Mattheo Riddle - Imagines/OneShot

Work of Love

Word Count: 907

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Before Y/N, there was only a storm.

I had always been a creature of war, forged in blood and expectation. The Riddle name carried a weight I had never asked for, a burden that settled like iron chains around my wrists. It dictated who I was meant to be—ruthless, unyielding, feared.

And I was.

At least, I thought I was.

I played the part well, the ever-smirking, sharp-tongued menace of Hogwarts. Fists bruised from fights, knuckles split from anger, heart locked away where no one could reach it. I was fire without warmth, a force of nature that only knew how to destroy.

Then, I met her.

The moment everything changed.

It wasn't some grand revelation, no choir of angels singing in my head, no immediate fireworks.

It was something small.

She walked past me in the Great Hall, laughing at something her friend said, and my world stilled. Not because she was the most beautiful girl in the room—though, Merlin knows, she was—but because there was light in her. A kind of warmth I had never known, something untamed and free.

I didn't understand it.

But for some odd reason, I wanted to.

So, I watched.

At first, it was curiosity. A fascination with the way she carried herself—like she had never been told to bow. Then, it became something more. The way my hands didn't curl into fists when she was near. How, for the first time in my life, silence didn't feel suffocating.

And then, before I knew it, she was everywhere.

She started slipping into the cracks of my life, my carefully built walls, like sunlight creeping through the darkness.

I caught myself seeking her out in crowded hallways, just to steal a glimpse of her smile. I found my anger fading, my restless hands stilling, my night no longer plagued by endless thoughts of expectation and failure.

She never once tried to change me.

She never asked for my secrets, never demanded my past.

She simply was, and somehow, that was enough.

It terrified me.

But even more terrifying was the thought of a world without her in it.