A/N: A short Dramione oneshot. I own nothing!
Life has rules. That's something that I've always inherently understood. I'm a good rule-follower. Top of my class, always polite, the classic good girl. I followed the path I knew my life was bound for after the war. I entered into Healer training at St. Mungo's, and two years later I'm starting my residency. I stayed with Ron, and when things didn't work out, I stayed friends with him. Because that was the right thing to do.
I follow the rules not because I necessarily believe in all of them – some of them just strike me as completely absurd – I follow them because I'm scared of what might happen if I don't.
I should have known that something would come along sooner or later that would warp my perfectly balanced world. I just didn't know it would be him. Because he was against every unspoken rule I'd ever known. He was inherently wrong. We never should have fit together.
But for that one night – that night that we saw each other for the first time in years, that night his perfectly built façade broke down, that night I stopped trying to be perfect – for that one night, we made perfect sense. And I broke the rules, because when I looked at him I couldn't think of a single reason to follow them.
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Life has rules. That's something that I've always inherently understood, because I was the one making them. I decided what to do and where to go. When I got to school I decided who was acceptable company and who should be shunned. I decided what people could and couldn't talk about, who would and wouldn't have power. It seems so ridiculous now, but that was my life. I made rules, I didn't follow them.
After the war, everything changed. No one wanted to be associated with me. They turned their backs faster than my father could be sentenced to Azkaban. And for the first time, the rules of life governed my existence. I was written off as 'bad', and that was that. So I turned my back on the world, and made my own way. It was not what I wanted, not how I had seen my future. But then again the only future I'd ever seen was the one my parents planned for me. And the deeper I got into that, the more I wanted out. No one would believe me if I told them that, of course. No one would believe that I wanted no part of the war. I just wanted to be left alone. Make my own rules, live my own life.
I knew that she was against the rules. She was good. She was a hero. Life doesn't work that way, and I'd spent so many years mocking her for pointless reasons that I knew I would never deserve to even know her. So that night, when I sat down next to her and said hello, I expected nothing.
Instead, for some reason, she gave me everything.