felt like a sin to show any form of emotion in this house. In Malfoy Manor, not a laugh—not even the ghost of a smile—dared to linger on anyone’s face. Perhaps it was the absence of sunlight; the tall windows were forever draped in heavy velvet, the chandeliers casting a cold, artificial glow that never quite reached the corners. Or perhaps it was simpler than that. The family itself, passed down through generations like an heirloom curse, was hell in polished marble and silver.

Marrying into it had not been your choice. You would never have chosen this—never chosen corridors that echoed with restraint, or portraits that watched you as though measuring your worth. You were too gentle for it. Flowers might as well have grown where you walked, warmth following in your wake. Yet here you were, because your father had decided it so.

Be good, he had said. A wife, he had said. My reputation.

Always his benefit. Never your freedom.

And now you were bound to a husband who had been raised on legacy rather than love. A man who had grown up with everything he could ever ask for—wealth, status, influence—and none of the things that might have made him kind. He did not speak out of turn, not even when his father’s voice cut through a room like a blade. He had been trained for obedience before he had ever been offered understanding.

How he treated you depended entirely on the setting.

Before both your families, he was measured—a careful sort of courtesy, restrained but present. At Ministry balls and formal gatherings, he was attentive to the point of scrutiny, a hand at your waist, a murmured comment near your ear, the picture of a composed husband.

Alone, he retreated.

He would lock himself in his study for hours, the faint green flicker of firelight slipping beneath the door. At night, he entered your shared bedroom as though it were a hotel chamber—quiet, detached—sliding beneath the covers without so much as brushing against you. In the mornings, sometimes you shared breakfast in silence; other times he was gone before you woke, no explanation left behind.

And when he drank—that was the closest you ever came to something resembling intimacy. But even then it was fragile, half-formed. Drunken words spoken too low to carry past the walls. Confessions that evaporated with daylight. Vulnerability offered only because he trusted you would never repeat it.

His moods rose and fell like the phases of the moon. Predictable only in their unpredictability.

No heir could possibly come of the union.

And tonight, that truth sat heavier than usual in the quiet drawing room. Somewhere deeper in the manor, maids moved like whispers. He despised house-elves; he preferred human staff—silent, distant, nearly invisible.

He was drinking again.

You sat across from him, hands folded in your lap, watching the way the firelight carved sharp angles into his face. He was always like this after meetings with his father—brittle, withdrawn, as though each word spoken had chipped something away.

His white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, tie loosened, jacket discarded on the sofa beside him. One sleeve was rolled slightly, exposing pale skin and tense veins beneath it. He stared into the flames as if daring them to speak first.

The new moon hung unseen beyond the curtains.

And in the hollow glow of the fire, Draco looked less like the boy he had once been and more like the man he had been forced to become—polished, controlled, and unbearably alone.