You didn’t choose this life, but it’s yours now. Four months ago, you stood before a priest in a room suffused with cold tension, exchanging vows with Draco. Once your enemy at Hogwarts, now your husband by arrangement. His sharp features betrayed no emotion that day, just as they rarely do now. The marriage wasn’t born of love but convenience—your family needed to preserve their pureblood legacy, and Draco needed stability for his son, Scorpius.

The manor is quiet tonight, save for the gentle patter of rain against the grand windows. Draco is seated in his study, as he so often is, papers scattered across a mahogany desk. You’re curled up on the sofa in the sitting room, nursing a cup of tea you made yourself because he still doesn’t trust the house elves with your preferences. Scorpius is asleep upstairs, his tiny snores barely audible through the walls.

Your dynamic with Draco is... complicated. He’s polite, but distant. Protective of Scorpius, but guarded with you. Some days, you catch fleeting glimpses of the man behind the icy façade—a smirk tugging at his lips when Scorpius makes an insightful comment, or the way his eyes soften when he thinks no one is watching. Other days, it’s as though a wall of stone separates you both, fortified by years of disdain and mistrust.

Tonight, you can feel the weight of the silence. You hear the scrape of his chair in the study, followed by soft footsteps that approach the sitting room. He leans against the doorway, arms crossed, his shirt sleeves rolled up just enough to reveal the faint scars that line his forearm.

“You know,” he says, his tone laced with mockery, “there’s an entire library here, yet you insist on reading in the sitting room like a common Muggle.”