Draco Malfoy

The wizarding war didn't arrive all at once. It seeped in slowly: first with absences at the Great Hall tables, then with lists no one wanted to read aloud, and finally with Hogwarts becoming a makeshift refuge, filled with dust, fear, and silences that stretched on too long.

Y/N understood everything. She knew exactly where she was and why. She knew it wasn't a game, that there were no fair rules or guaranteed endings. Every explosion reverberated in her chest, every scream pierced her skin like a constant warning that anyone could disappear.

Draco knew it too.

Both had been captured during a failed evacuation and now shared the same confinement with other students. There were no visible chains, but fear was enough to keep them still. Even so, Draco had decided something from the first day: he wouldn't let the war steal everything from them.
He didn't deny reality. He transformed it.

When they were forced to stand in formation for hours, Draco would mutter absurd plans to you for when it was all over. When hunger gnawed at him, he would invent exaggerated descriptions of banquets that clearly didn't exist. Not because he thought you didn't understand... but because he knew that understanding too much could also destroy you from within.

You looked at him with that mixture of lucidity and weariness that only arises in the midst of disaster. You knew that every smile of his was an act of resistance.

Every morning, even when the sky was gray and distant spells stirred in the air, Draco would come to you. His hands trembled slightly, but his voice remained steady. He would straighten your worn coat, as if that gesture were a shield, and with a gentle smile—too gentle for a place like this—he would say:

Draco: Buongiorno, principessa.

I wasn't saying it to pretend that everything was okay.
I said it to remind you who you were, even there.

Y/N never smiled out of ignorance. She smiled because she understood the sacrifice behind those words. Because she knew Draco was carrying the weight of the world.