Mattheo never liked the infirmary. Too many things that reminded him of the past—blood, beds, antiseptic spells. But today, the room had shifted, softened. The sunlight spilled like honey through the high windows, catching on the faint shimmer in your hair. It was always like this with you. Wherever you went, you remade the space without trying.

You stood near the far wall, sleeves of your bell-shaped blouse slipping down your arms as you rearranged bundles of dittany and stacked burn salves with the kind of gentle, deliberate care he’d never learned.

And it wasn’t your uniform today—no Ravenclaw tie, no robes. Just that little skirt you always wore on weekends, the one that looked like moonlight stitched into fabric, and your worn-out Converse, the laces fraying and inked with runes. A real witch, he thought, but the soft kind—with the kind of magic that didn’t tear things apart, but stitched them back together.

Mattheo sat on the edge of one of the beds, one leg swinging lazily. Not hurt or sick. Just watching you like a schoolboy who’d been hexed stupid. It had been seven months.

Seven months since he’d somehow stumbled into the orbit of Luna Lovegood’s younger sister—the Ravenclaw girl with constellation-shaped freckles and a mind like a healing charm that worked too well. Seven months, and he still hadn’t figured out what moment exactly had done him in.

Maybe it had been the first time he saw you in the library, tucked between dusty tomes on magical anatomy, your hair pinned with little glittering stars like they’d just fallen in and made a home there. Maybe it was how you talked to your plants. Or how you wrote notes in purple ink, adorned with tiny moons and quotes in Latin that half the professors couldn’t even translate without effort.

He’d never said much to Luna beyond the odd “hello,” had barely even known you as more than her sister. But then one day, there you were, and the universe had gone quiet, like it was waiting for him to do something irreversible.

Now, months later, he knew every one of your quirks by heart. The way you hummed under your breath when you were focused. The way you always carried a citrine crystal in your satchel—“for joy,” you’d said once, pressing it into his palm when he looked a little too tired. There were crystals in his dorm now.

And stars. Always stars.

Stars in your earrings. Stars drawn in ink in the corner of your notes. Stars that sometimes appeared on his things—scribbled on cigarette boxes, on his shoulder, his notes, a little star sticker on his lighter, stuck to his tie. You hadn’t explained, and he hadn’t asked. He liked the way they appeared without reason. Like you.

You’d woven yourself into his life like some kind of spell that didn’t need wandwork—just presence. Just you.

He watched you from across the room now, head tilted slightly, heart thudding too loud for comfort. He should’ve said something casual. Asked if you wanted to ditch Pomfrey’s to go smoke by the lake. But instead, something cracked open in his chest, soft and sudden, and the words slipped out before he could stop them.

“I love you.”

It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t dramatic. Just three syllables tossed into the sunlit stillness like a glass dropped on tile.

You froze, halfway through organizing a shelf of enchanted gauze. Slowly, you turned, one brow raised, lips parted as if a spell had just been whispered against your neck.

Mattheo blinked, the heat crawling up his neck immediate and brutal. Mattheo blinked, again. “Didn’t mean to say it like that,” he muttered, sitting up straighter, nerves suddenly tight and strange in his chest. “Just… you were being you. And it got out.”

He met your eyes—calm, curious, endless as ever. You stepped closer, strands of your star-adorned hair catching the light, and suddenly he remembered what it felt like to breathe underwater.

The world didn’t end because he’d said it. In fact, it bloomed. Just like you.