Hello! I am back! My new oneshot is here, after only... Two days? Honestly, I've had this idea for a little while, and only started writing this evening. I feel extremely pleased with it, especially as I have never written extensively in third person, or in past tense. This was a tricky one. But it's here. I wrote it to 'Work Song' by Hozier, but the Vanderbilt Melodores version, and to a piece of composed music
I hope you enjoy!
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"When my time comes around, lay me down in the cold dark earth; No grave can hold my body down; crawl home to her"
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"Be as late as you want honey, you deserve it," Hermione had told him.
And here he was, nursing a whiskey, and thinking about how long his days had been recently; thinking about how often he had been jeered at during work; thinking about he wished she hadn't sent him out of the house for evening. His work friends hadn't actually asked him out, but had left the office before he had the chance to join them. He had sort of expected it. And yet, he did deserve a night drinking and having a good time. Now he was here, he just wanted to be back home with Hermione.
It was odd how that had all happened. They'd been working together, much to each other's chagrin, on something he couldn't exactly recall. It had been painfully dull, and then there had come that time where he just couldn't do any of it anymore.
Every day was a battle after the war.
People looked at him like he was disgusting. Hermione had teased him. Then his mother had divorced his father, collapsing their family in a great internal implosion, and causing so many more difficulties in his personal life. One night, he just felt that hopelessness he had felt during the war, when Voldemort was always present and he couldn't quite keep away the bad thoughts. That one night, he had reached into the false drawer and pulled out a huge bottle of something fancy he had been saving for the day he and Granger stopped working together. To celebrate, of course. That one night, he hadn't wanted to go home to what was essentially a bomb in the process of exploding.
Instead of going home, he stayed in the office, drinking, and drinking, and drinking, and feeling worse every time he took a gulp of the burning liquid. It was nasty stuff, and he wasn't sure whether it made him feel any better. So, he kept going. Drinking, and drinking, and drinking, until he had raided other parts of the office, and anything else he could get his hands on, fully intending to end everything.
Three days.
Three days later she found him.
It had been a long weekend. Saturday, Sunday, Bank Holiday Monday. Hermione had taken the three days to travel up to Yorkshire with her parents. It had been a tough weekend for her, too.
Her father had stage two prostate cancer. This meant he found it difficult walking upstairs, and talking left him out of breath half of the time. Her father, once a prolific and excellent dental surgeon, grew up around the moors, taking his bike out across the heather. He had met her mother on the moors, in a pub one Sunday afternoon, the sun setting over the burgundy heather. They had moved south once they had been married, as she finally got the job she wanted in Sussex. Though it was beautiful, it wasn't Yorkshire.
She drove them the five hours on the Friday afternoon, taking off work early and leaving Draco to his own devices, paying attention to every strange and wonderful thoughts her parents had. They told her about everything they had been up to lately, and her father couldn't really hear properly. It was nice to get away from the office, though.
The moors were just as beautiful as they had ever been.
Hermione wasn't sure her mother remembered going to see them.
On the Tuesday morning after her long weekend, she had unlocked the door of the office, thinking that she might beat Draco there for once, and maybe earn herself some brownie points with him in that respect.
It felt like her heart stopped.
His pale blonde head was slumped over his knees, not moving.
"Draco?" she had called lightly, simultaneously scared of him waking up, and of him not waking up. He didn't move. She called again. And again. And again. She moved closer to him, brushing the hair out of his tear-stained face. No response. She checked his pupils; she called his name again; she even squeezed his hands to get a response.
Alcohol poisoning.
She took him to the hospital. He woke up there, worried and embarrassed. His mother had sent one owl. His father hadn't bothered. And yet… Hermione Granger was sat in the wooden chair by his bedside, watching him watch her. He swallowed thickly.
"I won't tell," she had said.
It had been another battle after that. She never questioned it. Granger had been by his side, and let him talk bits and pieces when he needed. Some days he wished he would disappear when the wind disappeared, and other days he wished he wouldn't be so far away from everything. Other days he liked her. It was sort of tragic, he would laugh to himself. She would never see him that way.
And now, here he was, missing her, in the middle of a bar, alone, after so long. Granger was at her home, probably watching some tat on television, and abiding by her native muggle ways.
He'd have to tell her how he felt. God, it sounded so weird when he thought about it. He couldn't be in love with the woman who had helped him through that time. It was wrong, wasn't it? It's wrong to date your therapist, so how would this be different? Granger had been that and more to him throughout that time. That time. The time when he was vulnerable, for once. And God did he love her anyway.
The beer wasn't finished when he got up to leave.
He thought no one was following him.
He might have been drunk, but he wasn't sure.
Ten paces, it must have been, before they called his name. It was his fault, probably. Shouldn't have been drinking in a wizard pub. He should have gone somewhere muggle, where no one would know him. But he didn't, and they were following him, calling his name, shouting crude accusations that weren't true. He kept walking, not stopping, thinking he could go into muggle London to confuse them. That didn't work, though. They followed him on the tube, and they followed him walking through Trafalgar Square. He wished there were witnesses, but there weren't. There weren't any witnesses when they dragged him into an alley, took his wand, and beat him to every syllable of their cusses.
Sometime after this he had to call her. She didn't pick up.
Beaten, broken, and drunk, he stumbled on through Charing Cross, and to her apartments not far after that. He buzzed himself in, tumbling through the doorways and barely able to crawl home to her up the staircases – the lift was broken too.
But he was there. He was outside her door, knocking voraciously, blood pouring from his nose, feeling light-headed now more than ever. Bleeding onto her doormat. He knocked again, and rang the doorbell for good measure, then slumped over, rummaging through his pockets for any kind of tissue, muscles aching from the tears and the bruises already forming. He wasn't sure how he had got home to her. His body was blue from the cold and the cost of being accosted.
"Draco?" she mumbled, opening the door, brushing the sleep from her tired eyes. "You're bleeding!"
"Not now," he told her, coughing through his nosebleed, and swollen eyes.
"What happened!"
"Hermione, please," he quietened her, wincing. "I'm in love with you. And I can't let that not be known for another second. I understand that you couldn't love me, and that you won't, and I don't want to ruin our friendship. It just had to be said."
"Draco, will you please come inside? You're bleeding everywhere."
He felt the resignation in her voice, and she was going inside. He had to follow her, stumbling and shuffling on his dead feel, the weight in his chest so much heavier than it had been ten minutes ago, knowing he had to go to her. Go to her. God, it sounded bad in his head.
"What happened?" she asked again when he was laying on the sofa, the television turned off now.
"Just some guys," he muttered. "I'm sorry for bothering you this late and everything." The words sounded jumbled as soon as they were out of his mouth, but it was too late. He'd already made the admission. "Maybe I'm just confused."
"Look, Malfoy…"
"Malfoy? Back to that, are we?" he laughed. "Everyone else calls me that. Calls me Malfoy Scum, and dirt-bag, and all those other horrible names that we inherited from muggles."
"Draco."
"Hermione."
"Stop it, please." She wiped at her face. He saw through the bleary eyes at the wobbling of her jaw, and of her lips, and the redness around her eyes, flooded with warmth of tears. He was quiet then. He hadn't meant to make her cry, not in the slightest. "You have to stop this. You can't focus on the people who hate you."
"These people just pounded me into the ground."
"Then I'll pound them into the ground."
"Hermione."
"Draco."
She held his hand then, and interlocked their fingers, sighing at his bruised face and at his unmistakable ability to be the shining little light for her. In all his darkness, he was something more than that to her. She pressed his fingers to her lips, kissing them more lightly than a breath of the wind. He was watching her watch him. Both of them were waiting for the moment to pass.
"I love you," she breathed into the silence. "It's not the most important thing right now, but it's important that you know it."
All Draco could do was smile back, and say that it was, absolutely, the most important thing.