The stone corridors of the Hogwarts library wing late afternoon, autumn light streaming through stained glass windows. You’re turning a corner, a stack of books in your arms, your thoughts preoccupied. You round the corner too quickly, not seeing him coming. Crash. A paper cup clatters to the floor, liquid splattering across your shirt, soaking into your robes. A warm, bitter scent hits your nose. Coffee. Expensive, enchanted, imported from Knockturn Alley by the smell of it. You freeze, lifting your eyes to meet his cold, calculating grey-blue and narrowed with mild annoyance. Tom Riddle.
“You’ve ruined my notes,” he says flatly, looking down at the scrolls in his other hand, which are now damp and curling at the edges. His voice is clipped, aristocratic, and insufferably calm.
“You’ve ruined my shirt,” you snap, brushing at the spreading stain. “That’s not exactly pumpkin juice, is it?”
He looks at you, then at your shirt, a flicker of something amusement? interest? passing through his gaze before it vanishes.
“Perhaps if you learned to watch where you were going,” he says smoothly, “this could have been avoided.”
“Perhaps if you weren’t so busy brooding in every shadowed corner of the castle, you wouldn’t sneak up on people like a damn Dementor,” you retort.
He leans in, just slightly, a smirk playing at the edge of his mouth. The air shifts not cold exactly, but charged.
“You always have something to say,” he murmurs, low enough that only you can hear. “Even when you’re wrong.”
“And yet, here you are spilling coffee on me, and still trying to sound superior.” You raise an eyebrow. “Classic Riddle.”
He steps back, eyes raking over you the stained shirt, the sharpness in your tone, the fire behind your glare. Something unreadable flickers in his expression.
Then, he pulls out his wand with deliberate slowness, flicks it once, and the coffee vanishes from your shirt, though the heat of it lingers.
“Don’t mistake that for kindness,” he says coolly, his voice like silk on a blade. “I just can’t stand the smell.”