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Chapter 29 –Parallel Lives:
Draco's final letter to Hermione -
Dearest Hermione,
You told me earlier tonight that there were 'constants' in this life. There are also needs and wants.I need your love; however, I want you to be happy.
I need to be with you forever, however, I want you to be happy.I need your forgiveness; however, I want you to be happy.
How can I have what I want and what I need at the same time? It's confusing.
Here are my life lessons for you; I was an arrow without a bow, until you came and gave your life to me. I was cancer without a cure, until you set my heart free. When I hear a song, it sounds off key, unless you're the one who sings it.
Your gentle laughter and wondrous smile are my constants, along with your endearing beauty and questioning eyes. You give me overwhelming fulfillment, and a life of surprises. You give me the hope of a life of light, a feeling of pure love.I see you here with me today, but I also see you drifting far away from me, but whether you're near or far, I don't want you ever to take your love from me.
I could lose all my worldly possessions, but nothing would break my heart more than if I lost your love, because that would hurt me the most.Our love is stronger than anything that can try to tear it apart. It's longer than anything we can measure.
If I look to the past, I lose my way; it's only in my future that I know I'll be all right.You can see right through me, through the lies, which you don't believe, and my pain, which you alone can heal. Loving you is like a beautiful symphony and I don't want it to ever end.I know that I'm rambling and not really coming to the point.
The point is that I love you no matter what. You can't ask more of me than I know how to give, though, so I don't know if I can forgive myself, but I'll try, and maybe some day, with your love, I find the redemption that I need to forgive. I feel the weight of your world upon my shoulders, and while I admit I still find myself questioning my fate and my place in this world, I cannot picture it without you.
Heal me Hermione, take my burden from me, and heal me.I love you so much.Forgive me, and I'll try to forgive me, too.Love, Your friend forever!
Draco
Hermione picked up the folded piece of parchment, which had her name written on the outside, and read it. As she read, Draco ate the rest of her eggs. She read it the second time and she looked over at him, with a confused look on her face, and while holding the letter up in one hand, she said, "SO? What does this mean?"
He put his fork down and said, "Must I slap you to make you understand?"
"If you do, you will be sorry," she responded with a smile.
"I have no doubt. My face still stings. Okay, here's what it means," Draco started. He walked over to her chair, which she pushed out from the table. He sat down on her lap and put his arms around her. "I love you, and you love me, and I don't know what the future will bring, but I want to give it a go, with you."
She said, "Are you sure you aren't a plagiarist, because you're so much more eloquent with the written word."
He thought on that for a moment, and said, "Maybe I just get all tongue tied when I'm around you, because I love you so much."
She said, "Get off me, you really are getting heavy. Let's see that gut." She pulled his shirt up. Still taut.
He said, "I have been eating in the kitchen a lot, lately." He got off her lap and sat in one of the chairs. "If we continue to eat in the kitchen, does that mean we must play into all the stereotypes of kitchen eaters?"
She laughed at the thought of what a 'kitchen eater' was, and then she asked, "What stereotypes?"
"Well," he started, "should I bang on the table and say, 'get me my dinner, woman!' or should I pick my nose and scratch my bum, like the common people do?"
Hermione stood from the table, came over to him, and sat on his lap. "You mean you think we're low class and common if we sit at the kitchen table to eat? Do you mean those stereotypes?"
"No, I meant, Muggles in general," he said. He pushed her off his lap when he saw her hand rise in the air. He didn't even offer to help her up, as he ran around to the other side of the table. "See, another stereotypes of low class Muggles, spousal abuse!"
"You deserve it," she said, still on the floor. He walked around the other side of the table, took both her outstretched hands in his, but instead of pulling her to stand up, he just pulled her. He pulled her along the floor to the doorway.
"This is another stereotype," he said. "The caveman picks his woman up by the hair and drags her across the floor. You're lucky I'm using your hands to drag you."
He let go off her hands after they crossed the threshold of the kitchen to the dining room. She stood up all on her own. She said, "I wonder how Monica's doing?"
"Why ruin our evening thinking about that?" he asked.
"I need to go over there, and check on her," she decided.
He came up to her so quickly, that she was shocked. He threw her over his shoulder and walked into the lounge. He said, "Stereotype, protecting my woman, not letting her come to harm." He threw her on the couch. He jumped up and landed on her.
"Oomph!" she uttered as his weight came down on her. He moved so he was lying beside her, with her back up against the couch. "Seriously, Draco, I need to check on her, mainly for my dad and my brothers' sakes. She was in a terrible state when we left."
He stroked her face and said, "I hope she's been driven insane. She's evil personified. She embodies all that's bad and evil in your life. I don't want you to go there. Anyway, you already have your little pajamas on, and how cute, little pink shorts and a white t-shirt, with a little pink bow on top." He fingered the bow on her t-shirt. "What are those little animals on it?" He looked at the design. "No, it's hearts. Adorable." He said it condescendingly, as he traced some of the little hearts with his fingers.
"Are you making fun of my sleeping attire? You ruined the only nightgown I brought," she reminded him.
"No, I think you ripped it on my gate, so don't blame me. Don't you own any sexy night things, like teddies, or negligees, or crotchless undies?"
"Stereotype, Malfoy! Those kinds of things are not comfortable to sleep in, and I find it stupid to put on something fancy just so the man can take them off you to have sex. You can take these off me just as easily," she said.
"Don't mind if I do," he said. He reached for the hem of her nightshirt, and started to pull it over her head. She laughed and tried to keep it in place.
She finally pushed him off the couch. He landed on his back and said, "Is it your goal to kill me today?"
"Not today," she said, leaning her head over the side of the couch to look at him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her so she was on top of him.
"Kiss me, Hermione Jean Granger. Kiss me hard and long and with passion."
"Still not very poetic," she said firmly, while still on top of his body. He reached up for a sofa pillow and put it under his head. He put one hand on her bottom, and the other hand moved up and down her back.
"Okay, you want a poem, here's your poem," Draco began:
"Here we are, bound together; here we are, joining lives. Here we are now, it's a new day, and here we are now, you and I."
"As we travel, this road together, as we sing, heart's lullabies, here we are now, once a memory, here we are now, you and I."
"As we journey through the stages and as we sample life's replies, as we map out each day's dawning, as we greet each night's goodbyes."
"As we carry, on with our burden's, greet life's sorrows with new tears cried, as we live now, our lives together, here we are now, you and I."
"Here we are now, bound together, here we are now, with love sublime, here we are now, a new beginning, here we are now, you and I."
She stared at him for a moment, and said, "You didn't just think that up, did you?"
"Those, my dear, our my wedding vows to you, and I wrote them many, many months ago," he said honestly. He brought his mouth to hers, kissed her sweetly, and said, "Poetic enough for you?"
She slipped off his body to lay down on the floor next to him she said, "A bit sappy, but okay I guess."
He looked at her quickly, and she was smiling. Draco said, with feigned disdain, "You wound me woman, wound me to the core. You have taken my poetic side and it's as if you've taken a dagger to it, cut it to shreds, and it's bleeding out, and it will soon wither away to nothingness. My artistic side, which was joined at the hip with my poetic side, is bleeding from the severing of their ties."
She frowned and said with fake disdain, "Well now, that's not very original."
He said, "I shall give you original!" He started to tickle her, and as she hit at his hands with hers, he sat up and straddled her body. He put both her hands in his left hand, and his right hand touched her face. As her laughter slowed, and finally ceased, he brought his mouth back down on hers. He rimmed her mouth with his tongue, before he took her mouth fully with his and pressed them closer together.
He rolled off her, stood up, and said, "I'm going to go get a quick shower, and then we're going to make love on the rug here, so don't bother getting up. I want you willing and waiting for me when I return."
She stayed on her back on the floor and yelled, "STEREOTYPE!"
He looked back at her and smiled. He was about to ascend the stairs when there was a knock on the door. It was Hermione's father. Draco could see him from the window. He went over and opened the door. Draco debated not answering, but when he saw Hermione walking through the lounge, heading toward the foyer, he decided that he must.
He opened the door, with Hermione standing right behind him.
"Dad?" Hermione asked, surprised to see him.
"Hermione, I need to know what you did to your stepmother today. She's quite undone. We've kept her sedated most of the day, but when she comes around, she doesn't make any sense, and she starts crying. Martin wants to take her to Hospital, but I want to know what you did to her first." He didn't seem angry, and he wasn't accusing.
"Do you really want to know?" Hermione asked.
"Yes, I do."
"I won't tell you, but I'll show you," she said. She took her father's hand and led him to the living room. She walked back to a surprised Draco and said, "Would you go get my wand?"
"I can't go through that again, Granger!" Draco said suddenly. "I can't see those things again!"
She put her hand on his arm and said, "I wouldn't ask you too, I'll show my father myself. It is easier that way. When I told Martin and Mike all my memories, and about my life, it took hours. Just go get my wand."
"Hermione," Draco said, looking at her father through the archway, and leading her closer to the stairs. "Do you want to drive your father into insanity, too? Don't do it."
"I have to, and he's stronger than that, I know he is. I'll go get my wand." She ran up the stairs, with Draco on her heels.
She walked back out of the bedroom, and he was waiting for her with a hesitant look on his face. "Please, don't." He didn't want her to go through it again, either.
As if sensing his apprehension, she said, "I'll be fine. We both will, so go get your shower." She stood on her tiptoes, kissed his cheek, and ran back downstairs.
After his shower, he cautiously went back into the lounge. Her father was holding her on the couch, rocking her back and forth, and he was crying. He was saying things like, "it's all my fault", and "I'm so sorry", and "I never knew". Draco sat down on the other end of the couch. He reached over and touched her shoulder, so she would know he was there.
She looked up, met his eyes, and he saw that she was not crying this time. She was the one comforting her father.
He understood another look in her eyes. She wanted to be alone with her dad. He stood back up and though it was not yet nine o'clock, he went to his bedroom. He pulled down the covers and threw his body on top of the mattress. He propped his upper body on top of four pillows, and waited.
She finally came upstairs. He had heard the front door shut, so he knew her father had finally left. She walked into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, near his thighs. She turned to him slightly, and then with her hand on his chest, she climbed over his body, to lie beside him. He gave her two of his pillows, and as they lay together, she said, "My dad has a lot of healing to do, as well."
"We all do," he said.
She sat up in the bed, against the headboard, and he joined her. She turned to look at him and she said, "My dad said that their marriage was rocky from the start. He said that she was the most beautiful girl in the village, but she was proud and vain. He said that he loved her despite that, but that he didn't think she ever really loved him. He said that she probably married him because of his money, and position in the community. After they had the boys, she desperately wanted a daughter. She never wanted sons, my dad said."
Draco held Hermione's hand as she continued her dad's story. "She finally became pregnant again, after Mike. She was sure it was a girl. Positive. That was the summer that my dad had to leave to go back to school for his surgical training, the summer he met my mum. You know that story, so I won't rehash it," she said.
"When my dad came back, he said he didn't care that she was pregnant, he was in true love for the first time in his life, with my mum, and he said he was determined to take my brothers away, and marry my mother. Therefore, when he came back, he told Monica about the affair, and that he didn't love her, and he was going to take the boys and try to find some happiness for them all. He told her he didn't care if it was selfish of him, because in the long run, it was for the best."
"They fought bitterly, and she asked how he could even think about leaving his pregnant wife. He told her child or not, he didn't want a loveless marriage. They continued to fight, and as he was running down the stairs, to leave, both boys holding his hands, she followed. They boys and he stood in the foyer and watched as the toe of her shoe caught on the runner on the stairs. She fell down the stairs and she suffered a miscarriage as the result. She was five months pregnant. It was a girl."
Draco did not even know how to respond to that, so he remained quiet. "She lost her baby, the girl she had always so desperately wanted, so he knew then that he couldn't leave her. He had to stay. He said he spent the rest of his life trying to make it up to her. He felt he owed her retribution. He said he ignored her anger and the pain she inflicted on their sons and on me, because of his guilt. He said that she especially hated me, because she felt I was the reason she lost her own baby, even though my dad didn't know about me until years later, she still blamed me, not my mother, not my dad, but me, for her losing her baby, and because I was the girl that she wanted. Twisted, huh?"
Draco finally said, "It's weird how their lives almost parallel our own. It makes me see how her grief ate at her soul, and her inability to forgive drove her mad. If you hadn't been able to forgive yourself, or me, you would have ended up just like her. It also makes me see that because your father had never forgiven himself, he in effect stopped living."
"Right, so that means you have to forgive yourself, because you don't want to end up like him," she concluded, her hands framing his face. "And I have to forgive myself and you, so I don't end up like her. You see that, don't you Draco?"
He did. He finally did.
