War, Love, and Riddle //Mattheo Riddle x OC

Chapter Ten - He's Off Doing Scary Boyfriend Things

Mattheo liked Professor Lupin. Liked was too small a word; he respected him, trusted him in a way he trusted almost no other adult at Hogwarts. Lupin treated him without the quirked lips and careful distance most professors reserved for a Riddle. That alone felt like mercy and, more dangerously, like permission to be more than the sum of his name.

He wore the privilege lightly, letting it sour a little when others bristled. Professor Burbage had been incandescent the year Mattheo became the youngest Head Boy in Hogwarts history; she'd marched straight to Dumbledore to protest the decision. Mattheo had enjoyed every indignant whisper that followed. If he was exceptional, let them gnash their teeth. He did not need their applause.... only Emma's, and the quiet acceptance of professors like Lupin.

In class, his arm looped possessively around Emma's waist. Lupin's classroom smelled of lemon oil and old books; the wardrobe in the corner trembled faintly, promising mischief. Non-verbal casting was the day's exercise, a lesson many wizards never mastered. Mattheo relished the challenge. He admired Emma. More than admired. Watching her had become the dangerous, delicious work of his days.

When it was his turn, he pushed his fear down until it was a single, steady thing behind his teeth. Boggarts had taught him, years ago, the cruel geometry of fear: facing it didn't make it polite. In third year the thing the wardrobe had produced bore his father's face and left him carcassed with humiliation. He'd sealed that memory tightly away.... until now.

Emma gave him a quick, wry wink before he stepped forward. He drew breath and looked into the wardrobe.

It wasn't his father. It was worse: a version of Emma with cloudy green eyes, skin gone waxen, moving with the soft, inevitable wrongness of something that no longer belonged to life. The classroom, usually a blur of movement and comment, shrank to a narrow ring of faces around him. For a heartbeat he could not move. Every muscle bunched. The world rearranged itself around the image of her corpse walking toward him.

Lupin, whose face had been an island of composed curiosity, reached for his wand. Mattheo stopped him with a small shake of the head and a whisper: They can't see me weak. He needed to be the boy who did not break in front of an audience. He needed to be more.

So, he emptied himself of everything that might betray him. He tamped grief down until it was a cool, focused blade. The spell was a thing of muscle memory, the arc of intent, the image in his mind. Riddikulus unfurled inside his head, a bright, private joke. The boggart buckled; the dead woman's features blurred and resolved into something ridiculous, a white sheet ghost, barefoot, prancing with a ridiculous little dance. Laughter flickered around the room like sunlight.

"Excellent, Mr. Riddle," Lupin said, and the warmth in the words felt like a reprieve.

Emma crossed the classroom the moment the bench emptied. She rubbed at his arm with one hand, small and grounding, whispering nonsense to stitch him back together. Lupin watched them, then asked her to slip out to her next class so he could have a word with Mattheo alone.

When the door closed behind her, the air between professor and student changed. Lupin took a seat, folded his hands and studied him with the uncomplicated, precise concern of someone who had seen brilliance and fragility entwined too often to separate them.

"Do you know what they've asked of her?" Lupin asked quietly.

Mattheo's face shifted: anger, then raw, stunned hurt. The room spun, and suddenly words were knives. "Yes," he said, the single syllable small and certain. "I know enough."

Lupin had always regarded Mattheo Riddle with a quiet respect. The boy's gifts were undeniable, a natural Legilimens, sharp and perceptive beyond his years and yet they unsettled nearly everyone around him. Too close to his father, the whispers went. Too great a risk, the Ministry insisted. Dumbledore had allowed him here anyway, gambling that the boy was more than the cursed name he carried.