Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. This fiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Title: Bleeding Regrets
Author: torigingerfox
Rating: M
Word Count: 4787
Summary: Was it too late to learn to be someone else? Draco felt he'd been someone else for a long time. Months, years even.
Warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH
Author's Note: First of all, thank you to Maloreiy for her invaluable beta reading, she always makes my stories infinitely better. Also, thanks to Akashathekitty for being an awesome alpha. Last but not least, thanks to bentnotbroken for reading this in preview and being super supportive. Second thing, I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me for writing a non-HEA, but this story basically wrote itself and I was just a medium, truly. The characters had a life of their own, I pinky swear.
Ah, before I forget! I have borrowed some of JKR's lines from Goblet Of Fire towards the end, they are all in italics.
Draco Malfoy was losing his mind. Losinglosinglosing it. He was completely and utterly crazy. Crazy as a box of frogs, crazy as a horse, crazy as a fucking loon.
Draco Malfoy, ladies and gents, was a fool of epic, gargantuan proportions.
Bigger than the bloody Big Ben—which admittedly wasn't very big if compared to other monuments, but he was not only a fool, he was also very British and therefore proud of his heritage.
"Malfoy."
Heritage, heritage. What a fucking gift it had been for him, his heritage.
He had to thank Lucius, he guessed. Thanks, Daddy.
Honestly, though. What for? Forcing him into the Dark Lord's ranks? Yeah, shitty gift, old man. Thank you very much.
Draco did not want to be out there, fighting for something as intangible as blood purity.
Had he ever believed in all that shit? Sure, he had. Big fucking time, and a fat lot of good it had done him too.
Did he still believe in all that shit? He—Did he?
He didn't know if it was true or not, he just knew it wasn't something worth killing for. Something he didn't care about. What sort of discrimination was it anyway? Who could see the fucking difference? Blood was blood. And the hypocrisy of it all coming from a Half-blood spoke fucking volumes too.
Draco didn't know for sure it was all bullshit, but he was fairly sure it was. He had seen one too many of the so-called Mudbloods giving a hard time to seasoned Death Eaters like his own Daddy Dearest.
For instance, he had witnessed with his own still-not-battle-hardened eyes the power of Hermione Granger unleashed. He had felt her righteous fury—her fierceness, in all its splendour—even back at Hogwarts, when their fights were easy ones. When they meant nothing in the great scheme of things, but they meant everything and more in determining their place in each other's world.
That slap in the face during Third year.
Her refusal to be afraid of his powerful Family name.
"Malfoy!"
Those eyes burning holes into his very soul, daring him to say it—to say she was inferior. To just say it out loud once, so she could fucking show him her worth.
Shit, in retrospect that had been the beginning of the end.
Because she ceased to be an insignificant Mudblood, and became Hermione Granger: The Mudblood. The one that beat him in every single class except Potions—and he adamantly refused to acknowledge the fact that it was probably due to Snape's favouritism.
She was the only one that challenged him, defied him, refused to back down. And not in the witless, brutish way boys do either; she did it spectacularly, with flawless grace.
She had the power to render him speechless. To make him feel even more of a fool than he already did on a regular fucking basis. To make him question his roots.
"Malfoy…"
And oh Merlin, Fourth Year.
Fourth Year, and the Quidditch World Cup, and him thinking that he didn't really want to witness Granger dangling upside down, at the mercy of the Death Eaters, but not wanting to know why it would bother him so. Fourth Year and that periwinkle dress, and her eyes shining, and Pansy paling in comparison. Yeah, Fourth Year had fucked him up big time.
Because, hell, she was a girl! And that realisation had messed with his head. He couldn't unrealise it. He couldn't stop noticing her. Her horrendous mane, which suddenly didn't look that horrendous, even if it was still a bird's nest by all accounts. And since when did she have freckles splashed on her nose? And her eyes. . .they weren't just brown, they were rich cinnamon, glowing as molten lava, and warming his insides in all the dangerous ways he couldn't afford them to.
Merlin be damned, she had stopped being just a Mudblood. She was Granger, the beautiful bane of his inane existence.
Granger, who ultimately contributed to making him go insane.
Then Fifth Year, and again he made all the wrong choices. Unsurprising news, there.
The Inquisitorial Squad, and ugh, he still felt bile rising up in his throat at the thought of Umbridge the fucking Toad. But he had been an idiot, and he had chosen the easy path. The path that would ultimately lead him to the other side of the War. The other side—not hers.
Fifth Year and oh, the rush of adrenaline he'd felt when he was holding Granger in place in the Pink Bitch's office. He could touch her, smell her hair, get close without risking everything. Just for once he could hold her, know what it would be like—damn it all!
"Malfoy!"
That had nearly killed him. Her fierce opposal, her disgust, her rage. Directed at him. He had almost caved, almost let her go. Almost.
But Sixth Year...Sixth Year ruined him. It wrecked him body, mind and soul. It changed him completely and irreversibly. He was thrown into the adults' game and he just wanted out.
He had wanted out ever since.
He could still feel the agony, the fucking torment he'd felt back then. It never really stopped; it never went away. But now, a year and a half later, it had subsided to a tolerable degree.
Back then, though, he'd stopped living, and simply existed. Day by day, just trying to survive, trying to protect his mother, trying to do his part and be left alone. Wishful thinking. Naiveté.
Sixth year.
Sanctimonious Potter and his hard stares and stalking habits.
Granger and her questioning glances that left room for hope.
"Malfoy?"
She was just a blur, just a smell, just an anchor he would use when everything looked too desperate and he had to stay focused. She was his saving grace, although unbeknown, when all he could think of was disappearing into oblivion and ending it all before it even started.
He was too much of a coward to ever consider really ending his life, though.
He liked to think he stayed for his mother, but she wasn't the only reason. The thought of not existing anymore was deeply troubling, and had him awake and panicking every other night. And ultimately what would send him into a frantic panic was the awareness that his existence was nothing but spittle into the ocean. He was just a tiny, invisible speck of dust on an equally tiny puzzle piece.
During those dark and endless nights, the thought of Granger calmed him. The thought of an alternate universe where he could sit with her in the Library and study for an assignment, or where he could invite her to Hogsmeade with him and buy her quills and parchment—because she wasn't the flower type, and only someone as daft as Weasley couldn't see it.
"Oh, Malfoy!"
He would make her fall for him. He'd charm her and erase the past, or better, overcome it—beg for forgiveness, promise he'd never call her names again, promise he'd always be there no matter what, promise to try to be worthy of her company.
Sometimes, he dreamt of a parallel universe with no war, no Dark Lord, no animosity and no blood supremacy. Where they could be 16-year-olds together, without the burden of being Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger.
Then he would always chastise himself, fully knowing those dangerous thoughts could have him killed on the spot. Treachery—of the mind, but treachery nonetheless.
And then it all changed.
With Dumbledore's death, it all started crumbling, and he would never, ever be able to fix things.
Draco couldn't kill him, in the end. But he still felt his death was his fault, and it weighed on his shoulders like a giant fucking boulder. He'd done the unspeakable; he'd helped it happen. He had allowed evil in his nuttiest form into Hogwarts. He had let children be held at the mercy of bloodthirsty psychopaths.
He fucking hated himself for it. Hatedhatedhated.
He bet Granger blamed him too, hated him too. And that hurt him more than a Cruciatus ever could.
Speaking of which, once back at the Manor, he had been tortured for failing to complete his mission.
Tortured endlessly. In front of his mother, who couldn't stop her tears, and his father, who'd looked the other way.
He had been living in constant fear ever since.
Fear. Pounding steadily into his bloodstream, accompanying him everywhere.
Of everything, though, he was most afraid to hear someone say, "The Dark Lord won, Potter is dead."
He'd almost felt life leaving him one day, during the past Easter Holidays, when he'd been summoned by his aunt to identify three suspects. He choked on air when he saw Granger and Weasley accompanied by a thankfully unrecognisable Potter. All he could think was, 'Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.'
That blithering idiot needed to end the war, he wasn't supposed to get caught! He was supposed to be off doing whatever he needed to do in order to kill the fucking Dark Lord.
He had kept staring at the trio, wondering how the fuck they had managed to end up on the floor of his fucking Drawing Room.
He had refused to identify Potter. All the while making it a point to avoid looking at Granger. No looking at Granger's big eyes. No. He couldn't look, he couldn't look or she'd see. She'd know. Everyone would know. And his life very much depended on everyone not knowing.
Her torture was the worst thing he had to witness. Her screams, her voice fleebly pleading him to help.
"Draco…"
She'd never spoken his first name before, and what irony to hear it with the cackling of his mad aunt as background music.
He still thought the sound of fingernails scraping down a blackboard was less chilling than Bellatrix laughing.
And then, when he had thought all hope was lost, when he was ready to say to hell with it and help her escape, Potter in shining armour and his idiotic sidekick managed to do one good thing in their pathetic life and saved her.
They had even stolen his wand in the process, but who fucking cared? She was safe, she was alive.
She had to be.
He couldn't be sure, though. He was never sure of any-fucking-thing and it screwed with his head big time.
He was a fucking idiot for feeling like this. For wanting, no, longing to be with them.
Yeah, yeah. Potter and Weasel included.
He wanted to be part of it, to be on the right side. It was some sort of ache building inside him that he couldn't quite comprehend, but it was there nonetheless. Weird feelings, weird images. It was all weirdweirdweird and it hurt so much. It burned and it froze his insides simultaneously in an endless contradiction.
He was insane, he'd lost the plot, he'd forgotten rationality.
What was real? He could feel his grasp on reality loosening. Every second a little bit more. A little crazier, a little less present. A little further down the rabbit hole, where there were no wonders waiting for him, just his own demons.
What was real? Granger's voice?
"Draco!"
The screams, the cries and the blazing lights? The pain seeping in, blinding him and making it hard to speak?
She was real. She had to be real.
"Draco, please…"
She had saved him and hurt him, she'd killed him and then revived him–all at the same time.
And how distressing, how glorious, how painfully beautiful it had been!
Growth—inner growth—fucking hurt. It was a never-ending climb towards an elusive top that was always on view but never on reach. And when one finally, fucking finally, got there—oh the view. The view, made it all worth it.
Painful, painful. Was the pain tangible? Was it an ache of the soul? Or was it his body shutting down? Why did it have to hurtsofuckingmuch?
He knew what his father would say. That it served him well. That he had basically asked for it. And he'd tell him to shutupshutup, shut the fuck up.
But he wouldn't. He'd taunt him instead, saying she was the cause of all his mistakes. All his desperate, appalling, compounding mistakes.
But no. Nonononono, Draco himself was a living fucking mistake.
She was and always would be too good to ever associate with the likes of him. She was all he could never be, all he yearned for. No, his only mistake was being too much of a coward and never standing up for himself.
Draco was in free fall, hopelessly waiting for the crash. And he thought if only he could be with her for just a moment, just a moment, just one—if he could be with her and tell her everything, he would finally feel alive. For just a few moments, he would finally feel alive.
How sweet would it be? Her lips saying his name.
"Draco! Malfoy! Draco!"
His and only his.
He could almost picture it. In the monstrous sea of black tar tainting his soul, in the ocean of despair that was pulling him down under the surface, she was a breath of fresh air. The lighthouse in the storm, the fucking Northern Star.
Why did it have to hurt so much?
He didn't care if he had failed everything. He didn't fucking care if he had defied his father, if he sent everything to shit, if he was labeled an incompetent loser. Disappointment. Good-for-nothing. Nobody.
Words. They were all just words rolling off his back. They did not define him.
If anything, they made him angrier and more frustrated with his joke of a situation. Why did things have to be this way for him? He'd never been given the chance to choose. The freedom to shape his own fucking path. Wrong or right, it would've been his. This, this was someone else's choice for him. He wanted to be the maker of his own destiny, to be able to finally say, "I did it because I fucking wanted to."'
Was it too late to learn to be someone else? Draco felt he'd been someone else for a long time. Months, years even. He'd been too cowardly to act on it, to turn tables and follow his heart–his heart that was splitting in two, bleeding and aching.
His mother, his poor mother would die, would suffer, would never recover. But oh, he was so tired of pretending, so tired of dreaming of something better. Couldn't they see it?
Would Granger see it? He wanted to scream at her to look at him, look deeper, search into his eyes. Look, looklooklooklook! Would she say his name again? He wanted to hear it again.
"Draco!"
It would never be enough, never enough, never.
"Draco! Malfoy! Merlin be damned, Draco!"
It was all chaos, all pain, all a fucking mess. He could see the sky above him; it was orange. Orange—why fucking orange of all fucking colours? He hated orange.
"Shit, shit. It's not working! Draco!"
Maybe it was true, though. Granger was his biggest mistake. She was a mistake in the sense that he regretted every single hateful word he'd spat her way. He regretted his cruel jokes, his fucking stupidity. He regretted never telling her the truth. Never telling her—
"Draco, can you hear me?! Harry, fucking do something for Godric's sake!"
Godric bloody Gryffindor. Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart. He'd never fit, would he? It hurt.
Why did it still hurt?
"Draco! Ugh, this fucking hair everywhere! Draco!"
Was she real? He wanted to touch her curls and oh—tell her she was worth fighting for. That he'd jump in front of the bloody Hogwarts Express for her.
"Why did you do it, Malfoy? Why?"
"Hermione, please! We have to leave!"
"Oh, shut the fuck up, Ronald Weasley! I am not going anywhere!"
She was real. Real, real. Real and holding him and yelling and hovering and. . .why was she crying?
"D-dd-don't." He wanted to caress her cheek and wipe away her tears, but he couldn't move. The pain had become unbearable, his body was fighting him.
"No, don't move, don't move. Just hold on a little longer. Neville went to look for help! Just a little longer OK?"
Oh Longbottom. He was fucking doomed.
"Why did he jump in front of you?"
"I don't know, OK?! Draco, hold on! Can you hear me?"
She was a vision, a fucking goddess. She was there with him, at last.
He nodded, or tried to. A racking cough was making it nearly fucking impossible. He had jumped in front of Granger, he had jumped in front of Granger and he didn't know why.
Or maybe he did. He'd always known. He had always been desperately, achingly and impossibly in love with her, and the world could do without a Malfoy, but would be an infinitely darker place without Hermione Granger.
"Shit, just hold my hand. Neville will find help, he will, and everything will be alright. Why did you do it, you crazy boy?" Her voice was hoarse from screaming and a little shrieky from the panic she was trying to hide.
Beautiful, she was.
And her hand was the only thing tying him to reality. A reality where he was lying on the grass, where the air was dense with smoke and there were distant lights and flashes. Where the sky was still fucking orange and where Longbottom wouldn't find help in time.
Draco, in what might have been a curse-induced delirium, laughed. The laugh soon morphed into another coughing fit, and Granger started fretting. She dabbed a soft cloth on his mouth, and wouldn't stop asking why, whywhywhy he'd done it. Why did he save her, why did he take the curse meant for her?
Draco knew, in the most poetical and frightening way, that he had run out of time, and no amount of magic would save him. But Merlinbedamned he had to ask her. He had to know. He put the little force he had left into squeezing her hand.
"You ever,"' he coughed blood, "wish there was annn-an-other u-u-universe, Granger? With nn-no V-Voldemort? Where you—ah—" He could barely grit the words out, but he had to hadtohadtohadto. "—D-ddidn't hate me?'
He was so fucking cold, and the cough was tearing him apart from the inside. His body, the traitorous piece of shit, was convulsing, protesting its unfair destiny.
"Bb-because I d-do..."
He couldn't really see her any longer. He was too far gone and was losing one sense after the other, but he felt her near him. Just a faint splash of colour moving over him—a soft touch, her hands trying to contain the blood. His pure, uncontaminated fucking blood. The very reason this was all happening. Oh the irony!
"What? No, no Mal—Draco! I—I don't understand. I—I...don't hate you."
Draco squeezed her hand as hard as he could. Every little movement sent a stabbing twinge of pain through his body, but she didn't hate him.
He was fucking freezing. Cold as a block of ice, sinking in the depths of the sea. Only, he was sinking in the worm-infested soil and he was sofuckingglad he couldn't feel anything any longer. He stopped fighting the darkness, embraced it even...because Hermione Granger didn't hate him.
The sky was black now and he couldn't hear the yells and cries anymore.
She didn't hate him.
And it was the most beautiful thing, ever.
"G-g-good."
"Draco?" Hermione started shaking the unconscious body, in a useless attempt to force the life back into him. "What do you mean? Wha—? She wasn't sure what to do, how to bring him back. "Malfoy? Fuck! I don't understand, why would he—
She was confused. Confused, tsk. She was in shock.
It had all been so quick. The flash of colour, the sudden realisation that she wouldn't be able to cast a Protego in time, the utter terror pervading her, and rooting her on the spot. Then, Malfoy jumping in front of her, out of nowhere, shielding her with his own body.
He took the unknown curse and started bleeding all over the place. Her hands were covered in Malfoy's blood, and she kept staring at them and then at him.
He was so pale and still. His words kept ringing in her head, over and over, but they still made no sense.
He was the one who'd always hated her...hadn't he? But then why would he save her?
"Hermione, he's dead. We have to go!"
Ron was pleading with her, stubbornly pulling her towards him and away from Malfoy's lifeless body.
But she couldn't move.
She was still clutching Malfoy's hand. Draco's hand. Draco. He had saved her from certain death, the least she could do was use his given name.
But why did he do it? She didn't know, and she hated not knowing something. It was in her very nature to know. She decided, in that moment, that she needed to know. She wouldn't move a step without an answer.
Hermione, deep down, was aware that there was only one person who could give her the answers that she so desperately needed in order to—to—to what?
Why did she have to know? To be able to sleep at night?
No, no amount of answers could ever help with that. War was senseless. It was cruel, and dirty. Merciless and barbaric. It mutilated both body and soul, stripping, no tearing humanity out of everything and everyone, even out of her, who instead of mourning the dead was now clinging to words and whys.
It was unimportant, on a rational level. But it was fundamental in that very instant where time had stopped and all she could do was continue to stare in horror and astonishment, wondering why someone who had supposedly hated her would save her life by sacrificing his own.
The only person who could help clear the thick fog clouding her mind was dead.
And she—she didn't know why.
Her eyes were glued to the still body of her former schoolmate. He was so pale, aristocratic even in death. His skin was translucent, and the purple circles under his eyes had faded already.
Shit, his eyes. They used to be—green? Blue?
Shit.
She couldn't even recall his eye colour. She'd seen him on a daily basis for the past seven years and she couldn't remember what colour his eyes were.
Merlin, she felt like utter shit. Because he saved her and she couldn't even recall the bloody colour of his bloody eyes and was anything turning out OK?!
It was all a mess, and she needed order. She needed things to make sense. Hermione based her very existence on organisation and structure. Chaos unsettled her, it subverted the axis on which she had founded her very world.
The worst part was that the chaos was mixed with a sense of failure that seemed to coat every fiber of her being. She had failed.
Hermione hadn't been able to heal him. The damage was too extensive, the wound too big. And it was cursed. Cursed and poisoned and impossible to heal.
And she did not remember the colour of his eyes.
That thought kept seeping through, disturbing her profoundly.
With a trembling hand she touched his forehead, smooth as alabaster and equally cold.
He looked peacefully asleep, serene almost. His mouth was tilted upwards, an eternal smile even in the face of the unknown.
She was reluctant to get up, not really wanting to leave him there on the ground.
"Hermione, for Godric's sake, we have to leave!" Ron's patience was wearing thin, and he kept pulling her away, pulling and pleading.
"Get off, Ron! I don't understand!" She yanked her arm free. "I need a second. I need to figure out why. Why did he do it?"
She suddenly felt two strong hands grabbing her middle. "Wh—Harry!"
He was hugging her from behind, taking her away, so that she couldn't run back to Draco's corpse.
"No, no, no, goddam— I need just one second! I have to know why! And we can't leave him here, Harry, we can't!'
But Harry didn't release his grip. He didn't care if she scratched him, beat him, kicked him or if she screamed her throat out. Or rather, maybe he would have under other circumstances, but he couldn't afford to in his current situation. He couldn't let Malfoy's death and Hermione's meltdown stop him.
He started pulling her away, all the while whispering a steady flow of reassurances in her ear. "Shhh, Hermione. We have to leave. I promise we'll get his body back, but now you just need to calm down and let him go."
"But—but I need to know why," she pleaded.
"We will never know why, Hermione." He kept pulling her away.
"We will never know why." He was dragging her again, more gently now. "But I will forever be grateful for it. You listening?"
She nodded.
He stopped pulling and spun her around. "Because I need you, Hermione. I need you with me. I need you alive. Most of all, I need you focused. He's—I don't know why he did it, but thanks to all the bloody Founders he did. Now, please, let's go."
She let him take her hand in his. Ron was already halfway up the hill, too worried to linger.
Her friends were right. Hermione needed to focus in order to make Draco's inexplicable sacrifice count. They had a mission. They had to finally end the War. After all the deaths, the injuries and the bloody pain, this had to end.
For all the people who'd perished, for all those who lost someone, for every single person affected by this absurd, illogical war. For all the blood spilt in the name of purity, blood that ironically stained everything. For her parents who had no idea who she was anymore. For Harry who'd lost so much, or never had it in the first place. For Malfoy, and his last act of defiance.
For all of them, she had to climb that hill, go back to the Castle and help Harry end it for good.
She glanced back once more. For the last time, she thought.
Draco Malfoy's body met her eyes, his platinum hair in stark contrast with the dark, moist ground. A white spot on a black canvas.
In a blur, she relived all their past interactions. Looking for what, she couldn't say. Maybe it was a farewell. Or maybe she needed a sign, something that would help her understand. That missing piece of the puzzle.
Because she'd never hated him, it was always the other way around. Why would he think it was Hermione that hated him?
Their first real exchange was at the Quidditch Pitch, during their Second year. When she'd accused him of buying his way onto the Slytherin team.
It was the first time she'd ever been called a Mudblood. Maybe that was when the war had really started for her.
Or maybe it was when he cheered the Heir in the corridors, '"You'll be next, Mudbloods!" Clearly hoping she'd be the next to go.
Third year, she had tried to slap some sense into Malfoy, with a blow across the face that had left him staggering. For insulting their friend Hagrid. For being a bigoted git. So what had changed? What was it?
Then she remembered a conversation that night of the Quidditch World Cup, that night when she'd felt for the first time that the danger was real.
"Hadn't you better be hurrying along, now? You wouldn't like her spotted, would you?"
Hermione had asked him what exactly he meant.
"Granger, they're after Muggles. . .D'you want to be showing off your knickers in midair? Because if you do, hang around. . .they're moving this way, and it would give us all a laugh."
"Hermione's a witch," Harry had snarled back, defending her.
"Have it your own way, Potter...if you think they can't spot a Mudblood, stay where you are."
They had all taken offence at the derogatory term at the time, but Hermione was so used to it by now, that it rolled off her back. That night, though, she'd had to bite her tongue and drag Ron away from Malfoy. Draco.
He had never been a pleasant person, but—telling them to leave. . .was he trying to warn them, in a twisted kind of way? Was he telling her to run away?
"Keep that big bushy head down, Granger."
His eyes had been sharp and shiny. Even in the dark of the forest they had shone bright and pierced her.
Grey, his eyes were grey.
***The End***