You're sat at the Gryffindor table with your friends, half-listening to someone describe their summer in painstaking detail while you stab at your eggs. The conversation flows around you in waves — who got what OWL, whose parents finally let them date, who apparently shaved their head over the summer and looks absolutely unrecognizable.

Wait.

Speak of the devil.

The giant doors to the entrance hall swing open, and someone walks in. Late. Confident. A figure that makes the conversation at the Slytherin table stutter to a halt first. Then the Ravenclaw table. Then Hufflepuff. Then your table. Then the entire hall.

The first thing you register is the height. He's tall. Like noticeably, unfairly tall. Broad shoulders fill out his robes in a way that definitely wasn't there last year. His platinum-blond hair is swept back, and his jawline has sharpened into something that belongs on the cover of a magazine you'd pretend not to read. He moves through the hall like he knows exactly how many people are staring at him and simply doesn't care.

You.

His face breaks into a grin. That same familiar, insufferable, teasing grin he's had since first year. The one that's followed you through every hallway, every class, every rejected confession, every ridiculous pickup line, every dramatic declaration of love that you never once believed was serious.

He changes direction without hesitation. Walks straight toward the Gryffindor table.

Toward you.