“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

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It was one of those moments where one second felt like one minute, and two seconds felt like two minutes and three felt like three minutes. It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds for Draco to pull back from Alexis. It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds when their eyes met, the unmistakeable pain reflected in both gazes. She thought she felt her heart rip in half, but of course that was both stupid and impossible.

“I – I’m sorry,” Hermione stuttered the first words she could think of. And then she was closing the door; unable to stand him looking at her like that, with a stare so piercing she felt there was nothing she couldn’t hide. And right now she couldn’t risk letting him see her pain. Couldn’t let him know how much power he still held even after seven months.

Draco caught the door before it could slam shut in his face, pulling it open hard enough to have ripped it off its hinges. Hermione didn’t stop to look back. She’d have to stop to do that, and if she stopped she was afraid of letting what she’d walked in on really hit her. So she walked fast, as fast as a person in a wedding dress could walk, heels clicking sharply on the bitumen. She counted them. One, two, three, four… Keep going. Don’t hesitate.

“Granger, wait,” he demanded. “What you saw – it wasn’t –”

“I should have knocked,” she said back, her voice higher than usual. The beginnings of a sob bubbled to her mouth when she spoke, and she hastily stifled it with a hand. Don’t cry. You have no reason to cry. He was never yours. Draco’s fingers grazed her elbow; she spun around sharply. “Don’t. Touch. Me,” she warned, her voice shaking but gaze unfaltering.

He stared back levelly. Two seconds that felt like two minutes passed.

“Hermione, I’m so sorry,” came a third voice distantly. Alexis had followed, standing some feet away. “I thought – thought whatever you and Draco had was finished. You hadn’t seen each other in so long. And you were getting married today. I thought –”

“Alexis, go,” Draco ordered harshly. She did not move, blue eyes on Hermione. “NOW!” he yelled so loud and so sudden she jumped.

Alexis was not someone to back down, and she had no real reason to be apologising. Draco was free to do whatever he liked. She was breaking no rules kissing him. And under normal circumstances if any man yelled at her like that they’d get an earful. It was different this time. They all knew it. And so Alexis turned back up the street.

Hermione strode away in the opposite direction. They’d reached the end now, where a forest surrounded the houses here. She heard Draco’s steps crunching under the leaves behind her. Hermione counted to three and faced him.

Her face was worked into a cold mask of indifference that could’ve only been taught to her by Draco. The one he’d used during those first months in the flat. She thought she saw him wince from the hardness of it, but he was still as good at hiding reactions as always. 

“Please,” she said calmly, “leave me alone.”

“Granger –”

He was just as calm as she was, which ignited a furious storm in her chest. He was so out of reach, so fucking fine and nonchalant all the time. Did anything unsettle him? How could he be so fine when she was sucking in heaving sobs? “I,” she started, voice constricted, “haven’t got anything to say to you, Draco.”

“Well, you came all the way over here,” he retorted, taking her arm, “so there must be something.” 

The slight note of agitation tinged his words; she stopped and looked at him. “I saw you,” she stated more firmly than she felt. “I saw you leave.”

He understood immediately. “Potter,” he guessed.

“No,” she corrected. “He didn’t screw up your little plan. You did that all by yourself. How,” she said seeing him about to interrupt, “did you pull it off? How did you snake your way around the vow?”

His face, formerly clouded with confusion, sobered. “A loophole –”

“How did you know for sure?”

“What?”

“How did you know it was a loophole?” And it did not take her careful stare to see the definite straightening of his shoulders, or the muscle jumping in his jaw, or the resolute expression that crossed his features for Hermione to realise what was not being said but implied. “You didn’t,” she said barely above a whisper.

When he did not correct her, there came a loud thudding in her ears, impossible to ignore. Her blood boiled. Fists tightened. A current of anger raged through her, and her body reacted before her brain could catch up.

Draco, seeing her fury, flinched and took a cautious step back. But that did not waver Hermione as both her hands shot out and slammed into his chest, shoving him back so that he stumbled, repeatedly slapping his chest.

“How. Could. You!” she shrieked between slaps. “You knew, knew I was getting married, and you showed up anyway? You could have died, Draco!”

“But I didn’t –!”

“But you could’ve! No one is worth your life! What were you thinking?”

“The vow said –!”

“I don’t care!”

But he had never been one to listen to her, and spoke anyway. “I have a purpose to be in your life,” he rushed out, and surprisingly Hermione shut up. “You and I,” he went on, “we’re not supposed to never see each other again because there will always be a reason for you being in my life and me in yours.”

After a pause, she let out a sardonic laugh. “And what purpose might that be? To constantly be at each others throats over insignificant things or being in denial about our feelings towards one another?”

Angered and frustrated, he grabbed her shoulders. “Damn it, Granger! Does this not mean anything to you?” 

His fingers were digging into her bare shoulders sharply. She fought back the urge to cringe and look away, meeting his penetrating stare head on. “Once, it might have.”

“And now?”

“We’re… we’re just not good for each other. Have you ever paused to consider that maybe you just want this – me – so badly because you know you can’t?” She did not expect an answer to that, and he did not give one. Neither said anything for a while. Then Hermione asked something she couldn’t let slip by; “Do you fancy her? Alexis?”

Draco looked away, into the trees behind her. “I…” He spoke slowly. “I don’t right now. But I think I could. One day, maybe.”

“I wasn’t even aware you two were still in contact.” Though of course now Hermione was kicking herself, of course they were.

“We liked each other, didn’t make sense to not want to see each other again. Not everyone’s under an Unbreakable Vow.”

She met his stare, if only because the fact that Draco had just tried to make a joke was an extremely rare occurrence. His attempt to lighten things fell short upon the unamused look she gave him, one she usually reserved for Ron when he tried to find humour in a situation that was not funny.

“And what’s there not to like about Alexis?” he continued. “She’s funny. Smart. When she walks in front of me I can actually see past her hair. She doesn’t give those weird snorts when she laughs really hard. Her skin’s unblemished, no freckles. Eyes are a bright blue and not a warm brown. Clothes are all designer. The woman was meant for fine jewellery. She doesn’t trip when wearing heels.”

Granger looked back at him as he said all this, completely unperturbed.

“But that’s just the problem, isn’t it,” he said, studying her. “She’s not you.”

“Stop it,” she said quietly.

“Stop what?”

“Stop acting as though you have feelings for me minutes after I catch you with her. It’s not like this isn’t the first time you’ve ran off and snogged some woman because you were upset.”

That was true, but Draco was not about to admit to it. Instead he heaved a sigh and rested his back against a tree. “I don’t know how to do this,” he confessed. “This is completely new territory. You, you’ve always been surrounded by people who love you unconditionally. You open yourself up, let them in. And it’s not that stupid high school kind of friendship where you shop everyday and hate the same people or whatever. You would and have almost died for your friends. Me, I’ve never loved a damned thing. At least not as deeply as you. I don’t understand how it works. Today I came to your wedding because I figured out a way around the vow. But I could have done it sooner and we mightn’t have had to go through all this. I’d made attempts, but that was only so I could tell myself I had. Really, this,” he gestured between them, “is scary. Caring for someone, loving someone more than you could ever yourself is fucking terrifying. And Granger when I’m with you, that’s what it’s like. I – fuck I can’t do this, this feels like it should be a fucking diary entry – feel too exposed around you.” Pause. “Do you get what I mean?” 

“So you’re saying, without any kind of threat, the possibility that we may actually wind up together forever frightens you?” she asked bluntly.

They were so far out of Draco’s comfort zone it wasn’t funny. All he wanted to do was take back everything he had said, edit it to make the words sound less stupid and corny, and crawl into a hole and die. Rather than say anything else that might embarrass him, he sat down, back still resting on the tree, and said nothing.

He did not look, but heard Granger move and kneel down in front of him, felt her eyes intently focused on him. She breathed deeply, swallowed. “The way I see it, if you’d really loved me at all, you wouldn’t have left that night.”

Her words were suddenly choked and constricted. His gaze founds hers only to realise at some point she had started crying. If anything he had thought she’d been crying when she was storming off down the street, and for a moment he was really confused. Then, Draco realised this was the source of the problem. This here was her breaking point, the one thing that finally unintentionally broken her cool mask. The longer he looked back, the clearer he saw the heartache, the pain, the betrayal. Because Hermione Granger did not sleep with just anyone. And for him to roll on out and be gone the next morning without a word, without even a note, had hit her hard.

He had tried to write something, he had paused with the nib of the pen pressed hard into a piece of paper. Had wanted so badly to say something. But words were not his thing, and what could he have said anyway to make her understand?

“I did that for you,” was his automatic defence, what he had drilled into his head since that morning.

“No,” she said, tears ruining her perfect makeup, “you did it for yourself.”  

Again, he did not respond. She shuffled around, heard the crackling of leaves as she sat down beside him, her knee pressing into his. He thought about saying something, the ground was brown and the dress was white, after all, but concluded that that was stupid. She could take on Death Eaters; she could easily get a stain out of a dress. Perhaps he was just searching for something to fill the silence (this was the weirdest conversation they’d ever had, including the pick up lines) but in the end, it was her who spoke. Soft and gentle – just audible over the rustling trees around them. “What we had was wonderful,” she said, staring straight ahead, “and I’m very fortuitous to have experienced it. It was… a wonderful fortuitous love.” Her voice had gained momentary strength, as though she had thought about saying this for some time. Another pause ensued. “You know some people are meant to fall in love but not be together.”

Draco’s pride had taken one too many hits today, and he was not going to react to how much the last sentence actually hurt, or that she’d used past tense to describe their messed up relationship, or that he was losing her a second time. Later he suspected the reality of this would all hit, and when it did he was fairly confident he’d be upset. Not crying or anything, but the kind of upset where all you want to do is pick up things and break them. The kind where you want to take off and run or do exercise and not stop until your lungs threaten to burst. 

“So that’s why you’re here?” he eventually got out. “You came here to tell me we have to stay away from each other?”

Granger breathed out a sound he decided was a weak laugh and rested her head on his shoulder. “No, I’m here because I wanted to see you. You see, Draco Malfoy, without your sarcastic replies to endure each morning and that arrogance only you could carry, I find myself somewhat missing you.”

Draco told himself he was not leaning into her. He really wasn’t. It was just cold, and he was uncomfortable and tired of holding himself up. Really. And then silence fell again. He tried to count the times they had sat like this, together, without a word. It was a comfortable silence, though. He knew that this was what he would miss most, having found someone to sit with without talking. Knowing that they like you enough without the worry of boring them or having to say something funny. Knowing that your presence is enough for them and visa versa. It wasn’t everyday you found someone like that.

When Hermione moved beside him, he knew that she was getting up to leave before she even said it. He felt like there were still too many things left unsaid and discussed, but if they did that, with the almost certainty of them fighting throughout it all in mind, they could be here for days. He stood with her. They faced each other. He told her before he left that he couldn’t say goodbye, it was a foreign thing to them both. So instead he stood his usual height, leant against the tree with the infamous Malfoy smirk and asked, “Tell me first, who was better, me or Weasley?”

A wide smile spread across her face, genuine and goofy, and that is when Draco realised what he had failed to before. Weasley and Potter may be her best friends and share the connection of saving the world and all that bullshit, but they would never see this Granger. The smile she gave him now was different to how she smiled earlier today. He couldn’t explain how there could be different smiles, but that’s what it was. No less happy. No less wider. But different all the same. Draco realised there was a side of her reserved only for him that her friends would never see, and he thought that this was okay too.

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So, like, hi after over three months of waiting. I'd apologise but I think you all know I'm sorry. This chapter destroyed me, you have no idea. I still don't think I'm happy with it. I feel like they've had heaps of fights and I'm repeating myself. I don't know, I think I'm having a midlife crisis if that's possible when you're seventeen. I tried anyway. 

AND BEFORE YOU FREAK OUT. 

There is still an epilogue my dear children! Do not fear! All shall be well! Trust me. 

I'm not going to say when I'll update next because grade twelve is kicking my butt. All those people who said it would be easier than eleven I want to punch.

I will update sooner than I did this time, though. 

xoxoxoxoxox to you all.