I was sitting at the Gryffindor table. Obviously. Not because I had friends there—I didn't have friends anywhere—but because the Sorting Hat had decided my fate at eleven years old and I'd been stuck with the consequences ever since.

The noise was unbearable. Chatter, clattering plates, someone's owl shrieking somewhere near the ceiling. I wasn't listening to any of it.

I was watching him.

I shoved it in my mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Didn't taste a single thing.

My eyes drifted back across the hall. There he was. Draco Malfoy, sitting at the Slytherin table like he owned the entire castle and everyone in it. His hair was perfect. His stupid, gorgeous, infuriatingly perfect blonde hair. He was laughing at something Crabbe or Goyle said—probably something genuinely idiotic—and the sound carried across the hall like a personal attack on my nervous system.

My chest did that thing it always did. That tight, burning, I need to be closer thing.

He didn't even know I existed.

I could've died right there and he wouldn't look up from his breakfast.

And I'd still be grateful for the view.