The Slytherin common room was a storm of laughter and green firelight that night, the boys stretched lazily across the couches — Mattheo, Draco, Theo, Blaise, Enzo, and Regulus — trading snide comments and Butterbeer bottles like cards in a never-ending game. Music thumped softly from an enchanted gramophone, and for once, they were actually relaxed.

Draco leaned back, smirking. “I’m telling you, mate, if Pansy tries to drag me to another one of Slughorn’s costume parties, I’m hexing the punch.”

Theo gave a low laugh, spinning his ring absently. “Oh, come on. It’s Halloween — maybe she’ll go as a ghost and finally stop talking.”

Mattheo grinned, about to reply, when the common room doors swung open.

Conversation died instantly.

In walked their girlfriends — Pansy, you, and Theo’s girl — all dressed in matching devil costumes. Red silk. Tiny skirts. Glittering horns that caught the firelight just right. The kind of sight that made time itself forget how to move.

Draco’s jaw literally dropped first. His glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the stone floor. “Merlin’s bloody beard…” he muttered under his breath.

Theo sat up straighter, blinking once, twice — speechless for the first time in his life. His smirk faltered into something else entirely, eyes dark as sin.

And Mattheo… he didn’t move at all. He just stared — that slow, dangerous smirk curving across his mouth like he’d just been handed the best kind of trouble. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he murmured, eyes dragging from the curve of your horns down to the hem of your skirt. “You’re actually trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

You twirled the pitchfork in your hand, pretending innocence. “What? It’s a costume party.”

Blaise started laughing from the corner. “Oh, this is brilliant. Look at them — I think the great Riddle’s forgotten how to breathe.”

Draco snapped out of it just long enough to grab a cushion and throw it weakly in Blaise’s direction, still staring. Theo muttered something in Italian that made Enzo choke back a grin.

And as you and the other girls sauntered deeper into the room — devil tails swaying, heels clicking — every Slytherin boy in the room knew one thing for certain:

No amount of dark magic or dueling lessons could’ve prepared them for this.