"How much do you hate your life, Granger?"
"A lot."
She never expected to be here. And she certainly never expected him to be the one to find her moments before she sunk her lungs into the cold release of the Black Lake.
Hermione had imagined her suicide transpiring in several modes, but the promise of a slow and sweet demise by suffocating, drowning, sinking like a feather into the muggy water of the Black Lake seemed most appealing to her recently debauched mind. It would be oddly purifying, like the lake water would simultaneously decompose yet baptize her skin, purge her body of the trauma, the pain, the memories, the fucking aching that resided in her brain.
Ultimately, she chose the Black Lake because while submerged under the water, there is absolute stillness. Void of noise. No birds chirping, no trees rustling, no distant whistling from steam engines, and certainly no pestering intones of the things Hermione was undeniably dreading to hear this eighth year from her peers—oh, we're back! Everything is normal! Things will be so much better now that You-Know-Who is dead!
Blah, blah, blah. All fucking bullshit. All lies and tales and fabrications about the newfound reality of their traumatized lives.
For fuck's sake, they had all survived a war. Who the fuck outlasts something like that and comes out mentally unscathed? Who comes out as the same person they once were?
Certainly not Hermione. She'd racked her brain since the day Voldemort died, combing for answers, searching for explanations for her weighty, almost inevitably crippling involvement in the war. Why had she put herself through hell and back?
It'd been for Harry, of course. For Ron, Ginny, Luna, Neville. For the people she loved. For the cause. For the good of the world.
But what had she gotten out of it other than reporters for the Daily Prophet practically stalking her and her friends whilst she attempted to undergo a normal summer?
Trauma. A brain pigmented by the images of scarlet blood staining the Great Hall and lifeless bodies scattered across the castle grounds, representative of the faulty mirages of a crusade she finds herself all too disenfranchised with now, too marginalized from the message preached so brilliantly by those she fought alongside.
Now, she can't stand any of them.
They're all fucking idiots for believing that everything is fine.
Because while they're probably sleeping soundly in their four-post beds, their crimson or emerald or indigo or gold sheets swathing their bodies in the warmth and promise of another day alive, Hermione is knee deep in the Black Lake, contemplating—no, affirming her imminent expiry date.
That is, until she is interrupted. She's fucking interrupted by someone stalking her.
Well, maybe he's not stalking, but he sure as fuck isn't parading around and willfully revealing himself.
His voice is hoarse like the night as he asks yet another question, much to Hermione's infuriation.
"Why is that?" His tone is sardonic and cynical, like he knows the very reverberation of his question will edge Hermione to her wits end.
Hermione huffs indignantly, her mind whirring at the nerve he has to disrupt her moment.
"I'd rather not have to explain myself to you," she snaps at him, still facing forward to take in the magnificence of the dusk, the splendor and luster of the full moon, and the silhouette of the castle as they all beat against the dark sky, chockfull of bullshit phenomena and phony gateways—gold and tall and pristine, just like her muggle friends used to explain to her—leading to—what—a fulfilled and saved life? An everlasting existence defined by one's orthodoxy and capacity to perform charitable deeds?
Hermione fucking despises divination, despises religion, despises all of that fabricated bullshit. It makes no sense to her. What the fuck does a star have to say about her? About him? About anyone in the world? And what the fuck does a man, woman, ethereal being—whatever the fuck this 'God' even is—have to do with her being offered an afterlife? She doesn't need an afterlife. Not when the one she is living in right now is wringing her dry of any capable emotions.
What the fuck could she contribute while in Heaven? In Hell? Wherever the fuck she was going after this life, if anywhere?
Maybe she's just headed straight for the ground. Body below dirt, nothing more.
Maybe, while under water, her body would decay so violently in the Black Lake that she'd be tethered to the abyss, her afterlife consisting of intaking water in her lungs and slowly decomposing over time.
She'd rather just die and see black for the rest of her life.
Not even black, but nothingness. Because the color black is still something—it's a color. What Hermione wishes for is nothingness.
It just so happens that they are rather similar.
Hermione feels the the water ripple on the back of her bare calves, and it becomes obvious that he has stepped into the water to meet her because every inch of the lake is perfectly still otherwise. The water sloshes against his determined strides, and Hermione inhales deeply with her chest and bunches her hands into tight fists. The color of her skin turns a deep red, dwelling over the first stage of discoloration—the white hue that usually appears with such pressure. Her body forgoes that tint as the blood gushes to her hand, as if to say, fuck you for making me work overtime, Hermione. It's exhausting serving you as your blood.
Yeah, she responds in her head, everything is fucking exhausting.
Countless thoughts and reprovals spin and churn through her mind as she senses his menacing presence behind her. He's only a foot away, and yet he clouds her ability to concentrate and execute her final act as the fucking Golden Girl.
A part of her, lodged deep within her subconscious, itching to break past the prude barriers she constructed years ago, wishes that she could take him down with her. Grab him by the neckline of his shirt and drag him under the water—wait, what is he wearing? Do I dare turn around and sneak a peek before I won't even be able to use my eyes?
Fuck no. Just imagine him in his robes.
That's what she does.
"I hate mine a lot too," he says.
There it is—the big reveal. It's like stars colliding to create a new, brighter bundle of light. It's rare and atypical, but when it happens it shakes the galaxy to its core.
Where are those reporters now? Someone should be here to write an exposé on this moment. Daily Prophet numbers would fucking soar with a headline detailing this extraordinary and erratic scene, recounting this unlikely interaction with verbose words and clickbait phrases: Golden Girl and Death Eater Engage in Clandestine Meetings at the Black Lake in the Apex of the Night!
Hermione swears she hears the click of a camera in her head—one of those ancient cameras, though. The ones that emit an earsplitting clack and a brilliant lumos, blinding her for just a moment and then allotting time for her eyes to readjust again. If she just counts to three and flutters her eyes open, the ricochet of the light eventually subsides, her pupils contract, and she's back in the lackluster and unfulfilling would she knows a little too well.
Or maybe it's just the moon sparkling in the air for just a second, but that second says it all. Slam the brakes! it advises, and she almost does. She almost forgets why she's even here. And then it reminds her, You're the Golden Girl! The one who saved them all! The brightest witch of her age!
And then all of a sudden, like the flick of a switch, she's back to wanting to fucking kill herself.
How does she even respond to his comment? This is meant to be her moment. Her time to shine. Her stage. She's supposed to be Hamlet—no, fuck, that's not the right character. Come on, Hermione—think. Who commits suicide in that play again?
She doesn't even bother searching her mind. It'll all be numb in a few minutes anyway when she succumbs to the pressure of the water and the unrelenting density of everyone's perception of her. It'll drown her in the words she hates more than anything—'brightest witch,' oh fuck off you absolute cunts. If only they'd known how depressed she was during those years, how emotionally exhausted and physically tattered she'd become. How much she despised the people around her.
Would they still be in awe of her if they knew she was two feet deep in water, yearning to be six feet deep in the ground later?
"Yeah." Her response is curt and ambiguous. "Glad we finally have something in common."
He snickers, the sounds snaking into the cavity of her ears like an ominous breeze.
"We've had plenty in common before that," he retorts, and she's right back to hating his guts more than anything else in the entire world.
"Indulge me."
Indulge me in the last few moments of my life. I'd love to have a laugh. One more hearty laugh.
"Well, we're both rich."
Ha.
"No, you're rich."
"Hm. My mistake."
Fucking bastard.
"Well, at least neither of us are fucking mudbloods."
You motherfucker.
"My left arm begs to differ."
He chortles, and her blood boils at the sound, like each reverberation of his laugh turns the heat dial of her body temperature up more and more, conjuring taller and hotter flames in her insides. The water around her calves simmers as her skin emanates that heat, stewing the lake with her anger.
"You have a shit humor," he mutters, and then he's treading even deeper into the water and flagging to her left, and now Hermione is even more pissed off at the impetuous blonde because he's effectively blocking her path, deterring her purpose for being here, and delaying the nothingness which she craves.
An audience might be interesting, though. Hamlet had one.
Fuck… It's on the tip of my tongue… the name… the name of the fucker who offed himself, maybe herself, in that god damn play—
Ophelia.
She's Ophelia.
She's Ophelia, knee deep in the water, ready to kill herself.
Figures. She should've plagiarized Shakespeare and sat on the branch of one of those trees back on shore, and then let it splinter under her body and allow her to tumble to her death and be ferried across the lake like a heavy log.
A missed opportunity.
But she digresses.
"Who needs humor when everything is fucking pointless?"
"That's the best time for humor, in my opinion."
Hm. He has a point.
"It's called dark humor, Granger. You should try indulging sometime. It tickles the brain in tantalizing ways."
Sometime? You mean sometime within the next minute or two? Because that's all the fucking time I have left.
"I'll have to pass on that enticing offer."
He snickers at her, digging his tongue into the inside of his cheek and shoving his hands into the pockets of his black slacks—slacks that are now soaking in the water. And he doesn't even seem to care.
Hermione had left her shoes on the shore because she couldn't even fathom wadding into the water with socks and shoes on.
Draco Malfoy wears his without complaint.
Fucking psychopath.
"That's classic. Always saying no because—what—you're a prude? Scared of letting that mind run free with dark and nefarious thoughts?"
If only he fucking knew. She's not scared of anything. She's about to stamp herself with an expiration label, and it's going to display today's date—09/03/98—and it's going to stick right on her forehead so that when a student, a professor—whoever the fuck stumbles upon her body—finds her cold, clammy, lifeless corpse in a few days, they'll know that she had expired, that her life had elapsed, and now she is dead.
"I'm not scared of anything," she argues, cracking the knuckle of her right index finger by pressing her thumb down on the metacarpal.
"Guess not. I suppose that's why you're knee deep in water in the middle of the night. The sorting hat clearly didn't falter when he put you in Gryffindor—"
"Do you have a point to being here, Malfoy? Can I fucking help you? Because I'm a little preoccupied with something right now, and I'd prefer to be alone for it."
"You like to be alone, huh?"
Hermione twists her head to the left, meeting his glistening eyes. She swears that the silver augment of those irises twinkle in the moonlight, yet their intentions are undoubtedly corrupted and sick. They flicker with the promise of something dark, as bright as the color actually is.
"That's not what you said a moment ago in that pretty little head of yours."
Fucking Legilimens bastard. He's that fucking skilled at entering people's mind that I can barely feel him slither his way into it? When the fuck did he even develop that skill? Motherfucker...
"You're reading my mind?"
"It's an interesting place. Tell me, Ophelia, do you plan on allowing Ms. Granger to plagiarize your iconic death scene?"
Hermione inhales a vexed breath through her nostrils, spoiled with the air he's already contaminated. It feels like chemicals colliding with the inside of her nostrils.
"It's my own spin on it. I'm merely paraphrasing the unwritten scene."
"Hm. Good. Shakespeare is a boring twat. He makes me want to gouge my eyes out."
Hermione fastens her eyes shut, using every muscle in her body to counter the festering anger she feels. The anger he is purposely trying to release.
"He's a literary genius."
"Sure. For fucking prudes."
"What is so prudish about Shakespeare?"
"He's fucking predictable."
"Predictable?" Hermione shrieks, twisting her head to face him. The smirk on his face reveals it all: Draco has successfully cracked her, chipped away at her skin piece by piece with his taunts and heckles until he's hit a nerve—she doesn't know which nerve, specifically—but he's hit it, sliced it, ripped it from its bundle, and now she's fucking fuming because, what, he doesn't like Shakespeare? Could she be more pretentious and annoying?
Draco snorts with victory. "There she is."
Hermione scoffs, rolling her eyes and forcing herself to look out at again the vast stretch of the lake.
"I don't think you actually want to die."
"I do," she responds, conspicuously nodding her head. "Trust me. I do."
"So you choose…" Draco screws his head side to side, glancing at the location with a raised eyebrow, "The Black Lake as your mode of demise?"
"Is that so difficult to believe?"
"A little, in fact. I'd pegged you for something more exciting. Falling on your own sword... like that cunt Dido—what a fucking dumb bitch she was for believing in love. Launching yourself off of a tower... like that officer from Les Misérables—don't even get me started on that fucking arsehole. Maybe even just casting a bunch of curses against walls in the hopes that it reverberates and hits you square in the chest, stopping that sweet little heart of yours from beating anymore." He shrugs and smirks. "I don't know. Something more exciting and poetic like that."
How the fuck does he know all of those literary references?
"You're teasing me. When have I ever been exciting to you?"
"You've always been exciting to me, Granger," he whispers, and then he's sidestepping to the right and placing himself behind her back, setting his chin on her left shoulder, and wrapping his arms around her cold body from behind. Hermione lifts her arms and holds them in the air as Draco sets his chest taut against her back. She can feel the bends and curves of his body against hers—bony yet sturdy, like his emaciated figure has been revitalized by something deeper and more sinister than simply muscle.
Her breath catches in her throat as his mouth hovers inches from her ear.
"There's a darkness to you that I have been desperate to uncover."
Hermione exhales out of her nose, her arms dropping to her sides and resting flaccidly atop his. "I don't have darkness within me. I have nothing within me."
There's a difference.
Draco snorts and tilts his head to the side, and now Hermione can really sense his breath upon her. Little pebbles configure over her arms and neck as his exhale amalgamates with the wind and crashes against her bare skin, pestering and begging the temptations within her to edge out.
"No," he rasps, "there's a darkness inside you. You are someone who is pissed at everyone and everything in her sorry life. Someone who wants desperately to let her rage out. Yell. Scream. Rebel. Do something dangerous and clandestine and dark. And I mean fucking dark."
She hates to admit to herself how tempting that sounds—not only the things which Draco says, but the fact that he's the one uttering these words.
Captivates is an understatement—he seduces her, bewitches her soul, bends her desires in his direction. She can feel her gut tow towards him like it's trying to consort with his suggestions.
"I can help bring that side out of you," he continues.
Her body flutters like the ripples of water around her, spreading out like cobwebs.
"Or—" and he suddenly pulls away from her and steps back, completely disrupting the water around them and leaving Hermione in a state of desperation for his hands again— "you can just off yourself in the trivial and uninspiring way you had planned."
Hermione spins in the water and watches as Draco treads backwards towards the shore, the smirk on his face already denoting his victory over her.
"So fucking predictable, Granger."
She has no shame stopping him. He's unlocked Pandora's box, and evil spreads within Hermione like a Gemino Curse. And he's the only one she wants to explore it with.
"Malfoy…"
Draco stops walking. "Yes, Ophelia?"
She inches forward to meet him, her eyes lifting to connect with his in the gloomy luster.
"What do you have in mind?"
Draco lifts the side of his cherry lips in a devilish grin and slowly leans his head into the crook of her neck, whispering into her ear, "The question is, what do you have in mind?"
She thought she wanted to kill herself, but perhaps that could wait. Perhaps, she could explore this side, this inner demon, this fucking sweltering presence that warps and coils its way around her nerves, her muscles, and her bones first.
And if she stills finds no pleasure in life, no excitement, no ounce of thrill that was once promised to her, then she'll off herself. She could hold this façade for a little longer.
The sentence blurts right out of her mouth, but she means every word of it:
"I want to kill Ron Weasley."