A/N: Okay, I've got a question for you all. When I uploaded the last chapter, I caught two typos while I was putting in the page breaks. So then I began to wonder about my other chapters, and I wanted to know if it would be worth my time to go back and edit my other chapters for spelling and grammar? Answer in reviews, please!

CHAPTER 15: Ruins

The sun slowly rose out the window. Hermione stared at it as it forced its way up through the earth, growing into a round ball of flame that was obscured by the clouds. It had been snowing nearly all night, and now Hermione walked out of the Room of Requirement and wandered blearily down the halls and walked outside into it.

The snow crunched under the soles of her thin sneakers, and she looked around as if lost. The world seemed to have an odd sense of fakeness, a dream-like quality, and Hermione stared at everything in interest. It all seemed new, unreal, as if she'd never seen snow before. She knelt in it, and seemed unable to feel the cold against her bare shins. Maybe this was just a bad dream after all.

Standing again, Hermione slogged over to the vague bulk of a rock near the frozen lake. Her shoes were soaked already, but she didn't really care as she spread herself out on the rock. The cold of the snow felt good against her bruises as it slowly melted and seeped through her robe and Draco's shirt that she was wearing. I wear this shirt a lot, she reflected. And if this was all real, I'd have to give it back to him, but it's not and I don't! Hermione snuggled into the thin shirt with a giggle that, in the silence, heightened the sense of unreality around the place.

Hermione lay on the rock for a long time, and after a while began to lose feeling in her limbs. It was only a dream, so it really didn't matter how long she lay there, even if she was only wearing her pajamas and a robe. Something red flickered at the edge of her vision, and she laughed at the moving speck, wanting to play with it. But eventually it came into focus and she saw it was Ginny.

"What are you doing in my dream?" she asked the girl as she sat up, not realizing how soaked she was.

"Hermione, we need to get you out of the cold."

Hermione laughed. "It's a dream, silly, nothing is real. It doesn't matter how long I stay here. I could die, and it wouldn't matter, because it's all fake anyway."

Ginny looked worried. "What happened?"

"Well, see," Hermione began conspiratorially, "Draco broke up with me." She lay back on the rock and sighed as the snow once again surrounded her. "But it's a dream, so it's all okay. I just need to wake up."

"He…he broke up with you?"

"Yes, but that's okay, I've dreamed about this before. But that time was worse. And weirder. In fact, this could almost be real, except that Draco wouldn't really break up with me." Ginny eased Hermione up, and Hermione shut her mouth suddenly as she realized how cold and soaked and miserable she was. "Oh, God. It's not a dream, is it?" Ginny shook her head sadly. "But it has to be," Hermione said, tears welling up in her eyes, "I can't live without him. He was—is—my everything. Oh, Ginny!" Hermione said, hugging the redhead fiercely.

"Oh, Hermione, I'm just as surprised as you are. Did he say why?"

"He couldn't handle it, apparently," Hermione snarled, before she burst into fresh waves of tears. She barely noticed when Ginny adeptly steered them to the castle, murmuring comforting words in her ear. However, when they entered the prefect's bath, she did notice. "What are we doing here?" she asked, confused.

"You need to warm up desperately, before you—" Hermione cut her off with a sneeze. "Before you get sick," Ginny finished. Hermione stripped off her robe as well as her shoes and socks and plopped herself into the tub.

"Do you want me to get you some food?" Ginny asked hesitantly.

Hermione looked at her impassively, then shook her head, as if only then realizing there was such a thing as food. "I'm not hungry," she said expressionlessly.

"Okay then," Ginny said, and even Hermione could see through her mask of cheeriness. "Do you want to talk about it?" she said, leaning close. Hermione could see the concern behind her eyes, and had a sudden desire to yell at this girl for being so innocent and naïve. But instead she just shook her head, choosing to keep the memory to herself for a while.

Draco had looked so beautiful in the firelight as he had turned to her. On her entrance, he had jumped, and she could see something was wrong by the look on his face. "You okay?" she had asked immediately.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Um…Hermione, I…"

Exhausted, all she had wanted was to fall into his arms. "I'm so glad you're here, Draco," she had told him, "you won't believe the kind of day I've had."

"Actually," he had said, and the firelight glinted off of his beautiful gray eyes, "I kind of have something to tell you." He looked worried, and Hermione had wanted to wrap her arms around him.

Taking a step forward, she had asked, "Yes?"

But then he'd said something utterly incomprehensible, stringing the words of his sentence together to make one big word that had no meaning. He looked worried, and she blinked in confusion before laughing. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch a word you just said."

He took a deep breath, and it was then that she knew it was bad. She should have known then what was coming. But she had been blind, and weak, and stupid. "I think we should break up. I can't…I can't handle being with you anymore. Not like this. I can't even visibly come to see you while you were in the Hospital Wing. I couldn't proudly show you to the world. We've had to sneak around and hide and crawl behind everyone else's backs this whole time!" Hermione blinked, unsteady, and felt ready to laugh. This couldn't possibly be happening, but Draco wasn't done yet. "If you got hurt again, I couldn't wait at your bedside like a good boyfriend, hover nervously about you and wait for you to get better, carry you around like you're glass until everyone laughs at the silliness of it. I just can't. I'm sorry," he told her, and the notes of sincerity in his voice shattered her heart.

Uncomprehending, she had fallen onto the couch, thinking about her terrible day before she realized what had just happened.

"That's terrible, Hermione," Ginny said. Startled, Hermione looked up at her and realized she'd said the whole tale out loud without meaning to. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," the brunette said faintly, as tears poured down her cheeks. Ginny drew her close in a hug, and she cried on the girl's shoulder. "No, I'm not, this is all a mess. I don't understand how this could have happened. It's not my fault we had to stay secret!"

"Hey, why don't you come over to Orlando's with me tonight? We can all sit down and have some tea and just talk. I'm sure he could make some hot chocolate for us if we wanted it," Ginny coaxed.

Hermione looked at her tremulously, "Really? I could come over?" She sniffed and wiped her eyes as Ginny nodded. "Okay then."

"Good. Now, let's go, and find something fun to do. Or do you just want to go somewhere and read? Reading would be fun, I'm sure," the redhead said. Hermione just nodded as they got out of the bath and dried their clothes off with spells. Ginny pulled on her robe, but Hermione just slung hers over her arm (it was still dripping, and had been too big to dry off) as they headed up to Gryffindor tower.

Rummaging through her trunk for another robe, Hermione spied something odd. Pulling them out, she recognized them as the pair of Draco's jeans she'd worn so long ago. She's meant to give them back, but had forgotten. Tears splattered on the floor as she pulled on the pants and pulled a robe over the outfit. With the robe on, you couldn't see what she was wearing, couldn't tell she was wearing a male's clothing. But she knew, and she smiled gently through her tears at the memory of them sneaking through his house.

"Oh, Draco," she mumbled, before she began to gather his things. In the end, the pile was small: Merlin's book, two black roses, and the clothes she was wearing. Putting all but the clothes in a small pile on her bed to give back to him, she took out another book and went down into the common room. She curled up uncomfortably on a couch and began to read, but soon Harry and Ron entered, casting dirty looks in her direction.

I can't handle this, she thought miserably. "Ginny, I can't do this. I'll see you at dinner," she said abruptly, standing and leaving before Ginny could protest. Hermione's wandering feet took her to the Room of Requirement, and she cautiously edged in. It was the usual room, seeped with memories of her and Draco, and she went and lay down on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

Silence. The ceiling seemed to echo her blank thoughts. Slowly she began to strike up a conversation with herself about books she had read, just to fill up the silence as she reached over and took her dress off the table. She had meant to get it last night, but had forgotten to take it with her. Taking out her wand, she carefully repaired the dress so that you could hardly tell it had been ripped apart, then picked up a book (she wasn't sure if it had been there before) on the table about cleaning and used a spell to remove the dirt and blood from her dress.

Now it was just as beautiful as it had been when she'd gotten it. She ran her fingers over it sadly, remembering how he'd held her that night as if nothing else mattered, as if he had wanted to hold her forever.

How he'd told her he loved her. "I love you too," she replied to the emptiness. The room did not answer her back.

Standing, she stretched, and before it was a conscious thought, there were two mirrors on either side of her. Annoyed that the room had read her thoughts before she'd even known them, she took off his shirt and her bra to inspect the damage anyway. Well, my back looks absolutely awful, she decided. Though once the bruises go away, it may not look so bad. My front… she looked a little closer at the two scars. Well, I'm not really sure what to make of that.

It'll be an interesting story though, someday, she settled on eventually. The makeup Ginny had applied on her yesterday morning (was it really that long ago already?) had faded to nothing, and she could see the ugly bruises on her jaw. She sighed. "I guess I was beaten up pretty bad," she said, jumping at the sound of her own voice in the silence. She examined the scar on her shoulder more. "But…that must have gone straight through my shoulder blade," she said aloud, fingering the exit wound. "And this one," she touched the scar under it, "Had to have gone through my ribs and my lung. And this one must have hit some ribs too. How many bones did I break?" she said, beginning to get scared of the magnitude of her own injury.

"I wonder if this one went through anything," she mused aloud, touching the fourth scar on her back. "Surely not through much, if it did. It didn't even go all the way through my body." She looked at herself in the mirrors for some time before concluding, "Well, there goes my chance of ever looking okay in a two piece swimsuit." She snorted, "Or anything that ever shows off my back or shoulder. Oh, how brilliant a situation," she said dryly, though she really didn't mind. It wasn't like she ever wore anything like that anyway.

"At least my tattoo is on my other side," she joked to herself. "I wouldn't want to have to pay for that again." She tapped her left shoulder, where her tattoo hung. But then she looked stricken. "I'm an idiot. If it had been on my left side, chances are at least one of these things would have hit my heart. My tattoo would be the least of my worries then. Who cares about a tattoo when you're dead?"

Sighing, she replaced her clothing and plopped down on her side on the couch, staring at the fire that seemed to be perpetually lit for hours until she finally realized he would not be coming. Tears coming to her eyes once again, she picked up her dress and sadly walked out of the one place that had become her safe haven, shutting the door behind her with a click that ached of finality.


Ginny was beginning to get frantic. It was nearly ten, and Hermione hadn't come back yet. She had searched all Hermione's usual haunts, to find that no one had seen the girl all day. She flopped onto a couch in the common room, though her nerves were just as tense as her sprawled form was tired. Sighing, she picked herself up into a less all-over-the-place position. Who knew what Hermione would do on her own? Cut herself? Something worse? Ginny shivered at that thought and pulled herself to her feet just as Hermione entered the common room, carrying a bundle of white in her hands.

"Come on, we're going to be late," Ginny said, annoyed. She grabbed Hermione's arm and pulled her back out the portrait, fairly dragging her through the empty halls to Orlando's room. In that hallway, she was careful of other people, though the halls were silent and still. They scurried down the hall, and she knocked on Orlando's door. It opened at her touch, and she went in, giving him a meaningful look as Hermione slipped in after her.

"Oh, Hermione," Orlando said, slightly surprised, and shot a glance at Ginny. She made a gesture of something breaking while Hermione returned Orlando's greeting, praying he'd understand. It looked like he did, as his eyes widened and he mouthed, "We'll talk later" to her. She nodded miserably and led Hermione over to the couch, where she tucked her knees to her chest and stared desolately at the white bundle in her arms.

Orlando offered them tea, and Ginny asked if he could make them hot chocolate instead. "Of course," he said genially, taking out the stuff for it. Ginny and Orlando made idle chat, leaving openings for Hermione to respond. When she didn't, Ginny began to get worried and looked at Orlando for help.

"So, how are you healing? I hope you're feeling better after that dragon thing," Orlando said, forcing Hermione into conversation.

"Okay," she whispered.

"How are your bones feeling," he asked, and Ginny loved him in that moment. Giving him a look of gratitude, she sipped at her hot chocolate in silence, letting the two of them carry on their limping conversation.

"All right, I guess." Ginny saw the flare of true interest in Hermione's eyes as she asked, "What exactly was broken?"

"Well…your jaw was, for one. Then you had your shoulder, upper arm, and a few ribs shattered. Another couple of ribs were fractured, and your lung was punctured in two places," he listed off, looking at her with interest.

"Entrance and exit," she murmured.

"Do you know how she healed you?" he asked.

"A potion, I would assume. I've go scars, though," Hermione said.

"Would you mind if I took a look?" he asked, giving Ginny a glance for permission. She shrugged, and Hermione stood, stripping off her robe. Orlando winced at the bruises all over her, and then she turned her back on the two of them, pulling up her pants (which looked suspiciously too big and boyish to be hers) before she dragged her shirt off.

Even Ginny gasped. The damage was fierce, the whole side of her back one big bruise, with four raggedly circular scars in a slightly curved line down it. Hermione stood for a minute like that, clutching her shirt to her, before she put it back on and settled down on the couch once again, letting her pants fall back down from her waist to be slung low on her hips.

"Oh, Hermione, I didn't know it was that bad," Ginny said. Orlando just shook his head in amazement.

"That'll be quite a story," he told her. She nodded wryly. "You know," he told her hesitantly, "They weren't sure you would make it at first. You lost too much blood." He chuckled softly, "They're still not sure who you are, although I expect that Dumbledore knows. He knows everything that goes on around here," he said, then glanced at Ginny somewhat guiltily and took a large gulp of his hot chocolate before choking on it.

Hermione gave a wry grin at the scene and buried her head in the white cloth that she clutched to her. Ginny wondered what it was before she saw a length of black ribbon sticking out. Her dress? She wondered, and then remembered the night of the ball.

"Hermione? What exactly happened that made you run out of the ball in the first place?" she asked curiously.

Unexpectedly, Hermione burst into tears. Ginny looked at Orlando, horrified, and he stood and wrapped his arms around the crying girl. She turned and cried into his chest while Ginny hovered around guiltily. "He said," she gasped between sobs, "That he loved me, and then I got scared and ran, but now he's gone, and…" she trailed off and simply wept into the dress while Orlando pet her hair, looking over at Ginny in bewilderment.

But Ginny had understood what Hermione had said.

Oh, that cruel bastard. And to think, I was actually beginning to like him! Or at least tolerate the thought of him. Telling her that you love her (probably for the first time, too) and then breaking up with her five days later. That's just cruel. Wait a minute…

He still loves her! He just doesn't want to sneak around about it. He never told her that he didn't love her anymore, and while that can be something mean to say as a break up, it's at least a good reason.

And one he wouldn't forget to mention.

By the time Ginny had finished her realization, Orlando was back in the kitchen heating up some more hot chocolate, and Hermione was staring blankly at the wall. "I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't know," she apologized. Hermione shrugged one shoulder, and Ginny felt even worse.

The rest of the evening was filled with idle chat, though Ginny was always carefully looking at Hermione. After an hour long visit (Ginny might have stayed longer under normal circumstances, but thought Hermione should get some rest), she and Hermione left, and Ginny quietly promised Orlando she would be back in a half hour to fill him in on all the details.

Just before Ginny closed the door to her dorm (she would at least pretend to go to bed before going out again), she heard a faint "Thank you" and turned to beam at Hermione. "Any time. If you want to talk, I'm always here," she offered. The brunette nodded, but didn't look like she would take her up on the offer.

"Well, goodnight," Ginny said. Hermione just nodded again and went to her own dormitory.


After dropping Ginny off at her dormitory, Hermione went off to her own dormitory and sat on her bed for a minute. She stared at the black roses that lay on Merlin's book, and then picked it up as if she'd never seen it before. "Promise of a rose," she murmured under her breath. She picked up one—the first one Draco had given her and sniffed it deeply. It still held that fresh-picked fragrance, and she felt a pang of desire for Draco. She just wanted him back, she just wanted to hold him in her arms and be held in his. Was that truly too much to ask for?

Apparently, she thought dryly, it is.

She slowly stood and pulled on the dress that she'd worn for the ball that night. She had a flash of memory of Draco with his wings, those magnificent glossy wings of his. Smiling gently, she put her mask on and redid her hair, pulling her cloak on over the outfit even though there was no one to see her. It was nearly midnight when she finished, but she was satisfied with herself (even though you could see the bruises on her jaw and on her arm, but that couldn't be helped).

Slowly, she ghosted through the halls and went up onto the roof where they'd taken their O.W.L.s for astronomy last year. Smiling gently, she danced with herself on the roof, spinning herself around and around just for the sheer delight of it. But then her face grew serious, and she stood still, leaning against the short wall. The wind rippled her skirts around her, and she wanted to laugh at it, but didn't.

I wonder what it would be like to fly, she mused. Just jump off the wall here and spread my wings. Closing her eyes, she felt the wind on her face, her bare arms, fluttering her skirt. I can pretend that I have wings like Draco's, beautiful glossy black ones that will stand out against that white snow.

It would be beautiful to play with you, she thought to the wind, spreading her arms and feeling it swirl around her. We could play, but if we did, it would only be the once. There would never be a second chance. "Do you understand the rules?" she asked the wind aloud, although really she was asking herself, and she knew it.

With bare feet, she sidled away from the edge and onto the more stable center. But I should live. There is so much to live for. I could be the perfect spy for Dumbledore, simply perfect. And I may even be able to win Harry and Ron back.

With a sigh, she took a step back to the edge, "But what is life without him?" Voldemort will not care about my petty problems in this, so who to run to? Ginny was analyzing me all night, and I don't like that. All my other friends are gone now. Surprising, she thought, taking another step, that they didn't tell Ginny I was a traitor. Lucky for me, I suppose, but surprising.

Oh, but my Draco, what is life without you? It is not life at all. Already I ache to have you back, to fill this space inside of me. I had to adjust to make room for you in my life, my heart, but now that you're gone…I'm just empty.

How can I be me without you? I could before, but not now.

Hesitantly, and scared out of her wits, she opened her eyes and stepped up onto the wall. The wind buffeted her eagerly from all sides, asking her to come and play with it. She smiled slightly, and felt the urge to do it, just go play. Forget all of this, forget your mortal pain, your misery, it insisted playfully, come play with me.

Hermione closed her eyes again and felt right for the first time since she'd left Draco's arms. "Ginny shall be my only mourner. And maybe Orlando. But they will have each other to console. Harry and Ron don't care. I don't think my father would either, actually. Neither of them. Draco…" Her throat seemed clogged, and tears filled her eyes as she continued thickly, "Draco doesn't love me either. Makes me wonder if he ever did."

She thought for another five minutes, frowning. "Alright," she said into the wind, "I'll come play with you, although I'll admit, I never thought it would turn out like this." She took a deep breath as a sense of calm washed over her. She didn't bother to wipe away her final tears over Draco. The wind picked up in anticipation, tugging at her dress more wildly than ever and playing with her hair.

With a disquieting sense of peace, Hermione stepped out from the wall and began her long descent to the ground.


I never thought I'd die alone
Another six months I'll be unknown
Give all my things to all my friends
You'll never set foot in my room again

—Blink 182 "Adam's Song"


DMHG 2GETHER 4EVER:Eeee! Was it that confusing! I tried to make it not-so-confusing. What were you confused about? The whole scene? I can try to clarify, if you specify what confused you! --hides in embarrassment--