A/N: tthis is my first dramione angst so be kind. ❤
Hermione runs straight for him, wishing that she could run a little faster to get to him, wanting and needing to pour her love into him. They'd been separated too long. She hadn't seen him since Harry come back from the dead. And now, two months later, she saw him., strolling through Diagon Alley.
"DRACO!" She screamed enthusiastically. The tall, slender blonde figure turned and his face lit up like a firework.
"HERMIONE!" He called, turning towards her fully.
She raced at him even faster. She leapt into his arms and nearly toppled him over. She kissed him fully on the mouth, pouring every ounce of love into him that she could muster.
"Finally." He whispered as they broke apart.
"I thought you were dead." She replied, breathless.
"Not dead Love, never dead. We Malfoys have quite a thick skin you see." He said, only to her. She smiled and kissed him again.
"Well, thank the gods for that. I love you Draco Malfoy." She whispered.
"And I you, Hermione." He whispered back.
"Marry me?" He asked as he placed her back on the ground. She stood gobsmacked in his arms.
"What about your parents?" She responded curiously.
"They don't even hold a candle to you." He whispered, kissing her again. She smiled against his lips.
"Well then, yes Draco I will." she replied, kissing him multiple times in quick succession.
Hermione's eyes stirred behind her closed lids and she fought the urge to open them.
No, she thought sadly, my dreams are where he lives on. My dreams are where the happy times lie.
Draco, her husband of twelve years, was dead. He had been slain by a deranged former Death Eater friend of his father's. He had been dead for three years . Three years she had been the widowed Mrs. Malfoy; single mother to ten year old Scorpius, eight year old Aurorah, five year old Abraxas, and three year old Cassiopeia. She was an overworked and underpaid Ministry malcontent. But above all, she was cloaked in a heavy depression.
Their large, opulent and ostentatious manor enveloped her, slowly suffocating her. Her parents and the Weasleys had helped her out as much as they could but she still couldn't shake it. All the empty rooms, left untouched because their children each had their own suites. Many of the rooms that had housed her husband and his parents, even Lord Voldemort, were dusted regularly but still stood empty, like rooms in a stately museum.
Finally she lost the battle with her own eyes and they fluttered open. The curtains on the windows and the panels of the four poster bed she laid on were pulled, the darkness a welcoming presence to her dark mood.
"Mumma?" came a small voice from beyond the darkness. She stirred and lifted her head off the pillow.
"Cassi?" she asked. Tiny steps echoed across the marble flooring of their master suite, her master suite, she self corrected silently.
A toddler's hand parted the black curtains on the four poster bed, and a head of thick blonde curls popped into her inner sanctum. Her plate sized grey eyes instantly reminded her of the grey eyes she loved staring into so. Her children really were beautiful, she thought to herself as she stared at her youngest daughter.
Cassiopeia climbed into bed with her mother, struggling for a moment, before crawling across the king size mattress to reach her. The little girl laid beside her mother and reached a tiny, chubby hand up to curl her mother's chocolate curls around her small digits. Hermione smiled as she stared into her youngest daughter's eyes and caressed the child's cheek with her hand.
"Mumma, why don't you get up? Gwamma Molly made pancakes. Come on Mumma, come eat." Cassi urged her mother, in her still unique toddler babble. Hermione smiled.
"Mummy was just waking up sweetheart. Are your sister and brothers awake?" she asked quietly. The three year old smiled before shaking her head enthusiastically.
"Gwamma Molly bwought Teddy wiff her! Scowpius was so excited he wan downstaiws. Awowah and Abwaxas wanted pancakes so Gwamma made them. Come and eat Mumma." Cassiopeia told her mother, dragging her hand down her mother's cheek.
"Do you miss Mummy Cassi?" Hermione asked, staring at her youngest daughter. The three year old shook her head enthusiastically to the affirmative.
"We all do Mum." came her eldest daughter's more aristocratic voice.
Hermione's head shot up from her youngest's face as three other faces that so resembled their father poked their heads through the curtain. She saw her eldest son holding her youngest son, both with their father's blonde hair but her chocolate eyes and his pointed face.
"We miss the Mum that even though she disapproved of flying so young, still bought us the sharpest racing brooms. We miss the Mum who made us pumpkin pasties every chance she got. We miss the Mum who would read us both muggle and magical fairytales. We miss the Mum that would play hide and seek across the Manor with us." Aurorah voiced, leaning against Scorpius.
She stood beside her brothers, a look of concern decorating her face sadly. Aurorah was the only Malfoy child with Hermione's brown hair, not curly but straight as a pin like Draco's, and the grey eyes so like her husband's. Hermione smiled as her children climbed into their mother's bed and curled up against her in a reassuring hug.
"Mum, we know you still miss Dad. We do too. But we hate seeing you like this. Please come have breakfast with Teddy and the lot of us. Gramma Molly wants to see you." Scorpius said, laying his cheek against his mother's shoulder as he stroked her curls, just like his father always had.
Hermione reached her hand back to stroke his cheek and smiled at her three youngest children.
"I don't know how I can miss him so much when I have four little versions of him still here with me. I'm sorry loves. Mummy will promise to work on feeling better; for the four of you. Now, go tell Gramma Molly to make a big plate of pancakes for Mum ok? Go on, I'll be right down loves, I promise." she whispered the last part, as part of a promise to not only them, but to her beloved Draco as well.
The four children kissed their mother in turn and waved before disappearing beyond the black veils of her bed she knew it, five year old Abraxas came bouncing back onto her bed happily.
"What is it Brax?" she asked, resting her head back against the pillows. Her youngest son smiled at her.
"Mumma, are you going to have syrup like Dad always did?" he asked, kissing his mother's cheek. She smiled at tousled his perfect platinum blond hair.
"Yes Brax. Gobs and gobs of it." she said,giving him a nose kiss before waving him on his way. He bounced away happily after his siblings.
Hermione rolled over and stretched. She kicked her legs over her side of the bed and made it back up. She grabbed her long, black dressing gown and wrapped it around herself as if chilled. She walked into her en suite bathroom and stared at her reflection disdainfully in the mirror.
How had she become this….this….creature? She pondered. Her curls stood up in places, mascara and eyeliner colored the tracks of tears down her face, and she looked sallow. She didn't look herself. She knew she wasn't sleeping well. She was plagued with the recurring dream of that day in Diagon Alley after the war had ended.
Two months. Two months she had gone without him and yet three long years was destroying her.
She shook her head at herself and took out her bottle of Sleakeasy's hair potion and began to brush it. Her wild, untamed curls became sleek and silky soft as Draco had always loved them. She scrubbed her face clean of the tear tracks and she decided to forgo the makeup for the day. Draco had always loved her natural look anyway. He had always said that her wearing makeup reminded him of the pureblood princesses of his status who put on gaudy amounts of it. He had always told her that it was one reason he fancied her. She was the exact opposite of everything he had been taught to find attractive.
She then dragged herself from her bathroom to her wardrobe. She picked out a pair of black capri yoga trousers and a simple green tank. As she put the hanger back, she heard a small unlocking sound. She turned towards Draco's portion of the wardrobe. A soft blue light emitted from a small door. She walked towards it.
As she reached it, she noticed glass vials, each filled with a wispy, cloudy liquid. Fresh tears sprang from her eyes. A small, luminescent bowl stood perched on sturdy, silver legs. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand as she began to cry harder.
Each vial was labeled. There was the day they met, at age eleven, the day she had slapped him at thirteen, the yule ball at fourteen, their first date at seventeen, as well as their wedding day, and the day she had given birth to their three eldest children. Sadly, he'd missed Cassi's birth by two months, but Hermione remembered it vividly.
Then she noticed other vials, of smaller more precious moments such as their first kiss, and their first time in bed together, late study sessions in the Hogwarts library, falling asleep curled up in overstuffed armchairs, and moments from all four of her pregnancies. She laughed as she saw one was labeled 'Draco's first nappy change'. Her laughs turned again to sobs as she sat down against the wall beside the Pensieve.
"Oh Draco, I love you, and I miss you oh so much. Why did they take you from me?" she cried silently, resting her head against the wall.
"Princess." she heard a whisper. She shot up to a standing position. She looked around the wardrobe before she heard it again.
"Princess." she looked towards the Pensieve.
Surely not…. She thought, slowly looking down into it.
Sure enough, Draco's face was framed by the edges of the small pensieve. She dipped her head into it and felt a falling sensation.
When her feet touched down again, she realized she was standing behind her husband as he talked into the very mirror she had been looking into moments ago.
"Princess, I love you my Princess. Do you remember why I call you princess?" memory Draco asked, his unseeing grey eyes staring right through her.
She licked her lips and thought.
"You always said because you were known as the Slytherin prince, and i was your Gryffindor princess." she whispered.
"Because, i am the Slytherin prince after all, and every prince needs a princess…. Even if she is a snooty, swotty, stubborn know-it-all lion." memory Draco chided. Hermione choked on a laugh and wiped tears from her eyes.
"Better a swotty know-it-all than an elitist pureblood prince." she whispered, recalling the conversation verbatim.
"I know my father's unhappy with me Princess. He didn't want me to pick you, or give you the Manor. I think he's to have me killed. If you're watching this, I'm probably gone and I reckon you're missing me like crazy. I wanted to gather all our happiest memories so that you'd never have to feel sad. I hate it when you're sad. If my father does have me killed, I just want you to know how much you and the kids mean to me. I love all five of you with every ounce of myself. And I know you'll be ok if I have to go. You're my strong, stubborn, brilliant, kick arse, warrior lioness. I know the days will be hard, especially at first, but stay strong. I'll always be here if you need extra strength. I'll never really leave you. I'm in every face of our four beautiful children. I'm the soft summer breeze billowing in from the balcony of our Italy summer house, I'm the soft comforting hug of our coverlet as you lay in bed at night. Even when you can't feel me, I'm never really gone from you. Every year when you take the kids to Platform nine and three quarters, I'll be there in the steam rising from the train's wheels. I love you my lady lion. I should go now, I hear you coming back from Florean's with the kids. Just know, I'll always love you. Forever….my princess." memory Draco monologued, staring into her chocolate eyes without seeing her. She was wracked by emotional sobs as she listened to his words.
"I love you...my prince." she whispered, reaching her hand out to touch his shoulder. But then she felt her feet plant in the familiar space of her wardrobe. She cried as she looked at all the vials, all their memories, alphabetized and jarred at her disposal.
She really had loved the most amazing man. He'd known he was marked for death by loving her, but still he did. And he had loved her with every bit of himself. She smiled down at the rings she still wore. She smiled fondly at the memories of their wedding, their engagement and every other miniscule memory.
She couldn't deny her husband knew her well. So well in fact he knew one day she would need to hear those words from him, to be able to go on, and he'd secured them so she would surely hear them.
"I love you Draco Malfoy." she whispered again before exiting her bedroom.
She wandered down to the dining room and smiled as all four of her children smiled up at her. She sat at the head of the table, with Abraxas to her left and Cassi to her right.
As she watched her children eat animatedly while Molly watched from the doorway to the kitchen admirably, Hermione realized that her loss of her husband was a bigger storm than she could weather alone. She had her parents, since she had thankfully been able to restore their memories, and the entire Weasley clan, and most of all she had her kids.
Her kids had always been the little lights of her life. Their radiant, beaming smiles paired with her late husband's memories were her little rays of sunlight, peeking through the clouds of this storm of a depression. The days would get easier, especially now that she knew she could revisit her fondest memories of her husband at her leisure.
That was when Hermione Malfoy realized, her depression could be and would be overcome. Armed with the vials in the pensieve and the smiles in her children's faces, she would be ok. One day at a time, she would be ok. And she would live on because her husband could not, and enjoy every day for the both of them.