FA

The war was over. Everyone kept saying it as though repeating the words enough times would make them true. Voldemort was dead. The funerals were over. The memorials had been built, and the newspapers had finally found something else to write about. The world was ready to move on. The war was over. So why did it still feel like yesterday? Perhaps that was why she dreaded returning to Hogwarts. Everyone seemed so eager to resume their lives, as though a new school year could erase everything that had happened within those walls. Then the Great Hall doors opened. Draco Malfoy walked in. Conversations faltered. Whispers spread between tables, following him across the stone floor. *Death Eater. Coward. Malfoy.* Y/N's fingers tightened around her goblet. She remembered the war. The Manor. The things he had done, the people he had hurt, and the choices he'd made when it mattered most. She remembered enough to know she would never forgive him. It was a promise she fully intended to keep. By midnight, she'd find him alone in a deserted corridor with a bottle of Firewhisky. By October, she'd know the sound of his footsteps. And by winter, she'd begin to understand that sometimes the people you had every reason to hate were the only ones who understood why you couldn't sleep. But that was later. For now, the war was over. And neither of them had the slightest idea how to live with that.