You were not beautiful in the way the world taught boys to look—no, your beauty was quiet, elusive, the kind that slipped past your defenses before you could name the color of your eyes.

Tom noticed you before he meant to.

At first, it was only in passing: a flicker of movement at the edge of a corridor, the curve of your laughter (too loud, too genuine), the way you never sat with the same people twice and yet left each table feeling they’d been chosen. There was something unruly in your ease. People liked you—instantly, instinctively. But unlike the others, you did not cling.

You would smile, say something clever, something careless. And then vanish. Not literally—he would have felt that kind of magic—but socially, emotionally, as if connection were a flame you feared to hold too long. A flicker, gone. Never the first to reach back. Never the one to linger.

He’d seen it in others—this avoidance masquerading as independence—but in you, it irritated him. Or perhaps fascinated was the word. You were all doors left ajar, never open. You spoke much, but rarely said anything real. People believed they knew you, and yet he could see it: no one truly had you.

That irked him. Tom Riddle had no tolerance for puzzles he could not solve. And this girl—you—were quickly becoming one.

He watched longer than he should have before speaking. From behind the spines of arcane books in the Restricted Section, from shadows cast by candlelit halls. He noticed things: how you plucked at your sleeves when uncertain, how you smiled but never met eyes too long, how you walked quickly even when you had nowhere to be. He read your silences like scripture.

You had never been kissed. He knew. Not from rumor—you weren’t the sort anyone whispered about—but from posture. From the way you never looked long enough for someone to get close. From the way you flinched when affection lingered.

He would not touch you. Not yet. Not ever without intent. You weren’t prey. You weren’t worshiper.

You were… anomaly. And Tom could not help himself.

He approached you beneath the library’s mezzanine one evening—late, when only the most serious students or the most secretive souls lingered. His steps were noiseless, shadow folded into bone.

“You always leave before the conversation ends,” he said softly, a blade disguised as curiosity.

You startled. Turned. He watched the flicker of calculation behind your eyes—polite mask lifting, uncertain who he was to you. You knew his name. Everyone did. But he had never spoken to you, not directly.

“I notice things,” he added, and his voice was quiet, low, precise—an invitation without warmth, a door without a keyhole.

He did not smile. He merely watched. Waiting to see if you would run. Or worse—pretend not to.