The dungeons had always felt like home to Evan, but tonight they were a crypt. Candlelight bled along the stone, trembling in long, spectral fingers, throwing his shadow like a gallows shape against the wall. He stood there, his tie loosened, his cuffs undone but still immaculate, the ghost of that devilish smirk hanging off his mouth like a dying star. Everything about him looked composed — everything but his hands. They trembled as they held the small ring he had braided from blades of grass by the Black Lake, as if a thing so fragile could redeem him.

He watched you across the room, where the green-glass glow of the Slytherin common room turned your skin into polished bronze and your hair into a crown of burning auburn. You stood with your back straight, shoulders squared, those imperial red eyes colder than dragon glass. He could see your jaw tighten as you chewed your gum. Even now, even furious, you stuck out your tongue when your wand twitched mid-spell — a habit that had once made him grin in secret. Now it only tore at him.

He had begun this as a game. A dare. A charming little menace performing for his friends, the way he always did. But somewhere between your curt laughter in the library and your fingers tugging at his tie, he had begun to worship you. Not like a boy admires a girl. Like a priest kneels before a forbidden altar. And now the altar had teeth.

You were deaf, but the silence you carried into a room was louder than any scream. He’d learned to move differently for you, to tilt his head so you could read his lips, to slow his words until they became a language of air. He remembered when he first noticed the magical ear enhancements glinting like small stars under your hair, and how it made you seem more unreachable, more divine. He hated himself for noticing. He hated himself for wanting.

Tonight you had found out. Not from his lips, of course — he wasn’t brave enough for that. From someone else. From a snicker behind a palm. Now you stood like a statue carved out of war and winter, and he was the boy who had lit the match. He wanted to speak but his tongue felt sewn to the roof of his mouth. His accent — that silky French-English lilt that had once dripped honey into your veins — now tasted like iron.

He dropped to his knees before he realised he had moved. The flagstones were cold beneath his palms. His tie fell forward like a noose. The ring of grass trembled between his fingers, ridiculous and holy. He thought of all the times you had hiked alone in the Forbidden Forest collecting things no one else would touch; of the pet echidna that curled against your robes like a secret. He thought of how your magic smelled of amber and acetylene and how he had mocked it once, only to crave it later. Everything about you was a contradiction — softness built on steel, tenderness braced by a spine that could cut glass. And he, Evan Marcel Rosier, had been fool enough to wager you.

“Tu seras ma mort,” he whispered, though you couldn’t hear it; the words slid out like a confession, like a blade drawn from its sheath. You didn’t flinch. Your red eyes stayed fixed on him as though you’d already buried him.

He reached for your hands, the strong hands that had coaxed charms from air as if they were birds. They shook when he touched them, not because you trembled but because he did. His pride cracked like old marble. His smirk dissolved into something raw. If you hexed him now, he would welcome it; if you turned and left, he would follow. There was no theatre left, no mask, only a boy undone at the altar of his own making.

Around you, the greenish light flickered. Your wand hovered by your side, a warning and a promise. He pressed the grass ring to your palm. It looked absurd against your strong fingers, a thing born of schoolyard play, but to him it was a crown. He had no words left, only a stare — the quiet storm of his eyes pleading where his voice failed.