I heard your cries for mercy pierce through the gloom of desolation.

She arrived in my doorway, her face contorted with anxiety, sweat pouring over her features, her brown hair disheveled. The horror in her eyes immediately alarmed me.

"What is wrong?" I asked her.

"Pansy, he's been killed. Draco has been killed," she sobbed.

I did not know what to do. I stared at her disbelievingly, unwilling to register the words that she had just said. They belonged to a dream, to a nightmare, more appropriately, but not reality. Too much had happened. This was too much.

"He can't be," I whispered. I sensed my heart beating faster and faster. "He can't be."

Hermione peered at me sympathetically, her eyes filled with tears, as she replied, "He is."

I clutched my chest and sank to the floor. We had tried for so long to protect him, to restrain him, to prevent him from being caught, and now all of our efforts were proven to have been in vain.

The next few minutes were worthy of nothing but the deepest recesses of the most insane mind. I was forced to rise and accompany her out of the Hog's Head. We turned down the avenue, and I felt tears pouring down my face. I had loved him so dearly, adored him so – he had meant everything to me; my whole heart was entirely and irrevocably devoted to him.

We Apparated from the outskirts of the village to the front of the Malfoy Manor. A quiet fog drifted over the hedges; I could hear voices, concealed, of a distressed nature. Hermione gripped my hand and dragged me through the fog.

Whispers. Cries. Sobs. Handkerchiefs. All of them surrounded me as I navigated my way through the crowd that was beginning to gather there, of faces that once offended me but now faces that I had come to accept over time in the effort to guard my beloved.

My throat seared. My body shook. I crawled through the mass of people and somehow reached the front row. There I saw him, pale and beautiful as ever, his brilliant eyes filled with terror at the Killing Curse. I could not believe it was him.

I fell to the ground and clung to him, crying my eyes out, pouring forth a torrent of sadness into his chest. I did not know how long I stayed there, lost in the merciless torrent of destiny and pondering how I could survive.

I lifted a finger and dragged it through your blond hair, appreciating the effect. So silky. So smooth. So lovely. This was probably the last time I would ever feel you, Draco. This was probably the last time I could touch your face intimately, feel your skin, lose myself in you.

I knew I wasn't prepared for that.

I leaned forward and pressed my lips against your own.

"What hurts me most," I cried as I pressed my hands against his cheeks, "is all the time we wasted. We did not treasure, we did not appreciate, we did not regard what we had like we should have. We took it for granted. We never knew how ephemeral our affair was, how brief our love was going to be. We should have known that we should have been more thankful. We were too childish to care more."

I felt an arm wrap itself around my shoulders. I, surprised, turned around and saw Harry Potter. I was alarmed to see that his face too was covered in tears, that his eyes were red, that his chest was heaving abnormally.

It was then that I understood everything that Draco's life had been.

I couldn't bear it anymore and collapsed helplessly, sobbing into Harry's shoulder. He held me tightly in his arms, trying to comfort me, trying to conceal the fact that he was just as upset as I was by this loss, for he had developed quite a strong bond with him in the last few months.

There was a time when I would have been repulsed to be consoled by him. But I was beyond that now.

I sensed another hand press against my back and turned my head. I saw that Hermione was standing there too, looking empathetic. "I'm so sorry," she muttered.

Redemption is a funny thing. It turns your world upside down.

But it came too late for Draco Malfoy. He only achieved it in death.

I don't know when I saw the sun again.