DISCLAIMER: SADLY, THE HP UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING IN IT(EVEN INCLUDING NARGLES) DON'T, IN ANYWAY, BELONG TO ME. WHICH IS SAD. REALLY SAD.
A/n : Hi guys! This is just a little in-between chappie to my flashbacks :D this was seriously different from the original scene that I had in mind, but I loved it, so I'm going to put it up anyway! Hope you'll like it! :D
Thank you to the people who favorited, followed and reviewed my little baby so far :) cookies for all of you, and specially large virtual cookie baskets for TooLazyToLogIn, I'llCatchYouIfYouFall, Annabeth-Artemis for your lovely reviews :)
Hope you love this chappie as much as I had fun writing it!
CHAPTER SIX - PRESENT
The smell of roses was unbearable.
"Get those damned things out of here!" He shouted at the intern donning stacks of the wretched vile shrubbery.
He stalked towards his office, glaring at the cowering healers and healer trainees. 3 years of working and running this place and no one ever remembered that he banned roses every valentines day. Or everyday, for that matter.
Stupid, bloody idiots.
"Patricia, Patrice, Polly, whatever," he called out to his secretary, "Make sure that everyone gets rid of those damned roses on the corridors. Your predecessor should have told you that I'm allergic! This is a hospital, not a bloody house of love or some other crap people call buildings on valentines."
His secretary's eyes went wide and she nodded meekly, rising from her desk.
"Get rid of them before I start my rounds, or I get rid of you, understand?" He growled. The smell still clinging to everything and making him agitated and nauseous.
He wasn't really allergic, but he hated roses. He hated them to the very core of the insides of their pollen infested flowers. He hated them because it reminded him of her.
Stupid, bloody flowers.
He had a headache coming on, seeing that he had only drunk enough hangover potion to get him to his feet. Last night was a blur, and he would have given everything in his Gringotts vault to make today as blurry as the night before.
He sank down his office chair, groaning as he closed his eyes and massaged his temples. He knew that he should have forgone going to work, but without labor's distraction, he wasn't sure that he could survive the day.
He groaned again as he set his head on his desk, going for a quick kip before having to visit his patients, something that he hadn't bother doing yesterday-not that it mattered because he was sure that his select team of healers were more than happy to get rid of his overbearing presence. They had been with him mere months after he was elevated to chief of healing. And they knew how he worked and when to expect his rare absences. He felt a box squish and give way as he laid his head on his desk, looking down, he saw that there was a box of now-squashed chocolates dripping and making a mess on his table.
Stupid, bloody chocolates.
With a quick scourgify, he had cleaned up the mess and chucked the box of offensive sweets onto the waste basket, scowling at it as it made a banging sound that was torture to his sore head.
"Oi mate, that was expensive!" A voice said from across his office. Surprised, Draco looked up and saw Theodore Nott leaning against the far wall, looking as haggard and bedraggled as Draco felt.
"I'll give you a galleon for your trouble." Draco snorted as he transfigured the chair that Blaise hated sitting on into a more comfier one.
"Come on mate, it's Valentines, can't you just feel the love in the air?"
Draco merely raised an eyebrow before motioning to the chair, "Sit."
Theo smirked at him and made his way towards the transfigured seat. He extended his arm and offered Draco a silver flask, "Hangover potion?"
"Already had my dose." Draco grunted. He couldn't help but wonder why Theo was here, so he chose the best method to use when getting information from a fellow Slytherin(save for bribery and coertion of course, but he didn't have the time, nor the energy, for such things)-bluntness. "Why are you here?"
"Can't I just want to visit a friend of mine? You know, without either of us being too intoxicated to string two sentences together?"
"Blaise says that every tuesday, and he always has an ulterior motive." Draco deadpanned. "Spit it out, Nott. Why are you here?"
Theo's face fell, and his amused grin morphed into a troubled scowl. "I wanted to visit her grave today."
Draco's expression didn't change, but inside, he was fuming. How dare this man want to even visit her when he didn't even bother to attend her funeral rites, when he escaped to a whole new country after everything that had happened. He stared at one of his oldest mate's face, searching for something that he himself did not studied the man who had abandoned their camaraderie when Draco needed him to be there the most. He wondered if he was as hurt as Draco had been. He looked for signs that Theo had suffered too.
And, judging from his expression, Theo did.
"And what's stopping you?" Draco asked coldly, eyeing Theo with disdain.
"I don't know the location."
"Ask someone else."
"I already did." Theo frowned. "Everyone else told me to as you."
Draco shrugged, but ignored the question inlaid within Theo's question. The other Slytherin was wondering why he needed to go through Draco. Let him wonder, Draco thought bitterly, before saying, "Why now? After all these years, Nott, why now?"
"Because," Theo said, hiding his face in his hands, and letting out a strangled sigh. "Because it matters to me. Because I've just found my courage. Because she deserves it."
"And she didn't deserve it six years ago?" Draco hissed, glaring at his friend. "Theo, out of the three of us, you were the one who had the most courage! You stood up to bloody Voldemort when Blaise and I hadn't. Courage isn't an issue, it never was! And it matters to you? Did she not matter to you all those years ago?"
Draco was huffing now, holding down his rage and his anger and gripping the sides of his desk to keep him from falling to the floor. He glared at the man that he thought he knew. He glared at him as he composed himself, looked up, and met his stare with a defiance that Draco had thought was lost.
"She did. She mattered. You know, that she mattered to me." Theo said, standing up to level his gaze.
"Then why did you abandon us all those years ago?" Draco whispered, putting all the anger, bitterness and disappointment in his words.
"You... You wouldn't understand." Theo replied, finally breaking their eye contact and slumping tiredly on his seat.
"Try me, Nott."
"You won't." Theo breathed, fighting to keep his face straight.
"Why wouldn't I?" Draco challenged, raising an eyebrow.
"Because you've always, always been there when she needed you! Because you've never disappointed her. Because she chose you!" Theo screamed, his semblance of calm thrown aside and replaced with a stormy fury that was almost identical to the one Draco was sporting. The blonde's secretary stared at Draco questioningly, silently asking if the guards were needed. Sighing, Draco shook his head. He watched his secretary walk out of the guest area of his office and lock the door behind her. He then reverted his attention to the shaking man. "You wouldn't understand. You never would, because you have never stood on the sidelines. You were always there for her. Beside her. Near her. Always. I just... Drake... Just this once, trust me when I say that you wouldn't understand."
"She was mine!" He shouted, rage coursing through him. "What right have you got? Barging in here and demanding to see the grave that you had flat out refused to see six years ago?"
"She was my friend-"
"You should have been there for her, then. Until the end. But you weren't. So why should I let you visit her six years too late?"
"And that is the exact reason why I know you'll never understand. Don't you get it, Drake? I'm guilty. I'm ashamed. I'm hating myself because I never had been there for her enough. Listen to me, please. Forgive me if I abandoned you, because honestly, at that time, it was the only thing that I can do without going completely mad. Hear me out, mate. She would have, you know."
Draco nodded, not really understanding his friend, but he was his friend, even if he abandoned him during the time when Draco had most needed him. He studied him again, in a new light, without the bias and the contempt. It wasn't easy letting go of the anger long enough for him to try to comprehend Theo, but Draco knew that Hermione would've done it if she was the one standing before Theo. And that thought alone made him willing enough to let the man explain.
But before the blonde could say a word, Theo lifted his face and looked at him with the expression that unnerved Draco.
"You're not the only one who loved her, Drake. I did. I still do."
It was like a bucket of cold water to his face.
In all of their years together, before and after Hermione's death, Draco had never once heard Theo say that he loved her.
Not once.
Maybe that was why Draco thought that Theo didn't.
Draco didn't know that his raven-haired housemate felt for Hermione as intensely as he did. He didn't know. And he had always assumed that he was alone in his suffering, that the rest of the world had forgotten about her, that he was the only one whose life orbited the now-gone planet called Granger. He thought that when Theo left, he left to forget about the girl that they had both loved. And maybe he did leave to forget, but it looked like he was still plagued by memories of her as much as Draco was. He thought that his friend stopped caring the moment he refused to see her.
And observing Theo, he knew he was wrong.
So wrong.
"Theo..." Draco started, not even knowing what to say, and there was sudden tension. Tension filled with bitterness, anger, jealousy and regret. So much of regret.
"I fell in love with her during an Arithmancy exam." Theo started, ignoring Draco and seemingly lost in his own world. Draco fell back to his chair, not knowing how to react. He was listening to another man recount stories about her. He wasn't sure if he wanted to punch Theo in the face, or open a bottle of Odgen's finest that they could share. "At least, I think I did. Maybe I started to love her before that, or maybe I fell in love with her later, but that was the earliest memory that I could associate with seeing her in a new light, you know? It was sixth year, sunny, but as usual, bone-numbing-chilly in Professor Vector's classroom. Her hair was up in a messy bun, with a hundred little strands escaping their tie, she was writing like a maniac on her paper, cheeks flushed and eyes bright, and when she turned towards me, she frowned, thinking that I was cheating. When she realized that I wasn't, she smiled. And I thought that she was beautiful."
Draco almost snorted at the sappiness. Was he this sappy when he talked about Hermione? He shuddered. He was annoyed at Theo, but somehow, he understood him. She was beautiful. But she wasn't only beautiful when she smiled. She was beautiful when she scowled, she was beautiful when she screamed bloody murder at him-cheeks cherry red and eyes storming with fury-, she was beautiful when she was absorbed in reading one of her many books, she was beautiful when she looked deep in thought and oblivious to the world, she was beautiful while she slept- hell, she was even beautiful when she had come down with a bad case of the cold; even with her nose stuffed and her eyes red and her lips dry and her ears puffing out smoke, she was beautiful.
She always had been.
Draco shook himself from his trance, just in time to hear Theo's next words, "-and that's why you have no right to keep her grave's location from me, mate. She wasn't yours."
"I beg to differ." He answered, glaring at Theo, but the other man silenced him with a pleading look.
"She was mostly yours. You owned the most of the parts of her heart, but she gave us pieces too, Drake. She loved us too. And I loved her. I loved her and all that she was. She was it for me. And it was like a kick to the balls when I realized that although I held a piece of her heart, it was just a midget compared to your share."
Draco nodded, prodding him to go on, secretly pleased that Theo was acknowledging that Hermione was Draco's.
She would smack me in the head for acting like she was a possession. Draco thought, smiling internally.
Here he was again, missing her.
Although, there never was a moment that he wasn't missing her.
"For me, everything related to her was different." Draco said slowly, softly, carefully, as if talking about him loving her was a delicate process. "I fell for her worst qualities first, before I even noticed all the good things about her. She was stubborn to a fault. She argued and challenged me, and there were times that were were both frustrated and downright angry, almost to the point of homicide on both our parts. She was as sarcastic as they came and her retorts never failed to make me want to strangle her. She loved cats and you know I hate those mangy furballs. She talked nonstop-it was like gift she had-it was annoying; she was annoying. And I was scared of her hair." Draco smiled, "I used to think that she was born to irritate and infuriate me."
"And then I found myself loving that she would stubbornly stay true to her beliefs, even if it meant that she got hurt or ostracized because of them. I admired her wit and courage to stand up to me, and everyone else as long as she thought she was right, and our debates thrilled me to no end. I even found myself desperate to argue again when she started to ignore me. I found her sarcasm was refreshing, and acknowledged that her comebacks were always intelligent. Her cat though, I still hated it. But I had grudgingly respected her for so being patient in dealing with that kneazle. I realized that when she talked, it was always passionate, and I would find myself mesmerized as she droned on and on, even when the subject was about house elf liberation fronts or something as batshit crazy. I didn't mind her babbling anymore, because it wasn't mindless, and admit it, she was hot when she tried to talk your ears off."
Blaise chuckled, nodding, and Draco continued, "And her hair. Her hair. Nothing compares to it now." Blaise nodded again in agreement, smiling as he thought of her untamable brunette locks too.
"It looks like when she died, she gave us every sappy tendency that she had and stripped us of being the manly, unfeeling slytherins that we once were. We could pose as twelve year old schoolgirls and none of them would even notice." Blaise laughed quietly, and Draco nodded. They were being pansies.
Eventually, the two of them settled into a companionable silence. Draco took a deep breath, settling down in his chair as the memories flooded him. Each a bittersweet reminded of the love that he had and lost.
"You know, I didn't fall for her gradually, hell, I was never aware that I was falling for her in the first place! It was like one moment, I hated the very ground that she walked on, and the next, I didn't anymore. Not in the least. And then it hit me, like a bludger to the head-I loved her long before I knew I did."
Theo smiled and answered, "She had a way of ensnaring you when you least expect it."
"Yeah." Draco whispered, and then in a teasing voice, he added, "But I, for one, would think that she would have a coronary if she found out that she was the reason why you failed that particular exam. I remember father gloating to your dad about me getting a higher score than you did."
"She would have apologized over and over again. But I didn't really care, I sucked at arithmancy anyway. Plus, I was a lovestruck fool, remember?"
"And you still act like one."
Theo snorted. "This is a prime example of the saying about a pot calling a cauldron black. You're worse than I am mate."
"Whatever. I'll write you the lot number and other details." Draco finally conceded. "You might be surprised though, about the amount of protective spells. She was a Hero of the War, and too many people tried to visit her those first few months, and there were even cases of others trying to steal her bones." Draco chuckled, and the tension dissipated. "I think I almost committed murder when I caught a particular idiot digging at her grave. I put the mother of all wards there, and now, only a few of us visit, since only a few of us had been given the location. I'm secret keeper. And I trust that this won't fall to public hands, yeah?"
"Of course." Theo snorted, giving Draco a what-do-you-think-I-am look. His expression was neutral now, but his eyes were still slightly red.
Theo moved to take the slip of paper from Draco's hand, giving him a handshake and a nod in the process. He turned on his heel, and just as he was outside Draco's office door, he turned around and gave the blonde a smile.
"Who knew a speech would move you enough to tell me?" Theo chuckled, but Draco knew that the speech had been sincere. "Blaise even told me to prepare to empty my trust fund just to get you to tell me the general location."
"Har-har. You may think that I'm going soft, but I'm not. Just, don't take all day, okay? I get her all to myself after four." Draco chuckled. "Now, get out of her before I make you listen to a speech of my own."
"Seriously though, Draco," Theo said softly, looking at him with gratitude and understanding and a touch of remorse that made Draco doubt if the two of them had ever been Slytherins. "Thank you."
And then Theo disapparated.
He was left alone.
He was left in silence.
He was left to his thoughts.
And all of his cheerful facade slipped away.
As he settled back on his chair, he picked up the stacks of paperwork on his desk, deciding to do a little work before going to do his rounds. He shouted obscenities when a particularly sharp edged sheet sliced through his index finger, quite deeply, eliciting a thin wound.
He lifted his finger closer to inspect the damage, and he watched as his scarlet blood flow slowly down to pool on his pale, shaking palm.
A/n: So, thoughts on this chappie? :) Review please! Pm or review any questions that you have, since I know that I'm a bit featherbrained and get distracted easily, I might get things mixed up or something :D
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