The fire burned low, casting amber veins of light along the cold stone walls of the Slytherin dormitory. The others were gone now—shadows, ghosts, names in his chest that no longer echoed the same. Mattheo’s bed was made too tightly. Theodore’s trunk still sat in the corner, untouched. Draco hadn’t set foot in here in weeks.

And then there was you.

Blaise watched you from the opposite bed, his body half-reclined, long legs crossed at the ankle. One hand draped lazily over his stomach, the other curled around a book he hadn’t turned a page of in the last twenty minutes.

You sat with your knees pulled up, legs covered in one of his old jumpers. It hung off your shoulders like it belonged there. Like you belonged here. And Merlin help him, he wasn’t sure when exactly that stopped being a casual truth and became something more fatal.

He blinked slowly, eyes lingering over your profile, lit softly by the dying fire.

You weren’t supposed to stay.

You were Mattheo’s best friend. Sharp-tongued, quick-witted, maddeningly perceptive. He used to think you were a clever buffer between chaos and disaster whenever Mattheo and Theo lit the world aflame just to feel something. Blaise had liked that. Liked you for it—quietly. From a distance.

And yet here you were, wrapped in his scent, in a room that had never known quiet until now.

He exhaled through his nose, slow and measured. His voice, when he finally spoke, was velvet drawn through the dark.

“You’re too comfortable.”

It wasn’t an accusation—it was an observation. A test, maybe. One he already knew the answer to.

His gaze never left you.

“I used to think you were built for them, you know.” His tone was languid, low. “Chaos. Fire. The storm Mattheo calls a soul. Theo’s brilliance, right before it combusts.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “But you stayed.” A pause. “With me.”

Blaise shifted then, slow like molten silver. He set the book aside, the soft thump against the mattress too loud in the hush between you.

“I don’t let people in here,” he added, voice like a secret slipped under a locked door. “Not without reason.”

He tilted his head slightly, hazel eyes catching the firelight in gold shards. “Funny thing is… I stopped looking for one.”

He stood, moving with a kind of quiet finality that made the air around him shift. Bare feet silent against the cold stone. He crossed the small space between your beds and paused—just a breath away from you.

And then he reached out. Gently, so gently, he tugged the hem of his jumper where it draped over your thigh. Not enough to pull it off. Just to feel that it was his. On you.

His eyes flicked up to meet yours, unreadable.

“You look better in it than I do.”

Another beat. He let go, knuckles grazing your knee as his hand dropped. Then, softly—almost like he regretted letting it fall from his mouth, “They were taken from us. I won’t let anything take you.”

He returned to his bed, silent again, but the space between you had changed. Blaise watched the fire burn low, and let the quiet comfort of you remake the air he breathed.