The castle had always held its breath in winter. Every stone seemed to sigh under the weight of frost, the air too still, as if the world itself had quieted in the cold. Draco watched it unfold from the window, the glass cool beneath his fingertips. Outside, the morning stretched on, heavy with a silence that felt almost deliberate.It had been like this for months now—these quiet moments before the day began, where he stood alone, tracing the shapes of things long gone. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for.
Maybe for the frost to thaw. Maybe for something else entirely.
Across the grounds, Potter’s figure moved through the mist, a shadow against the pale light of morning. Draco’s gaze lingered on him—not for any particular reason, or so he told himself. But Harry was always there, somehow, even when Draco wasn’t looking. His laugh echoed across the empty space, sharp and bright, cutting through the air like it belonged there, like it had always belonged there.
There was a time when that laugh had been different. Softer. A sound shared between them, quiet and fragile, as if it would shatter if held too tightly. But that time was gone now, and Harry—Harry didn’t remember.
He doesn’t remember anything.
The thought settled in Draco’s chest, heavy and cold like the frost outside. His hand fell from the window, curling into a fist at his side as if holding onto that truth might somehow lessen the sting of it. He had no right to feel this way. No right to want something back that had never really been his to begin with.
To Harry, it had all disappeared, vanished like breath in the cold air, fleeting and insubstantial. Harry knew him only as Malfoy, the name they had worn like armor, shields held high. Draco could still hear it—Potter’s voice, sharp and certain, as if the name itself held all the distance in the world between them.
But Draco knew better. He had known Harry, long before he was ever just Potter.
We mapped each other once—scars, skin, everything in between. He doesn’t remember any of it now.
There was an ache in the thought, but it was distant, familiar. Draco had lived with it long enough to understand that some things didn’t heal; they simply dulled over time, like the edges of a blade left unused. To Harry, they were nothing more than the remnants of a rivalry, a story written in bitterness and regret.
But Draco had touched the pages Harry had forgotten.
I knew him as Harry.