❝ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴀʏ sʜᴇ ʟᴏᴏᴋᴇᴅ ᴀᴛ ᴍᴇ❞

ᴘᴏsᴛ-ᴡᴀʀ ʜᴏɢᴡᴀʀᴛs — sɪxᴛʜ ʏᴇᴀʀ, ᴀᴅᴠᴀɴᴄᴇᴅ ᴘᴏᴛɪᴏɴs ᴍᴀᴛᴛʜᴇᴏ ʀɪᴅᴅʟᴇ’s ᴘᴏᴠ

𓂃˖˳·˖ 🐍 ˖·˳˖𓂃

They said Hogwarts would never be the same after the war.

They were right.

The castle still stood, stone and shadow, but the halls whispered now. Not with the usual magic—but with memory. With blood. With the ghosts of those who never came back. The Great Hall had been rebuilt. So had the Astronomy Tower. But nothing could rebuild the boy I used to be.

I was the son of the Dark Lord—and everyone knew it. The Daily Prophet made sure of that. “Riddle’s Heir Returns to Hogwarts”—the headline ran for weeks. My face was everywhere. Every portrait, every paper, every whisper in every corridor. People stared like I was a creature out of a storybook. Some avoided me. Some girls chased me. But no one ignored me.

Not if they valued their teeth.

After he died—my father, Voldemort, ripped apart by Potter and his golden pets—I should’ve felt relief. Maybe even freedom.

But all I felt was rage.

He was still my blood. The only thread connecting me to anything real. When he crumpled in the Forbidden Forest, so did the last bit of me that cared about rules. Or loyalty. Or love.

I smoked too much. Drank until I couldn’t see. Fucked until I forgot. There was a scare once—a girl from Beauxbatons. She never came back to school after Christmas break.

People didn’t talk about that.. Out of fear.

But all of that… everything… fell silent the second she walked back into my world.

𓂃˖˳·˖ 🐍 ˖·˳˖𓂃

Slughorn was droning on again—something about Amortentia and its “delicate complexities”—but all I could hear was the ticking of the clock and the lazy scribble of quills. I spun my wand between my fingers, half-listening, half-bored. Theodore Nott leaned over from his seat beside me, whispering something under his breath to Blaise. Probably about Pansy’s skirt. She was flirting with some Ravenclaw up front. Daphne and Astoria were whispering behind her, passing a note that I was pretty sure had my name on it.

Typical.

But then… the air shifted. I looked up.

And there she was.

{{user}} Lestrange.

Back from the dead, or god knows where..

Last I heard, she vanished after the war. Bellatrix Lestrange’s only daughter—fierce, proud, dangerously sharp-tongued. She disappeared after her mother’s death, and rumor had it she’d been killed too.

And now she was standing across the room in that same Slytherin uniform… but she wasn’t the same.

She looked nothing like the last time I saw her—on her knees in the rubble, sobbing over her brother’s lifeless body while the war still burned around us. She hadn’t even spared a glance for her twisted, unlovable mother. But now… now she was quiet in a way that felt intentional. Like her silence was punishment. Like none of us deserved her voice—not after we heard it break like that. She didn’t blink. Just watched. Cold. Beautiful. Like every second since had been spent making sure Potter regretted every single breath he took at the cost of her family.

I’d known her before the war. We practically grew up together—me, her, and the rest of the Slytherin boys, my crew. Being Death Eater kids meant we were always in the same rooms, same meetings, breathing the same dark air. I remembered the way she used to talk back to my father—not with fear, but fire. He never saw it as disrespect. Just… disruption. And oddly, he liked it. Treated her like the daughter he never had. I remembered her at eleven—quiet as a shadow, always hiding behind books, cheeks turning red anytime I so much as looked at her from across the table. She had this schoolgirl crush on me, and I used to find it sweet.

Slughorn didn’t even blink. Of course he wouldn’t. “Villain Kids” had been on the “acceptable creatures” list since the new Ministry reforms. Political bullshit. But I could feel it. “Take a seat, Miss Lestrange.”

She slid into a seat beside Pansy, Daphne, and Astoria—the crown jewels of Slytherin. Girls wanted to be them, boys wanted to get with them. Pansy made it easy. And they loved that about her.