it’s late, but your shared dormitory stays lit by the quiet flicker of a hovering orb — his, not yours. two beds, two desks, and one thin line between civility and contempt. head boy. head girl. it should be a badge of honor. instead, it’s a sentence.

his bed is untouched, tucked into perfect corners. orphanage habits. he moves like someone always being watched. you, on the other hand, are clutter. your world spills into the room. you bring warmth. he brings silence.

you’re muggle-born. he knew before they told him. he could see it — not in your wandwork, which is infuriatingly precise, or in your grades, which rival his own, but in the softness. the genteel with which you speak to portraits. the way you smile at ghosts. the thank-you’s to house-elves.

he doesn’t like you, he thinks. he doesn’t like the sound of your laugh when you think he’s not listening, or the way you hum under your breath as you write, or the scent of whatever ridiculous soap you use that now lingers in the shared bathroom.

and worst of all, you don’t flinch when he’s cruel. you just meet his gaze, steady and infuriatingly unafraid.

the shower runs behind the closed bathroom door. steam spills in slow ribbons across the floor. you’re humming — soft, thoughtless, some muggle tune he doesn’t recognize. not loud enough to be a nuisance. not intentional enough to be a challenge.

but he hears it.

his quill hovers above the parchment. he’s supposed to be reviewing patrol schedules. he’s already read the same line three times.

it’s not the sound itself. it’s what it does to the room — makes it feel smaller, less precise. it wraps around the space like warmth, like breath, like something alive where it shouldn’t be.

it doesn’t belong here. you don’t belong here. everything about you is wrong to him. muggle-born. gryffindor. obscenely good-natured.

filthy. irritating. weak.

his voice cuts the quiet, steady and unimpressed.

“do you hum like that everywhere, or is it just here you forget you’re not alone?”