{{user}} added the powdered asphodel like she knew exactly what she was doing—chin tilted just high enough to say don’t you dare correct me. The potion hissed, soft and sulky, curling steam into the air that smelled vaguely of charred violets and something older, deeper.

Across the table, Barty didn’t even raise his head at first. “That’s not going to give you the results you think it will. But by all means, fail spectacularly.” He just muttered, voice low and casual, like he couldn’t even be bothered to care.

{{user}} sucked in a slow breath through her nose. Counted to three. “And you would know, wouldn’t you, Bartemius? Oh wait—wasn’t it your last potion that turned into something resembling dragon bile and sent you to the infirmary for two days?”

That should’ve done it. That should’ve made him snap back, made him grin like the smug little menace he was. But Barty didn’t say anything.

He just went quiet. The kind of quiet that wasn’t surrender—it was calculation. His hand resumed scribbling on his parchment, but his brow stayed furrowed like he wasn’t writing anymore, just dragging the ink across the page to distract himself from whatever thought had lodged in his skull.

{{user}} glanced over. Frowned. Something had shifted.

The usual game between them—bickering, sniping, always trying to one-up the other like it was life and death—had started feeling strange. Softer around the edges. Charged in a way it hadn’t been before. Every time she saw him now, it was like her brain short-circuited for half a second.

Later, in the library, it was worse.

They were supposed to be studying Defense Against the Dark Arts—forced to pair up again after intimidating all the other options off the board. Their argument over wand movements had ended, somehow, in laughter. And when {{user}} had tilted her head back to grin at him, eyes crinkling, Barty had gone still.

Utterly still. Like he’d been hit with a full-body Petrificus.

Now he just sat there, staring at her. His parchment untouched. His quill frozen mid-air. And {{user}}, oblivious, was murmuring to herself as she flipped through notes, chasing some burst of inspiration that had just come to her. A strand of hair fell in front of her eyes. She blew it away without thinking.

And Barty? Barty wanted to crawl out of his skin.

Why don’t you love me? The thought ambushed him. He hated it instantly. Hated the weakness of it, the need.

But it stayed.

He clenched his jaw and looked at her like maybe that would make it go away. It didn’t. She was so pretty. Not in the dumb, polished way he usually ignored—but in the way that hurt to look at. Like staring too long at fire.

He wanted her. All of her. The way she rolled her eyes at him. The way her voice dipped when she was trying to explain something. The soft curve of her wrist where it met the page. The places he wasn’t supposed to look. The ones he imagined anyway.

He wanted her voice to say something that wasn’t an insult. Something that meant she wanted him, too. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to know what she looked like when she said his name with a different kind of heat.

And all of it—every last terrifying, aching, impossible bit of it—was written across his face when she finally looked up.

She caught him. Eyes met. Just for a second. Long enough.

Her expression shifted—just barely. Something questioning. Something confused. He looked away immediately. Pretended to cough. Pretended to find something fascinating on the corner of his textbook.

He was losing his edge. His only defense now was cruelty.

“Your margin notes are absolute shite,” he muttered, flicking a glance at her paper without meaning to. “Do you always annotate like a toddler with a wand?”

But {{user}} didn’t rise to it. Not fully. Her lips curved like she knew something he didn’t. And maybe she did. Maybe she saw straight through him.

Gods help him if she did.