Draco looked up from his breakfast as a tiny tennis-ball of an owl ricocheted into the dining hall. So – blast – did his parents, curious about this hooting disruption to their quiet routine. “Pansy’s," he lied, making a grab for the feathery Snitch-beast. It eluded him, leading him from the table, down a corridor, and halfway up the stairs before he caught it.

“You’d better have a damn good letter,� Draco hissed at the animal. He’d expected this owl a month ago at least, not a bare week before the term began. But the parchment was small, and ragged, and much-crumpled. This was not a long letter. This was not belated birthday greetings. This did not look good. He released the owl and took the note to his bedroom, the silly creature zipping and cavorting alongside him to take the reply.

Draco,

This isn’t going to work. I’m sorry.

Love always,

Ron

Draco sat heavily on his bed. What the hell was this supposed to mean? What, exactly, wouldn’t work? Hadn’t worked? How could he possibly reply to something so utterly totally uninformative?

Love always?

By the look of it, he’d been dumped. By Ron Weasley of the worthless Weasley clan of Blood traitors, no less. That wasn’t supposed to happen. If they had gotten as far as they had, it wasn’t supposed to end. If they had ignored their families and friends as completely as they had, for even the couple of months they'd had at school, they should be able to do so forever.

Two months of summer holidays wasn’t forever.

Draco shook his head, puzzled. Numb. What wasn’t going to work? Had Ron tried to tell his family and lost his nerve? That was rich. Awful as Ron’s family was, they weren’t a quarter as frightening as Draco’s could be. Would be, if he ever told them. And he’d been braced to tell them as soon as he had read this letter, if it had said anything else. Anything else at all, and he would have…

A tear blotched the parchment without his permission, and he wiped it away quickly. They’d been good together. Not just the kissing and the fooling around, but the laughter, actually having someone around who got his jokes and told better ones than Crabbe and Goyle. Now he was doomed to the entertainments of those trolls, unrelieved. Pansy’s nattering. Millicent’s gruffness. Nott’s disdain and Zabini’s arrogant smugness.

He needed some new friends. Not spineless little nobodies like Ron, but someone with a streak of brains and kindness.

Like Ron.

He set the parchment carefully aside, staring at the carpet for a long minute, then curled up around his pillow and sobbed. The ridiculous little owl perched on his forearm, peering into his face. He twitched it off, several times. Leave it to Ron to have a stupid pesky little twit of an owl that didn’t know when someone wanted to be left alone…

This time the beast perched on his shoulder instead, an almost unnoticeable weight. Had Ron told it to wait for a reply, or was it just a nuisance by nature? “Go home!� he snapped at it. “There’s no answer! There isn’t any possible answer! Go away!�

It fluttered up from him and perched on the windowsill, watching him with whatever concern or curiosity an owl felt. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a help. "Love always� wasn’t either. What good was that at the end of a letter that said they didn’t love each other enough? Draco pressed his face harder into the pillow. His half-breakfast sat in his stomach like molten lead, threatening to eat a hole through him.

There were footsteps on the stairs. He needed to hide the note, and quickly. There was no point in riding out his parents’ recriminations about his taste so completely after the fact. Having nowhere quicker, he stuffed the parchment under his pillow hastily and wiped his face. There was no hiding that he had been crying, and hard, but he might as well make some effort to look as though his world had not just ended.

“Draco?� His father had come, which was a mercy in one regard – his mother was too light-footed to be heard before she opened the door. She would have seen the note.

“Dad.� He sat up on the edge of the bed again, trying to look like a Malfoy. Straight back, head high, arrogant sneer – well, the last wasn’t coming properly, but the others were automatic.

“Girl problems?�

Draco managed the ghost of a smile at that. At least he'd been saved one long, painful explanation. “You might say that.�

His father sat on the edge of the bed. “First love?�

“I guess it was.� He emphasised the last word slightly. He hadn’t felt that way about anyone else, ever. He didn’t expect to again.

Lucius Malfoy, the man who could give Draco anything else he wanted, couldn’t grant this wish -- nor would he if he could. He patted his son’s shoulder. “Nobody ever keeps the first one. I did not. Nor did your mother. Nobody goes into the first relationship with enough practice, you see.�

Draco didn’t see. Either you had it right or you didn’t, and he’d really thought they had it right. He’d thought what they’d found in classroom 8B was forever. And apparently… “Who was yours?� he asked to distract himself.

“Someone a little older, and a little poorer, and a little too – little -- for my father to like. Nobody you have ever met. It is just as well – your mother and I have been very happy together. And we have you, of course.�

Draco wondered if he could ferret the information out of Professor Snape, who seemed to know an awful lot about the Malfoys. He wondered what his father would do on meeting that person again, now, and if the old feelings still lingered. “Did it hurt?�

His father sighed and put his arm around Draco. “Of course. I’m not sure I ever quite forgave your grandfather. But it would have meant giving up everything, and as thoroughly in love as I thought I was, it wasn’t worth that.�

Draco tried to imagine choosing between the Malfoy mansion and inheritance, the Malfoy name, the Malfoy power, and Ron. To his shock, he couldn’t, and he wasn’t sure which side shocked him more. “That wasn’t a fair choice. I hadn’t known my grandfather could be so cruel.�

“Not a fair choice?� His father rumpled Draco’s hair in a way he had not since the first Hogwarts letter had arrived. “This must have been serious. I had no idea Miss Parkinson meant so much to you.�

Who? Oh. Right. The ridiculous little owl still sat on the windowsill, and Draco went to let it out. “It wasn’t her, just her owl. Borrowed.�

His father raised his eyebrows in a question.

“You didn’t tell me yours; why should I tell you?�

Lucius Malfoy weighed this insolence, chose to ignore it just this once, and stood from the bed. “Anyone who needed to borrow a friend’s owl was also borrowing a friend’s nerve, Draco, and was not worth your time. I would have tolerated a poorer companion for you, but never a weaker one. Am I understood?�

The lesson, though misapplied, was understood. Draco considered the word choice, and what had not been said. A poorer – companion – would be tolerated, but cowardice, whether the companion’s or Draco’s, would not. 'Companion,' not 'girlfriend' or 'fiancée.' He wondered if perhaps another, unmentioned, objection to his father's first love had been the impossibility of an heir from the liason, a suspicion he'd considered before.

His father left the door open as he departed. Draco was now expected to wash his face, pull himself into a semblance of superiority, and go downstairs to finish his breakfast so his father could do the dishes. Unemployed house elves were a rarity these days. He straightened the bedcovers, so that nobody else would do so and find his damning little note, and did as he was expected.

His father must really love his mother, Draco reflected. He, Draco, would have given up a great deal for Ron, but doing housework was well beyond the limit.

Well. There was only one reasonable reaction to this much hurt – share it. Ron and his friends could expect a perfectly miserable year at Hogwarts to the greatest possible degree that Draco could arrange. The prefect's badge that had delighted his mother a few days before could only help. Prefects didn't have a lot of power, but they had more than other students. What else? Ron had been considering whether to try out for the Quidditch team; there was certainly material there if he did. Draco plotted over the remains of his breakfast, and, immersed in his plans, managed to eat it.