Blood. Lots of blood. Everywhere... Filling his vision with red. Painting his world the colour of sorrow. Painting it with the colour of the end.

He never thought it would end this way. With her, dying on the green grass in the middle of nowhere. There was so much blood. And still, she had almost bleed out on the marble floor in the manor. In his manor. In his very home. And it was all his fault.

"Draco..." she croaked and a trickle of blood ran down the corner of her mouth. "...Draco..."

He stroked her brown hair with a shaking hand. The other hand gripped his hawthorn wand tight. He was shaking. The shock gripping its sharp claws into his flesh. It couldn't be... It was all a bad dream. She couldn't die. Not now. Not ever. It couldn't be...

"...Draco..." she croaked and coughed. "Drake... I'm... I'm dying..." She fought to get the words to leave her soft pink lips. He shook his head so violently his blond hair whipped him in his face. It was wet of rain and fresh blood. The only evidence that he had been there when his aunt had had one of her mad episodes. Again...

"Don't say that! You're not going to die! Everything is going to be fine! We are going to go home to the camp and then Potter and Weasley is going to fix you! You're going to be fine!" it came out harsher then he intended. Desperate like he was drowning. And it was true. He was drowning. Drowning in all emotions and memories. In all thoughts and wild planes.

She shook her head and for a moment she looked like the usual bossy, bushy haired girl he had gotten to know.

"Too...late..." she croaked and he felt his eyes fail as they filled with wetness. "Can't...apparate...camp...wards..." She was right. Of course she was right. The wards around the resistance camp stopped anyone from apparating or portkeying into it. Luckily the Malfoy manner hadn't any anti-portkey wards or they would never have gotten out. It felt like a cruel joke to lose her now in the summer grass instead of in the cold manor with his crazy aunt torturing them for information.

She was the only one who could sound both like a besserwiser and a sacrifices at the same time while dying. He thought and stifled a sob. And he loved her for that. He loved her so much it hurt. His feelings must have shown in his face because she tried to sit up and reach his face with her hand against his protests.

"Love...you..." she panted and stroked his chin. She looked so beautiful, so grand in the weak light of dawn. Her eyes was brown, the colour of melted chocolate. It made him all mushy inside and his insides bubbled with emotion. Her gorgeous face was full of love. He wanted to trace the strong line of her jaw with kisses and then grab her hard to attack her mouth. He didn't. She was so fragile when she was hurt, like a butterfly with broken wings.

"I love you too. I love you so much it hurts inside. Just... Please, don't leave me" he whispered against her hand like a lost child.

She smiled. A sad, broken smile, as she shook lightly when the pain took over once again. One of her hands, the one that wasn't stroking his face, wrapped around her stomach. She let out a shaky breath and her sweet face was filled with pain. He pressed his hands against the wound on her upper body. There was blood colouring his hands but he didn't care. All he knew was that the life of the girl he loved was slipping out beneath his fingers. She made a coughing sound.

"Hurts..." she whispered as he feverishly stroked her hair and face. He felt so helpless as he stifled another sob. "Kiss me..." she breathed out and blinked tiredly. He could see her lips tremble. "I want you to... kiss me..."

He couldn't deny her, he never could. Gently he dipped down to brush his lips against hers. Sparks of electricity shot out when he touch her. The burning feeling in the bottom of his stomach flamed up. She tasted like strawberries. Strawberries and blood and tears. Her hands closed around his neck and dug deep into his hair. She pressed herself against him one last time before breathing slowly out. Her body became limp against his and her hands lost their grip of his hair. Desperately he pulled away.

Her eyes were locked on a spot a million years away. They looked empty, so empty. A trace of blood was bubbling up her mouth and down her chin. She was gone...

He was screaming inside. NO NO NO NO NO! It couldn't be! She wasn't dead! She had been alive just a few moments ago, so how could she be gone now? His heart was hammering against his chest. His breathing was getting worse. She wasn't dead. She could not be dead. It wasn't possible.

Then he felt anger. Terrible rage against his aunt, that crazy bitch and her cursed daggers. Against God and the hole world. Why hadn't anyone come to search for them? Where was Potter and Weasley when you needed them? What could they possibly be doing that was so important they had to let their best friend bleed to death? He hated them. No, hated was a too weak word to use. He wanted to kill them and then revive them and then kill them again.

Why her? Why did it have to be her? Why could it be him? Couldn't whatever god that sat out there rewind and then kill him instead of her? Couldn't he bring her back? He wanted to die. He didn't want to live without her. He didn't want to live while she died. It would be wrong. It would be messed up...

He didn't for how long he sat there. Stroking her hair and crying for the first time for years. Finally he picked up the pieces of himself and stood up. He would have to leave her body. There was no place and no time for the others to see her body.

It was funny how logic everything seemed now. He would go back to camp and tell them about her death. There was a coldness inside. He couldn't feel anything. The world seemed so unimportant and gray. She had been the only living and vibrant thing in this cold world of living. Now she was gone and she took the happiness and light with her.

A stream off fire shot out his wand and set fire to the body. No animal nor human would ever touch her again. He turned around and glanced out over the world where he stood. She was gone. What did really sunlight and green grass matter for anyway?

He apparated in a swirl of colours.

-w-

"You need to eat Draco!" they said. "Talk to us!" they said. "Stop moping. Return to the land of the living!" they said. But he couldn't return. Not when his heart was resting with the dead.

He caressed the little redwood box in his lap. It had been hers. Inside the answer to his problems laid. A tiny silver watch on a bed of red satin. The only prototype she had ever made. He let a finger stroke the surface.

Her fingers had once made this. Her magic had once charmed it. It was the only peace of her he still had left. It tempted him to no end. It whispered to him at night to pick it up and use it. To go and find her.

He knew what the others thought about him. How they looked at him with pain and compassion in their eyes. He didn't want their compassion. He didn't want anything from them. The new members of the resistance looked at him with big and observing eyes. Like he was an insect under their watch. Let us see what it does if we cut it here...?

He was a dead man walking. He wasn't Draco Malfoy anymore. He wasn't one of their leaders. He was nothing. She had died and taken him with her. He would never be talked, he never answered. Not a single word left his lips. It didn't matter though. Because he was dead without her...

-w-

It hadn't been a conscious decision. He hadn't really let himself think about it. Because that would mean hope. And hope would mean pain. Any emotion that could unbalance him and let the pain inside his ice palace would have to go.

It was simple. If it worked, he would see her again. If it didn't, he would still see her again. The watch had spun as he tried to make it work. It had hypnotized him to no end. The world had began to shimmer as the others rushed inside. He had caught a glimpse of their terrified faces as they blurred out with the rest of the world.

It didn't matter though, what they thought. It had all worked. He was there again. He could see her again. It would all be fine. There was guilt of course. He had left the others behind and left them without a word. But hey, what did it matter when he could see her again?

He lurked in the shadows and watched her. He watched her eat dinner with her parents, study and sit on her window sill to watch the sunset or stars. She didn't know he was there. She didn't now how he sat in a tree sometimes as a bird and watched her.

She had taught him herself to become an animagus. It had been an useful skill in the war. He had used it to spy on Death Eaters. Now he used it to spy at her. Spy was perhaps a strong word. He watched her. And he was so tempted, so terrible tempted, to fly inside her room and turn back. To let her see him.

But he couldn't. He couldn't do such a thing.

He missed her. He missed her more then ever. And it was so hard to remember she wasn't his Hermione. She would become a fifth year soon. She wasn't his love yet. She wasn't his...

Maybe he shouldn't have gone back in time. But he can't go back now. He is stuck. Like a drug addictive is stuck with his drugs, He is stuck with the sight of her.

He loves her. And for the first time in weeks he feels alive. He can't go back. He can't show himself to her. But he can't live like this anymore. He doesn't know what to do. So he lingers in the shadows and waits, and he remembers the taste of her lips.

What do you think? Good? Huh? I'd love to continue this story XD And for you guys that didn't get it; it's a Draco/Hermione story in a dark future where Hermione dies and Draco goes back in time to see her one last time. Review now, please. XDXDXDXD