The stone of the Astronomy Tower was cold beneath her palms. Frost clung to the edges of the crenellations, and the wind bit through her thick robes. Draconia stood still, watching the way the moonlight hit the snow on the parapet. The night was quiet, devoid of the usual chatter from the common rooms or the distant sounds of the castle. She had come up here because she needed to be alone, but the appearance of Harry Potter changed the intention of her solitude.
Harry stood a few paces away, his hands shoved into his pockets. He looked tired, his hair a mess of dark tangles that defied the stillness of the night. He did not call out to her, nor did he offer a greeting to break the silence. He simply arrived, a solid presence in the darkness. Neither of them moved to bridge the gap between them.
"You should not be up here," Draconia said, her voice flat. She did not need to pretend to be surprised by his presence. They had reached a point where their paths crossed with a predictable, frustrating frequency.
"I could say the same to you," Harry replied. He stepped closer to the edge, looking out over the darkened grounds. "It is freezing, Draconia. You will catch a chill if you stay in these thin robes."
"I am perfectly capable of managing my own temperature, Potter," she answered. She felt the familiar prickle of irritation, but it was a soft sensation, not the sharp edge she used to feel in the corridors. "Why are you here?"
Harry did not answer immediately. He turned his head to look at her, his eyes searching her face in the pale light. "No pretext," he said finally. "I just wanted to be somewhere where nobody was looking at us."
"Is that why you came? To hide?" Draconia asked. She leaned her back against the stone wall, trying to ignore the way the cold seeped through her clothes.
"Maybe," Harry said. He took a step toward her, his boots crunching on the light dusting of ice. "Or maybe it is just easier to be honest when there is no one around to hear the lies."
Draconia stiffened at the word. They were both experts at the art of the lie. She lied to her father, she lied to her friends, and she lied to herself about the debt she owed Harry. Harry lied to the school, to the DA, and to anyone who asked about the weight he carried on his shoulders. They were two people who had mastered the craft of being seen while remaining entirely hidden.
"Honesty is a dangerous thing to do in this castle," Draconia remarked. She watched the way his breath formed white clouds in the air. "It tends to get people in trouble."
"You are the one who started it," Harry said. He was standing directly in front of her now, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. "You started the whole mess with that hex in the corridor. You created a debt that nobody asked for."
"It was a way to settle the score," she snapped. "I did not do it to be kind, and I did not do it to be a hero. I did it because it was a transaction."
"It never felt like a transaction to me," Harry said. His voice was low, stripped of the usual bravado he used in the Great Hall. "Even when you were being difficult, even when you were being cruel, it felt like you were trying to tell me something."
"I was telling you that you owed me," Draconia said. She looked up at him, her eyes narrowed. "I was telling you that everything has a price."
"Everything does," Harry agreed. He reached out as if to touch her arm, but he stopped himself, his hand hovering in the empty space between them. "But you spend so much time worrying about the price that you forget to actually live the moment."
"That is easy for you to say," she countered. "You do not have a name to protect. You do not have a contract waiting for you in the mail."
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable, but it was heavy. The wind picked up, whipping a strand of hair across her face. Harry reached out and tucked it behind her ear, his fingers brushing against her skin. His touch was warm, a startling contrast to the biting air.
"Are you still running?" Harry asked. He was looking at her with an intensity that made her want to look away. "Are you still pretending that you do not care about the outcome?"
"I am not running," Draconia said, though the lie tasted bitter on her tongue. "I am simply calculating the risks."
"You are a terrible liar when you are tired," Harry said. He stepped even closer, his chest almost touching hers. The scent of him was faint, a mix of old parchment and the cold night air. "You look exhausted by the effort of it all."
"It is an exhausting business, being a Malfoy," she whispered. She felt a sudden, sharp ache in her chest. She wanted to tell him that she was tired of the rules, tired of the expectations, and tired of the way he looked at her as if he could see through every defense she had ever built.
"You don't have to be a Malfoy up here," Harry said. He moved his hand from her hair to her cheek, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. "It is just us. There is no one to watch us be wrong."
"I am not sure what you mean by that," she said, though she knew exactly what he meant. They were always wrong, always navigating the wrong currencies of affection and debt.
"You know what you mean," Harry said. He leaned his forehead against hers. The contact was electric, a sudden jolt of warmth in the middle of the freezing night. "You spend all your time making sure you are owed something, but you never actually ask for what you want."
"I know what I want," she said, her voice trembling slightly. She gripped the front of his robes, pulling him closer. "I know exactly what the cost is."
"Then stop calculating," Harry said. He moved his hands to her waist, pulling her body flush against his. "Stop waiting for the perfect time to pay the debt."
Draconia looked up at him, her breath hitching in her throat. The moonlight caught the green of her eyes, making them bright and fierce. She felt the weight of everything she had been carrying, the secrets and the contracts and the lies she told to keep herself safe.
"What is the point of it all if you don't get to keep it?" she asked.
"It is not about keeping it," Harry said. "It is about the truth of it."
"People will say the wrong things," she warned him. "They will say you are the reason the debt was never settled."
"Let them say it," Harry said. He moved his lips toward her ear, his breath hot against her skin. "I do not care about the version of the story they tell."
She felt a sudden, desperate need to know if he was truly being honest or if this was just another layer of his complicated grace. She needed to know if he was as much of a liar as she was.
"Tell me the truth, Harry," she said, her voice a mere shadow of a sound. "No more metaphors. No more dodging the question."
He pulled back just enough to look her in the eye. His expression was stripped of all pretension, leaving only a raw, aching vulnerability.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"You, out loud," he said, and she could not.