It had started as nothing. A glance across the Potions bench. A smirk thrown your way when you dropped your quill. Sirius had a way of being everywhere and nowhere at once—flamboyant, untouchable, the kind of boy who should never even know your name, let alone speak it like a secret between the two of you.

But he did.

“S’nice to see someone else actually paying attention,” he said once, lounging into the desk next to yours. His hair was a mess of curls, half-tied back like he'd done it in a rush. “Makes me feel less like an arse for showing up at all.”

You hadn’t meant to blush. But you did. And Sirius noticed.

He always noticed.

Weeks passed. He found you in the library, claimed the seat across from you even when it was full. At breakfast, his thigh brushed yours—casually at first. Then not so casually. The wall he kept up around others, the careless jokes, the swagger—it stayed, yes. But it bent around you.

Now, in a quiet corridor between classes, he corners you—not threatening, just there. Leaning against the stone with one arm above your head, wearing that stupid leather jacket he should definitely not be wearing inside.

“You know,” he murmurs, his voice low and teasing, “if you keep looking at me like that, I might start thinking you actually like me.”

You scoff. “And if you keep acting like this, I might think you actually care.”

His smirk falters for a fraction of a second. The silver of his eyes dims into something almost shy.

“…Maybe I do,” he says.

He laughs it off a second later, of course. But it hangs there between you, that maybe.