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

Chapter Twenty Four - Welcome Home

Several days had passed since Malfoy Manor, though time felt strange at Shell Cottage. The hours blurred together beneath gray skies and the endless rhythm of waves battering the cliffs below, each day indistinguishable from the last except for the growing knot of dread that had taken permanent residence in Mattheo's chest. Everyone insisted Emma was recovering. Fleur smiled whenever Emma finished a meal. Harry looked relieved every time she joined them downstairs. Even Ron had stopped hovering over her as though she might collapse at any moment. They saw color returning to her cheeks and bruises fading from her skin and mistook survival for healing.

Mattheo knew better.

The knowledge haunted him in ways he couldn't explain to anyone else because nobody else shared a bed with her. Nobody else felt her body trembling in the middle of the night when nightmares dragged her back into the cellar beneath Malfoy Manor. Nobody else heard the sharp intake of breath she tried to muffle whenever she rolled onto her side too quickly. Nobody else noticed that she reached for walls, tables, and doorframes whenever she thought she wasn't being watched. The cuts Bellatrix had carved into her skin were healing. The damage hidden beneath them was another matter entirely.

Emma stood near the small kitchen table studying a map Harry had abandoned earlier that morning, one hand braced casually against the wood while the other traced invisible paths across parchment already worn thin from use. To anyone else the gesture would have appeared thoughtless. Mattheo watched the way her fingers tightened against the table's edge and knew immediately that standing had become painful again. He watched her shift her weight almost imperceptibly onto her stronger leg and wondered how much energy she wasted every day pretending she was fine.

The cottage smelled faintly of sea salt and wood smoke. Rain tapped softly against the windows while the wind howled somewhere beyond the cliffs, rattling loose shutters and carrying the distant cries of gulls across the water. It should have felt peaceful. Instead, every sound seemed to sharpen Mattheo's awareness of her. The scrape of her chair when she sat down too quickly. The uneven rhythm of her breathing when she climbed the stairs. The exhaustion lurking behind her smiles. He had spent the better part of a week watching her push herself beyond every reasonable limit and was rapidly discovering that helplessness was far crueler than anger.

When Emma finally looked up from the map and caught him staring, the smile she offered was immediate, affectionate, and entirely false. It was the same smile she had been giving everyone since the day they arrived at Shell Cottage, a smile designed to reassure the people around her that she was still Emma Potter and not the broken girl Bellatrix had left bleeding across a stone floor. The sight of it hurt more than Mattheo cared to admit. Somewhere along the way she had convinced herself that protecting people extended to protecting them from her pain, and no matter how desperately he wanted to, he could not seem to convince her that she didn't have to carry every burden alone.

Emma eventually sat at the table with the map spread before her while Mattheo remained close enough that his knee brushed hers whenever either of them shifted. Neither mentioned the future again. Neither mentioned the promise they had made on the beach. The words hung between them all the same, unspoken and impossible to ignore.

The sudden crack of the front door opening shattered the fragile quiet.

Cold air rushed into the cottage alongside the scent of rain and damp earth. Harry stepped inside first, soaked nearly to the bone, his glasses spotted with water. Ron followed close behind carrying a small leather bag, while Hermione entered several seconds later with exhaustion written across every line of her face. Draco appeared last.

Emma noticed it immediately.

The distance.

It wasn't dramatic. There had been no shouting. No visible hostility. If she hadn't spent the last year watching the two of them circle one another like twin stars pulled together by gravity, she might not have recognized anything was wrong at all.