Disclaimer: see the first chapter
AN: I made small mistake in the author's note of the previous chapter: this story will be five chapters, not four.
Oh and I'm think if enough people like the idea and I manage to find some more inspiration, I might write an epilogue.
Thank you to the people who reviewed; you are great. I couldn't hold back any longer to post the next chapter; personally I like this chapter and the last chapter best.
Enjoy
The genuine article
Picking up the pieces
"Is there anything we can do for you, Hermione?" asked Ginny Potter, trying to make herself heard over her best friend's sobbing.
Harry stood next to the sofa, a cup of tea going cold in his hands. Ginny looked at her husband and shrugged helplessly; Harry for his part managed to look both concerned and murderous at the same time. The youngest Weasley knew that if Lucius Malfoy had been in his reach, the results wouldn't have been pretty. As it was, Harry could only look on as the woman he considered a sister was bawling her eyes out on his sofa, still in her elegant gown, a hopelessly wrinkled and rather sad looking handkerchief in the hand she held pressed against her mouth.
"I thought h-he really l-loved me-hee," she wailed disconsolately.
Ginny wrapped her arm around her friend's shoulder.
"I'm sure he does, honey. The way he looks at you...." she soothed. This only prompted Hermione to cry with renewed vigour.
"Well, I for my part..." Harry started to say, until his wife kicked him viciously in the shins, giving him a meaningful look over Hermione's bowed head.
"Men do stupid things, you know, when they're in love," she continued, giving Harry a glare.
Harry sat down on the other side of Hermione.
"Men in love behave like asses," he confirmed obediently, if a little insincerely. Ginny gave him a radiant smile.
"Really, we don't know what to do with ourselves," Harry continued gamely, repeating what he had heard Ginny say numerous times to her mother.
"I'm sure you will hear from him first thing tomorrow morning, Hermione," Ginny took over quickly, rubbing Hermione's back. "Why don't you go and get some sleep: tomorrow will arrive all the sooner for it!"
Hermione's sobbing eased up a bit; she wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks and blew her nose.
"Thanks, Gin," she said, sounding a bit nasal. She turned to face Harry. "You too, Harry. I wouldn't know what to do without the two of you."
"You'll always be welcome in my house, Hermione," Harry said, unwittingly repeating the words he had said when Hermione had told him she was dating Lucius Malfoy and was afraid they could no longer be friends because of it.
"Thanks."
Ginny and Harry both watched as she made her way up the stairs, waiting until they heard the door of the guest-bedroom close behind her.
"That unbelievable prick!" burst out Ginny, "To give her a fake ring like that. As if he doesn't own enough money to buy an entire jewellery store! If he has the gall to show his face here anytime soon, I am going to tell him exactly what I think of him!"
"Do you think it was all a hoax to him?" Harry asked, looking pensively at the stairs where Hermione had disappeared only minutes ago.
"Honestly? I don't know what to think anymore. I used to think he was really partial to her, the way he looked at her... I thought he had to have changed a lot to even consider dating her in the first place." She sighed. "Then again, he always was exceedingly egoistical; if this turned out to be some plan of his to regain some of his social standing, I wouldn't be surprised either."
On the first floor, Hermione moved away from the door and fell onto the soft bed without bothering to undress. Curling into a ball, she drew the pillow against her chest with both arms and pressed her face into it, lest Harry and Ginny would hear her crying again.
The next morning brought, contrary to Ginny's predictions no word from the elder Malfoy. Hermione had come down early, looking red-eyed and tired; she had refused all twelve offers of breakfast she had gotten so far, instead leaning against the kitchen counter, staring out of the window unseeingly her hands clamped around a rapidly cooling mug of coffee.
She had wanted to believe Ginny, last night, but now, in the cool light of morning she realised Lucius wasn't going to come here, begging for forgiveness. And even though a small, foolish part of her kept hoping that he would, she knew it to be idle hope.
Coming to a decision, she placed the mug on the counter behind her and gathered the purse and wrap that were the only items on her person when she fled to Harry's the night before.
The Potters looked on in concern as she made a conscious effort to gather her courage.
"Hermione," Harry asked cautiously, "where are you going?"
She looked him in the eye for the first time since she had gone up to bed the night before and Harry was shocked at the depth of the sadness he saw. But there was also the glint of stubbornness he had come to know so well over the years; the one that said she wasn't going to let anything or anyone keep her from getting what she wanted.
It seemed the old Hermione was already resurfacing.
"I am going to Lucius' apartment and get all of my personal belongings."
"Are you sure that's a wise plan?" said Ginny.
"He won't be there. He has a business meeting at ten, which is why we would have gone home early last night." She let out a harsh, cynical laugh that sounded utterly unlike her and might have ended on a choked sob. "Not as early as I did leave, but still...."
"Honey, are you sure you want to be doing something so drastic right now?" Ginny counselled. "What if he intends to make up with you? Won't this give him the wrong impression?"
Hermione shook her head sadly. "If I don't do this now, I won't do it at all," she said softly. "It is only going to get harder to go back there, besides..." she faltered for a moment. "Besides, I don't think he's intending to make up with me. Not if the look he gave me last night was any indication."
Visibly struggling to calm down again, she quickly wiped her eyes and took a deep breath.
Lifting her chin proudly, she gave them a determined look, somehow looking intimidating in her wrinkled dress with red eyes and unkempt hair. With a soft 'pop' she disapparated.
Harry and Ginny exchanged a worried glance, both thinking the same thing and reading their own thoughts in the other's eyes.
How long was Hermione's courage going to last her, when she went back to the place where she and Lucius had been happy, at least for a while?
Hermione let out the breath she'd been holding, relieved that the wards still let her enter what had been their apartment. Technically it was still Lucius's; he owned the place, but in practice it had been hers as much as it had been his.
She had picked out the new sofa in the living room, she had rearranged his kitchen cabinets to suit her needs (he didn't have any needs in that particular area because he relied on the house elves, of course), and she had cajoled him into looking after the potted plants she bought, because she had a peculiar talent to murder anything green she attempted to take care of by either drowning it or drying it out.
The smell of the large, tiny flowered orchid mix as she passed the dining room was almost enough to be her undoing. Especially when combined with the utter silence of the empty apartment. It was ridiculous, she knew, but somehow she expected Lucius to come walking out of the study at any moment, to welcome her home.
Telling herself mentally to suck it up for the umpteenth time that morning, she walked into the bedroom and adjoining dressing room. Appropriating one of Lucius' large dragon hide travelling bags, she started to systematically remove all of her clothes: her jeans and t-shirts, sweaters and sneakers, the pencil skirts she wore at work, the silk blouses that were her secret vice, the sweatpants and tops she used when she went running. Her sensible pumps, the sexy pumps, the cute little ankle boots she bought last winter....she put them all in the bag, doggedly continuing her work even as the tears ran steadily down her cheeks.
After she had packed her warm and cute-rather-than-sexy pyjamas, her hand hovered for a moment over the sexy satin-and-lace nightwear she had only started using when she had gotten involved with the Malfoy patriarch. Even the thought of having to ever wear them again was almost too much to bear and she was momentarily tempted to just leave them.
There were two thoughts stopping her though; the first was that it would imply that by ending her relation with him, she was also leaving her newly-discovered sexy side to wither (and even though that would probably be true, he didn't need to know that, thank you very much). The second was the question what would happen to them if she left them. Would he systematically destroy them, wanting them gone? Would he not be bothered by them at all, maybe giving them to the next witch to grace his bed?
She closed her eyes in anguish, as she blindly thrust her hand into her nightwear drawer and stuffed the slinky clothing into the bag.
Finally, the wardrobe held nothing but Lucius' garments and her evening gowns. Again she hesitated. Every single one of these gowns had been bought for her by Lucius and she knew they were very expensive.
She also knew she would never wear any of them again, because she would be reminded too much of what she had shared with the haughty wizard who had given them to her. But, as with the nightgowns, the thought of what would happen to them if she left them was not to be borne and she cast anti-wrinkling charms on the gowns, before adding them to her bag.
Going back into the bedroom, not looking at the neatly made bed in it's centre, she padded over to the dresser and added her underwear to the bag. She left one soft, comfortable set of bra and knickers out of the bag and, undressing hurriedly, put them on. Slipping into an aubergine coloured pair of sweatpants, she shrugged on a pink t-shirt and matching aubergine hooded jacket, the nicely colour-coordinated ensemble more a habit, than a conscious action prompted by her being worried what she looked like.
Binding her hair together with an elastic band and stuffing the clothing she had worn in a separate pocket of the bag, she swung it over her shoulder and made for the door of the bedroom. The scent of Lucius' cologne hit her about halfway and the way her emotions suddenly overwhelmed her felt like a physical blow.
Stumbling back towards the dressing room, blinded by tears and feeling her way along the wall, she took the shirt that Lucius had been wearing yesterday during the day and which the house elves hadn't gotten their hands on yet. Without examining her motivation too closely, she carefully folded it and put it in the bag with her clothes before going back to the hallway.
Looking from one door to the next, she decided that there was nothing she wanted form the living room or dining room; the only thing she could come up with were the plants and she would just kill them anyway.
As her gaze hit the door of the study, she sighed. She was not leaving without her beloved books, but dear God did she hate having to go into the study to do that. The room was, in contrast to the rest of the house, so entirely Lucius' domain, that it would be more painful to go in there than any other room.
"This is the last room, the last one," she quietly told herself as she closed her eyes for a moment.
Opening them a moment later, she set the bag with clothes on the floor and silently entered the study.
It was a pleasant room in cream and pale yellow, with two large floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the daylight. Lucius' cherry-wood desk was set with it's back to the windows at the far end of the room, the other three walls covered completely with bookshelves, with the exception of the fireplace.
Hermione took one of the carved wooden boxes that Lucius kept his quills in and tipped its contents onto his desk. Summoning those of her books which she knew to be at their apartment one by one, she shrank them and put them in the quillbox.
As she finished, she sighed, putting the box in the pocket of her jacket, another tear slowly making its way down her cheek. God, how long was she going to keep on crying?
Letting her eyes roam over the bookshelves, she felt more tears well up in her eyes as she took the long way back towards the hallway. As much as she had dreaded coming in here, leaving was more difficult by far.
Leaving meant she was leaving her life with Lucius behind and she couldn't deny herself one more, drawn-out moment in which she would soak this room into her memory, to be taken out and savoured on empty and lonely nights.
She moved towards the shelves on the right side of the room, where the fireplace also was and a nice little sitting area with a low, comfortable sofa in champagne-coloured fabric and cherry wood and a large, matching, wing backed chair that she had sometimes curled up in to read.
Trailing her hand along the shelves, her eyes on the books, so many of them still on her reading list, she slowly moved towards the fireplace and, ultimately, the door.
As she felt the wing backed chair at her back, she turned around to face the sitting area and remember the peaceful evenings she had spent here reading, while Lucius was still working on something, or sometimes sitting together on the sofa, staring into the fire as they talked and shared a glass of wine.
Flung over the sofa, looking as if he hadn't moved since he had lain down, face turned towards the fireplace, with dishevelled robes and generally looking like death warmed over, was Lucius.
Hermione managed to not exclaim or otherwise make a sound that would wake him and alert him to her presence, even though her heart was suddenly beating twice as fast and seemed to be lodged in her throat.
As she took in the way his right arm was hanging limply over the side of the sofa, an overturned glass of cognac staining the crème-coloured carpet and the slight smell of alcohol in the air she hadn't noticed up until now, she realised she would have to do more than gasp loudly to wake him up.
Unable to check the impulse, she silently moved nearer to the sleeping wizard, kneeling on one knee in front of the sofa, careful not to touch down in the middle of the cognac-stain.
Her hand trembled slightly as she stretched out her hand towards him, gently stroking a strand of his – now messy - soft silver hair behind his ear. There were tears softly and steadily rolling down her cheeks.
The wizard was oblivious to her touch, as she had known he would be and she took the opportunity to study him like she had been studying this room moments before. Even though his skin had a vaguely sickly hue to it and his left cheek was scrunched up rather unbecomingly on the arm of the sofa, she admired his looks one last time, allowing herself to remember the intellectual, the friend and the lover she had been privileged enough to know in this man.
As she bent closer to him, lips trembling and sight blurred by tears, she said the words she had never said to him until today, before settling her wet cheek onto his slightly cool one.
For a minute or maybe longer, she just sat there, uncomfortably bent over the sofa, his skin against hers as she breathed a mixture of his cologne and fine cognac, her body warmer where it touched his than where it did not. Her tears were silently making their way down to his face and into his hair, but she didn't care.
One more moment. She would break free in one more moment....
As the wizard beneath her suddenly shifted and sighed, she shot up as if stung, a piercing pain shooting up her knee. Hastily checking that yes, Lucius was indeed still asleep, she got to her feet and checked her knee. On the floor, right next to where her knee must have been, there was a small, white-gold ring with three sapphires at its centre, flanked on either side by three diamonds.
Well, fake sapphires and zircons, she thought resignedly as she picked it up and recognized the tiny little scratch at the back that she herself had made by accident. He must have retrieved it after she had flung it so dramatically away.
Palming the ring, she moved quickly to the hallway, where she picked up the bag of clothes and disapparated with a quiet 'pop'.
Inside the study, the man lying on the sofa slowly opened his eyes, groaning as a slight movement caused the pounding of his head to intensify.
Strange, he could have sworn there was somebody here just now, yet at the moment he was very clearly alone. Manoeuvring gingerly into a sitting position, wincing every now and then when muscles and ligaments that had spent the night in one and the same position protested vehemently, he took stock of his situation.
Why was he demonstrably hung-over?
A moment later the confusion in the silver eyes cleared and they turned a cold, icy grey.
She was gone.
AN: let me know what you think, will you? Many thanks in advance.