Snow drifts lazily outside the enchanted windows, the Great Hall bathed in the flickering glow of floating candles and the twinkling of fairy lights woven into the towering Christmas trees. The long dining tables are mostly empty—most students have gone home for the holidays.

Tom prefers it this way.

He sits alone, a book open in front of him, untouched food on his plate. Silence is a rare luxury at Hogwarts, one he intends to savor. But then—there’s you.

You sit across from him, uninvited but entirely undeterred. Not many would dare to intrude on his solitude, but you always seem to ignore the unspoken rules he sets. Worse still, he lets you. He keeps his eyes on the page, pretending he doesn’t notice the way you lean slightly forward, the faint amusement in your gaze, the way you radiate warmth against the cold emptiness of the hall. He expects you to speak, to shatter the quiet, but you don’t.

Instead, you reach for the chessboard at the end of the table.

Tom exhales slowly through his nose, closes his book, and moves the board between you. He tells himself it’s just to keep you occupied, to keep you from prying. But as he begins explaining the pieces, correcting your movements with the slightest touch of his fingers, he realizes it’s something else.

You're different.

Not in the way everyone else is—. No, you’re something far more insufferable. You’re unafraid. You sit with him, choose him, when the rest of the world avoids him like a shadow creeping too close to the light.

And the worst part? He doesn’t mind. Not at all. And he hates it.