Draco was loosing himself.
Not in the quiet, tasteful sort of way you might find in a novel, the kind where a man fades gently, each thread loosening under the weight of some grand and noble tragedy, collapsing into ruin so delicately that people speak of it as if it were a work of art. His version is far less palatable. It is raw, awkward, and unromantic. The edges of him are splintering, not fraying, scraping against bone as if every part of him resists letting go. It is the sensation of holding onto a rope that is already cutting into his palms, of feeling the fibres dig deep until his grip is slick with blood, and still refusing to release it even as the ground falls away and the dark rushes up to meet him.
From the outside he might still resemble Draco Malfoy, the polished heir, but beneath the surface there is a slow and stubborn collapse, an unspooling that no one can see unless they look closely enough to notice the cracks forming in the way he breathes.
His magic is the worst of it. It mirrors him too perfectly, temperamental and sharp, as if it knows exactly where he is weakest.
Once it had been seamless, something he could summon without a thought, as natural and steady as the beat of his heart.
Now it slides away from him like mist slipping through open fingers.
On the worst mornings it barely stirs, nothing more than a faint, reluctant hum, cold and unresponsive as if some part of him has already gone still. Simple spells falter halfway through the words, the energy scattering in the air before he can hold it, fading with a sound that feels like rejection.
Other times it surges without warning, fierce and uncontrolled, crackling at his fingertips and thrumming in his veins like a storm trying to break free. He does not admit how much this unsettles him. He simply pretends it is manageable, even when the truth is that there is no steady middle ground anymore — only the exhausting question of whether he will hold control or lose it the next time he reaches for power.
And then there is sleep, or rather, the absence of it. It has become something almost mythical, a distant memory blurred by years and by the heavy residue of a war that ended for everyone except him. The nights stretch on without mercy.
He walks the corridors until the stones feel colder under his bare feet than they did an hour before, stares at the ceiling until the shapes in the shadows begin to shift, listens to the kind of silence that grows heavier the longer it is allowed to settle. When dreams come, they are not dreams at all but fragments — brief flashes of moments that hurt to remember, faces that surface and vanish again, eyes that accuse even in memory.
These visions arrive when the rest of the world holds still, just before the pale light begins to spill into the sky, and in that suspended hour he hears them. Whispers slipping through the cracks in him, finding the hollow places grief and guilt have left behind. He has stopped pretending he can shut them out.
Because they are real.
They are part of the house now, part of the air he breathes. Just like the slow, stubborn unraveling that keeps him company.
And his patience was the first casualty in the long and steadily growing list of things he had lost. There had been a time when it had been his greatest armour, a weapon he had honed as deliberately as any duellist's blade. It had been cultivated over years of quiet endurance, forged in the slow suffocation of endless banquets and glittering balls where words mattered less than the way you held your champagne flute. It had been tested in family dinners heavy with unspoken demands, sharpened in the cold, echoing corridors of Malfoy Manor where any display of feeling was seen as weakness and silence was the only currency worth anything. He had learned how to stand very still, how to swallow every impulsive word before it reached his tongue, how to keep his back straight and his face unreadable no matter what he felt.
But that patience, once so precise and deliberate, was wearing thin to the point of uselessness. It felt brittle now, liable to snap without warning, as volatile as a Veela's temper on the wrong sort of day. It had been ground down by the tedious weight of forced politeness, by the steady drip of meaningless formalities, and by the parade of Ministry officials who pretended their visits were friendly when the judgement in their eyes told another story entirely.
They came with polite tones and rehearsed expressions, speaking in phrases so carefully measured they felt like interrogations dressed up as conversation. What is Draco Malfoy doing these days? How is he giving back to the community? How is he redeeming the legacy of a name that still makes some people flinch? As if redemption were a matter of paperwork, something you could track in neat columns of attendance at reform summits and hours spent on community service. As if atonement could be reduced to a figure on a ledger, and the moment it reached the right total, he would be declared absolved. Released. Fixed.
But he knew there was no such tally, no hidden scale that would ever tip in his favour. There was no finish line that could undo the things he had done, the loyalty he had twisted into fear, the moments where silence had been easier than courage. And so he lived in that strange middle place between what had been and whatever was supposed to come next, unable to move forward but unwilling to sink entirely into the past. It was a kind of limbo that left him feeling like a ghost wrapped in the skin of a man, haunting his own life.
He woke because it was habit, dressed because it was expected, spoke because silence was suspicious, and breathed because that was the one act that still happened without thought. But none of it had weight. None of it rooted him to the present. He was adrift, restless, and carrying the full press of a world that would not let go of who he had been, all while trapped inside a self that no longer fit the shape it once so confidently filled.
It had been six years since the war ended. Six years since the last curses had been flung and the echoes had faded from the battlefield. Six years since the smoke had thinned above the wreckage of Hogwarts, since the Dark Lord's reign had been broken and the world had begun its slow, uneven process of stitching itself back together. For many, those years had been a time of repair. They rebuilt homes that had been scorched to ash, mended friendships that had frayed beyond recognition, fell in love in ways they never thought possible again. They began to chase peace as if it were a prayer worth repeating, whispering it in the quiet spaces of their days and daring, little by little, to believe it might last.
For Draco Malfoy, those years had been less about healing and more about the dismantling of everything he had once believed. It had been a process of unlearning, of peeling back the layers of certainty that had been stitched into him since birth, of letting go of truths that had never truly been truths at all.
He had lost nearly everything. His parents. His position in the world. The identity he had carried like armour since childhood. In the beginning, he had clung to what scraps remained with the desperate, choking stubbornness of someone who could not believe that his entire life might slip through his grasp without warning. He told himself it could be salvaged, that with enough willpower and precision he could hold it together. But life did not yield to willpower. It was merciless in its indifference. It took, and when there was nothing left to take, it found ways to strip away the rest, leaving him with a handful of memories that felt less and less like his own.
His father had been the first to vanish from the life Draco knew. Not in the blaze of a duel, nor in the drama of a trial, but in the slow erosion that follows humiliation. Azkaban had not broken Lucius Malfoy in a single blow. It had drained him by degrees, hollowing out the man who had once stood so straight, who had once carried himself with a pride sharp enough to cut. When he returned to the Manor, it was as a ghost. The thunder in his presence had been silenced. His gaze, once icy and piercing, was dulled to something clouded and faraway. He drifted through the endless corridors like he was looking for a door that no longer existed. The name he had guarded so fiercely, the power he had wielded like a blade, the pride he had worn like a crown — all of it had been ground down under the weight of disgrace.
Draco had watched it happen in real time, each day a small collapse that went unnoticed by anyone outside their walls. He saw the light in his father's eyes dim to embers, then to nothing at all. The once-imposing figure who had ruled rooms with his presence began to shrink. His shoulders stooped. His voice grew softer, each word rasping as though pulled from deep inside a well. There was no redemption waiting for him at the end of it. No moment of defiance. No dramatic plea for forgiveness. Only silence. Only the tired surrender of a man who had realised the world had gone on without him and that it would never look back.
When death finally came for him it did not come like a storm. It came like a door closing in another room, faint and final. There was no shock, no mourning wail, no scene that would be remembered. It was simply the last note of a song that had already faded, a breath that went unheard. One moment he was there. The next he was gone. And that was all.
His mother had followed, though not immediately and not in the same way. Narcissa Malfoy had always been the stronger of the two, though few outside their family ever acknowledged it. Beneath her elegance there had always been steel, and beneath the velvet softness of her voice there had been a sharper edge. That quiet strength had carried her through the war, had kept her steady when others faltered, had saved Draco more than once. Her love for him had been the anchor that kept her from drifting while everything else around them broke apart.
But even steel can bend. Even the firmest foundations can crack. Once Lucius was gone, the silence inside the manor seemed to swell until it pressed against the walls, until it seeped into the air they breathed. The weight of their name, once worn like armour, became a burden too heavy to carry. She began to retreat from the life she had been born into. She no longer hosted dinners, no longer appeared at social gatherings, no longer upheld the carefully rehearsed traditions of bloodline and heritage. The world had shifted beyond recognition, and she seemed to have decided there was no use pretending it had not.
One morning, without ceremony or explanation, she packed a single suitcase.
She kissed Draco on the forehead, her lips cool against his skin, the faintest tremor in the gesture, and told him she needed somewhere quiet. A place where she could breathe without feeling the ghosts of her past closing in. Somewhere the name Malfoy would not feel like a noose. She did not say where she was going, and he did not ask. They both knew this was not something to fight. Asking questions would only make it harder. Pretending it was anything other than a farewell would have been a cruelty neither of them could stomach.
So he nodded, and he kept his silence, and he told himself not to think of it as another funeral. But the truth settled in all the same. It was another loss. Another goodbye wrapped in resignation.
And then she was gone.
Malfoy Manor, once the gilded cage that had kept his family bound together in all its contradictions of elegance and decay, became nothing more than a monument to a past that refused to fade. It stood sprawling and silent, a mausoleum dressed in stone and marble, its beauty stripped of warmth, its grandeur stripped of meaning. The vast halls held nothing but shadows and the faint memory of laughter that had never truly belonged there. The rooms felt too large now, their emptiness echoing back at him with every step. The corridors seemed to stretch on without end, leading nowhere, their purpose lost. Even the air carried a weight, as if it had soaked in every quiet argument, every suppressed disappointment, every grief that had gone unspoken.
It had not felt like home in years. Perhaps it never had.
The walls did whisper, but their voices were hollow. They spoke of the past, of footsteps that would never return, of people whose presence was now only a memory. There was no comfort in them, no trace of the warmth a home was meant to offer. The Manor he had once thought eternal, untouchable, as unshakable as the Malfoy name itself, was nothing more than a relic now. A beautiful prison filled with portraits that meant nothing and memories that pressed too heavily on the mind to be kept.
There was nothing left for him there. No family to share the space, no future to shape within it, no reason to keep pretending it mattered.
So he sold it.
There was no announcement. No dramatic scene. Just a quiet signature on parchment, a set of keys exchanged, and a final glance over his shoulder before he stepped away from the only world he had ever known.
He did not look back.
The money meant nothing. He had more than any man could spend in several lifetimes. Vaults of gold that would never be emptied, heirlooms sealed away in the deepest chambers of Gringotts, investments so old they predated most of the bloodlines that still called themselves ancient. But wealth, as he had come to understand with painful clarity, was only a kind of power when it was held for someone else's sake. When there was someone to share it with, someone who could give it meaning. Without that, it was just weight. What use was a fortune when the world around you had gone quiet? When your name carried not respect but pity, or worse, contempt? When the legacy you were taught to protect had been stripped of its polish and recast as a cautionary tale whispered at the edges of formal dinners?
There had been a time when he had believed the name Malfoy was everything. That to be a Malfoy was to matter, to endure, to be remembered. He had worn it like a crown and like armour, something too sacred to question. He had been raised to think that without it, he would be nothing more than another man, ordinary and unremarkable. Yet standing in the empty foyer of his family home for the last time, looking up at the grand chandelier that had once poured warm light over every room of his childhood, he understood something with devastating simplicity. Everything that mattered had been lost long before he put his signature to the deed.
The truth of it settled on him like frost, thin and cold and inescapable.
He had nothing left to lose.
There was no family waiting for him in the drawing room. No legacy left to guard. No ghosts worth addressing in the corridors. So he turned and walked away, not because the place had ceased to matter, but because it no longer belonged to him. The past had already let go of him. Leaving was only returning the gesture.
After that, he purchased an estate far from the city, hidden deep in the countryside. It was grand in every sense of the word. Isolated. Untouched. The land stretched for acres in every direction, rolling green hills melting into the horizon beneath a sky so wide it felt endless. The air was clear in a way that almost startled him, scented with earth and rain, carrying the distant rustle of leaves from trees that had been standing longer than memory. Some were so old they seemed to lean toward each other as the wind passed through them, their branches whispering in voices he almost thought he could understand. Beyond them lay a forest, wild and ungoverned, tangled with magic that had been left alone for centuries.
The manor at the heart of it was older than Malfoy Manor, its foundations set in stone that still held the quiet hum of spells woven long before his time. The walls carried the kind of magic that seeped into the air, subtle but constant, as if the building itself remembered every life that had passed through it. It was enormous and in perfect condition, the sort of place meant to endure for centuries, built with the expectation that it would bear a name, a lineage, a history that would grow inside it.
And that was the problem.
Why?
Why had he bought it?
Why choose a place built for permanence when he had no intention of building anything that would last beyond himself? Why fill halls designed for a family with only his own footsteps, why fill rooms meant for conversation with nothing but stillness? The question pressed at him from the moment he arrived, lodged itself in the corners of his mind and stayed there, persistent and sharp. It followed him as he wandered through the unused rooms, followed him to the windows where he stood staring out at the land until the view blurred and his thoughts became a single, dull ache.
It was there in the silence, in the space, in the way the emptiness of the house seemed to lean in around him.
And deep inside, beneath the layers of indifference he wore like a shield, beneath the careful apathy that kept the world at a distance, a part of him already knew the answer.
He simply was not ready to speak it aloud.
Not yet.
Even after everything, after the war had carved out pieces of him he could never replace, after his name had become something people spoke in lowered voices, after the pedestal he had been raised upon had crumbled to dust, he still found himself dreaming of a family. Not the softened kind found in sentimental fiction, all golden light and endless affection, but the kind he had been raised to expect. The kind that had been etched into him before he was old enough to understand its cost. A future built on legacy and tradition, on bloodlines as old and as cold as the stone corridors of Malfoy Manor. A life where duty came first, where the name mattered more than the man, where what was handed down was not simply wealth but the weight of identity.
By now, according to the unspoken rules of the pureblood world, it should already have been his. He should have been married to a woman whose worth had been measured in lineage and breeding before she was ever measured in anything else, someone who could wear the Malfoy crest with effortless pride and raise a child in the same narrow, carefully arranged world that had shaped him. He should have had a wife with precision in her posture and a steadiness in her gaze, someone who could host a room without flinching and guard the family name like a fortress. He should have had an heir, a son already walking beside him, pale-haired and sharp-boned, with a voice that carried the same clipped authority he had once been praised for mastering, with eyes that had already learned the difference between duty and indulgence.
Instead, Draco Malfoy sat alone in a manor built for more than one life. The walls seemed designed to hold the weight of a family, to catch the echo of footsteps on the stairs, to carry the sound of laughter through the rooms, and yet they held only silence. The dining table, long enough to seat twenty, was always set for one. The kitchens ran with the quiet efficiency of house elves who had nothing and no one to serve beyond his minimal demands. Every room felt like a reminder of something missing, space he could not fill and shadows that lingered no matter how many lamps he lit.
The truth, stripped bare of every polite pretense, was not something he enjoyed thinking about. But it was there all the same, heavy and sharp in the back of his mind.
No one wanted him. Not anymore. Not in the way they once had.
There had been a time when his name had weight. It could open doors before he even reached them, turn heads in crowded rooms, and still the air with nothing more than its mention. Witches had whispered about marrying the Malfoy heir as if it were a prize beyond measure, the kind of ambition that could define a life. That time had ended with the war. It had ended with the trials, with his face printed in the Prophet alongside words that could never be taken back, with the public judgement that came swift and merciless. What had once been a symbol of privilege had turned into a reminder of disgrace. He was no longer the crown jewel of wizarding society. He was the son who had fallen, a man with a name that carried a stain nothing could wash away, not gold, not charity, not the most carefully crafted apology.
Now, the only women who met his eyes without hesitation were Muggles.
He almost laughed at the irony, though it was never amusement that brought the thought to mind. It was not contempt for what they were, but for what they did not know. They were uncomplicated. They asked for nothing he could not give. Their interest came without the shadow of politics, without the weight of scandal. They saw the surface and were satisfied with it — the wealth, the tailored suits, the measured confidence, the face that had been honed into something striking. They could not see the rest. They did not see the mark burned into his skin, the one that would never fade. They did not see the boy standing on a battlefield with blood on his hands and terror in his chest. They did not see the fractures that had never set right, or the guilt that clung to him no matter how often he tried to bury it.
In their way, they served a purpose.
They were good for a night, for a pocket of silence in which he could almost forget himself. Their touch never came with questions. They offered the kind of escape that did not last but was easy to reach for. He took them for what they were — bodies without expectations, moments without memory, a way to put distance between himself and the ghosts that always followed him into the dark.
But even that had begun to taste like ash.
Every kiss was hollow. Every sound they made for him was stripped of meaning. The beds were cold before he had even shut the door behind him. There was no intimacy in it, no real connection, no possibility of a future. And perhaps the worst of it was not that he was alone, but that even the illusions he created to fill the emptiness could no longer convince him.
Because somewhere deep inside, despite every reason he gave himself to believe otherwise, he still wanted more.
And he despised himself for it.
Astoria Greengrass had been the closest Draco had come to something that could be called genuine, though even that felt fragile and uncertain. What they had was not a romance, not even a proper affair, but an arrangement that seemed to happen without being discussed. They saw each other only on occasion, their meetings shaped as much by convenience as by choice, and whatever drew them together had little to do with passion or any deeper sense of longing. They moved in the same narrow social circles, sat at the same interminable dinners, exchanged the same tired pleasantries with the same tedious people. Both carried the weight of their families' expectations, both knew the silent rules of the world they had been born into, and both had quietly failed to live up to them. In that way, their companionship was easy. It demanded nothing. It asked no questions they did not want to answer.
Astoria was, by every measure, well-suited to the role she had been raised for. She was beautiful in a way that was almost deliberate, with features that fit the pure-blood ideal so neatly they might have been drawn into existence. Her manner was polished, her wit sharp enough to be remarked upon, her intelligence obvious but never ostentatious. On paper, she could have been the perfect partner for him. The sort of woman meant to stand beside the Malfoy heir, to carry on the family name with grace and precision.
And yet, there was nothing in her that set him alight.
She moved through life with the same cool detachment that he himself had mastered, a stillness that never broke. There was no spark, no surprise, no challenge. She was the living embodiment of the world they came from, a woman who followed its rules without question, who never stepped out of line and never gave anyone cause to look at her twice for the wrong reason. In that sense, she was perfect for him. But her perfection only made the absence of feeling between them more obvious.
There were nights when, after they were finished, she would lie against him with her head on his shoulder, one hand drifting across his chest in slow, idle patterns. Her touch was soft, her presence light enough that he might have mistaken it for tenderness if he had not known better. He would stare at the ceiling until the lines blurred and feel nothing but the quiet press of emptiness. There was no warmth in those moments, no connection that lingered once she was gone. Their closeness was purely physical, and even that seemed hollow the moment it ended.
He never wanted more from her, and she never offered it.
They were two people fulfilling the roles written for them long before they were born, reciting lines in a play neither of them believed in. And when it was over, the silence that followed felt like the truest part of their time together.
The thought of settling down with Astoria, or with anyone who fit the same mould, filled Draco with a quiet dread that was impossible to shake. The image of a marriage without love, a life bound to a woman who saw him as nothing more than a responsibility, felt suffocating. He could not bear the idea of a partnership built only on duty, on the preservation of bloodlines and the maintenance of social standing. A future shaped by cold silences, hollow conversations, and polished courtesies was not one he could stomach. Even the thought of it made him draw back, made him question the foundation on which his life had been built.
Yet when he asked himself what he truly wanted, the answer refused to take shape. It slipped away the moment he reached for it. He craved something he could not name, something that would break apart the rigid structures he had been living in for so long. He wanted a connection that was real, one that felt unplanned and alive, something that could cut through the monotony of his days. But he could not picture what that looked like, could not imagine how he might find it, or if it even existed for him at all. What he did know was that the life he had now — the grand house meant for a family, the rooms meant for warmth and laughter — felt more like a tomb than a home. The silence pressed in from every side, heavy with absence.
He was tired of living in a world built for ghosts. Tired of being surrounded by reminders of what should have been and by the weight of expectations that no longer belonged to him. The emptiness around him only reflected the emptiness inside. And no matter how much he owned, no matter how carefully he kept the facade intact, the truth was constant.
He was alone.
Draco exhaled slowly, his breath slipping out in a way that felt heavier than it should. He dragged a tired hand across his face, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose as if he could push back the dull ache forming there. The Ministry building loomed behind him, its cold grey walls stretching long shadows across the cobblestones, as if the place itself was reluctant to release him.
The sunlight beyond the steps was harsh after the dim, airless interior of the courtroom. It flooded his vision, sharp and blinding, but it carried no warmth. If anything, it only reminded him how far he felt from the world outside those walls, from the life that continued for everyone else as if nothing had changed.
The weight of the day settled on him like a chain, pressing into his shoulders until they ached. It was heavier than the formal robes he still wore, heavier than any curse he had endured. This had been the final examination, the last in a long procession of inquiries that had stretched over years. Each one had been another dissection, another careful unpicking of every part of his life, framed as procedure but carrying the sting of accusation.
Six years of this. Six years of standing in rooms where every question was a reminder of what they thought of him. Six years of polite hostility dressed as protocol, of being measured against a standard that would never allow him to pass.
And still, after everything he had given up, after everything he had lost and endured, their eyes told him the same truth.
They did not trust him.
Six bloody years.
Six exhausting, humiliating years of leaping through whatever flaming hoops they set before him, of sitting under the watchful eyes of officials whose expressions ranged from polite indifference to barely concealed contempt. Six years of being made to relive the worst moments of his youth under the cold precision of legilimency, forced to lay open wounds that had never closed, to let strangers examine his memories as though they were specimens to be sliced and catalogued.
Again and again, they called him "former Death Eater," as though those two words were the whole of who he was, as though nothing he did could ever remove them. No act of restitution, no years lived quietly, no distance from that time would ever convince them to see beyond the boy who had once stood shaking in front of a monster. They refused to see the man who had fought to crawl back from the edge, who had taken what little he had left and tried to make something of it, even if it was only a shadow of the life he had once imagined.
He was tired.
So fucking tired.
He had lost more than anyone guessed. Not only wealth, not only influence or the polished reputation that had once shielded him, but the home that had been his sanctuary, the family that had anchored him, and the illusion that he was in control of anything at all. Still the Ministry demanded more. Still they cracked open his mind as if it were a locked chest of incriminating treasures. Still they sifted through his memories as if they had the right, searching for some hidden justification for their mistrust. As if every breath he took required their permission. As if survival itself was a gift he had not earned.
His fists tightened as he moved down the steps, his stride deliberate. Magic prickled along his fingertips, restless and hot, thrumming against his skin with a warning he could not ignore. It wound itself into his chest like the beginning of a storm, sharp and charged. He drew in a long breath of cool spring air, willing it to settle the agitation, to ease the pressure before it broke loose.
The streets of Diagon Alley were crowded, pulsing with motion and sound. Laughter spilled from shopfronts, children darted between legs, teenagers lounged against café windows, parchment notices flickered in the breeze, and spellwork shimmered faintly in the air above the cobblestones. Draco moved through it at an unhurried pace, hands buried in the pockets of his coat, his shoulders set. The noise scraped at his nerves, too sharp after the hours he had spent in the Ministry's suffocating halls. His thoughts were still snagged in the courtroom, still twisted with anger, still humming with the bitter aftertaste he loathed but could not quite swallow.
He needed something to break it. Anything. A distraction. A way to put space between himself and the morning he had just endured. Something that might remind him he was not just the sum of every whispered accusation, not just the headline that had followed him for years. Something to prove, if only to himself, that he could walk down a street and make a choice as ordinary as anyone else's.
Books had always been safe. They did not pry. They did not accuse. They were reliable in a way people never were. He told himself he would stop at Flourish and Blotts, pick up something on potions theory, maybe even a piece of fiction absurd enough to be completely removed from reality. Something he could turn to later, when sleep failed him again, to quiet the restless churn in his mind. Perhaps he would find a cup of tea as well, or something sweet, anything to take the edge off.
And then it happened.
The scent.
He had not been looking for it. Had not been prepared for the way it seemed to materialise out of nowhere, slipping through the air and folding around him like it belonged there. It was warm and familiar in a way that unsettled him instantly, as though it had been pulled from the most private corner of his memory. It threaded through the noise of the street, subtle yet inescapable, drawing him toward it before he could even think to resist.
It was magic — his magic. No spell, no wand, no conscious intent, and yet it wrapped through him as surely as if it had been crafted to catch him alone. He breathed it in, felt it coil into his lungs and run the length of his nerves, hot and unrelenting, until his pulse faltered in his throat.
Merlin's fucking balls.
He knew that scent. Not in passing. Not faintly. He knew it with absolute certainty.
Because it smelled exactly like his Amortentia.
His entire body went rigid, rooted in place as his mind tried to catch up to what his senses had already decided was undeniable. That scent—fresh parchment, something like spring rain on warm stone, and a soft, elusive sweetness he could never quite name, that was hers . He'd smelled it once in seventh year, during a half-forgotten potions class that had somehow stuck with him longer than anything else from that miserable, cursed year.
Draco had only ever encountered Amortentia a few times in his life. Once during an advanced Potions lesson that had gone spectacularly wrong, again during his apprenticeship under a master alchemist, and years later in a small apothecary he had stepped into on a rainy afternoon just to escape the noise of the city. No matter the place or the circumstance, it had always been the same. The scent never shifted, never lost its precision.
Freshly polished broomsticks, sharp and clean, carrying with them the memory of childhood flights and the rare, breathless laughter that came from speed and freedom. Old parchment, warm and brittle, the scent of dusty libraries and ink-stained fingers, of quiet corners in rooms that had once felt safe. Rain-soaked earth, cool and grounding, holding the promise of storms on the horizon, storms that could not be avoided and would have to be met head-on.
And then there was the last note.
That elusive, maddening sweetness that had haunted him for years. It was warm and soft, almost like vanilla but not quite. There was a hint of something floral, yet never exactly that either. It carried the comfort of skin touched by sunlight, the lingering trace of a scent clinging to a favourite sweater, something intimate enough to feel personal. It was the only part he had never been able to name, the single piece that always remained just out of reach. It had stayed with him like a whisper he could not quite hear, familiar enough to trouble him yet always beyond his grasp.
Until now.
The moment it reached him, he knew. The knowing was not in his thoughts but in his bones. It was her.
He moved before he could think. There was no pause, no weighing of the moment, no pretence of restraint. His body simply obeyed the pull. He turned and followed it, each step certain even as his mind scrambled to understand why. It was not curiosity that drove him, nor any kind of polite interest. It was need, fierce and immediate. His pulse thudded in his ears. Magic stirred under his skin, restless and bright, sparking with every breath.
When he stopped, he was standing in front of a shop he was almost certain had never been there before. It was small, wedged between a secondhand robe shop and a tea lounge, yet it stood apart as though it had been waiting for him. There was a quiet charm to it that made his chest tighten without reason.
The scent was stronger here, richer and unspoiled. It drifted from the cracks around the door, curling into the air like an open invitation. His hand was already on the handle before caution could speak, before reason could ask what in Merlin's name he thought he was doing.
He did not knock. He did not wait. He stepped inside.
Warmth met him the instant he crossed the threshold. It was not only the kind that came from a well-tended hearth or the soft hum of enchantments in the air, but something deeper, something that seemed to press into his senses and hold there. It felt like comfort remembered, like the memory of safety, like magic that had never been touched by the passage of time.
The shop was small, yet somehow brimming with life. A soft golden glow bathed every surface, cast by floating candles that drifted lazily overhead, their flames swaying as if to music only they could hear. The air was thick with scent, layered and intoxicating. Exotic teas mingled with dried citrus peel, cloves, wild lavender, and jasmine. Underneath it all was something softer, faintly floral, and just sweet enough to pull at his chest with the strange ache of a memory he had not known he was missing.
Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, each one crowded with neat rows of glass jars. The contents ranged from dried herbs to blooming teas suspended mid-flower, to powders and infusions that caught the candlelight and shimmered faintly. Delicate porcelain cups, no two alike, were stacked in precise towers beside brewing tools of copper, glass, and silver. Overhead, hanging plants spilled from beams of dark wood, their green tendrils reaching toward the floor, brushing through shafts of sunlight that slanted in through the tall arched windows.
The air itself seemed to hum. The magic here was not sharp or showy, but patient, old, and quietly wild. It felt as though he had stepped not into a shop, but into a place apart from the rest of the world. Somewhere untouched by politics, by war, by the kind of pain he had come to expect in every corner of his life. It was as close to dreamlike as anything he had ever experienced.
And then it happened.
"Oh, hello, Malfoy."
Draco stopped so abruptly it felt as if the air had been knocked from his lungs. That voice was unmistakable. Familiar in a way that unsettled him instantly. He turned without thinking, his pulse thudding hard in his chest, and there she was.
Luna Lovegood.
For a moment his mind emptied. The shop, the scent, the noise of the street beyond — all of it slipped out of focus until there was nothing left but her. She was beautiful, but the word felt inadequate. There was something unmeasured about her, something that reached past beauty into a realm he could not quite name. She looked as if she had wandered out of a dream and had not yet realised she did not belong in the ordinary world.
The girl he remembered from school was gone. No more drifting down corridors in mismatched shoes, no more necklaces of butterbeer corks, no more whimsical oddity he had once dismissed with a careless sneer. In her place stood a woman who seemed to bend the air around her.
Her hair, pale and silvery, tumbled down her back in loose waves that caught the glow of the floating candles until it seemed spun from light itself. Her eyes were wide and impossibly blue, bright with the kind of quiet mischief that made him feel exposed, as though she could already see the shape of every secret he carried. She wore deep green robes, the colour of old forests, gathered at the waist with a braided belt of gold. The sleeves fell in soft layers that brushed her arms when she moved, the fabric whispering with the grace of something not entirely bound to this world.
He could not look away. It was not that her presence was unexpected. It was that he had not expected this version of her — this striking, self-possessed, and utterly arresting reality.
She was not only beautiful. She was not only magnetic.
She was devastating.
And Merlin, her body.
She had grown into a vision of femininity that was both delicate and intoxicating. Her figure was a balance of contrasts, all soft curves framed by a slender, graceful frame. Her breasts were full and inviting, pressing subtly against the fabric of her dress. Her waist tapered in before giving way to the gentle swell of her hips. And her arse, Merlin's beard, was the kind of perfect curve that could drive a man to distraction, a shape that promised both strength and softness in equal measure.
And then there was the dress.
Holy fuck, the dress.
It was a masterpiece of quiet temptation, made from fabric so fine it seemed to blur the line between modesty and provocation. It clung to her like a second skin, tracing the slope of her breasts, the narrowing of her waist, and the curve of her hips with every subtle movement. In the shifting light, it shimmered and offered fleeting glimpses that were enough to send his thoughts into places he had no right to go.
Fucking hell.
The reaction was immediate and infuriating. Heat coiled low in his stomach, sharp and insistent. For a moment, Draco Malfoy, former Death Eater, disgraced heir, and the Ministry's reluctant pawn, was reduced to something he had not been in years. He felt like a schoolboy again, blindsided by a rush of want he could not quite hide. His pulse quickened, a faint flush crept along the back of his neck, and it took every bit of his control to stop himself from staring.
But he was a Malfoy. He still had some pride left.
He forced his expression into one of calm indifference, inclining his head with practiced ease, and spoke as though he were not seconds away from making a fool of himself.
"Lovegood," he said, his voice smooth enough to pass for composure, though it felt rough in his throat. "It is a pleasure to see you."
If his voice was tighter than usual, if his mouth felt uncomfortably dry, Luna did not need to know.
She smiled at him, her expression carrying that quiet, knowing amusement she always seemed to have. In that moment, he realised he was completely unprepared for this. It was rare for him to be caught without a plan. He was usually able to anticipate, to measure, to calculate. Yet here he stood, in a tea shop that smelled of warmth and comfort and her, and for once in his life he had no idea what to do next.
"It is good to see you after all these years," Luna said. Her voice still carried that same ethereal quality he remembered, as if she were speaking from somewhere just out of reach, yet her eyes were clear and steady, pulling him firmly into the present.
Draco hesitated, his mouth dry, searching for words that did not seem to come. "I… You too." He let out a slow breath, trying to steady himself, and his gaze swept over her again as if looking at her might help anchor him. "You have changed."
Luna tilted her head, the faintest smirk curving her lips, her expression at once knowing and unreadable. "You mean I am not a weird girl anymore?"
His back straightened at once. "No, I did not say that." The words came out sharper than he intended, defensive in a way that made heat rise in his face. Her eyes did not waver. It was as if she were waiting for him to reveal something without even trying. He forced his shoulders to loosen, cleared his throat, and tried again. "You just look… grown. And more yourself."
She blinked slowly, deliberately, before a spark of amusement lit her expression. "Still arrogant, I see." Her tone was not cruel and not dismissive, but it held a teasing precision that cut all the same, softened by warmth, as though she had expected no less from him.
The words landed harder than they should have. He felt them press into something raw, something he had not realised was still unguarded. It was not as though she had said anything untrue. He knew exactly how he had appeared during their school years, the way he had shaped himself into a perfect emblem of privilege, superiority, and the darkness he had inherited. He had worn that image like armour, all tailored robes and cutting remarks, because it had been easier to be the arrogant Malfoy than to let anyone see the fear and fracture beneath.
But hearing it from her was different. From Luna, who had always seemed to move above judgement, who carried herself with a strange, unshakable calm, the words twisted in his chest in a way he could not name.
"I hope not," he said at last, his voice quieter than he intended, rough with something that felt too close to vulnerability. He glanced away for a heartbeat, then forced himself to meet her eyes again. "I am trying. I truly am."
She did not answer right away. She simply studied him, head tilted slightly, her gaze unwavering. It was not just his face or his stance or his words she was reading. It felt as though she was looking through him, weighing what she found against the man who stood before her. There was no malice there, no contempt, no trace of superiority. Only the kind of patient consideration that made him feel exposed without feeling attacked.
Then, with a simplicity that caught him off guard, she asked, "How can I help you?"
Draco exhaled, slow and shaky, the sound pulling free a breath he had not even realised he had been holding. The question unsettled him, not because it was strange, but because of the softness in it, the way it landed without accusation or demand. It cut through the taut air between them without drawing blood, offering something he could not quite name. For a moment he let his gaze drift from hers, scanning the room, grateful for the excuse to look away and gather himself.
The shop felt like something from a half-forgotten story, the kind told by firelight on nights when the wind rattled the windows. The walls were a blend of dark wood and muted pastels, lined with shelves crowded with glass jars and tins, each neatly labeled in looping script. He could not pronounce most of the names, but the scents clung to the air like familiar ghosts—rosehips, chamomile, and something richer, darker, almost like cinnamon layered with clove. Candles floated in a slow orbit overhead, their light gold and steady, throwing gentle shadows that shifted along the walls. Bundles of dried flowers hung from the beams, their faded colours somehow brighter here, as if the room itself guarded them from time.
"Yes," he said at last. His voice was steadier than before, though he was not sure how. "I would like some tea. It smells incredible in here."
Her smile came easily, warm and genuine, and the sight of it sent an unwelcome rush of heat through his chest. "Thank you," she replied, moving toward the counter with a quiet grace that made every gesture seem deliberate. She reached for a small tin, her fingers sure and unhurried. "I bought this place a few months ago. I am still trying to make it feel charming."
You are charming, he thought without warning, the words leaping forward before he could catch or smother them.
For Merlin's sake, what was wrong with him?
There was no reason he should be standing in the middle of a tea shop fighting the absurd urge to stare at Luna Lovegood like she had just stepped out of some long-buried dream. Yet here he was, feeling the ground shift beneath him in a way he had not felt in years. Something about the way she held herself, the way she smiled as if she knew precisely how much she was undoing him, dragged him back to a place he thought he had left behind. It was infuriating, and intoxicating, and it made him feel seventeen again, hopelessly unprepared.
Desperate to pull his mind away from the dangerous path it was wandering, he let his gaze drift over the shop again until it caught on a set of teacups arranged neatly near the register. Each one was a tiny work of art, porcelain painted with constellations in fine strokes of gold, the stars forming graceful arcs that seemed to shimmer when the light touched them. It was impossible not to notice how the space reflected her. The shop felt like an extension of Luna herself—whimsical and wild, yet threaded through with a quiet depth that caught him off guard. It was a sanctuary pieced together from candlelight, dried petals, and magic.
"It looks like a fairy's home," he said without thinking, his voice low, almost to himself, as he let his fingers brush the smooth edge of the counter. The cool porcelain grounded him, kept him from drowning in the strange pull of her presence. "So I would say it is cute."
Her eyes lifted to meet his, and for a fleeting heartbeat the air between them seemed to hum with something unspoken. Her smile deepened, just slightly, and it hit him with the force of a well-aimed hex. "Good," she said, her voice soft yet touched with something he could not quite name. "I always liked fairies."
The words lingered in the space between them like a charm refusing to fade. Draco drew in a slow breath, forcing his composure into place, telling himself that this was fine. This was only small talk between people who had once known each other. He was not standing here in a sunlit tea shop wrestling with an entirely unhelpful rush of awareness every time she looked at him.
He was not in trouble.
Except, deep down, he already knew he was.