He expected the tight fist of anxiety and fear to squeeze around his chest, but it never came. Instead, something resembling a soft, resigned acceptance settled in his gut. He wouldn’t say it out loud to Draco, but this sense of giving in was significantly more comfortable than the stress of constantly swimming upstream. Now, it was a simple, single road forwards towards the inevitable, but the window of opportunity for that road would close eventually - it would close the second that Voldemort took off the ring and hid it once more. He wasn’t sure how or when, but he knew that at this point, a confrontation with Voldemort was inescapable.