"Does it get better?" she asks. Who is she asking again? She is tipsy, so tipsy, off the bottle of vodka that has been dangling off her fingers for the past two hours. She thinks about the boy with the cold eyes and the warm hands that used to be in her fingers instead.
She thinks about the first time post-war they met, on their way to an Order party.
"Get on," he grins, swinging his broom towards her. She adamantly shakes her head no. He laughs and twirls her onto the broom, wrapping his Quidditch-toned arms around her as they take off, her screaming. He lowers his mouth to her ear and whispers.
"I've got you."
She thinks about the next day, how she found herself asleep, tangled in his limbs on the couch, where they found themselves talking about life until they had drifted away, like two leaves tangled together floating across a pond. He blinks his silver eyes at her. They are so full of warmth she swears they are turning black.
"I've finally got you."
She looks down, her empty bottle falling from her hands and shattering in the street, glass splintering like the first time he told her he couldn't do this anymore. Why the fuck are her hands empty? She pulls out another bottle from her bag. It, too, has an Undetectable Extension Charm on it, like the first one.
"Why do you always have that beaded bag? It's so… worn," he comments offhandedly on a stroll through Diagon Alley.
"Worn and poor, just like that attitude," she shoots back, holding her prized bag. "I'll have you know, this bag survived a war. May have even ended it."
He snorts. "Looks like it ended itself first."
She scrunches her nose up at him. He tells her she looks like a disgruntled rabbit. She tells him she would tell him he looks like a disgruntled troll, but she wouldn't want to insult trolls.
They bicker like children all the way down to Flourish and Blotts. Her eyes light up with the telltale sign of interest.
"Just today, love." He lets go of his possessive hold on her hand as she rushes in, all excitement and bookworm. When he returns for her later, she is huddled in the corner, her brown hair curled across her back, her eyes glued to her book. There are piles surrounding her, and she hurriedly pushes her bangs back as she gnaws her lip.
"I'll have all the ones she requested," he whispers to the bookkeeper, slipping a bundle of Galleons to him. "And those bookbags she's been eyeing."
She closes her eyes. Was the world always spinning? She opens them. Would he still be there to catch her at the end? She closes them and bites down on her lip. It's always been a bad habit, but it helps her forget. What's her name? She inhales, drinks, and opens her eyes again. The stars are still shining and she doesn't remember her own name but she can hear his name echoing in her head, over and over, the first time she told him she loved him. She loved him. She loves him.
She didn't mean to say it. It had slipped out, like her feet underneath her the first time he swept her onto the broom. It was the way he looked at her, silver eyes almost black, like there was nothing else that could give him hope. It was the way he treated her as an equal, never bowing to her and respecting her all the same. Those three words hang in the air, strung after his name, thicker than blood, as she closes her eyes. She doesn't want to see his reaction. She doesn't have to.
"Finally," he breathes into her hair as he wraps her in his arms. "I was beginning to think I'd have to turn into a book for you to love me back."
She wishes he had turned into a book at the end. Instead, he had become a wall she had ran at heedlessly, because she was Hermione fucking Granger and to hell with anyone that thought they could tell her what to do. She wishes she had listened. She wishes she had never let anyone so deeply inside that she blew her whole damn head open on the wall of his emotions.
The first time they fight, it is a fire. Walls crack beneath his pure fury, his blonde hair disheveled, her eyes blazing because she would never beg for anyone to change if they refused to. She would never beg. The second time they fight, she thinks, I will never let myself die like this again. Until the third. The fourth. The fifth, the sixth, the seventh. The screams and the yelling, love turning to hate, their barbs cutting deeper than words ever could. The end is the worst. Walls no longer crack, simply stand still and wait. For nothing, and she doesn't give up until she really gives up. She realizes he has given up a long time ago. Perhaps she already knew.
In the end, it is just a trickle of smoke that has clogged up both their lungs for so long they are numb. She thinks she is numb, until she begins to cough it out and realizes she has never felt so damn empty before.
He tells her, "Get out." She does not flinch. Instead, she rises, and leaves. She swears she will not look back. She turns around anyway as he closes the door. How fitting that the first two words that has started this relationship will be eclipsed by the last two words that have ended it. She does not drop a single tear for the first week. Her friends congratulate her on finally getting rid of him. She lasts all of a week and two days.
She can feel herself crumbling into a thousand pieces and sinks to the ground, her knees becoming peppered with crushed glass. I'm okay, she whispers, her eyes burning but dry. It is okay. She can feel the gaping hole inside her where he used to be, where there was nothing but him. And yet he is still there and she is trying to claw it out with her fingernails, with the glass, and everything is bleeding but he's still inside of her. He's still inside of her.
"No." She can hear herself slipping away. "It doesn't get better."