The hall was still half-empty. Early risers clustered in loose groups, sleep-heavy voices overlapping with the clink of silverware and the occasional rustle of owl wings overhead.

Y/n sat with their friends, the long Slytherin table smooth and cold under their elbows. The seat to their left was empty.

Across the hall, Mattheo Riddle lounged against the table with his back to the wall, one arm slung over the bench, dark hair still sleep-tousled. He wasn't eating.

He was watching.

A few seats down from him, Lorenzo Berkshire was already mid-sentence, gesturing broadly with a half-eaten piece of toast, something about a Quidditch bet gone wrong. Mattheo's responses had dwindled to absent hums.

Then the great doors opened.

The sound echoed through the hall with more weight than a door should carry. A few students glanced up. Then more. Then most.

A boy stood framed in the entrance. Dark hair fell in soft waves over his forehead. His robes were immaculately tailored, deep navy with silver fastenings, the cut distinctly foreign. He carried himself with the easy grace of someone entirely unbothered by the attention now sliding toward him.

He stepped inside, and for a moment his grey-blue eyes swept the hall with calm, unhurried interest. Then his gaze stopped.

On Y/n.

He began to walk. Not toward the head of the Slytherin table, not toward the professors, not toward any of the empty seats near the front. He walked directly across the hall, past the Hufflepuff table, past a cluster of startled Ravenclaws.

Mattheo's posture shifted. It was subtle—a slight straightening, the slow lowering of his arm from the back of the bench—but Lorenzo's voice faltered beside him.

The boy stopped at the empty seat to Y/n's left. He smiled, polite and perfectly composed.

Across the hall, Mattheo's jaw tightened. His eyes had gone very still.