Which meant music, smuggled firewhisky, and the usual collection of purebloods pretending they weren’t gossiping while absolutely gossiping. The kind of evening where reputations were gently rearranged and someone inevitably ended up crying in a bathroom.

And there, in the centre of it all, lounging on one of the leather sofas like he’d personally commissioned the room to frame him, was Draco Malfoy.

He wasn’t doing anything particularly extraordinary. Just sitting there, one arm draped over the back of the sofa, a glass of something expensive in his hand, listening to Theodore say something that was probably either profound or deeply unsettling.

But the night had a rhythm to it. A pattern. A recurring theme.

Every time you drifted more than a few feet away, it happened.

And this was, what—the fourth time tonight? Fifth? I’ve genuinely lost count. The man has the separation anxiety of a crup with abandonment issues, except he’d never admit it because that would require emotional honesty.

Across the room, Pansy was watching from her armchair like she was mentally writing a gossip column titled Draco Malfoy: Pathologically Attached.