It’s a dreary Monday. The kind that feels colourless from the start—sky a dim, unpolished silver, rain murmuring against the cobblestones outside. You push open the warped door of the Leaky Cauldron and step into its familiar gloom.

Routine. That’s all it’s ever been, really. You come in, order your drink, exchange a few words with the witch behind the bar, and leave before the fire burns too low. It’s quiet here—comfortably so—and the silence has long since stopped feeling lonely.

You take your usual seat, the one by the window with its smudged pane of glass and half-wilted potted plant, and you order without thinking. It’s all muscle memory now. A small ritual against the dull ache of the everyday.

But tonight, it doesn’t feel like routine.

Because tonight, the seat beside you isn’t empty.

He sits there—head bowed, hand loosely cradling a glass of amber liquid that catches the dim light and throws it back dull and fractured. Malfoy.

It takes you a moment to recognize him. Two years can change a person, but war does more than that—it hollows. The boy you remember, all sharp arrogance and silken cruelty, has vanished. In his place sits something quieter, thinner, stripped of vanity. His hair is shorter now, though still that same pale silver; his shoulders, narrower, as though the weight he carried finally crushed what was left.

You glance once, twice, before you force your eyes away. The bartender slides your drink in front of you, and you take a slow sip, letting the chill bite through your chest just enough to anchor you.

You tell yourself not to say anything. You tell yourself it’s better this way.

But then he speaks first. His voice is lower than you remember—rough around the edges, as though disuse has turned it brittle.

“I wondered,” he says, eyes still fixed on the glass, “how long it would take for someone to look at me again, rather than through me.”