The first year, Draco had been almost impossible to find outside of class itself, or immediately after. It had been too strange, speaking to the students one at a time. Slowly, though, he'd begun to get to know a few of them, and whether they knew it or not, they'd drawn him out of his shell. Now in his seventh year teaching, when the first-years he'd first taught were frantic over their NEWTs, he's in his office for long hours.

"Yes, what is it?" he calls, finishing up his comment on an essay before glancing up, and immediately going tense. "May I help you?" he asks, and it's noticeably more formal and cooler than the somewhat welcoming tone he'd had when he'd assumed it was a student.