Jarred did not understand at first how profoundly his life had changed until Draco Malfoy entered it.
Draco Malfoy was forty-two, tall and composed, with pale blond hair worn neatly back and sharp grey eyes that missed very little. He had the bearing of old money — not flashy, not eager to impress, but quietly assured, as though the world had long ago agreed to make room for him. His features were aristocratic, almost sculpted, and his presence carried a calm authority that made people listen without quite realising why.
To Jarred, at least initially, Draco was simply another wealthy businessman — distant, polished, and impersonal.
That perception would not last.
Before Draco, there had been only loss, followed by a slow and relentless collapse.
For Jarred Middleton, life had never truly returned to what it once was after his father died.
Two years earlier, he had been thirteen — sheltered, cheerful, and comfortably unaware of how abruptly the world could fracture. The Middletons lived in an affluent pocket of Kensington, London, in a five-bedroom townhouse that reflected the steady ascent of William Middleton’s entrepreneurial success. Jarred attended a private school alongside his two sisters, an institution populated by children from similarly privileged backgrounds. He was reasonably popular there — partly because of his easy, sunny temperament, and partly because his father’s flourishing start-up had recently elevated the family’s social standing.
Jarred lived in a house dominated by women: his mother, Portia; Olivia, his elder sister by eighteen months; and Sophie, his twin. Many boys might have bristled at such an arrangement, but Jarred never felt unloved. Portia was affectionate, attentive, and fiercely protective. Olivia hovered somewhere between indulgent and teasing, while Sophie had always been his closest companion — a mirror, a confidante, and an anchor.
Yet the world of ballet rehearsals, shopping trips, cosmetics, and endless conversations about dresses and appearances left him quietly disengaged. It wasn’t resentment — merely distance. His real sense of belonging existed elsewhere.
With his father.
William Middleton was perpetually busy, his days consumed by meetings, flights, and late-night calls. Still, the time he carved out for Jarred carried weight. They played video games together — Fortnite, FIFA, anything competitive. They went to the park when schedules allowed. William spoke to him about discipline, confidence, and self-reliance — lessons delivered casually, but absorbed deeply. Those moments, rare as they were, became sacred.
Losing him so early carved a hollow space in Jarred that, even at fifteen, remained unfilled.
It was the early days of the COVID lockdown when Jarred last saw his father.
William had returned abruptly from a business trip to Mallorca as international travel began shutting down. A party attended with business partners had later been flagged as a potential exposure site. Acting cautiously — and decisively — William chose not to enter the family home.
Instead, he drove past it.
Jarred stood on the pavement with his mother and sisters as William slowed his car in front of the house. He didn’t step out. He didn’t wave exuberantly. He simply lifted a hand from behind the windscreen and gave them a restrained smile — one that lingered longer than usual, as though memorising them.
Then he drove away to self-quarantine at his South Bank condominium.
That night, Jarred spoke to him on the phone — his voice tight, anxious, betraying fear he did not yet know how to articulate.
William reassured him. He was fine. It was precautionary. A few weeks, that was all. When this was over, they would spend time together properly — no interruptions, no meetings.
Before ending the call, William promised to video call the next morning. They would play Fortnite together that afternoon.
Jarred clung to that promise.
The call never came.
Sometime before dawn, William began struggling to breathe. An ambulance took him to the nearest COVID treatment facility.
By morning, Jarred’s unease had grown into something heavier — a crawling dread he couldn’t shake. Calls went unanswered. Messages remained unread.
In the afternoon, the hospital finally rang.
William had been admitted. His condition was serious.
From that moment, time lost its structure.
William was moved to an isolated ward. No visitors were permitted. No contact allowed beyond brief, clinical updates delivered in impersonal voices. Each day brought a new report — oxygen levels, ventilators, procedures Jarred didn’t fully understand but feared instinctively.
The family waited.
They waited in silence, in prayer, in muted conversations that never reached conclusions. Portia stopped sleeping properly. Olivia tried to take charge, filling the house with lists and routines. Sophie barely left Jarred’s side.
Jarred himself drifted between hope and terror. Every unanswered notification felt ominous. Every phone call made his chest tighten. At night, he replayed his last conversation with his father again and again — searching for signs he might have missed, words he wished he had said.
Two weeks passed like this.
Then the call came.
William Middleton died alone.
The hospital staff were gentle when they informed Portia. They spoke of complications, of respiratory failure, of how everything possible had been done. Their words were careful, rehearsed.
Jarred barely heard them.
What he heard instead was the echo of his father’s promise — I’ll call you in the morning — and the sickening certainty that it had never been fulfilled.
In the days that followed, his grief twisted into something darker.
He began to believe — irrationally, relentlessly — that he was somehow at fault. That if he had insisted harder, called sooner, noticed something earlier, things might have turned out differently. The thought lodged itself in his mind and refused to leave.
There was no body to bury.
Because of contamination risks, the family received only an urn containing cremated ashes. No final viewing. No farewell touch. No closure.
Jarred never saw his father again.
The helplessness enraged him. The injustice burned. He was furious at the world, at the disease, at the rules that had stolen even the dignity of goodbye. At times, that rage turned inward — sharp, corrosive, and silent.
This was how childhood ended for Jarred Middleton.
William Middleton’s death did more than break the family emotionally; it exposed the fragility beneath everything they had built. Without him, the company faltered almost immediately. Investors lost confidence. Creditors grew aggressive. Loans that William had once managed with ease became suffocating liabilities in Portia’s hands.
She fought hard, but the tide was against her.
Properties were sold — first the investments, then the holiday home. Assets followed. The lifestyle shrank visibly, painfully. In the end, Portia was forced to relinquish most of the company itself, retaining only a small share that ensured survival rather than comfort.
The Kensington house was mortgaged heavily.
Jarred watched the transformation in silence. His mother grew thinner, sharper, constantly tired. Conversations stopped being about plans and became about damage control. Olivia and Sophie adapted outwardly, but the tension in the house was ever-present, coiled and brittle.
At school, the change was merciless.
The private institution that had once embraced the Middleton children now regarded them with polite distance. Friends withdrew. Invitations dried up. The unspoken truth — that their value had been tied to their wealth — became impossible to ignore.
Eventually, they left.
Public school was an unforgiving environment for Jarred. Olivia adjusted quickly, her confidence translating seamlessly. Sophie followed, socially intuitive and resilient. Jarred, however, struggled. His grief lingered unresolved, his manner set him apart, and his past clung to him like a mark he could not erase. His peers resented the boy he used to be and dismissed the boy he had become.
At home, relationships strained.
Portia was distant, preoccupied. Olivia and Sophie grew increasingly independent. Jarred felt peripheral — a problem to be managed rather than a son to be understood.
Then came the letter.
The house was at risk of auction.
They were weeks away from losing everything.
It was around that time Draco Malfoy entered their lives. Draco Malfoy has been an anathema for most people in the business community his appearance out of now where and the meteoric rise of Malfoy group of industries brought great speculation. Some say his is from an old aristocratic noble family from somewhere in Wiltshire.
It is said that if Malfoy wants something he always gets it. His competitors always yeild as if magically deciding to sell him their company or take most foolish decisions abrupty whixh will destroy their business.
People are as afraid of the Malfoy name as they are jealous.
Recently He had quietly acquired a majority stake in William Middleton’s former company. Portia met him at a board meeting she attended out of obligation, not expectation. Draco was measured, courteous, and unexpectedly empathetic. He spoke of William with respect, of loss with understanding. He did not pity her, nor did he rush her.
Draco himself was newly widowed.
Their connection deepened swiftly — too swiftly, in Jarred’s eyes. Where others had offered sympathy, Draco offered stability. Where chaos had ruled, he imposed order.
When the bank moved to seize the house, it was Draco who intervened.
He bought it outright.
He framed it as practical, even generous — allowing the Middletons to remain, sparing them the humiliation of displacement. When he later suggested moving in himself, it was presented as convenience rather than intrusion.
Portia agreed.
Jarred felt something inside him fracture.
The house was no longer theirs. It had been bought, reclaimed, reshaped by another man — a man who now occupied spaces that once belonged to his father. William’s absence felt sharper in Draco’s presence, not softened by it.
For two months, it was just Draco.
Then, at the beginning of summer, Scorpius Malfoy arrived.
He had returned from his boarding school in Scotland — an exclusive institution spoken of with quiet reverence. He would be staying only until September, before returning there.
That fact alone stung.
Scorpius was sixteen, tall and striking, with the same pale blond hair and grey eyes as his father, though worn with youthful arrogance rather than restraint. He moved through the house with effortless confidence, as though privilege were something he breathed rather than earned. Everything about him spoke of continuity — of a life uninterrupted by loss, of status preserved rather than stripped away.
To Jarred, he was a living reminder of everything that had been taken.
Scorpius did not need to stay. This was temporary. His real life — his better life — waited for him elsewhere.
The jealousy came unbidden and unwelcome.
Jarred watched as Scorpius settled in with ease, as Olivia and Sophie responded to his charm, as Draco interacted with his son in ways Jarred had once shared with his own father. The comparisons were impossible to ignore, the contrast unbearable.
Jarred’s resentment hardened into anger.
Anger at Draco, for stepping so seamlessly into William’s shadow. Anger at Scorpius, for embodying a future Jarred no longer believed he possessed. And most of all, anger at his mother.
In his mind, Portia was not merely surviving.
She was replacing William.
And that betrayal — real or imagined — burned deeper than anything else he had endured.
