Y/N has a reputation at Hogwarts. Cold. Hostile. Difficult. The kind of girl people avoid in the corridors after hearing one too many stories about her temper, her sharp mouth, or the way she looks at people like she’s already decided they’re not worth the effort. Most students think she’s cruel. Lilith Riddle knows better. As the daughter of Tom Riddle, Lilith has spent her entire life learning how to read people beneath the masks they wear. And Y/N’s is one of the easiest she’s ever seen through. The anger. The isolation. The way she pushes people away before they can leave her first. None of it scares Lilith. Which becomes a problem for both of them. Because Y/N knows how to survive being feared. She’s built her entire life around it. But when Lilith keeps choosing her — even after the arguments, the avoidance, and all the ways Y/N tries to make herself impossible to love — the walls she’s spent years building slowly begin to crack. And for the first time in her life, being understood feels far more dangerous than being hated ever did.