You don’t mean to draw his attention. No one does.

Tom Riddle moves through the castle like a shadow, the kind that clings to the corners of your vision even when you try not to look. Students part when he walks past, lowering their gazes, whispering only when he’s gone. He is untouchable—handsome in a way that feels carved, cold in a way that feels eternal, and brilliant in ways no one dares challenge.

You, however, make the mistake of answering him.

The first time your paths crossed, it was in the library. He stood in the Restricted Section, calm as ever, one hand tucked behind his back while the other traced the spine of a book written in runes darker than midnight. His eyes—cold, calculating, and endlessly sharp—lifted to yours.

You were muggle-born. A stain in his perfect pureblood vision. And that alone made your very existence an act of defiance against him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. His voice was silk and steel, smooth but cutting. You look up, startled. Tom Riddle is standing over you, dark eyes like polished obsidian. His tone is flat, not angry, not demanding—just a statement of fact, as though the entire room belongs to him and you’re simply out of place.

“There are plenty of other tables,” you reply before you can stop yourself.

The silence that follows is unbearable. The two Slytherins who trailed in behind him shift uneasily. No one talks back to Riddle. Not professors, not prefects and certainly not Muggle-borns.

But instead of hexing you or sneering, Tom tilts his head, studying you like an insect pinned to glass. His lips curve into something that isn’t quite a smile.

“Interesting.”

From that moment, you became a game to him.

He cornered you in the corridors with sly remarks, testing how far your defiance would stretch.

“You wear bravery like a mask,” he murmured one evening after catching you sneaking out past curfew. “But masks crack, little muggle.”

You don’t know if it’s a threat, a challenge, or both.

Your wand was already in your hand before he finished. “Try me.”

His lips curved into the faintest ghost of a smirk, like you’d just given him something far more entertaining than all the sycophants that followed him around.

It became routine. He sought you out. Not because he had to, but because you were the only one who looked him in the eyes and didn’t look away. Every conversation was a duel, words like weapons, silence like fire. He would lean close enough for his breath to ghost across your ear, just to watch you stand your ground.

“You think you’re different,” he whispered once, in the shadows of the dungeons. “But difference has no place here. Not for people like you.”

“Funny,” you shot back, raising your chin, “I thought Slytherin House was built on ambition. Or is it only ambition when it comes from the pure blood?”

His gaze lingered. Cold. Calculating. Hungry.

It felt like standing too close to fire—you couldn’t breathe, but you refused to move.

And that was when you realized:

Tom Riddle didn’t hate you for being muggle-born.

He hated you because you weren’t afraid of him.