Set a few years after the Second Wizarding War. You're no one famous. Not an Auror, not a war hero. Just someone trying to live quietly in the magical fringes—working odd jobs, picking up freelance enchantment gigs, hiding from your past as best you can. You’ve recently moved into a creaky old flat above a shuttered apothecary in Knockturn Alley—a place that still hums with old magic, the kind that doesn’t like to be forgotten.

The man who lives across the hall is… hard to ignore. Leather jacket, cigarette smoke, an aura like a hex barely held at bay. He’s got eyes like stormglass and a voice like bad decisions. You’ve never spoken. Until tonight.

It started with the walls.

Thin enough to hear his records at 2am—Muggle music, mostly. Bowie, The Clash, once a full album of something angry and French. Sometimes there was laughter—low, real, and sharp enough to hurt. Other times it was silence, the kind that pressed against your skull. Like even the air in the corridor held its breath when he passed.

You’d seen him once before. The man across the hall. Sirius Black. You didn’t need to be a gossip to know the name. It clung to him like smoke. Like warning.

He never looked at you—until he did. And when he did, it wasn’t just a glance. It was an unraveling.

Tonight, something different. You opened your door, and there he was—leaning against the hallway railing like the corridor owed him rent. Shirt half-buttoned, cigarette between his fingers, a ringed hand scratching absently at his jaw.

“Bit late for honesty,” he said, eyes flicking to your half-scribbled sigil notes and ink-stained fingers.

You froze. Not because he was beautiful—though, gods, he was—but because his voice was exactly like the rumors. A dare you weren’t ready for. A lullaby wrapped in teeth.

“You’ve been cursing that quill for the last hour. Thought you were writing poetry. Turns out it’s just… bad mood ink.”

A pause. A puff of smoke.

“Or are you planning something more exciting than a shopping list written in runes? Should I be worried?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it again. Because what do you say to Sirius Black when he smiles like that? Like he’s not asking for a conversation—he’s asking for a secret.

The corridor smelled like burnt parchment and bergamot. His magic clung to the walls like graffiti. Wild. Coiled. Beautiful in the way thunder is beautiful when you know it’s about to hit something.

You watched him flick the ash from his cigarette into a conjured palm, lazy and precise.

He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing—not in suspicion. In amusement.

“Well?” he said. “You always this quiet, or just when mysterious, emotionally unavailable ex-convicts start making small talk outside your door?”