Title: Missing Your Bed
Rating: PG-13 (Angst/Sexual innuendo)
Author: Lisa (Snapdragongrrl@aol.com)
DISCLAIMER: "Screaming Infidelities" is by Dashboard Confessional. I don't own it. Just borrowing it, okay? Thanks. All beings/objects/places in the Potterverse belong to a Ms. JK Rowling. I believe you may have heard of her?
PAIRING(S): Draco/Hermione; Also, Hr/? and D/?
SUMMARY: Yes, this is a songfic. If you hate that, you're in the wrong place. This is one of my favorite songs right now, and I think it suits Melancholy!Draco very nicely. Tell me if you agree or disagree, k? Oh, and just a heads up: there is NO dialogue in this at all. So don't go looking for it, because it never shows up. It's just the way it came to me, all jumbled and in a rush today.
SPOILERS: Just to be safe, the first four Harry Potter books. (But probably none.)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: My second fic! Yay! I'm just dabbling. As always, let me know how badly I suck or don't suck. Thanks! Also, I was inadvertently influenced by Melissa's *beautiful* story "We'll Always Have Paris," while writing this so she deserves mucho credit for part of the plot. (If you haven't read it, you aren't really a D/Hr shipper.) Second shout out to Sound Bytes, who also wrote a fic using this song but with a different couple. I did a search to make sure I wasn't accidentally taking an idea that's already out there. SB's was the only fic I found like this under Harry Potter.
DISTRIBUTION: As long as you let me know where it's going, it's coolio if you take it.
DEDICATION: To the D/Hr shippers of the world. And to anyone else who really digs Romeo & Juliet-type forbidden love stories.
Missing Your Bed
There is nothing a Malfoy hates more than being wrong. Not even muggles, mudbloods, or losing. Because, after all, you can always make a big fuss and say you didn't really lose; the other guy just cheated.
So when Draco decided to approach Hermione Granger in his 6th year and tell her how he really felt about her, he knew there wouldn't be anything wrong with it. Something as pure and good as his feelings for Hermione could never be wrong. And he knew they'd be mutual.
He'd never felt like this before, though, so what did he *really* know about love?
As it turns out? Not bloody much.
They had been subtly flirting for weeks, away from the prying eyes of their respective friends. It surprised both of them at first, that their casual banter had none of its usual bite with no one there to egg them on.
It was also amazing how much they had in common. Their favorite spots in the library, for example. Prior to 6th year, it had always presented a problem. They'd had to snip and snap at each other because there was only one table between them; not much of a barrier for enmity such as theirs.
But this year. This year something changed. Draco sat at the table right next to Hermione's. Without a backward glance, a rude smirk, or a snide comment.
Testing the waters, as one often does when there is a danger of shark attacks, she asked to borrow some parchment.
He obliged, and things spiraled out of control since that day. They Got Along.
They both adored potions, though Draco acknowledged that Hermione was never given the credit she deserved. They both hated Quidditch. He only played because he couldn't let Potter get the best of him, though he always did anyway. They both loved philosophical discussion, walks around the lake in the spring, and their favorite Bertie Bott's bean was red speckled with white: Peppermint.
One day, Hermione admitted to herself, and to a suitably shocked Draco, that she had always thought he was handsome-until he opened his mouth, at least.
Draco shocked her right back by laughing and confessing that the only one of the Wonder Triplets he actually hated was Ron. She and Harry were both better than him in certain things and by just being that way, they were made his enemies because of his jealousy. But Ron... Ron just begged to be hated and teased as he was generally a git.
She agreed that Ron was somewhat difficult to get along with at times; his fiery temper alone was the reason she had never dated him.
Draco wondered why he was so elated that the Weasel had never dated Hermione. He'd always thought that boys and girls could never be *just* friends. That someday one or both of them would submit to the nature of the beast and shag away. But not only had she never dated Weasley, she'd never been with Potter either.
He took a chance, put his hand on hers and said she was too pretty for either of those gits.
She blushed a fetching shade of pink, but told him not to call her best friends "gits." Hermione didn't snatch her hand away, though, so Draco saw this as an invite to do something slightly more brazen.
He pulled her hand to his mouth, kissed her knuckles lightly, and then intertwined their fingers.
Her blush was frighteningly red now, and she was afraid he could feel the heat emanating from it. He took their still-joined hands and placed them on his right knee, joking that it was a good thing he was left-handed and she right-handed, or this would never work. They continued their homework.
As hard as it is to believe, he was wrong. It would never work. Nothing could force it to.
"I'm missing your bed
I never sleep
Avoiding the spots where we'd have to speak,
And this bottled-up beast
Is taking me home"
It was a whirlwind courtship.
He approached her in the Great Hall during breakfast the day after holding her hand during their last study session.
The entire table had its guard raised; the Gryffindors' hair was on end like dogs defending their territory, but two were particularly vocal about his presence.
Her heart was fluttering, and she was afraid she was turning into the sort of brain dead girl whose only pleasure was watching guys fight over her. But it *was* entrancing.
Draco hadn't even spoken directly to Hermione yet and Potter and Weasley were threatening to pummel him.
But he didn't fight them back.
Instead, he did the worst thing he could've done, in their minds. He knelt before Hermione, who had swiveled around to see the commotion, and took her hands in his. He reached up to touch her face and told her that he had enjoyed getting to know her these past few weeks in the library. He wanted to know if they could date publicly.
Well, this was as public as it got.
Ron and Harry spluttered their indignation, practically forbidding Hermione from doing anything like consorting with the enemy. And what did he mean about her being in the library with him? She was just studying, right?
She was as blind as he was, in those first few months. She threw caution to the wind and embraced him and their fledgling relationship wholeheartedly, regardless of her closest friends' views. They would just have to get over it, she thought.
Hogwarts had never buzzed with gossip louder than it had that day.
And little more than 4 hours later, a rather foreboding eagle owl was dropping off a letter to Draco. In Care of Magical Creatures. Mail outside of breakfast time was unheard of unless there was a family emergency.
Draco's face turned a sick, pallid grey color. He clutched the letter in a nervous, sweaty grip and walked quickly back toward the castle.
Hermione made to follow him, but was berated by the Slytherins for it.
Hadn't she done enough, they yelled. Didn't she know what that letter probably said? He had more than likely just forfeited his entire inheritance for her. He would most likely never be welcome in his own home again. She was, after all, still a filthy mudblood.
Her two commandants protected and defended her, as always, but she could see that they agreed that the relationship was doomed before it began. Who knew they were so insightful? Even she couldn't or didn't want to see it. All they'd wanted was to give it a shot. Didn't they deserve to find out for themselves if it could work?
She followed him anyway and found him in "their" spot in the back of the library. He was staring off into space, and the parchment he'd received was still clutched tightly in his hand.
Hermione laid a hand on his shoulder and asked him what the letter said. He said that he had been ordered to break off their "silly little rebellion this instant or else."
He knew what the "or else" was, but he didn't bother expanding on it for her sake. Instead, he pulled her onto his lap and kissed her.
Draco kissed like the world was ending tomorrow. Always as if it could be their last kiss. It was like he wanted to absorb her into his very being.
It was a very intense way to be kissed, but she couldn't imagine a better way.
Two weeks later, after Draco had been found bloody and beaten in the halls four separate times by his father's orders to Crabbe and Goyle, Dumbledore gave him his own room.
Luckily, it was near the previously forbidden third floor corridor, an area Hermione knew exceptionally well.
As fatally flawed romances often do, theirs progressed quicker than was probably healthy. They were obsessed with being together as much as possible. Many an embarrassed professor had to pull them apart in between classes.
By their second month together, he had professed his love. She had reciprocated, and by the third month, they were sleeping together. Quite ironically in *her* bed, though he was the one with his own room.
Hermione charmed Draco and her bed with "Obfuscate" so that anyone looking curiously at either would suddenly have to be somewhere else. It worked amazingly well, and he praised her for her cleverness.
Silencio and Impervio completed the charm cocktail for her bed, and it was almost as if they were the only ones in the room. No one could hear whatever naughtiness they were up to, and if her dorm mates wanted to open her bed's curtain to check on her, they wouldn't be able to.
His room, they had decided, was too cold and empty. His bed was too hard, and the unused room smelled faintly of split pea soup for some odd reason.
They had been practically living together in her dorm for about a month when it happened.
Hermione left the tower to go and fetch him by his room at 10 p.m., as she always did, but when she got there, he was nowhere to be found.
She ran to Dumbledore's office, told him she felt like something horrible had happened, and sat in a chair, broken, when he told her that Draco's parents had taken him home. As was their right to do so, Dumbledore told her sadly.
"I'm cuddling close
To blankets and sheets
But you're not alone, and you're not discreet
Make sure I know who's taking you home."
Dumbledore left the room, sensing she needed a good cry. And she did. But she also needed a plan to get Draco back to Hogwarts, back to safety.
Hermione dragged her feet all the way back to Gryffindor tower, and found Harry, who had begun speaking to her again, unlike Ron. She borrowed Hedwig and sent one of the hardest letters she's ever had to write off to Malfoy Manor.
Then she went to make her peace with Ron. It was essential that they be on more than friendly terms for her plan to work, and it had to happen fast.
Draco never knew what hit him. A ton of bludgers? A runaway Hippogriff? No, just a terrible letter from the girl he'd loved enough to tarnish his family name. And whom he'd thought had loved him back just as fiercely.
Hermione's letter had been to Draco's father. In it, she told him that their courtship had really just been a rebellion, but that it was over now, because she'd never even liked Draco. And besides, she was with Ron now.
Lucius flaunted the news in his sons face, spouting such ancient wisdom as "see, you should never trust a mudblood."
Draco had no choice but to agree with what was written in the letter. The beating he had been receiving from his father ended abruptly, all his wounds were healed, and he was forgiven for being a teenager. We all got a little feisty at your age, Lucius had said. Though it had worried them to see it continue for all those months, almost as if it were *real,* the elder Malfoy shuddered.
The next day, Draco was sent back to school with a kiss on each cheek from his mother, and a fatherly "that's my boy" slap on his shoulder. He was no longer excommunicated, penniless, or in danger of being slaughtered in his sleep, and all was well in the world. Or so he was forced to pretend.
To say Draco was miserable would be like saying a dragon could get a little testy. He had never been "I told you so-ed" by so many people in his life. He put up his Malfoy armor, told everyone to piss off, and retreated inside himself. He rebuilt his "I'm too good for the likes of you" wall and was left alone.
He didn't see her until lunchtime. And she was indeed consorting with the youngest, most vile Weasley male. Her beautiful skin had a rosy glow, and though her smile seemed a bit off, she looked happy. She was laughing anyway. He was no longer hungry and left to go back to his room.
On his black comforter he found a piece of parchment with a hastily scribbled note.
'I hope you understand why I did what I did. I knew they would beat you to death otherwise. We knew this would never work, Draco, but you don't deserve to die. Not over our little affair. Not for anything. Just know that I love you still. Always and forever, Hermione.'
"I'm reading your note over again
There's not a word that I comprehend,
Except when you signed it 'I will love you always and forever.'"
He couldn't fathom how she could still love him and be with Weasley. It was the biggest betrayal of all. A betrayal of him and of herself. He also didn't understand what was worth fighting for if not love. She didn't even want to try. Now that he was back in his parents' good graces, he thought they should try again, in secret.
But she seemed to have moved on.
Whenever he approached, her little trio whispered and looked at him like he was a kicked house elf. With pity.
Malfoys may hate being wrong above all else, but a close second is being pitied.
"As for now I'm gonna hear the saddest songs
And sit alone and wonder
How you're making out
And as for me, I wish that I were anywhere with anyone
Making out."
So Draco went back to where everyone thought he belonged. He gave Pansy the buggering of her life, with his eyes closed of course, but he couldn't fool his hands into thinking her stringy hair was Hermione's full beautiful waves. And he couldn't fool his lips into believing Pansy's thin chicken- lipped kisses were Hermione's full-bodied slow, wet ones.
But at least he wasn't alone. She sure as hell wasn't.
The school year was coming to a close, and though he avoided her like undiluted bubotuber pus, he saw Hermione in the library every night studying for their exams.
He didn't sit near her, of course. But from the seat he had just happened to choose, he could see that she was lonely. She needed someone who was willing to study with her, someone to challenge her intellect, someone who loved her despite all labels. What she didn't need was a red-headed slobbery puppy following her around and growling at anyone within five feet of her.
But she had made her choice. And he had his pride to consider.
"I'm missing your laugh
How did it break?
And when did your eyes begin to look fake?
I hope you're as happy as you're pretending."
The year ended. Hermione got top marks, and Draco came in second. It seemed all was back to normal.
Hermione promised to come and visit with Harry and the Weasleys in late August, as always.
Draco flounced off high and mightily to his father's side, ready to apparate to their mansion. He had a smug smirk on his face as he looked toward her that didn't quite reach his sad grey eyes.
She hoped that he would be a better actor than that around his father, or she feared that to be the last time she would ever see him. If he acted as heartbroken as he was, or if she did, for that matter, anyone could put together her ruse, and he would be back in a world of trouble.
Hermione still missed his arms around her, his wood spice scent, his wry smile, and his soft supple lips on her neck. Her teddy bear that was fine to cuddle with last year just wasn't going to cut it anymore. And since she couldn't bear to let Ron in, her bed remained very cold and empty.
"I'm cuddling close to blankets and sheets.
And I am alone
In my defeat. I wish I knew you were safely at home"
Draco had never had a problem sleeping before. His parents always thought he might have died in his sleep, he slept so soundly. When he was a baby, they'd had to hold a mirror in front of his mouth and nose to see his breath fog the glass to be sure he was still alive.
He thought maybe his bed was just too hard. So he ordered another one to be delivered to the Manor, a much softer one. With bedspreads and curtains in a deep crimson hue that his parents ignored completely.
He wholeheartedly denied the fact that it was simply her presence missing that kept him from sleeping. He made himself believe he just missed a warm body. So he got a dog. An auburn golden retriever. And if he closed his eyes tight...it still wasn't good enough. Her hair was full and long and smelled like peaches. The dog smelled like a dog. But at least he was warm while he lay there, not sleeping, letting his heart harden so that he would never be wronged by it again.
"I'm missing your bed
I never sleep
Avoiding the spots where we'd have speak, and
This bottled-up beast is taking me home.
Your hair, it's everywhere.
Screaming infidelities
And taking its wear."
Rating: PG-13 (Angst/Sexual innuendo)
Author: Lisa (Snapdragongrrl@aol.com)
DISCLAIMER: "Screaming Infidelities" is by Dashboard Confessional. I don't own it. Just borrowing it, okay? Thanks. All beings/objects/places in the Potterverse belong to a Ms. JK Rowling. I believe you may have heard of her?
PAIRING(S): Draco/Hermione; Also, Hr/? and D/?
SUMMARY: Yes, this is a songfic. If you hate that, you're in the wrong place. This is one of my favorite songs right now, and I think it suits Melancholy!Draco very nicely. Tell me if you agree or disagree, k? Oh, and just a heads up: there is NO dialogue in this at all. So don't go looking for it, because it never shows up. It's just the way it came to me, all jumbled and in a rush today.
SPOILERS: Just to be safe, the first four Harry Potter books. (But probably none.)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: My second fic! Yay! I'm just dabbling. As always, let me know how badly I suck or don't suck. Thanks! Also, I was inadvertently influenced by Melissa's *beautiful* story "We'll Always Have Paris," while writing this so she deserves mucho credit for part of the plot. (If you haven't read it, you aren't really a D/Hr shipper.) Second shout out to Sound Bytes, who also wrote a fic using this song but with a different couple. I did a search to make sure I wasn't accidentally taking an idea that's already out there. SB's was the only fic I found like this under Harry Potter.
DISTRIBUTION: As long as you let me know where it's going, it's coolio if you take it.
DEDICATION: To the D/Hr shippers of the world. And to anyone else who really digs Romeo & Juliet-type forbidden love stories.
Missing Your Bed
There is nothing a Malfoy hates more than being wrong. Not even muggles, mudbloods, or losing. Because, after all, you can always make a big fuss and say you didn't really lose; the other guy just cheated.
So when Draco decided to approach Hermione Granger in his 6th year and tell her how he really felt about her, he knew there wouldn't be anything wrong with it. Something as pure and good as his feelings for Hermione could never be wrong. And he knew they'd be mutual.
He'd never felt like this before, though, so what did he *really* know about love?
As it turns out? Not bloody much.
They had been subtly flirting for weeks, away from the prying eyes of their respective friends. It surprised both of them at first, that their casual banter had none of its usual bite with no one there to egg them on.
It was also amazing how much they had in common. Their favorite spots in the library, for example. Prior to 6th year, it had always presented a problem. They'd had to snip and snap at each other because there was only one table between them; not much of a barrier for enmity such as theirs.
But this year. This year something changed. Draco sat at the table right next to Hermione's. Without a backward glance, a rude smirk, or a snide comment.
Testing the waters, as one often does when there is a danger of shark attacks, she asked to borrow some parchment.
He obliged, and things spiraled out of control since that day. They Got Along.
They both adored potions, though Draco acknowledged that Hermione was never given the credit she deserved. They both hated Quidditch. He only played because he couldn't let Potter get the best of him, though he always did anyway. They both loved philosophical discussion, walks around the lake in the spring, and their favorite Bertie Bott's bean was red speckled with white: Peppermint.
One day, Hermione admitted to herself, and to a suitably shocked Draco, that she had always thought he was handsome-until he opened his mouth, at least.
Draco shocked her right back by laughing and confessing that the only one of the Wonder Triplets he actually hated was Ron. She and Harry were both better than him in certain things and by just being that way, they were made his enemies because of his jealousy. But Ron... Ron just begged to be hated and teased as he was generally a git.
She agreed that Ron was somewhat difficult to get along with at times; his fiery temper alone was the reason she had never dated him.
Draco wondered why he was so elated that the Weasel had never dated Hermione. He'd always thought that boys and girls could never be *just* friends. That someday one or both of them would submit to the nature of the beast and shag away. But not only had she never dated Weasley, she'd never been with Potter either.
He took a chance, put his hand on hers and said she was too pretty for either of those gits.
She blushed a fetching shade of pink, but told him not to call her best friends "gits." Hermione didn't snatch her hand away, though, so Draco saw this as an invite to do something slightly more brazen.
He pulled her hand to his mouth, kissed her knuckles lightly, and then intertwined their fingers.
Her blush was frighteningly red now, and she was afraid he could feel the heat emanating from it. He took their still-joined hands and placed them on his right knee, joking that it was a good thing he was left-handed and she right-handed, or this would never work. They continued their homework.
As hard as it is to believe, he was wrong. It would never work. Nothing could force it to.
"I'm missing your bed
I never sleep
Avoiding the spots where we'd have to speak,
And this bottled-up beast
Is taking me home"
It was a whirlwind courtship.
He approached her in the Great Hall during breakfast the day after holding her hand during their last study session.
The entire table had its guard raised; the Gryffindors' hair was on end like dogs defending their territory, but two were particularly vocal about his presence.
Her heart was fluttering, and she was afraid she was turning into the sort of brain dead girl whose only pleasure was watching guys fight over her. But it *was* entrancing.
Draco hadn't even spoken directly to Hermione yet and Potter and Weasley were threatening to pummel him.
But he didn't fight them back.
Instead, he did the worst thing he could've done, in their minds. He knelt before Hermione, who had swiveled around to see the commotion, and took her hands in his. He reached up to touch her face and told her that he had enjoyed getting to know her these past few weeks in the library. He wanted to know if they could date publicly.
Well, this was as public as it got.
Ron and Harry spluttered their indignation, practically forbidding Hermione from doing anything like consorting with the enemy. And what did he mean about her being in the library with him? She was just studying, right?
She was as blind as he was, in those first few months. She threw caution to the wind and embraced him and their fledgling relationship wholeheartedly, regardless of her closest friends' views. They would just have to get over it, she thought.
Hogwarts had never buzzed with gossip louder than it had that day.
And little more than 4 hours later, a rather foreboding eagle owl was dropping off a letter to Draco. In Care of Magical Creatures. Mail outside of breakfast time was unheard of unless there was a family emergency.
Draco's face turned a sick, pallid grey color. He clutched the letter in a nervous, sweaty grip and walked quickly back toward the castle.
Hermione made to follow him, but was berated by the Slytherins for it.
Hadn't she done enough, they yelled. Didn't she know what that letter probably said? He had more than likely just forfeited his entire inheritance for her. He would most likely never be welcome in his own home again. She was, after all, still a filthy mudblood.
Her two commandants protected and defended her, as always, but she could see that they agreed that the relationship was doomed before it began. Who knew they were so insightful? Even she couldn't or didn't want to see it. All they'd wanted was to give it a shot. Didn't they deserve to find out for themselves if it could work?
She followed him anyway and found him in "their" spot in the back of the library. He was staring off into space, and the parchment he'd received was still clutched tightly in his hand.
Hermione laid a hand on his shoulder and asked him what the letter said. He said that he had been ordered to break off their "silly little rebellion this instant or else."
He knew what the "or else" was, but he didn't bother expanding on it for her sake. Instead, he pulled her onto his lap and kissed her.
Draco kissed like the world was ending tomorrow. Always as if it could be their last kiss. It was like he wanted to absorb her into his very being.
It was a very intense way to be kissed, but she couldn't imagine a better way.
Two weeks later, after Draco had been found bloody and beaten in the halls four separate times by his father's orders to Crabbe and Goyle, Dumbledore gave him his own room.
Luckily, it was near the previously forbidden third floor corridor, an area Hermione knew exceptionally well.
As fatally flawed romances often do, theirs progressed quicker than was probably healthy. They were obsessed with being together as much as possible. Many an embarrassed professor had to pull them apart in between classes.
By their second month together, he had professed his love. She had reciprocated, and by the third month, they were sleeping together. Quite ironically in *her* bed, though he was the one with his own room.
Hermione charmed Draco and her bed with "Obfuscate" so that anyone looking curiously at either would suddenly have to be somewhere else. It worked amazingly well, and he praised her for her cleverness.
Silencio and Impervio completed the charm cocktail for her bed, and it was almost as if they were the only ones in the room. No one could hear whatever naughtiness they were up to, and if her dorm mates wanted to open her bed's curtain to check on her, they wouldn't be able to.
His room, they had decided, was too cold and empty. His bed was too hard, and the unused room smelled faintly of split pea soup for some odd reason.
They had been practically living together in her dorm for about a month when it happened.
Hermione left the tower to go and fetch him by his room at 10 p.m., as she always did, but when she got there, he was nowhere to be found.
She ran to Dumbledore's office, told him she felt like something horrible had happened, and sat in a chair, broken, when he told her that Draco's parents had taken him home. As was their right to do so, Dumbledore told her sadly.
"I'm cuddling close
To blankets and sheets
But you're not alone, and you're not discreet
Make sure I know who's taking you home."
Dumbledore left the room, sensing she needed a good cry. And she did. But she also needed a plan to get Draco back to Hogwarts, back to safety.
Hermione dragged her feet all the way back to Gryffindor tower, and found Harry, who had begun speaking to her again, unlike Ron. She borrowed Hedwig and sent one of the hardest letters she's ever had to write off to Malfoy Manor.
Then she went to make her peace with Ron. It was essential that they be on more than friendly terms for her plan to work, and it had to happen fast.
Draco never knew what hit him. A ton of bludgers? A runaway Hippogriff? No, just a terrible letter from the girl he'd loved enough to tarnish his family name. And whom he'd thought had loved him back just as fiercely.
Hermione's letter had been to Draco's father. In it, she told him that their courtship had really just been a rebellion, but that it was over now, because she'd never even liked Draco. And besides, she was with Ron now.
Lucius flaunted the news in his sons face, spouting such ancient wisdom as "see, you should never trust a mudblood."
Draco had no choice but to agree with what was written in the letter. The beating he had been receiving from his father ended abruptly, all his wounds were healed, and he was forgiven for being a teenager. We all got a little feisty at your age, Lucius had said. Though it had worried them to see it continue for all those months, almost as if it were *real,* the elder Malfoy shuddered.
The next day, Draco was sent back to school with a kiss on each cheek from his mother, and a fatherly "that's my boy" slap on his shoulder. He was no longer excommunicated, penniless, or in danger of being slaughtered in his sleep, and all was well in the world. Or so he was forced to pretend.
To say Draco was miserable would be like saying a dragon could get a little testy. He had never been "I told you so-ed" by so many people in his life. He put up his Malfoy armor, told everyone to piss off, and retreated inside himself. He rebuilt his "I'm too good for the likes of you" wall and was left alone.
He didn't see her until lunchtime. And she was indeed consorting with the youngest, most vile Weasley male. Her beautiful skin had a rosy glow, and though her smile seemed a bit off, she looked happy. She was laughing anyway. He was no longer hungry and left to go back to his room.
On his black comforter he found a piece of parchment with a hastily scribbled note.
'I hope you understand why I did what I did. I knew they would beat you to death otherwise. We knew this would never work, Draco, but you don't deserve to die. Not over our little affair. Not for anything. Just know that I love you still. Always and forever, Hermione.'
"I'm reading your note over again
There's not a word that I comprehend,
Except when you signed it 'I will love you always and forever.'"
He couldn't fathom how she could still love him and be with Weasley. It was the biggest betrayal of all. A betrayal of him and of herself. He also didn't understand what was worth fighting for if not love. She didn't even want to try. Now that he was back in his parents' good graces, he thought they should try again, in secret.
But she seemed to have moved on.
Whenever he approached, her little trio whispered and looked at him like he was a kicked house elf. With pity.
Malfoys may hate being wrong above all else, but a close second is being pitied.
"As for now I'm gonna hear the saddest songs
And sit alone and wonder
How you're making out
And as for me, I wish that I were anywhere with anyone
Making out."
So Draco went back to where everyone thought he belonged. He gave Pansy the buggering of her life, with his eyes closed of course, but he couldn't fool his hands into thinking her stringy hair was Hermione's full beautiful waves. And he couldn't fool his lips into believing Pansy's thin chicken- lipped kisses were Hermione's full-bodied slow, wet ones.
But at least he wasn't alone. She sure as hell wasn't.
The school year was coming to a close, and though he avoided her like undiluted bubotuber pus, he saw Hermione in the library every night studying for their exams.
He didn't sit near her, of course. But from the seat he had just happened to choose, he could see that she was lonely. She needed someone who was willing to study with her, someone to challenge her intellect, someone who loved her despite all labels. What she didn't need was a red-headed slobbery puppy following her around and growling at anyone within five feet of her.
But she had made her choice. And he had his pride to consider.
"I'm missing your laugh
How did it break?
And when did your eyes begin to look fake?
I hope you're as happy as you're pretending."
The year ended. Hermione got top marks, and Draco came in second. It seemed all was back to normal.
Hermione promised to come and visit with Harry and the Weasleys in late August, as always.
Draco flounced off high and mightily to his father's side, ready to apparate to their mansion. He had a smug smirk on his face as he looked toward her that didn't quite reach his sad grey eyes.
She hoped that he would be a better actor than that around his father, or she feared that to be the last time she would ever see him. If he acted as heartbroken as he was, or if she did, for that matter, anyone could put together her ruse, and he would be back in a world of trouble.
Hermione still missed his arms around her, his wood spice scent, his wry smile, and his soft supple lips on her neck. Her teddy bear that was fine to cuddle with last year just wasn't going to cut it anymore. And since she couldn't bear to let Ron in, her bed remained very cold and empty.
"I'm cuddling close to blankets and sheets.
And I am alone
In my defeat. I wish I knew you were safely at home"
Draco had never had a problem sleeping before. His parents always thought he might have died in his sleep, he slept so soundly. When he was a baby, they'd had to hold a mirror in front of his mouth and nose to see his breath fog the glass to be sure he was still alive.
He thought maybe his bed was just too hard. So he ordered another one to be delivered to the Manor, a much softer one. With bedspreads and curtains in a deep crimson hue that his parents ignored completely.
He wholeheartedly denied the fact that it was simply her presence missing that kept him from sleeping. He made himself believe he just missed a warm body. So he got a dog. An auburn golden retriever. And if he closed his eyes tight...it still wasn't good enough. Her hair was full and long and smelled like peaches. The dog smelled like a dog. But at least he was warm while he lay there, not sleeping, letting his heart harden so that he would never be wronged by it again.
"I'm missing your bed
I never sleep
Avoiding the spots where we'd have speak, and
This bottled-up beast is taking me home.
Your hair, it's everywhere.
Screaming infidelities
And taking its wear."