14) Set in stone.
Everything was dark. There was no light, anymore, nothing to hold onto. No solid foundation. She had left him alone in the dark, spinning far from home, in a place where there was no escape and no way back.
The noises he had earlier were clear in his head.
Her strange scream, and the sound of footsteps. Ginny Weasley screaming…and then more footsteps as she ran away. Then Professor Snape. His normally calm voice frenzied as he spoke the words which would stay with Draco forever. Cardiac arrest. Her heart has given up. I'm too late.
And then he'd heard them lifting her and taking her away. He heard doors shutting and low murmured voice around him. Everything hurt and he cried openly. The only person who had ever seen him cry was her and now she was gone.
He lay like that for a while, choking on tears, and on his own overbearing grief. He couldn't brief past the lump in his throat. Her face haunted him, flying in and out of his grief-stricken rambling.
The softness of her brown hair. The sparkle in her brown eyes. The gentle curve of her lips, so warm and soft and kissable. The way her hand had felt on his body.
He couldn't sleep because when he slept, he saw her, trapped in some kind of hellish purgatory, looking at him with eyes that condemned and accused.
He should have been better. He should have been able to save her. But he hadn't been good enough, he'd been too weak, he'd left her to fend all alone and now she was gone.
The things that she said. The way that she laughed. The softness in her eyes when they met his. How she'd held him when he cried. The night they'd spent asleep under the stars. The slight frown line she got when she was concentrating.
All of it, gone.
The next torture was her funeral. He didn't know how he got there.
But he was there, dressed in a black suit he didn't recognise, stood alone at the side of the congregation of mourners. Nobody spoke to him. Nobody spoke at all. It was a time of silence, of tears and pain.
Ginny wept in Harry's arm, Ron leaned his head in mourning against Lavender's shoulder, Luna squeezed Neville's hand between hers. They all had their puzzle pieces, but Draco didn't have his. He would never love again, because he had lost the only person that had ever truly understood him, and understood him without him ever having to explain anything.
And then, everyone else was gone, leaving him alone. Nobody had spoken, nobody had looked at him. Because they all blamed him too, for the death of the brilliant and beautiful witch. He should have saved her. He should have died in her place. But hadn't and now he paid the ultimate price. Living in a world, a life, that had collapsed around him. Where there was nothing good or sweet or happy. Where there was a permanent dementor attached to his soul.
The pain was much to real. As he approached the grave, the old muggle phrase floated into his head. Time will heal all wounds.
But a wound like this? A deep, festering, painful wound? The pain was much too real, and there was just so much that no amount of time could erase. Her touch, unlike her life, was permanent. Never fading. No plaster could cover or repair the damage that his original saviour had left behind. He'd chosen to walk on the path of good with her, and the price had been one he was not willing to pay. Her life.
She had ripped open the seams of his past, and resorted everything so he saw it in a new and sparkling light. But now…what good was there to the side of Light without her? What was left to him, but to follow in the footsteps that had already been laid out? He had no soul left, for she had taken it. He had no love, for she still held it in the stiffness of her dead hands. He had nothing left to live for, but everything to die for.
He laid his hand on the cold marble of the stone tomb.
He had thought that their love was set in stone…but now her name was set in stone.
Hermione Jean Granger, "Death lies upon her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field"…Draco's cold fingers traced the sparkly golden words, remembering Hermione telling him it was a line from her favourite play by the muggle poet Shakespeare. He wondered who had chosen it. Probably her parents. They had been there…but he hadn't seen their faces, only their backs, bent and drawn with grief.
"I loved you," he whispered. "I love you so much. Why did you have to die? Did you not think about what you would do to those you left behind?"
But he knew that wasn't fair. She hadn't walked away. Her heart hadn't chosen to give up. He knew, if she could, she would have fought to the bitter end.
Somehow though, he still expected to see her, to watch her walk towards him down the slope of the hill, to stand by him and say it was all a mistake. He wanted her to come back.
But if he knew anything, anything at all, it was that death was final.
And so he stood up, looking for all the world like the Grim Reaper himself, tall and pale in his black suit.
There was no coming back for him.
Today he would leave the castle, and leave her grave. Leave the place where her face was everywhere, around every corner, behind every shelf, beneath every table. Leave the place where the ghost of her life lived on to haunt him. Leave the place where he fancied he could hear her soft footsteps. Leave the place where she had once eaten. Once cried. Once spoken. Once hummed. Once slept. Once been heartbroken. Once loved. And the place where she had died, where she had taken her last breath, spoken her last word.
He would leave Hermione Jean Granger behind, and give his mind and body over to the one who had no emotions, not even grief. That was what Draco wanted. To become like the Dark Lord. To live in a world where there was just power and glory, and no pain and no tears.
The old Draco, he left at the grave side, and walked towards the gates of Hogwarts, the gates through which he would walk to his own twisted salvation.
He didn't hear the people following him, calling to him. Not yet.
SORRY. I'M SORRY, OKAY? xxxxxxxxxx