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She was dying on the inside. He knew it, she knew it...but they were the only people who knew.

(He prided himself on being able to read people well. Too bad her friends couldn't say the same.)

Her eyes once sparkled in the glowing light of the candles in the Great Hall. Now they looked out of her face, broken, dull and lifeless.

(He couldn't believe he found himself missing her eyes before.)

He wished her eyes were back to normal, glittering, sparkling...and beautiful.

He loved her eyes before. They were so lovely.

(These thoughts came up often...he dismissed them as quickly as they had surfaced.)

When they were eating in the Great Hall, he would often find himself gazing at her, her nose buried in a book and her shoulders unconsciously hunched over in a defensive position.

(He was disgusted how her friends continued on in a wild fashion, ignorant of her suffering and pain.)

He saw the way she would caress her knife in Potions, pressing her fingers against the sharp edge.

He saw how disappointed she got when the dull blade didn't even make a mark on her soft, fair skin.

(He couldn't believe how much pain could come from one human being.)

Her smiles were fake, holding back all of her suffering, but her friends still didn't notice.

(He can't help but wonder why no one could see how broken she was.)

Sometimes when he was carefully observing her emotionless face, he could see a slight hint of a bitter smile and tears well in her eyes.

(She didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. He felt like that sometimes too.)

He found her muggle notebook once. All across the pages were notes...and drawings of knives, blood and tears, along with 'You laugh because you're happy. I laugh because I'm dying on the inside' scrawled on the inside of the cover.

(He could relate to that so much...he knew she could too.)

When he gave it back to her, he could see her flinch as if to prepare herself for the scathing remark that would come out of his mouth. It didn't.

(He just wanted to grab her by the shoulders and apologize over and over again.)

One day, he saw her running away from a group of girls in the year above them as they slung insults and library books at her.

("Nerd! Mudblood! Whore!")

He saw her friends glance at her as she ran passed them, then return their bored gazes to their parchments in front of them.

(Why didn't they go after her? Why didn't they save her in the way he never could?)

He remembered catching her gaze for a split second. She looked beautiful in that second...her hair wild around her face and her brown eyes more alive than it had been in the whole year. She also looked broken...with bruises and cuts forming on her face.

(She needed a saviour. She needed someone to envelope her in a hug and tell her everything was going to be okay.)

He remembered turning away.

(He couldn't be that saviour.)

She rushed out of his sight and he wished he stopped her and pleaded with her not to do it.

(He wasn't strong enough.)

Some part of him knew what she was going to do...but that part was silenced by the rest of his body as he ran after her. He was sorry...so sorry.

(A muffled sob, a glint of a knife and it was all over.)

That was the day Draco Malfoy witnessed the suicide of one Hermione Granger.