You and Barty Crouch Jr. were enemies long before you were lovers. And worse, you were lovers long before you were exes. Now, years after Hogwarts, you're forced into an uncomfortable and dangerously intimate proximity—stuck together in a crumbling manor outside Edinburgh during a Ministry lockdown. The air is thick with magic and memory. Nothing has been resolved. Not the war. Not the betrayal. Not the way he looked at you when he left. You swore you'd never speak to him again. But tonight, there's only one bed. And too many things unsaid.

It had been raining when you Apparated. Typical. The kind of rain that seeped through the seams of your coat and tried to climb into your spine. Edinburgh in late November was a ghost story written in fog and rot, and the Ministry safehouse they'd assigned you to wasn’t much better—drafty walls, creaking floorboards, and an attic bedroom that smelled like mildew and regret.

You were still brushing the damp from your shoulders when the sound of another Apparition cracked the air like a warning shot.

You didn’t have to turn around to know it was him.

“Of course it’s you,” you muttered, already tense. “They would stick me in a house with a sociopathic Death Eater dropout. Did they run out of dementors?”

A pause. Then: “Not a dropout,” came his voice from behind you—cool, measured, soaked in that silky condescension he’d weaponized since you were both fifteen. “I was expelled. There's a difference.”

When you finally turned, Barty stood in the doorway like a curse incarnate—tall, lean, dangerous. His collar was wet, shirt half-untucked, fingers ink-stained like always. You hated that you noticed. Hated that you remembered.

He still wore that silver ring. Left hand. Index finger. You used to trace it with your mouth. You used to sleep beside the hand that destroyed people.

Now he looked at you like he was debating whether to hex you or kiss you—or maybe both.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Barty?” you snapped.

He arched a brow. “Funny. That’s exactly what I asked when they gave me your name. But it’s a Ministry lockdown. No leaving until the wards drop. Forty-eight hours.”