#writting stuff

Since then, Draco had become the center of her secret world. The crush grew into something else entirely, something deeper and more unmanageable. She began noticing things others didn’t. The way his eyes weren’t just cold, but distant. The way he leaned back in chairs, confident. The way he sometimes stared into the fireplace as if he was somewhere else entirely. She memorised the brush of his hair, that impossibly soft silver-blond that she imagined running her fingers through. She pictured the feeling of tracing his skin with her fingertips—cool, porcelain-pale, smooth. She imagined what it might feel like to kiss him. To be looked at by him.

And not just looked at.

Seen.

She didn’t tell anyone. Not even her roommate, no one. She played her part: the sarcastic, observant Slytherin girl who didn’t get involved. The girl who wore quiet, beautiful sweaters and never looked flustered. But inside? She was spiralling.

It didn’t help that he had noticed her once. That time on the train—when those brutish Hufflepuff boys wouldn’t leave her and her friend alone. Draco had come over. Alone. His presence was thunderous even in silence. His cold, poised anger made them shrink back like dogs. And when he looked at her, really looked at her, she was sure he remembered her.

She'd clung to that moment like a lifeline. She played it over and over again, rewinding and dissecting it. She was convinced it meant something. That he saw her. That he chose to protect her. Not just because of house loyalty, not because of his prefect duty, but because of her.

That delusion became her oxygen. Every glance in the hallway. Every word he spoke near her. Every accidental brush of air as she passed by. It all became part of the narrative she built, alone in her mind.

She worked hard to look the part. Her hair always perfect, her perfume subtle and elegant. Her posture like poetry. She thought: he'll notice this time. She imagined him thinking: she’s cute, she smells good, that dress looks good on her, she sounds smart.

But he never did.

Not really.

He didn’t smile at her. Didn’t sit near her. Didn’t acknowledge her existence beyond a passing glance. And still, she told herself it was enough. That he was just like her: reserved, observing from afar. That he was playing the same silent game.

Until she saw him with her.

The girl was older, also Slytherin. Pretty in an effortless way, with thick dark hair and that careless laugh that seemed to spill too often. Y/N noticed the way Draco leaned slightly in when she spoke, how his lips tilted up at her jokes. How he turned to her, expecting her gaze, her laugh, her effortless attention—and how she gave it to him naturally, instinctively, like it belonged to him all along.

He was laughing.

Laughing with her.

Y/N felt her chest tighten like a fist was slowly curling around her lungs. She stood frozen, watching the way the girl brushed something off Draco's sleeve. How he didn’t pull away.

She spent that night turning in bed, face buried in her pillow, trying not to let the sobs escape. Her friend stirred beside her once but didn’t wake.

It got worse. The next weeks, she came back from the library late and passed through the common room. Only a few people remained, mostly yawning or gathering their books. And there they were.

Draco and the girl.

Sitting on the couch by the fire.

Too close. Far too close.

The girl’s hand rested near his knee. Draco didn’t move.

Y/N left so fast she didn’t even hear herself breathing until she was halfway to the dorm. That night she cried so hard her throat ached, the sobs caught like rocks beneath her ribs. She buried her face in her sheets, body trembling, mouth open in a silent cry. Her pillow soaked. Her hands gripped her blanket like it might stop her from dissolving.

Then came the worst night.

She had returned from Astronomy, distracted and unfocused. She turned the corner near the dungeons and stopped.

There they were again.

Draco and the girl.

Sneaking into his room. His hand on the small of her back. The girl smiled as the door clicked shut.

Y/N couldn’t move.

She hid in the shadow of a pillar until the corridor was empty. Then she ran. Not walked. Ran to the girls' bathrooms. She locked the bathroom door behind her and slid to the floor. Her chest was heaving. She wanted to scream. To hit something. To claw the feelings out of her.

She curled up on the cold tiles, hugging her knees to her chest, trying to hold in the grief that was pouring out of her anyway.

She felt like an idiot.

An idiot for every thought she ever had. For every moment she imagined him noticing her. For every time she picked an outfit thinking of him. For every day she stood straighter hoping his eyes would catch hers.

She felt sick.

The next morning, she said nothing.

One day, in the great hall, her friend mentioned how pretty Draco’s new girl was. “She has such good skin. Doesn’t she? And the way she talks, she sounds so confident.”

Y/N just nodded.

Pansy watched her a little too closely after that. Said nothing, but the look lingered. Later that night, Y/N heard her friend whispering to Pansy near the fireplace.

Y/N began avoiding the common room. The sight of that couch, of the firelight, made her nauseous. She took her meals at odd times. Spent hours in the library or wandering quiet corridors.

She stopped doing her hair. Stopped wearing perfume.

She didn’t cry anymore. Not in public. Not at night. Only in secret places. The second-floor girls’ bathroom. Behind the old tapestry near the south stairwell. In the snowy corners of the courtyard when no one was there.

Winter break came. She left for home with a hollow chest.

At home, the silence was different. Heavier. She wrote him a letter. She wrote it all out: what she felt, how she loved him, how she thought maybe, just maybe he could’ve seen her.

She wrote that she hoped he was happy. That he looked beautiful when he smiled. That she wished she had the courage to tell him in person.

She never sent it.

She burned it in the fireplace.

When she returned to Hogwarts in January, something in her had calcified. Hardened. She was quiet again, but it wasn’t the same kind of quiet.

It was the quiet of someone who had loved and lost without ever being held.

She didn’t look for him anymore. She didn’t dream. She no longer trusted herself to feel that way again. Because it hurt too much. Because it made her foolish. Because it left her hollow.

She kept the pain where no one could see it.

And no one ever did.

He’ll never know. And no one will ever know. For I have been foolish to believe in what I can never have.