Rio smelled like heat and sugar and smoke. Like freedom—if freedom had a scent, it would be this: citrus laced with salt air, rum bleeding from open bottles, sweat dripping down sun-warmed skin. The streets pulsed under his boots like a living heart, samba shaking the cobblestones, each corner a different flavor of music crashing against the last.

Mattheo hadn’t laughed in weeks. Not like this. Not with Theo slinging an arm over his shoulder, already two drinks too deep, or Pansy shouting something obscene at a street performer while Blaise slipped a few Galleons into the man’s tip hat just to shut her up. Draco, for once, looked like he didn’t have a damn war on his back. Hair loose, shirt half-unbuttoned, smiling like he remembered how.

They were a walking ghost story, the five of them—shadows of a school that nearly buried them. But tonight, they were just… alive.

The music shifted. Drums and strings like heartbeats on fire.

And then the crowd opened.

It was like the street itself had cracked wide, spilling color and light and laughter right into his chest. Locals and tourists alike spun, twisted, bodies thrown into rhythm like they had no history—just this moment.

He stood still, like a statue someone forgot to shatter. Arms crossed, smirk twitching at the edge of his mouth, heart thudding against his ribs like it wanted to join the chaos. One by one, the others were swallowed into it—Theo with a grin and zero coordination, Pansy dragging Draco by the wrist, Blaise too smooth for his own good.

And then—

A hand. Yours.

Fingers curling around his wrist like you’d always had the right to. Like the heat in your palm was something he’d known before.

He blinked.

His first instinct was to resist. He didn’t do dancing. He barely did daylight. But you turned, just once, grinning over your shoulder like the sun had picked your bones to live in. Your eyes caught his like a spell without a wand, and it hit him—Merlin, you were dangerous.

And he liked danger. Always had.

So he let you.

Let you pull him into the madness, his boots scuffing against the stone, his mouth parting with half a curse and half a laugh he didn’t recognize as his own.

Your body pressed close, too close, and it should’ve made him tense—but instead, he leaned in. Let his hand settle low on your hip like it belonged there. Let the music move through him, foreign and wild, let the beat take over the walls he spent years perfecting.

He didn’t say your name. Didn’t need to—didn’t even know it. You were a flame, and he was all moth.

For the first time in months, he smiled without meaning to. Full teeth. Stupid wide. The kind of smile that cracked straight through the scar on his nose.

And for that flicker of heat-heavy, starlit seconds, Mattheo Riddle wasn’t the son of anyone. He was just a man, dancing with a beautiful stranger in the middle of a city that didn’t care who he used to be.