Draco Malfoy has spent a scandal-free year teaching Experimental Alchemy, collecting polite respect and convincing himself redemption has finally taken. Then the Headmistress unveils a new policy: every professor may request an assistant of their choice. Malfoy files three identical requests for Tessa Carter-the sharp-tongued transfer student he bullied for daring to orbit Harry Potter-and feels oddly hopeful. An apology, a partnership, a clean slate: how hard can it be? Tessa's answer arrives faster than an owl can flap: absolutely not. The freckles Malfoy remembers have been laser-burned away, replaced by porcelain skin, obsidian hair, and emerald eyes that promise war. She hasn't forgotten the hexes that glued her boots to the flagstones or the nickname "Yankee Mudblood," accuracy be damned. When Hogwarts overrides her refusals, Tessa storms back into the castle armed with a decade of mastery in defensive charms-and a secret reason she missed an entire semester long ago. Their first meeting shatters a cauldron, singes half the draperies, and costs twenty house points no one technically has. Yet midnight experiments and castle corridors have a way of sharpening loyalties. She sees the professor who rewrites lessons at 2 a.m. to protect shy students from humiliation; he sees the witch who still shields the underdogs he once mocked. The tension sizzles between apology and relapse, guilt and attraction-until a sealed Malfoy vault stirs in the depths of the school, leaking a darkness bound to both their histories. To save Hogwarts-and themselves-Draco and Tessa must decide which is stronger: the sins that forged them, or the alchemy of a forbidden romance neither intended to brew.
Più dettagli