Your presence had always unsettled him—not for any overt reason, but because he could never read you. Not like he could others. The last time he had truly spoken to you, he had been thirteen and sulking in the Hospital Wing with a hexed arm gone stiff and purple.

You had stood at his side with a compress and strange calm, barely saying a word as she helped Madam Pomfrey undo the damage. He’d asked your name, irritated, only for you to answer with something honest and unafraid. And you remembered him. That much was evident.

Draco straightened, pulling himself into his usual posture—shoulders square, chin slightly lifted, like he wore his father’s shadow stitched into his spine. “You’re blocking the corridor,” he said, voice dry. Calculated. Defensive.

You didn’t move. Instead, you said, quite plainly, “Would you be willing to pretend to be my boyfriend?”

Draco blinked again.

It wasn’t a joke. You weren’t even smiling—not the way girls normally did when they were trying to flirt or trap him into something humiliating. Your eyes were entirely serious. Not nervous. Not blushing.

Just serious.

Draco felt his brows twitch together, a breath caught between disbelief and some cautious curiosity. “Is this some kind of Ravenclaw experiment?” he asked, tone already curling into that familiar sarcasm he used when he didn’t know what else to do with discomfort.

“No. It’s a request.” You were far too calm. “I need a fake boyfriend. Just for a while.”

And then, you explained. Not all at once, but enough—enough to make it make sense, infuriatingly enough. There was someone you needed to dissuade. Persistent. A Gryffindor, of course. Older, annoyingly arrogant, and likely to assume any ‘no’ was a challenge rather than a boundary.

Draco listened, arms crossed, expression unreadable save for the slow burn of something behind his eyes. He should have walked away. He wanted to. He didn’t make a habit of getting involved in other people’s dramas—especially not the delicate, personal ones. Especially not now. Especially not you.

And yet—

“Fine,” he said after a long pause, cutting the silence like a blade through velvet.

You tilted your head slightly, just enough to let one pale braid fall across your collarbone. “Fine?”

“Yes,” Draco said, voice like chilled wine. “But only under conditions.”

Your lips curved slightly then. Just slightly.

“First of all—no kissing,” he said immediately, as if he were offering the most logical stipulation in the world. “None. Not even a whisper of it. I’m not interested in being anyone’s test subject for Gryffindor retaliation or… whatever this is.”

“That’s fair,” you replied.

Draco narrowed his eyes. “And you don’t tell anyone this was my idea.”

You raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t.”

“Still,” he added, shrugging his coat straighter on his shoulders, “You know how people talk.”

You smiled then—soft, subtle. A Mona Lisa secret. The kind of smile that made Draco inexplicably uneasy. “I do.”

The corridor was still again, save for the faint sound of an owl somewhere outside and the thrum of magic living quietly in the stone walls.

Draco studied you a moment longer. Your presence was still strange to him—uncertain, quiet, but not soft. Like healing magic itself. Not gentle—but sharp, focused. Intentional. Nothing about you was accidental.

He stepped aside, offering a path forward. “We’ll start tomorrow. Don’t be late. I hate lateness.”

You walked past him, your shoulders nearly touching. “You hate most things.”

Draco turned his head slightly, just enough to watch the pale swing of your hair disappear around the next bend.

And for reasons he wouldn’t admit to anyone—especially not himself—he stood there a little too long after you’d gone.