These Days
(1/1)
::Insert witty-type disclaimer here:: Archival is my site (http://cherryice.topcities.com), and open to anyone who asks. Thanks and cookies are owed to Daroos, who gave this a first read through, and Andraste, who was wonderful and helpful even when this underwent major edits.
Sometimes the hardest lesson that life can teach us is that we choose what we become.
*
Corridor spanning along to infinity on either side of them. No other bodies, other cloaks, other hearts in sight. Seven years; a castle that constantly changes; and they would happen to be in the same stone hall on the same minute of the same day.
The years haven't treated her kindly, he thinks. It's the muggle-blood. It makes her weak. She raises her eyebrows at him, leans back against the arch leading out into the courtyard.
She's always been able to read his mind. Read his eyes. It's like magic, and it's a trick all her own.
He should be able to brush past her. It's been years and years, and the world has changed a thousand times. He should be able to brush past her, look down his nose, throw some casual insult at her. He's trained himself well in that, so well, and if that has failed him he has nothing left.
What *are* you doing here? Is the best he can manage.
My daughter, she says, and her voice is as cold as his.
You married the dentist? He asks.
I did.
I'd heard that women seek out father figures in their mates, but really...
Common interests. It irks you, doesn't it? She asks. That we had a witch.
If you need to ask that, then the years have been harder on you than I thought. His son is educated alongside mudbloods. Beaten by them, even, but only because the school administration shows such blatant preference to them. He needs to hurt her, because it is only in that he can prove to himself the way he has chosen is right.
Taking up with her was his own sort of rebellion. In his youth, when he was misguided, only it lasted beyond his youth. She was his control, his dominance. It was by her that he proved that the Death Eaters didn't control every facet of his life. Choosing the touch of her hand meant that the mark throbbing at the crook of his elbow didn't govern his every moment.
Maybe, for a while, she made him reconsider. Maybe she showed him that he had a choice in what he would be, but he doesn't like to think of that, because it would mean that he has chosen the mark, chosen his life. This was what he was meant to be from the moment of his birth, and he could not shake it.
She shook her head at him, and the flight of her curly hair reminded him of a time when he'd almost felt the sun on his skin.
That was something she'd once told him. He wore his darkness so thick around him that he couldn't even open it up to feel the sun on his skin. She washed the blood from his hands with her words. He'd left her a hundred, a thousand times, and she'd always taken him back, until the last time. When he'd come to her, after they'd taken down a group of muggles, with his hands shaking and regret in his eyes. She'd sat him down on her couch. Sat him down, stood in front of him with her hands on her hips, and told him to choose.
In another time,' he'd said. In another time, it may have been possible. These days... You don't understand these days.'
Bullshit. Every day is these days, and you make your decision every time you pick up your wand. Every spell you cast, every word you speak, you make it again.'
These are my people.'
Not if you hate what they do so much. Not if you can stand to touch me. We choose what we become.'
He'd left then, and she'd shut the door behind him.
Every word you speak, she says, and he thinks that she doesn't hate him.
That wounds him more than anything else. Something in him wants her to hate him. He needs her to hate him, because with desperation and sadness in her eyes, she makes every choice harder.
These days are all he has, and he can't go back.
There were points along the way, he sees now. There were roads he could have taken, and he never saw them until it was too late, until the exit had flown past him.
I have to go, she says.
You don't have to, he says, and though they both know that it's not true, he thinks that he can almost catch a hint of wistfulness in his own voice.
My daughter. I'm having tea with her in Hogsmeade in a rather short time, she says. If it wasn't her daughter, it would be something else.
He nods then, and some part of him thinks that he should shake her hand, hug her, kiss her on the cheek before they part, but it's been too ingrained into him by this time. Not of the pure, don't touch.
She steps out into the courtyard and heads across the green. She's bright against it, glowing, and he turns and walks down the empty corridor.
She'll never meet her daughter for tea. She'll never get to try this butter beer that she's always raving about, or watch her transfigure a pin cushion into a hedgehog.
*
Darkened room. The drapes are drawn. Red. Red velvet drapes. Some light filters in, coating the room in blood. That's where all of the blood is coming from, from the light and the curtains and her mind.
She asks, the sound of the door slaming closed behind her still ringing in her ears, and her voice is no more than a whisper. Muffled by the carpet and the wooden panelling and the smoke hanging heavy in the air. The smoke's dancing patterns on the ceiling, and something in her knows what they mean. Something in her has seen them before. Seen all too often these days. Not the part of her that's here now, though. She's just a scared little girl, because some part of her is refusing to accept this.
Mother was late for tea. Mother is never late. She had the tea all ordered. No sugar or honey, because Mother is a dentist.
She read her potions book. The tea got cold. Mother was staying just down the street, so she went to look for her. Knocked on the door to her room, got no response, even through the front desk had said she was up there. So she charmed the lock. Silly thing to do, really, because Mummy's just taking a nap, all nice and cozy, curled up in bed.
Wake up, she whispers. Mummy, wake up. The scones got all dried up, but I'm sure they'll get you another one. She creeps closer, and the smoke is making her head spin. Takes one more step forward, shakes Mother's shoulder. She doesn't respond. Wake *up*! She whispers fiercely. Shakes Mummy's shoulder harder.
Voices in her head block it all out, strip the world from before her eyes. Draco sneering, taunting. Can't win. You're not pure. Mudblood, Granger, Mudblood. Mudbloodmudbloodmudbloodmudblood.
Mummy's head lolls over towards her. Slowly. Curly hair falls from around Mummy's face.
Hermione starts to scream.
*
Moonlight. The night air is cold and clear, and his breath rises around his face in wisps. The stars are bright and invasive, hanging so close above him in the sky.
He doesn't know why he's here.
Graves surround him. Marble, slate, pale in the moonlight. The grass is dry and dead under his feet, crunches with each carefully measured step. It's as pale as the gravestones, white in the night, and he thinks that he can understand why some cultures see white as a colour of mourning.
His world narrows down to one. Just one. A single grave, earth fresh beneath the tombstone. The inscription upon it is simple. She will be missed.'
He wonders who will be left to miss him when he is gone. What will be written on his grave, or if perhaps he will be left in an unmarked trench, a victim of a war that has chosen him.
He thinks that maybe he came here for clarification, hoping that the words that are all that's left of her would spill some light on the tangle his world has become. She will be missed' doesn't help him much.
Come to gloat?
He spins, searching for the speaker, but all he sees is white. White, until his gaze travels upwards and he sees a single figure sitting atop a monument. Her knees are drawn up to her chest as she sits top the wings of an angel, and though her face is shrouded in shadows, he knows who it is.
No, not gloat, is all he can say. There's silence then, and the wind mocks him as it rustles the dry branches of the trees.
She slides down from her perch, moonlight catching the gold and silver glints in her hair. Maybe they're not really there, he thinks, and he's just filling in the spaces to match the new lines that he's been given.
Funny the things that come out in the midst of a murder investigation.
You're trying to figure out what I am, she says, and her voice is blank. You're trying to decide if this makes me less or more than what you've always seen. Good blood, your blood, polluted by that of muggles. Does that make me an abomination, or an object of pity? Does that make *you* something less than what you were? I've got a secret for you, Draco, she says. I'm the same as I've always been. The only things that's changed is knowledge.
He has no answer to that, because it's too close to the path that his own thoughts have been taking lately.
She hasn't changed, but laws of blood say that she's something more. What his whole lifestyle is based on suddenly seems... Inconsequential. She's the same as she always was, but she's more. They're dangerous, these thoughts. Because he has no choice in this war. He repeats them numbly, outloud, and he sees her eyes start to burn.
You may have no choice but to fight, but the side you take is all your own, she says. We choose what we become.
Not always, he want to say. Not when it's been bred into you. Not when everything you've ever been taught is for this, when it's what you've been raised for.
It's in my blood, he wants to say. Except, it's her blood, too, and that one simple thing can bring him screeching to a halt.
He chooses to remember her, he says finally, and he sits down on the dried and brittle grass, his gaze focussed on the grave. He hears her settle down beside him. He chooses to remember her in scotch, because it was her drink. It's a muggle intoxicant. Just a muggle intoxicant, but to him, it's become the essence of who she was. It's warmth against the drafts of our manor, and fortification for what he must do. And he *must*, Hermione. He must. There is no other way. These days are not the time to stray from the path.
She sighs. Rests her head on her knees and stares out into the night. she says. Maybe. Maybe he can't, but it's a prison of his own making, of the choices that he's made through the years. For him to change now, for him to break away... For him to do it today, or tomorrow, would mean that he could have done it at any time along the way. Eighteen years ago, seven, two... He could have walked away two weeks ago.
He didn't kill her, you know, Draco says, the words forced between his lips grudgingly. It shouldn't matter to him. It shouldn't affect him at all, but he needs that certainty.
No, he didn't, she says, and her voice is numb again. He didn't lift his wand, but he could have talked to her for half an hour longer than was strictly appropriate. He could have walked her back to her hotel room. Five seconds either way could have changed it all.
He has nothing to say to that.
This is what you choose, she whispers. This is the choice you make. Graves in the night, because a muggle would dare to see what she should not, speak words that should never ever have met her ears. You side with those who would do this, and you come and sit here with me. There are no absolutes to you, because you can make up for it with regret. Regret doesn't change anything, Draco. It doesn't make up for actions, and it doesn't make it okay, and it doesn't mean that you've chosen to live in both worlds. It just means that you haven't made a choice.
She scrambles to her feet then, brushing angrily and her clothes. It means that you aren't strong enough to decide, to find out if you can stand on the weight of your own convictions without your minions to back you up. So, Draco, choose a side. Decide where you stand, because in the end we all choose what we become, and after this moment, you can't say that no one ever offered you their support, showed you a road to a place where you could become who you wanted to be.
She crouches down beside him, and all he can feel is the wind plucking at his hair with chill fingers. He is numb. Everything that he's ever been taught screams at him to get up, get up and go, leave this place, but the very man who taught him that has proved false, his words empty against his actions while he slowly drowns in good scotch and regrets.
She offers him her hand, and he stares at it as if it is a snake that would lash out and strike him.
No one has ever offered him their hand before. It's a sign of weakness to take it, it's an insult to offer it, but it is a weakness to be sitting in a muggle cemetery at the grave of a woman he never even met. It is an insult to his blood that she was ever born, but he cannot bring himself to begrudge her the simple right to exist.
He looks to the stars for guidance, searching for some sign, but they remain silent.
Make your own choice, she says. For once, make your own choice. This is just you.
And for once, he thinks, it is. Just him, one lonely speck under a field of stars failing to offer up their guidance. Blood, he thinks, but it's no longer as simple as that, because blood is pulling him both ways.
The moon is bright, and the world is white, and as he takes her hand, he thinks that he can almost feel the light on his skin.