The shadows kept everything at bay, it saved her even while robbing her of life. She stood there at the edge of the cliff, far from London…far from the ravages of the war. In the only untouched place left in the world. She breathed this air because she couldn't bear to deny herself this one comfort. This air was what kept her soul from tearing into pieces, remembering the fallen. Because nothing, no crests, no title, no 'Order of Merlin' could justify those fallen. And when they fell, one by one, inside her something fell, till she was left with naught but a fragment of Hermione Granger. Nothing made anything alright. So she came here to let her eyes wander everywhere possible. Because she could look without flinching. Because here recognition could hit her, without killing her.
And when she looked up, the sky couldn't condemn her for not dying, the stars wouldn't cry clutching her, looking for comfort. And the sea below the cliff didn't make her heart break with its abundant violence.
She felt rather than saw a dark-clothed figure, behind her. She didn't know him. She let out a relieved sigh. She knew too many people. He stood beside her. And from the corner of her eye, she saw a familiar white-blond head. There was only one white-blond head surviving, who knew her.
"Malfoy"
"Granger"
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he voice was low and soft. He was looking up at the sky.She acknowledged his presence, but she didn't question it.
She turned towards him and, for the first time in a long time, voluntarily looked at a human being. His face didn't look broken, but like everyone alive something in it looked bruised. He stood tall, but somehow drained of everything he had once been. He was someone new. He hair was still blond, his jaw was still pointed and his eyes were still grey. But he was new. And for the first time something like tears settled in the corner of Hermione's eyes, because she was, finally, seeing someone who had emerged as a new man and not just a shell. For the first time in these destroyed years she felt something akin to tears for another human being. She was, for the first time in three years seeing a whole man. She didn't know him, she didn't know this unbroken human being.
"Yes it is" her voice was a choked whisper. She was looking at him.
He heard the hoarseness of her voice and slowly lowered his gaze to turn those silver eyes at her. Her breath caught. He looked her in the eyes. This imperfect, whole man. He gave her a reason to believe that she would live. He was whole and she could be too. His eyes didn't probe. In that moment Hermione knew that, Draco Malfoy was the only man in the world who emerged as a victor. She wasn't jealous about it. But her mind numbed in wonder that someone could.
"Why are you here, Granger?'
She heard him. But she was remembering the fallen faces. She was remembering friends and lovers. She was remembering Draco Malfoy.
"RON" Hermione screamed "behind you!"
Ron was fighting two death-eaters. Behind him a third hooded figure was creeping up. Ron whirled around, his face twisted in determination to stay alive, and shouted the death curse with so much force ,that the death-eater f\slammed backwards, his hood falling back and revealing blond hair. Lucius Malfoy's body lay on the ground, sparawled , killed by a scorned Weasley.
Hermione didn't spare the body a second glance, she was covering Harry, as he dodged death-eaters and preserved his strength for the final battle with Voldemort. she ran behind Harry shooting spells left and right, Ron a little away from her, but doing the same job. from the corner of her eyes she was a body move. She turned and froze for a second. It was Draco Malfoy, his face a vengeful mask. He arm was raised, poised to curse-no-kill Ron. Hermione unfroze and pointed her wand at him. Just as her mouth opened, he dropped to the ground, on his knees. She knew Ron was seeing the same thing.
She thought he had been hit. But he hadn't.
A split second later he covered his face with both his hands. And within that split seond Hermione saw the bone-deep exhaustion on his young face. The agony of watching death. And she realized that he couldn't kill anymore, couldn't add to the sad massacre.
Ron was as stunned as she was. But he didn't have time to dwell. They didn't. He waved his wand and shouted the incantation to transport Draco to the head-quarter prison in Grimmauld place.
It was an irony that that Ron Weasley had just Draco Malfoy's life. Because just a few minutes later, the explosion from Harry and Voldemort's wand blew half of the Wizarding world away. She clung to Ron as they both made a trench in the ground and burrowed themselves along with Harry's unconscious form till the screams died down. It was the end of the Wizarding world as they knew it. And both Hermione and Ron clung to their friend's broken, unconscious body and cried for days.
Harry hadn't woken up yet, still battling with the unconsciousness. He sometimes moved his hands, but he never woke up. It had been almost a year since she'd last seen Harry, lying, mangled, on the stark, sterile bed. She couldn't see him anymore, like that. She couldn't watch Ginny sit by his bedside and waste away, knowing that they they both needed her touch. Her warmth. But she didn't have much left in her body. She couldn't give and survive. And so she preserved and existed. Ron left the country, unable to watch the struggles of the world he'd lived in. unable to watch his best friends and torn family. It had been two years since anyone had seen him. They rarely wrote to each other. Because none of them were strong enough to comfort each other. They couldn't give each other the thing that they most wanted. So they didn't try.
"Everyone's so lost in their own grief, just like me." Her voice was lilting and quiet. "I can't watch. I can't watch my own agony on other's faces, knowing that I can't do anything for them. That I can't do anything for myself. I need some strength, I look for it but I can never find it, and I keep wondering why. I keep wondering what went wrong. I can't look at anyone's face, and watch them waste away because it reminds me too much of myself. It keeps reminding me that I'm too tired, and too weak. And so, I look for strength…and I look for warmth"
Her voice was raw, hollow grief. He looked at her. He thought of the biggest favor she'd done for him. she had banished him from London. She had let him pick a new life. She and Weasley had saved him from prison, banished him and then confined themselves to this hell-hole. At least she did. Weasley had left. He owed his life to them.
And so he did the only thing he could do. He held out his arms.
"Take it from me"
She gave a choked sob and walked to his arms and buried herself in them. And for the first time in so long she gave in to the urge to hope for something. An urge to be whole and the urge to pray that Harry woke up. And urge to want to beg Ron to come back so that they could patch their friendship and be there for Harry. She gave in to the urge to feel Malfoy as a human. Because if he wasn't human, then she didn't know who was. And she was so grateful, so so grateful that there was someone strong she could find. And he wouldn't break down when she would and he didn't.
He was so whole and she needed to know how. She needed to make it seep onto her bones.
She raised her face, cupped the back of his head to lower his face. She raised her lips to his and let herself touch his lips. She let herself kiss him and let him kiss her. And he did, he kissed her, and let her suck the warmth out of his mouth. He let her steal his strength. She wanted him to touch her. It'd been so long since she felt human touch, that didn't draw from her small reserve of strength. She moved her lips, a little desperate, a little in wonder. She lowered her hands from his head and entwined both her hands with his. And raised them to her breasts and place them there. She needed him to touch her, now. She would break if he didn't. He touched, he held and he was so gentle. He gave her the time to draw, to feel.
She pushed herself, deeper into his hands. His hands traced her waist, trailed down to her hips and then up again. She craved this comfort on her skin, so she tugged the buttons of her shirt open. And begged him with her lips. His lips left her and she mourned the loss more deeply then she mourned anyone's death. He looked at her exposed torso, then trailed her finger along her belly, to the hollow of her neck. He traced old scars. Caressed and soothed old wounds. Raw, dry wounds that never let her let go. She closed her eyes, savored the human contact. He gave and she took. He gave and she still craved. She stopped his finger's path only to spread his palm over the expanse of her skin. She didn't need the words that he didn't give, she only needed that warmth.
"Malfoy, Malfoy…"
"It's okay, It's all okay…it will be"
And with that, he dropped to his knees, kissed her skin, with his tongue and his lips…and he let her savor it, he gave her. And she cried in sheer wonder. She cried because she could feel someone else's humanity again. She clutched her hands in his hair, feeling this breathing, existing, living being who was trying to restore something in her. She clutched and gasped and felt, again
He pressed his hands on her hips, and slowly lowered her to the ground. He laid her on the earth beneath them, and kissed her mouth again. She held his shoulders, her body heaving and shivering and overwhelmed.
He put his hands between her legs and through her worn jeans, he felt her quivering flesh. And he knew it wasn't what he was doing that was affecting her, he knew it was what he was giving that was affecting her.
She lay there, feeling so much. Her nerves, after so long, pulsing into life. She felt the blood rushing through her body. She wanted to feel his skin, more of it. But she couldn't raise her hands with the heavy onslaught of sensitivity her body was going through. Because it had been so long, so very, very long.
As if knowing what she wanted, he let his robes fall of his shoulders. He cast his shirt aside. And as she looked at his naked torso, she felt, not revulsion at the sight of human flesh, but a desperate need to touch the living flesh. The flesh that had a soul, no matter what kind. It had a soul, she needed his soul. He sat on his knees, looking so real that it hurt her eyes. He looked down at her lying form. And with painful tentativeness and anticipation she lifted her cold hand and touched him. And she knew, in a moment of blind clarity, when the sob wrenched out from her throat, that there was hope, there was hope for her, and Harry, and Ron and Ginny. There was hope for everyone.
He tugged the at her jeans and he pulled it down. And then he bared her completely. He gently touched her, rubbing her flesh, till she cried out. He cupped her again and this time she arched into his hand, moving and searching. Crying with gratefulness and crying in happiness. And he bent and kissed the flesh between her legs, kissed it just as he had kissed her mouth, comforted it just as he had comforted her mouth. He kissed and filled her with his tongue and she cried with feeling. Something inside her was ready to burst open, to explode with soulful thankfulness for giving her a whole man. For this moment, to her, and she clung to him, like she'd never clung to life.
He tongue left her, and then he settled himself over. With another tender kiss, he stole inside her and her breath caught in her throat at the feeling of being full again. and even if that feeling was from him, it was beautiful. So much so…it gave her, and she wanted to live…and she realized, she finally realized that she had never really died…she blinked and arched her back, while he filled her, inside out. And in that moment the blinding light filled her vision, and she saw his grey eyes, before she closed her own.
"Sometimes there's God so quickly…"
"Your name please?"
The witch at the reception asked her, politely, without looking at her.
"Hermione Granger, here to see Harry Potter"
The woman's eyes snapped to Hermione's face, wide and surprised. Hermione felt something akin to amusement.
"Room 456, 5th floor"
Hermione nodded "Thanks"
She crossed to the elevator where various patients with varying levels of illness waited. For once, the sight didn't want to make her feel like running. Instead she felt, in the corner of her healing mind, a little compulsion to help.
The elevator stopped at the 5th floor. She walked along the corridor, her heart in her throat. Good God, she'd knew Harry needed her and she hadn't been there for him. she stopped in front of door 456, and carefully, pushed the door open. The room was cold and shaded. Harry wouldn't have liked it. She tread slowly to the bed that Harry lay in. her eyes filled, as she looked down at the pale, gaunt face. And she noticed for the first time, that even broken Harry looked alive. He looked alive, he was alive. She remembered that, she wouldn't forget again. so she went to the curtains and pulled them back, letting blessed sunlight filter through. She watched it fall on her best friend's face, watched his eye-lids and flutter and close, this time in peace. He looked in peace. And she knew that, even unconsciousness, he'd been waiting for her. Her and Ron. So she sat down, and took a piece of parchment and quill from his bedside table. And sitting there beside her Harry she wrote to Ron about, how it would all be all right…
AUTHOR'S NOTE: VIRTUAL HONEYDUKE'S CHOCOLATES TO THOSE WHO RECOGNIZED THE REFERENCE TO 'A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE'