The wireless crackled somewhere in the corner, tuned to the Wizarding Wireless Network as background noise. Draco paid it no mind.

Not until the announcer's voice cut through, bright and reverent.

Then the orchestra began.

A soft piano melody, deceptively simple. A few notes that made his chest tighten before his mind caught up to why.

Draco's pen stilled.

He knew that melody.

Not from the wireless. Not from any recording. From a cramped Hogwarts bedroom, years ago, when the firelight had caught on her hair and she'd played a song she swore wasn't ready. When she'd sung it just for him, because he'd asked, because she'd trusted him enough to be unfinished.

The page blurred. Draco looked up.

She walked onto the stage.

She was older. Of course she was. Her hair was different—shorter, swept back, elegant in a way the schoolgirl's hadn't been. Her gown was deep green, fitted, unmistakably expensive. She moved with the confidence of someone who had learned exactly who she was.

But when she smiled at the audience, it was her. That same smile. The one that had once made him forget whatever careful thing he'd been about to say.

His glass stopped halfway to his lips.

And she began to sing.

His chest pulled taut with every note. The song was different now—fuller, polished, backed by an arrangement she couldn't have dreamed of at seventeen. But the bones were the same. The chorus. The bridge he'd made her repeat three times because he'd wanted her to believe it was good.

The song about him.

He knew it was about him. He'd known even then, though she'd never said it aloud. He'd heard it in the lyrics she'd been too afraid to name. In the line about choosing a path over a person. In the melody that sounded like waiting.

She had published it.

The song she'd sworn was too personal. The one she told him she'd never release. The one he'd privately mourned, because he'd always believed it was the best thing she'd ever written—and she'd kept it hidden, tucked away in a journal he'd never seen again after he'd left her.

She had published it.

The performance ended. There was applause, and the camera caught her bowing, gracious and composed. The interviewer's voice came through the wireless, warm and familiar in that broadcast way:

Higher Ground was the name, he learned. Seven albums. Headlining tours. A catalog of songs, interviews, and performances spanning years, all of which he'd missed.

He tapped the first track. Then another. Then another.

By 2:30 in the morning, the whiskey sat untouched, and Draco Malfoy was no longer certain of anything except that she had written about him for years—and that he had been a fool to ever let her go.

He stared at the ceiling.

And whether she would recognize him if they met again.

The thought was absurd. Of course she would. She'd known him when he was seventeen and incapable of hiding anything—when he'd loved her so completely that leaving her had felt like the only way to survive becoming himself.

And yet.

He reached for his phone one more time. Type A message. Deleted it. Type another. Deleted that one too.

Somewhere above, rain kept falling against the dark windows, and Draco Malfoy, Senior Auror, heir to one of Britain's oldest families, conqueror of every expectation placed upon him—

Had absolutely no idea what to say.