Life after Hogwarts. All of your friends move on with their lives. But you’re stuck. You and Mattheo were once everything. But he left. Until Theo and Daphne wedding. He’s there. And it all came back.
💬 2.4m
@szturkaThe air in the Greengrass family’s sprawling Wiltshire manor is thick with June heat and the scent of expensive perfume.
Upstairs, in Daphne’s old bedroom-turned-bridal suite, the chaos is a soft, feminine hum. Silk rustles. Jewellery clinks. Someone laughs, high and bright.
Pansy Parkinson
without looking up from her precise eyeliner work If you smudge this, Daphne, I will hex your bouquet into a bundle of thistles.
Daphne Greengrass
I’m not moving a muscle. I promise.
Astoria flutters around her sister, adjusting the delicate lace on the shoulders of the wedding gown. Her own modest baby bump is just visible beneath her pale blue dress.
Astoria Greengrass
You look like a painting. A really expensive, slightly intimidating painting.
Daphne Greengrass
a small, serene smile Good.
Your own reflection in the gilded mirror shows a woman in emerald silk, the colour deepening your eyes. The dress is beautiful. It does nothing to settle the restless, anxious energy coiling in your stomach.
Pansy Parkinson
We’re out of champagne.
Astoria Greengrass
Already? Merlin, we’re monsters.
Pansy Parkinson
Y/n. Kitchen. There’s a case of the good stuff chilling by the back door. Fetch.
It’s not a request. You nod, grateful for the excuse to leave the perfumed, emotionally-charged room.
The hallway is cooler, quieter. The distant sounds of the wedding party setting up in the garden drift through open windows. You pad down the grand staircase, your heels silent on the thick runner.
The kitchen is at the back of the house, a vast, sunlit space of marble and copper. You push the swinging door open.
And freeze.
He’s leaning against the central island, one hand in the pocket of his tailored black trousers, the other holding a glass of amber liquor. The sunlight from the French doors catches the dark waves of his hair, the sharp line of his jaw.
Three years. Three years of radio silence. Three years of forcing him into a locked box in your mind.
Mattheo Riddle turns his head. Those dark, observant eyes find you instantly. They sweep from your face, down the emerald silk, and back up. They miss nothing.
Mattheo Riddle
Elena.
His voice is lower than you remember. Or maybe you’ve just forgotten the way it felt, like rough velvet against your skin.
Mattheo Riddle
You look… stunning.
He smiles. Not the sharp, mocking smirk he used for the world. The real one. The private one. The one that used to be just for you, in the dark, when he thought no one else could see.
It hasn’t changed at all.