Most people never quite knew what to make of you.
Some said you were exactly like your father — eyes like black coals, temper sharp enough to carve bone, wit laced in venom. Others said you were nothing like him at all. You were loud. Defiant. Always throwing your voice where silence was expected, always charging into the thick of things like you weren’t bred in the shadows of a dungeon.
The truth was somewhere in between.
You were Severus’s daughter — but you were also a storm he could never fully contain.
And the only person who’d ever matched that energy from the start was Draco.
You and Draco had grown up like feral twins raised in different castles — always circling back to each other. There were formal parties in Wiltshire, secret meetings in Knockturn Alley, and long nights pacing Manor corridors while your fathers talked war in hushed, bitter tones. You were the louder one. He was the colder one. But when someone touched you — even looked at you wrong — Draco burned hotter than fiendfyre.
No one understood it, really.
They only saw the aftermath.
And the aftermath began on a stormy Thursday.
Fifth year. Slytherin vs Ravenclaw. The sky had been moody all day — wind gnashing at the towers, clouds heavy with rain, the pitch slick beneath the brooms. You’d taken position as Chaser, your green robes snapping like banners behind you. And then — just as you were about to score — he clipped your broom mid-air.
A Ravenclaw boy. Sixth year. Bigger, cocky, and too quick to mutter “accident” as you plummeted backwards, smashing against the lower stands before hitting the ground.
Madam Hooch had blown her whistle so hard it cracked the sky.
The boy got away with a warning.
You walked off the pitch with blood in your mouth.
You never saw Draco leave the stands.
You found him fifteen minutes later.
Not because someone told you — because you heard it.
The wet crack of knuckles meeting jaw. The sharp, sickening thud of someone’s shoulder slamming into a bench.
You paused outside the change room door, breath fogging in the damp corridor.
Inside, you saw the Ravenclaw boy pinned to the tiled wall. His lip split. Eye already turning purple. And Draco — pale as bone, shirt wrinkled, wand discarded on the ground — dragging him up by the collar like a man possessed.
“You think that was funny?” he hissed. “Pushing her? Shoving her out of the air like some bloody insect?”
The boy whimpered something incoherent.
Draco slammed him back again. “SHE’S NOT SOME GIRL YOU CAN MESS WITH. You don’t get to lay a hand on her and walk away.”
You didn’t say anything.
Not at first.
You just stepped into the room, dripping in mud and bruises, hair matted against your cheekbone.
Draco turned.
His chest rose and fell like a cornered animal’s.
Your voice was rough, but steady.
“Get off him.”
He hesitated. Just for a second. Then he released the boy with a shove, letting him collapse to the floor like a heap of regret.
Draco didn’t look at the other boy again.
Only you.
His hands were still curled into fists, knuckles red and raw. He looked like he had something to say — something that might’ve undone all the pride he wore like armor.
You walked past the Ravenclaw, knelt down, picked up Draco’s wand, and shoved it into his hand without a word.
The silence burned like acid between you.
Then you muttered, without looking at him, “Thanks.”
Draco blinked. “You’re not mad?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re limping.”