The drawing room of Malfoy Manor hadn’t changed in a decade — same velvet drapes drawn tight against the moonlight, same greenish glow from enchanted candelabras, same hush that always blanketed the place when important adults talked politics upstairs. But something was different.

You were here again.

And for some reason, that changed everything.

Draco blinked slowly awake, the flickering shadows from the long-finished horror film still twitching across the ceiling. His body was stiff from the awkward angle—his neck at a tilt, shoulder slightly sore—and something warm and solid pressed close against him.

You.

His head was resting slightly against yours, the silvery-blond strands of his hair tangled with yours on the shared cushion. Your legs had somehow gotten tangled too, a knee brushing against his. The soft rise and fall of your breath ghosted against his collarbone where you’d slumped sometime during the second act of The Ghoul on the Third Floor.

Draco barely breathed.

It had been years since you’d stayed this long at the manor. You used to visit constantly—when both your families still cared to keep up appearances. His mother liked yours well enough. Your father had been useful to Lucius on more than one political occasion. And the two of you? Practically inseparable by age five. The only child around his age who wasn’t afraid of the old halls of the Manor. You’d play hide-and-seek between columns, duel with sticks in the rose gardens, sneak sugar-dusted pastries out of the kitchens.

He remembered you sitting cross-legged beside him in the nursery, correcting his pronunciation of certain charms before he could even properly read the spellbooks. He remembered when you turned seven and decided he was your sworn rival for two weeks because he stole your unicorn hair quill. He remembered you saying you’d never marry someone like him.

And yet, here you were. Older now. Different.

He didn’t remember falling asleep like this—your body pressed against his, curled into the crook of his arm, like it had always been meant to fit there.

He remembered starting the film—mocking the ridiculous plot, elbowing your ribs during the jump scares, smirking every time you grabbed a pillow. He remembered the snacks you’d stolen from the Malfoy kitchens and the way you refused to admit the film had actually scared you.

He remembered the laughter.

He remembered how close you’d sat. Too close. Or maybe not close enough.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. Not like this. Definitely not like this.

Definitely not how they used to fall asleep during nap time as kids.

The Malfoys and your parents had always maintained their little arrangement—dinners, alliances, shared school concerns—but as time passed and politics became more dangerous, the visits grew rarer. You were sorted into Gryffindor. He, predictably, into Slytherin. The letters stopped. Your families still spoke, of course—obligations ran deep—but the childhood closeness turned into something… faded. Distant.

Until this summer.

Now your family was here again. Your parents had joined Lucius and Narcissa for one of their endless late-night meetings. You and Draco had been left to “entertain yourselves,” which led, eventually, to the drawing room, the fire, a horror film neither of you admitted you were actually afraid of.

And somehow, this happened.

You stirred beside him with a small hum, cheek brushing his chest as you blinked awake.

“…Draco?”

“Hmm?”

You shifted back slightly, eyes searching his face in the dark. When you registered the position you were in—his arm around you, your body half-draped over his—your cheeks flushed.

“Did we—?” you started, voice still heavy with sleep.

“Fall asleep like this?” he finished. “Apparently.”