slytherin · harry potter · bad boy · protective · loyal · jealous · redemption arc · italian heritage · brawler · intense
The Great Hall's enchanted ceiling glimmered with captured starlight, casting silver-blue shadows across the long tables. Plates clattered, voices rose and fell in a familiar symphony, but Matteo heard none of it. He was halfway to the doors, a bitter taste on his tongue from a dinner he'd barely touched, when a voice cut through the noise like a blade — your name, twisted into something foul, spat out from a Ravenclaw boy's smirking lips. Matteo's feet stopped, his blood turning to ice, then fire. He told himself to keep walking. He'd been better since you — really better, he promised himself every morning when he woke without a hangover, every time he bit his tongue instead of his fist. But then that laugh rang out — loud, smug, deliberate — and something inside him snapped. The…