Dusk and Desire - A Mattheo Riddle Story

My Ridiculous, Crazy Boy

(A/N: Just FYI, for the diary writing, Nora's writing is in Bold, and Mattheo's is in Italics)

From the moment Nora had stepped into her family's modest home, it had been hell. Well, if hell was her mother being drunk on absinthe while simultaneously high off of some muggle drug she'd discovered during a visit to the nearby village and if it meant her brother gloating about his Quidditch prowess (which wasn't that good, especially now that Nora was improving steadfastly under Enzo's tutelage) constantly. If Nora didn't pretend to praise him, she'd receive a sharp slap to the cheek before she bit her tongue and smiled and complimented him while he incorrectly pronounced words to a sport he was paid to play.

Yeah, it was hell.

Not to mention the abysmal food—her mother had fired the last house elf and the new one was old and cranky and seemed to be sneaking something into her mother's serving—plus the cold, creaky house that had never really felt like home. The tree in the corner of the living room had lost most of its needles because the one in charge of keeping it alive and beautiful was Christopher. And... well... she'd already said how incompetent he was.

Nora huffed and walked around the house. She'd noticed that if she stayed in one place for too long, her mother would wander into the room and either complain about her daughter's talent—"It's not fair! I-I-I was the one who was supposed to be y-young and b-beautiful!" she would slur—or complain about her daughter's lack of talent—"You could be a lot more like your b-brother. A f-f-fine vision of his father."

Nora didn't hate her mother but she didn't love her either. It was hard to love someone who felt distant and unknown. It was like living with a stranger she vaguely resembled. She hated Christopher but almost everyone who met him—save for his kind yet ignorant girlfriend Imani—did. He just made it so easy, what with his pride that failed to match up to his pitiful skills and his temper that was somehow worse than Mattheo's.

Mattheo. She hated to admit it—and she never would admit it out loud—but she missed him. She had half a mind to apparate to him since she was eighteen and had received her license last year but the red mark on her cheek stopped her. Nora wasn't a particularly skilled healer since there were no Hogwarts classes on the subject and she had a bad feeling for what Mattheo might do if he saw it. He already didn't want her coming back to Rosier House. It would just be proving him right if he saw her like this. Plus, as much as she hated her brother, she didn't want him dead. And though she wanted to believe that Mattheo wouldn't kill Christopher for laying a hand on her, it wasn't a bet she'd place money on.

Nora had seen the look in his eyes when he caught her and Linc together. The black fury had clouded his chocolate irises, making him look a lot more like the terrible Riddle others made him out to be. Plus, after what happened to Dean Thomas when she got injured in Quidditch... well, she had reason to believe that he would make very good on his threats. Dean scattered every time she got near him and he was in the hospital wing for a few days with an injury he refused to say the origins of.

Despite what many people may think, Mattheo Riddle wasn't nice. He had friends and he was an outgoing chap but he wasn't necessarily nice. He'd never been nice. "Nice" wasn't what you called a bloke who'd been burying bodies since he was eleven. "Nice" wasn't what you called a man who was always about five seconds away from punching whoever was unfortunately in front of him. "Nice" wasn't what professors would say about the boy who could smuggle anything—even Death Eaters if he wanted—into the school, using his skills to sell the alcohol that didn't make it to his parties.

Mattheo might have been loyal to his friends—and her. He might have cared about them—and her. He might even be willing to die for them—and her. But he wasn't nice.