Disclaimer: For fortieth goddamn time, I'm not JK Rowling or her possessions. Christ!

Rating: R

Characters: Draco/Hermione

Category: Angst; Romance

Summary: Glimpses of Draco and Hermione's life together, where they are and will be after Hogwarts, and the decisions they had to make and deal with after they fell in love. The Glimpses are in random order and won't be in consecutive order of the events. It'll be random.

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Glimpse 2: The Heart She Never Had

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It was dark. Definitely not pitch black—some torches were lit, but it was pretty easy for her to trip over her feet or the feet of a random chair. She sighed and muttered lumos under her breath, instant relief settling over her when her wand lit up like a flashlight at the best possible moment. She covered it with her hand, trying not to wake anybody up and wondered if she should have even come.

It wasn't like he'd want to see her. He hated her...and for a while, she hated him. She supposed it was both their faults; after all, they never came running back to one another. Until it was too late, that is.

"Shit!"

She aided the pain in her finger by bringing it instinctively to her mouth. The faint, coppery taste of blood reached her taste buds and she looked down, wondering exactly by what—or in a strange case whom—she was assaulted by. It was a syringe, oddly sitting with a couple of others, pointing outward. Seeing it—the syringe full of faint yellow liquid—made her forget all about her injured finger and sigh a very heavy, painful sigh.

God, it wasn't supposed to happen this way. And she knew she had no right to say that. By all means, anyone had the right to say that he was here because of her. Why she'd done it was a different story...but it was her fault. She was a traitor—a fucking liar without remorse and, strangely enough, now remorse was getting to her. Uncontrollable guilt haunting her...and it was probably because he had ended in this place.

This horrid place. Because of her.

Most people couldn't—wouldn't—and probably shouldn't ever bear such a burden. It was practically worse than killing someone with bare hands and having the blood stain their clothes.

She passed a small desk—probably a nurse's desk—and her wand just happened to light up a small sign nailed to the side of the desk, brown and rusty but distinguishable with its meaning and words. Haunting—and there, telling her that she really was there and it wasn't one of a thousand nightmares she'd had about this place with him in it.

Only in her nightmares, he'd been tortured...painfully. Different syringes with different drugs and potions, causing him to go crazy, off the walls, more than he already had. His pained eyes would haunt her day after day, though she'd shut down that part of her emotional track. But at night, the scared, harmless, innocent eyes would come back and she'd be force to tell herself that she was becoming fucking crazy: the torture never even happened!

But how did she know that?

This was her first time—ever—visiting him here. She'd seen snapshots, pictures taken by friends whom had wished to remain anonymous; they didn't even want to really keep in touch with her anymore. And they knew it was because of her, they were forced to go visit him in the white, uninviting rooms; but they still sent her pictures. Maybe it was because they wanted to remain civil people, seeing as how she really hadn't done anything to them...yet. But she really knew what it was about. They wanted her to see what she had done; wallow in the guilt and remorse and do something—anything—that could make it right and ease their pain about what happened to him.

She knew the fact that it had been eating her inside out ever since she'd received the Muggle—not even moving—pictures of that scared, victim-like face wouldn't matter. It would matter if she formulated a plan to break him out of there, if she straightened out all of their lives and returned him to them and made their sun shine a little bit brighter. And after that heroic act was done, they'd want her to leave—disappear off the face of the Earth because they were disgusted with her and everything she'd worked for.

And it killed her four thousand times a night, but she came anyway. She came even though the people she used to consider her friends would have no qualms about accidentally killing her and blaming it on mother nature. Mostly, she came because those people weren't there—well, perhaps one was. And she knew she wasn't allowed there—she'd be jailed on the spot. But she snuck in, because she knew that before it all went down, before she helped hell overpower the sun, she had to see him at least once. Talk to him at least once. Hold his hand at least once—even if he was repulsed by the thought of having her in the same building as him.

The sign on the side of the desk burned itself on her brain even though she had passed it minutes ago. She was now turning down various aisles, trying to identify the colorful peacock quill by his bed that she'd seen in the pictures. That was the only way she knew she'd find him. If his hair was indistinguishable, and his features were hidden by the starched pillow, she'd see the peacock quill by his clone bed on the wooden night table which was given to him by their friends. No—his friends.

Don't litter. Charm your trash into the orange bins at the end of the hall. Keep St. Mungo's clean.

She willed herself to ignore the lump in her throat and reasoned within herself that she could do this. She'd had the stones to fucking put him here—imprison him in a damn mental hospital. The least she could do was visit him, maybe talk to him—just see him under the cloak of darkness.

She was sure the staff would be milling about, checking on their patients every thirty seconds, but that wasn't the case. She'd noticed one orderly at the end of the hall—by one of the orange trash bins—who seemed like they were learning how to fall asleep with their eyes open. That way, they could 'do their paperwork' and not care all at once.

The patients were also a bit more different that she had predicted. All of them—not just a few—but all of them had sensed her presence, sensed her sneak by them with her dimly lit wand, nervous and unsure of exactly what to do. Some of them were muttering random words under their breath, others were simply staring at her until she passed them so far that their eyeballs wouldn't follow. One thing she was sure of—not one of them was asleep. And the orderly was.

She was about to turn down another aisle when she passed the orange trash bin, but something blue caught her eye. Blue. A peacock feather.

When she turned back around and approached the clone bed—looking very much the same in real life as it had in the picture—she simply stopped and stared at him.

He wasn't muttering anything or looking at her. To anyone else, he would've been mistaken for asleep; but she felt that he wasn't. His body was tense and his forehead was scrunched up; not relaxed. His whole body seemed to be trying very hard to project a 'Go Away' aura.

She knew he knew it was her.

Finally, she gathered enough courage to step up to his bed—just one step, but that did it. She knew that it was now or never. It wasn't like she had planned to never come back, but this was four thousand times harder than she'd imagined. Now that she was here, she'd no idea what to say. And the fact that he knew she was there and was taking extra precautions to pretend like he was asleep so that she'd go away didn't exactly evoke the courage within her.

While she pondered, his movements on the bed escaped her attention. He was now facing her, eyes open and mouth closed shut; just staring. When she unconsciously moved her eyes back over to his bed, she noticed.

She noticed for the first time how...sick this picture was. He was staring back at her, white starched sheets bunched around his waist carelessly, revealing his now thin and frail chest, and arms restrained with two thick straps of leather binding. The leather was firmly bound to two large hooks on the stone floor, and besides that and the same hooks next to his legs where she presumed the bindings were, it would have looked like a regular hospital. As if he'd just been hurt in Quidditch, or he'd went up against one of his arch nemeses again and this time it got a little too rowdy in the duels which he was famous for.

"Harry," she whispered desperately, quietly. She felt like she didn't even deserve to utter his name, but did anyway to at least acknowledge that she came here for him. Her two sweaters and rain jacket seemed to sag on her, weighing her down forty thousands times less than her conscience was at that moment. "Hello, Harry."

 His facial expression didn't change at all. He seemed to not even have noticed that she'd said anything—just acknowledged her presence in front of his bed.

She mouthed 'Harry' once more but lost the voice that seemed so real and there just a second ago. She figured that since her heart was ready any second and Harry still hadn't answered or realized that she'd said a thing, she would look around his...cubicle. It wasn't a room—it was like a general floor filled with separate cubicles where bound members of a family rested, a thick fog in their mind and a numbness around their protected heart.

Her heart sliced open a fraction more. Because this patient didn't have a foggy mind...he wasn't...didn't...he couldn't...it wasn't his...

A wooden picture frame outlined a moving snapshot of he and Ron smiling and chasing each other on their brooms, laughing and diving towards the ground only to pull back up into the free air at the last possible second when one would surely think they'd smash their heads in. Mrs. Weasley's worried right arm could be seen from the right side of the picture, waving around at them repeatedly, motioning for them to come down for dinner even though it was only a few hours past noon. She just wanted to keep them safe and with her—because they were both her sons.

She blinked back the tears that formed of their accord. What had she—

Another picture frame held a present by Dumbledore, she presumed. It was a picture of his parents—James and Lily holding hands beneath a tree by the lake at Hogwarts. She was sure it was Hogwarts. Lily's feet were in the water and James kept pointing towards the lake, telling her about the sea monster legendary at the school of wizardry, and she would keep withdrawing her bare legs from the swampy water, then put them back in. The hem of her yellow sundress was wet, but she didn't even notice as she looked into James' eyes and he graced with a charming smile.

A Quidditch team logo was posted onto the wall of Harry's cubicle, and some more Hogwarts memorabilia: a box of Bernie Botts', one of Fred and George's creations, Dumbledore's chocolate frog trading card with his picture very much there, a wallet-size of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley smiling and hugging one another, a Get Well card from Neville, Dean, and Seamus, and finally a picture of Harry himself during one of the Hogwarts Quidditch matches when he was reaching for the Snitch, right before he undoubtedly caught it.

She blinked. She wasn't surprised that there were no pictures of her on her wall. She was surprised that thought had even occurred; of course he wouldn't have a fucking picture of her up. Some more damned tears threatened to overflow or drowned her eyes—either way they announced their presence.

"Did you see the Get Well card?"

His voice cut through the hospital murmuring like a knife. His voice was even and clear, like he was just standing there, showing her around his room for the first time. But he never had his own room—not a real one. And now he had a cubicle at a psycho ward.

She turned her eyes to him sadly and blinked—keeping her eyes closed a little longer than one usually would.

"Yea—"

"Funny, isn't it?" he asked, not caring that she was trying to answer his question. Her quiet, sympathetic tone of voice was overrun by his clear, hard voice anyway. He tried to catch her eye, but the sickening smile that appeared on his face couldn't keep her gaze on his face. Instead, she looked at the hooks on the ground which bound him decisively to the bed. "Funny how they sent me a card to get better." His eyes started gleaming now and his uncalled-for grin had turned in a low, eerie laugh. "Am I going to get better? I don't know. The beds are pretty comfortable. The pillow supports my head and the nurse told me that she believed me—that I wasn't crazy for saying the things I say. But am I going to get better?"

Using all the will that had ever been in her existence, she forced herself to meet his eyes. It wasn't pretty. The turmoil within him and within her clashed like fire and ice—both trying to overpower the other and they both knew his won. Now, she wished that she could look away as his look of pure hatred and defiance pierced her gaze, but her trained were trained on his and suddenly she couldn't will her body to move...or do anything.

"You didn't answer me," he inquired, his laugh long gone and his eyes starting fire by simply looking at her. "Am I going to get better?" The last word was almost screamed, but so much that the orderly at the end of the far hall was still doing the paperwork and she was still staring at him, tears there but not even willing to spill out anymore. She was frozen but grief, but on the receiving end of more guilt and reality.

Finally, he broke their eye contact and somehow set her free to move. He looked away, eye focused on the fluorescent lighting visible through the padded doors outside of the patients' ward. The lights he had memorized so well that he could describe in his sleep if he wished—but he didn't wish anymore. He barely was.

She, on the other hand, couldn't focus her eyes on anything. The tears came sporadically, drops here and dribbles there, leaking from her eyes and onto her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away with her mitten. Her nose swelled slightly and reddened quite a bit, her eyes swelling to a puffy size as well but she didn't realize it. She inhaled and exhaled, unaware of the tears that fell. It was all she could do from screaming out her apology to her former best friend so loudly that her lungs exploded and the last thing she saw before she died was the free, unbound, and lively body of Harry 'The Boy Who Lived' Potter.

She stood there for what seemed like thousands of decades, with centuries more, and he simply lied there with his eyes trained on the intolerable fluorescent lights he'd grown to know so well. Then, she gathered the last strength and will power she had, and focused her eyes back on the weary, tired, and frail form of Harry.

"Harry," she whispered, much like first time she saw him in the bed; his head remained turned towards the lights. "Harry, I didn't...I know what I did was..." She paused. She was making a fool of herself and of Harry. She needed to say something. "I came to see you...I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't go without seeing you, I..."

More tears descended down her salted cheeks and this time she was aware of the liquid assault, as well as the sob she tried to choke down. At the muffled sound of her crying, Harry turned his head back slowly to her shaking form and fixed his stony, emerald eyes upon her. As she tried to choke down more unnecessary grief, he simply stared and waited a beat. Then he clenched his fist madly, testing his restraints for the four billionth time since he first got strapped down.

"Don't," he warned, his voice so quiet that she wasn't sure he had even said anything. It got her attention though and she wiped more tears from her cheeks with her black mittens, only trying to dry her face. She shook her head in shame.

"I—I'm sorry, I just...I can't—"

"Don't," he began again in a deathly calm voice, but continued as though he didn't see her try to reply once more, "fucking come here to apologize. Don't think you have any right to say shit to me, you goddamn bitch. And don't think that anything you say could change a sliver of a piece of my thoughts about you. To me you're nothing and never will be anything more than you are: a traitorous, cold-hearted, selfish, sadistic piece of shit."

Suddenly, she was frozen in her place again, tears streaming down her cheeks like gushing waterfalls, but this time she made no point to wipe them away at all. They just smeared her eyeliner and ran down her already glistening cheeks in gray puddles, running in angles down her slightly aged and weary face before dripping off her chin and landing on the while tile floor.

Harry had turned to look at the lights again and she figured he was done. She didn't know if she'd set him off again if she managed to say anything, but decided that she had to utter something—anything. She'd deserved everything he'd said, but...

"Please, Harry...I know that it's horrible and, God, I didn't mean—"

The look in Harry's eyes suddenly told her that she shouldn't have said one word of that unfinished sentence. Not a word.

"You know it's horrible?" he asked, his voice calm again, but the sickening grin appearing on his face once more. His voice held no humor, though. "You fucking know it's horrible and you're telling me on behalf of God that you didn't mean it?" His eerie laugh overpowered his grin again, and for the first time since the beginning of her visit, she felt scared—threatened even, solely by the anger in Harry's eyes. "Your precious existence has never experienced the amount of pain and utter loneliness I had to live through, just this past year. Your little fucked up world in your twisted head has never even thought about the difficulty in breathing someone has when they're injected with so many potions to relax them, that they feel like they're about to drown. You've never even had a frosted glimpse of how foggy someone's mind gets when they're injected with some Muggle drug that you've never even heard of and they feel so helpless as they are being strapped down to a board and examined; tested." He closed his eyes and sucked in a necessary breath.

"You've never had the family you never had come to visit and watch them have the smiles on their faces wiped off as the doctor tells them that they will probably never release me and that I'm not getting better," he said in a voice so full of pain that her suicidal thoughts were making a rapid comeback. He opened his eyes and looked at her hurt, shaking form in the corner of the cubical as he lay stretched across a rock-hard mattress, strapped to the ground. "You hear that, Hermione? Your mission is complete." His maniacal laughed returned. "I'm not getting better," he uttered between strangled chuckles, "I'm not getting better, I'm not getting better, I'm not getting better..."

She couldn't take it anymore. It was as if he really had gone mad. And she knew she was close to it. She had a slight feeling that if this kept up, she would drowned in her tears and sorrow—and more so, she'd allow herself to.

"Harry—no—listen to me, you'll..." she took a deep breath, trying to continue while Harry kept chanting his failure in sanity, "you'll get better I know it. I'll—I'll help you...I'll talk to them, tell them that you're not crazy and...God, Harry, you'll get—"

Suddenly, all the chanting stopped and Harry's eyes shot to Hermione's. His smile—which hadn't meant much more than her tears—disappeared and his eyes widened to enormous proportions. And when he spoke, his voice was lower than Hermione had ever heard it been used in her life.

"You'll—help—me—get—better?" he spelled out, his voice clipped and chipped, jagged around the edges. Emerald eyes burned holes through her head and she knew that if he had the actual power, he wouldn't hesitate to use it. "I think it's my turn to ask God of something." His head sudden twisted towards the ceiling, eyes madly transfixed upon it as if that's where the Lord was actually sitting and he clenched his fists, straining against the leather again. "God, will you please restore my memory for a brief moment," he mock-pleaded, before turning his eyes back to her, "because with my loss of sanity, it seems it was severely impaired. Otherwise, I'd find it hard to believe that Hermione Granger would be willing to help me leave St. Mungo's for good...when she's the one that put me there."

For once in her life, she wished that Harry didn't know her name. For once she wished that he'd call her foulest name he could've thought up, that he would've called her a fucking bitch, a piece of shit on bottom of his cheapest shoe—anything but named her in the crime she'd had to live with since the end of Seventh Year. It had been the longest, most treacherous year of her life—even with Draco.

The water circulating down her cheeks couldn't even be defined as tears any longer due to the deep pain entrusted within it. Her face wet, eyes puffy, and lips quivering she shook her head. Not in denial, but in hope of a slight chance to explain something—anything...to help her ease Harry's pain. It's what she intended, but selfishly knew that it her own pain she wanted to ease—her own dirty guilt that wouldn't wash clean no matter how many times she'd tried.

"I didn't—I didn't—" Her voice was short and sporadic now, hiccups taking over half the time and not allowing her to get anything through. "I didn't—m—mean to do—do—what I—"

Harry's third laugh of the night reached her ears rapidly, but this time she recognized it to be soft and pitiful—as if he simply couldn't contain the pity he held for her. For poor Hermione.

"You didn't mean it?" he asked, not even looking at her anymore, but back at the fluorescent lights. "You didn't mean to become a Death-Eater in the beginning of Seventh Year? You didn't mean to get involved in the Dark Arts and not tell anyone until Draco Malfoy entered the picture? You didn't mean to spy for Voldemort and help him rise?" His eyes slowly—ever so slowly—crept towards Hermione's, whose sobbing had silenced and only his voice could be heard in the quiet hospital. "You didn't mean to tell Voldemort every vision I had about his plans, so that he wouldn't go through with them, successfully labeling me insane after a while?" Harry's voice was quiet and fuzzed, as if his lips were struggling to move. "'Potter boy finally cracks'...'The Boy Who Lived, or rather The Boy Who Lied?'...'Harry Potter: Once a weapon, now insane'," he listed off headlines monotonously. Then he paused.

"Or my favorite: 'If misery loves company, does insanity love Potter?'."

Hermione's eyes glistened and she could see that Harry's built up some unshed tears as well. She didn't know what to say to that; it wasn't like she hadn't replayed that whole week over in her head as many times as it took until she finally cracked and turned to two bottles of vodka as a comfort for her soul. And now—faced with the fucked up image of her once famous and brilliant, happy and cheerful best friend strapped to a starched mattress while hearing her sins from her victims was too much. She couldn't handle it.

Slowly, she leaned against the cubicle wall and placed her hand over her heart in attempt to stop it from hurting like a thousand hot arrows had just pierced it.

But Harry didn't care. His eyes hadn't even moved with her. He just stared at the spot where she had been, now his view consisting of another patients' cubicle wall.

"But that's okay, Hermione," he said, his voice quiet and almost warm as if he was reassuring her that everything in the world would always be alright. He didn't blink. "You had good reason to do what you did." His eyes looked glazed over now, and the only sign of his body possessing life were shallow breaths and his consistent, nearly monotonous voice. "I remember when Ron and I got in a fight with you. It was..." his brow crumpled. "It was the middle of Seventh Year when we realized that your detentions were because you kept getting caught in the Restricted Section and that when you weren't in the library, you were fucking around with Malfoy."

She inhaled sharply, not ready for a recount of Seventh Year as well—probably the most emotionally taxing year of her life—but Harry didn't seem to notice, and if he did, she guessed that he wouldn't give a damn.

"We confronted you," he recalled, his voice almost pitying his former self and Ron for doing such a stupid thing, "and finally got you to admit everything—your Dark Magic fetish, your affair—no, your love for Malfoy and your long-time attraction for them both. Ron and I got mad," he said evenly; simply. "We said that anyone who turns to dark magic and Malfoy for support and interest was sick and didn't deserve the respect and treatment you received. That you were honored for being Head Girl and your great N.E.W.T.s scores for nothing."

He shook his head, finally blinking and turning his eyes to a shivering, quivering of a mess that was Hermione, huddled by the cubicle wall trying not bawl and wake up the orderly. It was like he shattered her entire world and worlds to come by giving her a recount of what she'd done—or what they'd all done.

"But we were—I was a bastard," he continued, talking this time straight to her. "It was I that mostly said everything to you. Ron just wanted to kill Malfoy as slowly and painfully as he could." His eyes closed for a moment, as if paying one last moment of respect to the memory before uttering the most hurtful words Hermione had heard from him all night: "But, hey, at least I got what was coming to me, right?"

"No!" she exclaimed, and couldn't help but hiccup and choke on the sob that erupted from her throat. Her air supply seemed at risk all of a sudden and she couldn't make of what to do—was it inhale first then exhale? Or the other way around?

"No?" she heard Harry's voice exclaim suddenly. "No?" He was almost to hysterics and her eyes darted unconsciously to the sleeping orderly who was now stirring a bit in his desk.

Harry caught the movement and closed his eyes painfully, struggling against all of his restraints as if he was making a decision that his entire body protested against. Then—then everything was calm.

Hermione chanced a look at Harry and all that was staring back at her was a pair of dulled, green eyes which have seen and been through too much that they have never been through. A little boy chosen for the worst experience anyone could ask was still waiting for his heroic compensation. And thanks to her, she realized, it wouldn't ever come.

"Go," Harry's dull voice proclaimed. "I won't wake Clem. See?" He smiled a force grin that couldn't have looked more painfully disturbing than he'd made it. "I know everybody's names by heart. I've got friends." Then, his eyes hardened as he made a return back to reality and the last thing she ever heard him say before pushing off the cubicle wall and running out of the ward was, "You are in one of my pictures, Hermione. You were front and center in the crowd when I caught that Snitch."

And through her tears, she realized that he meant the pictures posted with all of his Hogwarts things.

She didn't know how long it took her to get off the floor she collapsed on after running out of Harry's ward, but her cheeks were still wet by the time she got to her feet again.

Closing her rain coat around her, she hugged herself in her arms and almost blindly ran through the building and into the room with the empty box of lemon drops which served as her Port Key. Before she touched the box and was pulled out of Harry's life, she couldn't help but wonder what would happen if she went in there, charmed all the restraints off Harry and pulled them upon herself.

What if she took on Harry's burden after all this? After her loyalty to Voldemort and all her trouble with spying and completing missions and falling in love with Draco? Could she make this right and fake insanity—if she even needed to—so that Harry would be let free and she'd be drugged time and again instead.

A single, last tear ran down her immensely pained, young face as she carefully touched the box of lemon drops and was pulled out of the hospital's cafeteria.

And the last thing she saw was a slightly larger version of the first thing she read when she walked in on her most heartbreaking night:

 Don't litter. Charm your trash into the orange bins at the end of the hall. Keep St. Mungo's clean.

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Okay, I KNOW that was super dark, but I told you it was in the 'Angst' category for a reason. Also, if there are any grammatical errors or missing words in a sentence or something: sorry! I hate when I do that but my computer sure as hell won't pick up those mistakes and when I type fast, my mind tends to go faster than my typing ability. Excuse me for that, will you? This is the revised version of the first type I posted—you're minus, like, ten mistakes now.

Cheery smile: Review!