Author's note: Cue the scary horror film music.

Year 16

"How old are you anyway?"

Draco had been ready to come back to Kure the second he left last summer. He hadn't wanted to leave. His summers in Kure were like a special treat at the end of each very long year. Kure was the dream he lived for all year long.

Hermione wrapped her arms around his neck. They were hanging out underneath the boardwalk. It was the spot they found after Gran had forbidden him from the flower fields. Draco still saw Hermione head out towards the fields once every little while, but she didn't say anything about him not coming with. She brought him a crown back and they hung them up on the fence post together. Some of the crowns were so old now Draco knew if he touched them they would crumple. They were running out of room on the fence post. Hermione had made so many over the years they took up nearly all of the space on the tops of the fence posts. He liked that Gran and Hermione's parents didn't ever move them. They just left them as is.

"I'm 16."

"What? No you can't be-"

Hermione pulled a driver's license out of her dress pocket.

"I always thought you were older than me for some reason.." Draco wracked his brain but couldn't come up with an explanation. Probably he figured she was just so much more mature than him he had never doubted his assumption. Still it was weird...but her license confirmed what she said.

Draco felt the pendant around his neck as he had become accustomed to in the year since he had been wearing it. When he found it in the wildflower field last summer Draco had run it under the sink at Gran's to get all of the dirt off it. It was a little scratched and he guessed Hermione hadn't cared enough about it to want it back. Draco liked it. It was a reminder of what he had waiting for him in Kure every summer.

There was laughter and running above them. The rickety old wood jostled a bit, and Hermione readjusted in his arms.

"I miss lying with you in the flowers." Hermione admitted while kissing up his neck in that way that made him turn to goo.

"Yeah me to." He kissed her back. "Gran's pretty set against the place though so-"

"Why doesn't she want you in the fields anyway?"

He laughed, because it was so ridiculous. "It's silly."

"Tell me." She smiled against his lips.

"Well-" He started and paused when Hermione's hands started roaming around his waist band. "she said it was like haunted or something-" Hermione froze. "a girl died there i think." He added and he knew the moment of heat between them was extinguished.

He searched her face. She looked stricken like someone had slapped her.

"Oh shit-" Draco realized. "Did you know the girl?" Kure was a big place but also it wasn't.

She looked up at the sky like he had seen her do a thousand other times. Had she been looking up all this time thinking of that girl?

"Yeah i knew her." Hermione said. "I don't wanna talk about it though." She palmed her pendant around his neck.

"Okay." He let his forehead rest against hers.

That summer he read Hermione Romeo and Juliet. He knew from the beginning of that book their love was nothing like Romeo and Juliet. Romeo was an idiot, and Juliet was a spoiled selfish person. It was no wonder they both ended up dead.

'Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.'

There wasn't anyway Draco felt he could truly be parted from Hermione. Even the time he spent away from Kure he only thought of her.

Draco would just have to keep looking for a story that conveyed what he felt when he thought of Hermione.

They walked back to their houses hand in hand. Hermione wanted to stay in the field of flowers for awhile which Draco understood. He had brought up her dead friend after all it was no wonder she was on Hermione's mind. He just was concerned, what if the girl had been murdered and- how safe was it for Hermione to be around here on her own.

"You're friend," he asked before heading back to Gran's for the night. "how did she die?" The last word felt like battery acid on his tongue it was acrid, and made his insides feel putrid.

"Metaphorically-" Hermione parted the taller flowers in the front as she went into the field. "it was death by a thousand cuts." Draco's brows rose in question, and worry. "Physically she killed herself." Draco's mouth dropped open. Thinking back on it summer 13 when Hermione's parents had been fighting alot she had seemed alot sadder than someone whose parents weren't getting along. Now he knew why. She was grieving her friend. Hermione looked up at him and saw his face. "It was an accident though. She didn't mean it. She didn't really mean to die. She wanted to take it back in the end."

What Hermione said to him all those summers ago came crashing back to him. "There's not a thing to do here but die."

"Hermione-"

"I'm fine Draco." She walked out until all he could make out of her was the honey colored curls flashing as her hair floated in the flowers. "I just want to be alone for a little while."

Well there wasn't a murderer around so he felt better about leaving her there, but still he wanted to turn around every step he took away from her.

Gran was probably waiting for him with supper, but he had decided this summer would be the one that Hermione finally came to the concert with him. He wasn't going to let whatever was going on with her parents deter him any longer.

His plan was to march straight up to the front door introduce himself and beg for Hermione to come with him if he had to. Only after 5 minutes of consistent knocking no one came to the door. The house looked like someone was home. The lights were on, and the fan on the porch was turned on. Draco looked through the window beside the door and he could see around some of the curtain. The tv was running to... how strange. He went home to Gran's vowing to try again tomorrow.

"What were you doing over there earlier?" Gran asked over a plate of hotdogs and slaw she prepared for them.

"Over where?" Draco took a sip of his off brand soda. That's what Gran bought off brand everything.

"The house next door, why were you banging on the door like that?"

He chewed his food. "I just had a question." He shrugged at her. "No one was home though."

"I don't imagine so." She squirted ketchup onto her plate. "No one's lived there in years."

It took a moment for that sentence to process in Draco's head. It was like a gear shift had broken in half in the inner workings of his brain.

"What?" He said dumbly.

"They moved after the girl died." Gran looked out through the window where the front porch was, and her eyes landed on the tinkling wind-chimes that hung there.

"What girl?" He asked struggling to keep his voice even and level regardless of the tornado of unease that was slowly building inside him.

"The girl in the wildflower field. Remember i told you about her. Such a pretty little thing, such a shame. It wasn't any wonder when her parents divorced. They say most couples do when they loose a child."

Draco stood up so abruptly Gran flinched.

"Draco, what-" He spun around and his arm knocked his drink to the floor. It shattered and off brand soda splattered all over Gran's kitchen floor.

He dashed out the front door not looking back once as Gran yelled out after him.

No! No! No! No! No!

He screamed in his head, as dread started to set in. This couldn't be this didn't make sense. She wasn't- Hermione wasn't- she couldn't be DEAD!

He flew through the wildflowers. It was dark and the stars were his only light. The taller plants whipped his face, and he was sure he earned a couple cuts across his cheeks. "Hermione! Hermione!" He screamed. "Where are you?!" His voice trembled and shook. There was no reply. It was eerily quiet around him. He was entirely alone. His hand shook as he reached for the pendant around his throat. He was relieved when he found it was still there. See. He hadn't imagined her he told himself.

He ran all the way back to Hermione's front porch, and almost tripped when he saw the house now. What the- the lights were all off. The paint was peeling off the porch. The fan was gone and bits of broken glass laid under where it had been just an hour ago. There was a cobweb overtop of the window next to the door. Draco walked up each step slowly as he struggled to control his breathing. When he reached for the door he saw the lock on it was busted and it creaked open when he tapped it.

Draco nearly fainted when he peered inside. There was no tv. There wasn't a single piece of furniture in fact. The entire house was empty, and looked like it had been for some time. Mold was creeping up the kitchen wall, and bits of the carpet was missing like an animal had scratched it away.

Draco swallowed thickly. "Hermione..." He called. He stepped inside carefully, and followed the way he knew lead to Hermione's bedroom. "Hermione." he tried again before opening her door.

The room to was empty save for one framed photo on the wall. It was hanging off a nail sideways, and had a layer of dust an inch thick over it. He pulled it down and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe it.

There she was young, and beautiful, and frozen at 16 he realized. She was wearing the same white dress she had every summer he had known her. Her hair was in a messy bun. The date on the photo was from the first summer he had spent in Kure when he was 12. Hermione hadn't aged or changed at all since then.

Draco must have screamed because a mouse scurried out from debris on the floor. It only made him scream harder.

A memory came back to him as he cradled the old photograph in his hands.

"I don't believe in ghosts. Gran."

"You should boy." She warned. "You really should."

Gran's voice in his head drifted out...