A/N: A Harry/Draco post-romance fic. It's actually more about real life than fiction (a.k.a. Jessi attempting to make a fanfic out of her stupid love-life... -sweatdrop- ) but I thought that if Harry and Draco were together, and then broke up for good, there would have to be some shattered illusions, as with the ending of any relationship. Mine was actually with my best friend, not my worst enemy, so perhaps this is out of context in ways I simply cannot fathom. Tell me what you think, either way.

Also, this is dedicated to all the people who read Darkness. I love you and am eternally grateful for the comments!

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The End of Romance

We could have been perfect. We were perfect. With you I was a real person, and I was never afraid. With you I finally found something to believe in. I believed in you and I hate you for it.

I want you to cry. I need your tears to make me whole again. I can't have your love. It was never mine in the first place, but your tears I think I've earned. I want for everything you've ever done to me to haunt you, and I want everything I've ever done to you to be the worst or the best things that have ever happened to you.

I want you to remember what it was like to be held by someone who really cared, and for once I want it to tear you apart. I want your blood, mixed with salty tears pouring down your face.

I know that for us it was never a matter of gray. I never thought in shades. You were white, and everyone else was a tone of black. You were the best, you were the worst; you were mine. It was the only thing I was sure of. I thought no one could take that away from me; not even you.

I can finally cry now, because I've let go, and it hurts so bad. It hurts like poison in my blood, but I'm too angry too care.

Somehow I am relieved. I feel real again. I have learned that not all things go the way we want them to, and the simplest of plans can turn into an unnatural obsession without warning.

You were my unnatural obsession. My permanent high, my substance to abuse. A perfect drug, a perfectly fucked up relationship. I can only say that I will suffer withdrawal for years. Or maybe I won't. Maybe it will feel good to finally end it, to have my closure, and yours with it.

Tell me, one more time, how you were never trying to hurt me, how I mean everything to you. Tell yourself one more lie, and let yourself believe that you are right. I won't disenchant you. Maybe you really think you care about me. Maybe you don't understand how vulnerable it is to trust someone. That's why I won't do this any more. I'll cry, I'll bleed, but I'm not coming back this time. Not even if you really are sorry. Not if you truly never realized you were killing me.

At one point, I would have wanted nothing more than that; to be killed by you. Perfect. Endless. Empty little lies I told myself, and I told you. Those lies I told you to keep you by my side are eating me up inside, licking their tiny flames along the fabric of my mind; a slowly burning ship in the midst of a vast ocean of tears. They have become my reality, my whole existence formed into one dense pattern of grief I wrought for myself, because of you.

I will always blame you, but know that however you hurt me, I can hurt myself far worse, and I have. For every tear I've cried over you, I have bled twice as much. That is my power. I make the pain, I create it to drown out the rest of the fear and the expectant agony I feel as you rip me into pieces again. You will sit here and read this and tell me that I have given drama to something that had none, that I have cried where tears had no place, and I will agree, but my first mistake was always to glorify someone who never deserved to be glorified.

I loved you, and I always will, but it's not as much of a part of me as it was before.

Every time I meet someone and part ways with them, they take something important away from me, but I do not leave without compensation. I leave with a lesson, given to me by the brief touching of two friends. It doesn't seem fair that the thing I would leave such an important relationship with is simply a little more fear, a little more mistrust, a couple more walls to defend myself with, but then I realized that I have taken something infinitely more important with me as well. I have taken freedom, and it feels… right. Finally I feel real again. Finally the fear is mitigated by knowing what I want, and just how to go about achieving it. And I have also realized what I don't want. I'll miss it, but not too much, and it will never be worth going back again, not if you beg and plead and apologize for years. I'm not really sad, and I should be, but you never felt remorse for what I've been through, for what you put both of us through. This is how it all comes down inside. You've seen me cry, now pay the price.

I'm sorry, I love you, goodbye.