Disclaimer: I don't own these two; the lovely J.K. Rowling has them. I just love to mess around with them. The title is a mash up/scramble of two songs I love, by the band Camera Obscura.
Author's Note: I suppose that this story might sound a little bit like the other one I've posted, From the Cottage in the Woods, but I promise you that it's not!
Careless Love in Cities and Towns
His resignation sits beside itself in a grey-blue chair, trapped by the edges of the desk. It sits there and watches as he unfolds his clothes from around his arms and hangs the cloak on the hook, waiting for him to venture to the surface of it, to touch what he wishes to leave alone.
With a sigh, he moves to the desk and places his briefcase on the top, bottom first, then the side, gently lowered by the flick of his wrist. He settles into his new chair, his forearms bordering the case; he then slides it to the side without looking at it. He turns his head to gaze around the room, to stare at the faded maps on the walls, the pins pressed into the moving images of countries that look like sorrow; at the other unoccupied desk that lies like an open grave in the corner of the room; at the glowing ember of a cigarette butt in the ash tray, lying there like loneliness.
Potter clears his throat from the doorway. "She'll be here tomorrow. Some squabble with those rioting groups on the Welsh border has her away for a few."
Draco does not look up from his hands, where they lie like damaged wood on the desk, his black cuffs like ash on his skin. He cannot make eye contact with Potter, does not want to, does not wish to, does not care to see the way he studies him. So what if he wanted to work here? So what if he requested this office?
He finds his voice and without turning, he asks, because he wants, needs, to know. "When did she leave?"
But Potter has left and the door has already settled into its frame. Draco closes his eyes hard and sees light, and then opens them to stare at the embers of her cigarette, dropped carelessly into the ash tray with a pinch of her slim hands, perhaps minutes before he walked into the room, her limbs making a quick dash for the doorway when she hears his name in the hall, grabbing her cloak and disappearing. He can imagine her sitting across from him, holding the cigarette in between her fingers, taking a drag and smiling like a secret when she blew the smoke into the air around his face.
When he looks up from the ground, he notices that the entire Hall has gone silent. He sees her from across the room, sees her in the flash of light, her face lit up for a moment by it, her eyes gleaming with that green color. She is mute as well, her mouth falling in an arc, lips carefully parted. He's kissed those lips before. He's parted them with his own, seen them form words in her sleep, heard them whisper things into his ear.
She does not see him. He wants to call out to her, to hear her name again from his own mouth (how many weeks has it been since he's said it? How many months?). He wants to see her recognize him, for those lips to pull back into a smile and call back his own name. For her mouth to unconsciously linger around the syllables like it used to.
He stands on the cusp of his own happiness, stands so close to her that he could run several yards across the hall and convince her that he'd been looking, that he'd come searching, that he'd wanted to find her.
He looks up from the ground to see his side lose. He looks up to see her disappear in the mass of people who rush to Potter, their limbs connecting and their mouths opening to scream. He looks up to watch his parents softly sigh in relief, to see his mother lift her eyes to his and smile with foolish happiness. He looks up to see her crying, her brown eyes veiled with tears that she has forced herself to contain for months.
He looks up to see the last little bit of himself deteriorate.
He had once laughed with her about many things, before the war had completely driven them to pieces. They had once been able to talk about anything, during that one point in time when both of them fell prey to affection. They talked of things that both fascinated him and confused him and sometimes he can still hear her in his sleep, discussing her literature and her Muggle science.
He had once been to her house, because she still believed that he might not turn her in, because she still hoped for redemption and still looked for the best in people, and he'd taken advantage of that in the beginning. It was a house that looked down to a lake that glittered in the sun, and she had shown him her books, her fingers caressing the spines, her lips savoring the titles. She had shown him the places she had loved when she was a child. She had taken him down the trails that led to the lake that glittered in the sun. She had kissed him by the woods, forcefully, harshly, her lips biting against his, pleading with him, hoping desperately that her blind belief in him was not wrong. A few weeks later, he had given up the location of her house to the Death Eaters. He had sat at the table and repeated her address while she begged him not to in his head.
He'd traveled to Rosedale in advance, obliterating the inside of her home, burning the books and the pictures, until all he could hear was the sound of papers rustling in the wind and being caught in the fire. Sometimes he can still feel the heat on his face.
He had once considered finding her again during the war, warning her, telling her. He never did.
The only time he had seen her after they'd left each other was at the Manor, while his aunt tortured her on the floor. He dreamt of her screams for weeks. She only looked at him once while she lay there on the ground, her hair matted to her forehead and her eyes numb with pain. She was disappointed, he saw it on her face, and she was resigned; she knew that he would do this. He'd looked away.
When he looked up to see her in the hall, he was mostly checking to see if she was still alive.
End Notes: I know that it must seem strange to hear of Hermione smoking cigarettes (way OC) but it will be explained in the next few chapters. So stick around folks! Next chapter will be posted tomorrow (and I mean it this time)! As always, dears, please leave a review!