Blood. It was everywhere and no where at the same time. Despite the shards of glass sunken into his flesh, he felt nothing. For the time he was numb, though there was no doubt in his mind that, eventually, he would feel the pain. He always did.
Drops of the crimson liquid flowed out of the small gashes in his right hand. Unlike what might have been thought by those who would see this abrasions, they were completely accidental. The paper had impeccable timing.
He had been enjoying a nice, cold bottle of some type of imported mead, each luscious sip savored before swallowed. The air was far too thick for his liking, the humidity doing horrid things to his usually perfectly groomed platinum blond hair. Not even the masses of gel kept it in place.
The mere air was a nauseating fume that threatened his gag reflex, like inhaling pints of syrup. It was too sunny and too warm out to be wasted inside. The bottle, when intact, had beads of moisture rolling off the sides and leaving a gentle and clear ring beneath it. When the newspaper was delivered he had, incidentally, been holding the bottle.
His grip increased at a surprising rate as his eyes widened slightly. For Draco Malfoy this slight show of emotion was more drastic and terrifying than a less controlled adult dropping to the ground and throwing a tantrum in the middle of public.
Within seconds the glass bottle shattered, the shards sinking into his pallid flesh as he bled, though he paid little attention to it, the mead long since forgotten. Sprays of his blood splattered her picture, though she was not alone. She's never alone, is she? He mused, his teeth gritted. But he knew that it was not true.
She was alone more than most people, she enjoyed her solitude and hated being cluttered. She grew irritated when people flocked around her, asking her the same incessant question. Are you alright? Those three words should be banished from the English dictionary.
A lesser being would have cried, reflected on the past, recalled his glory days, the days where she loved him and he loved her. But they were over. And living in the past would do neither of them any good.
It had to be front page, did it not? Couldn't it have been banished somewhere into the depths of the newspaper, where he would not see her smiling face waving up at him with the unworthy man beside her, grinning jovially at his luck. Luck, is it? He does not deserve her, so...but not even in his vast vocabulary could he come up with a term to describe Hermione Granger.
It was odd, increasingly odd that he loved her so deeply. He had not woken up one day and decided that the best way to ruin his life was to fall for her. It did not suddenly strike him that she was a beautiful, ravishing creature for the simple fact that she was not. Hermione was not the typical type of pretty, though she was far from ugly but she was too average to be perceived as anything more. It did not start with an attraction, though they had always had friction betwixt them.
He smiled wryly at the happiness that shimmered in her eyes as she posed comically and pushed her hand forward, showing off the spectacular diamond shimmering on her left hand. He frantically attempted to find any trace of false happiness on her face, to see if possibly, by the grace of Merlin, that perhaps her eyes would betray her true sorrow. There was none, nothing, not so much as a glint of uncertainty that he could detect.
Her stance and even her posture betrayed how comfortable she was with the man beside her. They were in love, no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise. She was not pining for him, waiting by the window for an owl. She moved on, he tossed the newspaper to the mead-stained porch, knowing that it was tainted by her engagement.
She moved on without me never knowing...his train of thought was conveniently broken as that tactless, ignorant owl that had delivered the paper pecked him impatiently for the money it was due. "Stupid, bloody owl!" He roared, overreacting to the attack, though the bird was unruffled. Mumbling about the lack of owl intelligence he reached into his pocket for some currency, paying off the bird hastily.
But he still loved her. Despite the fact that she was in love and marrying a man that was not him, he was still in love with her.
She's over me, moved on. But I'll never be over her. But I will never tell her that. Never.
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