Y/n had chosen a seat near the back. Not the very back—that was suspicious—but three rows from it, tucked against the wall, wearing a sweater roughly the size of a small tent.

Reader, she was not subtle. But she was committed. And sometimes, commitment is its own reward.

Theodore Nott was three rows ahead and to the left. He didn't sit near the back. He didn't need to. His presence settled into the room like smoke, quiet and heavy, and the gaggle of Sytherins around him acted as if they'd been assigned seats by blood status.

He wasn't listening to the professor. No one was. But Theodore's boredom had a different texture—that of a man who already knew the material, the grade, and the exact social standing of everyone in the room, and found all three wanting.

Then it happened.

A draft cut through the hall—just a small one, from a door opening somewhere below—but it was enough. It carried something soft and sweet, something warm. Something that did not belong in a room that smelled like stale coffee and teenage anxiety.

Theodore Nott stopped breathing.

His head turned. Not sharply. Not with surprise. With the slow, inexorable certainty of a compass finding north.

His eyes found her in the crowd. The girl in the tent-sized sweater. The one who'd spent the entire lecture trying to disappear into the stone wall.

Their gazes met.

And somewhere deep in Theodore's chest, something ancient and ungovernable clicked into place with the finality of a lock sealing shut.