A general note, it is becoming clearer and clearer through reviews and friends that I am in great need of a beta, if there is anyone here that is willing I would be much obliged. To the rest: happy reading, and thanks for reading!

Chapter 9

It was ending, winter was; the snow melted and little green sprigs started to pop up where before had been a blanket of snow.

The forest became a muddy mass of roots and twigs and the privacy enjoyed from the winter cold would soon come to an end for us.

The family ties that Draco and I had long ignored came unfurling out of no where, just like we had known they would; but the seeds had lain idle all season, were forgotten and catching me unprepared, budded suddenly and grew quickly.

Mine and Draco's relationship went on though. We would meet at the lake, perhaps less than before but often enough. Sometimes little signals were sent to each other a glance or an owl without a letter attached the morning or the night before.

Because spring had come we had to abandon our spot by the lake though; instead we explored deeper and deeper into the woods. It never occurred to me then, that no matter how deep we went into the wood, eventually we would come out of it. I was living off the high of being with someone that made me whole. The idea had never even seemed plausible before. I lived off the promise I knew Draco wouldn't break.

Unlike Christmas break, at Easter vacation we both went home; our families were both calling for us and the call was getting so loud that neither of us could deny them any longer. Letters from my mother and pestering from my brother and his friends were constant. His parents also were pressuring him in their own way. So I went home to the coddling and cramped love that my family was and he to his own version of break.

It was a good time, though I missed him; I didn't feel exactly at home anymore but I was still happy to see my family and wake up knowing I was in a house with so many bodies and people I loved that the day would not go by without much laughter and much love induced irritation.. We didn't speak with each other for that week and I didn't think it was odd. I didn't feel the need to write him a letter and I'm sure neither did he. Our relationship was present and real, it was face to face and in the moment; even a letter was a transition too much of a delay.

I came back to school worn and refreshed from visiting with my family. In good spirits my desire to see him grew with each moment that the possibility was more realistic. I was nervous that perhaps seeing his family had not done him the good it had done me. It had indeed done me good; all that time I spent with him gave me the chance to miss my family a bit. Something that had never happened before as they were always constantly with me. His family on the other hand, though he never really talked about them, I knew was not like mine.

The day I came back I searched him out in the great hall and made quick eye contact which he did not exactly return. Sometimes though Malfoy was so quick he didn't even aknolwage, I knew he'd caught my glance so I didn't need to make a nuisance and spectacal of myself to catch his. It looked as if his vacation home hasn't been as pleasant as mine had, he looked like a wreck. I'm sure no one could tell though. He was too concentrated, too preoccupied with everything in front of him. I don't think he even saw me.

Maybe I should have written him a letter though. That afternoon he never came. I walked around the lake four or five times and finally went in to dinner. I didn't know how to feel, first I was angry, then worried and then irate. By the time I was in the great hall I was a ball of fury I considered lashing out at him even in public if need be.

I walked into dinner and there he was.

I looked at him and his gaze was looking up from his plate and his eyes crossed over mine, except it was just as it had been earlier that year, as if he didn't know if I did or did not exist. As if I were a blank face in the crowd.

I understood then the double edged sword that being invisible was. There is no freedom like it, and there is no pain like it. I wouldn't get the picture yet though. I wouldn't believe that he was throwing in the towel. I stared at him the whole dinner. Making a fool of myself, the kind of fool only love can make of you; the only kind of fool worth being, on the off chance that you end up with the dream.

Well, I didn't end up with the dream. I was just another fool in love. We never spoke again, I understood after that night that things had changed, I didn't know why or when or how but I knew they had. I wasn't such a fool that the truth escaped me completely.

Even for myself, I realized going home that somehow after the wonderful winter I'd had, those obligations came sneaking up. Academic pressures, friends and family were piling on fast from all the neglect I'd exhibited. Without him I finally chanced to glimpse the damage I needed repair. I thought it was good then, that I had so much to do so I wouldn't have to think about him. I thought probably he'd recognize the same in his life and that I would get my life back in proper order, and he would as well and when everything was good again, I'd look up one morning and he'd be look at me for a second and I'd meet him at the lake.

It never happened, later, not too much later I found out what happened. In the one week I was not there for him his family had been. That week where perhaps he most needed reaffirmation that there was more outside his obligatory lifestyle I had not been there for him. I was not there, but his family was and he could not turn his back fast enough. He loved them, perhaps not the same way I loved my family, but they were his family, that I could understand. It still hurt, hurt a lot.

As the weeks wore on after Easter break, I chanced the occasional look at him every couple of days. Not only did I notice the subtle changes in his demeanor but I soon also recognized the presence of a very pretty very aristocratic looking girl that was in his constant company. The more I observed, the more I saw of her. The more I observed her, the more I hurt. She was pretty and she smiled with him and enjoyed his company and I would wonder if she was enjoying his words as well. She would hold his hand and enjoy the closeness and I couldn't help but wonder if she enjoyed his kisses too. Then one day, nearing the end of school her hand bore a ring on its finger. And that's when I resigned myself to near heart-break. I could only hope it wasn't the one he had picked for me.

I say near heart-break because as much as I hurt, I was still very much in love. I never saw him look at her like he cared, or talk to her at all for that matter. I still truly believed he loved me.

I had never exploded or tried to contact him. I knew him and I knew if he felt inclined to explain something to me he would and I would never get an explanation out of him other wise. I knew too that yelling at him would make me feel worse. I knew also that it wasn't just love it was more. Love I might be able to find again, but it was that something more that I had with Draco that made love undesirable by any other.

The last day of the school year was the last chance but before it even came I knew there was no chance. So when I got an owl that morning I was surprised. It wasn't alone though, it carried a parcel.

The paper was brown and wrapped awkwardly but precisely as if there were and oddly shaped but very delicate object within it. I took the package in my lap and opened it under the breakfast table, where only I could see it.

There lay was a single wilting daisy with a ring incircling its stem.

An apology.

There were no words with it; the words were posted everywhere else. In the paper, in peoples mouths. Marriage. A young couple, to be wed. Fresh out of school. Two prominent families finally coming together.

Malfoy and not me. That was all that mattered, Malfoy and someone else, Draco and some other girl.

She was of a prominent family, rich and powerful as was he. It was a perfect, expected, match; a young marriage with a good potential.

I didn't interfere; Draco and I were in the present, the then past. I knew Draco, I knew there was nothing to do and further more, there was no way for me to reach him. I didn't know how to reach out to him because he'd always been there.

Those months after school were a lull, I don't remember what I did or what people thought if me, but I know that I was not fully myself any more. Home still wasn't home, but I had no where else to be. I had surpassed the time of my greatest happiness and I was living in the aftermath, and I knew it.

Some months passed and one morning I saw the picture from his wedding. It hurt, it hurt that he was getting married. I couldn't believe that somehow he hadn't come to me, to explain what I didn't need explained. I knew what happened, his family and his life caught up with him and he bought right back into it, miserably but still into it. He had always implied that he never expected the great or wonderful for him. Only when he spoke like that to me I never expected that some day he would actually give in. but nevertheless, I knew it was what had happened.

The press had caught everything, the ceremony, the reception; I saw it all from my morning paper. I think that's finally when my heart broke. I never know how to explain it, a broken heart. It wasn't as if I'd died, or believed I wouldn't ever wake up again or be happy again. The feeling was so complete and overwhelming that I couldn't even comprehend the idea of feeling. He had even worn a daisy in his button hole for the ceremony. A short blurb under the picture told that his wife took it out at the reception reportedly said it was ugly and weeds didn't belong. The people thought it was a laugh. I guess it got swept out with the rest of the trash.

I was so sure he would never break the promise; I was so sure because he had never broken one before, then again, he'd never made one before.