He once told her that she almost made him not lonely in the dark.
Evidently, "almost" wasn't good enough. Though she had arrived early, she made her way to the farthest pew. She would probably be the only ex-Gryffindor there, and despite the solemnity of the occasion, she thought she might vomit if she were subject to Pansy Parkinson's melodramatic wails through the whole service, or to Mrs Malfoy's disapproving glares if she sat in the front row. So she moved to the back, musing on Draco's words.
That had been when he was completely blind following the final battle. Harry and Ron had understood, however grudgingly, her need to be with him. To save him.
She'd failed. She couldn't save him. "Almost" was never enough.
He'd come to them a coward. A disavowed son, running from the wrath of his father's memory, from the burden of continuing the family legacy. After the Dark Lord tortured Lucius Malfoy to his death, Draco had nothing left to fight for. Or, rather, no one. If Voldemort could commit such atrocities against his family–his pureblooded, tenaciously loyal family–then there was no telling what means at which he would stop to ensure his own immortality. His master needed to be controlled. There was only one place to go to join the resistance, and it was the first time Draco Malfoy had to swallow his pride to get something he wanted.
Ginny was the first to accept him. Everyone assumed she did it due to her own forgiving, well-meaning nature, but Hermione knew it was her faux-rebellious side showing again. She was deeply disappointed; Malfoy wasn't interested in a girl acting like she'd just stolen Daddy's credit card–another woman acting like a girl, who assumed he would be just the bad boy to help her break the rules right. He didn't have time for Ginevra's childish games. He never wanted to be a rebel.
That Hermione was so averse to him was that which piqued his interest in her. She viewed his presence in the room as akin to that of a highly contagious disease. She couldn't sit within a ten-foot radius of him. She took every opportunity she could to fault him, or to harass him, and when he could do no other but rebuke, she incited Order meetings–sans Draco–to discuss his motives, and his place. These meetings occurred so often that Snape and Lupin took to ignoring her requests whenever possible, just for the sake of their own sanity.
And then he started to be of use to the Order. He proved an excellent double agent, and sacrificed much of his safety for justice. He garnered a sort of sanctimonious air. He went out of his way to be accepted in the community. Granted, he couldn't always resist a good fight, but he made an effort. He was lonely.
Alastor Moody was their match-maker. He insisted they learn to work together, for their antipathy toward each other was becoming something of a distraction. Draco had argued his innocence, and Hermione had breathed fire in her own defence before attacking his obvious bluff. When she realised there was no undoing of Moody's will, she acted toward him in kindness, because she was no fool, and knew their cooperation was vital to keep them alive. It was refreshing to him. He saw a side to her he'd never seen. The side Potter and Weasley raved about non-stop. The side he grew to love, the side he grew to fear his love of, the side he grew to hate his fear of loving.
When she professed her feelings for him, he hurt her. Not only that, but he humiliated her. It wasn't that he did not feel the same way, but that he was too proud to admit it. She immediately asked to be removed from her duties, and, to Draco's surprise, Moody allowed for this. He didn't see her for months. Each day in her absence, a part of him died all over again.
A visit from Ronald Weasley had been his first kick in the teeth.
"I hate your guts," Ron said. "I hate your guts," he repeated, "but not because you're a stupid git, and a coward, and a racist. I hate you because you hurt the woman I love, but even more because you threw away the opportunity I took for granted. I took it for granted, and I lost her. But at least I gave it a chance. And here she is, pouring her heart out to you, and you can't just give her the satisfaction of knowing you're head-over-fucking-heels in love with her, too, because you–you–I don't know why you wouldn't do that, you shithead, you prick, you lowly Death Eater."
He punched the redhead in the stomach. "I am not," he breathed, "a–"
When Ron regained his composure somewhat, he exhaled frantically, "A death eater? A servant to the Dark Lord? What, you can't say it? You can't say the name of the dirt you really are?"
"I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE! I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE!" He'd screamed in a tone reminiscent of his adolescence. "I'm not! I'm... I'm not a... I'm not..." He waited for Weasley to leave before he collapsed his head in his hands, and wept through white-blond strands.
He tried to go back to her, but she was stubborn as ever. And he wasn't about to admit he was wrong just so she would accept him. No matter how close he got, each time he couldn't bring himself to say the words, she rejected him. And he couldn't say them. In spite of his new revelations, he was still a Malfoy, and Malfoys took the route of self-preservation. Always. It was part of the protocol. It ran in his genes.
The night before the final battle, he'd experienced a genetic malfunction. He told her he loved her. That he hadn't always loved her, but that he'd changed, and he'd go to the ends of the earth for her, as long as she would shut the fuck up a few times a year as to give him some peace and quiet. And that he didn't care what she thought about it, because Malfoys always got what they wanted, and he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life, whether it be until the next day or fifty years in longevity.
For some reason unbeknownst to him, she accepted his less-than-gentlemanly proposal.
And they both lived. She came out with battle scars and those that ran deeper–those of holes in her heart which knew no boundaries. He came out blind.
Blaise Zabini moved to the podium. She figured he would be chosen to read his eulogy. What with his eloquence and charisma. She doubted he cared more about his deceased friend than his performance. "There are some men who rise among the gods. Some men deserve at their funerals notorious speakers, known for their energy, kindness, and poise. Others are the gods. I do not deserve to speak for the life of Draco Malfoy, but that I was chosen to do so is truly humbling."
Oh, bloody fuck. If she had to sit through his Platonic rhetoric five more minutes–
"Some men live their lives as pacifists, hoping to someday meet their demise old, content, and asleep in bed. Draco Malfoy was a fighter. If he were asked, he could have gone on for hours on how he would never have settled for anything less than a valiant death. In the end, although he was completely and utterly blind, he looked evil in the eye, and he fought. For one cannot see evil with one's eyes. Draco did not see evil through lenses.
"All men are strong, but none display such herculean strength as that which was of my dear friend, Malfoy. In the face of adversity, he rose to the challenge–"
She thought she might actually hurl. He wasn't describing the Draco he knew. He was describing himself. She knew because she'd been there after he'd lost his sight, when even his dearest friends were not. She'd consoled him when he was at his lowest of lows. She'd helped him through the first few days, weeks, months.
He'd acted in anger toward her after the first time they made love, because he thought it was unfair she could see him in the flesh and he couldn't her. She cried and cried for herself, for him, for the loved ones she'd lost, and for the life she'd given up.
Draco was not a fighter. He was not strong. But she loved him anyway, because it was in her nature, and because she could see in him virtues that nobody else could.
They picked up the pieces together, but just as she was starting to forecast their life together as not-so-hazy, he'd found the potions they never told you about in school.
Things weren't really the same. They couldn't flirt the way they had before the end. They couldn't joke and kiss and talk for hours into the night anymore. Things were different. Things had changed. She couldn't save him.
Because before the end, before their great row, it was his argumentative tendencies that fueled her fire. They attracted and repelled like magnets, depending on which pole was facing which direction.
They'd fought once because she thought subverted their mission by sleeping with a spy.
"You dick! Just because you can't keep it in your pants doesn't mean I should suffer!"
"You suffer?" He roared. "You wouldn't know suffering if it slapped you in your goddamn face! And besides, I never even touched her!"
"Why don't you just go find some bimbo with an IQ even lower than her weight, and screw her over for a change? It would solve the problem of her being smart enough to spike your drink with Veritaserum."
"Oh, Granger, I love it when you're bitter. It's such a fucking turn-on. When are you planning on blowing me?"
"When are you planning on taking me out?"
Then there were times when opposites just attracted. When she called him Draco for the first time, he'd asked her simply, "What did you call me?"
"Draco," she repeated uneasily. And then he kissed her. What else was there to it? He hadn't known–at least then–why he did it. He only knew that he liked it, and he intended to do it again, whether she did or not.
And he did. And she did.
When he came to her that night, she'd been so relieved, so happy. She felt she could die, knowing that he returned her affections. Knowing that she was not wrong in her analysis. Knowing that she had not made a mistake in her calculations by telling him of her feelings.
"Draco was a noble man, a thoughtful man, a powerful man, a lady's man–"
What wasn't he? What wasn't Draco Malfoy to Blaise Zabini and his shameless harem? What was–oh, no. No. He couldn't. Zabini couldn't torture her by recounting Draco's sexual exploits. Not today. He wouldn't.
He would.
"Honestly," Blaise began responsively to a crowd of half-giggling, half-sobbing women. "You wouldn't believe the number of times I found him in his flat with the newest flavour of the week. But all kidding aside–"
That bastard. The nerve of him. The nerve of him to say that when he knew she was there. When he knew what they were. Fat chance he'd even make the slightest mention of her in the entire thing.
His family had remained completely scornful of her. Even after he'd recovered slightly, even after they had hard evidence of the wonders she'd done for him, he'd had to threaten his relatives not to send her howlers or to call her "mudblood." Most of them were in Azkaban, anyway, he'd reasoned to her, and it didn't matter what they thought. He pled their case with her crying into his arms.
His friends were another story. Not to say that Hermione's were any more accepting, but at least they never went out of their way to attempt to seduce her back from him, or to convince her to leave him. He'd declined them all, and told her this as she wept into his brand new robes. He'd complained about her ruining them, which brought a watery smile to her face for a few brief moments before they kissed, and then she cried once more.
She could barely sit through the rest of Zabini's speech. But she would never get up herself to do him justice. Instead, she walked out in the middle of his description of his affairs, eyes faded and cheeks streaked with tears.
So she waited a week to give her own eulogy, alone. It was raining at the cemetery. They hadn't lifted the stone yet. She knelt in the newly-covered soil, sullying her knees. She held herself as she cried, knowing he would have held her, had he been there.
"Draco Malfoy," she breathed, voice quivering, "was not a god. He was not a fighter, nor was he strong. He was selfish and angry. He was depressive and unstable. He was a coward and stubborn and arrogant." Her voice cracked on the last syllable.
"But he was also attached, and caring. He was the only–oh, God," she gasped. Nobody was there to witness her cries, but she still did not know if she could continue.
She couldn't remember what he looked like when she found him. She blocked it from her memory completely. All she had was the note he left, the note she was now damaging with tears, wind, and rain.
Hermione,
I can hardly bring myself to pen these words, thinking of the pain I must be inflicting upon you. But I can guarantee you, pet, that I would have inflicted more pain had I not chosen this fate for myself. Things change. People change. We could never have been the way we were. I can't live with myself as long as you are forced to live with me and to watch me waste away my life this way. You're strong. You're the strongest woman I know, and because of it, you'll be better off without me, in the long run. I know it. Don't stay up for me.
Love always,
D.M.
She hated him for it. She hated him for always wanting the last word. Why couldn't he
have sacrificed his dignity just this once, to let her argue her point? To let her convince him that he was wrong, and that she needed him, and that they could work it out, and it was a stubborn, stupid thing to do what he had in mind?
Ah, but of course. He never let her have the last word, even when he knew he was wrong. And he was wrong. Because people don't change. He was the way he always was to his death. The note merely proved it. And she wanted to scream at him for it, like she would have in the past, because people don't change, and she couldn't.
"Draco Malfoy! Are you listening? I know you're not!" she screamed. "But I don't give a damn! Because I love you! And you were wrong! You were so, so wrong," she sobbed.
He once told her that she almost made him not lonely in the dark.
Almost was never enough.