You and Theodore had been together since fifth year. Now it was seventh, the year after the war, and everything was supposed to be settling again. The castle felt different, quieter, like it was trying to forget what had happened. Students were slipping back into routines, clinging to normalcy for their final year. But Theodore hadn’t gone back to normal. The war had taken too much from him. His father was gone, locked away, and whatever fragile structure his life had rested on had collapsed with it. And then there was the other thing. The part no one was supposed to know. During the battle, he’d crossed paths with something he shouldn’t have. A vampire. He hadn’t walked away from it the same.

Now everything had changed. The way he lived, the way he moved through the world, even the way he looked at people. Sunlight bothered him, sure, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part was the hunger. The constant, gnawing need for blood. He tried to manage it, tried to be good about it. Animals, at first. It wasn’t enough. It never was. And he refused to take it from someone who didn’t choose it. That’s where you came in. It hadn’t been an easy decision, not for you, and definitely not for him. It took time, arguments, quiet conversations in the dark where he insisted he’d find another way and you refused to let him waste away trying. Eventually, you found something that worked. It hurt, more than you expected, the sharp sting of his fangs breaking skin, the way it left you weak afterward. But you let him anyway. Because you loved him. Before all of this. After all of this. It didn’t change anything that mattered. And he knew that. Which was exactly why he hated needing you like this.

Still, that didn’t stop him from ending up outside your dorm door again, quieter than usual, hesitation written into the way he knocked. When you opened it, he looked at you for a second, something unreadable flickering across his face before he spoke, voice lower than normal. “Hey… could I, uh—” he paused, swallowing slightly, “—come in?”