A/N. Hooray for updating! If you guys get bored with waiting, you're perfectly welcome to browse my other fics, including my ongoing one, Not Like This. And now that my shameless plugging is done, on to the chapter!
xxxxx
Draco stepped into the small Muggle café that stood a few blocks from his apartment. He'd stumbled upon it a few months ago, and had instantly liked the quiet atmosphere, simple design and homey feel. The armchairs were soft and slightly worn, but not tattered and tacky. The coffee was good; the clientele were few but regular, the staff friendly but not prying. Draco placed his usual order of Irish cream and made his way to a table near the back.
Settled into a comfortable seat, he took Hermione's diary out of his coat pocket and studied it. He'd already figured out it was a Muggle diary; wizard diaries tended to have specialproperties, like the ability to correct the owner's spelling or squeaking when an important event was scheduled on that day. He ran his fingers over the dark red cover. It was felt, or maybe velvet. It was a little too worn for him to be sure. A thin, dark green ribbon served as a bookmark. Draco opened it. The inside cover was black, a stiff sort of paper. The statement of ownership was written in silver script, Hermione's name filled in with some strange, shiny red ink. (*) It was, physically, an unremarkable diary. Draco's journals at home were much more ornate, with intricately engraved covers and fine silk bookmarks.
Staring at the diary, Draco's thoughts began to drift toward its owner. Much like her diary, Hermione was worn and tattered. Draco would and could never forget the sight of her, when she'd mysteriously appeared at St. Mungo's after her disappearance. The sight of his wife on the hospital bed was branded into his mind. Her body, once healthy, had been wraith-like, her bones jutting out, her skin almost translucent. Her hair had been matted and uneven, some parts only an inch long. She had been covered in scratches and scars and bruises, and she had been shaking. And her eyes… Draco shuddered inwardly. Her normally warm brown eyes had been spinning in their sockets, looking at everything without really seeing anything, with madness inside them. And when her eyes had rested on him, she hadn't recognized him, not even as The Ferret.
His coffee arrived and Draco took a few sips, if only to have something to do so he could calm down. It never stopped being painful, and he doubted that it ever would, even if she were cured. It never stopped hurting to see his wife, his beautiful, brilliant wife, lying on those white sheets, delirious and screaming. Even on her good days, her forgetfulness chafed at the raw parts of his heart, where he could remember everything that seemed to be gone from her mind. On her bad days, well, he would always leave before he broke down.
He opened the diary, leafing through the pages to the entry where he had stopped reading. It reopened wounds, ripped through old scars, reading the diary did. But Draco knew he had to. Because when he had first opened it, it had been out of curiosity, but now Draco knew he was reading in the hopes that somewhere in its pages, the diary held a clue to Hermione's madness.
xxxxx
Draco came again today. It was in the middle of lunch, if I can even call it that. It was really more of me eating an end of a bread loaf with the last of the butter. I was alone in the kitchen, nibbling at the bread, trying not to think about what ifs and I-could-haves. I don't think he'd expected anyone to be there, judging by the way he looked at me. He'd probably hoped that he could just leave them on the kitchen counter and go. He was carrying a few tattered tote bags, which bulged in odd ways.
"I brought food." His words were awkward and halting, and I would have laughed if I still knew how. I helped him unload the packages. He'd brought quite a lot; bread, oatmeal, milk, cheese, fruits, even coffee. Also meat –some sausages, a chunk of beef, half a chicken. I tried asking him where he found it all, but he didn't answer. Now I wish I'd pressed him. I can't stand the thought of him out there, risking his life finding food for us. Toast isn't worth his death.
Draco seems to be getting thinner every day. I wonder where he sleeps, if he eats. Every time I see him I feel this urge to mother him. I think I just need someone to care for. I think I also need someone to care for me. Without Ron I feel so alone in this house, a house that while physically filled, is emotionally empty. Harry spends a lot of his time just sitting in Sirius' old room, or so Ginny told me over the one breakfast we've had together. Ginny just tries to sleep a lot, or reads books from the library. I don't hear much from the other people in this house. The Weaselys mostly keep to themselves, though sometimes I hear the twins' voices. They don't make jokes anymore; if anything, they're just as dead as the rest of us. I find that unbearably sad. Before the last battle, we always knew we could count on those two to lighten up the atmosphere and keep us in good spirits, or as close to them as was possible. Now it's like the cheer has been sucked right out of them, as if with the loss of their siblings they lost all ability to be happy as well.
We're all broken, all of us in this house. We don't smile, we don't laugh; we barely even speak to each other. Harry tries to drop by and check how I'm doing, but it feels off. I think we both feel the void that's there, the empty space that used to have red hair and freckles and laughter. It's hard to talk. Back when we were travelling, when Ron…walked out on us, we didn't mind the void so much because we both knew that sometime, somehow, he would come back to us. We had that hope. But now that hope is gone; we are utterly devoid of his presence. Ron will never come back. And it feels like even Harry's disappearing, the way he's wasting away in front of me. He seems to get skinnier and skinnier, disappearing into himself. It scares me. If Harry were to disappear, I don't know what I'd do with myself. I don't think I'd be able to live.
As for Draco… I still don't know why I did it, but after Draco and I had unloaded the food, I asked him to stay for lunch. It was probably his thinness, his pallor. Thankfully he agreed, and took some toast. I didn't feel much like cooking so I couldn't serve any meat, but he didn't complain. He simply sat there, quiet and brooding, chewing his bread with jam.
I wonder what happened to the boy who used to taunt me about my hair and horrible teeth, the smirking, pale boy who was so much like his father. I wonder what changed him, what made him into the dark, silent young man who sat in front of me this afternoon. I realized then, that while I knew everything that had happened to the residents of this house, and even our closest friends and allies outside of it, I did not know how the war had affected Draco. I wonder, now, who he has lost, if his parents are still alive, if all his possessions are intact. I wonder if, like us, he has lost something precious. I wonder if he still sees his friends, or if they have alienated him because he fights for us now. I wonder what the war has done to him, to make him seem as broken as the rest of us in this forlorn house, of which we cannot find it in ourselves to call home.
I wonder why I'm thinking about Draco so much.
When he left, I felt this longing to ask him to stay, to plead with him, somehow. Strangely, I want him here, I want him around, if only to know that he's safe, and that he has somewhere to return to at night. But I did not act on it. Instead, I simply stood mutely in the hallway as he gathered up his cloak and nodded at me in farewell. And I still stood there, long after the pop of his Disapparating had faded.
Why do I suddenly care about him so much? Is it because he risked his life for us, that fateful day at Hogwarts, and still does so until now? Perhaps. He is important to me, to all of us, because of what he did and does. I think I would not be the only one to mourn if we lost him. We would all be devastated.
I hope he comes back tomorrow. Somehow I feel like in this house of ghosts and people acting like ghosts, he's what keeps me sane.
xxxxx
Draco's heart clenched at that last sentence. He's what keeps me sane. No he wasn't, not anymore. He hadn't been able to protect her, hadn't kept her safe, and then one day she had disappeared and come back without her mind. He hadn't kept her sane. And he couldn't make her sane again.
He stared at the small diary. It seemed like such a fragile and commonplace item, to be holding such great hopes –and great fears. There seemed to be much Hermione hadn't told him, about those post-war days in Grimmauld Place. She hadn't wanted to speak of them, much, when she still knew what she was saying. In the early days of their tentative romance, and even sometimes around the time they'd gotten married, Draco had tried asking her about them. But Hermione always grew silent and deflected any questions, after a while simply telling his she didn't want to think about them.
His hand loosely wrapped around his now-cold cup of coffee, Draco thought back to his own post-war experience. He had declined Harry's offer to stay in Grimmauld Place, although he knew he would be safer there, and better taken care of. He hadn't wanted to stay somewhere he wouldn't exactly feel welcome in. Despite Harry's offer, he could see the reluctance in the eyes of the rest of the small group gathered in the living room of the dusty house. Even if he'd joined them, turned traitor to his own family and fought against the Dark Lord, they could not fully accept him. He had tormented Harry and his friends for years, had almost become a Death Eater (Draco still shuddered at that), and had been and still was a Malfoy. They would have been civil toward him, to be sure; he would have been tolerated. But he would never have been accepted.
Though, having read this diary… Draco nearly broke down in the café. In reading this diary, he found out how much Hermione had cared. Even if he had taunted her all those years in school, had been the son of the man who had caused much of her misery, she had cared. She had accepted him. She had wanted him there. She had never told him much about how she'd felt about him, in those months after the battle at Hogwarts. And now he knew.
"Come back to me, Hermione," he whispered, his tears dotting the pages of the diary like hers had, so many years ago.
xxxxx
A/N. Short chapter is short, I know, and I don't even think I did a very good job of it. I'm trying to think up the next chapter already, and hopefully it'll be a nice, long one! Again, R&R, much appreciated!