you laugh. You help first-years find their classes even when you’re running late to your own. You once spent an entire Herbology lesson talking to a Venomous Tentacula because you thought it looked lonely.”

Your mouth was hanging open. “How do you know that?”

“Because we noticed you,” Evan said. He sounded almost reluctant, like admitting this was physically painful. “We noticed you years ago. You’re… memorable.”

“Memorable,” you repeated.

“In a weirdo loser way,” Barty added helpfully. “But like, a cute weirdo loser way. A way that makes you want to… I don’t know. Protect you. Or annoy you. Same thing, really.”

“I don’t understand,” you said. Your head was spinning. “If you noticed me, why didn’t you ever… talk to me? Or sit with me? Or do anything?”

“Because we’re Slytherins and you’re…” Regulus hesitated. “You’re not. We have a reputation.”

“A reputation for what, not talking to anyone outside your own house?”

“A reputation for not being… soft,” Evan said. The word seemed to cost him something. “For not caring. You think I could have walked up to you in the Great Hall and asked to braid your hair like Pandora did? I would have been laughed out of the house.”

“But you did it under the potion,” you said slowly. “All of you. You were… soft. With me.”

No one denied it.

Dorcas was the one who finally broke the silence. “I meant what I said that night,” she said, her voice low. “About wanting to kiss you. The potion just made it so I didn’t care about the consequences.”

“I meant what I said too,” Pandora added. “About you smelling like home. I’ve always thought that. Ever since I sat next to you in Herbology third year and you were using honey-scented hand cream.”

“I don’t use honey-scented hand cream,” you said, bewildered.

“No, but you’d spilled honey on your hands at breakfast and never washed it off properly. It was very sticky. Also very endearing.”

Evan cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable—more uncomfortable than you’d ever seen him. “The things I said about your eyes,” he said. “And your nose. And your mouth. I’ve thought all of that for approximately two years. I just never planned on saying it out loud. Ever.”

“You called me a dickhead,” you said faintly. “Multiple times. In my head.”

“I am a dickhead. But I’m a dickhead who apparently has feelings. For you. Specifically.”

“All of us do,” Regulus said. His voice was carefully neutral, but there was a faint flush creeping up his neck. “The potion just… accelerated the timeline.”

You stared at them. All five of them. Regulus with his carefully guarded expression, Evan with his reluctant honesty, Barty with his manic grin, Pandora with her tear-bright eyes, Dorcas with her steady, unflinching gaze.

“You’re telling me,” you said slowly, “that you all had crushes on me. Before the potion.”

“Yes,” Pandora said.

“For years.”

“Yes,” Dorcas said.

“And you never said anything.”

“We were going to,” Barty said. “Eventually. Maybe. After graduation. Or never. We hadn’t really decided.”

You put your head in your hands.

“I spent four days thinking you hated me,” you said, your voice muffled. “Four days not eating. Four days having a mental breakdown. Because I thought I’d ruined everything. And you’re telling me that the whole time, you actually—”

“Liked you,” Regulus finished. “Yes. We’re still furious about the potion, by the way. That was genuinely unhinged behavior. You should probably see someone about that.”

“Noted.”

“But we’re also…” He paused, as if the next words were physically difficult to get out. “Willing to move past it. If you are.”

You lifted your head. “Move past it how?”

The five of them exchanged glances.

“We talked about that too,” Evan said. “Extensively. For three days.”

“And?”

“And we came to a conclusion,” Pandora said. She was smiling now—a real smile, the kind that made her whole face light up. “We want to try.”

“Try what?”

“This,” Dorcas said, gesturing between all of you. “Us. All of us. Together. Without potions this time.”

You blinked. “You want to… date me. All five of you. At the same time.”

“We’re a package deal,” Barty said cheerfully. “Always have been. You can’t have one of us without the others. It’s in the fine print.”

“There’s no fine print.”

“There is now. I’m writing it. It’s very legally binding.”

You looked from Barty’s manic grin to Evan’s reluctant smile to Regulus’s guarded hope to Pandora’s beaming face to Dorcas’s steady, waiting gaze.

This couldn’t be real. It had to be another dream. Any second now, Beatrice was going to snore and wake you up, and you’d be back in your bed, alone and pathetic and dreaming of things that could never happen.

But the seconds ticked by. And no one snored. And they were still there, still looking at you, still waiting for your answer.

“I’m not cool,” you said, your voice small. “I’m not interesting. I’m not good at anything. I once set my cauldron on fire trying to boil water. I talk to plants. I put honey in my pumpkin juice. I’m a disaster.”

“We know,” Regulus said. “We’ve been watching.”

“For years,” Evan added.

“You’re our disaster,” Pandora said, and she said it with such simple certainty that your eyes began to sting again. “If you want to be.”

And there, in the quiet corner of the Hogwarts library, with five Slytherins who had somehow, impossibly, decided that you were worth the trouble, Y/N Selwyn—plain, boring, disaster of a girl—started to cry.

But this time, for the first time in days, they were happy tears.

“Okay,” you whispered. “Okay. Yes. I want to be.”

Pandora made a sound like a delighted teakettle and launched herself across the table to hug you. Barty whooped so loudly that Madam Pince shouted at him from across the library. Dorcas smiled—a real smile, warm and fierce—and reached out to squeeze your hand. Evan rolled his eyes, but he was smiling too, that small, private smile from before, the one you’d thought was just the potion.

And Regulus Black, the boy from your dreams, leaned across the table and pressed a kiss to your forehead.

“No more potions,” he murmured.

“No more potions,” you agreed.

Then Barty said, “So, about those cookies—do you have any more? Because I’m kind of hungry, and also I think I’ve developed a taste for cayenne pepper.”

And you laughed, and it was a real laugh, the first real laugh you’d had in days, and Pandora was still hugging you and Dorcas was still holding your hand and Evan was pretending to be annoyed but his knee was pressed against yours under the table and Regulus was looking at you like you were something precious—

And for the first time, it felt real.

It felt like the beginning of something.

Something sweet.

Later, much later, you would find yourself back in the Slytherin dormitory—this time as an invited guest, no potions required—curled up in the center of a cuddle pile that was entirely voluntary on all sides. Barty was playing with your hair. Evan was reading a book and occasionally reaching over to adjust your blanket. Dorcas had her arm around your waist. Pandora was braiding flowers into your hair. And Regulus was holding your hand, his thumb tracing slow circles on your palm.

“You know,” Barty said thoughtfully, “we should probably address the fact that you technically committed a crime.”

“We’re not talking about that,” Regulus said.

“I’m just saying, if you ever feel the urge to brew illegal potions again, maybe come to me first. I have ideas.”

“Absolutely not,” Dorcas said.

“I’m just saying!”

You smiled, and closed your eyes, and let the warmth of them surround you.

You were still yourself. Still a disaster. Still put honey on things that had no business having honey on them, still doodled in your textbooks, still sometimes dreamed about things that would never happen.

But you also had five Slytherins who, against all odds and logic and basic moral principles, had decided that they wanted you.

And honestly? That was better than any dream.

The Arithmancy classroom held its breath.

It was a particular kind of silence, the sort that settled only when Professor Vector returned graded assessments—parchment sliding across desks with whispers softer than ghost breath, each page a verdict delivered in crimson ink. Y/N Ollivander did not need to look at hers. She already knew. The weight of expectation had taught her to read results in the air before they reached her hands, in the minute tightening of Professor Vector’s mouth, in the way the parchment seemed to hesitate before touching her desk.

E.

Exceeds Expectations.

The letters burned. Not terrible. Never terrible. An Ollivander did not produce terrible work. They produced exceptional work, generation after generation of Ravenclaws whose names decorated honour rolls and Ministry records and scholarly publications. Exceeds Expectations was perfectly respectable for anyone else. For an Ollivander, it was a crack in a lineage of excellence, a hairline fracture that would widen into a chasm if she let it.

She stared at the parchment until the red ink blurred. Her jaw tightened until her teeth ached. Around her, students were shuffling papers, whispering comparisons, but she heard none of it. There was only the E, mocking her with its inadequacy, and the knowledge that somewhere across the classroom, someone else had received something different.

She didn’t have to look.

She looked anyway.

Barty Crouch Jr. was already watching her, lounging in his seat with the casual arrogance of someone who had never questioned his place in the world. His Slytherin tie hung slightly loosened, dark hair falling across his forehead in a way that seemed deliberately calculated to look effortless. And in his hand, tilted just enough for her to see, was his assessment.

O.

Outstanding.

His grin was slow and devastating, the sort of expression that made professors forgive late essays and made half the student body forgive considerably worse. He lifted the parchment a little higher, a toast to his own brilliance, and then—with theatrical precision—mouthed a single word across the rows of desks between them.

Sorry.

It was not an apology. It was a performance. Every syllable dripped with mockery, with the unearned confidence of someone who had never known what it meant to fall short. Y/N felt something hot and sharp twist in her chest, and she did not look away. She would not give him the satisfaction of flinching first.

Professor Vector had not yet dismissed the class, but Barty was already on his feet, weaving through desks with the easy grace of a Seeker who had spent years dodging Bludgers. He paused beside her, close enough that she could smell something faintly citrus and irritatingly pleasant.

“Don’t look so upset, Ollivander.” His voice was low, meant only for her. “E is still respectable.”

She kept her eyes fixed on the parchment, refusing to acknowledge him. The ink blurred further.

“Maybe next time.”

Still nothing. She was a statue. She was ice. She was the unyielding legacy of every Ollivander who had ever set foot in this castle.

Without looking up, she spoke. “Did your father rehearse that line with you?”

A beat of silence. When she finally glanced up, his grin had somehow widened, sharpened at the edges like a knife catching light.

“No,” he said. “He usually says ‘Better luck next ranking.’”

Her book slammed shut with a crack that echoed through the classroom. Half the students were already watching, heads swivelling between them with the grim fascination of spectators at a duel. Someone near the back muttered, “Here we go,” and someone else shushed them urgently.

Barty’s eyes danced. “Oooh. Are you sure you’re not a Slytherin? That’s not very Ravenclaw of you.”

“I’d explain the joke if I thought you’d understand it,” she replied, rising from her seat with deliberate calm, gathering her things with hands that trembled only slightly. “But I suspect your comprehension peaks at Quidditch statistics and mirror-gazing.”

“Temper, temper.” He stepped aside just enough to let her pass, but his voice followed her. “You’re proof that excessive studying deteriorates one’s sense of humour, you know that?”

She paused at the door. “And you’re proof that charisma lowers academic standards. Funny how that works.”

She didn’t wait for his response. The corridor swallowed her, cool and dim, and she walked until the tremor in her hands subsided, until the red E stopped burning behind her eyelids, until she could breathe without feeling like her ribs were caging something dangerous.

It didn’t work.

The thing about Barty Crouch Jr. was that Hogwarts adored him.

It was an objective fact, as immutable as the laws of transfiguration. He was the top student in their year, Slytherin’s star Seeker, possessed of a face that seemed specifically designed to make intelligent people forget their own names. He moved through the castle like a small sun, pulling people into his orbit without apparent effort. Girls lingered after Quidditch practice with flasks of pumpkin juice and hopeful smiles. Students he’d never spoken to asked for tutoring sessions, and he granted them with a magnanimous air that somehow made him seem generous rather than condescending. Professors praised him in staff meetings; his father praised him in the Prophet.

Y/N Ollivander moved through the same castle like a ghost who had somewhere very important to be.

She kept to the library, to the quiet corners of the Ravenclaw common room, to the back tables in classes where no one would attempt conversation. She did not attend parties. She did not linger in corridors. She spoke when spoken to, usually with a precision that made people flinch and decide, on reflection, that perhaps they hadn’t needed to speak to her after all. The younger students had taken to warning each other: don’t interrupt the Ollivander girl when she’s studying. She’ll verbally eviscerate you and then footnote the remains.

It wasn’t that she disliked people. It was that people required time and energy and emotional investment, and she had none of those things to spare. Every hour spent socialising was an hour not spent studying. Every friendship was a potential distraction. Every party was a missed opportunity to edge ahead in the rankings that her parents checked with the regularity of stockbrokers monitoring markets.

Rankings. The word itself had begun to taste like copper in her mouth.

She had been second again. Not first. Second. Barty Crouch Jr. occupied the top slot like he’d been born there, like it was his birthright, and perhaps it was. His father was Barty Crouch Sr., head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a man whose name was spoken with the sort of reverence usually reserved for historical figures. The elder Crouch was not known for warmth—he was known for results, for discipline, for the ruthless efficiency with which he had prosecuted Death Eaters during the war. And he was known, increasingly, for boasting about his son at Ministry functions.

Y/N’s parents had heard him. They had written to inform her of this.

The owl had arrived three evenings ago, a handsome tawny carrying a letter sealed with the Ollivander crest. She had opened it expecting—what? Encouragement, perhaps. A query about her wellbeing. Some small acknowledgment that she existed as more than a vessel for academic achievement.

Your name appears second in the latest rankings, her mother had written, the script as elegant and precise as a wand movement. We had the occasion to attend the Ministry’s winter gathering, where Mr. Crouch spoke at length of his son’s accomplishments. Several colleagues inquired after your progress. It reflects poorly upon the Ollivander family when we cannot claim the foremost position. For generations our name has been synonymous with scholarship. Do not become the first exception.

No hope you’re well. No we’re proud of you. No warmth whatsoever. Just the cold arithmetic of expectation, the unspoken ultimatum that love was conditional upon excellence, that her place in the family was measured in Outstanding marks and first-place rankings.

She had read the letter three times, folded it precisely, and placed it in the drawer beside her bed. She had not cried. Crying was inefficient.

But she had not slept, either.

The morning after the Arithmancy assessment, Y/N was running on fumes and fury.

She had spent the night staring at Arithmancy charts until the numbers blurred into meaningless spirals, then risen before dawn to review Transfiguration theory, then forced down half a piece of toast before her stomach rebelled. By mid-morning, her eyes felt like sandpaper and her temper had been filed to a razor’s edge. She was not in the mood to be cornered by anyone, least of all by the cluster of girls who intercepted her in the corridor outside the Great Hall.

They were Barty’s admirers, mostly. She recognised their faces from Quidditch matches, from the edges of parties she did not attend, from the careful orbit they maintained around Slytherin’s golden boy. There were three of them today, arranged in a formation that suggested premeditation.

“Second place again,” said the one in the middle, a tall girl with honey-coloured hair and a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Must be exhausting, always chasing.”

“Maybe if you smiled more instead of studying so much,” added the one on the left, “someone might actually want to help you.”

“Barty probably doesn’t even know your birthday,” said the third, and this, of all things, was apparently meant to be devastating.

Y/N stopped walking. She turned to face them with the slow, deliberate precision of a predator who had decided that prey was no longer worth ignoring. Her voice, when it came, was ice.

“Strange. None of your names appear anywhere near the rankings. Perhaps if you spent less time memorising my schedule and more time with a textbook, you’d have something to contribute beyond unsolicited commentary on my facial expressions.”

The honey-haired girl opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. No sound emerged.

Y/N did not wait. She walked away, footsteps measured, shoulders straight, the perfect picture of unbothered composure. She maintained it all the way down the corridor, around the corner, through the first empty classroom door she could find. And then she stopped, pressed her back against the cold stone wall, and felt the mask crack.

She was not crying. She was absolutely not crying. But her breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, and her hands were shaking, and the letter from her parents was burning a hole in her memory like a brand. Do not become the first exception. As if her entire worth as a human being could be reduced to a number on a ranking chart. As if she existed only to reflect glory upon a family name that had never once asked her what she wanted.

The door opened.

She knew who it was before she looked up. The universe, she had long suspected, possessed a cruel sense of dramatic timing.

Barty Crouch Jr. stepped into the classroom, still in his Quidditch robes, hair windswept from practice, a broom slung over one shoulder. He did not see her at first—or perhaps he did, and simply chose to pretend otherwise, because that was the sort of thing he would do. He was humming something under his breath, a tune she didn’t recognise, and he looked so infuriatingly at ease that she wanted to hex him on principle.

Then he saw her.

And because he was Barty Crouch Jr., because he had never learned to read a room or leave well enough alone, he did what he always did.

“Rough day, Ollivander?”

She did not answer. Her jaw was locked so tightly she could feel the ache radiating into her temples.

“You know, second isn’t—”

She shoved him.

It was not a gentle push. It was not a warning. It was every ounce of sleepless rage and parental disappointment and accumulated humiliation, channelled into both palms against his chest with enough force to make him stumble backward, broom clattering to the floor. He caught himself against a desk, and for one blessed moment he looked genuinely startled.

Then he laughed.

It was not a cruel laugh. It was surprised, almost delighted, the reaction of someone who had finally received a response after years of prodding. But Y/N did not hear delight. She heard mockery, condescension, the sound of every “Sorry” he had ever mouthed across a classroom, every smug grin, every insufferable comment, every single time his name had appeared above hers while her parents’ disappointment arrived by owl post.

She tackled him.

They went down together in a tangle of limbs and fury, crashing against a desk that screeched across the flagstones. She was hitting whatever she could reach—his shoulder, his arm, his chest, his hair, his infuriatingly perfect face. Years. Months. Every ranking. Every comparison. Every expectation. Every time she had smiled tightly and said nothing while something inside her withered.

“Merlin—” Barty was trying to block, curling up, half-laughing and half-horrified. “You’re actually trying to kill me! What in Salazar’s name—”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t. If she opened her mouth, something far more dangerous than fists might come out.

The classroom door slammed open.

“What in heaven’s name is the meaning of this?”

Professor McGonagall’s voice cut through the chaos like a blade through silk. Y/N felt herself being hauled backward by invisible forces—a Levicorpus, perhaps, or a particularly aggressive Seize and Pull—and suddenly she was standing, gasping, her hair wild and her knuckles stinging. Barty was on his feet too, one hand pressed to his mouth, and when he pulled it away there was blood on his fingers. His lip was split, a thin line of crimson against his pale skin.

He was staring at her. Not with anger. Not with the smug superiority she had expected. Just… surprise. As if she had suddenly become a person he had never properly seen before.

Y/N touched her own cheek and found it wet. She was crying. She had not even noticed.

“Detention,” Professor McGonagall said, her voice flat with fury. “Both of you. My office. Now.”

The Headmistress—for McGonagall had summoned reinforcements—was not inclined toward leniency.

“One month,” she said, looking between them with an expression that suggested she had dealt with academic rivals before and was thoroughly unimpressed by the genre. “Every evening. Together. You will report to the assigned supervisor at seven o’clock, and you will remain until your tasks are completed. If you cannot coexist, you will learn. Am I understood?”

“Perfectly, Headmistress,” Barty said, his voice smooth despite the swelling lip. He had the audacity to sound almost cheerful about it.

Y/N said nothing. She nodded once, sharp and curt, and fixed her gaze on a point just past the Headmistress’s left ear.

“Good. You will begin this evening in the trophy room. Mr. Filch will supervise. Do try not to injure each other further—I would hate to involve St. Mungo’s.”

The first evening of detention was a study in mutual loathing conducted in absolute silence.

The trophy room was a cavern of gleaming metal and dusty accolades, generations of Hogwarts achievement trapped behind glass cases. Argus Filch had deposited them at the entrance with a mop, a bucket, and a series of ominous mutterings about what he’d do if anything got broken, and then he’d retreated to his office with the air of a man who fully expected disaster and intended to be elsewhere when it arrived.

Y/N took the left side of the room. Barty took the right. Neither spoke.

They cleaned with the grim determination of people who had turned domestic labour into a competitive sport. Y/N polished a Quidditch cup until it reflected her face with uncomfortable clarity. Barty dusted a shelf of ancient medals with aggressive precision. When she moved to the next case, he somehow materialised beside her, reaching for the same tarnished plaque. Their hands brushed. They both recoiled as if burned.

“I was here first,” she said.

“You were categorically not.”

“I categorically was.”

“Your spatial awareness is as lacking as your Transfiguration practical.”

“My Transfiguration practical received an Outstanding.”

“A fluke.”

“Your face is a fluke.”

Barty paused, sponge dripping onto the floor. “That’s the best you can do? My face is a fluke?”

“I’m conserving energy for people worth insulting.”

He laughed—a short, startled sound—and returned to his shelf. The silence that followed was marginally less hostile. Marginally.

They continued cleaning, and when Filch returned to inspect their work, he found exactly half the room immaculate and the other half untouched, a clear demarcation down the centre like a territorial boundary. He assigned them both another hour.

The second week brought a change of venue and a change of tormentor. Madam Pince presided over the library with the gentle warmth of a Dementor on holiday, and she had apparently been briefed on the situation. When Y/N and Barty arrived, they found a mountain of books waiting—texts that had been returned in the wrong order, volumes that had migrated to incorrect sections, ancient tomes that had somehow shelved themselves upside down.

“You will reshelve these,” Madam Pince informed them, “without magic. The restricted section has been warded against levitation charms. Do not test me.”

The library after hours was a different creature than the library during the day. The lamps burned lower, casting long shadows between the stacks. The silence was deeper, broken only by the whisper of pages and the soft scuff of footsteps on stone. It should have been peaceful. It was, instead, a battlefield by other means.

Barty developed a habit of placing books on the highest shelves, just beyond her reach. “Need a hand, little Raven?”

“I will hex your eyebrows off.”

“That’s not very Ravenclaw of you.”

“Neither is being insufferably tall, and yet here you are.”

She retaliated by hexing his shoelaces together. He tripped spectacularly into a cart of unsorted periodicals, sending copies of Transfiguration Today cascading across the floor. Madam Pince materialised like a vengeful spirit and extended their detention by thirty minutes.

But something was shifting, subtle as the change in light between seasons. The insults were still sharp, but they had lost their venom. When Barty placed a book on a high shelf now, it was with a glance that seemed almost… playful. When Y/N hexed his laces, it was with a flicker of satisfaction that felt less like vengeance and more like a shared joke.

And then came the punishment that neither of them would ever speak of willingly again.

Professor Flitwick had apparently been consulted on methods for fostering cooperation, and the tiny Charms master had produced a suggestion of diabolical ingenuity. On the third Thursday of their sentence, Y/N and Barty arrived at an empty classroom to find a length of silver cord and a note in Flitwick’s precise handwriting: If you insist on behaving like children, you’ll remain attached like children. One hour. No magic. Good luck.

The charm bound them wrist to wrist, left to right, with about eighteen inches of slack. Just enough to make every movement a negotiation. Just enough to ensure that neither could reach for anything without dragging the other along.

“This is absurd,” Y/N said.

“This is Flitwick’s idea of humour.” Barty examined the cord with the clinical interest of someone assessing a puzzle. “It’s elegant spellwork, actually. Probably a variation on the Binding Charm with a timed release component. I wonder if the tensile strength correlates to the emotional resistance of the subjects.”

“Do you ever stop being a swot?”

“Do you ever stop being a harpy?”

She tugged her wrist toward a bookshelf. He stumbled. “I’m trying to complete the task, Crouch. Some of us take detention seriously.”

“Some of us take everything seriously.” But he moved with her, adjusting his stride to match hers. They managed three steps before their paces diverged and the cord snapped taut, jerking them both to a halt.

“You walk too fast,” she said.

“You walk too slow.”

“Perhaps if your legs weren’t absurdly long—”

“Perhaps if you weren’t determined to inspect every book spine individually—”

They glared at each other. The cord hummed between them, faintly warm, as if amused by their bickering.

The hour passed in a series of minor catastrophes. They reached for the same book simultaneously and knocked foreheads. She stumbled over a loose flagstone and he caught her by the elbow—then immediately released her as if the contact had scalded him. They discovered, through unfortunate necessity, that the cord required them to coordinate even the most basic movements: sitting, standing, reaching, breathing in each other’s immediate vicinity.

At one point, their hands brushed. Properly brushed, fingers against fingers, skin against skin. Neither acknowledged it. Neither pulled away quite as quickly as they should have.

When the charm finally dissolved, releasing them with a soft silver shimmer, the silence between them was different. Heavier. Charged with something neither was willing to name.

“Well,” Barty said, flexing his freed wrist. “That was deeply unpleasant.”

“Agreed.”

“We should probably never mention it again.”

“Absolutely.”

They did not look at each other as they left.

By the end of the second week, something fundamental had shifted.

The insults had become teasing, playful, almost affectionate in their sharpness. Barty had stopped calling her “Ollivander” with quite so much bite; now it sounded more like a nickname, a private joke shared between them. She had stopped flinching at the sound of his voice.

He began leaving snacks.

The first time, it was an apple, placed on the corner of the library table where she usually worked. She found it when she arrived for detention, cool and red and conspicuously out of place among the dusty tomes.

“Yours?” she asked.

Barty didn’t look up from the book he was shelving. “I was full.”

“You’ve never been full in your life. You eat like a Hippogriff after migration season.”

“Charming imagery. Are you going to eat it or interrogate it?”

She ate it. The apple was crisp and sweet, and it settled something in her stomach that had been empty for longer than she cared to admit. She had been skipping meals, she realised. Not intentionally—she simply forgot, or couldn’t face the Great Hall, or found herself studying through dinner without noticing. But he had noticed. Barty Crouch Jr., who had every reason to resent her, had noticed that she wasn’t eating, and he had done something about it, and he had been so aggressively casual about it that she couldn’t even thank him without making it weird.

So she didn’t thank him. She ate the apple, and the next evening there was a bread roll, and the evening after that a small wedge of cheese wrapped in a napkin. She ate those too.

She began noticing things about him in return.

The ink stains on his fingers, for one thing. They were not the stains of ordinary note-taking; they were the stains of someone who wrote and rewrote and wrote again, scrapping entire paragraphs, starting over. She saw it one evening when he fell asleep over an essay—his head drooping onto folded arms, quill still clutched in ink-stained fingers. The essay beneath him was a draft of something for Potions, and she could see where he had crossed out entire sections, rewritten them, crossed them out again.

It was not the work of someone for whom excellence came easily. It was the work of someone who clawed his way to Outstanding through sheer brutal effort, who could not afford to be anything less than perfect.

“Quidditch,” he said when she asked him about it the next day, his voice dismissive. “Practice runs late. I get tired.”

But Quidditch didn’t explain the rewriting. Quidditch didn’t explain the way his handwriting grew shakier toward the bottom of the page, as if he’d been writing for hours. Quidditch didn’t explain the shadows under his eyes that she had never noticed before, or the way he flinched—just slightly, almost imperceptibly—whenever someone mentioned his father.

The realisation came to her slowly, over the course of several evenings, like a photograph developing in solution.

He’s just like me.

The thought was so startling that she nearly dropped the book she was holding. Barty Crouch Jr., golden boy of Slytherin, Seeker extraordinaire, beloved by professors and students alike—he was running on the same treadmill of impossible expectation. His father’s praise, so publicly bestowed at Ministry gatherings, was not unconditional love. It was a transaction. Be first, and I will acknowledge you. Fall short, and you cease to exist.

She understood that transaction intimately.

The third week brought a conversation that neither of them had planned to have.

They were in the library again, working through a stack of mishelved Herbology texts. The silence between them had long since stopped being uncomfortable; now it was companionable, punctuated by the occasional rustle of pages and the soft thud of books finding their proper homes. Y/N was halfway up a rolling ladder when she spoke.

“Why do you do it?”

Barty was at the base of the ladder, steadying it with one hand while he sorted through a pile with the other. “Do what?”

“All of it. The studying. The Quidditch. The…” She gestured vaguely, nearly overbalancing. “The being perfect all the time.”

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was different—flatter, stripped of its usual theatrical polish. “Do you honestly think I’m doing this because I enjoy beating you?”

She hadn’t expected that. She climbed down carefully, her feet finding the solid ground of the library floor. “Then why?”

He didn’t answer immediately. He was holding a book—Flesh-Eating Trees of the World, third edition—and his knuckles were white against the faded cover.

“If I stop being first,” he said, very quietly, “my father notices.”

The words hung in the air between them.

“Only when I’m first,” he continued, and now he wasn’t looking at her at all, his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance. “That’s when he remembers he has a son. When there’s something to boast about. When I’ve done something worthy of the Crouch name. The rest of the time…” He shrugged, a jerky motion that was nothing like his usual insouciance. “The rest of the time, I’m just a student at Hogwarts. Just another Ministry brat. Nothing special.”

Y/N thought about the letter in her bedside drawer. Do not become the first exception. She thought about generations of Ollivanders, their portraits lining the walls of the family home, their painted eyes following her with silent judgment. She thought about love measured in Outstanding marks, affection calibrated to ranking positions.

“My parents,” she said slowly, “haven’t asked me how I’m doing once this year. Not once. They write about rankings. They write about what the other Ministry families are saying. They write about the family name.” She took a breath. “I don’t think they’d recognise me if I wasn’t holding a perfect score.”

Barty looked at her then. Really looked, in a way he never had before—not as a rival, not as a target for barbs, but as a person. As a mirror.

“Different families,” he said.

“Same loneliness,” she finished.

Neither of them spoke for a long moment. The library was very quiet, the lamps burning low and golden, the shadows soft around the edges. Somewhere in the distance, a book rustled its pages in its sleep.

“Well,” Barty said eventually, his voice carefully light, “this has been thoroughly depressing. Shall we finish the flesh-eating trees before Madam Pince decides to feed us to one?”

Y/N laughed. It was a small sound, startled out of her, and it felt foreign in her throat—rusty from disuse. But it was real.

Barty heard it. His expression flickered, surprise and something else, something warmer.

“That was a smile,” he said.

“No.”

“Definitely a smile. I witnessed it. I have witnesses.” He gestured at the empty library. “The books saw everything.”

“The books are notoriously unreliable narrators.”

“That was a smile, and I intend to commemorate the occasion. Perhaps a plaque. ‘On this spot, Y/N Ollivander experienced human emotion.’”

“It was indigestion.”

“It was a smile, and you know it.”

She was still smiling, she realised. She couldn’t seem to stop.

The paper cranes began on a Thursday.

Y/N was deep in the restricted section, cross-referencing three different Arithmancy texts for an essay that had consumed her entire evening, when something small and white drifted down from the gallery above and landed precisely on her open page. A paper crane, folded with meticulous care, its wings sharp and its tail fanned perfectly.

She unfolded it. The handwriting inside was unmistakable.

You’re frowning. Stop it. You’ll frighten the first-years.

She looked up. Barty was leaning over the gallery railing, three floors above, his expression one of elaborate innocence. When she caught his eye, he gave a small wave.

She wrote her reply on the back of the same parchment, refolded the crane with considerably less skill, and sent it winging upward with a whispered charm.

Stop watching me. It’s unnerving.

The response came moments later, the crane spiralling down like a tiny owl.

Stop being watchable, then. Your concentration face is deeply entertaining. You look like you’re trying to set the textbook on fire with your mind.

Perhaps I am.

Arithmancy isn’t sentient, little Raven. You can’t intimidate numbers.

Watch me.

A pause. The next crane took longer to arrive, and when it did, the handwriting was slightly different—less theatrical, more careful.

You’ve been working for four hours. There’s food in the Great Hall. I checked.

She stared at the note for a long moment. The Arithmancy text swam before her eyes, numbers blurring into incomprehension. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She hadn’t noticed.

Fine. But only because my vision is starting to blur.

Victory is mine.

Don’t get used to it.

But she was getting used to it. That was the terrifying thing. She was getting used to the paper cranes, to the snacks that appeared beside her books, to the sound of his footsteps approaching in the corridor. She was getting used to the way he said her name—not “Ollivander” anymore, or not always, but sometimes “little Raven” in a tone that was almost gentle. She was getting used to the way his presence had stopped feeling like an intrusion and started feeling like… something else. Something she didn’t have a name for.

The paper cranes continued. They became a language of their own, a conversation conducted in folded parchment and whispered charms. He sent her terrible puns about Arithmancy (“Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven was a registered Dark number”). She sent him critiques of his Quidditch form (“Your Wronski Feint needs work; you telegraph the pull-out”). He sent her a detailed drawing of a hippogriff wearing Ravenclaw robes. She sent him a list of books he should read if he wanted to stop being “intellectually provincial.”

The cranes accumulated on her desk, a small flock of white paper birds. She kept every one.

The night before their final detention, she fell asleep in the library.

It had been a long day—a gruelling Transfiguration practical, an essay on vanishing spells, an hour of detention spent reorganising the Potions storeroom while Snape watched with undisguised loathing. By the time she reached the library for her usual evening study session, she was running on willpower and the memory of sleep. She sat down at her usual table, opened a book on advanced charm theory, and blinked. When she opened her eyes again, the light had changed and there was something soft and warm draped over her shoulders.

A scarf. Green and silver. Slytherin colours.

She sat up slowly, disoriented. The library was darker now, the lamps guttering low. Her book had been closed and neatly stacked beside her, a slip of parchment marking her page. There was no one else in sight, but she could smell something faintly citrus in the wool of the scarf, and she knew.

Barty had been here. Barty had covered her with his scarf and left before she woke, carefully, deliberately, without seeking credit or acknowledgment. The simple kindness of it lodged somewhere beneath her ribs, sharp and sweet.

She wore the scarf back to Ravenclaw Tower that night. She told herself it was because the corridors were cold.

The final detention arrived with the weight of an ending neither of them was ready to name.

They spent it in the trophy room again, the same room where they had begun, as if Hogwarts itself appreciated narrative symmetry. But this time there was no competition, no territorial divisions, no silent warfare. They cleaned together, working in easy synchronisation, their movements complementing each other without conscious effort. When Barty reached for a high shelf, Y/N handed him the cloth without being asked. When she struggled with a stubborn tarnish, he produced a specialised cleaning solution from his bag.

“You carry silver polish with you?” she asked.

“A gentleman is always prepared.”

“You’re many things, Crouch. ‘Gentleman’ is debatable.”

“Wounding. Deeply wounding. After everything we’ve been through.”

They finished early. The trophy room gleamed, every surface polished to mirror brightness, every accolade restored to its former glory. They stood together in the centre of the room, surrounded by the reflected light of a thousand achievements, and neither moved toward the door.

“Well,” Barty said eventually. “That’s it, then.”

“That’s it.”

“A whole month. We survived.”

“Barely.”

“Speak for yourself. I was a model detainee.”

“You hexed a suit of armour.”

“It looked at me funny.”

She laughed—easily now, without the rusty awkwardness of before. He smiled, and it was not his usual performance smile, not the sharp-edged grin he deployed like a weapon. It was softer. Realer. It made him look younger, somehow, and more human.

“Try not to hex each other,” Professor McGonagall said when she came to inspect their work. Her tone was dry, but there was something almost like approval in her eyes.

“No promises,” Barty said.

Y/N rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

She walked away first, because she had learned that Barty Crouch Jr. was the sort of person who would stand in a doorway and watch you leave, and she wasn’t sure she could handle that tonight. The corridor was cool and quiet, her footsteps echoing in the emptiness. She did not look back.

She did not need to. She knew he was watching.

The paper crane arrived the next afternoon.

Y/N was in the library—where else would she be?—working on an essay that no longer felt quite so urgent. The rankings had come out that morning, and she was still second, and Barty was still first, and somehow neither of those facts had ruined her day. The sun was slanting through the high windows, golden and warm, and she had just discovered that she didn’t mind being second if it meant she was second to him.

The crane landed on her parchment, precisely folded, wings sharp. She unfolded it with careful fingers, already smiling before she read the words.

Would you like to spend time with me somewhere that isn’t assigned by a professor?

A date. He was asking her on a date. Properly, deliberately, with all the care of someone who had folded and refolded this particular crane until it was perfect.

She stared at the parchment for a long moment. Her heart was doing something complicated in her chest, a sort of fluttering arrhythmia that would have concerned her if she hadn’t been so thoroughly distracted by the warmth spreading through her limbs.

She took another piece of parchment. She folded it—not as neatly as his, the wings slightly uneven, the tail a bit crooked. She wrote her reply.

Was a whole month of being stuck with me not enough for you?

And then, much smaller in the corner, her handwriting almost shy:

Come get me at two tomorrow. ♡

The crane flew away, wobbling slightly, its imperfect wings carrying it across the library with determined optimism. She watched it go, watched it spiral up toward the gallery where Barty was pretending to browse the Charms section, watched him catch it with the easy grace of a Seeker.

He unfolded it. Read it. Froze.

And then he grinned—a grin so wide and bright and utterly undignified that Madam Pince immediately materialised to inform him that smiling like an idiot was not permitted in her library, and would he please compose himself or vacate the premises.

He composed himself. Barely.

Y/N looked down at her essay, but she wasn’t seeing the words. She was seeing his face, the way it had lit up like the sun breaking through clouds. She was feeling the ghost of his scarf around her shoulders, the memory of paper cranes and shared silence and the first person who had ever looked at her and seen not a rival but a reflection.

The rankings would come out again next month, and the month after that, and the month after that. One of them would be first, and one of them would be second, and the world would keep spinning. But for the first time in seven years, Y/N Ollivander found that she didn’t particularly care.

She had something better than first place.

She had someone who understood.

And at two o’clock tomorrow, she had a date.