emily! this is for you. happy belated. (:

. . .

Pairing: Draco/Hermione
Prompts: "I broke my heart when I broke yours, and for that I am so very sorry.", watching the milky way spin, "Sometimes it's just better to walk away.", running out of chances


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The

D i s t a n c e

Of

G l a s s D r e a m s

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( o n e h u n d r e d t h e m e s )

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w r i t t e n b y

s e l e n e s w a n


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Introduction

Draco was. Hermione was. And so they were.

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Love

She wasn't sure what she was thinking when she had decided to brew Amortentia, on her own, in her first year—much before any other witch had done it, or any witch her age had even heard of it at all. But she was Hermione and she succeeded no matter what. And so, when she inevitably succeeded, she took a sniff, she smelled something indistinguishable, something she had never before smelled.

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Light

His hair was like lightning, she thought once, comparing its pale hue to the white flashes that glittered across the sky in the dark of the night.

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Dark

She had always thought storms a terrifying sort of beautiful.

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Seeking Solace

It was when he called her that word that she ran, ran, ran, and she regretted ever meeting him in the first place.

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Break Away

It was his first full-blown argument with his father, and all he was left with was the stinging sensation of being slapped but not by a hand—a magically inflicted wound.

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Holy

Muggle Studies was her thing, she discovered, with an amused smile twitching on her lips, when ironically enough, during wintertime, Draco mispronounced holy as holly.

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Innocence

She wondered one day, in passing, what he would have looked like as a small boy- void of the weight that seemed to be bearing upon his shoulders lately.

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Chemistry

But Ron, sigh. Ron got to her. He laughed and grinned and made her angry and happy and frustrated and teary and he was so much emotional chaos…and she wasn't sure.

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Breathe Again

It was times like these, when they went home for the holidays and she went skiing with her mum and dad that she felt, up in the icy drifts, that she could finally breathe again.

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Memory

She was homesick…homesick for Hogwarts.

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Insanity

They had gotten into a row again in an empty classroom where she had returned to so as to retrieve her book bag, and accidentally, somehow, amidst the sour words and bitter glares he had pinned her against the wall. And then, it all stopped. He froze, backed up, and left.

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Misfortune

Sometimes, Draco wished he hadn't had the misfortune of being born to a pureblood family, hadn't been born to someone like his father.

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Smile

And amidst it all, even as they grew older and the world fell apart, she still took the time to stretch her lips upward, her eyes glittering with laughter of sadness and happiness.

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Silence

It was all that was between them anymore.

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Questioning

Ron was curious. And he wondered, offhandedly, why he would catch Hermione staring, with something not so discernable in her expression, at Draco Malfoy.

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Blood

He dreamt of it, again, and awoke screaming.

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Rainbow

They had taken a trip to Hogsmeade in the spring, and she had caught his attention when, with her Muggle skills, had made a rainbow out of water and the light of the sun.

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Gray

It was the color of her wooly sweater that she always seemed to wear whenever she was in the library.

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Fortitude

He had thought himself incapable of admiring someone—anyone at all, really—but her resiliency towards anything, to the way that people treated her, the way that he treated her and how she always stood up, even after she infrequently fell made something twinge within him—made him develop something small, perhaps, respect.

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Vacation

And when he went to sleep at night, under thecover of darkness, he allowed himself to think of a happier place.

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Mother Nature

He found himself finding her standing at the outskirts of the black lake, peering up at the sky as if wondering where, why, and how she got there.

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Cat

Her stupid Kneazle kept finding itself in his dirty clothes hamper, and he couldn't help but be exasperated every time he found it in there.

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Duality

She glanced back and forth between the two, at Ron who was all riled up and Draco, whose arrogant posture screamed superiority, and wondered how the two could even manage to stay in the same room together without turning everything around them into fire and ice at the same time, creating utter destruction.

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Law of Fysics

It was hard for him to understand all this Muggle nonsense—like that nonsense they called physics and friction and the space-time continuum, but there was something strangely gravitational between the two of them, almost as if he came cascading back at her at 9.8 meters per second squared.

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Tears

And when she laughed, he could see the tears fill her eyes with mirth.

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Foreign

He was practically from a different planet—she didn't think she would ever understand him, she thought idly as she fingered the letter he had written her.

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Sorrow

"I broke my heart when I broke yours, and for that, I am so very sorry," she whispered, pain lancing through her normally clear expression.

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Happiness

He couldn't bear to see her, to see him, that Weasley. To see them…happy.

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Under the Rain

She found him drenched, staring up at the dark sky as the raindrops beat down on him. And there was something so cleansing about that rain that when she walked into it, she felt as if everything bad had been washed away and she was clean.

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Moth

She always wondered why, when some moths were as beautiful as any other winged-insect, that butterflies were always considered better. That day, she discovered that although butterflies were popular and filled with life, it was the moth that she liked better, what withthe subdued sort of elegance that it had about it.

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Night

As she watched the Milky Way spin upon the nighttime ceiling of the Great Hall, she wondered what fate held for her.

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Expectations

There was an equation for happiness, she discovered. Expectations divided by reality.

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Run

He wished he could run away, sometimes, to some place far where his father could never reach him.

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Hold My Hand

She didn't know what had prompted her to do such a thing, but her fingers slid through the spaces between his and squeezed his hand ever so softly.

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Precious Treasure

Ron and Harry…they meant a lot to her. But it scared her to realize that Draco…he was everything.

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Eyes

His were grey, she discovered. She wondered perhaps if they should have been green, with how jaded he seemed.

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Found Ya!

It was when she jumped out of nowhere, laughing hysterically before slapping his arm, screaming "Tag, you're it!" did he realize that Muggle Studies, although the class was essentially pointless, may be worth something after all.

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Dreams

She had her first nightmare in seven years the night, and it was about him, about a tattoo on his arm, and about a dark power that gripped her in fear.

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Rated

"On a scale of one to ten, one being horrendously ugly and ten being absolutely gorgeous, how would you rate Draco Malfoy's looks?" Rita Skeeter quizzed. Hermione twitched, and walked away.

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Teamwork

They worked together in complete harmony, as if they were never meant to be apart.

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Standing Still

It was when she used the Time Turner and there was that split second that time froze did she take into account that reliving parts of her life, seeing that expression on his face one more time…it made her happy.

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Dying

He wished he could escape.

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Two Roads

And so he decided he would take the one less traveled by, and it would make all the difference, even if he had to fight to the ends of the earth to make that difference happen.

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Illusion

His laugh couldn't possibly be that beautiful.

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Family

His mother was all that he had left—he might as well have been dead to his father.

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Creation

"Life is like a flower. As a bud, it's beautiful, and when the petals finally emerge, it's beautiful, and even as it's withering away, it still has a certain beauty to it," she spoke to him. "No matter what happens in life, there's always some beauty."

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Childhood

She wished things were simple again, like when she was a child.

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Destruction

There was nothing left between them after their fight but the shards of what once was laying between them, waiting to be picked up.

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Breaking the Rules

She knew she shouldn't see him, especially after all that happened. It wasn't even like there was anything there in the first place between them, but it was somehow so forbidden. But she had to, and so she did.

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Greed

He wanted her, desperately.

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Deep in Thought

She wondered what people would think…if they were to ever be.

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Mask

He hid from everyone, even her, behind his carefully crafted mask of lies and deceit so that he may save everyone else but himself.

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Tower

The astronomy tower was theirs, too.

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Waiting

He would spend his life like this, for her.

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Danger Ahead

He was too risky, she thought, rationally. He was too much impulsiveness and he was too much impracticality. And somehow, she wanted to risk it all, to jump off the cliff and ignore all the danger signs because being with him was somehow worth it. But it wasn't realistic and she knew that she never could.

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Sacrifice

"Sometimes, it's just better to walk away," she whispered softly, her fingers trailing down the side of his face. "Sometimes, it's better to let go."

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Kick in the Head

How Ron ended up with a concussion was hard to remember, but he knew, instinctively, that it had something to do with Draco Malfoy.

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No Way Out

She was trapped, she had to make this decision, she was between a rock and a hard place, and she just wished that she could take the rock and dig a hole with it in the ground and burrow away.

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Rejection

But her decision wasn't necessary, because, the next day, she discovered that he was with someone else. Someone named Astoria.

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Tiny

It was small, the crack in her heart, and it was something that not even the healers and St. Mungo's could fix.

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Magic

But even being the brightest witch of her age couldn't possibly make her the strongest.

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Do Not Disturb

He was so closed off to the world, then, when he discovered, finally, his engagement. Astoria. She wasn't a bad person by any means, but he had it so driven into his mind that he had freedom and it got taken away and—oh, how he hated his father.

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Multitasking

Perhaps she could be a balancing act, a tight-rope walker at the circus. Perhaps she could.

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Horror

And somehow, Ron developed insight. And he confronted her, and she was astounded and speechless and left frozen. And he cast her a dejected look, a hurt look, a pained look. And he walked away.

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Traps

In her dream, she was running, running, running. But she was never fast enough.

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Playing the Melody

He once heard her humming to herself, a certain rhythm in her walk, a flourish to her movements, and rather unconsciously, started humming himself that same tune the next day.

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Hero

He would always be the villain, wouldn't he.

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Annoyance

He needed to stop acting like he was doomed, like his existence was all torture, she thought to herself with a grimace, because really, there were always bright spots in life. And then, rather self-centeredly, she thought of herself.

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67%

Math and numbers and logic never seemed to work with them. There was a 100% chance that they could never be together, and somehow, when they were alone, the number seemed to descend to nothing. There was a 100% chance that Ron would come back for her, but when she found herself tangled in sheets with him for the first time, she couldn't help but think that was impossible.

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Obsession

He needed her like he needed water, like he needed air, like he needed life.

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Soft

And in the crowded hallway, his pinky found hers.

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Dance

She twirled and twirled and twirled and all she could see was him.

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Are You Challenging Me?

They were competitive, and they argued, and they fought, and they spat bitter words at each other (words that sometimes spoke of truth, sometimes spoke of reality), but they were so cohesive and when he, in a fit of frustration, would press his lips to hers, hard and dominating, they would both melt and soften and challenges seemed to dissolve to nothing.

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Mirror

When Ron looked at her like she was trash, she wondered how horrible of a person she was. And as she stared in the mirror, all she could see was her wrongs.

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Blinded

They ran from reality.

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Test

There were a select few times in her life that she felt as though she were really, truly being challenged, and as Ron demanded from her answers, explanations, she couldn't help but think that this was perhaps the hardest test of them all.

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Drink

She was water, she was life, and he wanted to drink her dry.

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Starvation

He hungered for her.

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Words

And when she told him she needed space, he felt as if his words had been taken away from him.

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Pen and Paper

He owled her from across the building, and she never replied.

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Can You Hear Me?

He felt as though he were communicating to a wall.

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Heal

She came back in a flurry, throwing herself into his arms, and he wondered what had happened that time in the first place. But it didn't matter, because he was whole.

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Frozen

He wished he could have stopped time.

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Spiral

And then, out of nowhere, as fragile as glass as they were, they shattered, and were spiraling downward, doomed for destruction.

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Anger

He slammed a fist into the wall, frustrated, furious, but helpless. She was impossible.

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Guardian

She needed to feel safe. And he was a rush, he was thrilling, he made her want to take risks and never look back, but she took one too many risks, and now…now she needed something soft and warm and safe.

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Pain

She left.

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Through the Fire

His father was furious with him. But he couldn't even bring himself to care.

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Trinity

Not even religion could save her now.

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Drowning

She was slipping, slipping, slipping…

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All That I Have

"You're all that I have left," he told her desperately. And with tears welling up in her eyes, with hurt flashing on her face, he spoke again, bitterly. "But we're running out of chances."

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Give Up

He resigned himself. There could be no more.

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Last Hope

But there was always a silver lining on a cloud.

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Advertisement

He was a walking ad for a funeral parlor.

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In the Storm

It was strange how they kept meeting under cover of the rain. And as the lightning tore through the sky, her lips met his once again.

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Safety First

She wouldn't break her own heart again.

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Puzzle

They fit together perfectly.

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Solitude

She would never be alone again.

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Relaxation

His lips pressed to hers, and it was slow and easy and she felt like she could breathe and then he walked away, and somehow, she knew, even though he was gone, it was only for now. And like a burst of fresh air, she smiled. Because she knew he would return.


afterthoughts: I feel like this ended kind of ambiguously. Like almost open-ended but not. Anyways, happy happy happy belated birthday, Emily! I hope you had an amazing spectacular beautiful day. (: