AN: Wow. I am overwhelmed, quite frankly, by the wonderful reactions to this little project of mine. Thanks people, I love you all!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, and I used a snippet of a poem by Robert Frost somewhere in here. You'll recognize it, I guarantee. And Rent's in here too. Thanks to Jonathan Larson (?) for that.
Dedicated to: The Euphoric Banana, who told me that this story made her cry. Once she told me that, I got up, ran to the computer and finished this chapter. :)
Chapter 15: Will I?
Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow
from this nightmare?
- Rent
Something appeared at the cell door, with just the slightest glimmerings of magic around its edges.
Food.
Draco walked over to the plate, head held high and back straight and proud. He glanced down at the dry bread and cheese, and sniffed aristocratically. "Tell me, don't you serve anything, at the very least, resembling edibles in this dump?"
"No, not really. The People here don't usually eat."
He left the plate lying at the door and sat down under the barred window, head tipped back, eyes closed, his snow-white lashes touching his cheekbones gently. The dying light of day flooded through, illuminating Draco... or what was left of him.
He had grown gaunt and pale... nothing was left of that the beautiful, aristocratic, milky complexion he once had. He was now pallid, with dirty blond hair that hung in tangles up to his shoulders and a skin-and-bones body. There was almost nothing left of the straight, strong and proud Draco Malfoy... almost nothing.
Yet in the way he carried himself, in the way he glared out at the dementors who came to subject him to daily torture... there was a faint glimmer of hope. Something fainter than the farthest star, something you were almost never sure actually existed.
But, as the dementors who stood outside his door observed, there were dark days. Days when he would fling himself against the stony wall, cutting himself on the jagged edges. Days when he would scream for help, pleading for unknown names to bring him out of his private hell. Days when he would sit in a corner and babble... whispering one word, over and over again... as if it would bring him salvation.
"Granger."
He soon stopped throwing wrathful tantrums, and seemed to go quiet... but as everyone knows, they all go quiet in the end.
***
"Roses? Harry, you shouldn't have!" Hermione clapped her hands in delight. Harry watched her mirth with eyes that held a light unfamiliar. She took the bouquet he held out, cradling the blood-red roses in her arms. "Thank you, they're so pretty!" Then she looked up at him with an eyebrow raised. "Wait a minute. Did I miss... anything?"
Harry laughed. "Yes, you did. It's our anniversary today." He pointed towards the calendar on the wall. Hermione glanced over at it. May 4. "Oh." she swallowed. Smiled. "Oh, yes."
May 4. The day Harry moved in. A year ago. The day she had married Draco. Four years ago.
Four years, broken in the middle. Four years, never to be whole again.
She laid the roses down on the mantelpiece. Four years ago, he had surprised me with tickets to Venice. Hermione looked up at Harry, who was leaning coolly against the doorway, coat still on, hat in hand. Now, someone completely different is surprising me with roses.
She forced a smile, for Harry's sake. "Happy anniversary, love! Why don't we go out for dinner tonight, to celebrate? Let's invite Ginny, why don't we? And Ron..." she moved towards the fireplace, two words repeating themselves over and over in her mind.
Completely different.
***
He woke with a start, and the silver bars of moonlight on the cold stone floor of his cell reminded him of something he would have rather forgotten.
"Happy anniversary, love." he whispered, wanting nothing more than to hear her whisper back to him. Something. Anything. Everything.
He crawled to the window; the window acknowledging his sanity, for only the most decent of prisoners had cells with windows. Those too far gone were afraid of daylight.
Draco looked out of the bars to an Unplottable, empty vacuum, and the frigid moonlight that spilled over it all. There were no stars, and the night was cloudy and grey. "On a night like this..." he whispered, his voice cracked and hoarse.
"On a night like this we would go out to dinner. Just the two of us." He pressed his palms, sore and scabbed, onto the stone wall. "She would want to invite..." he swallowed, as if saying the name was difficult... "Potter, but I would say no, and in the end she would always agree."
It was the most that Draco had ever said since he had been put in Azkaban, but his voice was growing weaker as the moonlight faded away.
"It's our anniversary, just the two of us. Alone. Happy. In love."
He slid down to the floor; eyes closed tight, having cried too many tears to summon any more.
"Hermione Granger. I love you."
***
"Hermione Granger. I love you."
She looked up from her ravioli, her smile stopped halfway to her lips. "What?" Harry reached across the table and took her hand in his. "I love you." he repeated, eyes bright.
Ron, who was beside Hermione and was in the process of getting severely drunk, seemed to sober up. "Really now, Harry." Ginny's hand went to her hair and began nervously twirling a bright red lock.
Harry stood up, and speechlessly, Hermione followed him outside, where the skies were grey and the night frigid cold.
He turned to her. "I love you." he told her for the third time that night. "Hermione nodded faintly. "Yes?"
She could not bring herself to say that she loved him too.
He frowned for a brief second, then his face smoothed again, looking like the Harry she had always known.
Finally, he put his gloved hand in his pocket. Hermione's eyes followed it quickly, one eyebrow quirking up. Gloves? Harry never wore gloves.
But all her doubts were quenched when he pulled out a box.
A sleek, jade green box. All too familiar in romantic movie scenes.
He handed it to her, and she flipped it open, revealing the outrageously expensive diamond ring.
"Will you marry me?" The words floated to her on a breath of night spring air. She looked up at him, the ring heavy in her hands and his words heavy in her heart.
She looked down. Thought of her future, which now stood on two paths.
Two paths diverged in a yellow wood. And sorry I could not travel both...
If she said no. Two years without the man she had married. A life without him, living in sin and pain and the burden of memoriam. A mediocre job in a mediocre department, mediocre pay, mediocre spendings. She would never marry again, she was sure of that. If not Draco, nobody else.
But what if she said yes?
A song from a Broadway musical ran through her mind, playing out every bittersweet note in the biting wind.
Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care? Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?
She looked up at Harry, standing there, hands in pockets, beautiful eyes fixed on her. She looked down at the ring, weighed it in her hands and weighed the idea of a life ahead of her. A life with Harry Potter.
She closed her eyes and took a step down that road.
"Yes, Harry."
He leaned closer to her. "What?" She opened her eyes and looked at him, holding out the ring. Her eyes were bright with tears. "Yes, I will marry you."
He smiled. Took her hand. She watched their hands, detached, as if she was watching a movie and the screenshot was of the man's hands removing the woman's ring... Draco's ring... and replacing it with his own.
And she began to cry. In that movie theater, in the dark, in her heart. Harry told himself that they were tears of joy as he took her in his arms and kissed her.
And the restaurant door burst open and people and noise and light spilled out onto the street. Ron headed the pack, now very drunk and his cheeks as red as his hair. He held up his champagne glass, loudly proclaiming a toast to the marriage of Harry Potter to Hermione Granger.
The people cheered, though Harry didn't know them, they most certainly knew him.
And all Hermione could think as Harry held her close and people congratulated her and she nodded back, was that Ron had said her name wrong.
"It's not Hermione Granger. It's Hermione Granger Malfoy."
She heard Harry whisper something in her ear as he waved jauntily to the crowd. "How does Hermione Potter sound?"
She smiled. "Very good."
***
Draco sat on his wooden bunk, the splinters digging into his thighs.
A faint trickle of water could be heard somewhere in the dark of Azkaban. Silence reigned, if not for the whimpers of the people left behind with their minds. He closed his eyes and began to sing, a hoarse whisper with the faintest traces of melody woven into its words.
"Without you, the stars gleam, the poets dream, the eagles fly..."
His voice cracked, faded to a silence louder than the shrillest scream.
And the night wind outside his window, carrying with it the laughter of some anniversary party far away, finished the song for the poor man.
The earth turns, the sun burns...
... but I die, without you.