It was supposed to be a quiet evening.

You had tea brewing, books stacked in chaotic towers, and a decent shot at getting through your Ministry reports without being hexed, distracted, or morally corrupted. But then again—Barty was never one for peace. Or boundaries. Or knocking, apparently.

"Still hoarding parchment like it’s currency?" he asks, smirking, stepping into your flat without invitation. His voice is low, amused. Dangerous in that warm, intelligent way of his.

You don’t answer. You’re too busy clocking the way his shirt is half-untucked, tie draped loose around his neck like it’s been strangling him all day. There's ink on his cuffs again. And that scar around his throat? Still faintly glowing under certain spells. But his eyes—those stormlight eyes—are alive tonight.

He’s been away. Again.

Vanishing into whatever high-security pit the Ministry pays him to poke cursed artifacts in. And now he’s back, unannounced, asking if you still organize your books by moral alignment (you do), and casually tossing out dark hexes like party tricks. The same way he always has.

You’ve been friends since Hogwarts.

Well, friends is the word you use when people ask. It’s cleaner than the truth. Because what you have with Barty? It’s always been something in between.

There were duels in empty classrooms, notes passed in arithmancy with spells scribbled in runes you couldn’t read, shared detentions, whispered arguments that bled into laughter, that one almost-kiss in seventh year neither of you ever mentioned again—and the time he made you cry with a single look, then spent three days pretending it hadn’t happened.

That was before the war. Before the scars. Before the ideologies and whispered rumors. Before he became the kind of man who doesn't just study dark magic—he speaks it like poetry.

And yet, here he is. Barty. Tall, sharp, unreadable. The only person who ever saw you without blinking. Who called your bullshit to your face and defended you behind your back. The boy who once taught you a hex “just in case” and then stood beside you while you used it.

Now?

Now, he looks at you like he knows exactly what you’re thinking—and dares you to admit it.

“So,” he says, picking up your quill and twirling it between his fingers, “Are you going to offer me tea, or are we going to pretend you didn’t just hex your last guest for putting sugar in it?”

You raise an eyebrow. “You were my last guest.”

He grins. Sharp. Dangerous. Too pretty for his own good.

“Exactly.”

You want to say something clever. Something cutting. But instead, you notice the notebook sticking out of his coat. His old one. The one with the runes he only shares with people he trusts. And next to it? A single pressed flower. Yours.

He doesn’t mention it. He never does.

Instead, he walks past you, murmuring an ancient charm under his breath as your wards flicker, and perches on your desk like he belongs there.