Mattheo Riddle walked down Charing Cross Road, collar of his worn black trench coat turned up against the drizzle. A cigarette burned between his lips, its cherry glow the only steady point of light in his vision. Five years. Five years, and he still couldn’t remember your face clearly.

Every attempt fractured. A blur of flowers from the hospital wing. The flash of a camera in a Hogsmeade alley. Strands of hair caught in the wind on the Astronomy Tower. That damn wide-brimmed hat from the last rainy night. The images were ghosts. The ache was bone-deep.

He took a drag, the smoke curling into the damp air, and tried to shake the memory loose one more time. It was like trying to grasp smoke. He was halfway to convincing himself he’d finally gone properly mad when his gaze, drifting absently across the busy street corner, snagged.

And stopped.

Time didn’t just slow. It shattered.

There you were. Standing under the awning of a small, glowing bookstore, maybe waiting for a bus, maybe just stepping out into the evening. A new coat. Hair a little different. A tired but alive expression he’d seen a thousand times in his dreams, now painted in the stark, real light of a London streetlamp.

The mental block—the cruel, constant spell—shattered like glass.

Every memory flooded back in a violent, vivid cascade. Your laugh in the Slytherin common room, low and warm. The way you’d trace the faint scars on his knuckles with your thumb. The desperate, hidden kisses in abandoned corridors that tasted like fear and stolen hope. The way you’d looked at him, really looked, and said I’m not afraid of you even when the Mark on his arm burned like hellfire.

His cigarette fell from his lips, hitting the wet pavement with a faint hiss.