Old Partchments| Hermione. G x OC |

As Leo Hercules Black grew older, the shadows of his lineage only lengthened. Each passing year at Hogwarts pressed him further between two opposing fates-the dark legacy of the Black name, and the fragile, fleeting light of those he had come to care for. The quiet boy who once haunted the halls of Grimmauld Place with sharpened silences and watchful eyes now stood at the brink of something far more perilous: feelings that threatened to dismantle the fortress he had built within himself.

Love-unwanted, uninvited-crept into him like a sickness. He denied it, cloaked it in cruelty, and turned from it as if avoidance could extinguish its flame. Yet it lingered, persistent as blood, tempting him with a vulnerability he loathed. To love was to be undone, and Leo Black had been taught since birth that weakness was fatal.

But the world beyond his heart gave him no reprieve. Whispers of the Dark Lord's return thickened into reality, and with it came the stirring of old loyalties, the gnawing suspicion of betrayal, and the heavy weight of expectation. Leo moved through these storms with the same cold grace he wielded in duels: calculating, unflinching, and always unreadable. And yet beneath the calm veneer lay a dangerous fracture.

For how long could he deny his own heart before it turned against him? How long could he balance on the edge between survival and ruin, loyalty and freedom, darkness and love?

Leo's path was never one of ease. It was a descent into choice: whether to remain the perfect shadow of the Black family's legacy-or to step, trembling and unwilling, into the light that might save him, or destroy him entirely.