Draco had spent the previous night alone — a rare occurrence these days. In his hunt for breakfast, he found Theo seated at the kitchen counter, eating his own breakfast (tea and toast) and reading The Daily Prophet. Theo folded the paper and placed it on the counter.

"How is it that you look more tired this morning than you do when you're with her?" he teased, waving his toast towards Draco vaguely. "I think you're doing it wrong, mate. Need some pointers?"

"I can't sleep when she's not here." He stifled a yawn and began fixing a cup of coffee — he needed something stronger than tea in the morning.

Theo's brow quirked as he sipped his tea. "How are things between the two of you? It seems I rarely see you without her. She hasn't gotten sick of you yet?"

Draco stood across the counter from him and sighed as he stirred cream into his coffee. "Not yet, but it's bound to happen eventually, right? I'm not exactly the sort of person who gets a happy ending," he said bitterly. Perhaps not the sort of thing he should say to someone in therapy, but Theo was also his friend — and the only one who knew about his relationship with Hermione.

"A bit maudlin even for you, don't you think?"

"What do you want me to say, Theo?" he said, temper rising. "I have nothing to offer her. My name is worthless. My fortune is gone. No one will hire me. I'm a fucking pariah. Before long, she's going to realise what being with me really means. I'll do nothing but hurt her and her career… If I were less of a selfish bastard, I'd walk away now and prevent any further damage, but I fucking can't. I know there's only one way this ends, but I'm too fucking weak to walk away. So, I think I've a right to be maudlin now and again, yeah?"

"You seem to be living quite comfortably…"

"Oh, you know what I mean, Theo. This is nothing compared to what we both had before the reparations. All of us have to earn our money now. Malfoy and Nott heirs — if we have any — will have to work for a living. No matter how much we try to preserve what we have left now, the old way of life is over. And in case you weren't aware, a stint in Azkaban doesn't look great on a resume. But that's beside the point…" Whirling around in annoyance, he headed for his room, coffee in hand, to wallow in self pity on his own.

Theo shot him an appraising look. "Don't you want to be happy, Draco?" he asked seriously. Theo was rarely serious, and it stopped Draco in his tracks.

He scoffed. "Of course, but I'm a realist. 'Happily ever after' just isn't it for me."

"And why not? Who says you don't deserve to be happy too?" Anger suffused his voice, something he rarely let out for others to see. "Why shouldn't you find happiness and enjoy your life? Just because our lives don't look the way we expected doesn't mean that we can't still find a way to be happy."

Draco was distracted from his own misery for a moment as he recognised how big of a step this was: Theo saw a future worth living for. It hadn't been very long since he'd been released from St. Mungo's... Draco wondered what had happened to cause such a drastic change in such a short time.

"You're punishing yourself," Theo continued. "I can feel you trying to build a damn wall around yourself. You're trying to keep her out. Others might not see it, but I know you."

His eyes grew flinty, but he didn't deny it.

"Don't fuck this up, Malfoy. I've barely spent any time around the two of you, but it's clear that this is something real. You know Granger never cared about money and bloodlines and all that shit, anyway." He threw his toast down on his plate.

"Merlin, it's like you think everyone deserves a second chance but yourself. Is that it? It's been eight bloody years, Drake. You said it: we can't change what happened, but we have to find a way to live and move on. Now, maybe you've managed to convince yourself that you've moved on, but hiding in this house isn't living. You're gonna need to figure that out before it's too late." Theo huffed and picked up the newspaper, erecting a wall between them before slurping his tea noisily.

"Nosy bastard," he muttered angrily, stalking away.

Draco was pissed off. Honestly, where does he get off, talking to me like that? Retreating to the library to think, the words dug into him. The truth was, Theo was right: he was trying to hold some part of himself back (trying to keep himself safe), so that when she left, it was simply the ending of a story with a foregone conclusion. He'd worked hard at his game of mental gymnastics, convincing himself that what she felt for him couldn't be real. But what Theo was pointing out (and Draco knew subconsciously) was that the tactics he was using to keep himself safe were also the thing holding them back. His unwillingness to tell others about their relationship was just another way of trying to keep himself safe, even though he knew it hurt Hermione. Ultimately, he knew that his fear would be the thing that drove them apart.

Maybe he needed to find another therapist.