Isn't It Ironic?
Author's note: Hey guys! Another one of those I'm-not-used-to-writing-this-sort-of-fic fics. This is the only time it's ever going to happen, I promise you! This is Draco/ Hermione, but it's an incredibly rare occurrence in my writing, and they don't even end up together, so…well, just read it. And, if you would be so kind, please review! For those of you who are waiting for a new chapter in either a Fairy Tale in Pop Music or The Search for Potter, I'm working on it, but it could be a while yet. Hope you like this!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter was created by J.K. Rowling, a very smart woman in writing, if not politically. I'm not trying to make any money off of this, so, if you're a Warner Bros. employee, bugger off. My Mum has the sass to kick your…erm, that thing you sit on, in court!!! Thank you!
An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day.
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay,
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late,
Isn't it ironic…don't you think?
Draco Malfoy knew that in all of his thirty-five years, there was one person he would never forget. She would always the most important one to him. How had all of this happened? How on earth did he, of all people, become a muggle?
Draco massaged his forehead thoughtfully, and took a sip of his coffee. It had been a very gradual process, he knew that, but yes, there had been something to finally initiate the action. That slap really did do Draco some good. No, he would never forget the day that Hermione Granger had smacked him across the face, telling him that he was a foul, evil thing. He was, at that point in time. After that, he started to entertain more thoughts of why that would be, and why he couldn't be nice to a "mudblood" such as herself.
She had knocked him out of his box and back to his senses, if he had ever really used them before. How ironic it was for the former Death-Eater-to-be and muggle-hater to suddenly convert and drop totally and completely out of the picture, Draco knew.
He had seen the newspapers after that confrontation when he was only twenty. They all said something different, and yet none of them were even close. Some thought that either the Dark Lord or Lucius Malfoy had killed him (which Draco reminded himself, in respects to his father, probably would have happened), and others blatantly declared that he had become an agent for one party of wizards or the other. Yes, they were all wrong. His old life and wand were long gone, and if he had held onto only one part of his former life, it would have been her.
Hermione.
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
And who would have thought, it figures.
Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye.
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight,
And as his plane crashed down he thought,
"Well isn't this nice."
And isn't it ironic…don't you think?
After all of those years, calling her a mudblood and trying to hate her with all of his energy, he knew that he never really had. She was the one who started him thinking about the way things could be, instead of how they were. Of course, Draco was never outright stupid. He decided to keep acting the way he always did: snobby, insulting, and (in his own opinion) like the worst prat ever to crawl the earth.
But his father had started to notice Draco's subtle changes nonetheless. He started to give Draco many more scrutinizing and dark looks, difficult questions about his "beliefs", and he even began to test him in certain ways. Draco knew what his father was doing and always answered the framed questions carefully and correctly; he knew the doctrine of a pureblood Slytherin well enough to do so. But his mind, now that it had been opened, was much different than before. Everyday, it seemed, those other feelings and bits of new knowledge grew and snowballed, tests that his father posed were harder to perform, and once, just once, he flawed in his record.
Lucius was asking, once again (it seemed he asked this question at least once a week) why Draco wasn't as good as "that mudblood Granger girl". Well, he had mistakenly answered, "because, Hermione is much smarter than I am." Lucius turned to face him with a sharp look of triumph in his cold, gray eyes.
Every time he had mentioned her before that, it was "because Dumbledore is just a mudblood-lover" or "the teachers favor her cause she's a brownnoser," or some such statement. But now he had favored her in his response, and had even called her by her first name, a name he only used for her in his head.
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
And who would have thought, it figures.
Only in his last year in Hogwarts did Draco start to stand up for what he believed. Lucius sent him a letter, one dark, dreary day, telling him that if he killed Hermione Granger, the Dark Lord would give him the privilege of becoming one of his closest supporters: a Death Eater. This was something that Draco could never do, and he tried to do it all the same. He knew that it was either Hermione or him, and he wanted to live.
Down in that corridor, late at night, cornering her, his wand trembling as he pointed it at her chest, the words of an Unforgivable Curse pounding in his head. He had to do it, and yet, he couldn't. She had looked at him so helplessly, her beautiful brown hair askew from trying to run from him. Two heavy volumes were in her hands, and her usually neat robes were crooked; there was such a look in her soft brown eyes that pleaded to him like Snow White to the hunter in the woods. She called to him, please! Please, let me go! And he did. He released her and gave back her wand, telling her never to come near him again.
Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right,
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong, and everything blows up
In your face.
In the three-year period after that, times were torturous. Lucius would beat Draco; call him a traitor, a coward, and a lover of mudbloods. He said that Draco wasn't worthy to be a pureblood wizard: that last statement was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was then, at twenty, when Draco approached Lucius.
"You know what, Father? You're right. I'm not worthy to be a pureblood wizard. I don't think I'll be a wizard at all, in fact," he spat. Then, with a strange sort of pleasure, he took out his wand and snapped it in half. Lucius stared back at Draco in shock. That gave him the time to escape before his father could kill him.
Ever since then, he had been building his life as a regular, lonely, muggle man, who worked steadily, and struggled along with everyone else in the world. He was happier than he had ever been before, though. To keep from being spotted, he dyed his hair black, wore a conservative suit, and constantly pored over difficult F.B.I paperwork.
But he often thought of Hermione now, and he was starting to believe that, perhaps, if they had never been enemies, if they had just been regular classmates together, maybe they could have…but soft, who was this?
She wandered casually into the small bistro with a smile on her face and her long brown hair hanging down her back. She sat at a table for four and ordered herself a coffee. Draco held his breath. It was her. Hermione Granger, his savior, was here. How ironic, that right now, thinking of his star-crossed love for her, had led to…this? He got up, and hesitating for only a moment, approached the table where she was sitting.
"Hello, Miss, erm, well, may I speak to you?" he asked weakly.
"Certainly," she replied, seemingly a little surprised. "Sit down, introduce yourself. My name's Hermione Granger," she said in her naturally haughty voice, holding out a hand for him to shake. Ah, yes. That hand, Draco thought, remembering a burning sensation on his cheek when she had slapped him.
"Have we met before? You look so familiar," Hermione said, searching his face. He shook her hand with his rather shaky one, and said, "Yes, we have. But the conditions were much more unpleasant than this. M-my name is, well, I don't really think it matters."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. "Tell me who you are," she demanded, keeping hold of his hand, and obviously reaching for her wand with her other.
"I don't think you want to do that, Granger," he whispered to her, smirking slightly. "This is a muggle restaurant."
Her eyes widened, and she dropped his hand. "You're a wizard?" she mouthed, taken aback.
"I once was. Not anymore," he said. He might as well tell her. It would make things a lot easier if he did. "Draco Malfoy. I couldn't help but recognize you when you came in, please forgive my terrible manners, Hermione. I…" but Hermione interrupted him.
"Malfoy?" she breathed, backing up in her chair slightly, as though still under his warning to stay away. "I had no idea it was you. Your hair, your clothes, your civility: why are you in a muggle restaurant? This is the first time anyone has seen you in the past fifteen years, Malfoy! What happened? Everyone thought you had died, they thought-" she stopped to catch her breath, but continued quickly, her brow knitted in concern.
"Where did you go? Who are you working for? I promise you I am a capable witch, and I can perform memory charms very well, so…" she stopped, and was about to reach into her robes when Draco grabbed her wrist, and took her hand in his own.
"I have never doubted your capability as a witch, Hermione, but this is completely unnecessary. I'll explain everything, I've changed, and you were the person who saved me from myself and my father's ambitions for me. I've taken special pains to ensure that no witch or wizard sees me. I am a muggle now."
He explained everything to her, all that had happened and why it did, except, that is, for his love. He did not share those feelings. She listened patiently and intently, her delicate face reacted perfectly to every emotion he'd ever felt throughout his whole transition. She truly understood him now, he knew that, and he also felt as though the world had been lifted off of his shoulders. Being seen truly by Hermione made him a free and content man. But if only…
"I had no idea, Draco," she said, clasping his hands tightly, across the table. "I have to, I need to apologize for everything, for Harry, and Ron and I. We treated you terribly. Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, tears glittering in her dark, innocent eyes. Draco stopped her, and wiped the tears away with a handkerchief from his pocket.
"Hermione, please don't apologize. You don't know how much you helped me. Why, if it wasn't for you, I'd probably be a miserable Death Eater." He leaned closer to her, dabbing her damp face tenderly. He wanted to kiss her so badly.
Suddenly, the door of the bistro opened, and a tall and lanky, red-haired man walked in, a little girl sitting on his shoulders, and two slightly older boys playing about his feet. And then he knew, as they came toward the table. He leaned back away from Hermione, giving her the handkerchief, and waited for her to introduce him to her husband.
A traffic jam when you're already late,
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break,
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.
It's meeting the man of my dreams,
And then meeting his beautiful wife.
And isn't it ironic…don't you think?
A little too ironic…and yeah, I really do think…
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
And who would have thought, it figures.
"Oh, Ron," she said, getting up to give him a hug. Ron set the little girl down and said, "Molly, you go play with Harry and Cedric. Mum and Dad need to talk, alright?"
"Okay," she replied, and ran off to join her brothers, who were pretending to wizard duel.
"What's going on, "Mione?" he asked, looking from his wife to Draco.
"It's Draco Malfoy, Ron. He has just told me the most amazing story you'll ever hear…"
Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you,
And life has a funny way of helping you out,
Helping you out…