The Worst Part Was How Real It Felt
Warnings: arguing, jealousy, toxic relationship dynamics, possessiveness, kissing, emotional conflict, hurt feelings
Summary: After the celebration pulls everyone else into the warmth of the night, she finds Matteo alone in the corridor, and a small misunderstanding turns into something far more painful. What starts as jealousy quickly unravels into sharp words, exposed feelings, and the kind of messy love that hurts just as much as it comforts.
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The Great Hall looked unreal.
It didn’t even feel like Hogwarts anymore. It felt like stepping into the inside of a snow globe someone had shaken too hard, all silver and white and gold, all soft light and glitter and magic that made your chest tighten before the night had even properly begun.
Silver icicles dripped from the enchanted ceiling like glass, catching candlelight every time they turned. Frost curled delicately over the stone walls in shimmering patterns, as if winter itself had pressed its hands against the castle and left something beautiful behind. Hundreds of floating candles glowed overhead, their reflections dancing in the polished floor beneath everyone’s feet, and somewhere between the soft music and the hum of conversation, everything blurred into something dreamlike.
People were laughing. Dancing. Spinning under floating stars.
Champagne glasses flashed in elegant hands. Dresses glittered as girls passed in groups, their heels clicking against the floor. Jewellery caught the light. Boys stood straighter in pressed suits, pretending they weren’t nervous. It was all so bright, so alive, so beautiful.
But the only thing Enzo noticed when I walked in was me.
Or more specifically, the dress.
Green.
I saw the exact second it happened.
He’d been in the middle of talking to Theo near one of the long side tables, looking half amused about something, one hand wrapped around a drink, his tie already slightly loose in that way that made him look unfairly good without trying. Then I stepped into the room, and his sentence died in the middle.
Just stopped.
His eyes found me across the Great Hall and stayed there.
It wasn’t subtle. Not even a little.
Slowly, Theo noticed Enzo had completely checked out of the conversation and turned to see what had stolen his attention. I watched the moment realization crossed his face, followed by the tiniest grin before he muttered something to Enzo that I couldn’t hear and disappeared into the crowd.
Enzo didn’t even react.
He just kept looking at me.
And God, the way he looked at me made heat rise all the way up my neck.
His expression wasn’t cocky or teasing for once. It was quieter than that. Almost stunned. Like he’d forgotten where he was for a second. Like the noise around him had gone dim.
Green.
Because months ago, on one of those late evenings where we’d been sitting far too close in the common room pretending not to notice it, he’d glanced at me in this absent, thoughtful way and said, almost under his breath, Green’s my favourite on you.
I hadn’t forgotten it.
Clearly, neither had he.
I tried to keep my smile under control as I made my way across the room, weaving between groups of students and avoiding the edge of someone’s robes before I finally stopped in front of him.
He still hadn’t looked away.
I tilted my head. “You’re staring.”
He blinked like he’d only just come back to himself. “Can you blame me?”
I laughed softly, trying and failing to act unaffected. “Bit dramatic.”
“A bit?” he repeated, offended. “I’m trying to have a genuine moment with you.”
“You’re doing a terrible job.”
“I disagree.” His eyes dropped over my dress again, slower this time, and his mouth curved. “Actually, I think I’m doing very well.”
My cheeks warmed instantly. “Enzo.”
“What?” he asked, completely unrepentant. “You look...” He exhaled a little, shaking his head once. “You look ridiculously pretty.”
Something in my chest softened in the most dangerous way.
I looked down for half a second, suddenly shy under his attention, then glanced back up. “You look nice too.”
His hand flew to his chest in mock offense. “Nice?”
I smiled. “Yes. Nice.”
“That’s cruel, actually.”
“You’ll survive.”
“Debatable.”
I laughed again, and that seemed to snap him fully back into himself. His grin returned, bright and familiar, and before I could say anything else he reached for my hand and tugged me closer like it was the most natural thing in the world.
His fingers slid between mine with no hesitation, warm and sure.
And for the first hour, everything felt easy.
Not perfect, maybe. Nothing with us was ever perfect.
But close enough that I could pretend.
We danced until my feet ached and the straps of my shoes started rubbing at my heels. We laughed through one horrible slow song after another, and when Enzo muttered, “If this gets any more tragic, I’m throwing myself into the Black Lake,” I had to press my lips together to stop myself from laughing loud enough to draw attention.
“You’re impossible,” I told him.
“And yet you’re still here.”
“Questioning that choice constantly.”
He smirked and spun me anyway.
Later, when the tempo changed and people crowded closer to the center of the dance floor, he leaned near my ear and said, “Come with me if you want to survive this.”
“That was deeply embarrassing.”
“You loved it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You absolutely did.”
He stole two drinks from a table that definitely didn’t belong to us, handed one to me with the kind of confidence only Enzo could manage, and led me toward the edge of the Hall.
“You’re a thief,” I said.
He took a sip and shrugged. “Only when necessary.”
“You didn’t even ask.”
“And ruin the mystery?”
I should’ve rolled my eyes, but I was smiling too hard.
At one point, he grabbed my hand when another lively song started and dragged me right back into the crowd before I could protest. He spun me too fast, his laugh already breaking loose when I stumbled toward him, and the two of us nearly crashed straight into a group of Ravenclaws.
“Oh my God,” I gasped, laughing so hard I could barely stand.
One of the Ravenclaw girls glared. “Watch it.”
Enzo, still laughing, let go of me long enough to make an overly formal bow. “A thousand apologies. Terrible choreography. Entirely my fault.”
“Obviously,” I said, breathless.
He looked back at me, eyes bright, and for a second everything else disappeared.
That was the worst part.
How real it felt.
How easy he made it feel when he wanted to.
Like maybe this could actually be normal.
Like maybe I could have this without always waiting for the crack in it. Without bracing for the part where something sharp slipped through. Without wondering how long we had until the mood shifted and I said the wrong thing or he shut down or one of us bled all over something that had been good five minutes earlier.
For a little while, I let myself believe it.
I let myself believe that loving him didn’t always have to feel like standing too close to the edge of something dangerous and pretending I wasn’t scared of falling.
Later, when the room had grown warmer from too many bodies and too much music and too much noise, Enzo brushed his thumb against my wrist and said, “Stay here. I’m getting us another drink.”
“You mean stealing us another drink.”
He gave me a look. “Don’t say it like that.”
“How should I say it?”
He leaned in slightly. “Say, Enzo, you’re incredibly brave and handsome.”
I laughed. “Go away.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
He squeezed my hand once before letting go, then disappeared into the crowd.
The second he was gone, I felt the shift.
Not in the room.
In myself.
Like I’d only realized how anchored I’d been because suddenly I wasn’t.
I drifted toward the side of the Hall, more to get a little air than anything else, stopping near one of the long tables where a group of Slytherin boys stood talking too loudly over their drinks. I didn’t pay much attention at first. Their voices blended with everything else, just background noise under the music.
Then one of them said my name.
My body stilled before my mind did.
“Still can’t believe she’s with Enzo,” one of them said with a laugh, like the whole thing was a joke he couldn’t quite get over.
Another boy snorted into his drink. “Give it time. He’ll ruin that girl eventually.”
A few of them chuckled.
Quietly, casually.
Like that was just obvious.
Like it was normal.
Like I was stupid for not already knowing it.
My stomach twisted.
I told myself not to react. Told myself boys said stupid things all the time. Told myself it didn’t matter, that none of them knew anything about us, that I shouldn’t let it get under my skin.
But then I heard footsteps behind me, and before I even turned, I knew Enzo had come back.
I could feel it.
One of the boys looked up and noticed him standing there with the drinks in his hands.
A grin spread across his face. “You know I’m right.”
Everything in me went tight.
This was the moment.
The easy answer. The obvious one.
The one where Enzo rolled his eyes and told them to shut up. The one where he said they didn’t know what they were talking about. The one where he made it into a joke and pulled me into his side and proved, in one careless sentence, that whatever was between us mattered enough for him to defend it.
Instead, he just looked down at the drinks for a second.
Not long.
Just long enough.
Then he said, quiet enough that it somehow hurt more, “Probably.”
The cold that settled in my chest felt immediate and heavy.
It spread so fast I almost forgot how to breathe.
He looked up then, maybe finally noticing my face, maybe realizing too late that I’d heard every word.
Something in his expression changed.
“Wait,” he started.
But I was already stepping back.
“I need some air,” I said, and even to my own ears my voice sounded strange. Too flat. Too careful.
He moved after me. “That’s not what I meant.”
I didn’t trust myself to answer.
If I opened my mouth right then, I was scared I’d either cry or say something ugly enough to make the whole room turn and stare.
So I walked away.
The rest of the night didn’t fall apart all at once.
That would’ve been easier.
Easier if we’d fought right there. Easier if he’d said something awful and I’d snapped back and the damage had been clean, visible, impossible to ignore.
Instead, it unraveled in small, miserable pieces.
He found me again a few minutes later, quieter now, trying to act like he could still fix it.
“Here,” he said softly, offering me one of the drinks.
I took it because not taking it would’ve made a scene.
“Thanks.”
One word.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
The next song started. He looked at me like he wanted to ask me to dance, but he hesitated for half a second too long, and I used that second to look away.
I stopped reaching for his hand first.
He kept glancing at me throughout conversations, trying to catch my eye, trying to read whatever I wasn’t saying.
Every time he smiled, it looked a little more forced when I didn’t fully smile back.
The silence between us stretched in strange places.
In the pause after a joke that should’ve landed.
In the seconds before he asked, “You alright?”
In the breath I took before lying and saying, “Fine.”
Even dancing felt wrong after that.
His hand on my waist wasn’t comforting anymore. It just made me think of what he’d said. What he hadn’t said. What he believed.
Probably.
Probably, he’ll ruin that girl.
And maybe the part that hurt the most was that he hadn’t sounded smug.
He hadn’t said it to be cruel.
He’d said it like it was true.
Like it was something he already knew about himself.
By the time we left the Great Hall, snow was falling thick and steady outside.
The cold hit the second the doors opened, sharp enough to sting my lungs. White covered the stone paths and softened the edges of the courtyard, gathering in the corners of steps and clinging to the dark hedges. The castle behind us glowed gold through frosted windows, all warmth and light, while outside everything was quiet except for the muffled crunch of our footsteps.
We walked side by side, but not close enough to touch.
Snow caught in my hair and melted against my bare shoulders. I wrapped my arms around myself, though I couldn’t tell how much of the shivering was from the cold and how much was from everything sitting ugly and heavy inside me.
Enzo lasted maybe half the courtyard before he broke.
“You’ve barely spoken to me for the last hour.”
His voice wasn’t sharp at first. Just tired.
I kept walking. “Maybe I got tired.”
“Tired of what?”
There was something in the way he asked it that made me stop.
I turned to face him, snow drifting between us in slow white flakes.
“Tired of hearing people talk about you like you’re some disaster waiting to happen.”
His whole expression changed instantly.
His jaw tightened. His shoulders drew stiff. “Who said something to you?”
I let out a breath that fogged in the freezing air. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It clearly does.”
“No, what clearly matters is that they said it right in front of you and you agreed.”
His eyes flashed. “They were joking.”
I gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “That’s supposed to make it better?”
“You know what they’re like.”
“Yes, Enzo, I do. I heard them.”
He took a step closer. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like I was standing there insulting you.”
I stared at him. “You didn’t say they were wrong.”
For one second, maybe two, he just looked at me.
Snow clung to his dark hair and the shoulders of his suit. His breath came out slow through his nose, visible in the cold. He looked frustrated already, but there was something uneasy underneath it, something restless and raw.
“That’s what this is about?” he said finally.
I actually blinked at him.
“That’s what this is about?” I repeated, disbelief rising so fast it almost choked me. “You literally agreed with them.”
“No,” he snapped, voice sharper now. “I just didn’t lie to you.”
That landed like a slap.
The air left my lungs.
For a second, I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there in the snow staring at him while something cracked quietly in my chest.
He seemed to realize it immediately, because the anger in his face shifted, not disappearing but twisting into something more complicated.
But it was too late.
“Why would you even say that?” I asked, and I hated how small my voice sounded.
He dragged a hand through his hair, already visibly losing his grip on whatever calm he’d been trying to hold onto. “Because I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth would’ve been a good start.”
“That was the truth.”
I looked away for a second, because if I kept looking at him I thought I might cry, and I absolutely was not going to cry in front of him in the middle of a freezing courtyard.
“Great,” I said quietly. “Thanks for that, then.”
“Don’t,” he said.
I looked back at him. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t do that thing where you shut me out and act like I’m the only one making this difficult.”
I laughed then, but there was no humour in it. “Are you serious?”
He was breathing harder now, his control slipping in visible pieces. “I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“No, you’re being careless.”
His mouth tightened. “Same difference.”
“It’s really not.”
The wind swept through the courtyard hard enough to make me flinch. My fingers were numb. My face was cold. None of it compared to the ache building under my ribs.
“I heard them talk about me like I was some naive idiot who’s just waiting for you to wreck her,” I said, my voice shaking now despite how badly I wanted it not to. “And then you stood there and basically told me they weren’t wrong. Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”
Enzo’s expression flickered.
For the first time, he looked less angry than cornered.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it?”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Looked away.
That hurt almost as much as the answer itself.
I shook my head. “Right.”
“Stop,” he said, more urgently this time.
“You stop.” My voice rose before I could help it. “You don’t get to say things like that and then act annoyed because I’m upset.”
“I’m not annoyed because you’re upset.”
“You look furious.”
“I’m furious because I can’t say anything without it coming out wrong.”
“Then maybe think before you say it.”
His eyes met mine then, dark and sharp and suddenly full of something much more dangerous than anger.
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
The words echoed across the empty courtyard.
I froze.
He took another step toward me, voice lower now but no less intense.
“Do you think I don’t hear what people say about me?”
I didn’t answer.
He gave a humourless laugh and looked away, jaw clenched so tightly I could see the tension in it. “You think that was the first time?”
Snow kept falling, gathering on his lashes, melting against his skin.
When he looked back at me, there was something stripped bare in his expression that made my stomach twist.
“I know exactly what they think of me.”
His voice was quieter now.
Too quiet.
“And the worst part is they’re not completely wrong.”
I swallowed hard. “Enzo...”
But he was past stopping.
“Because I don’t know how to do this properly, alright?” he said suddenly, and the force of it cut through the cold air like shattered glass. “I don’t know how to be what you want. I don’t know how to be calm all the time or careful all the time or normal all the time. I don’t know how to love someone without ruining it a little.”
Silence crashed down between us.
My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
His chest rose and fell unevenly, breath clouding in the air. He looked angry saying it, but underneath the anger was something worse.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of himself.
Fear that this was all he was ever going to be.
And God, that was the part that almost undid me.
Because I knew he meant it.
He believed every word.
He wasn’t trying to manipulate me. Wasn’t trying to win. Wasn’t trying to make me feel guilty.
He was standing there in the snow, beautiful and miserable and defensive and completely exposed, telling me the ugliest truth he knew about himself.
And I hated that I understood it.
I hated that some part of me wanted to cross the distance between us and hold his face and tell him that wasn’t true, even while another part of me was still bleeding from what he’d said.
My throat tightened.
“That’s exactly the problem,” I whispered.
The second the words left my mouth, I wanted them back.
I saw them hit him.
It was small. So small someone else might not have noticed it.
But I did.
The way his face went still.
The way something in his eyes shut behind the anger.
The way his mouth parted slightly and then closed again, like he had a hundred things he could say and none of them would help.
And the awful thing was, I hadn’t said it to be cruel.
I’d said it because it was true.
Because loving him felt like trying to hold onto something beautiful while it burned through my hands.
Because every good moment with him came with this quiet dread, this terrible little voice asking how long it would last before he pulled away or lashed out or said something that left bruises where no one could see them.
Because I was tired.
Tired of making excuses for pain just because it came wrapped in tenderness half the time.
Tired of pretending intensity meant the same thing as safety.
Tired of loving someone who looked at me like I was precious one minute and then spoke like losing me was inevitable the next.
For once, Enzo had nothing sarcastic to say.
No clever comment.
No bitter laugh.
No smirk sharp enough to hide behind.
He just stood there in the snow looking at me like I’d finally said the one thing he could never argue with.
And maybe that was because some part of him had already been thinking it too.
The courtyard felt even colder after that.
Neither of us moved.
I could hear distant music still spilling faintly from the castle, muffled by thick stone walls and winter air. Somewhere far off, someone shouted and laughed. The sound felt like it belonged to another universe.
Not this one.
Not us.
I looked at him and saw too much all at once.
The boy who made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe.
The boy who noticed the colour of my dress from across a crowded room.
The boy who held my hand like he meant it.
The boy who could make me feel adored and devastated in the same night.
And standing there in the snow, I didn’t know what to do with that.
I didn’t know how to keep loving someone who seemed so certain he’d destroy every good thing placed in his hands.
He looked away first.
That somehow hurt more.
I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, suddenly aware of how cold I was, how tired I was, how badly I wanted this night to have gone differently.
Neither of us spoke again.
Because what was left to say?
Sorry wouldn’t have fixed it.
I love you wouldn’t have fixed it either.
Some things break long before the moment you actually hear them crack.
And deep down, in the quiet horrible space where honesty lives, we both knew it.
Sometimes loving someone isn’t enough to save them from themselves.
And sometimes, no matter how badly you want it to be, love isn’t enough to save you either.
