A/N- Hey guys (: This is just a little Harry/Hermione oneshot; I'm dumping a lot of these out right now :P Enjoy, and don't forget to review!
Disclaimer- Yeah right.
This is the way the world ends:
He never thought the Golden Trio would "break up", for lack of a better word, but the ache in his heart and the ache in his head tells him that they did, and that he's had too much to drink.
He scoffs. Too much to drink. He hasn't even touched any alcohol today.
Has he?
Discarding the question (either way, he doesn't really care) he needs some, so he goes looking for a place to drown. If he had class he'd drink wine - courage he'd drink vodka - passion he'd drink whiskey, but he doesn't have any of those qualities anymore, or any qualities at all anymore, so he wanders into a muggle bar and collapses onto a stool, scowling at the countertop and scowling at his life.
He doesn't want to look at himself. He's here and he's suffocating under life, under just life, and he killed a Basilisk and destroyed a Horcrux and defeated Voldemort and he can't win over his own damn life.
He wonders how something so pathetic could take him down. (He doesn't much care for living, these days.)
.
Somewhere, buried under thirteen glasses of beer and the sorrow of his youth, his rational mind is telling him that he should probably get the hell out of that bar before things get ugly, but another part (the stronger part) of him doesn't want to. He's made friends with the chair, you see, and she wants to buy him another round.
.
This is the way the world ends:
It's four a.m. before he wakes up in the bar, slumped over the chair he thinks he remembers making out with last night. He's got a splitting headache and when he tries to stand up his legs buckle.
I must have had one hell of a night.
He doesn't remember what sent him over the edge. Really, it's not like he enjoys waking up at random drink stands and feeling like crap. Most nights he'll take a Bud Light in his living room, sipping quitely before everything fades away. He likes those moments the most. When things leave slowly, and it doesn't create a scare when they're there one moment and gone the next.
Smart analogy, he chides himself. The only difference is when the alcohol wears off the memories come back, and Hermione and Ron never came back.
He never drank until they left.
.
He wants to apparate. But apparating makes him think of magic, because it is magic, and magic makes him think of her, because she's magic, and thinking of her makes him think of him and he's far, far from magic. Really, they both are, but while he's shit-mad at the both of them he's scared, really. He doesn't want to die alone. He doesn't know who would.
.
This is the way the world ends:
Stumbling back to his apartment, half-dead and weeping, he fumbles with the key in his hands like a football player with a broken wrist. He's taken to inserting himself into the world in a muggle way. Muggles like football, right?
He doesn't know; doesn't care.
Opening the door and doing his best to shut, lock, deadbolt after he enters and through his hung-over haze, he sighs. Then he almost falls backwards. She's sitting in the middle of his kitchen floor, barefoot, holding a glass of wine. She must have brought it, he muses. The only thing he keeps are beers.
It doesn't look like she has drank anything from the glass, but she instead moves the cup in slow circles, watching the yellowish liquid ripple and scar.
Funny. He always saw her drinking it red.
Shaking his head, he manages out a What are you doing here? and she replies by lifting her head to look at him. There's a black mark from her left eye down to her jawbone, and he gasps at the scratch marks on her right cheek.
You were always the good one, she says, and abruptly downs the liquid. I needed to see you one more time. He hurriedly goes to sit beside her, and within a few minutes she limply slumps over onto him.
Maybe a little more than limply.
.
He's not scared of dying alone anymore; now, he's bloody terrified.