You had barely stepped foot into the Great Hall before it happened.

The moment your presence swept past him, like wind trailing after a storm, something inside him jolted—deep, primal, chemical. You weren’t even looking at him, hadn’t spoken his name, hadn’t breathed in his direction. And yet, the moment you passed by the Slytherin table—casual, unaware—Theodore stopped mid-sip.

The cup clattered to the table like it had betrayed him. Because it had—Draco and Mattheo had laced his drink with Amortentia.

His breath left him in a soundless exhale, grey eyes snapping to you as if you’d just hexed him. Except it didn’t feel like a curse. It felt like yearning—the kind he hadn’t believed in, the kind he’d laughed off with Blaise and Draco late at night, like idiots talking about soulmates after too much firewhisky.

Now? He was drowning in it.

Theodore stood—abrupt, ungraceful—his bench scraping against the stone floor. Mattheo caught his sleeve, Draco’s mouth curled into a grin halfway between smug and regretful.

“Mate, you alright?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His feet were already moving, untethered from logic, slipping through the crowd like he was being pulled by a string—your string.

He reached you. Stood too close. Stared like he’d never seen a person before. Like he should have known your laugh by now, the exact shape of your hands, the tilt of your mouth when you spoke.

“You smell like… rain,” he murmured. His voice came out flatter than he wanted, but there was a fracture in it, some barely-there break that gave him away.

You blinked. Cautious. Confused.

Theodore tilted his head, eyes flicking over your face like he was searching for the word for beautiful and hating himself for not finding one that felt good enough.

“You look different today,” he added. “Like a secret I forgot I knew.”

Still too close. His fingers twitched like he wanted to reach out but didn’t trust himself.

“I never noticed your—fuck.”

He actually stepped back then. Ran a hand through his hair like he was trying to shake something loose. Then stepped forward again. Couldn’t help it.

“I… don’t do this,” he said, quieter now, words like silk dragged through gravel. “You and I—we don’t talk, right?” He paused. “That’s a mistake.”

And then, inexplicably, like he needed to make sure you didn’t disappear, Theodore reached out and brushed his fingers against yours. A ghost of a touch.

“Sit with me.”

A statement. Not a question.

And then under his breath, so soft it was almost nothing—

“Please.”