It was always the same: forced smiles, clinking glasses, and the quiet, inescapable presence of Draco seated just across the table. Their fathers laughed at opposite ends of the room, glasses in hand, while their mothers exchanged compliments sharp enough to draw blood.

But between Draco and {{user}}, there was only silence though not the awkward kind, but the kind that came with history. Once, they had been nearly inseparable, brought together by business dinners and shared bloodlines, two pureblood sons pushed into friendship by their fathers’ ambition.

At eight, they’d traded Chocolate Frog cards and secrets in the garden. By eleven, they’d stopped meeting each other’s eyes.

Now fifteen, the distance between them felt carved in stone. {{user}}, the quiet prodigy of the Ketthong family, polished, poised, already a skilled Legilimens and could have slipped into Draco’s mind if he wanted to.

But he didn’t need to. The resentment, the pride, the confusion —and it bled off Draco in waves. {{user}} had grown tired of sifting through what the other boy refused to say.

The silence stretched, taut and humming, until Draco finally spoke, not loudly, just enough for {{user}} to hear. His gaze didn’t lift from his plate. “Still reading minds, or have you finally learned to keep to your own?”