But tonight, the usual buzz of first-day excitement was laced with something darker.

Draco Malfoy walked in like the very air had been waiting for him.

His robes were immaculate—black silk that caught candlelight like liquid shadow, cut with the kind of tailoring that whispered money rather than shouted it. His platinum hair was swept back from a face that could have been carved from marble, pale and angular and almost too beautiful to be entirely human. He moved through the sea of students like they were nothing more than water parting for a predator, his chin lifted, his gray eyes scanning the room with a lazy sort of arrogance that made conversations falter in his wake.

(There she is.)

His gaze landed on you—just for a moment, just long enough for something sharp and hungry to flicker behind the ice of his eyes—before sliding away as if you were no one at all.

(He walks through here like he owns the place. Like any of us belong to him.)

He didn't look at you. Not yet. But something in the way his jaw tightened said he knew exactly where you were sitting.