Chapter 30 Nighttime Reflection
The Hufflepuff dormitory was quiet in the way only late nights at Hogwarts ever were—not silent, but softened. Candles burned low in their sconces, golden light spilling over patchwork quilts and neatly stacked trunks. Somewhere down the corridor, someone laughed in their sleep. Another student turned over with a sigh.
Liora lay awake.
She stared at the canopy above her bed, tracing the carved vines with her eyes, her thoughts circling back to the same person no matter how hard she tried to steer them elsewhere.
Mattheo Riddle.
She exhaled slowly, pressing the heel of her palm to her chest as if that might quiet the strange, restless warmth there.
She hadn’t meant for it to happen—not the thinking, not the noticing, not the way her mind kept replaying the smallest moments. The way his voice dropped when he spoke honestly. The way his eyes softened when he laughed—really laughed, just once. The way he always positioned himself between her and danger without ever announcing it.
He was a contradiction.
Everything she’d been warned about Slytherin told her to stay away from boys like him. Guarded. Sharp. Dark around the edges. And yet, everything she felt around Mattheo told her the opposite. That beneath the reputation and the legacy and the silence, there was someone trying—fiercely—to be more than what the world expected.
She rolled onto her side, hugging her pillow.
Why do I trust him so easily?
The question echoed in her thoughts, unanswered.
She thought back to the courtyard, the way he’d spoken about his family—carefully, as if even the words themselves could cut him if handled wrong. The pain there hadn’t been exaggerated or theatrical. It had been quiet. Enduring. The kind of pain people learned to live with rather than heal.
And yet… he’d let her see it.
Just a glimpse. But enough.
Her fingers twitched, remembering the warmth of his hand around her wrist in the entrance hall, steadying her. Remembering how safe she’d felt standing beside him in Hogsmeade, even when the alley had closed in around her.
I don’t feel unsafe around you.
She’d meant it.
The thought startled her with its clarity.
She sat up, pushing her hair back from her face, and reached for the green-bound book resting on her bedside table. Magique Obscura. The ancient map still tucked carefully inside. The mystery of it lingered, but tonight it wasn’t spells or secrets that held her attention.
It was the boy who’d handed it to her.
She opened the book at random, eyes skimming a passage without really reading it.
Some magic awakens not through incantation, but through proximity—through the collision of intent and instinct.
Her breath caught.
She snapped the book shut, cheeks warm.
“Stop,” she whispered to herself.
She wasn’t foolish. She knew Mattheo was complicated. That his world carried shadows hers didn’t. That getting close to him could mean stepping into something she didn’t yet understand.
But she also knew this:
He had never lied to her.
Never mocked her curiosity.
Never made her feel small.
And that mattered.
Liora lay back down, pulling the covers closer, her thoughts finally slowing as exhaustion crept in. As sleep edged closer, one last image surfaced unbidden—the way Mattheo had looked at her on the bridge, torn between distance and something far more dangerous.
Something that looked a lot like wanting.
Far beneath the castle, where the air was cooler and the torches burned with a greenish hue, Mattheo Riddle stared at the ceiling of his dormitory and did not sleep.
Slytherin House had settled into its usual nighttime rhythm. Low murmurs. The rustle of sheets. The faint drip of water echoing through stone corridors. Enzo snored softly from the bed across the room.
Mattheo lay flat on his back, one arm flung over his eyes.
It wasn’t working.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her.
Liora’s smile.
The way her laugh had caught him completely off guard.
The steady certainty in her voice when she said she trusted him.
You shouldn’t look at me like that.
He clenched his jaw.
He had meant it. Merlin, he had meant it. Because when she looked at him—really looked—it was like standing too close to a fire. Warmth and danger all at once. Temptation wrapped in gentleness.
He rolled onto his side, staring at the dark stone wall.
This wasn’t part of the plan.
He didn’t have plans where she was concerned. That was the problem.
People didn’t usually surprise him. He understood ambition. Fear. Desire. He knew how to read motives like spells in a book. But Liora didn’t fit into anything he recognized. She asked questions without accusation. She offered trust without demand. She saw him without flinching.
And worst of all—
She made him want to be better.
That terrified him.
Because wanting meant weakness.
Attachment.
Loss.
His fingers curled into the blanket.
He thought of the way she’d looked at him when she defended Slytherin, when she said loyalty meant more if it was chosen. No one had ever said that to him before. No one had ever framed his house as something worth understanding instead of fearing.
He exhaled sharply.
You’re getting in too deep.
He knew it. Knew it in the same instinctive way he recognized dark magic humming beneath the castle stones. If anyone noticed—if the wrong people noticed—she could become leverage. A target.
And yet, when he imagined pulling away, imagined deliberately avoiding her, something in his chest twisted painfully.
He couldn’t do it.
Not yet.
He sat up, running a hand through his hair, eyes burning with wakefulness.
Across the room, Enzo muttered something incoherent and turned over.
Mattheo ignored him.
Instead, he let himself think it—fully, honestly, without restraint.
He thought about the way Liora trusted too easily and how he wanted to protect that instead of exploiting it. He thought about how she laughed at danger and made it seem smaller. He thought about how, for the first time in his life, someone looked at him and didn’t see a name, a legacy, or a threat.
They saw him.
The realization settled heavy and electric in his chest.
“This is bad,” he muttered under his breath.
Because he knew the truth now.
He wasn’t just watching her anymore.
He was thinking about her endlessly.
And that—far more than dark magic, far more than whispers or expectations—was the most dangerous thing of all.