A/N: I don't actually like this fic an incredible lot. But you know what I realized? I can always write another fic. A better one. I'm going to have to live with some of the things that don't turn out the way I want them to. So read, review, flame, whatever, I don't care. Mistakes are Snowlily's fault, she beta-ed this.

Disclaimer: I own 100% of nothing.

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Seven Years of Rain

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It's been seven years since I saw him last. Seven long years since he shook his head at me, turned around, and walked out the door for the last time. Seven years since I've cried.

I remember the day he left as though it were only yesterday. And I remember the hurt that came with his goodbye. I remember everything about him.

Things were so hard back then, for all of us. And he wanted an escape. How selfish of him to turn away from everything just when it was starting to go downhill. How cruel of him to overlook my feelings....

It was raining that day. White-blonde hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes stared back out at me through their cold gray façade. But his eyes were empty and fathomless with no emotion. It was as if he had never lived. I hated his eyes then. I hated the way they glared out at me without even meaning to. I hated the way they seemed to read my every thought while I had no idea what his were.

But I don't hate him. I could never hate him.

Even with his icy eyes that day, he still held a pale hand to my cheek, and his touch was still soft, and he still brushed away a lock of my red hair. That was his tradition.

Except he didn't kiss me goodbye. I couldn't even say anything to him; I just let him twirl my hair and stare at my face while I silently begged him not to go. Then he shook his head and picked up his suitcase, walking out the door with not so much as a backwards glance. I stood staring at after him for a long time before I ran out into the street and screamed his name. It was pouring, and I was sopping wet, but I still screamed after him.

It's raining now.

These days are so cold. I find ways to close myself up to all the world and float around the shadows of him. I don't know why. A constant icy wind swirls around me, and it's blocked out everything.

The bell on the door of the muggle coffee shop rang as another ragged someone wandered in, in search of shelter from the gray and gloom of the rain pelting outside. A man, tired and worn, completely soaked, stumbles in, face concealed by a hat and the dimness that followed him. Another bedraggled nomad.

Everyone seems lost these days. Everyone seems to be searching, wandering around, yearning for something. I had what I wanted seven years ago. And it left me.

I don't see a point in anyone trying to obtain that which they desire anymore. If, by some amazing chance, they do acquire it, they'll only end up losing it, and then the hurt that follows would be almost too much to bear. It is far better to yearn for all eternity than to know something, love it, and lose it, no matter what anyone says.

It seems like it's always raining these days.

The man with the hidden face slid into the chair next to me and I stared at him, waiting for him to say something. He merely sat motionless with his shaded eyes.

"Can I help you?" I asked quietly. He was silent for a while longer while I sat there waiting in curiosity. His persona seemed to echo out weary loneliness and embittered dreams. Like he had some sort of stanchly unrelenting ghost poking at his back and going around his head in a dizzyingly exhausting swirl.

"I've spent seven years searching for myself and trying to find what it was I really wanted out of life."

Who was this stranger?

"I've lost seven years of my life to a circular journey of striving to gain back what I had given up."

Why was he telling me this?

"I never saw what I had in whole, and it took seven years of desperation to open my eyes to the beauty that I'd left."

Why can't I see his eyes?

"Seven years of rain have sent me spiraling into the truth that I'd always known but never realized."

What was the truth about this man?

"And now, Virginia, after all this time, I've come back, with a bitter hope for forgiveness for my blindness those seven years ago."

He lifted his eyes to meet mine. They were gray, like clouds before a storm, and deeper than the bottomless sea. They seemed to pour out more emotions than I could bare to see. They weren't empty.

Draco.

With a steadying breath I calmed myself, summoning all my willpower not to reach out to him. My mind was racing with a million thoughts at once. So I said the only thing that I could make sense of.

"They say that if you love something, to let it go, and if it comes back to you, then it's yours." I shivered with the desperate anticipation of the outcome of my next question. "So promise me one thing."

"Anything."

"That you won't ever leave me again." He smiled, leaned towards me, and kissed me. And then he twirled my hair in his fingers and held me. And in that dreary little shop, spread out with various itinerants who paid us no attention and a couple waitresses who looked like they hadn't had their morning brew yet, and with the rain slowly easing outside, I smiled with him.

And with the seven years of rain there brought an eternity of sunshine.

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