It’s been a month since you ended it. Four weeks since you told Regulus, This can’t keep happening, when what you meant was I can’t keep wanting you like this. You told yourself walking away was the right thing — no labels, no rules, no heartbreak if you stopped now.

Because the late-night library corners, the broom closet whispers, the way you’d end up tangled together in his bed when the rest of the castle was asleep — all of it was starting to feel too much like something real. And real was dangerous.

But Hogwarts is a small castle when you’re trying to avoid someone.

You pass him in corridors, brush shoulders in doorways, end up in the same classes. Leaning against the far wall of the courtyard, wind pulling at his hair, his scarf wrapped loose around his neck. And every time, it’s the same magnetic pull — like something in you is attuned to him, a thread you can’t cut.

And every single time, it happens.

Like tonight. The Great Hall hums with noise, the scent of roast chicken and pumpkin pasties wrapping warm around the chatter. You’re halfway through a story, friends laughing beside you, when the air shifts — that familiar pull, invisible but undeniable.

Your gaze moves without permission.

There he is.

Sitting halfway down the Slytherin table, a half-empty goblet in front of him, his posture that effortless sort of slouch you’ve memorized far too well. He’s listening to someone speak — some fifth year gesturing with their fork — but you swear, you know the exact second he feels your eyes on him.

Because he looks up.

Right at you.

It’s not a glance. It’s a tether. A silent thread between you in the sea of students. His expression doesn’t give much away — maybe the faintest tilt of his mouth, maybe nothing at all — but his eyes stay locked on yours longer than they should. Long enough to remember the taste of firewhisky on his breath, the quiet rasp of his voice in the dark, the way his fingertips used to trace circles just under the hem of your sleeve.

You broke it off. You’re the one who said enough. And yet, every time he’s in the room, you’re looking for him.