Emerson Wilmore was an exemplary Ravenclaw student, known for her unwavering dedication to academics and an unyielding moral compass. However, things took a twisted and deviated turn in her life after her boyfriend, Cedric Diggory, was murdered by L...
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The party did not end so much as blur gently into the early hours of the morning.
Once the worst of the Elena revelation burned itself out, or as Enzo put it "the uprising of the future brother-in-law", the room found its balance again in that strange, precious way that only their close friendship could manage.
Olivia did not forgive Enzo, not properly or in any permanent or declared sense, but she stopped looking at him like she might hex him into another dimension, which was progress.
Enzo, sensing this with the self-preserving instinct he only occasionally possessed, made the unusually intelligent decision not to mention Elena. He steered well clear of the subject, and when his mouth looked like it might wander there anyway, one glance from Theo was enough to make him veer sharply back into safer territory.
So the laughter returned.
More Firewhiskey was poured, then more after that, and eventually Theo shared the expensive Scotch he'd been nursing as though each sip cost him part of his inheritance.
Enzo declared it "disgracefully smooth." Olivia said it tasted like money and bad decisions. Emerson thought it burned far more pleasantly than Firewhiskey, and Mattheo, already looser now in the lazy-limbed way the alcohol brought out in him, only shrugged and said, "It should. It was part of the Nott collection that Theo's great-great-grandfather assembled."
The Slytherin common room took on that late-night softness that made time feel less real. The Amortentia candle still burned low on the table, the lake-light outside dark and deep and shifting against the glass, and the fire settled into a slow red glow that made everything seem more hidden from the rest of the castle than it really was.
Mattheo became impossible.
The more he drank, the less inclined he seemed to pretend he could sit anywhere except with Emerson folded into him somehow. What started as a hand at her waist became his arm wrapped firmly around her when she sat beside him; then, when the others got louder and the room got softer, it became Emerson half-curled against him again, one of his hands resting high on her back while the other lazily traced over her knee or her wrist or the line of her forearm whenever he could reach it.
He touched her like he was thinking about her even when he said nothing.
Every movement from him seemed sharpened by want and the same patience he was forced into all week. His hand tried to settle at the base of her spine and stay there, thumb moving slowly in absent circles that were not absent at all. If she shifted, his fingers tightened gently at her waist as though he meant to draw her closer without making it obvious. When she laughed and tilted her head back, his gaze would drop to her mouth before it lifted again, dark and heavy-lidded and entirely too warm.
