🜸 {{ - SHE'S JUST A GIRL - MATTHEO RIDDLE - }} 🜸
Fifteen-year-old Madeline Potter has spent her life hidden away, overshadowed by the legend of her brother, Harry Potter. When she finally arrives at Hogwarts in her fifth year, she expects to be sorted into Gryffindor, to finally belong at his side. Instead, the Sorting Hat makes a choice that shocks the entire school-Slytherin.
The Great Hall falls silent. Harry's face is frozen in disbelief. The Gryffindors whisper, the Hufflepuffs glance at each other warily, and the Ravenclaws analyze the implications. But the worst reaction comes from her new house. The Slytherins sneer. She sees the disgust in Draco Malfoy's glare, the cold judgment in Pansy Parkinson's smirk. A Potter among the snakes? A betrayal of everything her brother stands for.
The first weeks are hell. Whispers follow her down the corridors. Some Slytherins ignore her. Others want her gone. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are wary-Why Slytherin?-and Harry's distant confusion stings more than she expected.
But then, something shifts.
Mattheo Riddle, dark, unreadable, and carrying a surname that terrifies most, doesn't sneer at her like the others. Theo Nott and Blaise Zabini don't shun her completely, watching her instead, testing her. Even Lorenzo Berkshire, ever the enigma, seems curious. Pansy, instead of tearing her down, extends an unexpected invitation-because, as she says with a smirk, if you're going to survive Slytherin, you'll need friends.
Even Draco, reluctant and cold, starts seeing her differently when she refuses to back down.
As Madeline fights to prove herself, she begins to see Slytherin for what it truly is-not just ambition and cruelty, but loyalty, strength, and survival. She expected enemies. She didn't expect to find a place where she might actually belong.
But war looms. Lines are being drawn. Loyalties are being tested. And Madeline must decide: stand with the brother who barely knows her, or the house that's becoming her home.
