In Death
"Please, Hermione, try to understand..."
She shook her head slowly, closing her eyes, willing herself to push back the tears that threatened to spill over. "I do. Understand, I mean. Don't worry, Draco, I understand." She extended a hand. "Friends, then?"
He nodded tentatively and grasped her small hand in his. "Friends."
When she left, he wondered if it was normal that she took it so well. He shook his head, ignoring his doubts. "She understands...she said so herself."
And he went on with his day and his week and his month, assuming that she was doing the same; not knowing that what she was doing was a far cry from "moving on."
And now, she sat on the windowsill in the astronomy tower, gazing out at the moon's reflection in the placid lake.
She shifted her gaze to the ground below her, well over fifty feet away. "Has it really come to this?" she whispered to no one. "It's over, isn't it?"
She looked to the doorway, praying that he'd come in and stop her. But she knew he wouldn't: he would only be getting his letter now.
She imagined him, eating turkey, or perhaps chicken, and washing it down with pumpkin juice. Then he'd receive the strange letter, and maybe he'd recognize the handwriting, but maybe not. And then he'd read the note. And maybe he'd understand it, but maybe he wouldn't.
More likley than not, he'd be bolting up the stairs now, willing her to hang on for a little longer, because he'd said that before to her.
Like the time at the Quidditch match, when everything started...
She had been sitting in the front row of the stands, watching the Gryffindor versus Slytherin game in earnest. It was when she stood to watch Harry dive for the Golden Snitch that Marcus Flint, who had been left back again, decided it would be amusing to watch the Mudblood fall sixty feet to her death. Ironically, she was about to do just that now.
Draco Malfoy had been the only one to see her fall. Acting on pure instinct (and the lust he had been feeling for quite some time now), he raced towards her and an impossibly steep angle, and grabbed her wrist in mid-fall. "Hang on, Hermione! Just hang on for a second! I'm going to pull you up, and I need you to work with me."
And she did. And they worked together quite often after that, in the classroom, with their studies, and eventually in bed, or while they "patrolled" the school after hours, as was required for Head duties.
And now, when she needed him most, he wasn't there to tell her to hang on.
She had read once, "It is when the ones you love seem to deserve your love and sympathy least that they need it most."
Perhaps that was correct--she had proposed to be "just friends", and she had ignored him after that. He hadn't understood...she had assured him over and over that she was fine, but she still avoided him at all costs, and ignored his attempts to get through to her.
But she needed his love. Desperately.
"Please come, Draco...please get here," she whispered again to an empty doorway.
He never did come.
But as she fell to what would have been her death, her eyes closed to the pain she knew was inevitable, she suddenly stopped falling and started flying. She opened her eyes slowly, and she saw that he had her wrist in his grip, tears in his eyes.
"Hang on for me, Mia...for us."