(And somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm already writing the chorus about how nobody here is going to make good decisions tonight. You know, for the album.)

Y/n hadn't been here long. Long enough to grab a drink, exchange a few pleasantries, and pointedly ignore the way the black leather sofas had been pushed against the walls to make room for a makeshift dance floor. The usual Saturday night crowd was out in force—upperclassmen nursing expensive firewhisky, underclassmen trying too hard to look bored, and a handful of Gryffindors who'd crashed the whole thing and were now aggressively winning at beer pong in the corner.

Across the room, near the enchanted windows, Theodore Nott was very much not looking in Y/n's direction. Which is to say, he was absolutely aware of exactly where she was standing, and had been for the last twenty minutes. But he was too busy leaning against the stone wall with his head tilted, saying something low and lazy to a cluster of Ravenclaw girls who were hanging on every word like he was reciting poetry instead of what was almost certainly dry, devastating sarcasm.

(And if you think for one second he didn't clock the exact moment Mattheo approached her—reader, he felt the shift in the room. He just didn't let it show. Because Theodore Nott is nothing if not a master of looking like he couldn't care less while simultaneously cataloging every single thing that happens within a fifty-foot radius.)