Head of House, Ravenclaw, Round 9, Standard, Prompt: Fall Out Boy - My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark, WC: 826

AU. A letter to Hermione from Draco after he is forced to kill her by Voldemort.

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Dear Hermione,

Steady my hand as I write my dear, steady my heart as it breaks.

I heard it in a poem once, I can't remember exactly when, but when I tried to think how to start this, that phrase was all I came up with. You told me that I'm a hopeless romantic, and that is most certainly true. At least, when it comes to you.

My mother always used to say that one should be careful when making wishes in the dark. In the dark of night, when things are undiscovered and unknown. When we are in the deep shadows of life. Or in the literal dark, unable to see or interpret the shadows. That delightful thing called foreshadowing. Seeing the truth of the dark before it comes. Maybe we should have known, making promises in the dark, that things would go wrong. You hoped for love and hope and comfort, but I was dreaming of tearing the world apart.

Dreaming of tearing you apart.

I was in details with the devil. We all know what the devil is most prolific for; damage, destruction, war on the things we love and cherish. He wanted you, he wanted your destruction. Muggles, muggleborns, anyone that would mean you or your family would go down in flames.

I'm on fire. In flames with you, burning with you.

The Dark Lord wanted the world to be shrouded in smoke and ash, and I was halfway in the dark, the smoke, the flame with you, and halfway into his world of hate and vengeance for an unknown cause.

I wish I could say I wasn't hurt, being torn between my two selves. You knew I was allied with him, and you knew that I loved you. You didn't see how much it was hurting me that I wanted to do both, wanted to be both men. The man who could love you and be with you for eternity, and the man like my father, power and dominance over Magic itself.

I wish you could see that I was hurt.

Maybe you would forgive me then.

I already have scars from tomorrow and I wish you could see. I know I will be hurting tomorrow, the day after that, and the day following that too. I will be hurting for all eternity for what happened. Because, Merlin, I should have chosen different.

You were sunshine and wonder and magic and everything that is good in the world. You were the antidote to everything… Except my own ignorance. I couldn't see you and see past the hate that The Dark Lord had inflicted upon my soul. A constellation of tears on your lashes, reflecting back at me. The stars quite literally in your eyes. You cried, and it hurt, and it hurt so much.

He told me to burn the body. Your body.

Burn everything you love, then burn the ashes. Burn it all.

You were caught in the literal flame. My allegiance pulled me in this direction. He told me to do it. He told me to get rid of you, to burn you. The glitter on your eyelids, tears having streamed and not quite dried, even in death. He told me to light the fire, incendio, pushed me to the edge. You were already dead, what difference did it make whether I buried you or burned you.

You died. You're dead.

You loved me, and I loved you. I couldn't see past the devil. Couldn't escape him.

You were everything.

In the end, everything collides. The worlds of love and hate came together and you were in the middle of it all. My destruction. My end. It was as though the two galaxies had been spinning towards each other for millennia, coursing their paths through my skies, contrasting each other, both as ferocious and significant as the other. In the collision, there was bright, burning light, and then the absence of everything.

Did you see the monster? Did you fall in love with the man behind it, or did you fall in love with our tragic connection to each other? I would like to know, but now I can't. My childhood was the making of me, it spat me out as the cruel, devious monster that you see. You saw.

Steady my hand as I write my dear.

I wish you were here, to steady my hand as I write to you. But if you were here, there would be no need to write this, there would be no need to expose my life and my heart onto dead paper.

Steady my heart as it breaks.

Even if you were here to hold me together for just one moment, there is a guarantee that I would fall apart as soon as you leave. There is no steadying my breaking heart, as there is no steadying my aching soul.

I miss you.

All my love and worlds more,

D. M.

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Thanks for reading!