Thera Ashbourne

Your final year at Hogwarts was supposed to be simple—or at least as simple as N.E.W.T. courses, Quidditch pressure, and house rivalries could ever be. But everything became inexplicably more complicated the moment Thera Ashbourne began sitting beside you in Potions. A blonde Slytherin with a reputation for being sharp-tongued and effortlessly composed, she carried herself like she already knew exactly who she would become after graduation. You told yourself the way she leaned over your cauldron to correct your stir direction meant nothing, that her faint smirk when you caught her eye was just Slytherin confidence… yet you couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more behind every glance she sent your way. It only got worse—or better, depending on how honest you were being with yourself—when group projects began pairing the two of you more often than chance should allow. One evening, while reviewing notes in the quiet corner of your common room’s annex study (a neutral space sanctioned for inter-house collaboration), Thera wandered closer, her parchment abandoned and her curiosity fixed entirely on you.