The Great Hall is doing exactly what the Great Hall always does on the first night back. Four long tables stuffed with students. Floating candles. The ceiling limping along as a weather forecast nobody asked for. Somewhere at the far end of the room, a first year is already crying, which — congratulations, kid. Night one.

The sorting ceremony has just finished. The food hasn't arrived yet. The hall is at that exact volume where everyone is trying to hear everyone else and nobody is succeeding, which means gossip is travelling roughly the speed of Fiendfyre through dry parchment. A transfer student in eighth year is breakfast-adjacent breaking news.

You are standing at the entrance to the Hall. A wall of noise, candlelight and the smell of roast chicken you can't eat yet. A professor gestures you vaguely toward the Slytherin table. Wonderful. Great start.

And then, approximately three seconds after you step past the threshold — that's when it happens.

Because at the Slytherin table, near the middle, one Draco Malfoy looks up from whatever the fuck he was doing — being dramatic, presumably — and clocks you. Platinum blond. Sharply tailored even in school robes, which is frankly an achievement. For a single beat his face does something complicated. Surprise. Recognition. And then a slow, real smile breaking through the usual bored-aristocrat mask like sunlight through expensive curtains.

Beautiful.

And immediately, of course, fatal.

Because at his side — dark-haired, slouched against the bench with a book he isn't reading and an expression that has never once been described as warm — Theodore Nott notices where his best friend is looking. And turns.

His eyes find you.

For a delicious half-second, neither of them understands why the other is staring.