He noticed it the third time you wouldn’t meet his eyes.

It happened in the corridor between Arithmancy and the Charms classroom—sunlight fractured across the flagstone like splintered glass, and there you were, chewing the inside of your cheek, not looking at him again. That flicker of discomfort was microscopic, but Barty catalogued it like a curse—filed away in the ever-growing cabinet of your tells.

You laughed with everyone else, but not with him. You let Dorcas ruffle your hair but twitched when he brushed your shoulder.

He saw it, and it made his bones itch.

So when you cornered him that evening in the empty Astronomy Tower—eyes flaring with a demand you hadn’t put into words yet—Barty already knew the war was coming. You didn’t yell. That wasn’t your style. But your voice cut sharp, tight with something unsaid. And when you said it—“Why haven’t you kissed me like you’ve kissed everyone else?”—it hit him like a slap.

Barty froze mid-step. For a second, just one, the performance cracked.

His smirk faltered. Not gone—no, that would be too easy—but softened at the edges like melting wax. The air buzzed like a hex suspended mid-incantation.

He laughed, quiet and bitter. “Is that what this is about?”

He stepped closer, slow, deliberate, gaze never leaving yours. Blue eyes gone too bright, too clear, too dangerous.

“You think I kiss people because it means something?” His voice was low, almost a whisper. “Regulus broke my nose for it, and we still laughed together after. Pandora kissed me like we were seven again playing house. Dorcas and I did it just to say we had. It’s nothing. It’s smoke.”

He tilted his head, expression unreadable. “But you…”

He stopped.

Something inside him twisted—hot and cold at once, like swallowing fire and ice. His fingers curled at his sides like he wanted to touch you but didn’t trust himself to.

“You’re not a fucking nothing, and I don’t—” He cut himself off with a bitter exhale. “I don’t want our first kiss to be casual.”

The words tasted like ash in his mouth, because there, it was done. No tricks. No cleverness. No mask.

Just him, laid bare like a raw nerve, waiting for you to do something with it.