Disclaimer: Not the characters, or the plot really. Just putting them both together, I guess.
A/N: This is a one-shot song-fic based on the song 'Paint Me a Birmingham' by Tracy Lawrence.
Enjoy!
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Paint Me a Birmingham
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Draco walked down the street. He was depressed. He thought that a vacation was what he needed to make him feel better about her leaving him, but it didn't, it just made him feel worse. He thought that going on a vacation and talking to Muggles would help him, but it just made him miss her more.
Walking down the pier, he saw a man painting a beautiful picture of the ocean. Of course it reminded him of her, of her wild untamed nature, yet so beautiful to look at. Why did she leave him? He was still questioning this. What had he done? After years of being together, what had he done to make her want to leave?
Draco walked up to the man with the painting.
"May I help you?" the man asked.
"Do you only paint the ocean?" Draco asked.
"For a price, I'll paint you anything you want," the painter said as he pulled a canvas from the bag and propped it up on the easel. "What do you want me to draw?"
"Nothing. I was just wondering if that's all you painted."
"Tell me what you want and I'll draw it," the man persisted.
"Maybe some other time," Draco said slowly, walking away from the man. He made his way further down the pier, still watching the ocean; it was so much like her and her personality, he wanted her back.
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"Honey, what are you doing today?"
"I need to go down to the shop for a couple of hours today."
"I'll see you tonight then?" She asked.
"Of course," he said, giving his wonderful girlfriend a kiss and making his way out the door for the day.
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"I can't be home until later," Draco said through the floo in the fireplace of his Apothecary shop.
"Draco, I need you to come home tonight."
"I'll be home later. It will just be much later on."
"You're never home anymore."
"I will be home later, honey, I promise," Draco said.
"I'll see you later."
"Goodbye love."
"Goodbye."
He lost the floo connection and went back to work on his potions. He really wanted to be home with her, but he needed to get these potions finished before the deadline tomorrow.
She sat on the bed and cried. He didn't even realize that it was her birthday. It wasn't like she was being overly weird, she didn't expect him to remember everything, but this was an important birthday, her 21st birthday.
She hoped that it was just a fluke, that he was only blowing her off tonight because he really had something really extravagant planned. She hoped; she wanted to believe that. But he had forgotten her birthday for the last three years that they had been together, so why would he remember now? Had he forgotten that it was on her 18th birthday that they had first gotten "together?"
Draco got home late after midnight. When he walked into the bedroom, she was already asleep. He decided to let her sleep, he didn't want to wake her up and have her get mad at him.
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When he had woken up, she had been gone. He didn't see her again and he didn't know why she had left. That was three months ago.
Draco made up his mind and walked back up to the man with the painting.
"Can you paint me the perfect life; a white house with a wrap around porch with a swing?"
"Yes sir, I can. Anything else?"
"I want her in it, wearing that dress, a yellow cotton one…she loved that dress," Draco said, slowly reminiscing about his lost relationship with the one person that he the loved while the man started the picture.
"Excuse me, but what does this woman look like?" the man asked, sketching the outline of the house with a charcoal pencil.
"Long, curly brown hair, the face of an angel, the body of a goddess, the perfect woman," he rambled, but the man just looked him straight in the face, without wavering.
"You lost her." It was more of a statement than a question.
"Yes and I don't even know why."
The man continued with the picture; he sketched the house, a porch with a swing, and the starting of a woman on the swing.
"If you want to come back tomorrow morning, I'll have it finished for you,"tThe man said.
"Thank you, sir," Draco said, leaving the man to finish the painting.
He went back to his hotel. He had thought about the reason that she had left for so long and he could not remember a single thing that would make her want to leave. He could still remember when they had gotten together. They had been enemies forever, and he resolved in the end of sixth year, since his father was gone, he was going to try and be nicer. He wanted to make them see that he wasn't a bad person. He even got the Weasel and her together.
That's when he fell for her, as he watched her so happy with the Weasel, as he snogged her brains out. He couldn't help but feel a sense of jealously towards the Weasel. He finally realised the goodness behind Hermione, he saw the real her, he saw what she wouldn't show to anybody else but her close friends, and that is what they became—close friends. Hours of studying in the library together will do that to people.
When Weasley broke up with her over the summer for Loony Lovegood, Draco was there to help her get through. She wrote him letters every day and he sent her ones as well. She flooed to his house all the time, and they would spend hours together, just talking and joking and laughing, and kissing. Presently, they fell in love.
On her birthday, September 19th, he planned the best night ever; they had already said the three fateful words to each other, so this was just the next step in their relationship.
Her birthday was three months ago to the day, he thought. She was 21; they had been together for three years.
He then realized, her birthday was three months ago to this day, she had left him three months ago. She had left him the day of her 21st birthday. He had forgotten her birthday. That was why she had left, he should've woken her up, he should have told her happy birthday and told her how much she meant to him, he should have remembered, it was not only their anniversary but also her birthday, and he had disregarded the entire occasion.
How did that Muggle saying go? The past is 20-20 vision. He had no idea what it meant, but Hermione said it all the time.
He had to make forgetting her birthday up to her.
But how?
She was probably at her parent's house; he would go and apologise to her. But would she take him back? That was what he was hoping, but after three months? Why did it take him so long to realise?
In the morning, he went back down the pier. He wanted to see the painting that the man had made for him. He wanted to see how perfect his life would be had he remembered a simple thing like that. Something so simple, yet obviously complicated to Hermione. Why else would she leave?
When he arrived at the pier, the man was there, painting. The easel was towards Draco, so he couldn't see what the man was painting.
The man saw him.
"Just putting on some finishing touches," he said softly, not looking up at Draco.
"I'm not in any rush."
The man made a few more swishes with his brush, shook his head, and rubbed something out on the painting, and then he concentrated hard on a couple more small brush strokes.
"Fin," he said, throwing his hands up.
Draco walked around the easel to look at the painting. It was magnificent, the white house was not exactly white, a little yellowed on the edges, the porch was a wrap around like the one that Hermione always wanted, and the house had blue shudders. The lawn was green and there were trees everywhere—privacy was always a necessity.
He looked last at her and, to his amazement, the woman in the painting looked exactly like Hermione, down to the last detail of her face.
"You did a good job, it looks exactly like her," Draco said.
"I had someone pose for me. You talked about the hair and just as I was to start on her a woman passed with that hair, so I stopped her and asked her to pose for me. She thought it was a great scene, she said that she had always wanted a wrap around porch."
"She said that?" Draco asked.
"Yes," he smiled.
"How did this woman act?"
"She was as you said, the face of an angel and the body of a goddess."
"Do you know where she went?" Draco asked excitedly, it could have been Hermione.
"No, but…" He cut off and smiled, looking past Draco.
"But what?"
"But, I wanted to meet the man who had this painting commissioned, so he told me that the man would be here this morning to pick it up," a voice from behind him came.
Draco turned around at the voice, he knew the voice.
"Mina, you're here," he said.
"Yes, Draco, I'm here," Hermione said and smiled.
Draco walked up to her and kissed her.
"Just because I'm here doesn't mean that we can go back to being the way that we used to be."
"I know, I realised what I did wrong, I'm sorry that I forgot your birthday, Hermione. I didn't mean to, I was just so busy that day."
"It wasn't just the birthday, Draco."
"I know, it was our anniversary, I'm sorry, how can I make it up to you."
"It wasn't just the anniversary," Hermione said softly.
"Then what is it Hermione?"
"I didn't want to tell you, I figured that I would leave before you could throw me out, I'm doing fine on my own."
"Hermione, what are you talking about?"
"Draco, I'm pregnant," Hermione said gently, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
"Hermione, that's wonderful," he said, smiling broadly at the thought.
"It is?" she asked hesitantly.
"Yes," he said softly, kissing the tears from her cheeks, "it is."
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One Year Later
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"Draco, come in here, she's walking!" Hermione cried outside to her husband.
Draco got up quickly to go see what the fuss was about. He only needed to paint one more trimming to finish the porch.
When he walked inside the living room, his daughter, Emma, was taking wary steps towards her mother.
"See Draco, she's walking," Hermione cried happily, holding her arms out for her daughter. "I was just painting the wall and she started to walk over to me."
Draco smiled at his six month old daughter, her hair was as blond as his, and her eyes were the same hazelnut colour as her mothers.
He leaned in the door frame looking at the two women in his life. He smiled, looking at the half finished walls. Hermione had wanted to renovate the whole house without using magic. He had agreed at the time, but he realised now that that was a mistake.
Though as slow as it went, they were almost finished. The trimming on the porch needed to be finished, the swing hung, and the walls in the kitchen finished painting. The living room was finished. It was a great big room with only one colour—white. This was so because there was one thing in this room that they wanted everyone to see.
Above the couch hung a picture of a white house with a wrap around porch.
A/N: Hope you liked it, please review.
Love and Lemons
Brittany