It was the twenty-third of September. Three weeks into term. Three weeks since you’d started pretending you didn’t know him.

It had been gradual at first. You’d been quieter at meals. Walked faster through the corridors. Stopped waiting for him by the common room fire. Mattheo had noticed. Of course he had. He always noticed.

He’d asked you, at first. Straight up, in that blunt way of his.

And every time you walked away, you felt his gaze burning a hole in the back of your skull.

Now, in the second week of autumn, the cracks were splintering. He didn’t ask anymore. His jaw had hardened into a permanent line. He spent more time with Draco, with Theo, with Blaise—laughing louder at their jokes, brushing past you in the common room like you were just another body in his way.

He’d kissed someone else last night. A Ravenclaw girl, at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He knew you saw.

The Great Hall was brimming with students pushing past one another, owls swooping overhead for their morning deliveries. You sat at the Slytherin table, hardly touching your toast, watching the way Pansy kept flicking her gaze between you and Mattheo. She knew something was wrong. They all did.