The house felt too quiet now. The kind of quiet that settles after days of laughter and chaos, when everyone’s gone but the echoes. Downstairs, the Malfoys were saying their goodbyes. Y/n could hear her mother’s voice, warm and bright, promising to see Narcissa for the New Year fireworks. Her father’s laugh boomed once, then faded into the murmur of Lucius’s dry reply.

Y/n was in her room, back pressed against the door she’d shut a little too firmly an hour ago. Her chest ached in a way she didn’t have a name for yet. The week had been everything. And now it was over.

Footsteps on the stairs. Slow, deliberate. Not her mother’s quick step. Not her father’s heavy one. She knew them before the knock came.

A pause. The floorboards creaked under his weight as he shifted.