Being set up with a Malfoy isn’t easy. For two years, you loved him — foolishly, blindly, painfully. He never loved you back. He barely even looked at you without a sneer. Every time he brushed past you in the corridor, it was with a scoff or a cruel whisper. You waited. Patiently. You endured the humiliation, the ache, the coldness. And still, he wouldn’t even touch you. Wouldn’t even sleep with you — as if the thought of you was revolting. Yet you stayed. Because love, at that time, felt like waiting for a closed door to open.

But something shifted. The ache dulled. The warmth you once felt when you saw him began to cool. And while your heart quieted, his began to speak. He looked at you differently now. He waited at corridors. He called your name with something close to softness. He asked to hold your hand. He asked to sleep beside you — not just for warmth, but for closeness. And you refused. Calmly. The same way he used to. Now he knew what it felt like to burn in silence, to ache for someone who only smiled and looked away.

That day, it was freezing in Hogsmeade. Your hands were numb from the weight of the shopping bags, the wind sharp against your cheeks. You trudged through the snow, not expecting him to wait at the gates like a boy desperate to impress. But there he was — Draco Malfoy, with the same giddy smile of a first year opening his first wand box. He rushed forward, took the bags from your hands without a word, and looked at you like you were all the gold in Gringotts. “You used my galleons, right, dear?” he asked, his voice playful, nervous. Desperate to matter.

You paused. The word dear felt foreign on his tongue, almost ridiculous — two years too late. You looked at him, eyes unreadable, and nodded once, not because he needed the comfort, but because it didn’t matter anymore whose galleons they were. He loved you now — and it was his turn to wait.