Welcome Back, Hermione

Chapter Twenty: Apologies and the Knight Bus

Disclaimer: Lemme see… shuffles through papers oh yeah! I don't own Harry Potter! Wow!

A/N: Now don't get too mad at me…and I know this chapter was short, but there was no real other place to stop.

From last time:

What to say, what to do, what to think, she was dizzy, the room was spinning, and oh god oh god oh god she couldn't think, and all the world was revolving and narrowing down to a pinpoint where all that left was—Draco.

And she opened her mouth, and spoke her answer.

"No," she said. Draco couldn't breathe, couldn't think, the world was spinning around him, the walls were closing in, everything was too cold, too stifling, waves of icy cold pressing on him, fingers running up and down his spine.

Time had stopped passing; the flames in the fireplace seemed to just freeze in place, the hands of the grandfather clock unmoving, the scream in Draco's throat choking him, unable to come out.

It seemed as though the universe had tilted off its axis, and the stars had stopped shining, and the earth had stopped spinning, and the moon had stopped glowing, and the sun had stopped rising.

The whole world tilted at an alarming rate, the ground was coming to swallow him up, but none of that mattered, it was all rubbish anyway, because she had said no, and no meant no, no laughter, no children, no joy, no comfort, no love, no life, because no meant no Hermione, and that meant no anything.

No to everything.

Finally he managed to choke out, "Why?"

It sounded so pathetic, so helpless, but then he was helpless, and he had never felt as pathetic before in his life, so it didn't really matter now did it? Nothing mattered anymore.

She wouldn't meet his eyes, instead staring at the flickering patterns the firelight made on the wooden floor. "Because—I can't—I just—oh damn, Draco, I can't do this. I can't pretend to love you, I can't commit to staying here with you, when I don't—I mean—it's not—"

I can't stay here when I don't love you, the unspoken words hung in the air between them, clogging his breath, an ooze of fog, dark and cloudy, creating a barrier between them that he did not want to see.

And then he wanted to protest, somehow, a childish whine, the last remnants of a long-lost spoiled brat inside of him saying, "But I want you, but I need you, but can't you see how right we are together?" He wanted her to ask how she could just leave him after seven years. He wanted to remind her of all the times she had told him she loved him. He wanted to tell her that she couldn't go, he'd die without her. He wanted to know if anything had meant anything to her, if it had all just been a stupid hoax. He wanted to say so many things they all came rushing in his throat at once, choking him until there was only room for three words, three simple words, and that might be okay, because really it all came down to this—

"I love you."

Then he got up slowly, slowly, like an old man—no, like a young man aged before his time, trying desperately to keep this last modicum, this last vestige of pride he had left, because pride was all he had left, clumsily grasping the sofa arm and rising to his feet, though the world swayed around him. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to collapse on the floor and just make it all go away, but he couldn't. He couldn't. Lucius Malfoy had done his work well.

"For what it's worth," she said, looking at the ground, "I'm sorry."

And then he couldn't stop himself, all the pent-up hurt and rage at her came lashing out at her, and he hurled, "Sorry for what? For losing Potter's respect? For leaving all your fine books? For disappointing Weasley?"

Her face seemed to crumple just a little bit, the lines around her eyes drooping, and the thin line of her lips trembling ever so slightly, but she held her chin high and refused to look away, and he felt rather ashamed of himself, and lowered his eyes and muttered, "Sorry."

"No," she said. "No, I deserved that. It's just—I can't, you know?"

Yes, he did know. He knew that she deserved much better than him, that she would never love him again, that maybe she had never really loved him in the first place, and that right now, he was better off dead. But he would never understand. Never ever ever.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again. "We—I can't do this. You understand, don't you?"

"No," he said bitterly. "No, I'll never understand."

She nodded, as if accepting the fact.

"But I'll let you go."

Then he stepped toward her, hating how she shrank back just a tiny bit, and how her hand strayed to her wand, and cupped her cheek in his hand, and asked—no, begged, "Please? Just one last kiss?"

Her face tensed, and she looked like she was going to run away.

"Please," he begged, allowing the last vestiges of his ravaged Malfoy pride to fall away, letting her in, letting her see all the pain and all the longing and all the raw hurt she had given him, not caring now whether the kiss would be out of pity, simply longing for and needing her touch.

And she turned her face up, and screwed up her eyes. He covered her lips with hers, gently, not attacking, not demanding entrance he knew she was not ready to give, just—a gentle kiss, until all the dams broke, and all his regret and sorrow and anger and tears flowed through that kiss, from one soul to another, and when she broke the kiss off and stepped back, he had tears flowing down his face, finally, broken, tears falling from his eyes without a thought to cover them up, because nothing mattered anymore.

She stared at him, her chin quivering, stared at the tears, the first tears she had seen from him, and choked, "Why? Why do you keep loving me, even though I just keep hurting you? Why don't you hate me?"

"Because I can't," he said bitterly. "I'd love to, but I can't." He laughed, a short wry laugh that wasn't a laugh at all, but only a hollow, empty shell of it, and continued, "And you know what? I can't even blame you for losing your memory, because it was all my fault."

"What are you talking about?" her voice was demanding, just a little bit frightened maybe. Still suspicious of him and his motives.

"The Potions explosion. You warned me not to do it. Too risky, you said. Too dangerous. You said that the dragon's blood was too volatile, too dangerous, and that the Boomslang skin would nullify the calming effects of the daisy roots. But then I wouldn't listen, and you got upset, and I got mad at you, and I swung the whole damn vial of the blood around, and tipped it in the cauldron, and that was when everything blew up on us."

He couldn't look at her, so he stared at the ground instead, at the knot on the wooden floor that was shaped irregularly, a blob of brown that, if he tilted his head just right, looked almost like her blasted Kneazle-cat.

"So you see, the whole fiasco was really my fault, so I can't exactly blame you for losing your memory."

For not loving me.

He didn't say them aloud. He didn't have to.

She didn't say she forgave him. She didn't tell him it was all right, like the old Hermione had done. How could she? By losing his temper, he had inadvertently stolen ten years of her life. Anger choked up in her throat slightly, but it was mostly regret, regret at all the would-have-been-could-have-been-should-have-beens, and she found that she couldn't even yell at him, for by accidentally erasing her memory he had destroyed his life.

So she just nodded, and looked at him, and tried to smile and found she couldn't, and just brushed by him and headed up the stairs to—to what, really? Everything in this house was his.

He seemed to sense her unease, and said without looking at her, "Anything you want, you can take. Most of it was bought with the money I made from investing with your money."

Did you marry me for my money? She remembered hurling it at him, sniping and constantly hurting him. She had sworn she wouldn't do it again, yet here she was hurting him far more than she had ever hurt him before or ever could again. Without turning around, she nodded yet again and continued up the stairs to pack. She wouldn't take much.

She came down later, with suitcases all shrunk and placed in her pocket. It wasn't much really, just almost all of her clothes—what could he do with those?—and her makeup, and jewelry, which she thought she might sell, and other personal effects. She had longed to take the books, but ended up choosing only a few—most of them were so expensive, and she couldn't take them all. And her wand, of course. That was all.

No money. She couldn't take money from him as well on top of everything else she had taken from him.

He stopped her at the foot of the stairs. "You can't leave tonight," he said. "It's late, and you won't get far before the sun sets. Even summer days don't last that long."

"I can sleep on the Knight Bus," she said coolly. Cool was good. Cool meant she didn't have to think.

She saw the flash of hurt on his face but pretended not to notice, even though the bond was screaming at her for hurting her husband.

"Fine," he said. "At least take this." He pressed a small envelope into her hands. "It's the key to our Gringotts Bank vault. I changed it to your name."

"But—I—what about you?"

"I have enough in investments. And that's only the largest vault. We have others."

She nodded mutely. He could take care of himself.

The question is, would he? Whispered an insidious voice in her mind. She pushed it away; she had made her choice. She could live with it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered yet again as she stepped outside the door and began to hail the Knight Bus. Suddenly, she felt very very tired. The sun was extremely bright.

Unreasonably so.

Finis

Post A/N: Now before you all start flaming me—

STOP!!!!

This is not the end. There will be an epilogue. I know not everything is all tied up in this chapter, not really, to your satisfaction, so yeah…I promise there will be an epilogue, and I can almost guarantee that things will look up for Draco and Hermione. So I hope I haven't disappointed all your fluff-voters out there too much…

Remember, there WILL BE AN EPILOGUE!