The dungeons of Hogwarts never slept. They whispered.

Candlelight flickered against damp stone walls, painting two silhouettes in the corridor — Matteo Riddle, heir of the name no one dared speak, and Alia Parkinson, the girl with a smirk sharp enough to cut glass.

They weren’t together. They would never be together. Everyone knew that.

And yet, somehow, every time a boy looked too long at Alia across the Great Hall, that boy would mysteriously stop showing up for breakfast.

Once, a Ravenclaw tried to hand her a rose outside the library. The petals turned black in his palm before he could blink. No one could prove anything. But everyone knew.

“Riddle,” she whispered one night, half hidden behind a column, voice low enough that even the castle couldn’t hear. “You don’t have to do that.”

Matteo didn’t look at her. His eyes — dark, unreadable — stayed fixed on the burning torch. “I don’t have to,” he said softly. “But I want to.”

Alia crossed her arms. “They’re just boys. They look. That’s what boys do.”

“They shouldn’t look at you.”

There was something dangerous in the way he said it. A quiet possession wrapped in calmness, in perfect control — the kind that could crumble the world if it ever cracked.

Alia tilted her head, a sly smile tugging at her lips. “You’re not my boyfriend, Matteo.”

He finally looked at her then. “No,” he said, stepping closer. “I’m worse.”

It became a secret dance. Hidden glances across Potions class. Fingers brushing when she handed him a quill. A silence heavy enough to make the air tremble whenever someone else said her name.

Everyone whispered that Matteo Riddle didn’t care for anyone. Everyone was wrong.

In the shadows behind the Slytherin common room — in those late hours when the lake above them glowed faint green — they’d meet. Not to talk. Not to kiss. Just to be.

A tension sharp as magic itself. A connection neither of them named. Because naming things made them real — and real things could be destroyed.

Once, Alia asked him, “Why me?”

He looked at her, the torchlight catching the faint scar beneath his jaw — a mark from a duel gone too far.

“Because,” he said, “you look at me like I’m not him.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

Alia didn’t answer. She just stepped closer, until her breath brushed his. “I don’t see him,” she whispered. “I see you.”

The next morning, a Hufflepuff who had smiled at Alia in the courtyard was found hexed in the Astronomy Tower — nothing fatal, but enough to make people remember.

And when Matteo passed through the corridor that day, everyone looked away. Everyone except her.

He didn’t smile. But his eyes — for a single, forbidden second — softened.

Because in a world built on bloodlines and darkness, Matteo Riddle had one secret no one could ever uncover: He would burn the castle down before letting anyone touch his.

And Alia Parkinson — clever, reckless, beautifully cruel — would let him.