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

Chapter Eighteen - R.A.B.

Emma stood in the cold quiet with one hand pressed against her chest, forcing herself to listen to the stubborn rhythm beneath her palm as though the sound alone could keep her from splintering apart. One breath in, one breath out, she told herself, repeating the pattern again and again until the world stopped tilting beneath her feet. The night still clung to her skin, damp and sharp after the ruin of the wedding, and somewhere in the hollow ache behind her ribs she knew that if she was going to survive this, if she was going to survive Voldemort and every monstrous thing waiting in the dark, then she and Harry had to find some way back to each other. The thought made her chest tighten so violently she nearly lost the breath she had worked so hard to steady, but she closed her eyes and forced herself to begin again, one breath in, one breath out, because the bond between twins was supposed to be sacred, wasn't it? It was supposed to be unbreakable. It was supposed to be the one thing the world could not touch, and yet Emma had felt the rip in theirs long before she had ever learned how to name it. She had once tried to blame distance, Beauxbatons, letters unanswered and summers spent apart, but some buried part of her had always known the truth. The wound had opened the moment the Sorting Hat screamed Slytherin over her head and Harry looked at her as though she had become something less worthy of standing beside him. No one prepared you to love someone who hurt you by accident. No one prepared you to keep protecting someone who could be noble to everyone in the world and still careless with the person who had bled beside him the longest. The guilt of thinking it made her stomach twist because Harry had saved people, Harry had suffered, Harry had carried burdens no boy should have had to carry, and still, Emma could not stop hearing the ugly little truth whispering beneath all of it, that loving him had become toxic in ways she was terrified to admit.

"Ready?" Mattheo asked softly, and Emma opened her eyes to find him watching her with the kind of careful intensity that made it impossible to pretend he had not seen every thought move across her face. His brown eyes were dark in the dim light, restless with all the rage he was trying to bury for her sake, and when he offered his hand she took it without hesitation because touching him had become the only thing that made the ground feel solid beneath her anymore. Their fingers interlocked, his grip warm and possessive around hers, and before she could breathe herself into panic again, the world folded in on itself with the suffocating pressure of Apparition.

They appeared in front of a small, shabby coffee shop tucked beneath the dull grey London sky, its windows fogged from the warmth inside and its sign flickering weakly as though even the Muggle world had grown tired of pretending everything was normal. Emma felt the pavement beneath her shoes, felt the cool city air bite at her cheeks, felt Mattheo's hand tighten around hers before she even looked through the glass. Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat at a table near the window, hunched close together in conversation, their faces pale and drawn beneath the yellowed café lights. For a moment Emma only stared. Harry was alive. Harry was safe. Harry was sitting there with Ron and Hermione as though the world had not just burned behind them, as though his sister had not vanished from the wedding, as though there had been no frantic search clawing through his chest for her. He did not look wrecked by worry. He did not look like someone who had spent the last hour imagining every terrible thing that could have happened to her. He looked tired, frightened, focused, but not devastated, and that absence hurt worse than any visible cruelty could have.

Mattheo felt the change in her immediately, because of course he did. He had learned the language of her silence better than most people learned spoken words, and the moment her fingers loosened slightly in his, his gaze cut through the coffee shop window toward Harry with such violent hatred that Emma could feel it like heat. He had known Harry Potter for six years, had watched the arrogance, the presumption, the infuriating certainty that the world bent around his suffering while Emma's was folded away neatly in the background. He had watched Emma tear herself apart trying to protect a brother who did not know how to look for her unless he needed her. Standing there on the pavement, seeing the quiet devastation hollowing her face as she realized Harry had not been sick with fear over her absence, Mattheo wanted to hurt him. He wanted to drag him out of that booth by the collar and slam him into the brick wall until Harry finally understood what he had done. He wanted to make him look at Emma, truly look at her, and see every wound he had dismissed because he had been too busy being the boy the world called chosen. Yet Mattheo remained still, his jaw clenched hard enough to ache, because he had made a promise to himself long ago that he would not become another man who took choices from Emma. If she wanted Harry protected, Mattheo would protect him until the end. If she told him to stand down, he would stand down with blood in his mouth and murder in his heart. But if she ever gave him permission, if she ever looked at him and said the word, he knew with terrifying certainty that there would be nothing left of Harry Potter for the world to worship.