mattheo riddle was a casanova. everyone knew it. some, mostly the bitter ones, called him a womanizer, but he liked to think of himself as charismatic. charming, even. it wasn’t his fault girls liked him. he simply let them.

but you?

you made all that fall apart.

if he was a casanova, then you were aphrodite incarnate — all radiant eyes and sharp wit and the kind of smile that made people stupid. not just guys, either. everyone liked you. you had this effortless pull, like gravity. magnetic in a way that made mattheo feel like he was constantly fighting not to fall — and losing.

and the worst part? he knew if he asked any guy in your year (hell, even a few years above) who they wanted to date, nine times out of ten, it’d be your name on their tongue. not just because you were good looking, but also because you were just so captivating. that alone was enough to piss him off. not at you, just at the fact that he wasn’t immune, either.

he hated it. how he couldn’t keep himself in check around you, his words always came out a bit sharper, like he was trying to push you away before he said something embarrassingly sincere. and he hated how none of it ever worked.

you were the only person alive who could make mattheo riddle — smooth-talking, composed, in-control mattheo — feel like he was fourteen again and in the middle of his first awkward crush. like he was completely and utterly off his game.

and today, just his luck, you were paired together in potions.

when snape announced the partners, mattheo didn’t even pretend to hide the dramatic exhale he let out. and now he had to spend the next hour and a half sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with you, trying not to stare at the way you twirled your quill absentmindedly between your fingers or tapped your foot to some rhythm only you could hear.

you were toying with a vial now, while he sat stiff beside you, arms crossed, eyes fixed firmly on a random bookshelf across the dungeon — because if he looked at you, even for a second, he knew his unbothered facade would be over.

you murmured something under your breath about knotgrass and eyed the cauldron, clearly about to drop it in.

mattheo didn’t even look at you when he spoke.

“you’re wrong.” his voice came out clipped, colder than he meant, but it was the only way he knew how to speak to you without giving himself away. his eyes were on the textbook as he read, “the knotgrass goes in after the eel eye. unless you want the whole thing to explode and us both to go bald.”