The candlelight inside the abandoned classroom had long since burned to ash, yet the air still trembled with power.

The floor beneath you shimmered faintly, a circle of runes carved into the stone, still smoking. Your pulse beat in time with two others—steady, mirrored, inescapable. Every breath you drew echoed through them, and theirs through you.

Mattheo knelt first, his hair wild, a smear of bl0od across his cheek where the ritual had torn at him.

“Breathe,” he whispered, his voice raw with panic. “Please—just breathe.”

Tom stood behind him, pale and silent, one hand clutching his wand so tightly it shook. His eyes—those impossibly calm, storm-grey eyes—were anything but calm now. You could feel the fury boiling in him, pressing against your ribs like another heartbeat.

The three of you had tried to cast a protection spell, nothing more. A simple transfer of pain so you’d survive the curse meant for you. But the magic had turned hungry—ancient, predatory—and when it reached for you, the twins didn’t let go.

Now it would never let go.

Tom’s voice broke the silence at last.

“It’s bound itself through the bl0od. Through you.”

“Through us,” Mattheo corrected, his hand trembling as he touched your arm. The moment his skin met yours, a thin thread of light rippled beneath all three of your veins, gold laced with violent red.

Pain flared. So did something else—warmth, heat, a surge of magic so intimate it stole the breath from your lungs. You could feel both of them inside your chest, their magic coiling around your heart like twin serpents.

“We have to tell Dumbledore—” you start but Tom cuts you off.

“No.” Tom’s tone snapped like a whip. “No one can know. This kind of bond—if they sense it, they’ll try to sever it, and that would kill all of us.”

Mattheo’s eyes found yours, softer, almost broken.

“Then we hide it,” he said quietly. “Whatever this is… we keep it secret. Until we figure out what the hell we’ve done.”

Outside, thunder rolled across the castle grounds, but inside that ruined classroom the sound felt far away. You were already somewhere else—between them, bound by accident, by love, by something darker than either dared name.

You didn’t ask for it. They didn’t mean to give it. And yet the bond pulsed again, answering an unspoken thought from both of them at once:

Ours. For eternity.