Draco jerked awake as something heavy fell somewhere in the house. His eyes glued shut with the remainders of his restless sleep, stinging as he forced them to open. The weak autumn light was pouring in through the windows and past the sloppily shut curtains, dancing across the dusty floor.

His heart skipped a beat as he nearly pushed the bottle off the table with his elbow. In the silence and absence, the bottle was all he had left. Alcohol and the empty house became his best friends as loneliness was all he deserved.

He groaned, realizing he had fallen asleep at the kitchen table again. Too drunk the night before to make it to his bed. As most of the nights. And days. The bedroom was a wound and his presence there—open-heart surgery. He slept there only till her smell disappeared from the sheets. He could lie to himself up to that point, but when her scent no longer welcomed him in bed - he knew she was gone for good.

All the stupid lies and stupid games cost him everything. They cost him the love of his life. The only light he ever knew. The only person who had ever truly seen him beyond his flesh and blood. He didn't know what he had until he lost her. He hadn't realized she was the high, made everything worthwhile, until he had crashed and burned, fallen to the bottom. She dismantled the walls he so cruelly constructed around himself to resist love at all cost. No, not dismantled, she crashed through them like a wrecking ball.

And he fucked it all up. Her face twisted with betrayal was behind his eyelids whenever he closed his eyes. Her shaking hands gnawing at her chest as if she wanted to rip her heart out, tears streaming down her face. She begged him to say they were lying. She yelled at him to say something. She shoved him, hit his chest and arms. And he just stood there, taking it all in silence. He deserved it and more.

He did the one and only thing he promised her he wouldn't do—broke her heart. He had crushed her, hurt her more than anyone ever could and now he had to live with it. He wanted to scream until his throat bled. It was guilt, frustration and everything in between. His chest ached with the devastation that only loss could leave.

If he believed in God, he would ask for a second chance in another life and that time he would do it right. No lies, no games. He would gladly be nobody if it meant he could grow old with her. No ambition was worth losing her. He knew that now. He hated that it seemed like she was never enough. He was chasing glitter, ignoring he already had the diamond. And now her heart was the casualty of his mad, senseless pursuit.

He found himself wandering through the abandoned house, a bottle of whiskey in hand. All the color seemed to have disappeared from his world. Everything hidden behind a veil of dust. Draco stumbled into a room he avoided all those weeks. The library. She used to sit curled up on the window seat, reading for hours on end. Sometimes she read to him, while he laid in her lap and her fingers were playing with his hair. Other times he sat behind her, holding her close to his chest, enjoying the subtle coconut smell of her hair.

Those memories, while painful, were not the worst. The gallery was.

She loved Muggle photography. The moving wizarding photos lacked the charm, according to her. That wall was a highlight reel of their years together. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but no language on this miserable Earth had enough words to describe these.

Their first trip together. Their first Christmas together. Hogwarts reunion. Trip to Australia to spy on her Obliviated parents. There was a photo of him begrudgingly holding a newborn Parkinson-Longbottom spawn with her laughing at his misery. That was maybe two years into their relationship and even then he already knew - she was it, she was his endgame. She was the only one he was willing to marry, she was the mother of his future children… All of that he realized during that one dreadful afternoon.

His heart sank even lower as his eyes moved further across the wall. She had dedicated so much of the wall to him, he'd lost count of the photos of him shaking hands with someone, of him going places, of him celebrating every minor thing that went right in his career—he'd lost count of how many photos of him there were. Period. If she was in a photo, it was because she was there with him.

He had lost sight of what was important. He'd projected his own shortcomings onto her, picking fights, making her miserable while he thought he'd existed on some higher moral ground. He forgot how much he loved her; he'd been blinded by professional achievements, climbing back up on the social ladder, reclaiming the position in the society his family once had. No price wasn't high enough, he would sell his soul. Predictably not many people were interested in his soul, they were just content with his body. Draco wanted to puke whenever he realized how many lipstick smudges on his shirt she must have ignored, how many times she must have wondered about the perfume she could smell on him.

She waited for him at home. Patiently. Quietly. Never complained when he showed up smelling like different women. Though he heard her now when she said it hurt. She was broken and bleeding for love; waiting, hoping he would come around. And he didn't, not until it was too late and their friends had enough. In retrospect, he didn't understand why and how they let it go this far. To relieve himself of part of the blame and rotting conscience, Draco liked to fault them. What good friends allow that to happen? What friends just watch from the sidelines as they derail their lives? If the wind blew in the opposite direction sometimes, he couldn't understand why they did it when they did? They were getting better, he was sure of it. She even moved back into their bedroom a few days before. They talked about their anniversary trip. 5 years together. They talked about starting a family in the near future. But their friends had different plans and instead of seeing her belly round with their child, he watched her back as she walked out of his life. They ruined it as much as he did.

His eyes land on the last photo she added to their gallery. He remembered that night vividly, it was just a few weeks before it all blew up into his face. That night he believed they would only get better. He had a brief moment of clarity that night, a sudden urge to do right by her. The photo just drove the imaginary dagger deeper into his chest, torturing him as it carved around his heart. They went out for drinks with friends and if his memory served him right Potter took the photo. She was sitting in his lap, arm around his shoulders… they were both laughing. Maybe too hard since she was hiding her face in the crook of his neck.

Draco took a generous swig of the brown liquid, scrunching up his nose as it burned his throat, surprised he could still feel a thing. His chest got tighter as more and more memories were jumping at him from the frames; blood rushed to his head, roaring behind his eardrums. Breathing heavily he stumbled back, taking in the whole wall, details becoming fuzzy and blurred as tears clouded his vision.

The bottle hit the floor as his tortured scream echoed through the house. He paced the room, fingers raking through his hair, blood boiling with sheer rage. He threw a book at the very wall that was the best and simultaneously the worst thing that ever happened to him. And second. And third.

By the time he leaned against the empty shelf, he wasn't feeling any better. Quite the opposite. Then the idea struck.

He didn't stop to think for too long. It was the solution for every single one of his problems. If anything he was mad it didn't occur to him earlier. With newfound vigor, Draco threw all the photos onto a big pile, breaking the frames, shuttering the protective glass as he whacked it against the floor or the wall, leaving dents and scratches.

The alcohol covering the floor was about to become his best friend. He had one last chance to confess all his sins.

"I am sorry for all the pain and hurt I caused you," he spoke for the first time in days, his voice hoarse from all the drinking and just screaming. "I hate that I made you the enemy. I hate that your heart was the casualty… I hate that I need you," Draco whispered as Hermione smiled at him from the photo at the top of the pile.

He painted his life to turn out differently, but it was a masterpiece made of his mistakes. And to illustrate all his pain he was going to set it ablaze. The fiery swirls pouring out of his wand barely licked the trail of whiskey, catching on fire, when a creak of the floorboards caught his attention.

And in the light of his own demise, he saw his failures in her eyes for one last time.