The Astronomy Tower felt colder than the rest of the castle, though the stone was not the only thing that held a chill. Draconia stood by the parapet, her fingers tracing the rough edge of the granite. She had not worn the badge since the previous week, but the absence of the silver and green pin felt like a physical weight against her chest. Her palms were still slightly unsteady from the conversation with Umbridge, a tremor she had managed to hide behind a mask of Malfoy indifference. She heard his footsteps before she saw him, a rhythmic, heavy sound that signaled his approach. Harry Potter did not move like the others; he walked with a certain bluntness that ignored the grace expected in these high places.
"You look like you are waiting for a ghost to appear," he said, leaning against the stone archway.
Draconia turned to face him, her expression smoothing into a bored composure. "I was enjoying the silence, but since you have broken it, you might as well stand here."
"Is that why you did it?" he asked, stepping closer into the moonlight. "To make things quiet for yourself?"
"You are remarkably arrogant to assume my motives are always about my own comfort," she replied, crossing her arms.
Harry walked toward the railing, standing just a few feet away from her. He did not look at the view, but kept his eyes fixed on her profile. "The way you spoke to those Gryffindors on the staircase, it was calculated. You acted like you were offended by me, but you were actually shielding me."
"I was not shielding you, Potter. I was simply tired of hearing them chatter," she lied, her voice steady despite the way her heart hammered against her ribs.
"You used the name," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "You used the Malfoy name to shut them up. You used the very thing you pretend to hate about yourself to protect me."
Draconia felt a flash of heat in her cheeks, but she refused to look away. "It was a tactical decision. It was efficient. A Malfoy knows how to command a room, and you were being an inconvenience to the social order."
"It wasn't a tactic. It was a rescue," Harry countered, his eyes narrowing. "And that is the problem. I did not ask to be rescued by you."
"Do you always have to be the one in control of your own salvation?" she snapped, her composure slipping for a single second.
"I want to stand on my own feet without a Malfoy's shadow looming over me," he said, his tone growing sharper. "When you use your influence to soften the blows meant for me, you aren't helping. You are making me look like a charity case."
"You are a difficult man to help, Harry. You are stubborn, and you are needlessly proud," she said, using his given name to pierce through his defensive stance.
"I don't want your protection," he insisted, stepping into her personal space. "The badge, the name, the way you look at me when you think no one is watching. It is all too much. It feels like you are trying to manage me."
"I am not managing you; I am surviving you," she retorted, her voice rising. "Do you think it is easy to watch you walk into danger and then have to use every ounce of my social standing to keep the vultures from picking at you?"
"Maybe the vultures should pick," he said, a grim smile touching his lips. "At least then it would be honest. This game you are playing, where you pretend to be indifferent while pulling strings behind the scenes, is exhausting to watch."
Draconia felt the sting of his words, the way they cut through the polite distance she had tried to maintain. She wanted to tell him that she did it because she could not bear to see him suffer the consequences of her silence. She wanted to tell him that the badge was a weapon she used to carve out a space where he could breathe, even if it meant she looked like a traitor to her own kind.
"It is not a game," she said, her voice dropping to a low, fierce murmur. "It is a necessity. If you were as observant as you claim to be, you would see that the world is not as kind to you as it is to people with names like mine."
"I don't need your kindness, Draconia. I need you to stop pretending that you don't care," he said, his gaze intense and unyielding.
"Caring is a liability in this castle," she whispered, her eyes searching his face for a hint of softness. "If people see that you matter to a Malfoy, they will find a way to hurt you through her. I am just being smart."
"You are being a coward," he said, and the word hit her with the force of a physical blow. "You are hiding behind a name because you are afraid to be seen actually standing by my side."
"How dare you," she breathed, her eyes flashing. "I have done more for you in a single afternoon than most people do in a term."
"And yet, you're still the one who is afraid," Harry said, his voice softening but the edge remaining. "You use the name to build a wall around us, but you're still the one standing outside of it."
Draconia looked away, unable to sustain the pressure of his stare. The wind whipped a stray lock of hair across her face, and for a moment, the silence between them was heavy with the weight of things unsaid. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him that his pride was a wall he built himself, but she could not find the words to break through his stubbornness.
"You are a fool, Potter," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "You think you want independence, but you don't realize how much it costs to keep the peace."
"Then let the peace break," he said, moving even closer until she could feel the warmth radiating from him. "I would rather have a broken peace than a perfect lie."
"You are so incredibly difficult," she sighed, closing her eyes.
"And you are too noble for your own good," he replied, his voice a low rumble in the dark.
She felt the urge to reach out and touch his arm, to bridge the gap that the unspoken tension had created, but she kept her hands clenched at her sides. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her vulnerability, not when he was being so relentlessly honest.
"You think you're being brave by refusing the help," she said, her voice regaining its iron. "But you're just being stubborn."
"Maybe," he admitted, his eyes never leaving hers. "But at least it's my stubbornness. Not yours."
The argument had reached its peak, a frantic exchange of defenses and accusations that left them both breathless. She looked at him, really looked at him, seeing the exhaustion in the lines of his face and the quiet strength in his posture. He was not a boy to be pitied, and he was certainly not a project to be completed.
"Don't do it again," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper as he took one last step toward her, the fight was real, and it ended with him saying "don't do it again" and meaning the opposite.