A War No One Will Thank Us For— Slytherin Boys
Summary: A letter that should not exist forces Y/N to decide whether to destroy the world that raised her from inside it. Warnings: War themes, Angst Word Count: 5.8k
. . • ☆ . °.•°:. *₊° .☆. . • ☆ . °.•°:. *₊° .☆ :.
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The wards recognized them before the house did. Gold light rippled through the iron gates as six magical signatures crossed the boundary—ancient magic stirring, measuring them, naming them. Bloodlines older than the manor itself were acknowledged and allowed passage without question.
That used to comfort her.
Tonight, it made her skin crawl.
The gates did not open.
They yielded.
With a low, reluctant groan that vibrated through the iron and up into her bones, like something being forced to bow.
Only then did the silence break.
It didn’t fall.
It fractured.
Mattheo tore his mask from his face the second they crossed the threshold and hurled it across the marble. It cracked on impact, skidding across the floor like something dead. Enzo followed, ripping his gloves off as if the leather burned, breath heavy, uneven. Blaise removed his more slowly, controlled as ever, but his shoulders were rigid, knuckles white. Theo’s jaw was clenched so tight a muscle jumped in his cheek, his eyes moving constantly, not in caution in restraint.
Draco said nothing. He hadn’t spoken since the meeting ended.
Y/N was the last inside.
She turned back once.
For half a breath, the memory of the chamber pressed against her mind: torchlight on stone, the sickening warmth of too many bodies packed together, the way some of them had laughed. The way others had knelt.
The way blood status had been spoken like law.
She sealed the doors.
Three spells.
One in a language her family no longer spoke aloud.
The manor answered.
Pressure shifted. Candles flared violently to life. Shadows recoiled. And somewhere deep within the walls, ancient magic rearranged itself to protect what it had been taught to protect.
And that, she realized, was the problem.
Only then did the Dark Marks burn.
Not together.
Not clean.
One after another, like something being passed through them. Like the manor was cleaning their sins from within.
Mattheo hissed, crushing his forearm in his grip as if he could tear the thing out. Blaise’s breath stuttered before he forced it steady. Enzo braced against a pillar, eyes shut, jaw tight. Theo inhaled slowly through his nose, control layered over something much closer to panic.
Draco didn’t move.
He lifted his arm and watched the black symbol writhe beneath his skin. As if it were alive. As if it were displeased.
They had stood feet from him tonight.
From the throne.
From the serpent.
She had watched a man beg.
She had watched another thank him.
She had been taught that this was power. That this was order. That this was the natural way of things.
She had felt none of that.
She crossed the ballroom, wand already in her hand. “Cloaks. Now.”
They obeyed immediately.
Dark fabric struck the long table. Masks followed. Rings, cuffs, enchanted chains—objects designed to impress, to intimidate, to erase the human beneath them.
Each one locked into the waiting chest.
A ritual.
A necessary one.
A lie, sometimes.
The ballroom had long ago stopped pretending to be a place for music. A single table dominated the center, layered in maps, coded lists, vials of potions, objects, none of them ever named. The walls still bore the ghosts of old runes scraped away and rewritten into something sharper.
A war room pretending to be a drawing room.
Theo broke the silence. “He’s tightening the circle.”
“He’s enjoying it,” Enzo said quietly. “You could hear it.”
Blaise exhaled. “He always does when he thinks he’s close.”
“Close to what?” Mattheo snapped.
No one answered. Because Y/N knew they were all thinking of the same thing. The way the room smelled like copper. The way purity was spoken, as if it excused everything.
Y/N moved to the sideboard, opening a hidden compartment. Her fingers shook as she withdrew a vial. She crossed to Draco. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s on your collar.” He let her tilt his chin. The cut was shallow. Precise. A reminder. Not meant to kill. Meant to teach.
Her jaw tightened as she sealed it with a whispered spell. The skin closed.
The message did not.
Theo’s eyes never left the door. “We were followed.”
The air went still.
“Not in the usual way,” he added. “Not Dark magic. Not surveillance.”
Y/N felt it again, that wrongness she had sensed the moment she crossed the grounds. “The west wards were tested while we were gone.”
Mattheo’s mouth curled. “By him?”
“No.” She shook her head. “By something that didn’t try to break them.”
“That doesn’t make it better,” Blaise murmured.
Before anyone could respond, the fire changed. It didn’t flare. It folded. Red collapsed into a cold, unnatural blue.
The wards surged violently, gold lines racing across the ceiling, the windows, the doors—magic scrambling, remembering old lessons about invasion and blood and threat. Every wand was in hand before the envelope slid free of the hearth and landed on the marble.
Untouched.
Unburned.
Wrong.
“That,” Enzo said quietly, “did not come from our side.”
All the boys stepped in front of her without thinking.
Theo scanned the room. “No breach.”
“Nothing crosses these wards without blood or permission,” Y/N whispered. She stepped around them anyway. The closer she drew, the heavier the air became, like approaching something aware.
She knelt. The envelope was warm. Not Dark. Not clean. Old. Alive with a kind of magic she hadn’t felt since this war began.
“I know this,” she said softly.
Mattheo frowned. “From where?”
She didn’t answer.
Because she wasn’t sure if she meant the magic or the feeling.
She turned it over.
No seal.
No crest.
No name.
Only the whisper of a protection charm woven so delicately it felt like intent.
Blaise swallowed. “That’s not a summons.”
“No,” Y/N agreed. Her thumb brushed the edge. “It’s a reach.”
Silence fell. Five Dark Marks. Six people shaped like shadows. One letter that had found them anyway.
Draco’s voice was low. “From who?”
Y/N stared at the parchment. At the impossible fact that someone outside their world knew where to find them.
And for the first time since she had been raised on blood and hierarchy and destiny, since she had been taught she was higher, cleaner, chosen, she felt something in her fracture.
Because standing in that circle tonight, she had not felt superior.
She had felt small.
And looking at them now at the tension in Theo’s shoulders, the hollow under Enzo’s eyes, the way Blaise would not look at his own arm, the way Draco still hadn’t lowered his. She knew she was not alone. They still wore the masks. But doubt had begun to live in them.
Even if none of them dared say it.
For the first time since she had been allowed into Voldemort’s inner circle, since she had been trusted with secrets that got people buried, she felt fear that had nothing to do with him.
“Someone,” she said quietly, “who knows exactly what we are.”
And she no longer knew whether that was a threat or a chance.
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The Astronomy Tower was not empty when Y/N arrived.
It only felt like it.
Wind tore across the open stone, sharp and cold, carrying the bitter remnants of smoke and magic. Below, Hogwarts burned with scattered light—professors moving like shadows, voices drifting upward, the distant echo of orders being given, of students being herded back inside.
Of a world trying desperately to hold itself together.
Y/N stopped just inside the archway.
Hermione Granger stood at the edge of the tower, both hands on the stone, curls whipping violently around her face. She was perfectly still.
Not crying.
Not shaking.
Holding herself together by force.
For a moment, Y/N only watched her.
Then Hermione spoke.
“You’re supposed to be gone.”
Y/N stilled.
Hermione turned slowly.
Her wand was already in her hand.
And then it was pointed directly at Y/N’s chest.
“You were supposed to be long gone,” Hermione said again, voice sharp, trembling with something dangerously close to fury. “Snape killed him. The Death Eaters are everywhere. Your group was being pulled out—everyone knows that. They’re supposed to be at your manor by now.” Her grip tightened. “So why are you here?”
The wind surged between them.
Y/N didn’t move. “Lower it,” she said quietly.
Hermione didn’t.
“You shouldn’t still be in this castle,” Hermione continued. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near this tower. You were with them. I saw you. I watched you leave.”
“I came back.”
“Why?” Hermione demanded. “To make sure he was dead?”
The words struck harder than any curse.
Y/N’s jaw tightened. “No.”
“Then what?” Hermione snapped. “To watch the rest of us fall apart? To pretend this night didn’t go exactly the way your side wanted it to?”
“My side didn’t want this.”
Hermione laughed—a broken, disbelieving sound. “Your friends were cheering.”
“Some were.”
“And you stayed.”
“Yes.”
The wand didn’t lower.
Y/N took one careful step forward.
Hermione’s spell hand twitched.
“Don’t,” Hermione warned.
“If I wanted to hurt you,” Y/N said softly, “you wouldn’t be standing.”
Hermione’s eyes burned. “You don’t get to say that.”
“I do,” Y/N replied. “Because I came here alone.”
That gave Hermione pause.
Just for a second.
“Why?” Hermione demanded.
Y/N exhaled slowly. “There are objects. Objects that are tied to him.”
Hermione’s breath caught. “What?”
“I cannot tell you everything,” Y/N said. “No details. Just… truth.”
Hermione’s voice was tight. “You don’t get to speak in riddles after what happened here.”
“You’re going to leave,” Y/N said quietly. “You, Potter, and Weasley. You’re going to abandon this place. You’re going to look for the things that keep him alive.”
Silence exploded between them.
Hermione stared at her. “Who told you that?”
“No one.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It isn’t.”
Hermione’s wand shook slightly. “How would you even know something like that?”
Y/N looked past her, toward the dark sky. “Because I stand close enough to hear what he forgets to hide.”
Hermione swallowed. Then anger surged back, hotter. “You expect me to believe someone who walks into Death Eater meetings comes back out with secrets for us?”
“I’m not giving them to you.”
“Then why are you here?”
Y/N met her gaze fully.
“Because you are not going to survive this alone.”
Hermione laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “And you think you’re the answer?”
“No,” Y/N said. “I think we’re the mistake that might be useful. We can help.”
Hermione’s eyes hardened. “You’re closest friends with Mattheo Riddle. His son. His own blood.” The name cracked through the night. “Everyone knows they follow you,” Hermione continued. “Malfoy. Zabini. Nott. Berkshire. All of them. They would tear the world apart if you asked.”
Y/N didn’t deny it.
“So how,” Hermione demanded, “do you expect me to believe that Voldemort’s son is going to help us?”
Emotion finally slipped through Y/N’s control. “He doesn’t follow me because of who his father is,” she said. “He follows me because I’m the one thing he chose for himself.”
“That doesn’t make him safe!”
“No,” Y/N agreed. “It makes him dangerous in a different way.”
Hermione’s voice broke. “You’re asking me to risk Harry’s life on the devotion of a boy raised by a monster.”
“I’m asking you to remember this conversation,” Y/N said. “So that when everything collapses, you’ll remember there was a night I stood in front of you and didn’t lie.”
Hermione’s wand wavered. “You and your friends have made our lives hell,” she said. “You’ve humiliated us. You’ve stood on the wrong side every single year.”
“I know.”
“And now you want me to believe you’re not on it.”
“I am on it,” Y/N said quietly.
Hermione stilled.
“I just don’t belong to it.”
The wind howled around them.
“When the time comes,” Y/N said, voice low, “you won’t be able to go to the teachers. You won’t be able to go to the Ministry. And you won’t be able to go to people who wear their loyalties openly.”
Hermione whispered, “You think we’d come to you.”
“I think you’ll have nowhere else.”
Silence.
Then Hermione’s gaze dropped to Y/N’s bare forearm. “You don’t even bear the Mark,” she said. “Why would they follow you into hell?”
Y/N didn’t hesitate. “Because they already live there,” she said. “And I’m the only thing they won’t leave behind.”
Hermione’s breath hitched. “They love you,” Hermione said. Not softly. Not kindly. Like it frightened her.
“Yes.”
“And you think that makes them capable of betraying him.”
“I think it makes them capable of betraying everything.”
The words trembled between them.
“If you’re wrong,” Hermione said, “they will kill you.”
“Yes.”
“And if you’re lying—”
“Then don’t come.” Y/N stepped back. “I’m not your ally,” she said quietly. “And I’m not your enemy.”
Hermione’s wand lowered an inch. “You terrify me,” Hermione whispered.
Y/N met her eyes. “Good.” She turned and walked toward the stairs. Behind her, Hermione Granger stood on the Astronomy Tower, shaking, staring at the place where a future no longer felt clean.
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The parchment trembled. Not from the fire.
From her hand.
Y/N stared down at the envelope like it had grown teeth. The ballroom felt smaller than it had moments ago. The chandeliers flickered. The wards hummed low and uneasily, as if the house itself sensed what she was holding.
Someone who knows exactly what they are.
Hermione’s voice from years ago echoed where the wind had been.
“Y/N.” Draco’s voice cut in sharply.
She hadn’t realized she’d stopped breathing.
All of them were watching her now. Mattheo stood rigid near the table, dark eyes fixed on the letter like it might detonate. Theo hadn’t moved from the door. Enzo’s hand hovered near his wand. Blaise’s expression was carved into something carefully empty.
“Open it,” Mattheo said.
Draco’s gaze snapped to him. “Or don’t.”
Theo’s voice was quieter. “Either way, we need to know what crossed her wards.”
Y/N swallowed. The parchment was warm. Not Dark. Not harmless. Old. Protective. Intelligent.
Her thumb slid beneath the flap. The wards surged. Gold light raced across the walls, the ceiling, the arched windows. The fire roared once, then dropped into a low, unnatural blue.
The moment the seal broke, magic bled into the air.
Not violent.
Urgent.
A single line of ink flared briefly across the parchment, as if the letter itself were making sure it had been received.
If you are reading this, we are already gone. I don’t know if this will reach you. I don’t know if it should. But I remembered a night you probably thought I’d try to forget. You told me there would come a day when we would have no one else to ask. That day is here. Lightning Bolt and Red are with me. We are leaving tonight. If we fail, this letter never existed. We are looking for what keeps him alive. You said you stand where he forgets to whisper. I don’t know what you are. I don’t know who your friends truly serve. And I don’t trust you. But I trust that you didn’t lie to me. If you meant what you said—if they will follow you where you go—then I am asking you to decide what that means. We need access to places we cannot enter. We need objects moved that cannot be traced. We need eyes in rooms that would kill us on sight. I don’t expect you to answer. I don’t expect you to help. I am only giving you the chance you said would come. If you burn this, I will understand. If you answer it... Then I will know you chose. — HG
Silence crashed down around them. The chandeliers flickered once. Mattheo was the first to speak. “She’s insane.”
Theo exhaled slowly. “She’s desperate.”
Blaise’s gaze lifted to Y/N. “She knows exactly what we are.”
Enzo said nothing.
Draco stepped closer. “Look at me.”
Y/N did. He searched her face, pale eyes cutting, trying to read something she hadn’t shown anyone in years. “She’s asking us to betray him.”
Y/N closed her fingers around the parchment. “She’s asking if we already have.”
The words settled like a blade between them.
Outside, thunder rolled somewhere far beyond the wards. Inside, six people stood in a room built on bloodlines and secrets, holding a letter that could get them all killed. And for the first time since they had been allowed into Voldemort’s inner circle, the choice they had pretended not to make finally had a name.
Silence didn’t hold.
It split.
“This is a mistake.”
Mattheo’s voice was low, but it carried through the ballroom like something dropped and shattered across stone.
The chandeliers trembled faintly above them, reacting to the subtle spike of magic in the air. The wards hummed, restless. Outside the tall arched windows, storm clouds dragged slowly across the sky, distant thunder muttering like something half-awake.
Y/N lifted her eyes to him. “A mistake?” she repeated.
Mattheo took a step forward. The movement was sharp. Uncontrolled.
“Yes,” he said. “A catastrophic one.”
Enzo shifted uneasily near the table, fingers flexing. Blaise’s jaw tightened, his gaze cutting from Mattheo to Y/N like he was bracing for impact. Theo straightened slightly by the door, tension threading visibly through his shoulders. Draco’s pale eyes flicked to Mattheo, warning already burning there.
“She’s asking us to dig our own graves,” Mattheo continued, gesturing sharply toward the letter still clenched in Y/N’s hand. “And you’re all standing here like she didn’t just hand us the shovel.”
“She’s asking if we already have,” Y/N said quietly.
Mattheo laughed under his breath. It wasn’t humor. It wasn’t disbelief. It was contempt edged with something that hurt. “That’s not bravery,” he said. “That’s romantic stupidity.”
Draco moved instantly. “Watch your mouth.”
Mattheo didn’t even look at him. “When it’s you,” he said, eyes locked on Y/N, “everything becomes a fantasy. A story where blood doesn’t matter. Where monsters suddenly grow hearts.”
Y/N’s fingers tightened around the parchment. The wards pulsed once, faint gold lines skimming the ceiling like a warning.
“That isn’t what this is.”
“It always is with you.”
The words landed harder than a shout.
“You stand there,” he went on, “talking about choice like it isn’t a luxury bought with other people’s bodies.”
Theo spoke carefully, trying to slow it. “Mattheo—”
“Don’t.” Mattheo took another step closer. “You don’t get to make this clean.”
Her shoulders drew back instinctively, spine straightening like armor sliding into place.
“You think this is about sides?” he said. “This is about blood. And blood doesn’t forgive.”
“You don’t worship it either,” she said.
Something in his face hardened.
“Easy for you.”
The air felt colder.
“Easy for you to say,” Mattheo continued, quieter now, sharper. “You don’t wake up wearing his face. You don’t feel his name crawl under your skin every time someone looks at you.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She couldn’t.
“You don’t walk into rooms already sentenced,” he said. “You don’t live your life as evidence.”
Draco took a step forward without thinking. Enzo caught his arm.
“And yet you stand there,” Mattheo said, “talking about freedom like you didn’t build this place just to keep us breathing.”
Her breath stuttered.
“You don’t bleed when he calls,” he went on. “You don’t shake when he smiles. You don’t sit across from him wondering whether he’ll kill you faster for failing him… or for loving you.”
Theo said his name sharply. Mattheo didn’t stop. “You don’t even bear the Mark,” he said. “You get to play savior because you don’t pay for it.”
Y/N felt it then—the first real fracture.
A tightness in her chest. A heat behind her eyes. She forced her jaw to stay steady. Forced her voice not to shake. “Then tell me what you need.”
Something ugly flickered across his face. “I need you to stop pretending this is anything but you trying to make us something we’re not.”
She took a step closer. Brave. Stupid. Honest. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”
His laugh was hollow. Broken at the edges. “You don’t want us alive,” he said. “You want us innocent.” The word struck like glass. “And we’re not.”
He moved again. “You want me to betray him?” he said. “Fine. Say it. Say you want me to carve myself open for people who would spit if they knew where I stood.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“It is,” he snapped. “Because the only reason this even exists—” He gestured sharply between them and the letter. “—is you.”
Her breath caught.
“You are the reason we hesitate,” Mattheo said. “You are the reason we look back. You are the reason we imagine worlds where this doesn’t end with our heads on spikes.”
Theo’s voice broke. “Stop.”
Mattheo didn’t. “You want the truth?” he asked her quietly. The ballroom felt like it leaned in. “You don’t make us better.”
Her composure slipped. Just barely. A sharp inhale, she couldn’t stop.
“You make us weak.”
Her throat burned. Something wet gathered in her eyes. She blinked hard.
Once.
Twice.
Willed it away.
“You make us forget what we are,” he continued. “And that is the most dangerous thing you could ever do to people like us.”
Her vision blurred anyway. She swallowed. Lifted her chin. Tried to hold it.
“And if this ends with us dead,” he finished, voice low, brutal, “it won’t be because of him.”
Her lips parted. Nothing came out.
“It will be because we loved you.”
The words didn’t hit like a blow. They collapsed into her. Her control—years of it, layers of it, all the steel and silence and strategy—gave way. A broken sound slipped out of her before she could stop it. A sharp, shaking breath.
Then another.
Tears spilled, hot and humiliating, blurring the chandeliers into gold smears of light. She pressed her lips together, hard, like she could trap it inside. Like she could force it back down.
It didn’t work. She let out a cry before she could stop it.
Draco swore viciously.
Theo stepped forward. “Y/N—”
She shook her head once, violently. “Don’t,” she whispered.
Her hands trembled. She dropped them to her sides because she couldn’t trust them not to give her away. Her chest hitched again, breath coming in fractured, uneven gasps. She tried to breathe through it.
Tried to swallow it.
Tried to be who she always was.
But the tears kept coming.
Soundless.
Relentless.
For the first time in years, they saw it.
Not calculation.
Not command.
Not the girl who walked into rooms full of monsters without flinching.
Just her.
Breaking.
She turned abruptly, before any of them could say her name again, before anyone could touch her, before anyone could see it get worse.
And she walked out.
The doors parted instantly, the manor responding to her distress like a living thing. She fled into the corridor, one hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking, breath tearing out of her chest as if she could outrun what she was feeling.
“Y/N!” Theo called.
She didn’t stop.
Theo was after her immediately, boots striking hard against the marble as the ballroom doors slammed shut behind him.
Inside the manor, no one moved. Draco stood rigid, fury and helplessness warring across his face. Enzo stared at the floor, jaw clenched. Blaise’s expression had gone pale, controlled emptiness cracking at the edges.
Mattheo remained where he was, staring at the space she had occupied. The echo of her cries still in the air. The first real horror of what he had done settled heavily in his chest. Because for the first time in their lives, the only girl they had ever loved had walked away from them in tears.
.
.
.
She didn’t know how she got there. Only that at some point marble became stone, corridors narrowed, and the air changed.
Colder. Damp with earth and frost.
The winter garden lay hidden in the oldest wing of the manor, where the ceilings arched high and glass replaced stone, where dead noble vines clung to iron trellises and pale moonlight spilled across cracked tile. Enchanted snow drifted lazily through the air, never melting, never thickening, caught forever in the moment before settling.
Y/N stumbled inside and the doors whispered shut behind her. The sound of the ballroom vanished. The sound of the world vanished. What remained was the quiet.
And her.
She made it only a few steps before her knees hit the cold stone and the rest of her followed, collapsing beside a withered rosebush that hadn’t bloomed in decades. Her hands came up to her face too late. A broken sound tore out of her chest before she could stop it, raw and sharp, the kind of sound she had never allowed herself to make.
She pressed her forehead to the floor.
And shattered.
Her shoulders shook violently. Breath came in jagged pulls that hurt. Tears soaked into the sleeve of her robes, then the stone beneath her. She curled inward, one arm wrapped around her stomach like she could hold herself together by force.
It wouldn’t stay.
Images from the meeting rose unbidden.
A man on his knees begging for his life. Bellatrix's laughter echoing the room. A woman thanking him after he branded her with the Dark Mark. The word pure spoken like absolution.
Her mother’s voice when she was a child: We are not like them. Those half-bloods and mudbloods are dirty, lower. We are superior. The only ones who can wield true power.
The Dark Mark burning into skin.
Mattheo’s voice in the ballroom. You make us forget what we are.
Her chest convulsed. “What are we?” she choked aloud into the empty garden. “What are we supposed to be?”
The question echoed faintly against glass and iron.
She dragged in a breath that broke halfway through.
“I don’t believe it,” she whispered, fists twisting in her robes. “I don’t believe it anymore. I don’t feel higher. I don’t feel chosen. I don’t feel clean. I feel—” her voice cracked, “—I feel like something rotten learned how to speak.”
She pressed her mouth into her sleeve, trying to muffle the sound.
It didn’t work.
She cried harder.
She cried until her ribs ached, until her throat burned, until the cold seeped through her clothes and into her skin and she welcomed it because at least it was simple.
She didn’t hear the doors open.
Didn’t hear the hurried footsteps on stone.
Only the change in the air.
“Y/N.” Theo’s voice was hoarse. Breathless. Close.
She flinched violently, curling tighter, one hand flying up as if she could shield herself from being seen like this. “Don’t,” she gasped. “Theo, don’t—please—”
He stopped instantly.
Didn’t touch her.
Didn’t crowd her.
Just stood there, a few paces away, chest rising and falling hard, eyes taking her in like he was afraid she might vanish if he blinked.
The winter garden was washed in silver-blue light, catching in his dark hair, carving shadows into his face. He looked wrong here. Too real. Too human.
“I’m here,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to make you get up. I’m not going to make you talk.”
Her hands trembled where they were pressed to her face.
She shook her head, tears spilling through her fingers.
“I can’t—” She dragged in a breath that broke. “I can’t be what he said. I can’t be the thing that kills you.”
Theo took a slow step closer.
Then another. He lowered himself to the cold stone a short distance away, not touching, not cornering, simply there. His cloak brushed the edge of her sleeve.
She could see his boots. The frost was gathering on the hem of his trousers.
“I saw your face in that room tonight,” he said quietly. “When he was speaking.” She swallowed hard. “You weren’t listening to him,” Theo continued. “You were watching the people.”
Her breath hitched.
“The ones who were kneeling,” he said. “The ones who were laughing. The ones who looked… empty.”
Her shoulders shook.
“I don’t think you questioned this tonight,” Theo said. “I think tonight was just the first time you let yourself hear it.”
She shook her head weakly.
“What if Mattheo's right?” she whispered. “What if he’s right and I’m killing you by letting you care?”
Theo answered without hesitation. “If loving you makes us weak,” he said quietly, firmly, “then we're the weakest men in the world.”
She lifted her head slightly, making eye contact with him.
“Because we've never loved anything.”
The words settled into the cold air between them. Something in her face broke open. She let out a sound that was half a sob, half a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding for years.
“I don’t think we’re higher,” she whispered. “I think we were just… raised somewhere louder. Somewhere that told us the same lie until it sounded like truth.”
Theo was quiet for a moment. Then, softly: “I count exits when he speaks.”
She looked at him. Her vision blurred, but she saw his jaw tighten.
“I memorize faces,” he went on. “I watch who doesn’t cheer. I watch who does. I watch who looks like they’re trying to convince themselves.” He swallowed. “I don’t believe it either anymore.”
The words landed between them, fragile and enormous.
Her chest caved. “What if all I’m doing is dragging you toward something you can’t survive?” she whispered.
Theo shifted closer without thinking. Not enough to trap her. Enough that she could feel the warmth of him through the cold.
“Then let it be our choice,” he said. “Not the Dark Lord's. Or Mattheo's..”
Her breath fractured. “I don’t want this world,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be what it made us.”
Theo hesitated only a second before reaching out.
Slowly.
Giving her time to pull away.
When she didn’t, he draped his cloak around her shoulders, wrapping it gently, like he was afraid she might shatter under his hands.
“You don’t belong to what you were taught,” he said quietly. “You never did. That’s why this hurts.”
Her face crumpled. She leaned forward before she could stop herself, forehead pressing into his shoulder, fingers fisting in the fabric of his shirt like it was the only solid thing left.
And she cried.
Not silently.
Not carefully.
Theo’s arms came around her, firm and protective, one hand braced at her back, the other cradling her head, anchoring her as her sobs tore through her.
The enchanted snow drifted lazily around them. The dead roses listened. And for the first time since she had been taught what she was, Y/N let herself be something else.
Just a girl.
Breaking.
.
.
.
The ballroom felt wrong without her.
Too large.
Too quiet.
The chandeliers burned steadily overhead, their light too warm for what had just happened beneath them. The wards had settled back into their low hum. The hearth’s blue glow painted the marble in a sickly color.
Nothing had changed.
And yet the space she had occupied felt hollowed out of the room.
Draco stood exactly where she had left him. Rigid. Hands clenched. Jaw set so tight it hurt. Enzo hadn’t moved from near the table. He stared down at the floor like it might open. Blaise leaned against one of the carved pillars, arms folded, expression controlled—but tension threaded every line of him.
Mattheo still stood near the center of the room. Staring at the place she had been. At the echo she had left behind.
Theo’s footsteps were barely gone when Draco moved. He crossed the room in three strides and shoved Mattheo back.
Hard.
Mattheo staggered, boots scraping marble. The sound cracked through the quiet.
“What is wrong with you?” Draco snapped. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Mattheo looked up slowly. His eyes were dark. Bright with something close to pain. “You don’t get to touch me like you’re righteous,” he said hoarsely.
Draco shoved him again. “You don’t get to talk to her like that and then stand there like you didn’t just break something.”
“She’s already breaking,” Mattheo shot back. “And so are you. All of you.”
“That doesn’t make it yours to finish.”
Enzo stepped forward instinctively. “Draco—”
“Don’t,” Draco said without looking away. “Not this time.”
Blaise straightened slightly. “This isn’t helping.”
“No,” Draco said. “But pretending he didn’t just do what he swore he never would isn’t helping either.”
Mattheo’s mouth twisted. “You think I don’t know what I did?”
“Then why?” Draco demanded. “Why would you say that to her?”
Mattheo dragged a hand down his face. “Because she’s questioning everything,” he said. “Not just him. Not just the Mark. Everything. Blood. Purity. What we were raised to believe we are.”
The words rang differently in the room.
“She stood in that meeting and didn’t look proud,” he continued. “She looked sick. And now Granger sends her a letter into this house like a hand reaching into a grave—”
Draco’s eyes sharpened. “Don’t.”
“That letter means death if my father ever finds out,” Mattheo snapped. “Death for her. For us. Slow or fast, public or quiet—it doesn’t matter.”
Silence pressed in.
“She is not talking about resisting him,” Mattheo went on. “She’s talking about undoing the foundations. The very thing they drilled into us since we could speak.”
His voice roughened. “She is questioning blood itself.”
Draco stepped closer. “Good.”
Mattheo stared at him, taken aback. “That is not good,” he said. “That is extinction.”
Blaise exhaled slowly. “Mattheo—”
“No,” Mattheo cut in. “You all heard her tonight. You see it in her. She’s not standing in that circle the way she used to. And if she stops believing what we were raised to believe, she doesn’t just become a threat to him.” He laughed bitterly. “She becomes a mistake.”
Enzo’s jaw clenched. “She becomes honest.”
“She becomes dead,” Mattheo shot back. “And she takes us with her.”
Draco’s voice dropped. “You’re afraid.”
“Yes,” Mattheo said immediately. “I am.”
The admission cracked something open.
“I am afraid because she makes this world start to look wrong,” he said. “And the moment it looks wrong, you can’t unsee it. You can’t go back to believing the lie that keeps you alive.” He gestured sharply to his arm, where the Dark Mark burned. “This thing keeps us breathing.”
“And it keeps other people dying,” Draco replied.
Mattheo’s mouth trembled. “She is standing in a house built on blood and telling us blood doesn’t mean what we were taught,” he said. “Do you understand how dangerous that is?”
“Yes,” Draco said. “I understand exactly how dangerous that is.” He stepped closer. “And you didn’t say what you said because you wanted to protect her.”
Mattheo’s eyes flickered in regret for a second.
“You said it because you wanted to make her small enough to fit back into the world that scares you less.”
The words landed heavy.
Silence stretched.
“You think I don’t hear him when I sleep?” Mattheo said hoarsely. “You think I don’t wake up with his voice in my head and her name in my chest and know those two things don’t coexist?”
Draco’s voice sharpened. “Then why are you trying to make her carry that for you?”
Mattheo swallowed hard. “She makes me want a world where blood doesn’t decide who deserves to live,” he said. “And that world gets people like us killed.”
Draco grabbed the front of Mattheo’s shirt and hauled him forward.
“You were breathing before blood meant anything to him,” he said. “You were breathing before he ever put his name in your mouth.”
Mattheo’s breath shuddered, but he kept his stance, glaring at Draco.
“You are not alive because of him,” Draco continued. “You are alive in spite of him. And if you ever say something like that to her again—” Mattheo shoved him back. “—it won’t be him you answer to.”
The room was silent.
Mattheo stood where he’d been left, chest rising and falling, eyes bright. “I didn’t mean to make her cry,” he said.
The words sounded too small.
Enzo looked away.
Blaise’s jaw tightened.
Draco stared at him.
“You don’t get to choose the cost of the things you say,” he replied. “Only who pays it.”
And the worst part was that Mattheo already knew. Because for the first time since they’d been children, since they’d been untouchable, since everything between them had been blood and iron and certainty, the person who had always stood between them and the dark had walked away.
And now there was a letter on their table that could bury them all.
.
.
.
The ballroom was empty when she returned. Not peacefully empty.
Vacant. As if the room had been abandoned in a hurry and forgotten by whatever was meant to come back for it.
The chandeliers burned low overhead, their light thinned and dulled, casting long, warped shadows across the marble. The fire had settled back into red, but it seemed smaller than before, its warmth no longer reaching the corners. The great space no longer felt like a war room.
It felt like the aftermath.
Y/N stood just inside the doors, her palm still pressed to the iron handle, as though part of her expected the house to object to her being alone. The wards hummed faintly inside the walls, a sound like something breathing in its sleep.
She released the door and crossed the floor slowly.
Each step echoed too clearly. Until she reached the table. The letter lay exactly where she had left it.
Perfectly still.
Perfectly ordinary.
A single folded piece of parchment that had crossed wards, bloodlines, and worlds to reach her.
Waiting.
She did not touch it at first. She only looked. At the pale curve of the fold. At the faint, living shimmer of protective magic still clinging to it. At how small it was. How easily it could be destroyed.
Her chest tightened. If you burn this, I will understand.
She could still smell the meeting on her clothes. Smoke. Iron. Old stone. The echo of laughter where there should not have been any.
She reached out. Then stopped. If she burned it, this would end. The reach unanswered. The danger sealed. The world repaired into the shape it had always been. They would return to the circle. They would kneel or stand when told. They would call it legacy. They would call it survival. They would keep letting blood decide who mattered.
Her fingers curled slowly into her palm. You don’t belong to what you were taught. Theo’s voice surfaced unbidden. So did her mother’s. We are not like them.
So did the man on his knees. So did the woman who thanked him.
She picked up the letter. It was still warm. That frightened her more than anything else. Her hands tightened around the parchment as she leaned forward, bracing herself against the edge of the table, shoulders drawn inward like she was standing before something that might speak back.
If she answered it—
Her breath caught.
If she answered it, there was no performance left.
No neutrality. No clever positioning. No illusion of standing in the middle. It would mean saying out loud what her body had known for years and her mind had only just allowed.
That the foundations were wrong. That the things they had been praised for surviving were the very things rotting them from the inside. That love, not blood, was the first real treason.
Her wand lay heavy against her wrist.
Burn it.
End it.
Be what you were taught to be.
Footsteps sounded behind her. She froze. Didn’t turn. Didn’t breathe. She felt them before she heard them fully — the shift in the room, the familiar gravity, the way the air always changed when they were near.
Five of them. Draco first. Then Theo. Enzo’s quieter presence. Blaise measured steps. And Mattheo. She straightened slowly but did not turn. The letter remained between her hands.
“I was going to burn it,” she said quietly.
No one spoke.
“I thought that was the responsible choice,” she continued. “The intelligent one. The one we were raised to make.” She swallowed. “And then I realized I don’t know if I believe in that superiority anymore.”
She felt movement behind her.
A step.
Mattheo.
She sensed him before he was close enough to touch, the familiar pull of him, the instinct that had always known where he was without sight.
“Y/N—” he began.
She stepped back.
The motion was sharp. Deliberate. Enough to put the table between them. Enough to draw a line. The sound of her heels against marble cut through the room.
Silence followed.
She did not look at him. Not even when he stopped. Her gaze stayed on the letter. “I can’t do this with you standing there like nothing changed,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”
The words were not cruel. They were necessary. She closed her eyes briefly. Then opened them again. “If I answer this,” she said, voice low, steady, “it doesn’t mean we’re helping someone.”
Her fingers tightened around the parchment. “It means we are working to end the people who raised us.” The words landed heavily in the vast room. “It means everything we were built on becomes the thing we move against,” she continued. “Our families. Our names. The stories we were told about why the world looks the way it does.”
Her chest ached. “It means blood stops being an excuse,” she whispered. “And power stops being a birthright. And survival stops being something we inherit.” She exhaled slowly. “It means there is no version of this where we don’t become traitors to what made us.”
Behind her, she felt them shift. Draco closer. Theo still. Enzo’s breath drawn tight. Blaise’s attention sharpened. She did not look at Mattheo.
“I don’t know who I am if I send this,” she said. “But I am starting to know who I am if I don’t.”
Her hand hovered over the parchment. The wards hummed softly. The chandeliers flickered. The letter lay open to her choice.
“I haven’t answered yet,” she finished. She let the words exist. Let them sit in the space between heartbeats. Then, at last, she lifted her head slightly. Not enough to see him. Enough to be heard.
“But don’t mistake my hesitation,” she said quietly, “for doubt about what this costs.”
Behind her, five boys stood in a room built on blood and inheritance, watching the girl they love stand on the edge of something no one had prepared them to survive. And for the first time since any of them had been old enough to understand what their names meant, the future was not a continuation.
It was a fracture.
The silence that followed her words pressed in from every side. The chandeliers whispered faintly overhead. The wards breathed in the walls. The fire shifted low and uncertain, as though even the manor were listening.
Five presences behind her. One space she refused to turn toward. She was still staring at the letter when Blaise spoke.
“You’re not wrong.” His voice was quiet. Even. But there was nothing uncertain in it. “If you answer that letter,” he continued, “we don’t become allies. We don’t become heroes. We become something much worse.”
She inhaled.
“We become ghosts inside his house.” He stepped closer — not toward Mattheo, not toward the door, but toward her. “No one will know,” Blaise said. “Not our families. Not the circle. Not the Ministry. Not the Order. To the world, we stay exactly what we are.”
Death Eaters.
Enzo moved next. His hands were clenched, but his voice was steady. “We don’t stand beside Potter,” he said. “We stand behind him. In rooms he will never enter. We move things he will never touch. We hear things he will never be meant to survive.” He swallowed. “We help him end this war without ever letting him save us.”
Theo stepped closer until he stood just behind her shoulder, close enough that she could feel him without seeing him. “We work from the inside,” he said quietly. “We don’t defect. We don’t announce. We don’t hesitate in public.” His voice didn’t waver. “We stay where we are. And we rot him from within.”
Draco was last. And when he spoke, the room seemed to narrow around his voice. “No one will ever know we betrayed him,” he said. “Not unless we fail.” He took a step closer. “We will sit at his table. We will answer his summons. We will let the world believe what it wants about us.”
A breath.
“And everything we do in the dark will be for Potter.” The name left a familiar bitterness on his tongue. He rolled his eyes faintly, almost reflexively. Old habits die hard, even now.
Her fingers tightened around the parchment.
“To end this,” Draco finished. “Not to survive it.”
Four decisions. Four deliberate, conscious choices.
Then Mattheo laughed.
Soft.
Bitter.
Hollow.
“You’re talking about suicide.”
No one turned. No one rushed him. He stepped forward. She stepped back immediately. The table remained between them.
The line held.
“You’re talking about staying in the mouth of the thing that eats people,” he said. “And pretending you still belong there while you poison it.”
His eyes were bright.
“You think my father won’t notice?” he went on. “You think he won’t feel this the moment it becomes real? He will tear this house apart stone by stone to find out where she went.”
He gestured sharply toward Y/N.
“You are not talking about betrayal,” Mattheo said. “You are talking about living deaths. My father will know he probably saw your change today.”
Silence.
Then Y/N spoke. “I don’t think he knows,” she said quietly. The admission felt heavier than certainty. “I think that’s the most dangerous part.”
Mattheo stilled.
“I stood in that circle tonight,” she continued, eyes fixed on the table, on the letter between her hands. “And nothing in his gaze changed. Nothing in the room shifted. He didn’t see anything.”
Her fingers curled slowly around the parchment. “But something in me did.” Her voice softened, not with weakness, but with something more frightening. “I didn’t feel chosen. I didn’t feel powerful. I didn’t feel superior.”
She drew a slow breath. “I felt exposed to myself.”
Mattheo’s breath hitched.
“You didn’t put doubt in me,” she went on quietly. “You only said out loud what was already there.”
Mattheo dragged a hand down his face. “You’re all standing there like love turns monsters into martyrs,” he said. “Like this is a story where the terrible become useful.”
No one answered. “I am not better,” Mattheo said. “I am what he made. I am what survives.”
His voice dropped.
“I am a monster.”
The word settled into the marble. “And monsters don’t get to imagine clean wars,” he continued. “We belong in the part that ends badly.”
Y/N’s grip tightened around the letter.
“That is exactly why this works,” Draco said sharply.
Mattheo looked at him.
“Because he doesn’t watch monsters for betrayal,” Draco went on. “He uses them.”
Silence.
Mattheo’s mouth trembled. “You think I can stand there,” he said hoarsely, “and help Potter kill him?”
Y/N finally turned her head just enough to be heard. “If you stay,” she said, “you’ll help him kill everyone else.”
The words were not cruel.
They were true.
Mattheo closed his eyes. For a long moment, he didn’t speak. When he did, his voice was stripped bare. “She is asking me to help end the only world that ever let me live.” No one interrupted. “And she is asking me to do it quietly,” he continued. “Without glory. Without forgiveness. Without anyone ever knowing.”
He exhaled sharply. “Do you know what that makes me?”
No one answered.
He opened his eyes.
“Alone.”
The word was almost a breath. Then—
“I will help.”
It didn’t sound brave. It sounded chosen. “I will stay in that circle,” Mattheo said. “I will lie to his face. I will bleed when he asks. I will become whatever keeps me close enough to him to matter.”
His voice roughened. “And I will do it knowing he will kill me if he ever finds out.” A beat. “But at the end of the day… Y/N... you were the one who showed me what love feels like.”
The room stilled. “And if something like me can feel that,” he said, “then something like me can choose it.” He lifted his head. “Even if it destroys me.”
The fire shifted. The wards hummed.
Five shadows stood behind her.
One across the table. All of them choosing a war no one would ever thank them for. All of them waiting. Not for permission.
For her.
.
.
.
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@cminoko @ayyeitssarahh @404rogers @n00dl3zzz @eneywey @blublublubby @lilians17 @multiversejumper @whoreforfictionalmen18 @stillstuckinthelabyrinth
I’m going to take this moment to defend my client Mattheo, because sure maybe this is my Mattheo bias showing, but also I feel like some of the stuff he said was lowkey fair?? Like I was genuinely relieved to see someone give the reader some pushback after she basically volunteered the boys to Hermione without so much as asking them what they think or want, like yikes.
I’m not gonna sit here and say that what Mattheo said wasn’t harsh, because it was, but the reader needed a reality check, because girl be so fucking for real, you are too casual about this.
AND DRACO IF YOU DON’T SHUT YOUR BITCH ASS UP AND GET THE HELL OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE—
Genuinely his holier-than-thou ass speech to Mattheo had me legit fuminggggg, like dude, you aren’t HIS SON. You aren’t Voldemort’s son, and you could probably never fathom what cost that has for Mattheo. And you know what, you’re also a blonde man, and in my book, those things don’t get to have opinions, so ZIP IT!
On the flip-side though, it was really interesting to see this reader break for once. It felt weirdly necessary, and that moment with Theo was very sweet.
YESSS THIS IS WHAT I LOVE criticize the reader babe and yes I made Draco annoying on purpose trust 😩 he used to be my fav but hell girl Mattheo?!?! I am going to make a part 2 for this at some point be ready to be more annoyed??? maybe ???? who knows anymore my brain just be everywhere
