Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger
Notes: My second drabble ever written and the first in this series. It is a short introspective thought process in Draco's perspective to waking up to a reality that he cannot have what he wants for once. Also heavily inspired by Attica's This is How You Lose Her fanfic because her writing is just so beautiful that I am floored every time I read it. Her craftsmanship with the written word is something I can only aspire to.
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This is how you lose her.
In the deafening silence. In the stillness of the night. A million light years apart in the inches of space between your bodies.
All is fair in love and war, they say. But seeing her face under the moonlight, her eyelashes crafting silhouettes on her cheeks, you think, "She is a different kind of war." The kind you'd lose a limb for, the kind of war that shatters you—the kind you'd want to win.
But every war eventually has its finale. And while the moon walks its own path, as does the sun. The night eventually bleeds into day and you know with a certainty that startles you, this cannot last. So you watch as closely as you can, like a man starved, the way the beginning of a sunrise is painted on her face. You burn the image of each freckle on her face into memory; the curve of her jaw and the line of her nose; you trace with your eyes each dip and crevice of her torso. You memorize the feeling of her body against yours.
Funny what the world has come to, you realize. Her: Hermione Granger, golden girl and smartest witch of your generation; deeply asleep and showing a vulnerability you're sure others have never been privy to. You: Draco Malfoy, a former Death Eater, a pariah and a lost cause all the same; impeccably besotted, fool that you are. Together: them, in a bed far too large, inches apart; light and dark–a running theme for all of your lives. You wonder how this ever came to be.
But then, you are reminded of the very first time you stood toe to toe with Hermione Granger in the hallways of your shared department floor. Her wand brandished against your throat, her eyes blazing with indignation and fire and so much–so, so much that you are silenced by her intensity. And oh, you were truly hopeless. Hopeless against this whirlwind, this force of nature, this terrifyingly beautiful woman that she is.
And woe is the man who foolishly, fervently even, thought that the fire he'd ignited inside her–with her–was enough. Because it isn't. It never was and it never will.
This will not last, you tell yourself a second time.
She looks at you the moment she awakens; and even with the vestiges of sleep evident on her face, her gaze is far too knowing as if your thoughts are like neon signs in the dark. She reaches for you and touches your face feather light. Her eyes are searching yours, a question neither of you could speak of even in the dark is hanging in the air. The silence is thick with a restless anticipation. And you suddenly wish you could bottle this moment to keep forever. Because in hindsight, when you are drawing your last breath with no one to hold on to, you will remember this as a moment of impact, as time suspended in anticipation of an explosion.
Stay, you wanted desperately to tell her.
But your voice evades you. You are no Gryffindor. You are no Chosen One. You are simply Draco Malfoy, a boy trapped in a man's body. And she is Hermione Granger. In this lifetime, and the others before or after, you think you can never even earn the right to deserve her. You are nothing compared to the vastness and the fullness and the brightness that is Hermione Granger. She belongs to a world not welcome to you and you understand this more than she thinks you do. There is no place for you there.
You're a coward, you finally say to yourself.
So you say nothing to her. You close your eyes. And the moment of impact has passed. The ticking of the clock has resumed. And right when her warmth is no longer felt and she picks up the fallen ring on the floor, you know this is when you lose her.
But, you admit in the privacy of your own mind and in the choking silence enveloping your room, you never really had her anyway.