Theodore Nott wasn’t listening. Not really.

The Muggle Studies professor was speaking in slow, reverent tones about Dionysian rites and tragic ecstasies—drunken gods and divine undoings—but Theodore’s mind had wandered elsewhere.

The scent of herbal tea still curled upward from the professor’s cup in pale tendrils, white and weightless, like breath in winter. They drifted past the cold-glow windows and the orchids blooming unnaturally out of season, past the Persian rug and the clutter of tiny, overly sentimental portraits dotting the walls like nervous eyes.

He should’ve felt soothed. The classroom was beautiful in that soft, curated way he appreciated—foreign and delicate and rich in detail. But none of it could reach the place his thoughts had fallen into.

Instead, his attention had settled, like a bruise, on the dull ache at his cheekbone.

It was hand shaped. Small. Red against the olive of his skin. Faint, but impossible to ignore when he looked in the mirror that morning. You’d made it.

You were still sitting across from him now—focused, attentive, playing the part of the diligent student. Your quill moved in little arcs, and the ghost of your perfume still clung to the sleeve of his jumper, reminding him of this morning. Of your anger. Of your hand. Of how you’d grabbed him by the face, trembling with frustration, and striked him. His breath had caught in his throat, not from pain exactly, but from the strange, twisted intimacy of it.

And he let you.

You came to him before class, almost in tears. Apologizing. Fingertips feathering across the fresh wound like you were afraid it might shatter him. But he hadn’t said a word. He’d simply watched you. When the others asked about the mark, he laughed—a dry, dismissive sound—and waved them off.

“It’s nothing. Don’t fuss over it.”

The room stirred again, and the professor’s voice sliced clean through his reverie.

“Do you recall what we discussed earlier?” the man intoned, not unkindly. “Of the Greeks. Of their understanding that the most beautiful things are often soaked in blood. That terror and beauty are inseparable.”

Theodore blinked once, slowly.

Beauty is terror. The phrase landed in him like a stone dropped in still water. The ripple of it moved through his bones.

He looked back at you.

You were already watching him—eyes cool and unreadable, mouth tugged into a faint, practiced smile. It would have looked kind, even charming, to anyone else. But Theodore had known you long enough to recognize the chill behind it. The part of you that could burn a boy’s face and still wipe his skin like a wound you were proud of.

So beautiful, he thought, and it made his stomach twist. So cruel.

His gaze dropped to your hands. Elegant. Precise. The same ones that bruised and soothed in equal measure.

Ti amo, nonostante tutto, he thought. I love you, despite everything.

And it was true. You terrified him. And that, he supposed, was the point.

The most beautiful things always do.