***This is just a short little Dramione one-shot that's been in my head for a long time now. I normally don't do one-shots, and I normally like my stories to be happy and kind of funny, so this is waaaay different than my usual stuff. It took me a lot of time and has been edited and over-edited and then edited some more, so hope somewhere in there I made it halfway decent! Of course, I own nothing to do with Harry Potter; if I did, I'd hardly be scraping my way through college right now! I really hope you like this, and I hope to post something else HP that's more typical of my writing style eventually.***
A memorial now stood where they once had, many years ago. The cool marble was the final resting place for the names of all those who fell in the Battle of Hogwarts, a day as permanently etched in her memory as the words were in the stone. But the names were just that, names. Nothing more. It did not say that Fred Weasley was one half of a whole, and that while the other name might not be on the stone, he died that day as well. It could not explain that Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin fell in the same instant to protect a group of students they had never even seen before. Stone carvings could never tell the whole story.
A memorial could not compare to the memories. To the nightmares. They happened nearly every night, waking her up in a cold sweat as her scream echoed in the darkness around her. For the first few nights, someone would come in to comfort her, but that had stopped long ago. They learned quickly that she would not fall back asleep, just lay shaking in her bed until the darkness was too overwhelming. Now, they let her lie back down, bury her face in her pillow, and let the soft down absorb the sounds of her dry sobs. There was only so much strength left in her household. She'd much rather face her nightmares alone, anyway. Everyone had their own demons to face when the darkness stripped away the facades of strength they put up during the day.
A memorial did not discriminate. Someone had raised the point that even those that fought for the other side still deserved to be remembered, and their names were etched amongst the others. There was little room for hatred after that day. Everyone was too tired for that. The decision was hardly worth arguing over. Even her friends, typically the most vocal of the lot, shrugged off the news as if it were no more important than what color shirt someone wore. She reached out her hand and lightly brushed her fingers across his name. The memorial did not know if he was good or evil. Maybe he didn't, either.
Years ago, in this very spot on the grounds of Hogwarts, they'd stood and made their choices. He'd asked her to come with him. It was impossible, of course, but he'd asked. She'd asked him to come with her. To this day, she could see no reason why it would have failed, especially considering the ultimate outcome. Now his name was etched amongst countless others in a stone that caught the morning light so every letter was perfectly accented against the cool white marble. Maybe as a result of their choices. Maybe fate.
When she first met him a lifetime ago, she saw everything either as black or white. Now, she knew that nothing was that simple, not even her own heart. Sometimes, people fell into the shades of grey that she now saw everywhere. Sometimes, one served evil wizards to protect the few people that had ever stood by his side. Sometimes, one fought for good, but watched someone from the other side fall and felt part of herself fall, too. And another name would be added to a slab of marble for the world to judge.
She let her finger trace his name again. His father's name was on the stone below his, but that was only because of alphabetical order. It was the best way to make the good and the bad mix together so that centuries from now, when the weathered memorial stood as the last remaining reminder of what happened that day, no one would be able to discern who believed in what. Otherwise, she would have insisted his name be nowhere near his father's. He would have wanted it that way.
She was glad his father died, and that happiness sickened her. She hated that she rejoiced in the death of another human being. He had been human once, long before his death, but that part of him died well before his body did. To content the schoolgirl inside of her, she mourned the loss of that man but celebrated that of the one who took his place. Another grey area.
She still remembered the last time she stood in this spot, perhaps more vividly than she remembered any of her other days as a student. He used to stand by the lake before anyone else was awake to watch the sunrise reflect off of the water. When they finally stood there together, they never spoke. It was their time to consider just how complicated it all had become, how twisted and disgusting and ugly. How something so beautiful could be considered so wrong. It was a rare moment together, but they always used it to be alone. There was a small comfort in having one's most personal thoughts in the silence that can only exist between two people. That was what they used the time for, needed it for, until their final meeting there.
That last day, as the reflection of the rising sun off of the lake was reaching that blinding brilliance that normally signified their departure, their final interaction for the day, he broke their code of silence.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?" Her voice felt cracked, hoarse, as if it didn't want to be used. He squinted out at the lake rather than looking at her, his hands shoved deeply in his pockets.
"There're things that I have to do now. I'm sorry."
His voice was strangled, slighty choked, and she knew he didn't just mean that they were departing for the day. She shook her head and softly said, "There are always other choices."
He sighed head and looked down at his shoes, the reflection of the rising sun too much to bear now. "There aren't. You don't understand, Hermione. I promised to do something, and I have to keep my promise. If I don't…it'll happen anyway. But if I back down, I don't know what they'll do."
He told her countless times that she didn't understand. She came from a world that was so simple, so basic and childlike compared to the things he had grown up surrounded by. In his world, people held evil in the palm of their hands. All someone had to do was want it. There was always someone new to run from – someone more powerful, more dangerous. He could never keep her safe. He couldn't even keep himself safe.
He was right. She didn't understand. She didn't understand that, in just a few days, she would be attending the first funeral of her life, mourning not only the loss of her headmaster but also the loss of innocence. Of hers and of his. How could she have known it then? "I'm sure there's another way."
"There's not," he snapped, then took a deep, shaky breath to be calmer when he said, "I have to do this. To keep my family safe."
"You hate your family."
"I hate my father," he corrected sharply, which was enough to silence her. "But my mother…she doesn't deserve any of this."
It was useless to point out that, just perhaps, maybe she did. It was the first time Hermione thought that somebody deserved to have bad things happen to them, but she could not say that it was the last.
"They could protect her, too. Talk to Dumbledore. He c-could…"
His harsh laugh made her stutter into silence. The laugh died in the air between them, and he took a moment to find the most ambiguous way to say what he needed. "I wish life was as easy as you think it is." His voice was softer than she expected, with no bitterness or anger or sarcasm. No, he was too tired for any of that. Too resigned. When he finally turned to face her, the harsh angles of his face were backlit by the rising sun behind them, casting heavy shadows over the crevices of his eyes. "Dumbledore can't stop what's coming."
"At least he's trying."
That seemed to humble him. He dropped his head down slightly and let out a sigh that deflated his entire torso and slumped his shoulders. He looked back up and managed to lock eyes with her through the shadows on his face. "There's going to be a war, y'know that, right?"
"Do you?" she countered. "We're not children blindly walking in our parents' shoes anymore. We can choose our own paths. You could help us."
"I can't," he murmured. There was no point to prove, no argument to make, and therefore no insistence in his voice. Just a simple statement of fact. He couldn't. "You could stay with me. Help keep from going over the edge."
"You know I can't." He did, of course. But he had to ask. Just in case she was insane enough to say yes. But she never would be. She was too brilliant for that. And even if she did agree, he'd never let her. He would die before letting her do the things he knew he had to do.
"I know," he nodded. He took a careful step towards her, and she reacted by taking one towards him. "But I had to ask." She nodded breathlessly as he pushed a strand of bushy hair out of her eyes. "I hate you, Granger, you know that? You're just so damn good."
"You could be, too," she murmured. He gave her the condescending grin she had seen so many times on his face. He couldn't. Not in his mind.
When he leaned towards her, she was sure he was going to kiss her. If he did, she told herself, she could sway him to do the right thing. It would give them a bond they hadn't had before, and she would have enough power over him to save him.
But he didn't. Instead, at the last second, he let his lips lightly brush against her cheek and linger there a moment too long. "You took the long way to get there, so I'll say it again. There are things I have to do now, and I'm sorry. I hope…" he stopped and pulled his head away. "I hope I never see you again."
She hoped so, too. If she never heard from him again, she would know he was safe. The way their lives were diverging, the only way she would see him was if they met on the battlefield or if she saw his name in the papers, and neither one would mean good news. She couldn't bear to think of him either way. Her head and heart screamed to chase after him as he crossed back towards the castle, but her feet kept her firmly planted. She did not follow.
They had met again, though, and their last meeting was what made her come back to the memorial year after year. She visited with her friends, of course, hanging back as Ron spoke to the marble as if his brother was actually there in front of him. She let Harry stare at the names silently so that he could spend the next week blaming himself for every one of their deaths. But while they were there, she couldn't see him. She couldn't stand with her forehead against the cool stone as the sun rose behind them. She couldn't pray that her body was no longer too numb to cry so he could see that someone did mourn his death. She couldn't curse him for being a fool. She couldn't hate herself for letting him walk away.
When she went alone, she could.
It was in the middle of the battle that would later be eternally memorialized in marble that they met again. The choking dust and deafening screams around her from the wall that just collapsed were nothing compared to the terror she felt from the stone trapping her leg. She had to break out, get away, find Harry and Ron and find a way to end this. She struggled to reach her wand, but the force of the collapse had thrown it just out of her reach. When she reached for her wand, a shooting pain shot through her leg that made her scream out, and she unscientifically decided it was broken.
With a sob of frustration, she shoved on the rock with all of her strength. They were coming. She could hear them. She had to move the rock trapping her leg and get that extra bit she needed to reach her wand. But it didn't budge. She threw her whole body at her wand, but her leg screamed in protest and her hand fell short. She stayed that way, sprawled across the floor with dusty tears cascading down her cheeks, and resigned herself to a very obvious and overwhelming fact.
She was going to die.
When footsteps came running towards her, not once did she consider it would be him. She was so certain she would die in that hallway that when she felt the weight being lifted off of her leg, she convinced herself it was all imagined. The rock, however, was replaced with a shooting pain that made her cry out until a hand covered her mouth, convincing her that this was real. She didn't recognize the gruff, calloused skin against her lips and cheeks. Eyes wide with the new terror of this new situation, her gaze trailed up the arm of her rescuer to a shock of hair she would recognize anywhere.
He was there.
He didn't look at her as he healed her leg. She felt the warmth course through her body as the bones mended themselves and the skin sewed back together. He didn't have time to magic away the blood, but no one would ever ask her about it. He used the hand holding his wand to carefully place pressure on her leg and, when she didn't wince in agony, he summoned her wand and placed it in her hand. She closed her grip tightly around it as she wracked her brain for something, anything, to say when he took the hand off of her mouth. But she never got the chance.
When he finally turned and looked at her, she didn't see the blood covering his forehead or the odd angle to his nose. She just saw his eyes. They looked exactly the way they had when she'd last seem. Tired. Troubled. Numb. But there was something else there. Something she later realized was determination, a look she had never seen in his eyes before. There had only ever been uncertainty.
"I'm sorry."
The blinding green light hit him square in the chest, freezing his face with the last word still lingering on his lips. His eyes had no time to widen in surprise. She didn't even have time to scream as his body slumped on top of hers. Her wand sent a disarming spell seemingly of its own accord; it couldn't possibly have been her doing. How could she think enough to protect herself when he had just been taken from her?
She never could explain to them exactly what had happened. Her friends thought that he'd come around in his last moments, maybe switched sides when he was face-to-face with the horrors. They didn't see the grey she saw. They never saw the turmoil in his eyes. She kept that from them; they wouldn't have understood, anyway. The world was made only of black and white as far as they were concerned. When his body was laid amongst the wounded and the dead, she closed his eyes to keep it all hidden. Let him die with the dignity of his secrets instead of having them analyzed and twisted into something else, something wrong.
She might have loved him. It was hard to say. Her head told her no, that even though it replayed the feel of his wind-chapped lips scraping against the burning skin of her cheek and haunted her with the memory of the life leaving his eyes every night, her heart belonged elsewhere. Her heart knew this was a lie. She was getting married soon. Maybe she even loved Ron. But he shared her heart. This man that had only ever kissed her cheek, that had opened up his soul for her so many nights but closed his mouth to her during the day, the one that walked away, would always own a piece of it. The man that made saving her his dying act. She told herself that he might have loved her, too. She had no way of being certain, of course, but it comforted her to think that the words they once spoke in the cover of darkness actually meant something to him. Like his true loyalties, though, this was a secret that died with him.
She preferred it that way.
A glance at the lake nearly blinded her. It was time to leave. Her hand fell from the name and slowly lowered to her cheek. She wasn't surprised to find it dry. She'd been too numb for tears ever since that day.
The memorial sparkled a brilliant ivory white as she stepped back to let the sun illuminate every letter carved into it. Her eyes found his name naturally, breezing by her friends and teachers, those that fell fighting for her cause. The angle of the engraving caused the letters to appear black on the white surface, and his name seemed to stand out more than any other.
She pressed three fingers to her lips and extended her hand out to press them against his name.
"I'm sorry."
She let her hand fall back to her side, gave one last, wistful look at the blinding reflection on the water, and turned her back on Draco Malfoy's name.