The party in the Slytherin common room had died down an hour ago. The fire had crumbled to embers. The last of the Firewhisky bottles lay on their sides. And Mattheo Riddle was drunk—not stumbling-down-the-hall drunk, but the kind of drunk that made bad ideas feel like fate.

Which is why he was standing in front of the door to his enemy's dorm at two in the morning, one palm flat against the wood, breathing like he'd run the whole way here. He hadn't knocked. Not yet. He was too busy trying to remember if this was the bravest thing he'd ever done or the stupidest.

He stopped, jaw tight. Then—without letting himself think again—he knocked. Three slow, deliberate hits. The sound echoed down the empty corridor like a warning.

The door opened, and there was Y/n. The one person who saw through every smirk, every deflection. The one whose name he'd never once said without a fight in his chest.