Author's Notes: Although this story is short, it's one of the darkest and deepest I've ever written. Enjoy.
TRAGIC ENDINGS
He didn't bother to knock as he entered her bedroom quietly, opening the door slowly to make sure it didn't creak. He tried to remember the last time he had been in there, sat on the bed, and actually talked to her. It had been so long.
She was asleep, and his eyes were fixated on the rise and fall of her small chest, his heart beating in sync with the rhythm of her breathe. The moonbeams played across her face, accenting her delicate brow and flawless skin. He missed stroking her chestnut curls, kissing her brow, and reading her stories, until she nodded off to sleep. He missed her.
Once upon a time, they would spend hours talking, laughing, or just enjoying the silent presence of each other's company. But now there was nothing but an empty space, an awkward silence between them both. They both pretended that it wasn't there, that nothing had changed between either of them, but inside they both knew that the ease and friendliness of their father-daughter relationship was gone.
She often tried to talk to him, to fill in the silence with meaningless pleasantries. They were nothing like what they once had. They simply had nothing to talk about anymore. She had her friends, her school, her magic, her fiancé, her life. He had his friends, his practice, and his wife. But commenting on the weather or a program on the telly wasn't as deep or fulfilling as what he wanted from her.
She found the things of his life too trivial after the war she had lived through and he found the things of her world too amazing, too bizarre to have a true interest in them. The more she learned to love that world the more she learned to not care about his.
Every year she had spent at that school was another year they had drifted farther and farther apart. Just a week ago he had caught her crying in her room. He had tried to comfort her, to console her to ease the pain as he would have done so many years ago, but she only pushed him away, claiming that he wouldn't understand. He couldn't. He was a muggle dentist to her now, not her father.
He observed her sleeping form sadly, thinking of how life could have been for them. If only she hadn't received that letter and gone off to that school and become a different person. They could have been so happy together a family happy, together. If only he had cared more about her world, and tried to fit in with that world.
Tomorrow his baby Hermione would be getting married and leaving his house forever. If there was distance between him now, he could only imangine the distance between them after she had married and was caught up in her own world, breeding little witches and wizards and working for the wizard goverment and spending cozy evenings with that Snape man. He would not let his baby get so far away from him.
He picked up one of the throw pillows on her window seat, using it to cut off her breathing.
His eyes grew frantic as he watched her breathing slow down, the rise and fall of her chest becoming smaller and smaller the longer he held the pillow there, until it wasn't there at all.
He placed the pillow back onto the window seat and climbed into her bed, and underneath her covers, hugging her lifeless corpse to his chest as he used to do when she was small. He began to whisper bedtime stories into her ear and smooth her soft curls.
Nothing could take away his baby Hermione now.
FIN
Author's Notes: You were forewarned about how depressing and dark this is. I felt possed whilst writing this...I always do when I write dark stuff, please review.