Spring Fic Request for Cyyt/Candice
Spring Fic Request for cyyt
Title: The Sound of Paper
Author: eucalyptus
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Character death, language.
Summary: There are many things about this girl, even though she’s the only thing he’s got.
Author Notes: Probably not what was imagined when requested, but I am willing to fight to the death that it is romantic. Well, maybe not to the death. Thanks to Jenn for the beta!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me.
-----
Mr. Granger was buried yesterday to the sound of thunderous applause, and for once it wasn't a pathetic attempt on Draco Malfoy’s part to celebrate another pointless muggle death.
What he hears is wholly uncontrollable, the roaring cacophony of millions of things happening at the same time -- people dying and babies being born, tide water rushing in and out with the pull of the moon, muggle cell phones ringing in muggle subway cars beneath muggle cities. A woman is shrieking with laughter somewhere; he himself is sitting in a cemetary and a grieving girl is clutching his arm so hard it hurts.
“Mum thought it was a practical joke,” she whispers with a sad laugh. “Have I mentioned that?”
The wind picks up and sighs through the trees.
Draco is especially curt this morning. His back aches, refusing to ease the iron grip on his spine. He huffs so the girl with the wild brown hair and glassy eyes can hear him and then ignores her by picking at the dirt beneath his fingernails.
She gets the picture.
“Fine."
She sighs and taps her shoe in a puddle of dirty water pooled in the cracks of pavement at their feet. They’re sitting on a metal bench and a lamp post with a ghostly artificial glow is seeing its final minutes of duty above them before the rise of the sun.
He's lost track of the days, but knows enough to figure it has been 12, maybe 14 hours since the funeral.
Hermione laughs under her breath.
“I bet I haven’t told you what happened when McGonagall came. Mum didn’t know she was coming, you see, and Dad was working late -- ”
He groans, making no attempt to hide his annoyance and he is pleased to see her eyes narrow.
"...so she tried to serve tea at the dining table, but McGonagall transfigured into a cat and drank from the saucer of milk instead. Poor Mum, she dropped the whole tray of dishes, smashing every piece into a million pieces."
Hermione beams at the memory then dissolves into soft laughter.
"Good story,” he deadpans. "It's funnier now than the first thirty times you told it."
Her face pales and she doesn't reply. Instead she slides her bum to the far end of the bench.
And damn it if he doesn’t feel guilty. The urge to explain himself overpowers him. Draco slides himself along the cold wet bench and nudges her with his shoulder, dismayed at his powerlessness in the face of this girl’s pretty little pout.
"Okay, okay, what happened then?"
She gives in, an expression of gratitude flitting across her face. “She Reparo'ed it. And I was so excited I must have asked McGonagall a hundred questions, all the while taking exhaustive notes so she couldn’t leave until after Dad came home from work.”
The lamp post flickers out, leaving them in the early morning glow. The skin of his hands looks ashen now, so he closes his eyes and tries to sleep.
Hermione makes a little noise, trying to get his attention again. He blinks at her, unfocused, and she steals her arm beneath his back and around his waist.
“She gave me my copy of Hogwarts: A History. Did you ever get one?”
“Yeah.” He snorts at the memory. “I didn’t even crack it open, figured I already knew it all already.”
Granger turns her gaze to the stars. Her voice is soft. “If Mum hadn't read that book, I’d have been packed off to the strictest all girls’ school in Europe. And probably made to see a child psychologist.”
This is the kind of stuff Draco never knows how to respond to. It’s personal stuff, too personal for his liking. All he can think to say are the careful, non-descript answers that people are supposed to say at times like these…
Like, “You were only ten.”
Hermione disentangles her arm and leans down to stare at herself in the puddle of water. She smoothes her hair and wipes her eyes, but he knows she can’t see her reflection in the dark. It’s been years since he caught her looking into an actual mirror. The truth is, she hates what she sees, and that's saying something because she is far less vain than he is.
“I know.” She trails her fingers in the water. “She panicked.”
Draco listens for the sound of water at his feet. Instead he hears what sounds like parchment, ribbon maybe, being wrapped around a gift. He wonders who it’s for and what the occasion is.
Perhaps it is just the result of passing time, but bits and pieces of his memory are missing. He’s well aware of what moments he’s forgetting, sort of, but not their content. He knows he had friends once, but who they were escapes him. He can't remember how he used to take his coffee. And it's more than just minor details. He's certain he's missing important things too -- the kind political strategists and leaders of nations and dark lords might think really important if they knew -- but it’s so bloody cyclical that trying to remember makes his head hurt.
And sometimes he’s haunted by the sound of crackling fire, a relic of one those lost memories. He's sure of it.
“Magic just doesn't make any sense to them," Hermione continues softly. "They studied life sciences and dentistry."
He doesn't bother to correct her use of the present tense. “Granger, can we talk about something new for once? Or not talk at all? Now there’s a novel idea.”
He feigns interest in rubbing his clammy hands for warmth.
The glare she sends him is so intense he imagines he can feel his skin recoil. “Honestly,” she says, her voice tight. “No need to be so hostile.”
“I’m not hostile,” he snaps. They share a tense silence, and it's all he can do not to shake her for being able to inhale entire textbooks and recite them on command and yet completely forget every inane conversation she’s had with him.
He’s learned many things about Granger over the years. Among the many details she’s managed to stuff into his head, he knows her mother was once taken hostage in a bank hold-up, and that her father was ambidextrous. He knows they made vegetarian shepherd’s pie because they honestly liked it better that way, never had time to tend to their garden and hadn’t wanted children until Hermione had decided she was going to be born.
And he knows they tore her bedroom apart one day when she was ten in a moment of unparalleled panic, looking for certain “paraphernalia” after receiving the letter from Hogwarts. They were convinced their daughter was obsessed with the occult and had crafted the letter herself.
How different from the lavious gifts he’d been given when he’d received his own letter.
“It certainly begs the question,” she whispers. “How exactly do dentists come to terms with their one and only daughter doing magic? That their entire profession and life’s work, their years of study, their blood, sweat and tears to successfully open their own practice, can be accomplished with magic in the space of seconds?”
After her first year at Hogwarts, she’d noticed a change in the way her parents loved her. Less unconditionally.
They started giving her wonderful muggle history texts and literature so she “wouldn’t forget who she was”.
They -- seriously -- banned magic and all talk of it from the dinner table, so that nothing witchcrafty could belong in that most sacred of family traditions.
They were quick to let her spend her holidays away from home, including an entire summer at Draco’s turncoat (and scapegoat) of an uncle’s house.
He knows she cries for them sometimes, that she sees something so wrong about muggles existing on the brink of irrelevance, about the possibility of being excluded from the boys club, about existing as the equivalent of domesticated animals and household pets in the new societal hierarchy, with wizards at the top.
The cure for the common cold is a potion. The solution for a dirty shirt is a cleaning spell. Strong charms can keep thieves out of your home at a fraction of the cost of a home security system and none of the wiring. Flooing, portkeys and broomsticks, easily adapted for muggle use, can end muggle society’s collective dependence on pollutant-emitting vehicles. Raw materials can be produced with a simple duplicating charm or transfigured from something else. Computers nearly run themselves.
Very few muggle advancements would remain if magic was unleashed in the muggle world. Millions upon millions would lose their jobs. Entire industries would destabilize and collapse. It is the thought of it all being pointless that he has learned Hermione can’t bear.
It is the thought of her family in that world that she cries for.
Now she is ashamed of her teeth, that she had Madame Pomfrey shrink her teeth back in forth year, when Snape’s brilliant words (‘I see no difference’) had made her cry. What a stupid little boy Draco thinks he had been, awed with his head of house’s penchant for cruelty.
On the crest of a dark hill aglow with the light of dawn. Draco can just make out the silhouetted pitch of Mr. Granger’s headstone. Hermione suddenly starts to cry, great big gulping sobs, grabbing a fistful of his faded shirt. He quells the urge to shake her off.
“You knew this was coming,” he spits uncontrollably. For some inexplicable reason, he’s so angry with her that he can’t see straight.
“Yeah,” she hisses back. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.” Hermione leans her head on his shoulder and he can feel her thin frame shaking.
He shivers, the cold aching deep within his bones, and reluctantly wraps an arm around her.
One of the memories Draco has lost is how their truce came about. He can only remember a familiar crackling in his ears and a heat on his face. Besides that, he presumes he must have had a bloody good reason, like pity. He does know that her hearing isn’t as fucked up as his is, and that her memory is intact except for what he likes to call the black hole of personal anecdotes.
They sit that way for a long time before Hermione inhales sharply and nudges his shoulder.
“Look.”
He follows the point of her hand. Harry Potter has just come through the metal gates of the courtyard behind them.
“He must be on his way to work,” she whispers, her eyes wide.
Draco’s body seizes in anger. “Fuck.”
Potter wears a dress shirt and tie that don’t quite match and his dark hair is starting to see signs of gray. It is as unruly as ever, and he makes his way across the courtyard.
Beside her, Granger holds her breath hopefully, but Potter doesn't notice them as he passes, and he walks on, steps sure and unwavering. He is heading towards Mr. Granger's grave.
A sob flies from Hermione’s throat in despair. “Harry,” she croaks, and impulsively she flies after him.
Draco watches her in disgust, swallowing his own disappointment.
Potter stops at the foot of Mr. Granger's grave for a few minutes, his head bowed, and Draco can't help but watch Hermione hover at the edge of his vision, giving Potter no indication she is there. After a long, wretched moment, she opts for wrapping her arms around herself, and a few minutes later, Potter leaves.
She's left standing on her own, a forlorn slope to her shoulders, and like a kick to the gut, Draco remembers that he hates her. In a moment of brief and utter clarity, he wonders what Granger would do if he left her all alone, right now, for good.
They walk together though. And he knows there is a reason, but he can't remember it. With a measure of frustration, Draco leaps from the bench, his limbs shaky with nervous energy.
He wanders aimlessly among the headstones of the cemetary, waiting for her because he doesn’t have the guts to go it alone, resentment pooling in his gut. Eventually he sits, tucking himself behind one of the larger headstones, and leans back against the rough marble.
Time passes, and the sun rises behind dark grey clouds before Hermione eventually makes her way back to him. She appears surprised to see him.
“Still here?” Her breath fogs.
Draco mutely pulls himself to his feet. He takes in her faded school uniform and jumper, her house scarf with its frayed, burnt edges, and her scuffed shoes that have seen better days.
“I should have left,” he sneers. “I don’t know why I agreed to come with you to the service in the first place. Muggles just see us as minions of another kind of dark lord anyway."
And he does that silly muggle quotation thing with his fingers on the word minions and pretends he really believes he wasn’t one.
“You know I had to,” she says defiantly. Her chin wobbles. “That’s my father!”
“No, you didn’t. No one knew we were there yesterday. So they sang a few sad, manipulative songs and cried." He mocks her with a shit-faced grin. “Does that make you feel any better?”
Hermione’s eyes go wide. “No, but surely you know that’s not what it was about. Why are you giving me such a hard time? Because of Harry?”
“Fuck Potter,” he spits immediately. “And fuck you.”
She stops then in shock, takes a step back. The cemetery looms grey and empty behind her.
“How dare you?” Hermione whispers.
And fuck, his mind races with the feeling that he’s missed something.
“You -- you forgot. Oh, honestly, Draco, you forgot! How could you forget?”
Her words resonate as something flashes before his eyes.
Fire racing through the halls of Hogwarts. Dark wizards in white masks. Father, yanking him by the forearm from the path of an Unforgivable. There’s a roaring in his ears.
“How could you forget!” she says, shrieking. “After everything I’ve done for you!”
And then she forcibly stills her shaking hands, her eyes closed, and Draco watches as she schools her face into something more composed. When she faces him again it is with a certain finality that puts a tight pressure in his gut.
“I’ve had it, Malfoy,” she says, her voice trembling. “If you are so insistent on walking alone, then I can make that happen.”
And she starts to move away, superstitiously trying not to step on any of the graves, but her feet are still quick and he thinks he can hear her start to sob.
For a moment Draco doesn’t think to follow. He hears screaming in the back of his mind, the crackling of fire fills his ears and suddenly, he remembers.
He remembers. And his stomach seizes with guilt.
He’d killed her.
Someone had killed him.
And then the fire had consumed them both.
Of course he knows he’s dead, has always known, but --
Oh, Merlin.
How the fuck could he forget?
She STAYED with him. Fuck, she stayed.
His mind hasn’t whispered the word ‘mudblood’ in decades.
“Granger!” he shouts. “Granger! Wait!”
And he rushes after her as the sky darkens again for an early morning storm, a desperation welling inside of him.
“Granger -- Hermione, wait!”
He’s lost her between the stones and the knotted trees. Draco slips on a wet patch of mud, scraps his hand up on the jagged edge of something, the storm beginning all around him. There’s lightning, for a second, sparing him some more light, and he can see Hermione walking quickly towards the large steel gates and out of his pathetic, lonely existence.
He runs after her.
“Merlin, Hermione, for fuck’s sake, wait, I’m sorry!”
She stops and turns around. The shock is enough to squeeze a gasp from his mouth.
He can see right through her. No no no no no.
She is leaving him.
“Hermione, please,” Draco says desperately. “I did forget, but I am SO sorry.”
She sobs as the rain starts to fall. “You’re SORRY? I could be with my family, my friends, Ron -- even my father, Draco, my father! I could feel and breathe and taste and sleep, and forget what it’s like to be so cold, but I stayed with you -- for thirty years! LOOK at me! I haven’t aged a day since you killed me! How could you FORGET what I’ve given up for you!”
Draco closes his eyes in pain. “I know,” he says, his voice breaking, “and I get it, that you can pass without looking back, that the only reason you’re here in the first place is because of me, but I need you so much.”
His body shakes with the memory of killing her, and how he came to regret it too late -- because there is something about his death that now makes it all seem so wrong, like a morality redirected so he has to live with it for eternity. He supposes that is the point.
And there is something about this girl, even if she is the only company he’s got.
Her sobs catch in her throat. A moment later Draco opens his eyes and trembles with relief. Her eyes once again look glassy, and her skin is ashen, pale, but whole. Thank Merlin, she looks like he does. Rain water courses over her face and makes her hair stick in clumps to her forehead.
Hermione sniffs and gives him a watery smile. “You deserve to be alone. That’s your punishment.”
“I know,” he chokes out as he reaches for her and draws her close.
The rain is steady, muddying the ground. He can barely feel the cold water seeping into his shoes.
“Fuck,” Draco manages, hoping she can’t feel the shudders of his body. He holds her far too tightly than must be comfortable but can’t manage to loosen his grasp. “I forgot, that’s all.”
She hides her wet face in the curve of his neck and breathes some warmth against his skin. A few people dressed in black, huddled beneath a large umbrella, walk by out on the pavement without seeing them.
That’s always the way it is when you walk after death. No one sees you. Your body grows cold and aches with the pains of how you died, however that may be. The world moves on, time moves forward, and you stay the same and wish you were a ghost so you could at least talk to people and pretend you were still alive. You don’t see or hear of the others who walk, those who also died without honour or penance or shame.
But none of them have what he has.
It was only by some weird happenstance that he and Hermione co-existed in this place, wherever it really is, before she was to pass to where he couldn’t follow. The single biggest irony of his life.
And she’d stayed, in the end, when she owed him absolutely nothing. When he’d taken away her father’s only daughter.
“You’ll be here for a thousand more years, Draco,” Hermione whispers, placing a kiss on his collarbone. “Don’t be a complete bastard and I might stick around.”
He pulls back a little, then gives her a long look. “What can I say to that?”
She pauses, and then the answer is simple. “I know you love me.”
It makes him weak in the knees to hear her say it, so he responds by kissing her.
Draco continues to whisper heated apologies in her ear and Hermione laughs softly because she loves him too, but he can still hear fire crackling, and the sounds of people dying and babies being born, tide water rushing back and forth along sandy beaches, and muggle cell phones ringing in muggle subway cars beneath muggle cities.
Mr. Granger was buried yesterday to the sound of thunderous applause.
And in the most fucked up way imaginable, Draco Malfoy is grateful.
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END
Request
Name/Pen Name: Candice
LJ Username: cyyt
Rating(s) of the fic you want: G-PG13
One tone/mood you want your gift to include: Romance
One element/theme/item you want your gift to include: Lucius Malfoy
One common cliche you don't your gift to include: Post-hogwarts
Thank you for your participation in the Spring Forward Exchange!
Title: The Sound of Paper
Author: eucalyptus
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Character death, language.
Summary: There are many things about this girl, even though she’s the only thing he’s got.
Author Notes: Probably not what was imagined when requested, but I am willing to fight to the death that it is romantic. Well, maybe not to the death. Thanks to Jenn for the beta!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me.
-----
Mr. Granger was buried yesterday to the sound of thunderous applause, and for once it wasn't a pathetic attempt on Draco Malfoy’s part to celebrate another pointless muggle death.
What he hears is wholly uncontrollable, the roaring cacophony of millions of things happening at the same time -- people dying and babies being born, tide water rushing in and out with the pull of the moon, muggle cell phones ringing in muggle subway cars beneath muggle cities. A woman is shrieking with laughter somewhere; he himself is sitting in a cemetary and a grieving girl is clutching his arm so hard it hurts.
“Mum thought it was a practical joke,” she whispers with a sad laugh. “Have I mentioned that?”
The wind picks up and sighs through the trees.
Draco is especially curt this morning. His back aches, refusing to ease the iron grip on his spine. He huffs so the girl with the wild brown hair and glassy eyes can hear him and then ignores her by picking at the dirt beneath his fingernails.
She gets the picture.
“Fine."
She sighs and taps her shoe in a puddle of dirty water pooled in the cracks of pavement at their feet. They’re sitting on a metal bench and a lamp post with a ghostly artificial glow is seeing its final minutes of duty above them before the rise of the sun.
He's lost track of the days, but knows enough to figure it has been 12, maybe 14 hours since the funeral.
Hermione laughs under her breath.
“I bet I haven’t told you what happened when McGonagall came. Mum didn’t know she was coming, you see, and Dad was working late -- ”
He groans, making no attempt to hide his annoyance and he is pleased to see her eyes narrow.
"...so she tried to serve tea at the dining table, but McGonagall transfigured into a cat and drank from the saucer of milk instead. Poor Mum, she dropped the whole tray of dishes, smashing every piece into a million pieces."
Hermione beams at the memory then dissolves into soft laughter.
"Good story,” he deadpans. "It's funnier now than the first thirty times you told it."
Her face pales and she doesn't reply. Instead she slides her bum to the far end of the bench.
And damn it if he doesn’t feel guilty. The urge to explain himself overpowers him. Draco slides himself along the cold wet bench and nudges her with his shoulder, dismayed at his powerlessness in the face of this girl’s pretty little pout.
"Okay, okay, what happened then?"
She gives in, an expression of gratitude flitting across her face. “She Reparo'ed it. And I was so excited I must have asked McGonagall a hundred questions, all the while taking exhaustive notes so she couldn’t leave until after Dad came home from work.”
The lamp post flickers out, leaving them in the early morning glow. The skin of his hands looks ashen now, so he closes his eyes and tries to sleep.
Hermione makes a little noise, trying to get his attention again. He blinks at her, unfocused, and she steals her arm beneath his back and around his waist.
“She gave me my copy of Hogwarts: A History. Did you ever get one?”
“Yeah.” He snorts at the memory. “I didn’t even crack it open, figured I already knew it all already.”
Granger turns her gaze to the stars. Her voice is soft. “If Mum hadn't read that book, I’d have been packed off to the strictest all girls’ school in Europe. And probably made to see a child psychologist.”
This is the kind of stuff Draco never knows how to respond to. It’s personal stuff, too personal for his liking. All he can think to say are the careful, non-descript answers that people are supposed to say at times like these…
Like, “You were only ten.”
Hermione disentangles her arm and leans down to stare at herself in the puddle of water. She smoothes her hair and wipes her eyes, but he knows she can’t see her reflection in the dark. It’s been years since he caught her looking into an actual mirror. The truth is, she hates what she sees, and that's saying something because she is far less vain than he is.
“I know.” She trails her fingers in the water. “She panicked.”
Draco listens for the sound of water at his feet. Instead he hears what sounds like parchment, ribbon maybe, being wrapped around a gift. He wonders who it’s for and what the occasion is.
Perhaps it is just the result of passing time, but bits and pieces of his memory are missing. He’s well aware of what moments he’s forgetting, sort of, but not their content. He knows he had friends once, but who they were escapes him. He can't remember how he used to take his coffee. And it's more than just minor details. He's certain he's missing important things too -- the kind political strategists and leaders of nations and dark lords might think really important if they knew -- but it’s so bloody cyclical that trying to remember makes his head hurt.
And sometimes he’s haunted by the sound of crackling fire, a relic of one those lost memories. He's sure of it.
“Magic just doesn't make any sense to them," Hermione continues softly. "They studied life sciences and dentistry."
He doesn't bother to correct her use of the present tense. “Granger, can we talk about something new for once? Or not talk at all? Now there’s a novel idea.”
He feigns interest in rubbing his clammy hands for warmth.
The glare she sends him is so intense he imagines he can feel his skin recoil. “Honestly,” she says, her voice tight. “No need to be so hostile.”
“I’m not hostile,” he snaps. They share a tense silence, and it's all he can do not to shake her for being able to inhale entire textbooks and recite them on command and yet completely forget every inane conversation she’s had with him.
He’s learned many things about Granger over the years. Among the many details she’s managed to stuff into his head, he knows her mother was once taken hostage in a bank hold-up, and that her father was ambidextrous. He knows they made vegetarian shepherd’s pie because they honestly liked it better that way, never had time to tend to their garden and hadn’t wanted children until Hermione had decided she was going to be born.
And he knows they tore her bedroom apart one day when she was ten in a moment of unparalleled panic, looking for certain “paraphernalia” after receiving the letter from Hogwarts. They were convinced their daughter was obsessed with the occult and had crafted the letter herself.
How different from the lavious gifts he’d been given when he’d received his own letter.
“It certainly begs the question,” she whispers. “How exactly do dentists come to terms with their one and only daughter doing magic? That their entire profession and life’s work, their years of study, their blood, sweat and tears to successfully open their own practice, can be accomplished with magic in the space of seconds?”
After her first year at Hogwarts, she’d noticed a change in the way her parents loved her. Less unconditionally.
They started giving her wonderful muggle history texts and literature so she “wouldn’t forget who she was”.
They -- seriously -- banned magic and all talk of it from the dinner table, so that nothing witchcrafty could belong in that most sacred of family traditions.
They were quick to let her spend her holidays away from home, including an entire summer at Draco’s turncoat (and scapegoat) of an uncle’s house.
He knows she cries for them sometimes, that she sees something so wrong about muggles existing on the brink of irrelevance, about the possibility of being excluded from the boys club, about existing as the equivalent of domesticated animals and household pets in the new societal hierarchy, with wizards at the top.
The cure for the common cold is a potion. The solution for a dirty shirt is a cleaning spell. Strong charms can keep thieves out of your home at a fraction of the cost of a home security system and none of the wiring. Flooing, portkeys and broomsticks, easily adapted for muggle use, can end muggle society’s collective dependence on pollutant-emitting vehicles. Raw materials can be produced with a simple duplicating charm or transfigured from something else. Computers nearly run themselves.
Very few muggle advancements would remain if magic was unleashed in the muggle world. Millions upon millions would lose their jobs. Entire industries would destabilize and collapse. It is the thought of it all being pointless that he has learned Hermione can’t bear.
It is the thought of her family in that world that she cries for.
Now she is ashamed of her teeth, that she had Madame Pomfrey shrink her teeth back in forth year, when Snape’s brilliant words (‘I see no difference’) had made her cry. What a stupid little boy Draco thinks he had been, awed with his head of house’s penchant for cruelty.
On the crest of a dark hill aglow with the light of dawn. Draco can just make out the silhouetted pitch of Mr. Granger’s headstone. Hermione suddenly starts to cry, great big gulping sobs, grabbing a fistful of his faded shirt. He quells the urge to shake her off.
“You knew this was coming,” he spits uncontrollably. For some inexplicable reason, he’s so angry with her that he can’t see straight.
“Yeah,” she hisses back. “But that doesn’t make it any easier.” Hermione leans her head on his shoulder and he can feel her thin frame shaking.
He shivers, the cold aching deep within his bones, and reluctantly wraps an arm around her.
One of the memories Draco has lost is how their truce came about. He can only remember a familiar crackling in his ears and a heat on his face. Besides that, he presumes he must have had a bloody good reason, like pity. He does know that her hearing isn’t as fucked up as his is, and that her memory is intact except for what he likes to call the black hole of personal anecdotes.
They sit that way for a long time before Hermione inhales sharply and nudges his shoulder.
“Look.”
He follows the point of her hand. Harry Potter has just come through the metal gates of the courtyard behind them.
“He must be on his way to work,” she whispers, her eyes wide.
Draco’s body seizes in anger. “Fuck.”
Potter wears a dress shirt and tie that don’t quite match and his dark hair is starting to see signs of gray. It is as unruly as ever, and he makes his way across the courtyard.
Beside her, Granger holds her breath hopefully, but Potter doesn't notice them as he passes, and he walks on, steps sure and unwavering. He is heading towards Mr. Granger's grave.
A sob flies from Hermione’s throat in despair. “Harry,” she croaks, and impulsively she flies after him.
Draco watches her in disgust, swallowing his own disappointment.
Potter stops at the foot of Mr. Granger's grave for a few minutes, his head bowed, and Draco can't help but watch Hermione hover at the edge of his vision, giving Potter no indication she is there. After a long, wretched moment, she opts for wrapping her arms around herself, and a few minutes later, Potter leaves.
She's left standing on her own, a forlorn slope to her shoulders, and like a kick to the gut, Draco remembers that he hates her. In a moment of brief and utter clarity, he wonders what Granger would do if he left her all alone, right now, for good.
They walk together though. And he knows there is a reason, but he can't remember it. With a measure of frustration, Draco leaps from the bench, his limbs shaky with nervous energy.
He wanders aimlessly among the headstones of the cemetary, waiting for her because he doesn’t have the guts to go it alone, resentment pooling in his gut. Eventually he sits, tucking himself behind one of the larger headstones, and leans back against the rough marble.
Time passes, and the sun rises behind dark grey clouds before Hermione eventually makes her way back to him. She appears surprised to see him.
“Still here?” Her breath fogs.
Draco mutely pulls himself to his feet. He takes in her faded school uniform and jumper, her house scarf with its frayed, burnt edges, and her scuffed shoes that have seen better days.
“I should have left,” he sneers. “I don’t know why I agreed to come with you to the service in the first place. Muggles just see us as minions of another kind of dark lord anyway."
And he does that silly muggle quotation thing with his fingers on the word minions and pretends he really believes he wasn’t one.
“You know I had to,” she says defiantly. Her chin wobbles. “That’s my father!”
“No, you didn’t. No one knew we were there yesterday. So they sang a few sad, manipulative songs and cried." He mocks her with a shit-faced grin. “Does that make you feel any better?”
Hermione’s eyes go wide. “No, but surely you know that’s not what it was about. Why are you giving me such a hard time? Because of Harry?”
“Fuck Potter,” he spits immediately. “And fuck you.”
She stops then in shock, takes a step back. The cemetery looms grey and empty behind her.
“How dare you?” Hermione whispers.
And fuck, his mind races with the feeling that he’s missed something.
“You -- you forgot. Oh, honestly, Draco, you forgot! How could you forget?”
Her words resonate as something flashes before his eyes.
Fire racing through the halls of Hogwarts. Dark wizards in white masks. Father, yanking him by the forearm from the path of an Unforgivable. There’s a roaring in his ears.
“How could you forget!” she says, shrieking. “After everything I’ve done for you!”
And then she forcibly stills her shaking hands, her eyes closed, and Draco watches as she schools her face into something more composed. When she faces him again it is with a certain finality that puts a tight pressure in his gut.
“I’ve had it, Malfoy,” she says, her voice trembling. “If you are so insistent on walking alone, then I can make that happen.”
And she starts to move away, superstitiously trying not to step on any of the graves, but her feet are still quick and he thinks he can hear her start to sob.
For a moment Draco doesn’t think to follow. He hears screaming in the back of his mind, the crackling of fire fills his ears and suddenly, he remembers.
He remembers. And his stomach seizes with guilt.
He’d killed her.
Someone had killed him.
And then the fire had consumed them both.
Of course he knows he’s dead, has always known, but --
Oh, Merlin.
How the fuck could he forget?
She STAYED with him. Fuck, she stayed.
His mind hasn’t whispered the word ‘mudblood’ in decades.
“Granger!” he shouts. “Granger! Wait!”
And he rushes after her as the sky darkens again for an early morning storm, a desperation welling inside of him.
“Granger -- Hermione, wait!”
He’s lost her between the stones and the knotted trees. Draco slips on a wet patch of mud, scraps his hand up on the jagged edge of something, the storm beginning all around him. There’s lightning, for a second, sparing him some more light, and he can see Hermione walking quickly towards the large steel gates and out of his pathetic, lonely existence.
He runs after her.
“Merlin, Hermione, for fuck’s sake, wait, I’m sorry!”
She stops and turns around. The shock is enough to squeeze a gasp from his mouth.
He can see right through her. No no no no no.
She is leaving him.
“Hermione, please,” Draco says desperately. “I did forget, but I am SO sorry.”
She sobs as the rain starts to fall. “You’re SORRY? I could be with my family, my friends, Ron -- even my father, Draco, my father! I could feel and breathe and taste and sleep, and forget what it’s like to be so cold, but I stayed with you -- for thirty years! LOOK at me! I haven’t aged a day since you killed me! How could you FORGET what I’ve given up for you!”
Draco closes his eyes in pain. “I know,” he says, his voice breaking, “and I get it, that you can pass without looking back, that the only reason you’re here in the first place is because of me, but I need you so much.”
His body shakes with the memory of killing her, and how he came to regret it too late -- because there is something about his death that now makes it all seem so wrong, like a morality redirected so he has to live with it for eternity. He supposes that is the point.
And there is something about this girl, even if she is the only company he’s got.
Her sobs catch in her throat. A moment later Draco opens his eyes and trembles with relief. Her eyes once again look glassy, and her skin is ashen, pale, but whole. Thank Merlin, she looks like he does. Rain water courses over her face and makes her hair stick in clumps to her forehead.
Hermione sniffs and gives him a watery smile. “You deserve to be alone. That’s your punishment.”
“I know,” he chokes out as he reaches for her and draws her close.
The rain is steady, muddying the ground. He can barely feel the cold water seeping into his shoes.
“Fuck,” Draco manages, hoping she can’t feel the shudders of his body. He holds her far too tightly than must be comfortable but can’t manage to loosen his grasp. “I forgot, that’s all.”
She hides her wet face in the curve of his neck and breathes some warmth against his skin. A few people dressed in black, huddled beneath a large umbrella, walk by out on the pavement without seeing them.
That’s always the way it is when you walk after death. No one sees you. Your body grows cold and aches with the pains of how you died, however that may be. The world moves on, time moves forward, and you stay the same and wish you were a ghost so you could at least talk to people and pretend you were still alive. You don’t see or hear of the others who walk, those who also died without honour or penance or shame.
But none of them have what he has.
It was only by some weird happenstance that he and Hermione co-existed in this place, wherever it really is, before she was to pass to where he couldn’t follow. The single biggest irony of his life.
And she’d stayed, in the end, when she owed him absolutely nothing. When he’d taken away her father’s only daughter.
“You’ll be here for a thousand more years, Draco,” Hermione whispers, placing a kiss on his collarbone. “Don’t be a complete bastard and I might stick around.”
He pulls back a little, then gives her a long look. “What can I say to that?”
She pauses, and then the answer is simple. “I know you love me.”
It makes him weak in the knees to hear her say it, so he responds by kissing her.
Draco continues to whisper heated apologies in her ear and Hermione laughs softly because she loves him too, but he can still hear fire crackling, and the sounds of people dying and babies being born, tide water rushing back and forth along sandy beaches, and muggle cell phones ringing in muggle subway cars beneath muggle cities.
Mr. Granger was buried yesterday to the sound of thunderous applause.
And in the most fucked up way imaginable, Draco Malfoy is grateful.
-----
END
Request
Name/Pen Name: Candice
LJ Username: cyyt
Rating(s) of the fic you want: G-PG13
One tone/mood you want your gift to include: Romance
One element/theme/item you want your gift to include: Lucius Malfoy
One common cliche you don't your gift to include: Post-hogwarts
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