A/N: Okay, this is a reposted chapter; I forgot to put a disclaimer for the song lyrics near the end. It's not a songfic, don't worry about that.. it's just for effect. Anyway..

Disclaimer: Blink 182 owns "Adam's Song", Elton John owns "I Want Love", Foreigner owns "Cold as Ice", and Soft Cell and apparently Marilyn Manson both own the rights to "Tainted Love." I collect quotes like a packrat, so please notify me if I took something and didn't credit it.

Guilt

-Sick Realization-

That day has passed. The day after two broken men went to take revenge on their lost love has come.

It's another day with my love gone forever.

I haven't slept, quite obviously, because dreams follow things like this, and I don't think I'd be able to handle dreams of yesterday. Of her.. and of her death.

I can't bring myself to look at her. I can't. She's gone--gone before I could spirit her away from Harry and all this pain I have. I don't think I--I don't think I have the courage to stare into those flat, dead eyes that once held light so like starlight--

But only as she just confessed her heart to me. To us--to both of her murderers.

I suppose it would be called a crime of passion--but Harry is the one who held the gun, who shot the gun, who--who killed her.

She's still tied to the chair with the one loosened wrist from when I attempted to save her.

But I failed.

And she paid for my failure with her death.

The news owl arrives at my window. I laugh; I forgot it was Sunday. I open the window and the owl drops the newspaper to me. I stare at the front page with the sober irony.

"AURORS HARRY POTTER AND HERMIONE GRANGER TO BE MARRIED"

I suppose I shouldn't let Harry see this.

Harry looks up at me from his leisurely spot on my couch. He's slept there since about an hour after he.. you know. "What is it?" he asks. "Let me look."

"You don't want to see it," I say quite honestly. "I didn't want to, you don't."

He gets up and looks over my shoulder before I can cover it up. "Oh." I look up at him, and pity, but still anger, overcomes me. He looks haunted, like a man who's seen too much.

"Sorry." Lame, I know, but what else can I say? There's nothing for two men who've conspired to kill the one woman they both loved to say to one another. If you can think of something better, you're more tactful than I am.

"Why should you be sorry?" he says. "You didn't kill her." I suddenly get the feeling that Harry's drifting away from the here and now, reality. "You weren't the one holding the gun."

"Yet I still feel guilty," I say. "I still am guilty."

"You don't know guilt," he says accusingly, but not harshly--even so, it still cuts like a knife. "You don't know guilt."

"I know more than you'd think."

Harry looks away, nods. "Goodbye, Draco." His tone is strange; far away, distant. I'm suddenly gripped with a sense of doom.

....Don't walk away/Before you know how I feel....

"What do you mean, goodbye? You can't--you can't leave me here with her here."

He looks at me, shakes his head. "I'll be in the bedroom. 'Bye."

I finally resign to misunderstanding. "Goodbye, I guess." Harry leaves the room absently, his steps seeming almost to be floating.

"Hell," I say to myself. I go to lay on the couch, then my body is gripped with sleep. Suddenly I'm exactly where I don't want to be.

My twisted, cold subconscious.

Dreams, dreams of starlight and vials and a dull sun shining over all of it; a desolate, cold

landscape with starlight pure, like innocence.

The voice of my love..

"I was immature and selfish.. didn't know what love was... wanted it so bad.. I've wronged you two so much."

A half gasp of pain, then an angry voice. "Do you think you deserve to live?"

Answered with a shaky, but fully honest answer. "No."

Blood, then sound shattering through my senses.

I see two Hermiones, the one I desired and the one I loved, in front of me. They both speak at once; it echoes.

"Can't I ask a former classmate for a favor?.. I didn't mean any of it... So, Draco, have you made a decision?..."

"No. No. No. No." Starlight slowly builds up until it blinds me, and the echoes grow fainter as both Hermiones become one and she glides away from me with a look so torn on her face. I reach out for her.. but she's gone.

As my eyes snap open--

....Don't look away/Before you hear what I say....

--That's what I remember. She's gone.

Irrationally, I wonder if Harry has left me here. That leads me to the train of thought of how strangely Harry is acting, and as if some strange manuscript was obscure to me, I receive the information with sudden clarity.

In a panic I get my sluggish body up to track with my mind and quickly arrive in the bedroom.

Harry is lying on my bed with a slightly intoxicated look on his face. He looks at my partially panicked expression and laughs. "What's wrong, Draco? Don't worry about nothin'.. everything's all right, yeah, everything's fine.."

I groan as a bottle of pain medicine on my nightstand catches my eye. I pick up the bottle and shake it.

It's completely empty.

"Hell," I say. "Hell."

Harry laughs. "Yeah, painkillers all right. Killed my pain.. my thoughts; now I have only about.. hmm, a couple minutes, hopefully."

"Harry, stop joking around," I snap. "Did you--have you taken all these pills?"

After taking a short look, he says, "Yeah. That's about right."

"You'll die!" I say, on the verge of hysteria. Of course, I knew it, I knew it, voices scream in my mind.

He laughs, then looks at me soberly. "That, Draco my friend, is the point of suicide, isn't it?" He nods to me, lays back a little with one arm propping him off the pillow and the other across his stomach.

Anger hits me harder than before. "You fucking coward," I seethe. "You're doubling the death rate here, you fucking moron, I'll be left with two dead bodies in my flat because you're just a fucking coward!" I scream that last word, and I'm then surprised by my own voice.

He seems about to argue, but looks like he's just had a clear realization. I pause and watch him as I realize he was about to vomit, which he now does.

"Great. Fucking great."

------------------------------

Harry's been puking his guts out--in my bathroom, of course--for about fifteen minutes now in intervals. He bitterly rants to me in between.

I perch on the edge of the tub, staring down at the tiles. The harsh electric light hurts my eyes, which are already stinging with tears of frustration and desperation.

"We talked all the time, especially in bed. We'd just talk, and she seemed so sincere and honest, I--dammit, I just loved her so damn much and I killed her, I shot her." The sick look I'm now used to seeing overcomes his face, and I look away and wince as he vomits again. Surprises me, there must have been more pills in there than I had thought. He'd have puked up all of them by now if it had been half-full.

He recovers, looks at me, and I can tell we're nearing the end. His breathing's rougher and he's becoming a pale shade that I can only call deathly. "How does it feel?" I ask gently.

"How does it feel," he repeats, shaking his head. "How does it feel? It feels like guilt. Like betrayal. Like.. well, like you'd figure suicide would feel like, Draco. It hurts, but not half as bad as life."

"Maybe life would have been better if I had gone with her and killed you."

"Maybe," Harry says bitterly. "Either way I'm the dead one."

He pukes one more time and suddenly collapses down, falling onto the tiles. His head, luckily--or unluckily, I guess you could argue in his case--hits carpet. I take this opportunity to flush the toilet. This scene's sick enough as it is; those investigating will appreciate the action.

"Is it gettin' worse?"

He's fading fast, so I kneel beside him. "You're an Auror, you're dignified, so you've the right to them; what are your last words?"

"I lived my life the way everyone said I should but I still ended up here, it still ended this way. I lived for her, I loved her, I would've died for her.. but I loved the innocent one, the one I.. that's the one I want to remember, not the siren; the one I talked to." He laughs weakly. "Good luck, Draco.."

"Good luck to you, Harry," I say softly.

....Don't turn your ear/Because I have something to say to you....

"I... I forgive you."

As I leave the room, I feel him die. I pause, but continue on in respect.

As I sit on my bed in a silent flat, I realize I am in a house with a dead former ally against my love, who also sits dead in the living room.

It strikes me funny that I begin this strange week in a silent flat, and ended it in a silent flat--but in a silent flat splattered with blood.

....Taste my life, taste my tears....

I flip on a Muggle radio I've become fond of and listen. I hear bits and pieces as I crawl over to the knife laying on the ground, then crawl back onto the bed.

I never thought I'd die alone/I laughed the loudest who'd've known..

I can't love shot full of holes/Can't feel nothin'/I just feel cold..

You're as cold as ice/And willin' to sacrifice your love..

I love you though you hurt me so..

....Taste my love, taste my blood.

Blood as red as the evening dress she wore that low noon dripping off my wrists, more

bitter but twice as sweet...