Duet 9 teenage_hustler and ningloreth
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Title: Just a Schoolyard Crush
Author: teenage_hustler (pinch-hitter)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2720
Summary: It was just a schoolyard crush. That’s all it ever was.
Warnings: Some exploration of war-time psyche, implied adultery.
Timeline: Hogwarts to Post-DH
Genre(s): Angst, Romance
Author's Note(s): Based on the prompt “Schoolyard Crush”. My dear recipient, I hope you like this! And thank you to blackestfaery, for being a star and beta-ing for me last-minute. You’re such a legend.
Beta: blackestfaery
Mod's Note: Both of the stories in this duet are pinch-hits, but they were written using a matching pair of prompts!
~*~
It was just a schoolyard crush.
That’s all it ever was.
He smiled at her on the Hogwarts Express, as she ran between carriages trying to find Neville Longbottom’s toad. She smiled back, pawing at the hair falling into her eyes, and thought nothing else of it until later that evening, when he caught her eye from across the Great Hall and smiled again, after making sure nobody at his table was watching. She felt a flutter in her stomach her eleven-year-old self did not understand.
The flutters came back whenever they spoke. When he went to her during first year to ask her how that wand movement was supposed to go. In second year, when she ran into him in the corridor and he pulled her into a deserted corner and apologised for being so horrible in public (but didn’t Ron look funny puking up slugs?) She bonked him on the head with her copy of one of Lockhart’s books. After she slapped him in the face in third year and decided she was done with having anything to do with him after all the pain he was putting Hagrid through. And then during that summer, when he sent her an owl of apology and admitted that the habits of spoiled rich kids used to getting their own way die hard sometimes. She knew she had a crush by then, but she kept it to herself.
~*~
“‘Potter stinks’? Really?” she asked him at the beginning of fourth year. “If you’re going to be horrible to my friend, can you at least be a little bit classier about it?”
“I could, I guess...” he said. “But come on. I so very rarely get to act like a child. Can’t you let me have this one?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, really, since you always do what you want anyway.” She sighed. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.
“What you think always matters, Granger,” he said quietly.
She looked back at him, not sure what she could say to that.
~*~
He looked ridiculous at the Yule Ball. Those high-collared robes had probably cost his parents thousands of Galleons, and all they had got for their money was something that could have easily been procured at a Muggle costume shop one-size-fits-all for thirty quid.
She saw him staring at her more than once during the evening. To be fair, he was not the only person looking her way. Ron was getting a fair few gawks in when he wasn’t scowling or ignoring Padma. Victor was too, naturally. But he was allowed.
Until the row with Ron, it had been a dizzying night of romance. Viktor was lovely, proper - a gentleman. Maybe they could have something real together. She fell asleep that night imagining life with Viktor, maybe in Bulgaria, with several adorable and slightly clumsy children. It was nice to think about for a night, but by the next morning it had been all but forgotten.
~*~
He waited for her after Runes in fifth year, the Monday after he’d gotten Harry, George and Fred kicked off the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
“You’re a bastard,” she said, walking past him. He followed her.
“Let me explain-”
“No.”
“I had to do it-”
“Had to?!” Several people glanced at them. Hermione sighed and turned into an empty classroom, because she knew he would just keep following her until she paid attention to him.
“You didn’t have to do anything,” she said, once he had closed the door. “You haven’t had to do any of the crap you’ve done to Harry and Ron since first year. This is all a ridiculous power play between you and Harry, and I’m sick of it!”
“Yeah?” Draco asked, crossing his arms. “Well you want to know what I’m sick of, Granger? I’m sick of having to walk around with all these brainless oafs, listening to them guffaw over their arm hair or whatever. I’m sick of having to be friends with people with whom I have nothing in common. Most of all, I’m sick of having to hide the only friendship I really care about, while Potter and Weasley get to trumpet it around for the world to see.”
Hermione sighed, and raked a hand through her messy-enough-without-the-added-stimulation hair. Damn him, she thought. Damn him for saying that.
“That’s not their fault,” she said. “It has nothing to do with them. They can’t control your heritage. Or mine, for that matter.”
“I am aware,” he said, taking a few steps closer to her. “But I’m jealous. Every time I look at them I want to strangle them.”
“Yeah, well,” she slid onto a table, “if it’s any consolation, the feeling is pretty mutual.”
He smiled grimly, and she felt soft warmth on her hand as he took it in his.
“If only your ancestors were magical.”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “If only yours weren’t.”
~*~
She had always prided herself on her intellect - on her ability to separate her heart from her head - and have her head lead. Even when it involved something or someone she passionately hated, at least what she ended up doing to them (trapping them in jars, leading them to angry centaurs, etc.) made better sense in her head than any other option.
And she thought she was being sensible this time, too. It seemed illogical to believe that Draco was up to anything in sixth year. And for once in his life, Ron also seemed to be seeing the logical side, telling Harry as frequently as she that he was being ridiculous.
Of course, Ron may have just been saying that to get in her good books.
So when the Death Eaters appeared out of what appeared to be nowhere, right when Harry had disappeared with Dumbledore, she did not suspect Draco for a moment. She did not suspect anyone, truth be told. All she knew was that she had to do something. With a mouthful of Felix Felicis coursing through her system, she started fighting.
And then she felt it. A coldness that would have had even Dementors pulling up their hoods and wanting a nearby fire. The flutters she had almost grown used to over the past six years flapped furiously, angrily, inside her stomach. Clutching her stomach, she ran to the nearest corner she could find and knelt down.
Something had happened. Something that would change everything for her.
Something involving him.
“Granger?”
She opened eyes she had not realised she’d closed to see Draco, puffing slightly from overexertion, standing in front of her. Without another word, he grabbed her hand and pulled her through the nearest tapestry.
“There’s not much time,” he said, before she had a chance to say so much as what’s going on. “I’m leaving.”
“What?” As though they had now been given license to go for gold, the flutters intensified and she had to kneel down again. “Why?”
“Because I did this.”
“Did what?”
Draco gestured hopelessly outside. “I got them all in. The Death Eaters.”
Later, Hermione would look at this moment and think ironically about how people say that when they receive bad news, their hearts sink. Her heart, she felt, sort of disappeared. Like it figured it did not need to exist anymore. Perhaps it had followed her brain, which had clearly left her earlier that year. Harry had been right. And she had not, for one second, believed him.
“...You?” she finally managed to choke out. “But... how?”
“There’s a vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement. Its partner cabinet is in Borgin and Burkes. All I had to do was fix the one in the Room.”
She was hearing him, but her brain was not connecting the dots together. “But, why...”
“I had to.” Draco, who had been looking more at the entrance to the room than at her until this point, suddenly turned, knelt down, and took her hands. “I didn’t have a choice. He would have killed me otherwise. Please believe me.”
She nodded slowly. “I believe you,” she said, and he seemed to visibly relax. “But... why didn’t you tell me? Maybe I could have... I don’t know-”
“What? Helped? Talked to Dumbledore?” Draco shook his head. “Come on, Granger. You’re smarter than this. The last person I would have asked for help is you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hermione said. “I know. If he’d known that you were getting help from a Mudblood, he would only have killed you sooner.”
“That is one reason, yes,” he agreed. “But more than that, he already has enough reason to want to kill you. I don’t want to give him extra incentive.”
It was extraordinary how, despite how long they had known each other, he was able to completely surprise her. She looked back up at him, only to have him take her face in his hands.
“Listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once,” he said. “You have to win this, Granger. This can’t go on. He can’t go on. If he wins we’re all doomed, and none of us will lead the lives we want to lead.”
“None of us?” she whispered, the warmth of his hands burning her cheeks. “So what life do you want to lead, then?”
“I’m not fussed,” he answered. “As long as it’s with you.”
Then, before she could speak, he kissed her. It ended as soon as it began, and with a final parting I’ll miss you, he exited through the tapestry, leaving her in the dark room.
Hermione could not say how long she stayed there. She traced her lips, thinking everything and nothing all at once, the flutters in her stomach soldiering on.
~*~
It is amazing how, even in the most self-absorbed years of one’s life, one’s thoughts and feelings take a backseat when there are more urgent things - like, say, war - to be thinking about.
For some reason, she almost forgot about him, focusing instead on finding Horcruxes and keeping Harry and Ron safe.
For some reason, he protected their identity when they needed him to. He glanced at her, and she glanced back, hoping her heartfelt gratitude was well-enough communicated.
For some reason, she protected their secret, and therefore their friendship, when she would have given just about anything for the pain to end.
For some reason, in the Room of Requirement, Harry went back for him.
Somehow, they both survived the war.
~*~
It took six months’ worth of meetings, hearings, testimonies from Harry and herself and even an unenthusiastic Ron, truth potions and enough charm to melt cement walls, but when Kingsley Shacklebolt announced that the Malfoys were cleared of all Azkaban charges, Hermione was sure that it was worth it.
She went to Draco after the hearing, and he, without any worry about the dozens of people milling around the Atrium, threw his arms around her. It was this point, more than any other, that made her realise that the war was well and truly over.
“You would not believe how long I’ve wanted to touch you again,” he whispered.
“A year and a half, I’d have thought,” she said, clutching him back. “Was it worth the wait?”
“Definitely.”
At that point Ron and Harry wandered over, the latter reaching out to shake Draco’s hand.
“Who would have thought it would come to this, eh?” Harry said. “The four of us, co-operating? War really does change people, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly makes us bolder,” Ron agreed.
“How do you mean?” Draco asked.
“Well, I doubt that Hermione and I would be engaged now if war hadn’t made us stop being stubborn and waiting for the other, would we, Hermione?”
Hermione glanced from Ron to Draco, who was watching her carefully, one eyebrow raised in question. She made a mental note to smack Ron later for being a tactless git.
“Right.”
~*~
One more thing about war: it makes you feel things you are not supposed to feel. You want to hurt people you love. You find happiness in death. You, yourself, want to hurt. To die.
When things are that desperate, you form attachments to people. Attachments that are strong during times of war but inevitably fade when peace comes, to what they are meant to be.
That is how it was with Ron. Hermione loved him, during the war. When she kissed him in the Room of Requirement, she genuinely thought she would do anything for him and that he would be everything she needed. And he probably still would be, for her.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care for him. She did. They had been through a lot together, after all. And she did not question their getting married, because it was not as though she did not want to be there for him for the rest of her life, in some way.
But her attachment to him faded after the war. While the touch of his hand made her feel warm and comforted, like everything was going to be okay during the war, now she felt nothing. Nothing more than what she felt when Harry or Ginny touched her.
Still, that might be all right.
~*~
She floo’d over to Draco’s house the night before the wedding for their usual weekly cup of tea and chat.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, handing her a cup and passing the sugar without her needing to ask.
“A bit nervous,” she admitted. “I’ve never been married before, after all.”
“Mmm.” He took a biscuit from the plate between them. “Well, judging from what I’ve seen of my parents, you’ll probably be fine. As long as you love the ginger-haired git.”
He smiled at her, and she did her best to smile back. Attempt unsuccessful, she sipped her tea instead.
“Granger?”
She placed her cup carefully back on the table, her shaking hands hopefully not as obvious as she thought they might be. “Yes?”
“You do love him, right?”
She tried her damnedest to look at him as though he was mental, and reached for a biscuit. “Of course.”
He touched her hand and the flutters came with a vengeance. Just like they did every time she was with him. Since the day they met.
“How much?” he asked.
“A lot.” He slid his hand along hers and grasped it, before he stood, pulling her up with him.
“Really?”
“Yes. We fought a war together, after all.”
“You fought the war with Potter, too,” he said, taking her other hand.
“Yeah, and I love him as a friend,” she explained. “But Ron was different. You know how sometimes, you just fall in love for no reason?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
He was close. Too close. She wanted to step back, but couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot like a romantic cliché. Which, she supposed, this was.
“I do love him,” she repeated.
“Okay.”
“Just...” she looked up at him and dimly wondered when, exactly, this had become the point of no return. “Just not like you.”
~*~
Her dress was lovely. Her hair, most extraordinarily un-bushy. Her flowers, blooming and beautiful.
Inside she was screaming.
She kept a tight grip on her father’s arm as he led her down the aisle. She looked up and saw Ron. He was grinning like a loon. Like this was the most wonderful day of his life. To his side stood Harry, looking almost as happy, winking at her and mouthing “you look beautiful”. Ginny walked in front of her, her vibrant hair sparkling with glitter. Hermione was sure she was grinning too.
And, when she passed the front row, she saw Draco. He had been watching her the entire time, she knew. He had the same look of wonder on his face he’d had last night as he undressed her. When she caught his eye, the flutters came back as strong as they had been when he’d laid her on the bed. For that brief moment, like the hours they had spent together, knowing they had to be their last... their only time... nobody else existed.
Then Hermione and her father reached the end of the aisle, and she put on a brave face.
It was just a schoolyard crush, she said to herself. That was all it had ever been.
Except it was never that, really.
THE END
Title: Just a Schoolyard Crush
Author: teenage_hustler (pinch-hitter)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2720
Summary: It was just a schoolyard crush. That’s all it ever was.
Warnings: Some exploration of war-time psyche, implied adultery.
Timeline: Hogwarts to Post-DH
Genre(s): Angst, Romance
Author's Note(s): Based on the prompt “Schoolyard Crush”. My dear recipient, I hope you like this! And thank you to blackestfaery, for being a star and beta-ing for me last-minute. You’re such a legend.
Beta: blackestfaery
Mod's Note: Both of the stories in this duet are pinch-hits, but they were written using a matching pair of prompts!
~*~
It was just a schoolyard crush.
That’s all it ever was.
He smiled at her on the Hogwarts Express, as she ran between carriages trying to find Neville Longbottom’s toad. She smiled back, pawing at the hair falling into her eyes, and thought nothing else of it until later that evening, when he caught her eye from across the Great Hall and smiled again, after making sure nobody at his table was watching. She felt a flutter in her stomach her eleven-year-old self did not understand.
The flutters came back whenever they spoke. When he went to her during first year to ask her how that wand movement was supposed to go. In second year, when she ran into him in the corridor and he pulled her into a deserted corner and apologised for being so horrible in public (but didn’t Ron look funny puking up slugs?) She bonked him on the head with her copy of one of Lockhart’s books. After she slapped him in the face in third year and decided she was done with having anything to do with him after all the pain he was putting Hagrid through. And then during that summer, when he sent her an owl of apology and admitted that the habits of spoiled rich kids used to getting their own way die hard sometimes. She knew she had a crush by then, but she kept it to herself.
~*~
“‘Potter stinks’? Really?” she asked him at the beginning of fourth year. “If you’re going to be horrible to my friend, can you at least be a little bit classier about it?”
“I could, I guess...” he said. “But come on. I so very rarely get to act like a child. Can’t you let me have this one?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, really, since you always do what you want anyway.” She sighed. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered.
“What you think always matters, Granger,” he said quietly.
She looked back at him, not sure what she could say to that.
~*~
He looked ridiculous at the Yule Ball. Those high-collared robes had probably cost his parents thousands of Galleons, and all they had got for their money was something that could have easily been procured at a Muggle costume shop one-size-fits-all for thirty quid.
She saw him staring at her more than once during the evening. To be fair, he was not the only person looking her way. Ron was getting a fair few gawks in when he wasn’t scowling or ignoring Padma. Victor was too, naturally. But he was allowed.
Until the row with Ron, it had been a dizzying night of romance. Viktor was lovely, proper - a gentleman. Maybe they could have something real together. She fell asleep that night imagining life with Viktor, maybe in Bulgaria, with several adorable and slightly clumsy children. It was nice to think about for a night, but by the next morning it had been all but forgotten.
~*~
He waited for her after Runes in fifth year, the Monday after he’d gotten Harry, George and Fred kicked off the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
“You’re a bastard,” she said, walking past him. He followed her.
“Let me explain-”
“No.”
“I had to do it-”
“Had to?!” Several people glanced at them. Hermione sighed and turned into an empty classroom, because she knew he would just keep following her until she paid attention to him.
“You didn’t have to do anything,” she said, once he had closed the door. “You haven’t had to do any of the crap you’ve done to Harry and Ron since first year. This is all a ridiculous power play between you and Harry, and I’m sick of it!”
“Yeah?” Draco asked, crossing his arms. “Well you want to know what I’m sick of, Granger? I’m sick of having to walk around with all these brainless oafs, listening to them guffaw over their arm hair or whatever. I’m sick of having to be friends with people with whom I have nothing in common. Most of all, I’m sick of having to hide the only friendship I really care about, while Potter and Weasley get to trumpet it around for the world to see.”
Hermione sighed, and raked a hand through her messy-enough-without-the-added-stimulation hair. Damn him, she thought. Damn him for saying that.
“That’s not their fault,” she said. “It has nothing to do with them. They can’t control your heritage. Or mine, for that matter.”
“I am aware,” he said, taking a few steps closer to her. “But I’m jealous. Every time I look at them I want to strangle them.”
“Yeah, well,” she slid onto a table, “if it’s any consolation, the feeling is pretty mutual.”
He smiled grimly, and she felt soft warmth on her hand as he took it in his.
“If only your ancestors were magical.”
She gave his hand a squeeze. “If only yours weren’t.”
~*~
She had always prided herself on her intellect - on her ability to separate her heart from her head - and have her head lead. Even when it involved something or someone she passionately hated, at least what she ended up doing to them (trapping them in jars, leading them to angry centaurs, etc.) made better sense in her head than any other option.
And she thought she was being sensible this time, too. It seemed illogical to believe that Draco was up to anything in sixth year. And for once in his life, Ron also seemed to be seeing the logical side, telling Harry as frequently as she that he was being ridiculous.
Of course, Ron may have just been saying that to get in her good books.
So when the Death Eaters appeared out of what appeared to be nowhere, right when Harry had disappeared with Dumbledore, she did not suspect Draco for a moment. She did not suspect anyone, truth be told. All she knew was that she had to do something. With a mouthful of Felix Felicis coursing through her system, she started fighting.
And then she felt it. A coldness that would have had even Dementors pulling up their hoods and wanting a nearby fire. The flutters she had almost grown used to over the past six years flapped furiously, angrily, inside her stomach. Clutching her stomach, she ran to the nearest corner she could find and knelt down.
Something had happened. Something that would change everything for her.
Something involving him.
“Granger?”
She opened eyes she had not realised she’d closed to see Draco, puffing slightly from overexertion, standing in front of her. Without another word, he grabbed her hand and pulled her through the nearest tapestry.
“There’s not much time,” he said, before she had a chance to say so much as what’s going on. “I’m leaving.”
“What?” As though they had now been given license to go for gold, the flutters intensified and she had to kneel down again. “Why?”
“Because I did this.”
“Did what?”
Draco gestured hopelessly outside. “I got them all in. The Death Eaters.”
Later, Hermione would look at this moment and think ironically about how people say that when they receive bad news, their hearts sink. Her heart, she felt, sort of disappeared. Like it figured it did not need to exist anymore. Perhaps it had followed her brain, which had clearly left her earlier that year. Harry had been right. And she had not, for one second, believed him.
“...You?” she finally managed to choke out. “But... how?”
“There’s a vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement. Its partner cabinet is in Borgin and Burkes. All I had to do was fix the one in the Room.”
She was hearing him, but her brain was not connecting the dots together. “But, why...”
“I had to.” Draco, who had been looking more at the entrance to the room than at her until this point, suddenly turned, knelt down, and took her hands. “I didn’t have a choice. He would have killed me otherwise. Please believe me.”
She nodded slowly. “I believe you,” she said, and he seemed to visibly relax. “But... why didn’t you tell me? Maybe I could have... I don’t know-”
“What? Helped? Talked to Dumbledore?” Draco shook his head. “Come on, Granger. You’re smarter than this. The last person I would have asked for help is you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hermione said. “I know. If he’d known that you were getting help from a Mudblood, he would only have killed you sooner.”
“That is one reason, yes,” he agreed. “But more than that, he already has enough reason to want to kill you. I don’t want to give him extra incentive.”
It was extraordinary how, despite how long they had known each other, he was able to completely surprise her. She looked back up at him, only to have him take her face in his hands.
“Listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once,” he said. “You have to win this, Granger. This can’t go on. He can’t go on. If he wins we’re all doomed, and none of us will lead the lives we want to lead.”
“None of us?” she whispered, the warmth of his hands burning her cheeks. “So what life do you want to lead, then?”
“I’m not fussed,” he answered. “As long as it’s with you.”
Then, before she could speak, he kissed her. It ended as soon as it began, and with a final parting I’ll miss you, he exited through the tapestry, leaving her in the dark room.
Hermione could not say how long she stayed there. She traced her lips, thinking everything and nothing all at once, the flutters in her stomach soldiering on.
~*~
It is amazing how, even in the most self-absorbed years of one’s life, one’s thoughts and feelings take a backseat when there are more urgent things - like, say, war - to be thinking about.
For some reason, she almost forgot about him, focusing instead on finding Horcruxes and keeping Harry and Ron safe.
For some reason, he protected their identity when they needed him to. He glanced at her, and she glanced back, hoping her heartfelt gratitude was well-enough communicated.
For some reason, she protected their secret, and therefore their friendship, when she would have given just about anything for the pain to end.
For some reason, in the Room of Requirement, Harry went back for him.
Somehow, they both survived the war.
~*~
It took six months’ worth of meetings, hearings, testimonies from Harry and herself and even an unenthusiastic Ron, truth potions and enough charm to melt cement walls, but when Kingsley Shacklebolt announced that the Malfoys were cleared of all Azkaban charges, Hermione was sure that it was worth it.
She went to Draco after the hearing, and he, without any worry about the dozens of people milling around the Atrium, threw his arms around her. It was this point, more than any other, that made her realise that the war was well and truly over.
“You would not believe how long I’ve wanted to touch you again,” he whispered.
“A year and a half, I’d have thought,” she said, clutching him back. “Was it worth the wait?”
“Definitely.”
At that point Ron and Harry wandered over, the latter reaching out to shake Draco’s hand.
“Who would have thought it would come to this, eh?” Harry said. “The four of us, co-operating? War really does change people, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly makes us bolder,” Ron agreed.
“How do you mean?” Draco asked.
“Well, I doubt that Hermione and I would be engaged now if war hadn’t made us stop being stubborn and waiting for the other, would we, Hermione?”
Hermione glanced from Ron to Draco, who was watching her carefully, one eyebrow raised in question. She made a mental note to smack Ron later for being a tactless git.
“Right.”
~*~
One more thing about war: it makes you feel things you are not supposed to feel. You want to hurt people you love. You find happiness in death. You, yourself, want to hurt. To die.
When things are that desperate, you form attachments to people. Attachments that are strong during times of war but inevitably fade when peace comes, to what they are meant to be.
That is how it was with Ron. Hermione loved him, during the war. When she kissed him in the Room of Requirement, she genuinely thought she would do anything for him and that he would be everything she needed. And he probably still would be, for her.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care for him. She did. They had been through a lot together, after all. And she did not question their getting married, because it was not as though she did not want to be there for him for the rest of her life, in some way.
But her attachment to him faded after the war. While the touch of his hand made her feel warm and comforted, like everything was going to be okay during the war, now she felt nothing. Nothing more than what she felt when Harry or Ginny touched her.
Still, that might be all right.
~*~
She floo’d over to Draco’s house the night before the wedding for their usual weekly cup of tea and chat.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, handing her a cup and passing the sugar without her needing to ask.
“A bit nervous,” she admitted. “I’ve never been married before, after all.”
“Mmm.” He took a biscuit from the plate between them. “Well, judging from what I’ve seen of my parents, you’ll probably be fine. As long as you love the ginger-haired git.”
He smiled at her, and she did her best to smile back. Attempt unsuccessful, she sipped her tea instead.
“Granger?”
She placed her cup carefully back on the table, her shaking hands hopefully not as obvious as she thought they might be. “Yes?”
“You do love him, right?”
She tried her damnedest to look at him as though he was mental, and reached for a biscuit. “Of course.”
He touched her hand and the flutters came with a vengeance. Just like they did every time she was with him. Since the day they met.
“How much?” he asked.
“A lot.” He slid his hand along hers and grasped it, before he stood, pulling her up with him.
“Really?”
“Yes. We fought a war together, after all.”
“You fought the war with Potter, too,” he said, taking her other hand.
“Yeah, and I love him as a friend,” she explained. “But Ron was different. You know how sometimes, you just fall in love for no reason?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
He was close. Too close. She wanted to step back, but couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot like a romantic cliché. Which, she supposed, this was.
“I do love him,” she repeated.
“Okay.”
“Just...” she looked up at him and dimly wondered when, exactly, this had become the point of no return. “Just not like you.”
~*~
Her dress was lovely. Her hair, most extraordinarily un-bushy. Her flowers, blooming and beautiful.
Inside she was screaming.
She kept a tight grip on her father’s arm as he led her down the aisle. She looked up and saw Ron. He was grinning like a loon. Like this was the most wonderful day of his life. To his side stood Harry, looking almost as happy, winking at her and mouthing “you look beautiful”. Ginny walked in front of her, her vibrant hair sparkling with glitter. Hermione was sure she was grinning too.
And, when she passed the front row, she saw Draco. He had been watching her the entire time, she knew. He had the same look of wonder on his face he’d had last night as he undressed her. When she caught his eye, the flutters came back as strong as they had been when he’d laid her on the bed. For that brief moment, like the hours they had spent together, knowing they had to be their last... their only time... nobody else existed.
Then Hermione and her father reached the end of the aisle, and she put on a brave face.
It was just a schoolyard crush, she said to herself. That was all it had ever been.
Except it was never that, really.
THE END