A.N. Welcome! I'll let this story speak for itself. The only thing I'll say as preface to it is that I'm planning on it being 6 chapters plus an epilogue. Usually when I write a Dramione, I make it funny because that's my favorite dynamic for them. This one is gonna be a little angsty (and by a little I mean a lot lol).

Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter.

Any Last Words

Chapter 1: Haunting the Halls

Hermione Granger died last night.

All week, Harry had been convincing her of his suspicions that something bad was going to enter the castle—Death Eaters, Hermione, I think there's going to be Death Eaters let into the castle—and despite her unwavering faith in her school and her headmaster, she also felt the darkness in the air, seeping through the cracks of her hope and trust. Hours she investigated with Harry and Ron, behind their professors' backs, around the corners from their peers, searching, despairing, waiting.

"Is she still really going to classes?"

"She sat next to me in Potions, and her hand went through mine trying to grab an ingredient. I swear to Merlin I felt a chill."

"You did not."

"Did to."

"Can she really not remember how she died?"

"She remembers. She just isn't going to grace people like us with her answers. Only her real friends know what happened."

"Harry and Ron aren't acting like they know. They seem sad and annoyed."

"And kinda confused."

"I mean, wouldn't you be? Your best friend just died, but her ghost is still here. Like she isn't gone at all. Like she didn't really die."

The students and professors were too busy trying to solve the mystery of Hermione's murder to notice Draco Malfoy. They hadn't noticed the deterioration of his physique, hadn't noticed the sallow cheeks, the lack of sociality, the dull expression in his eyes. All these changes happened before Granger died, features and behaviors that only increased in degradation after her body was discovered in the library.

They found her limp against a bookshelf, torso bowed over legs, arms beside her, resting as if she fell asleep, her wand under a pile of books. Cause of death: the killing curse. Her ghostly body would have otherwise looked just like she had in life if she hadn't hit the corner of her study table at some point in her scuffle with whoever killed her, marring the left side of her forehead. Blood poured into her eye and down her cheek.

Another late night studier, a 4th year Ravenclaw, found the body with its ghost sobbing in a nearby corner, blubbering unintelligible words and shaking its head back and forth, back and forth. The Ravenclaw ran until they found a professor, a student, Filtch, anybody. Then McGonagall, the headmaster, and Harry and Ron ran to the library, followed by various students who couldn't help but follow, but feel the death in the air, but know that something terrible happened to someone they knew. Those who didn't follow heard the shout from Ron, heard the sobs from Harry, the screams from them both.

Word spread, and when finally someone thought to seek out to tell Malfoy that one of his childhood rivals was killed, they found him in a dark and quiet corridor, floors and stories and miles away from the library, as far as he could get. He was sitting against the wall, knees to chest, face buried, and when he looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, whoever found him stumbled away, muttered a spell, and sudden light burned eyes that hadn't opened for a very long time.

"Did you hear?" the Slytherin first year gasped. He ran to find Draco Malfoy, to be the first to tell him. "The mudblood's dead." The first year caught his breath as he waited for the 6th year to answer.

Draco turned from the light and stared at the shadows on the wall opposite him, pulling his knees in tighter. He was so uncomfortable—his joints were taut, begging for movement, for blood flow. He focused on the pain, hoping, as he had all night, that he would go numb eventually.

"I said the mudblood's dead," the first year repeated as soon as he realized Draco wasn't going to say anything. "They're not sure who did it—think it's an outside job, someone who snuck in with help from the Dark Lord—but personally? I think it was another student."

Draco closed his eyes and swallowed the sound that tried to escape his throat. Maybe a shout. Maybe a sob. He lowered his head, forehead resting on knees.

After a few more coaxing attempts for a response from Malfoy—to no avail—the first year left.

A week after Hermione's death, the school settled down. Hermione tried to stick to her old schedule. Went to classes, studied, asked questions, answered questions. She asked anybody who was willing to take notes for her and put them in her bag she made Ron carry, but mostly no one agreed. When she went to the library, she would try to get people to open books for her and turn the pages, but no one wanted to do that, either. She settled for reading over people's shoulders, hoping they wouldn't feel too uncomfortable with her hovering presence, but they usually did.

Sighing, she'd prowl the shelves until she found someone so immersed in their book that they wouldn't notice a ghost unless she accidentally gasped in their ear, unless she thought she could turn the page herself and her hand would pass through theirs, and they'd both scream.

Two weeks after Hermione's death and no one was phased by her anymore. She was just another ghost to some people, and to others, she was just the same old Hermione, except even more annoying than before because she couldn't touch anything and she wouldn't stop asking people to hand her something as if she could touch it.

Harry and Ron, still pestering her for details—"I told you, I can't remember, there was just a sound and then a green flash, I'm sorry, I really am"—started to suspect, just as most students, that it was someone amongst them who killed her and not, as Harry originally thought, a Death Eater at all.

There was no way for someone outside of Hogwarts to enter the school, anyways. He was just paranoid because his scar hurt so often and Voldemort had returned. Harry thought maybe Hermione's death was the first act of war, but no other student had died, no one had found any suspicious persons on the grounds, and no war had started outside yet. Both sides seemed to be biding their time.

If only Hermione could remember something. But whenever they would ask, she'd apologize, sometimes seem as if she would cry (that might have just been the blood), but had nothing new to say.

Sometimes, Harry thought she was lying. Sometimes, he thought her eyes shifted to the Slytherin table when he asked. Sometimes, he thought that Hermione didn't care about the living world and its problems anymore, because she was already dead.

Draco didn't know how nobody noticed. None of his housemates commented on his lack swagger. Not one professor commented on his lack of participation. His rivals didn't snicker when he made a mistake.

And no student, teacher, or groundskeeper mentioned how often he and Hermione made eye contact.

At first, they were involuntary, an attraction to motion. Draco couldn't help that his eyes would follow the new ghost trailing behind her two best friends, a spectacle. But then she would look over, too, and then they'd both flinch and turn away.

After a while, Hermione wouldn't look away when they glanced at each other, and he would stare back, sometimes as a challenge to her, sometimes as a challenge to himself—sometimes because when he looked at her and remembered that she was actually dead, he would feel like he was drowning, suffocating, dying himself, and he would swear that she could tell, that her eyes would soften, that she cared.

And he hated her, he hated her so much for doing this to him, but he couldn't stop staring at her and waiting for her to look back.

The first words she said to him after she died were, "What are you doing here?" to which he replied, "What are you doing here?"

Hermione scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Come on, Malfoy. It's been a month. Don't you think I should move on?"

"You do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time here, considering this was the scene of the crime."

She sniffed and turned away. Draco sat at the table she was sitting at that night, twirling his wand on the table. No other student wanted to sit there, partly because Hermione would frequent the area, and partly because Hermione died there.

"Yes, well," Hermione said. "Sometimes I feel like I have to be here."

"That's weird." Draco started to twirl his wand again, his heart crashing in his chest. He should leave. He wanted to leave. But he couldn't. He wouldn't.

"Must be a ghost thing," Hermione mumbled, looking at the books on the shelf. "Hey, would you mind grabbing this book for me? I want to reread it."

Draco slammed his hand down atop his wand. Hermione jumped before turning to glare at him. She shushed him, and Draco tried to keep his temper under control. He felt so unstable these days.

After a few deep breaths, he replied, "No." He began spinning his wand again.

"Fine," she grumbled, crossing her arms. She grumbled a few more things Draco only understood half of. He smirked.

"Tsk, tsk, Granger."

"Oh, stuff it. You don't know how frustrating it is to not be able to touch anything. No one wants to help a ghost."

"Why don't you ask your friends for help, then?"

"They're sleeping, Malfoy." She rolled her eyes, and Draco gritted his teeth.

"It's a reasonable time to be asleep, I suppose," he mused, glaring at her before realizing something. "Hey, aren't you pretending to still be a student? Why aren't you haunting your dorms? Did they give up your bed already?"

He watched her deflate. He hadn't noticed how straight and poised her posture was until she hunched her shoulders and turned away from him.

He was going to apologize but the words caught in his throat. He didn't care enough to apologize. He shouldn't. He didn't want to. He wouldn't.

After a minute, Hermione, in a soft voice, replied. "No, they didn't give away my bed."

He stared at Hermione's back and she stared at the place her body had been when she died and woke up a ghost.

Draco wanted to walk away then, while she wasn't watching. He wanted to. But he didn't. Hermione continued, "I don't need to sleep, Malfoy. And my roommates"—a hitch, and Draco flinched—"old roommates can't sleep in a room with a dead girl in it."

He frowned. "But you're—" He was going to say a ghost, but then Hermione turned around to look at him with black eyes that used to be brown, blood forever streaming down her cheek, and he couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't breathe.

"I'm dead, Malfoy," she said in a dead tone, dead eyes staring at him, dead expression on her face.

She turned and floated away from him—he hadn't noticed that her feet had been planted on the ground until they weren't anymore—and he waited until he thought she was gone before he let out a shaky breath, closed his burning eyes and clenched his shaking fists, waited until he calmed down before standing up and grabbing the book Hermione wanted to read. He stared at the cover until the librarian told him he had to leave, and then he left the book outside the Gryffindor common room before walking back to the Slytherin common room, watching the sun rise through the windows.