The air inside the shop was thick—chokingly thick—with the kind of atmosphere that settled deep into the lungs and refused to let go, a cloying blend of aged parchment curling at the edges, dried herbs long past their prime, and something older, something nameless, something that didn't belong to any one century but clung to the room like a memory too ancient to forget. It wasn't just a smell—it was a presence, a weight that pressed against the skin like humidity laced with foreboding, wrapping around Theo's shoulders with slow, suffocating purpose, as though the moment he stepped inside, the past had taken notice of him. The shelves lining the walls were packed in a kind of barely-contained chaos, every surface cluttered with relics and remnants of magic long buried, books stacked in crumbling towers with spines half-eaten by time, jars filled with preserved specimens that looked more sentient than they had any right to, talismans hanging from rusted hooks like trophies taken from a war no one remembered winning. Some of the artifacts were humming—literally humming—the vibration barely audible but deeply felt, a low, teeth-on-edge frequency that made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, made his breath hitch just slightly in his throat. It felt like being watched, not by a person, not even by a spirit, but by the concept of memory itself, as though the room remembered things it had no business remembering, and was now sizing him up, deciding if he was worthy or merely next.
He hated places like this.
Theo had spent most of his life avoiding rooms that whispered, avoiding magic that didn't obey rules, avoiding the kind of lingering enchantment that didn't ask for permission so much as consume whatever was foolish enough to step into its reach. He didn't like places where the boundaries of time felt soft and unreliable, didn't like the way the energy in this shop crawled beneath his skin like something alive. And yet—Luna moved through it like it was home. Like the shelves welcomed her. Like the dust of forgotten centuries slid off her shoulders the moment she passed, revealing her as something kindred, something that didn't fear the dark corners or the whispering things in jars. She drifted through the space with the quiet confidence of someone who knew that knowledge, especially the dangerous kind, never lived in well-lit rooms or tidy libraries. She belonged here in a way he never could, and as she ran her fingers along a table cluttered with scattered bones—arranged deliberately, too deliberately, in shapes and sigils that twisted Theo's stomach into knots—he felt that quiet, inevitable shift inside himself, the one that always came when he was with her: awe, terror, and the sickening certainty that he would follow her anywhere, even here.
The old woman behind the counter didn't acknowledge them at first, her head bowed in reverence or disinterest—it was impossible to tell. Her hands, gnarled with age and dusted with ash, moved slowly over a battered deck of tarot cards, each shuffle slow and deliberate, as though time were something she owned outright and could spend as she pleased. The cards looked ancient—older than ancient—their corners frayed, their surfaces worn down by centuries of questions and too many truths. She shuffled them like she was stirring fate itself, like the answers had already been written into the folds of the world and all she had to do was turn them over and point. The very room seemed to tighten the moment her hands moved, the air sharpening, the candle flames bowing inward slightly, like something unseen had just taken a step closer to listen. Theo's body reacted before his mind did—tense, guarded, spine straightening as though he could ward off the feeling with posture alone—but nothing could fight the way the magic in the room shifted, like it had taken notice, like she had taken notice.
"You've come," the woman said, and her voice was like the rustle of dead leaves dragged across stone—dry and brittle and strangely resonant, the kind of voice that didn't ask for attention so much as demand it, the kind of voice that had been speaking truths long before either of them were born. "I wondered when you would." She didn't lift her eyes. She didn't need to. The weight of her knowing was already upon them.
Theo turned to glance at Luna, instinctive, searching for that grounding sense of calm she always carried, but she wasn't looking at him. Her gaze was locked on the woman, eyes clear, unblinking, filled with the kind of calm that made Theo's bones ache. Of course she wasn't surprised. Of course she wasn't unnerved. Luna Lovegood never looked surprised, because Luna Lovegood knew—things, people, timing, intention. She was always two steps ahead, always listening to the world through frequencies no one else could hear. But still, the way she stood in that moment—so still, so focused, so ready—unsettled him, because it meant that whatever this was, it wasn't random. She had planned for this. And he had followed her here anyway.
"We need information," Luna said, her voice soft but firm, a thread of certainty woven into it like steel beneath silk, and it hit Theo harder than it should have, because she sounded like someone stating a fact, not making a request.
The old woman's fingers never stopped moving, still shuffling, still tracing the edges of her cards like she was reading something invisible to them both. "Information," she echoed, and there was something in the way she said it that made Theo's skin prickle. "Is that what you think you seek?" Slowly, she stopped. Set the deck down. Her hands spread out across the scarred wood of the counter, palms wide, revealing lines so deep they looked carved. "You do not come looking for answers. You come looking for understanding."
Theo exhaled, long and sharp through his nose, tension leaking from his spine like steam, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. He hated this. Hated riddles. Hated half-truths and metaphors and people who answered questions with more questions. "Look, we don't have time for—"
She lifted one hand—barely—just a flicker of fingers, a gesture so small it should have meant nothing, and yet it stopped him cold. Like a spell. Like a command. "You do not have time for much at all," she said, and this time she looked at him—really looked, her gaze slow and heavy and ancient in a way that made something inside him recoil. "Not with the way things are unraveling."
And that was it.
That was the moment.
The moment when something inside Theo shifted, twisted, dropped. A cold ripple slithered down his spine and settled low in his gut like a seed of dread planted in fertile ground, curling inward, coiling tighter, whispering things he wasn't ready to hear. He didn't need to look at Luna to know she already knew. She always knew.
But now he did too.
They were already running out of time.
Luna didn't speak, didn't shift, didn't even seem to breathe, but the stillness of her frame was no longer passive—it was deliberate, fortified, anchored in something ancient and unshakable, and though her face remained unreadable and her posture unchanged, Theo could feel it now like a current under his skin—the pressure that had begun to build, the tension humming just beneath the surface of the shop's stale, time-worn air, the shift in the room's energy as something unseen stirred, something listening, something leaning in. The walls themselves felt like they had drawn breath, like they had become sentient in their silence, and though he could see no movement, no flickering shadow, no change in the candle's flame, there was no denying the sensation—the heavy weight in the air that hadn't been there before, as if this moment, this question, this convergence of paths had pulled something awake that should have remained sleeping.
"Tell us what you know," Luna said at last, her voice cutting through the thick silence not with sharpness but with clarity, clean and absolute, no tremor, no trace of her usual gentle dreaminess or the floaty softness that people so often mistook for absentmindedness or whimsy. There was no room for misinterpretation here, no veil of pleasantries or gentle curiosity—only quiet certainty, the kind that came not from guessing or hoping, but from knowing, from having seen, and the tone of it made Theo's blood run cold, made the hair at the nape of his neck rise, because she was not asking. She was calling something forward.
The old woman behind the counter lifted her gaze, her face curling into what might have once been a smile, but now was something more sinister, more knowing, less an expression of welcome than one of inevitability, a grim acknowledgment that the wheel had turned and the players were finally where they were meant to be. There was no kindness in her expression, no reassurance, no sense of comfort—only the cold amusement of someone who had read the last page of the book and pitied the characters still floundering through the middle chapters. "The crows have been watching," she said, and the words struck like a blade dragged slowly across the surface of Theo's spine, not because of what she said, but because of how she said it—like it wasn't news, like it wasn't a warning, but a truth that had simply taken its time arriving. He went still, every muscle locking down, the cold shock of recognition slicing through the heat of his breath. "And they whisper of things already set in motion."
Her eyes flicked between them, dragging across Luna's face with a little too much weight, lingering a fraction too long, and though her expression didn't shift—didn't soften, didn't sharpen—there was something in her gaze that made Theo feel like she had seen through his skin, like she had peeled back the layers of his silence and his deflection and his denial and found something fragile underneath, something damning. "You do not see it yet, do you?" she asked, and though the question was directed at him, it felt like it echoed through the room, like it wasn't meant to be answered but realized.
Theo's jaw tightened, his mouth dry, his throat aching around a breath he didn't remember holding, and every instinct—every finely-honed defense that had kept him alive in war and in the spaces between war—was screaming at him to walk away, to turn his back on this shop and this woman and these impossible truths and pretend they hadn't begun to wrap around him like chains. "See what?" he asked, and his voice sounded wrong, too low, too strained, too much like he already knew and hated that he did.
The woman's fingers resumed their slow rhythm against the tabletop, drumming in a pattern that was maddening in its deliberateness, like the ticking of a clock he couldn't see, one that counted not seconds but inevitabilities. "The way your fates are entwined," she said, and the words were a weight dropped directly onto his chest, pressing down into his lungs, curling beneath his ribs like smoke or ink or something worse—something permanent. They didn't feel like a prediction. They felt like a sentence.
The silence that followed was unbearable, thick with tension and something older than fear, something that clawed at the inside of his chest, something he couldn't name. He could feel it building, rising, not in his mind but in his body, that slow tightening, that awful pressure, like his ribs were being pulled inward, like his heartbeat was trying to warn him of something he wasn't ready to face. He wanted to say she was wrong, wanted to scoff, to laugh, to throw the idea back in her face and tell her fate wasn't real, that nothing was written, that all of them were free and every step was their own choosing—but he didn't. He couldn't. Not with Luna standing next to him, silent and still and listening in a way that made it clear she hadn't needed the woman to say it aloud to know it was true.
"Theo," Luna murmured, and the sound of his name—spoken so gently, so sadly—sent a chill down his spine, because he couldn't tell if she was calling him back to the moment or pushing him forward into it. He didn't know if she was grounding him or unraveling him, and for the first time, she hesitated. Not visibly. Not loudly. But he saw it—the pause in her breath, the slight drop of her gaze, the shift in her posture that spoke of knowledge carried too long and held too tightly.
"You have known this all along, haven't you?" the old woman asked, not cruelly, not accusingly, but with a calm finality that made Theo's stomach lurch, made his palms go cold. The question wasn't for him. It was for her.
Luna didn't deny it.
She exhaled softly, her eyes not on either of them now but on the space between, and for the first time in all the time he had known her, Theo saw not the seer but the burdened. And in that breath—in that hesitation—he felt the truth crest behind his ribs like a wave, sharp and rising and ready to pull him under. Because he had known. Somewhere, deep in the part of himself he never allowed light to touch, he had known all along.
The woman leaned back slowly, her hands moving toward the candle beside her, watching the way its flame danced, her face illuminated by flickering gold and shadow. "It is not chance that brought you here," she murmured, and her voice was quieter now, but no less powerful. "Not to this place. Not to each other. You are part of something greater—greater than bloodlines, greater than curses, greater than the wars men wage on each other out of fear and ignorance. You are not accidents. You are alignments."
Luna's voice came so soft Theo barely caught it. "And what happens now?"
The woman didn't answer immediately. Instead, she reached for the deck once more, her movements slow, deliberate, her fingers steady as she shuffled, then drew a single card and laid it between them on the table, turning it face up in one smooth motion.
The Lovers.
Theo's breath caught in his throat, the shock of it slicing through him like ice. A trick. A coincidence. A joke, surely. But when he lifted his eyes, the woman was not smiling.
"You will understand soon enough," she said, and the words landed like iron, final and irreversible, the weight of them settling into his chest like a curse already spoken, already cast, already sealed.
And for one terrible, breathless moment, Theo didn't know if he wanted to understand—or if he was already too far gone not to.
~~~
The return to the safehouse was suffocating in the most maddening, visceral way—not the kind of silence that offered peace or rest, not the kind that cradled you in the aftermath of something heavy—but the kind that wrapped itself around their shoulders like a noose made of all the things they hadn't said, a silence too thick, too charged, too dense with the weight of truths they hadn't yet admitted. It clung to them the entire way back, worming its way beneath Theo's skin, curling into the spaces between his ribs and coiling there like smoke that refused to dissipate. Every step away from that cursed little shop felt heavier than the last, as though the world had tilted just enough to make balance impossible, and through it all, his mind churned restlessly, caught in a slow, inevitable spiral around the seer's words—the crows, the Lovers, the whisper of fate like something alive, something crawling through his veins with every beat of his heart. He wanted to dismiss it. Desperately. He wanted to tear the idea from his mind and leave it rotting in the dust of that room with its bones and cards and knowing, awful smiles—but the problem was, he couldn't. The words wouldn't leave him. They stayed, stuck in his throat, digging in like thorns, scratching at something buried too deep to dislodge.
It was all bullshit—every last bit of it. That was what he told himself. It had to be. All of these prophecies, all of these riddles spoken like gospel by women with too much time and too many secrets, all of it was just the same tired trick of using fear and mystery to create meaning where there was none. Fate was a myth. Fate was a leash. Fate was the story people told themselves to make sense of chaos—but he had survived chaos. He was chaos. And no one, not even the gods, got to decide where he went or who he became. He was supposed to be the one in control—the one who chose, the one who cut his own path with blood and steel and ruthless certainty. But the problem, the truth—the fucking terror—was that it lingered anyway. That voice, that whisper, that possibility. That Luna had been undoing every one of his defenses from the moment she first stood beside him like she'd always been meant to, from the moment her strange, quiet magic slid into his world and refused to be ignored. From the first time she said the crows are watching, and made him believe it.
By the time they stepped inside the safehouse, the pressure in his chest was unbearable. The familiar comfort of home should've helped—the soft, golden glow of the lamps tucked into corners, the gentle crackle of the fire in the hearth, the distant echo of conversation and footsteps in rooms not far from theirs. It should have grounded him. Instead, it felt like a mockery of comfort. Like a set piece arranged around them by something waiting for them to play their parts. The moment the door clicked shut behind them, he exhaled sharply, a sound more animal than human, and dragged his hands through his hair with enough force that his scalp burned from the strain. His body felt too full, too tight, every muscle strung with tension, every breath jagged and incomplete.
"Fucking hell," he bit out, the words escaping like a curse expelled from the deepest part of him, raw and bitter and entirely too much, but still not enough. It shattered the quiet between them, and he immediately began pacing—long, aggressive strides across the wooden floor, boots hitting hard enough to echo, his fists clenching and unclenching like he didn't know what else to do with his hands, his frustration a living, breathing thing trying to claw its way out of him. He could feel her behind him, could feel the weight of her watching, but he couldn't look at her yet, couldn't bear to see her face and risk believing that she wasn't just as shaken as he was.
"They're lying," he snapped, the words acidic, brittle, laced with something almost like panic. "This fate bullshit—it's a fucking lie." He needed her to believe it too. He needed her to say she didn't buy it, that they could walk away from all of it and never look back, that nothing had changed. But she didn't say that.
"They're never fully right," she murmured, and her voice—gods, her voice—was soft but grounded, quiet but immovable, the kind of certainty that didn't need to be raised to be heard. "But they're never fully wrong, either."
And just like that, something inside him snapped.
"No," he growled, whipping around so suddenly the air seemed to shift with him, the tension pulling taut like a drawn bowstring as he closed the distance between them in two furious strides. He stopped just short of her, too close, the heat of his body rolling off in waves, his breathing uneven, his hands still clenched at his sides like he was holding himself back from destroying something—her, the room, himself. "You don't get to say that like it means something," he said, his voice rough, cracked at the edges. "Like we're just supposed to accept it. Like—like this—like you and me—was planned." He dragged his fingers across his jaw, his frustration spilling over into every movement, every breath. "Like we're just supposed to go along with it, like we're not allowed to fucking question it."
And still—she didn't flinch.
Luna Lovegood, who had seen things that should have broken her, who walked through darkness like she was born from it, who carried other people's ghosts like lanterns—she just lifted her chin and looked at him like she'd already played this scene out in her mind a hundred times and had never once doubted how it would end. There was no fear in her, no hesitation, only that maddening calm that made him want to shake her and kiss her and beg her to do something.
"Theo," she said, and it was just his name, just that, but it was everything. It was an invocation, a balm, a challenge, a plea. It tightened something in his chest so violently he almost winced. It made him look at her, really look, and in doing so, he saw how close they'd gotten, how little space there was between them now, how her breath synced with his like they were two halves of the same broken thing trying to remember how to beat again.
He saw her lips.
And then he was doomed.
Because his eyes dropped—just for a second, just long enough to register the softness, the nearness, the quiet invitation in the tilt of her head, in the way she didn't move away, didn't blink, didn't speak. She was still there. Right there. Not stepping back. Not ending this.
He shouldn't have looked.
He should have turned and walked away.
He should have done anything but stay in this moment, let it swell, let it break, let it consume them whole.
But he didn't.
Because she wasn't moving either.
And that was the worst part.
Because now the space between them was humming—alive, pulsing, dangerous—and everything in him, every piece of who he had once been, every careful wall and cold decision and hardened instinct told him to retreat.
And yet—he stayed. And so did she. And the world, as they knew it, began to change.
His hand twitched at his side—barely, a subtle tremor that might have gone unnoticed to anyone else, but not to her, not to him, not in this moment, not with the weight of what had just passed between them still hanging in the air like a storm that hadn't yet broken. His fingers curled slowly, tense and aching, as if by clenching them he could anchor himself in the present, as if he could somehow restrain the pull of his body toward hers, hold back the urge to reach out and touch her face, her waist, her throat—anywhere, just to feel something solid beneath his hand, something real, something hers. It was a fragile, doomed attempt to maintain control, to keep himself from giving in to the impulse that had been building inside him like a rising tide, pressing harder and harder against the walls of his restraint until it became unbearable. And then—
The window slammed open.
There was no warning, no gradual creak of hinges or flicker of magical resistance—just the violent crack of the frame snapping outward, the glass shuddering in its panes, the metal latch slamming hard enough against the wall to echo through the room like a gunshot. A rush of air burst inward, a cold, sharp wind that hit them like a curse, cutting through the warmth of the room with the brutal precision of something deliberate, sent, not accidental. The flames in the candles along the wall flared wildly, long tongues of fire snapping in every direction, shadows flailing across the room like claws as papers were flung from the desk, their pages spiraling into the air with frantic, rustling wings of their own. But it wasn't the wind that stopped him—it wasn't the cold, or the noise, or even the shock of the room responding like it had been punctured. It was the sound.
Wings.
Theo's breath caught mid-exhale as something slammed against the glass with a force that rattled the entire wall, a heavy, wet thud followed by the scrape of claws and the fleeting flash of dark feathers. He jerked back, the reaction instant, primal, every muscle in his body locking down like he'd been hit with a curse, his hand flying to his wand even though he didn't remember reaching for it, the beat of his heart exploding in his ears with such violence that he couldn't hear anything else for a moment—not even her breathing, not even his own.
A crow.
A fucking crow had flown straight into the window.
The impact had been so loud it felt like it echoed through his chest, like it struck through the glass and into him directly, and then—nothing. Silence. The bird was gone, vanished into the night before either of them could react, before they could even process the sight of it. One second it was there, and the next, the only proof it had ever existed was the faint smudge of feathers on the glass and the undeniable shift in the air around them, the way the room had gone still—not quiet, still—like the very house was holding its breath.
And then came the feeling.
That creeping, slithering sensation that something unseen had been left behind, that something had entered with the wind and chosen to stay. The warmth of the room, already diminished by the gust, evaporated completely, replaced by a chill that settled into the bones, the kind that didn't come from the cold but from the knowing, from the realization that something had changed, that something had arrived. The energy in the room curled in on itself, recoiled, pulled tight like a noose being drawn closed around them, and Theo's breath grew uneven as panic laced through him in quiet, corrosive threads.
He looked at her.
Because of course he did.
Because in moments like this, when the world tilted and meaning scraped too close to the surface, she was always the fixed point in his mind, the anchor he never admitted he needed. And when his gaze found hers, he knew—without needing to ask, without needing to speak—that she had felt it too.
Luna stood frozen, but not afraid—not in the traditional sense. Her body was still, her expression composed, but the calmness there wasn't serenity, wasn't indifference. It was alert. It was the eerie kind of stillness a creature adopts when it knows it's being watched. Her silver-blue eyes, always too clear, too sharp beneath their softness, flicked toward the window, toward the space the crow had occupied a heartbeat ago, toward the invisible line that had just been crossed. And when she looked back at him, when her eyes locked with his, they had darkened just slightly, like a veil had been pulled away, like something deeper had come forward to meet him. Her voice, when she finally spoke, was a whisper—but not a gentle one. It was a statement, a quiet declaration edged in certainty and something like grief.
"They know," she murmured.
Just that.
Two words.
But they hit him like a curse.
Theo swallowed hard, his throat dry, his jaw tightening to keep the fear from showing, but it was already too late. His fists curled again at his sides, not in want this time, but in defense, in defiance, in desperation, because the heat that had been driving his body only moments ago had vanished, and in its place was something colder, something sharper, something more familiar. Fear. Real fear. Not the kind born of nightmares or memory or violence—but the kind that comes when something real reaches for you from the shadows and you realize too late that it already knows your name.
And she wasn't just talking about the crows.
Gods help him—he knew she wasn't just talking about the crows.
The weight in Theo's chest had gone from a dull pressure to a living thing, something heavy and relentless and coiled like an animal trying to claw its way through his ribs, and the more he tried to ignore it, to stuff it down, to force it back into the dark corner where he kept everything he didn't know how to face, the more violently it fought to be seen. It wasn't just the old woman's voice echoing in his skull, wasn't just the tarot card still seared into his memory, the Lovers card burned like an afterimage every time he closed his eyes, mocking him with its inevitability. It wasn't even the crows, not really, though they haunted his periphery now, black-winged things that stirred when he wasn't looking. No—the real reason he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't stop himself from unraveling, was her. It had always been her. Luna, with her maddening calm, with the way she looked at him like he was a story she already knew the ending to, with the way she never seemed surprised, never seemed shaken, never seemed like she was struggling the way he was. She just waited, always, as if the rest of the world would eventually catch up to what she had already seen, and the longer he stood there, the more he began to realize he might be the only one still trying to pretend they hadn't already crossed a line.
He had spent his entire life depending on rules, on the clean logic of things that made sense—cause and effect, order and consequence, the belief that if he just kept control of himself, of everything, he could keep the chaos at bay. But this—she—was slipping through his hands like smoke, like starlight, like something he couldn't name and didn't know how to fight. And gods, he was tired. Tired of chasing shadows, tired of pretending none of this mattered, tired of pretending she didn't matter.
His breath caught in his throat, uneven, and he stood there like a man on the edge of something that could not be undone, his fists clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles ached, his pulse loud and frantic in his ears, too fast, too heavy, pounding like a war drum as he forced himself to look at her—really look at her. And fuck, she was—gods, she was standing there like the eye of the storm, candlelight painting gold across the sharp line of her collarbone, her hair a mess of pale strands falling over her shoulders like silver thread, her lips parted just slightly, like she was either about to speak or about to let him kiss her. The space between them was charged, stretched too tight, drawn too thin, and it would take so little to break it.
He couldn't take it anymore.
His voice came out before he could stop it, rough and biting and thick with something far too dangerous. "What do you know, Luna?" He hated how broken it sounded. "No riddles. No cryptic bullshit. Just tell me what the fuck is going on."
She didn't flinch.
Of course she didn't.
She didn't back away, didn't blink, didn't even seem to register his anger as a threat. Her gaze remained fixed on his, steady as a heartbeat, and instead of answering right away, she exhaled—slow, deliberate, like she was grounding herself, or maybe giving him one last second to walk away. And that breath—that breath—ghosted across his lips, hot and impossibly soft, and he realized with a full-body jolt that they were that close. One movement. That was all it would take. One movement, and everything would change.
Her voice was barely louder than the flicker of the flames. "What you killed isn't dead, Theo."
The words landed like ice water down his spine, sharp and immediate, making the world tilt sideways, making his stomach twist and his lungs seize and the air go razor-thin. It wasn't just what she said. It was how she said it—calm, flat, with no fear, no drama, no flourish. Like a fact. Like telling him the sky was blue, or that winter always comes. Like this was something she had always known, something she'd expected him to understand far sooner than he had.
The air around them thickened, the walls inching closer, the room pulsing with something that felt alive, like the house itself had taken notice of her words. Theo's hands twitched at his sides again, his fingers itching to grab her, to shake her, to force her to explain what the fuck she meant—but he didn't. He couldn't. Because the space between them was no longer just heavy. It was sacred, and he was standing at the edge of something he wasn't sure he could return from.
He tried to speak, tried to form a word, a question, anything—but before he could, the world itself seemed to exhale.
A door slammed in the distance, hard enough to echo down the corridor, a sharp crack that shattered the tension in the room like glass. The candle flames leapt too high for a second, shadows whipping across the walls like they were alive, stretching into shapes that didn't make sense, moving too fluidly, curling too deliberately, watching. The air dropped several degrees in an instant. The floor groaned beneath them, a low, aching creak that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Something had shifted. Something unseen had stepped closer.
The spell between them broke.
Theo snapped back into himself all at once—his body too tense, his breathing ragged, the echo of her breath still lingering on his skin. His fists were still clenched. Her lips were still parted. The moment—whatever it had been—was gone, shattered by whatever presence had just entered the house. But the residue of it clung to him, thick and choking, and he couldn't unfeel what he'd just felt.
Luna blinked, her gaze flickering to the door, her posture shifting in that slow, weightless way she always moved, like she wasn't quite bound by gravity the same way he was. And then, as if nothing had happened, she turned—just turned away, just like that—and reached out to brush her fingers across the surface of the table, head tilting slightly, listening to something only she could hear.
"We should check what that was."
Theo didn't move right away.
Didn't speak.
Didn't even breathe properly.
He forced himself to nod, to step back, to remember who he was, to remember why they were here. But something had changed. The air between them. The way she'd looked at him. The way he'd looked at her. The way that fucking tarot card had felt too much like a warning and not enough like a metaphor.
He wasn't sure what had just happened.
But he was sure of one thing.
He wasn't walking away from this unchanged.
And if something was coming for them—whatever it was—he was suddenly, terrifyingly aware that losing her might destroy him long before the darkness ever got the chance.
~~~
The bed felt unbearably empty in a way that made his skin itch and his chest feel too tight, as though the silence pressing in on all sides had taken on a physical weight, as though the absence of her beside him had reshaped the room into something unfamiliar, something hollow and half-alive. The place where she should have been—where she had been, night after night, tangled in the sheets with her soft breath brushing against his skin—was cold now, untouched, the blankets pulled too tightly on one side, as if the space itself had been abandoned in a hurry, as if she'd made the deliberate choice not to return, not to slip back into the comfort of their unspoken routine. No matter how many times Theo turned over, no matter how long he lay there trying to find a position that felt bearable, no matter how many times he told himself that it didn't matter, that it wasn't important, that she was her own person and could sleep wherever the fuck she wanted—none of it helped. None of it soothed the gnawing, anxious thing curled beneath his ribs, the restlessness that kept crawling up his spine, the hot, burning pulse of frustration and want and confusion that refused to be ignored. She wasn't here. She hadn't come back. She had chosen—chosen—to put distance between them tonight, had made the quiet decision to sleep in another room, to close a door between them, to draw a line he hadn't realized she was planning to draw.
He should have seen it coming. Should have felt it in the way she'd been acting since the last conversation they'd had, since the moment the words had slipped from his mouth like blades, words that weren't even cruel but had landed like betrayal all the same. Since the way her gaze had shifted, had hardened just slightly, had filled with something unreadable and sharp and ancient and quietly devastating, like she'd seen this version of the story before and it always ended the same way. And even though he had told himself, again and again, that this was for the best—that space would give them clarity, that they needed to think, to breathe, to remember who they were and why they'd come this far—it hadn't helped. None of it helped. None of it stopped him from lying here in the dark, jaw locked so tight it ached, fists clenched into the sheets like he could somehow wring sense from the fabric, heart pounding with a dull, aching rhythm that made his whole body feel too loud.
And gods, the questions wouldn't stop. Should he kiss her? Should he say something? Should he stop pretending that this wasn't happening, stop acting like it hadn't already swallowed him whole, stop hiding behind all his well-worn walls and sharp-edged avoidance and finally, finally face the fact that this thing between them had already taken root in his bones? Should he let it happen, let it consume him, even if it burned?
The thought looped through him in endless, merciless repetition, dragging its claws through every inch of his mind, whispering with the cruel inevitability of something he could no longer outrun. It wasn't just attraction anymore, hadn't been for a long time. It wasn't just the subtle glances exchanged across a too-quiet room, or the near-touches that lingered just long enough to make his breath catch, or the way his body responded to hers with a hunger that felt almost violent in its intensity. It wasn't just that she made him ache—it was that she made him feel, in ways he didn't have words for, in ways he didn't know how to handle, in ways that made the world outside her feel like static. It was the way her presence steadied him, soothed the frayed, scorched pieces of him that no one else had ever even noticed, let alone cared enough to reach for. It was the way she had become the place his mind returned to when everything else spun too fast, when the nightmares got too real, when the darkness pressed in too hard. It was worse than a crush, deeper than a want, more dangerous than a need.
It was everything.
And it was going to destroy him.
The sharp, insistent knock hit the door like a curse, like a thunderclap, shattering what little fragile stillness remained in the room and dragging Theo violently out of his haze of restless, sleepless nothing. The silence that had once been thick and oppressive, wrapping around him like a second skin—tight, suffocating, laced with regret and too many unsaid things—was instantly obliterated by the brutal force of the door swinging open. No hesitation. No pause. No warning. Just wood against wall and the unmistakable sound of fury entering the room, wearing the too-familiar shape of Draco fucking Malfoy.
The energy shifted immediately. The air, already stale from too many hours spent trying to ignore the ache beneath Theo's skin, turned heavier, dense and charged and volatile, like a storm gathering itself behind Draco's eyes. His presence alone made the space feel too small, the walls pressing in, the shadows suddenly sharper, hungrier, as if they too could sense the tension pouring off the blond in waves. There was nothing subtle in the way he moved—his every step a statement, a demand, a crackling threat coiled beneath too-tight skin. He was fury personified, all rigid posture and clenched fists and eyes that didn't just accuse—they condemned.
Theo had barely managed to shove himself upright, heart still lagging behind his body, brain still thick with the remnants of a night spent drowning in thoughts of her, of what if, of too late, when Draco was already on him. There was no greeting. No buildup. Just words, spit like venom.
"What did you do to her, huh?"
The accusation landed with the force of a blow, knocking whatever breath Theo had left from his lungs, his pulse going from slow burn to full sprint in a second. He blinked, stunned, his mouth dry, his thoughts tripping over themselves in a frantic scramble for footing. What was he talking about? What had happened? He didn't know. He didn't understand—and yet, some part of him already did. Some deep, ugly, instinctual part of him that had been whispering warnings since she hadn't come back to bed, since the space beside him had gone cold.
"What?" It came out hoarse, too small, too slow, the sound of a man who hadn't yet caught up to the horror unfolding in front of him, but who already knew, deep down, that something was terribly wrong.
Draco scoffed, a sharp, disbelieving sound that felt like a slap, and took another step closer, looming now, practically vibrating with fury, his expression twisted into something almost feral. "She's crying, you idiot."
Crying.
Theo froze.
The word didn't register at first—not really—not until it started to echo in his skull, not until it settled like lead into his gut, curling through his insides with barbed hooks. Crying. She was crying. The ache that had been living beneath his ribs flared, sharp and immediate and sickening. His hands curled into fists before he even realized he was moving, every nerve ending in his body alight with something awful, something that felt like guilt. Like failure. Like grief.
"No," he said, almost too quickly, the denial scraping out of him on instinct, a desperate reflex. "No, she wouldn't—she wouldn't cry over me—"
But even as he said it, the words crumbled, hollow and brittle and false, because he knew. Gods, he knew. He had seen it, hadn't he? In the way she turned her face away too fast. In the way her voice faltered when she said "I understand." In the way she hadn't come back, hadn't looked at him the same, hadn't breathed near him since he'd opened his stupid fucking mouth and let something sharp slip between them.
Draco's lip curled. "Don't insult either of our intelligence. You did something. You said something. And whatever it was, it was enough to break her."
"I didn't—" Theo started, but the words stuck in his throat like glass. He shook his head slowly, like the motion alone could rewind time, undo it, un-say it.
"You didn't what?" Draco's voice dropped, dangerously low now, quiet in the way storms get quiet before the lightning strikes. "Didn't think she'd take it personally? Didn't think she'd feel it? Didn't think she'd matter enough to be hurt by you?"
Theo flinched, and Draco saw it—savored it.
"She matters, Nott," Draco snapped, every word a whip. "She's not some shadow you get to hide in. She's not some pawn you use to ground yourself while pretending nothing touches you. She's Luna. She's a vital part of this mission. She's smarter than all of us combined. And she's my cousin. I love her. And if you so much as look at her like she's disposable again, I'll put your face through a wall."
Theo closed his eyes, jaw clenched so tight his teeth ached, trying to breathe through the nausea rising in his throat, through the undeniable truth in Draco's voice, through the slow, sick realization that he had been the reason she'd looked away. That he had made her cry. That all the things he hadn't said, all the moments he hadn't taken, all the fear he'd let win—that was what had broken her.
He was drowning in it now, and Draco—cold, furious, justified Draco—had every right to drag him under.
"You don't get to want her," Draco added, quieter now, more controlled, but no less cruel for it. "Not if you're going to treat her like something you're afraid of. Not if all you're going to do is wound her with silence."
Theo's breath caught. He couldn't speak. He couldn't move. All he could do was sit there, staring at the empty space Draco had just filled with fire and fury and unflinching truth, heart splintering inside his chest, his throat closing around the thousand things he should have said to her, should have told her, should have given her before it was too late.
"She cried," Draco repeated, one last time, softer now, almost like pity. "And you weren't there."
He had spent so long—too long, lifetimes, it felt like—convincing himself that none of this mattered, that the feelings crawling up his spine and nesting behind his ribs were irrelevant, pointless, a fleeting surge of adrenaline mistaken for intimacy, a symptom of war and stress and proximity, not desire, not longing, not love, because love was a liability and Theo Nott had never allowed himself to want things he couldn't kill or control. He had told himself, again and again and again, that this—whatever this was—had no place in a world built on blood and ruin, had no space among broken spells and collapsed safehouses and sleepless nights spent waiting for another mission to go wrong. He had repeated it like a mantra, like an exorcism, like a prayer meant to protect him from the inevitability of his own undoing. Love was a distraction. Love was dangerous. Love, in a war like this, was a fucking mistake.
And still—despite every denial, despite every sleepless night spent staring at the ceiling while she breathed peacefully beside him, despite the wall of emotional iron he had built to keep her out—none of it had prepared him for the image currently eviscerating him from the inside out: Luna, curled into herself, tucked between them, between Draco and Hermione, in their bed, in their warmth, in a space that was not his. No matter how many times he rolled over and told himself it didn't matter, that she was free to sleep wherever she wanted, with whomever she wanted, that she didn't owe him a single damn thing—none of it stopped the clawing, biting, visceral ache that had taken root in his chest and refused to let go. None of it stopped the part of him that was screaming.
Because she hadn't come back.
Because she had chosen someone else's bed.
And it made him want to punch holes in the walls.
He couldn't stop thinking about it—the unbearable softness of the scene playing out in his mind like a curse, over and over: Luna curled into Draco's side, her head resting on Hermione's shoulder, their warmth surrounding her in a way that should have been his to offer, their arms wrapping around her when it should have been his hand she reached for in the dark. Not because he was entitled to her, not because she owed him anything—but because he loved her, and that meant he wanted to be the one she trusted most, the one she came to without hesitation, the one she chose, every time, in every version of the world.
But she hadn't.
She'd chosen them.
And it was fucking killing him.
And just when he thought this night couldn't get any worse—when he thought he might finally lose his mind and scream into the abyss until it swallowed him whole—Draco strolled into his room without knocking, without hesitation, with the smugness of a man who had already read the next ten pages of your personal downfall and circled the worst ones in red ink.
Theo barely had time to sit up before the door slammed behind him and Draco's voice, sharp and low and soaked in that brand of aristocratic contempt he had spent a lifetime perfecting, cut through the air like a knife.
"Sleep in your own fucking bed."
Theo blinked. Just blinked. Because that was what you did when reality stepped into the room, wearing tailored robes and a condescending expression and a voice that made you want to commit homicide on principle. And then he scoffed—because of course Draco had an opinion. Of course he couldn't just let Theo self-destruct in peace.
"She can't sleep with you guys," Theo muttered, the words sharp and reckless and coming from a place so deep in his chest they might as well have been dragged out by force. "Hermione has to sleep in the middle."
The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Not because they were wrong—no, because they were true, and because they revealed far too much. Because Draco didn't blink. Didn't flinch. Didn't pretend not to hear the jealousy embedded in every syllable. He just raised one unimpressed eyebrow and let the silence stretch, smugness radiating off him like heat off a curse.
"Are you actually trying to dictate how I sleep in my own bed," Draco asked, voice flat with disbelief and edged with a kind of deadly amusement that made Theo want to claw his own ears off, "or are you just wildly insecure and deeply unhinged?"
Theo was up before he knew it, hands raised, palms open, pacing like a man on the brink of collapse because there were too many thoughts, too many emotions, too much want and nowhere safe to put it, and he couldn't talk about this, couldn't do this—not with him. But Draco wasn't done. Of course he wasn't done. No, Draco was just getting started.
"Sit the fuck down, Theodore," he said, and it wasn't a suggestion. It was an order.
Theo hesitated, breathing hard, chest heaving like he'd just run miles through a battlefield, and Draco—bastard that he was—watched him like a cat with a cornered bird, eyes gleaming, mouth curved into that same insufferable smirk that meant he was about to say something unforgivable.
And then—he did.
"Tell her you love her already."
Silence.
And then the world shattered.
Theo couldn't breathe.
The words hit him like a fucking Killing Curse, straight to the chest, knocking the air out of his lungs, leaving him exposed and hollow and burning with the kind of truth that you couldn't unhear, couldn't undo, couldn't unsay.
But Draco, blessed with the self-control of a sadistic god, wasn't finished.
"Shag and stop this dance."
Theo whirled, like he might actually punch him, like he might do something desperate and permanent, like his body might explode from the sheer violence of the embarrassment currently eating him alive from the inside out. Because Draco had just said that. With a straight face. With smug amusement. With zero remorse.
And then—then he added the final blow, delivered so softly, so casually, it nearly undid Theo completely:
"It's annoying."
That was it. That was the final straw. Theo staggered back like the words had physically struck him, like he could feel them branded across his soul, like he was never going to know peace again.
Because Draco was right.
He was fucking right.
Because Theo Nott was in love. Madly. Recklessly. Horribly. With Luna Lovegood. With her wild hair and haunted eyes and strange little smiles and the way she never flinched when he got too close. With the way she saw him, really saw him, and never looked away.
And he hadn't told her.
And now it was too late.
Because she was sleeping in Draco's bed.
Because she was gone.
And it was entirely his fault.
And Draco knew it.