You tell yourself again and again and again that he thinks you just wants to be left alone. That he thinks you don't love him. That you have a heart that's stone. But deep down you both know different. The amount of times you've smelt perfume. The amount of times you imagine he's kissed a girl with such ease, forgetting the fact that you poured out your heart to him(obviously this was before the Malfoy you know now). the times when you were best friends instead of hated enemies.
The times when water fights happened every day, when you and Albus and him were forever. You never thought those times would end, but they did. It was inevitable, purely ironic.
He gradually changed, stopped wanting to spend time having fun but instead chasing girls, turning his smile into a smirk, the one her and Albus worked too hard to get rid of, and becoming obnoxious and arrogant and everything that the Malfoy's were.
You quickly worked out life was against you every step of the way, that perfect images can be torn to shreds by anyone with claws big enough to rip down your inner walls. That best friends aren't forever.
You changed your image to forget about your former life. Gone were the summer dresses and shorts, and sleek shiny hair you must have done over a 1000 times to impress him but he never noticed. In place was the curly frizzy red mass that reminded you of Hugo as a baby. In place were black leggings and oversized t-shirts and makeup. No more eyeliner or blusher, just concealer to hide up the long messy nights that had you crying into your pillow, and mascara to remind you of former life. Glasses were back instead of contact lenses, nights spent buried by books again. That made you smile, the fact that when your former 2 best friends had managed to you out of your books, you wanted to crawl back into it. The fuzzy warm feeling of home. Every night you managed to spend here, sometimes not even making it back to your dorm.
You find new friends, friends who understand you, not the fake ones you used to have you used you to get closer to Albus and him. Maisie and Leona were there names. They brought you carefully back to life, making you see the error of your old ways. Quickly you were top of the class again, good score on owl exams. You remember when you used to study with him and your image shatters and crying happens again, apart from this time after it, you feel better.
One day a boy stepped into your broken heart, and came to mop up the pieces. His name was Lysander Scamadar; the quiet boy who used to admire you in the library when you came in sometimes. He takes you in his arms and sows together the uneven parts of a heart so severely broken that, in the end, even he gives up and you find him cheating on you with your best (ex best now) friend Leona. You go back to being a crying mess, and when they start going out you and Masie ignore them completely.
2 weeks later when they break up, you and her celebrate by getting fire whiskey and drinking yourself inhabitable. She wants to forget her ex and so do you. So drunk you are that you fall into the arms of one you never wanted to here again. In the morning when you wake up, the nights events are a black hole of hell and the body next to you is enough to start tears sliding down your face and the fact your falling apart hits you again, a never ending cycle.
Except this time, he wakes up, and sees you going to sneak out, tears streaming down face, glasses on all steamy, with an oversized jumped and pyjama shorts. You look a mess but he takes you in his arms and tells you how he tried to deny feelings to please his father and that he's a mess and needs her and Albus back in his life, how much he loves her. He starts crying at the huge mess of everything he's made and the fact how he broke both hearts in the process of trying to save one.
The words she needed to here have been spoken, and he comes back into her life with tiptoe steps, until the day where they get married and he's healed her heart completely but still spends time brushing the broken parts away, so that they can start afresh and they do. It's not the story she expected, but it's the story she got. And she won't let him go.