They had not meant to notice you.

The Knights of Walpurgis—eight brilliant, dangerous boys who moved through the bones of Hogwarts like a secret heartbeat—did not notice people. They selected them, used them, dismissed them. But your presence had begun as a whisper and grown into something far more intrusive: an anomaly, a disruption, a curiosity none of them could file neatly away.

It began the evening you stepped into the abandoned classroom on the third floor—their classroom—your silhouette framed in candlelight and dust. You held yourself neither timidly nor boldly, simply as though you had every right to be there. It irritated them. It intrigued them more.

Abraxas Malfoy was the first to react, chin angling upward with polished annoyance, though his eyes lingered far too long on the calm line of your posture. Rosier smirked, delighted by the unexpected entertainment. Dolohov’s hand drifted instinctively to his wand, eager for a duel that likely would never come. Reinhard Lestrange stiffened, offended that a girl—any girl—had breached their sanctum. Mulciber’s stare was silent, dissecting, already attempting to read the architecture of her mind. Nott tilted his head like one studying an odd specimen in a jar, intrigued by the variables you introduced to their delicate equilibrium. Avery had gone white as chalk, certain you would get them all expelled—certain Tom would blame him.

But Tom Riddle… Tom merely looked at you.

And that was enough.

His attention was a rare, dangerous gift—one the others felt ripple through the room like a shift in air pressure. There was no smile on his lips, no warmth in his expression, and yet something in his gaze suggested calculation, curiosity, the quiet beginning of obsession. The Knights felt it at once, the way animals sense lightning before it strikes.

From that moment, you became the exception—the only girl they allowed in their hidden corridors, their stolen classrooms, their whispered councils in dust-choked dungeons. Not because they welcomed you. Not because they trusted you.

But because each of them, in their own guarded way, found themselves circling you like planets caught in an unexpected orbit.

You disrupted them. You rewrote their hierarchy. You made Tom Riddle look twice.

And for the Knights of Walpurgis, that was the most dangerous magic of all.