A.N. Hello to you all!
This is my first Dramione, so if it's OOC, I'm very sorry and I would like to hear from you what you think I should do to improve.
Anyway, it's bit of a real drama, which was supposed to be a one-shot, but I'm planning to write a Draco PoV as well.
I hope you'll like it! ^^
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or his series or any of the characters belonging to the series. All credit to JKR.
With the Daily Prophet still clutched in her shaking hands, she dropped herself on the floor by the window, through which the owl had entered and left hardly five minutes ago.
Hermione cried, for she had lost her love and, with him, her life.
Tears ran down her cheeks like rivers, while her entire being shook from head to toe. Her eyes were wide, the image of the tiny little article edged on her mind, not a detail left out or blurry and her mouth a little open. Slowly, the real meaning of what she had just read began to actually sink in.
The initial shock which clouded her mind evaporated, leaving her with an agonizingly clear mind. She wished it hadn't. She wished it had stayed with her for just another moment, a safe blanket to protect her from the stabbing reality she had to face sooner or later. The reality came too soon.
She shut her eyes quickly, hoping it would save her from the upcoming headache, the result of her mind fighting the misery her heart was drowning in. But it couldn't. Her mind couldn't rationalise this, couldn't sooth her with cold logic. This was beyond her mind. At this point all that was left for her to do was choke on the raw sorrow.
The sobs that racked through her body increased every passing minute and before she knew it, the carpet at her knees was soaked with the tears that didn't stop flowing. Vaguely, she wondered how many tears she had left to cry. She had already cried more tears than she thought she had.
She was a war-heroine after all. The losses she had had to swallow in and after the war had been so great, she thought that in those years she had cried enough for a lifetime or two. Yet it seemed time proved otherwise. He had proven her wrong.
Sitting there, just sitting there, crying all alone in this place that she called her home, she thought of him. Oh, how he had haunted her. How he haunted her still. All the nasty words he had said, all the painful sneers. And yet, because of him, the boy, the man, she had always publicly loathed changed the whole course of her life.
She could've had been happily married by now, maybe even could've had her first baby, but he had prevented her from doing so. And he didn't even know. He had never cared a thestral's backside about her. He had hated her.
And what for? For her know-it-all attitude? For her, back then, bushy hair? Although he had often insulted both her personality and her appearance, she didn't believe that's what started his detestation towards her or if it had even fuelled it at all. She knew too well what had truthfully made him hate her. Her family. Her blood. He always had always said that her blood was dirty.
"Mudblood."
She remembered the times she had cried over it. That word. How it had made her want to curl up in a corner and just die. How it had made her curse her own blood. How it had made her wonder, sometimes, what on Earth she had done to deserve his cruelty.
Later on, it's impact would wear off. Not because she got used to it, but because she slowly, yet surely started to understand how he had been brought up. And it had cheered her up. He never really hated her, he had just been brought up to hate her and treat her like vermin.
Still, she never had the courage to walk up to him and actually talk to him. Maybe because of him. Maybe because of his friends. Maybe because of her friends. Maybe because of her pride. Maybe because of his prejudice. Maybe a combination of all the above.
Years after Hogwarts, after the end of war, she would humourlessly laugh at how it had gone down. It was like the wizarding version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. But in this version, Mr. Darcy did not love Elisabeth, while she did love him, even though he had hurt her pride and she had a lot of prejudices to lay against him.
She smiled through her tears. Yes, he had been a jerk. No, worse. He had been the biggest, stupidest, proudest, most prejudiced and blindest ferret of all time. And though she had had her periods in which she had hated his guts, in the end, she loved him. She had dreamt of him. Never of them being very intimate, for she couldn't even imagine it, but of him standing in front of her. Sometimes close, yet far away. And sometimes far away, yet close.
In anybody else's opinion he never did anything special in her dreams, but in Hermione's eyes, he had done the most wondrous things. He had showed her every expression on his face. Had showed her smiles and tears. Eyes full of pain, sadness, fear, loneliness, happiness, wonder, confusion and on a very rare occasion she would see love shine in his grey, nearly silver eyes. After such dreams, she would wake up to find herself blissfully happy.
What made her dreams even more wonderful to Hermione was the fact that when she talked in her dream, he would not turn away or walk off, he wouldn't even look annoyed. He would listen to her. And she would tell him hundreds of stories. About Muggles, about the stress she suffered because of her schoolwork, about Harry and the trouble she got into with him, about him, what he had done or said recently.
The sad part was that he never responded. His expression told her lots of things, but still, sometimes all she wanted him to do was say something. But he never even uttered a word. And she accepted that. She could hardly do anything about it, so there was no point in dwelling on it.
When it exactly started, the feelings, the dreams, she did not know. Somewhere along the line, he had brought her to her knees. It went gradually, that she knew. She reached the point of truly, deeply loving somewhere during fourth year.
At the Yule Ball, she had begrudgingly admitted he looked handsome and that same evening she, by coincidence, saw his face through the crowd for only a second or two. But those two seconds would forever feed her dreams, for that was the only moment in her life that she saw him smile a honest smile and laugh out in pure joy. What or who had managed to entertain him so would always be a mystery, but she didn't care about that at all.
At that moment, while honestly enjoying himself, he was the most beautiful guy Hermione had ever beheld. Perhaps that's when it really struck her. Perhaps that was the moment from which on she would love him knowingly.
The tears still didn't cease to come. Hermione felt like at total mess, but didn't give a damn.
She remembered how she tried to push it down, to pretend that the love she felt belonged to Victor Krum and, after that, to Ron. She never fully fooled her heart though. What had hurt the most about seeing Ron kiss Lavender Brown had been knowing that Ron had achieved something she couldn't even wish for.
And some years later, she still felt those feelings and every time his face made it to the front page of the newspaper, she would stare at it, before reading the article concerning him with great diligence. Ron never noticed it. He always made some rude remarks on the topic and she would reply with something even more insulting.
Married. He had married. That's when she decided to break up with Ron. The news of the marriage crushed her and she realised that by keeping up the relationship with Ron, she fooled both him and herself. So she went to live on her own, concentrating fully on her job at the Ministry, trying to think as less of love, of him as possible.
She still visited the Potters and the Weasleys often, but she never stayed too long. She felt like a stranger in those happy, loving families. It was suffocating.
And here she was, barely seven months since he had married, alone in an small, sober room with bookcases on every side of the room, up to the ceiling, filled with books which for once could not keep her mind of him.
Died. He had died. His own father being the main suspect. He was 'found' by his mother in his private working room. Apparently, he died reaching out for something in the fireplace, considering the way they found him: Lying on the floor, on his stomach, his right arm stretched, his right hand halfway in the fireplace.
Since his hand had some serious burns on it, they concluded the fire was still on when he tried to reach, perhaps to grasp something. They assumed, he was having hallucinations, since during the autopsy it was discovered that he has been severely Crucio'd, before finally being killed with the Avada Kedavra curse, so it would not be weird for him to have gone mad of the pain, before dying.
Hermione was still crying for the terrible fate he had met. She cried and cried for hours and after that, she would lead a half life, work herself to death during the day, cry herself at sleep at night and never marry anyone.
Only when she would sleep, would she truly feel alive, for that's when she would meet him. The man she would never have. The man she loved. Draco Malfoy.
But that day, with the Daily Prophet shaking in her hands, sunken to the floor, she didn't dream. She only cried.
Hermione cried, for she had lost the love and, with him, the life she never had a chance to have.
A.N. What do you think? Review please!
