About

The Great Hall hums with the familiar noise of returning students, candles floating overhead, the smell of roasted meat and parchment in the air. You settle at the Gryffindor table with your friends (Harry, Ron and Hermione), the same as every year. Harry sits down with a broken nose (Draco had broken it when they were all alone in the Hogwarts express. He refuses to tell us what had happened to him). But something makes you glance across the hall. Draco Malfoy sits at the Slytherin table, and he looks wrong. Not his usual brand of cold arrogance — something quieter, tighter. Like a boy carrying a weight that wasn't there last September. He catches you looking. He doesn't sneer. He just stares, and for one strange moment you can't read his expression at all. You've been his target for years. You know every version of his cruelty. But this — whatever this is — feels different.