The ball is a dazzling affair, a spectacle of swirling silks and candlelit decadence. The enchanted chandeliers float high above, casting a golden glow upon the opulence of the great hall. The air hums with laughter, the soft clink of crystal goblets, the quiet murmurs of whispered gossip. You are here by invitation, though you have long since lost sight of whoever extended it. It hardly matters.

The atmosphere is intoxicating, laced with the scent of aged wine and roses wilting in their vases. The music, slow and sultry, coils through the room like smoke. It is the kind of night where secrets are exchanged in the shadows, where old ghosts slip between the living.

And then, you feel it. A presence—familiar yet entirely, unmistakably wrong.

Your skin prickles before you even see him.

Sirius was never a man easily forgotten. But the Sirius standing across the ballroom is not the same one you once knew. He is watching you, silver eyes glinting beneath the candlelight, his gaze steady and unreadable. His presence is an ache, a whisper of memories you never expected to revisit.

You remember him as a reckless youth, all sharp grins and untamed laughter, his hair always falling into his storm-grey eyes. This Sirius is something else entirely. His beauty, once wild and careless, has been refined into something almost unnatural. His skin is porcelain-pale, flawless beneath the flickering glow of the chandeliers. His black attire is elegant yet effortless, dark fabric draping over his frame as though the night itself has shaped around him. The silver rings on his fingers glint like teeth.

You can’t place what it is about him that sets your nerves alight. It is not just the way he looks—something deeper, something unsettling.

Then he moves.

Not toward you, not yet. But through the crowd, weaving like a shadow between bodies, his presence a ripple in the atmosphere. He is magnetic. People glance at him, drawn inexplicably, but no one stops him. No one truly sees him.

Except you.